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(B) Traits of Every Successful Entrepreneur with Michael Gerber

Lace Gilger
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In this episode we bring in legendary business expert Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited to share why most small businesses don’t work and show you exactly how you can build a truly scalable business.

Michael E. Gerber is an Innovator, Entrepreneur, Author, of the mega-bestselling author of 29 “E-Myth” books. The Wall Street Journal named The E-Myth the #1 business book of all time (November 1995) having sold millions of copies and has now been applied in 145 countries, in 29 languages and is taught in 118 universities. He has founded The Michael Thomas Corporation, The E-Myth Academy, E-Myth Worldwide, and Michael E. Gerber Companies, and has served over 100,000 small business clients. 

  • Why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it

  • The vast majority of small businesses are solopreneuers.. but they are just technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure

  • What’s the difference between the Technician, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur? (And which one are you?)

  • A technician never truly thinks like an entrepreneur.. they fall into the trap of doing it every single day.

  • If you don’t understand it, you don’t do it, and if you don’t do it, you will be stuck. 

  • The four elements of an entrepreneur:

    • A dreamer - dream

    • A thinker - vision 

    • A storyteller - purpose 

    • A leader - mission 

  • How do you grow from a company of 1 to a company of 1,000?

  • The manager's job is to manage the SYSTEM that has been created by the entrepreneur to effectively enable the technician to perform their role.. to enable everything to happen. 

  • A technician wants to do the work... but they don’t want to deal with being managed. 

  • The entrepreneur wants to constantly be creating.. and they drive everyone crazy.. they are always in the future looking at the next best idea. 

  • The technician is in the present.. doing the work. 

  • The manger is trying to harmonize the entrepreneur and the technician. 

  • What should you do if your business is stuck?

  • Working ON Your Business vs Working IN Your Business

    • Working on your business means you have to rise above the day to day activities of the business

    • You have to be able to see the business and be detached from its operations

  • Becoming defined by, and attached to, your perceived roles is a disease. Growth requires letting go of the roles that you perceive you need to do. 

  • Growth requires transcending yourself to transform yourself. 

  • You have to transcend beyond what you do, but also you must transcend WHO YOU ARE. You have to transcend your PERSONALITY to discover the true potential of the human being within.

  • Entrepreneurs are not born, they are made. They are made through an insight into this very topic. 

  • Why are so many entrepreneurs, solopreneuers, and small business owners trapped in and stuck with their existing identities? Why are they stuck, unable to transcend? 

  • There is a huge difference between owning a small business and being self-employed - they are essentially the opposite kinds of mindset. 

  • Many people say they want to become an entrepreneur but have no idea what that means. 

  • The true distinction between an entrepreneur and someone who is self-employed is wanting to have a more profound and greater impact on the world. 

  • If your dreams and aims are larger.. then almost by definition you must marshal resources at a larger scale than just yourself to create that impact.

  • The first thing that has to happen, at the very beginning, is that you have to create a PLATFORM to create the change you want to see in the world. 

  • Your dream can’t be a personal dream.. it must be a larger dream.. a bigger vision about helping people. 

  • The dream is the big change you want to see in the world. 

  • The vision is the form that your company will take to make that dream a reality. 

  • It’s never about you. It’s about helping others. Figure out WHO you want to help. 

  • Stop living with the need to control, and you become free with the desire to CREATE. 

  • The calling is NEVER about money.

  • Homework: Read the E-Myth revisited. If you’ve already read it, then re-read it. 

  • Homework: Read Awakening the Entrepreneur Within 

  • “I've read the e-myth 39 times"

  • The Eightfold Path

    • Dream

    • Vision

    • Purpose

    • Mission

    • Job

    • Practice

    • Businesses 

    • Enterprise 

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Hey, it’s Matt. I’m here in the studio with Austin. We’re excited to bring you another business episode of the Science of Success. We just launched season 2 of our business episodes. If you want to learn more about what these are and why we're doing them, be sure to check out the season 2 teaser that we recently released. With that, Austin, tell us a little bit about how these episodes are different than our traditional Science of Success episode?

