Rerun: Transforming the State of Small Business with Michael E. Gerber

Oh, do you have a business or do you have a job? Do you have a big job or do you have a business? That is really the topic. How could you have more of a business, have something you could sell someday, something that you didn't have to worry about, were you waiting too long, but really gave you freedom and impact in the world and the rewards that come with creating huge value. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling up podcast. Our show comes to you every week, usually a couple times a week. We talk to a great guest like today's guest, who, if you're watching me now, you can see on the screen already, or if you're listening, I'll tell you in just a second. But anyway, over 530 episodes now, a big back catalog of shows, plus tools, downloads, programs, all that kind of thing and more at scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com is our website and where you can get all that information and more so. And it's all about the world of scaling up, all the things necessary to get growth going and then survive the growth, not be drowned and overwhelmed in the business. And it's so appropriate because in the world of scaling up, a past Scaling up speaker contributor is Michael Gerber. Michael, welcome to the show.

Hello, Bill, how are you?

So I think you're so extremely well known to our audience, but if you are living under a rock, Michael's a multi mega bestseller for many years, like his book E. Myth Revisited back in the 80s, right. When I was first starting to work. So E. Myth Revisited, his first book, but I don't know, 30 books or more now. How many books have you done, Michael?

34.

34. That's a pretty good track record, pretty good accomplishment, right? So there's not only several in that core series, but then also E. Myth for all sorts of verticals, all kinds of things that you might want to address. And anyway, he's got a lot to say and share about this world of that. So, Michael, welcome to our show.

Thank you, Bill.

So, you know, I think I'd love to start and go way back the Wayback Machine for a minute first. There you are in the 80s or maybe even before then. What makes you think about writing this book at this time? Like at that time?

Well, actually, it was the product of the business that I coincidentally started, which was called Michael Thomas Corporation. And it was my first company, you understand. My first company was started in my early 40s. So I wasn't one of those guys who said, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was never interested in business.

What were you interested in?

Everything. But I was a saxophone player, a jazz musician, I was a poet, I was framer of houses, I was anything and everything you can imagine, seller of encyclopedias. I did this and I did the other, and I had no place to go but where I was going, which was indeterminate. And so this was a complete accident, if you will, that I got into the business of business. And it was based upon an invitation that I got from my brother in law, who happens to still be my brother in law, which is really quite remarkable when you think about how many times I've been married, who still is my brother in law after all these years. His name is Ace Remus. And Ace then owned a small advertising agency in Silicon Valley. And the advertising agency was called Cuneiform. And Ace came to me and said, michael, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to visit one of my clients who's having a great problem converting the leads that we create form into sales. And I said, why do you want me to do that, Ace? He said, because I think you can have a immense impact on him. And I said, but I don't know anything about business. And he said, you know more than you think you do, Michael, just do me the favor. Just come and visit Bob. Not his name, but the name I can remember because I keep on telling this story again and again. Yeah, please come visit Bob and let's see what happens. So I said, sure. And we did. We went to visit Bob. Bob asked me, so, Michael, what do you know about my business? Nothing, Bob, because I didn't. He said, well, if you don't know anything about my business, what do you know about my product? Less than that, Bob. Well, if you don't know anything about my business, you know anything about my. You get the point.

Yeah, yeah.

How can you help me? Yeah. Having a clue, Bob. But Ace thinks I can. You like Ace? I like Ace. We got an hour to kill. Let's see what happens. Took off. Bob and I sat there looking at each other in a puzzled manner.

Yeah.

And I started asking Bob questions. And it wasn't long before I discovered that not only didn't I know anything about business, but Bob didn't either. And here, here was Bob, who owned a business in Silicon Valley, of all places. And every question I asked created a. An answer in the vernacular, yes. And it came obvious to me that I did know something about business. I knew that selling is A system. I learned that selling encyclopedias all places.

So here I am, sophisticated today, right? Selling encyclopedia is a thing nobody even needs anymore. Your old volumes are right there.

You are. Well, everybody needs, but nobody looked at.

Anyway, my dad used to pay me to read them. I would get paid $20 a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica if I would read it.

It's pre.

Like a staggering thing. And I didn't read them very closely, but I'd sort of flip through them and then he'd try to quiz me on something and then I'd fake it.

How weird your dad was and how weird you were and.

And you know what? To this day, I still enjoy, and my son very much enjoys a deep dive into Wikipedia. Like, I could get lost just following links and reading about this and Mesopotamia and that, the Han dynasty, this and sodium nitrated.