[0:00:36.2] AF: Yeah. It's important to note that you're still going to get all the great contents you've come to know and love from the Science of Success every Thursday. These are bonus episodes with added value, specifically centered around business. We've interviewed some true titans of business and multiple industries from multiple walks of life. What we're going to focus on are the habits, routines and mindsets that made them successful titans they are today.

That said, these are lessons, routines, stories, best practices that anyone can learn from and apply to their life. You don't have to be a business owner. You can be an employee. You can be a student, or you can of course be a business owner. Come check them out. You're going to come away with a ton of valuable takeaways. We do have a bit of a business focus on these specific business episodes in season 2.

[0:01:19.7] MB: With that, let's get into the episode.

[0:01:23.0] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we bring in legendary business expert, Michael Gerber; author of The E-Myth Revisited, to share why most small businesses don't work and show you exactly how to build a truly scalable business.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right? on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we showed you exactly how to build the habits and routines you need to succeed, we broke down what makes powerful habits and shared how to stay motivated and productive no matter what happens, with our previous guest, James Clear.

Now for our interview with Michael.

[0:02:48.7] MB: Michael Gerber is an innovator, entrepreneur and author of the mega best-selling 29 E-Myth books. The Wall Street Journal named The E-Myth the number one business book of all time and it sold millions of copies and been translated into 29 languages. He founded the Michael Thomas Corporation, the E-Myth Academy, E-Myth Worldwide and the Michael E. Gerber companies and has served over a hundred thousand small businesses.

Michael, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:17.4] MG: Matt, delighted to be here.

[0:03:19.5] MB: Well, we're so excited to have you on the show today. Obviously, you're a legend in the business world, and so it's really exciting to be able to have you on the show.

[0:03:27.9] MG: Well, thank you. I’m delighted to be a legend in the “business world.”

[0:03:34.3] MB: Well, as I told you in the pre-show, I'm a huge fan of E-Myth and I have an old dog-eared underlined copy sitting on my bookshelf that I've reread many, many times. I'd love to start out with just a couple of the key ideas from that book, because to me this is one of the most important business books really that's ever been written and I think it was even at one point, named the top business book of the year, or the top business book of all time. Isn't that correct?

[0:04:00.3] MG: Well, yes. It is. The book you're really speaking about is the second book in the series, which was called The E-Myth and is called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. The original book, The E-Myth, was published in 1986. Can you believe it? The second in the series, The E-Myth Revisited was published in 1995. It was revisited which has captured the minds and hearts and attention of so many, many millions of small business readers.

[0:04:44.0] MB: Let's start with the fundamental question, why do most small businesses not work?

[0:04:50.8] MG: Well, because they started wrong. They’re started by a guy, by a lady who has technical skills, a carpenter, a graphic designer, a programmer, whatever. They started small business to get rid of the boss. Mainly, they're working for somebody else and they hate it. They start their own business to do what they love to do, which is programming, or carpentry, or graphic design and begin doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. They built them what they call the business, which is really nothing other than a job. They're effectively self-employed.

They build a business that depends upon them. If in fact they're successful at it, to begin to become overwhelmed with the myriad and varied other skills, capabilities, knowledge that's required in order to do that. Most of them never do. The vast majority of “small businesses” are what have been mockingly called solopreneurs, well, they're not preneurs at all. They’re technicians suffering from a entrepreneurial seizure, as I say in The E-Myth. That's the very first and most fundamental reason that the vast majority of small businesses fail, that the very small minority of small businesses ever grow into something other than a small business. It requires an enormous shift of attention and purpose and understanding for someone to make that great.

[0:06:59.6] MB: You've throughout two terms there that are both really important to understand to grasp this key concept. First, you talked about the technician and I'd love to explore really the three main roles that people fall into within a business; the technician, the entrepreneur the manager. Then we'll get into the concept of the entrepreneurial seizure and really how the journey typically takes place.

[0:07:21.7] MG: Perfect. Well, the technician is the doer. That's the one who does the work. In a large company, that's the one at the bottom. It's the guy who does the job. It's the HVAC technician who goes out and fixes the air conditioner. It's the woman who does the graphic design. It's etc., etc. The manager in a emerging organization is one who manages technicians. In fact, the manager oversees the work of a technician to make certain that the work is being done the way it needs to be done in order to produce the results that have been promised to be produced.

The entrepreneur is the one who founds the company, creates the company and essentially, like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates or on and on and on and on, Walt Disney, leads the company and most often, plays the role of the chief executive officer of that company. Effectively in the company, the entrepreneur is the CEO and in many cases, the CMO, the CTO, the CIO, whatever all of the C-level functions are in a small emerging company.

The mid-manager, the middle managers are the ones who oversee the work. The technicians are the ones who do the work. As you can imagine in a small business, the technician “is the entrepreneur,” but in reality, not. When I say in reality not, because the technician never truly thinks like an entrepreneur and we can describe what that is, they fall into the trap of doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it every single day. Because they are singular in scale and scope, that means they're just me doing it, like you're doing it right now and I'm doing it right now. Right now, we're technicians doing an interview. You follow me?

The manager manages that to make certain it's working. The leader leads that to make sure that it's reaching the level of performance that is necessary for that small business, that job to grow and do a business and that business to grow into an enterprise. Does that help?

[0:10:24.4] MB: Yeah, that's a great description. I want to come back to the mindset of each of these roles and how they clash and what that class really means for the day-to-day struggle of a small business owner.

[0:10:39.4] MG: Well, great. Let me first describe for you the core components, the four elements of an entrepreneur. I write about that in my book, Beyond the E-Myth, effectively dealing with the entrepreneurial totality that is absolutely essential to understand, most specifically when someone starts a small company, because to the degree, one doesn't understand this, they will never live this. If they never live this, they will never do this. If they never do this, they will be stuck in a tragic relationship with themselves and with the company, that start up, that job they've created.

An entrepreneur has four different personalities. I call them a dreamer, a thinker, a storyteller and a leader. In that regard, the dreamer has a dream, the thinker has a vision, the storyteller has a purpose and the leader has a mission. In my case for example, in 1977 when we started our original company, which was called the Michael Thomas Corporation, my dream was stated very explicitly, to transform the state of small business worldwide.

My vision was to invent the McDonald's of small business consulting. My purpose was that every small business owner who was attracted to our point of view, our paradigm and implemented it could be as successful as on the lowest level of McDonald's franchisee, and on the highest level, McDonald's itself. Our mission was to invent the business development system that was crucial for any small business to be able to grow from a company of 1 to a company of 1,000. I call it the emergence of an enterprise.

You see that when you understand that role of the entrepreneur, then you understand the role of the manager. The manager’s true job then is to manage the system that has been created and led by the entrepreneur to effectively enable the technician to perform the role that technician is to perform, to enable the dream, the vision, the purpose and the mission to be expressed in the work that technician does in order to take the promise of awakening the entrepreneur within in our case, small business clients. You follow that.

[0:14:01.8] AF: This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you once again by our incredible sponsors at Brilliant. Go to www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess to learn more. For a limited time, the first 200 of our listeners to sign up get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Brilliant is a math and science learning platform and their mission is to inspire and develop people to achieve their goals in STEM learning. I love it.

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Brilliant offers a wide range of content, like interactive courses on topics from mathematics, to quantitative finance, scientific thinking, all the way to programming. On our show, we dig into the importance of learning, how to learn and building frameworks for problem solving. That's why I can't think of a better sponsor for our show than Brilliant, because they help you do just that.

Go check them out today. Brilliant is giving away 20% off their premium annual subscription to our first 200 listeners, to go to www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess. Go today and get started. Again, that's www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess.

[0:15:29.2] MB: It all makes sense and it almost is easier to see the distinction in a larger enterprise. When you scale all of those roles and all those functions down into the head, or the life, or the activities of a single individual, that's where some of these conflicts start to arise.