Well, Bill, you are peculiar. What can I say, Bill, at the start of this. I'm saying this to Bill because he raised the question, I'm not as quirky as I might look. And I said, no, you really look quirky, Bill, so don't worry about it. And Bill said, I do. And I said, yeah, you do, Bill. He'll ask me maybe in this conversation, what does quirky look like? And Bill, just look in the mirror. You look quirky. So my point being. Yes. So selling encyclopedias is a systemic process. And I answered an ad run by a sales manager for Encyclopedia Americana.

Yeah.

And he interviewed me. And then he said, you know something? You might be very, very good at this. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a 15 minute script. I want you to take it home, and I want you to memorize those 15 minutes tonight. I want you to come back with what you've memorized and share it with me. So I said, okay, now you got to understand, I'd been studying the saxophone for six years.

Yeah.

And I memorized music.

Yeah.

So memorizing a script was nothing.

Right.

So I went home that night, I memorized what he gave me. I went back the next day and I said it to him, and he said, absolutely wonderful, Michael. Now I want you to listen to how I say what you just said. And then I want you to repeat the way I say it. Not just the words, but the inflection.

The inflection. The meaning.

And he did. And I did.

Yeah.

And he said, absolutely perfect, Michael. Now I want you to take the next 15 minutes home with you and memorize that. Yeah, we did that for a week. And by the time I was done, I had the words down and I had the inflection down. Yeah, so get me. Memorize, memorize, memorize the selling system. It sells, you don't. He told me, it sells, you don't. And when I did that, I learned something that Bob never learned. Bob thought it was the people he was hiring who made the difference because they were tech freaks. In short, they knew the technology and they were sales freaks. They knew how to sell. So effectively, they knew the technology, they knew how to sell. Of course they'd be successful, and they weren't. And he couldn't figure it out. But I did. He needed a selling system. And at the end of the hour I spent with Bob, he said, well, can you create that selling system for me, Michael? I said, sure. He comes to pick me up and he said, what happened? I said, bob just hired me as a consultant. And I said, a consultant? You don't know anything about his business, you don't know anything about his product. How in the hell are you going to help him? I said, ace, that's what I said to you before we even got here. But I learned that I could. And that's what he hired me to do, to create a selling system for him.

Yeah.

Now here, you get this. It's really, really important. Ace had an advertising agency. None of his clients knew what I was going to teach Bob how to do. None of them. And this Ace didn't know it either. So Ace didn't understand the secret underlying converting leads into sales, but I did. So suddenly Ace needed me for his advertising agency. And as I did that for Bob and for Mary and for Judy and for Jim, all different businesses, I learned something. It didn't matter what the business was, it didn't matter what the product was, because the true product of the business is the business itself. And I learned that. But Ace didn't know that. Yeah, you know, I went off to do that by myself.

That I think it may be among the worst, but it probably not. Maybe just because I notice it more. And I have coached. Maybe half the companies I've coached over the years have been Silicon Valley tech related companies or tech related outside of Silicon Valley. And there's a great deal of expertise in some domain. Oh, we know a lot about this sensor, we know a lot about this kind of software, this tool set, or you know, they have something and they know it very, very deeply. And they're like, bill, you don't understand our world. I'm like, no, you don't understand business. You are trying to reinvent everything all the time and come up with all these things and getting lost down bizarre things. And it's actually much simpler than you think. But you do have some basics to cover and I think that's a really great thing. And the thing I love regularly, especially when early stage people discover e Myth and get the beginning of the idea that they need to go study something besides whatever it else that got them into business in the first place.

Absolutely. But there's also another piece of that puzzle because you talked about the book called the book the E Myth Revisited, which is pretty much the book everybody reads. Yeah, yeah. And they never go beyond that book.

Right.

But you have to go beyond that book to really get face to face with what exists beyond the emit because the truth is it doesn't get said in the e Myth Revisited. The truth is it's said and beyond the e Myth, the evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000, and that is that the business is the product, the product isn't the business. And when you begin to understand that and you really take that in, that the business is the product, something magical occurs. Magical that occurs goes far, far beyond the technology that your Silicon Valley guys are immersed in. Yeah, they're immersed in the product called the product which turns into a commodity.