[0:15:46.0] MG: Well, yeah. That's where the conflicts, because understand to the technician, all he really wants to do is the work. I want to be a photographer. I want to be a photographer. I want to be a graphic designer. I want to be a graphic designer. The only reason they left the job that they had is because their boss controls them every day. The last thing the technician wants to do is to create a control of what he or she does. E. g. the entrepreneur has control over all of the work that must be done in that organization, as Steve Jobs did so eloquently and graphically and profoundly in the beginning of Apple Computer.

As everyone does who is a true entrepreneur, so you understand Steve Jobs started as a technician, but as an entrepreneurial technician who effectively had a dream, a clear dream that he wished to realize. His job was to orchestrate that outcome in such a way that he could replicate it throughout the world. Of course, that's what the first product of Apple was designed to do. Of course, as true of every entrepreneur as well, the entrepreneur is the creator. The entrepreneur is the infinite creator. The entrepreneur never stops creating. The entrepreneur drives everybody crazy, because the entrepreneur is always in the future, always in the future, always in the future.

The technician is always in the present, always in the present, always in the present. The manager is trying to keep the two of them from doing battle with each other. You can see the balance the manager plays in that role. Well, if the manager isn't effectively enjoined into this process, this evolution of an enterprise, then the conflict begins there. If the technician is holding on to his right to do what he wants to do in the way that he or she wants to do it, insists upon doing it no matter what the entrepreneur says, no matter what the manager says and you understand in this case, I'm talking about the entrepreneur as one of the personalities within a technician, the manager is one of the personalities within the technician.

In the beginning, the technician is running the show. Effectively, this job that I've taken on for myself is fraught with complication, because it's constantly in conflict with the dueling of it, in order to create the seeing of it and the expansion of it into a truly dramatically, creative enterprise that grows and grows and grows and grows. Apple grew from a guy doing it, doing it, doing it, Steve Jobs, to the very first trillion dollar enterprise ever created on the planet. Think about that.

[0:19:31.6] MB: It's so interesting. To see these different mindsets, the entrepreneur, the technician and the manager all operating in one person's head, give me an example of how those things might conflict with each other, or might create conflict in a small business situation.

[0:19:50.6] MG: Well, first of all, if the technician, the doer, the graphic designer has never read The E-Myth Revisited, they wouldn't even know about that story. They wouldn't know about the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician remarkably. The first one who's ever told that story in my first book, The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, and then expanded upon that story in my conversation with Sarah in The E-Myth Revisited, Sarah being the technician in a pie shop, a baker of pies.

Suddenly, Sarah owns a business because her pies attracted a great enthusiasm from the marketplace, so she couldn't just bake pies herself. She had to get other people to bake pies and she couldn't just resort to baking pies alone. She had to create a restaurant in which she fed people pies and on and on and on. All of a sudden, she's involved in a completely different organization than the one she started unwittingly at the beginning, because of her love for pies.

The technician begins to experience as they begin to experience the response from the marketplace, from their customers who love their pies, who love their pies, who love their graphic design, that more and more people are attracted to them. As more and more people are attracted to them, they begin to realize they need to organize this in such a way that enables them to continue to do what they love to do and not have to do the stuff they don't love to do, so they hire a bookkeeper, or they hire a sales person, or they hire you follow me, they hire somebody do the work they don't love to do, but they're forced to do at the very beginning of the company as a company of one.

As this emerges, something occurs. Something that occurs in that technician is, “Holy cow. People really love this. Holy cow. This is something bigger than I thought it was. Holy cow. How do I do bigger?” As they begin to say, “How do I do bigger?” They begin to read perhaps books on doing bigger. They begin to look for resources that might teach them about how to do bigger. They might get a business coach. They might get a business mentor. They might begin to join the association of sole proprietors, or the association of solopreneurs. You get my point.

As they begin to do that, they begin to be influenced by ideas that they never had at the beginning. As they begin to be influenced by ideas they never had at the beginning, they begin to see the structural reality of an emerging enterprise, of emerging company, a company of six, a company of 10, a company of 30, etc., and so forth. In the process, they go out to learn what they need to learn in order to deal with it. You follow me.

It's always at the beginning from the point of view of one. I'm one. I'm one who wants to do something that I don't know how to do. It's now more than just baking pies. It's now doing the books. It's now etc., etc., etc. As they begin to realize, it's now more than baking pies. They have to expand their awareness to all those different functions that exist within an emerging company. That existed at the very beginning in the company of one. Meaning, she had to sell it. Meaning, she had to deliver it. Meaning, she had to buy the apples to put in the pies. Meaning and on and on and on and on and on.

The minute she begins to see that, she begins to see that there is no really such thing as a company of one. There's a company of many, but that has to be organized in a way that enables each one of those functions to work in tandem with each of those other functions in a process that has intelligence to it. That intelligence escapes most solopreneurs. They simply are stuck as a technician and resist having to grow beyond who they are.

[0:25:12.5] MB: That makes me think of two really fundamental lessons that I learned from E-Myth Revisited and I'd like to explore both of them. One is that you have to start with changing yourself first. The other is this concept which has now become extremely popular, which is the notion of working on the business, instead of working in the business. Let's start with that idea and then come back to the notion of changing yourself first.

[0:25:36.1] MG: Yeah. Well, I created the conversation about working on it, rather than in it from the very beginning, way back then in 1977 as we joined my partner and I then, Tom, created the Michael Thomas Corporation and we created the dream, the vision, the purpose, the mission and we asked the question, so how does one do that? Became very, very clear to us, we have to go to work on our company, not just in our company, if our company was ever to emerge into something other than two guys doing it, doing it, doing it.

The working on it means you have to rise above it. Once you begin to realize I have to rise above it, so that I can literally see it and remain detached from it, attachment is a terrible disease. We become so defined by our perceived roles, who we are that we find it almost impossible to grow beyond who we are. Growth of a person, growth of a company, growth of anything requires that separate capability to transcend myself, if I'm ever to transform myself. To transcend my company, If I'm ever to transform my company.

It is A, if not the key ingredient in truly awakening the entrepreneur within who must play the role of transcending herself, not just the company in order to discover herself in a way that's going to lead her to discovering all of the other components of one's self necessary to lead and grow and imagine and create what in fact one is here to create a life fit for. And I'm saying, a higher power.

[0:27:58.6] MB: Such a great point. The idea that you have to transcend yourself in order to transform, in order to grow, that you have to let go of the roles that you're attached to, the things that you feel you have to keep doing to ever scale beyond being a solopreneur, being a small business and truly become a thriving, growing and scalable enterprise.

[0:28:21.9] MG: Yeah. You have to not only transcend beyond what you do, you have to transcend who you are and understand you have to transcend your name. You literally have to transcend the personality that has been accidentally created over time in order to discover the true potential of the human being within. I'm given to say and this is an evolution of my consciousness that if we're born in the image of God as it said, now an atheist would laugh at that, but it doesn't matter what an atheist says because what is an atheist? No.

I'm saying, if we're born in the image of God and I believe we are, then we're born to create. God is the infinite creator. We’re born in the image of God. We’re born to create. Then the question becomes to create what? I'd say, to create a world fit for God. If we’re born in the image of God, we’re born to create, we're born to create a world fit for God, you suddenly began to see the transcendence beyond who I am, leads me to something I never knew before.

In fact in most cases, we'll never understand, what does it mean to create? The sad and so sorry reality, Matt, is that none of us are ever taught how to create from the beginning as children. We’re never brought to that conversation as children, because were we to be brought to that conversation as children, our entire lives would be completely different. I'm suggesting, entrepreneurs are not born, entrepreneurs are made and are made through a insight into this conversation we’re having about working on, rather than working in.

[0:30:54.4] AF: What's going on, everyone? This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you by incredible sponsor Best Fiends. That's Best F-I-E-N-D-S. Just like friends, but without the R. I am absolutely in love with this game. If you're looking for a fun way to pass the time while engaging your brain and enjoying some truly breathtaking visuals and a gripping story, Best Fiends is perfect for you.

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[0:32:21.8] MB: Why do you think so many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, etc., are stuck in their existing identities, roles, activities, etc., and unable to transcend?