Right. You know, a couple things are interesting. So people come to us, right, Scaling coach. They're like, we want to grow, we want to scale. And they, the first and main reason come is the growth is not enough or they stop growing. And so they, it's generally first and foremost about some kind of strategy work. The other secondary reason is they are growing and they want to bring some order because they're overwhelmed, they're pulling too hard themselves. They're having trouble hanging out to people, recruiting. And, and that's the second problem. But in almost never is it like it. And they're not, not almost never. In a. A minority of cases, they're thinking about the sale of the business majority of the time, like 75, 80% of the time, they're just like, I don't know, I want to run this for a while. I want to grow it to accomplish this thing. I want to hit 100 million, I want to hit a billion, something like that. And they're. They hadn't thought about, well, I'm young, so I'm just going to keep running this thing. And then one day they wake up, they're tired, they lost it, they don't have the energy anymore. It's past its peak. And then they're like, oh, I want to sell it now. And I turned 70 and I'm like, well, it's a lot harder to do now. And your team is very set in their ways and they don't want to do anything new. And you didn't set up any kind of succession plan. And, you know, like, it's a very, very different thing.

Well, it is a completely different thing. And. And the truth is, it's even worse than that because it grown to this point. Very dependent upon personalities.

Yes. Yes.

Very dependent upon individuals. Very dependent upon positions of ownership. And by ownership, I don't mean equity, I mean ownership of how we do what we do. And when it comes to that point, it's almost impossible to wrench it free from them.

Yes.

And then it becomes negotiation. And that negotiation is hugely problematic because it's a conflict. And the conflict becomes between me and him, me and her, and so forth and so on. And then you have no idea how to wrench it free from that model. So it's critical that it's built intentionally from the very outset.

Yeah.

In a way that prevents that mindset from taking hold.

Yeah.

And that's why I say our curriculum, you might say, is built upon what we call the Eightfold path. Path is a process, a rigorous process that's absolutely essential if you're ever going to create a company that grows beyond the ordinary to achieve the extraordinary, but liberates you at the same time. Not to be free of the business, but to be unrelated to the business as a job.

Yeah. Hold the Eightfold Path for a minute. And the ideas there. Let people hang with that. Talk to us. Let's share some stories about this. An example. Tell the story of your first visit to McDonald's. Maybe.

Well, it was simply an accident waiting to happen. I was working in my early stage of consultancy, in my early company called the Michael Thomas Corporation. And the Michael Thomas Corporation was what we called a business development firm. And in that stage of our life, we were the only company doing what we were doing. We created what we like to call the very first business coaching company on the planet. And that very first business coaching company on the planet was working with those we called the smallest of the small. And I mean the smallest of the small, meaning every small company that started on the street doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. Busy, busy, busy, busy in the hands of a technician suffering from what we called an entrepreneurial seizure. Our company was created to liberate them from stupid and I say liberate them from stupid, meaning liberate themselves them from themselves. And that's what we set out to do. So understand we set out to do that. I was in my 40s, Tom was in his 40s. Our age, we weren't in quotes, consultants. We were dreamers. And what I call dreamers, thinkers, storytellers, and leaders. We reinvented the language of entrepreneurship. We came up with a definition for what an entrepreneur is. An entrepreneur is a dreamer, a thinker, a storyteller, and a leader. The dreamer has a dream, the thinker has a vision, the storyteller has a purpose, and the leader has a mission. The first four steps of what we called the Eightfold path. So we worked on our company to discover what our dream was, our vision was, our purpose was, and our mission was. And Tom and I worked, conversed about that radically in the first number of months with our company. What's our dream? What's our vision? What's our purpose? What's our mission? What's our dream? What's our vision? What's our purpose? What's our mission? We had to get that right. Because until and unless we got that right, we wouldn't know why we're in business together. So we did get that right. I had a dream. My dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. There, I just said it. I've lived with that for close to 47 years. My dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. There I said it again. My vision. Get this. Was to invent the McDonald's of small business development services. But without a dream, there was no vision. But without a vision, there was no purpose. Without a purpose, there was no mission. Get it? A process. So my dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. There I said it again. My vision was to invent the McDonald's of small business development services. Why McDonald's? Because McDonald's is. Was the most successful small business in the world. There, I said it and I said it and I'll say it again. Because McDonald's was. Is the most successful small business in the world. Now, how can you say that, Michael? McDonald's is a public company. McDonald's is a big fat company. How can you say McDonald's is the most successful small business in the world? Because McDonald's never would become the great big company McDonald's is had they not become the most successful small business in the world. So you understand, it starts right here. Our purpose was the storyteller's role. The storyteller told a story. Without that story, we could never enable a small business owner to understand the power of a story. At the heart of our purpose is the power of a story. A very great, compelling, moving story. Let me tell you the story of McDonald's, Ray Kroc said. Let me tell you the story of McDonald's, Ray Kroc said. Again and again and again and again, you get this. 99% of the people who own a small business today, Bill, don't have a story. And if they have a story, it changes every day. And when it changes every day, the people who work there believe they have a story. Judy's story, Mary's story, Jimmy's story, Marty's story. Everybody's got a story. But it's not the one story, the singular story, the most important story that lies at the heart of who we are and what we do. Our story. Our story. Our story. You understand how critical that is. One story, not two, not three, not four, not seven, but one story, Bill. So critical and finally, our mission. And our mission leads us to lead them toward the evolution of their enterprise by understanding their dream, their vision, their purpose, the story that lies at the heart of everything they do. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me. Say it. Say it. Say it. Say it. You get this. It's a religion, Bill. Hear me. It's a freaking religion, Bill. And when you get that, then you understand what leadership means. It's leading the religion forward. Tell me our story again. Tell me our story again. Tell me. No, not like that. Like this. No, not like that. Like this. You get it?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing that I think is fascinating, like, so you're well known, you talk about the processes and the systems, but at the heart of this conversation, you're talking about the vision and the dream and the purpose and all that kind of thing, which is more of like the religion behind the business. And we talk to people about creating a great culture. We're like, so you're going to build a culture which is like rituals and traditions.