[0:32:37.7] MG: Well, it's very, very easy to see. You're in the Science of Success. When you go back into our history, I understand I'm going on 84 and you’re not. But I'm saying go back into our history, in the history of America, the history of the world, in the 20th century, in the 21st century. See that we’re emerging into an increasingly secular world and in that increasingly secular world, the heart of that secular world is the individual. In the heart of the individual is the personality of that individual and the personality of that individual is born with a belief system that says, “I,” meaning Michael, or you, meaning Matt, or Suzie, or Jerry, or Jim, or Benny, whomever, has the power to do whatever we choose to do.

That is that power is a highly personal thing, a highly singular thing. In short, that every human being in accordance with the way our consciousness is being shifted is born as a company of one, literally born as a company of one, here to do what I can imagine can be done and it stops there. In fact, fewer small businesses are being started today than ever before. On the other hand, more “solopreneurs” are being launched today than ever before. Those solopreneurs will never become a small business, let alone a thriving enterprise, despite all of the small groups that are devoted to teaching entrepreneurs how to do their elevator pitch and how to create a small business. They're really not teaching anyone how to create a small business. They're teaching people how to become self-employed. Effectively, that's why it's so difficult to even imagine creating an enterprise, because it's almost – it's the antithesis of the mindset, our culture has grown us to believe in and to behave through.

[0:35:45.2] MB: Such a fascinating point, this idea that the – and I love the distinction between a small business and being self-employed essentially are worlds apart, though they're often almost used as synonyms in today's world.

[0:35:59.8] MG: Yes, they are. Wrongfully so, because the problem is the people who make up these stories, the people who sell these services are predominantly and unfairly and terribly, wrongfully and tragically selling that solopreneur, that individual, that self-employed person, the story that they're in fact doing exactly the right thing and we're selling them tools to do it.

Effectively, the tools that are being sold to these self-employed people, these supposed entrepreneurs who are entrepreneurs at all, our tools that enable them to sustain their productivity as one person and maybe two and maybe three, but never to grow beyond that comfort zone. Effectively, we're speaking to their comfort, not to their discomfort and understand, it is their discomfort. When I speak about growing beyond a company of one to a company of 1,000, who when the world would put themselves into that enormously uncomfortable and terribly uncontrollable universe that I'm speaking about?

[0:37:46.7] MB: If someone is self-employed and they want to become an entrepreneur, they want to become a business owner, how would they make that shift? What are some of the first steps that they would need to take, or the things that they would need to do to change trajectories?

[0:38:03.7] MG: Well, let me say, I would argue with what you just said, that somebody wants to become an entrepreneur. I'm going to say that yes, some people do want to become entrepreneurs, but mostly have no idea what that means. Some people want to become Steve Jobs, but they really have no idea what that means. I'm saying that in fact, the true distinction is that someone begins to want to have a profoundly greater impact on the world.

Understand that in our case, my dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. In order to realize that dream, I would have to transform the stink of entrepreneurship worldwide. Once having realized both of those dreams, I would discover my ability to transform the state of economic development worldwide. That's what inspires me. I've never been inspired to be “an entrepreneur.” I've never been inspired to create a large organization. I've been inspired to transform the state of small business worldwide, because I've discovered the profound link positive, amazingly transformational impact I can have on every single small business owner who opens her heart, opens her mind, opens her imagination to grok, in old 60s language, to understand, to take in, to encompass this story that I'm sharing with you right now.

When that happens, growth must follow. You follow. The very first thing that has to happen at the very beginning is one has to create a platform to transform the state of whatever you're there to transform, to transform the state of financial management worldwide, to transform the state of relationships worldwide, to transform the state of creativity worldwide and on and on and on and on. Whatever the dream might be, I'm saying one has to discover first before anything at all, while you're doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it in this small company of one. You have to discover what your dream is.

I'm saying that that dream is not a personal dream than that. It's an impersonal dream. That it's not I want to grow up and make a lot of money. It's not any of the kinds of conversations that you hear “entrepreneurial instigators” discussing about how to become a millionaire, how to create an on and on, all those terribly obnoxious conversations that have nothing to do with the spirit of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs never wanted to become a multi-millionaire. Now, I didn't know Steve personally, but I know from what he did and how we did it, that exactly, he was driven by the dream. He was at a cause, hearing because, a dream is a cause. I'm saying the first thing one has to have is a cause, something that you're absolutely passionately, determined to fulfill. That's the beginning. That's the first thing.

The second thing is the vision. You have to have the vision. You have to be able to see the form your company is going to take in order to realize that dream. See, the company isn't the deciding factor. The dream is the deciding factor. The vision is the deciding factor. The purpose is the deciding factor. The mission is the deciding factor. When you begin to understand that, you understand why I created the dreaming room. The dreaming room was a place where you discovered your dream, your vision, your purpose, your mission. It's what we do for example, in the first year of what we call Radical U.

Radical U is an entrepreneurial development school, which is dealing with that platform, that foundation that absolutely is critical. Over here, you're doing the work, you’re doing the work, you’re doing the work. That's on the left hand. Over here on the right hand, you're creating new code, you're creating the future of what you're here to pursue. You follow me? To pursue, to pursue. It's the pursuit of a vision, of a dream, of the purpose, of a mission, because you're so passionately brought to life in that venue.

[0:43:39.1] MB: Yeah, that's a really great perspective. This whole notion that it's not about your individual ambitions, or aspirations, it's not about you. It's really about having a larger dream that's about creating some change, or positive impact in the world and being almost pulled by that dream into having to bring together resources and create an organization at a scale larger than just yourself, to create that change and to make that vision a reality.

[0:44:11.6] MG: Absolutely. You just really nailed it. It's absolutely critical that first the dream, first the vision, first the purpose, first the mission. Because until and unless that happens, it's all about you. You understand, it's never about you. Once you discover your dream, your vision, your purpose, your mission, it's about them. They're in you define, who them are, who they are, who your consumer is. Because if I'm here to transform the state of small business worldwide, and the only way I can do that is to transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide, then you can begin to understand that every single small business, every single smallest of the small, the tiniest of the tiny are the people that were most determined to serve, so that they don't get into this spiraling, negative relationship with themselves and with their work, because it's so self-consumed and never sufficient to create a great life.

Never, never, never, never it's so small, it's so restrictive, it's so controlled. I want to break free of that control. As I begin to break free of that control, free of the mind that created that sense of personal control, controlling my environment. Once I stop living with a need to control, I began to be filled free with a desire to create. As that begins to happen, I swear, Matt, it is just astonishing what arrives in that guise and what one must begin to take on to fulfill this assignment.

This becomes why I was born. You follow me? This becomes why Steve Jobs was born. This becomes why I, Michael E. Gerber, do the work that I do, this becomes why Matt Broder does the work Matt does. This becomes the calling. Effectively, I'm saying every true entrepreneur must have a calling and the calling is not about money. It's never about money. Despite the fact, that's what everybody talks about is money.

Effectively, if you can get rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, if you can get rich, you've got it by the well you know, the short livers. Effectively, I'm saying that has nothing to do with anything other than this very limited self and this very limited self is the bane of our existence.

[0:47:33.3] MB: I love the quote that once you stop living with the need to control, then you become free to create. Such a great perspective.

[0:47:42.9] MG: Thank you. It is a great perspective. To understand, it’s perspective, a perspective that's been learned in the process of creating. I'm constantly being abraded by those who are operators. They essentially say, “Gerber, you're living in the belt of Orion. You’re living in outer space. You're creating all these problems. You're not creating opportunities.” I'm essentially saying, “Well, yeah. One could look at it like that.” During the time that one's doing it and it seems to be incompatible with the operational needs of what we do, one finds it almost impossible to see the importance. Not only the importance, necessity of dreaming that in fact, without that, where's the heart in that pie that you're making? Where is that connection with the consumer you're making that pie for? What is the gestalt of that pie? To understand the psychology of that pie. The life's purpose of that pie in relationship to every human being on the planet of that pie.

You suddenly come face-to-face with the poetry of commerce, the religion of commerce, the absolutely stunning potential of commerce that a Walt Disney discovered with his little mouse and that a Steve Jobs discovered with his little Apple. We go on and on from there.

[0:49:37.1] MB: Michael, for somebody who wants to start implementing some of the stuff that we've talked about today, what would be one action step, or a piece of homework that you would give them to begin their own journey?

[0:49:50.4] MG: Well, the very first thing I’d tell them do and it sound selfish, but it isn't. It's like, just do it. It's read The E-Myth Revisited. If you have read The E-Myth Revisited, then go back and read it again, because the enormously tragic thing is millions upon millions of people have read The E-Myth Revisited. The problem is they don't do The E-Myth Revisited, brought to a story that was told to me very recently by a gentleman who has done The E-Myth Revisited. His name is Ken Goodrich. Ken is the founder of a HVAC company that he built from scratch. He built it upon The E-Myth Revisited’s business model.

He told me not that long ago. Said, “Michael, you may believe that I'm an E-Myth fanatic, but you’re absolutely be right. I've read The E-Myth Revisited 39 times.” They hear me, Matt, 39 times. I said, “How come you've read it 39 times?” He said, “Because I kept on forgetting it and I realized I was forgetting it based upon mistakes I was making in my business. As I realized that I said, you've got to read the book again.” We went back to the book and back to the book and back to the book and back to the book. Now here, you might think that here I am speaking about detaching myself from my personality. You've got to understand, I didn't write this book. It wrote this book.

That's why you see that I don't stand in fascination of myself. I stand in fascination of the point of view of that book and the process within that book. That's why I say, you got to read the book. The first thing I would say, read The E-Myth Revisited. The second thing I would say is read Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. That you might call if I were to look at the totality of my work and it exceeds 30 books now that we've written and published, but the three core books are The E-Myth Revisited, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. The third book you mentioned earlier, Beyond the E-Myth, whose subtitle it is, The Evolution of an Enterprise From a Company of One to a Company of 1,000.

I would say that every single person listening to us here should go there and do that. I would also suggest one last thing, that for you to truly absorb what I'm writing about, the most immediate thing one can do is to enroll in what we call Radical U. That's not you as you, Matt, you Jerry, you Jim, it's Radical University. Effectively, I'm saying it's the only university of its kind in the planet devoted to what we call the eightfold path. The eightfold path is very simply defined as the dream, the vision, the purpose, the mission, the job, the practice, the business, the enterprise. It's the evolution of an enterprise.

If you were to in fact join me in Radical U, an online university, anybody can join that university, Radical U. Just very, very simple. You just go to it .com and you'll find iti and you just sign up. The first year is what I call the dreaming room. The first year, you discover your dream, your vision, your purpose, your mission. That's something every single person here can do, because everybody can forward to do it.

Everything we do today, everyone can afford to do. I say that because it's my passion, my what do you call it? Devotion. That if I can awaken the entrepreneur within every young child, then Matt, what can happen is just astonishing. We can literally transform the state of economic development worldwide, because that critical component, I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a purpose, I have a mission. To understand when somebody possesses a dream, a vision, a purpose, a mission. If you could see me right now, I'm touching my heart and it just automatically do that when I begin to speak about that.

When one has a dream, a vision, a purpose and mission to transform the state of the world in a very specific way, that becomes their calling for their life's purpose. In that, one discovers what it means to be human.

[0:55:32.0] MB: Michael, a truly inspirational and thought-provoking and fascinating interview. It's been so great to have you on the show, to hear all of these insights and to hear about your own journey, the transformation that you've gone through and some great advice and wisdom for everybody listening. Thank you so much for coming on here and sharing all of that knowledge.

[0:55:54.8] MG: Well, Matt. Thank you very much for being interested and for bringing the story out to as many people as we possibly can. Because every single one of us are here to transform the state of economic development worldwide, but mostly to awaken the spirit of the creator within. Thanks, Matt.

[0:56:17.9] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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