Screw the culture, Bill. Screw the culture. Stop that language. Stop that language. Because that language doesn't get to the heart of it. That language then suggests there's a methodology underlying culture, and it's how you develop people, and it's how you develop the heart of the matter, and that's how you develop and on and on and on and on. It's. It's coach talk. This isn't coach talk that I'm sharing with you. This is new entrepreneur talk. I'm Sharing with you. And until Entrepreneur Talk replaces Coach Talk, Coach Talk ends up being as stupid as most, most Coach Talk is. Don't take this personally, Bill. You don't. You're not going to take it personally because you're strange. But you understand. Don't, don't take this personally. But Coach Talk sucks. Coach Talk simply establishes a pattern to sell, so Coach Talk simply establishes a pattern to sell, will sell culture. So we've got a system for selling culture, so we got a system for selling, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm not in the business of doing that.

Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about the ways that we build all of the systems within a company, the ways the company reminds and ritualizes that so that they're saying it on the regular. What is the purpose of this company? What are our values? What do we promise people? How do we do things differently? And what I'm amused by in that world is that very commonly what we see that works is they teach them to people when they hire them and as they go through, they talk about these things inside and outside the company. They post them around the workplace as displays. They build in rewards and penalties for these things. Right. And after a while, they create this environment that has a feel to it. Right. A feel that's distinct. It's a very different feel to work at Disney than it is to work at Apple or it is to work at McDonald's. They all have unique or In n out burger. They have very unique things. The language we use maybe you don't like, but is cult like for those places. And they have that kind of thing. And yet in cultures, those are some of the things that we do to keep a culture alive over time. Like a ethnic culture, regional culture, similar kinds of things, right?

Yes, in one respect. One respect. But another respect, I'm suggesting that there is a way to do this that has a profoundly more effective outcome than the way it's being done with all the in quotes coaching that's going on failure rated businesses is just as profound today as it was 25 years ago. Just as profound a disaster today as it was 25 years ago. So obviously something is very seriously missing in this picture. I'm suggesting there is a process to pursue that deals with what's seriously missing in this picture. And that process has a profoundly positive impact when it's utilized again and again and again and again.

Yeah, the repetition of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I studied saxophone when I was a kid. I started when I was 11 years of age. And my saxophone teacher taught me the ritual of practice. And the ritual of practice was, you don't make music, Michael. Music finds you. You don't make music, Michael. Music finds you. And music finds you through practice again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And the greatest of musicians, the greatest of jazz musicians, practice religiously every day. The same scales religiously every day. In business, we don't do that. There are no scales in business. In business, the scales are. Make it up. Everybody's making it up. In business, they're not provided with a ledger domain through which to produce our brand. Our brand constitutes our scales. Our scales are a choreography that's been meticulated intentionally to produce an exact outcome that has worked for us for generations, for years. We are those scales.

Yeah.

We're not something other than those scales. We are those scales. We don't make music. Music finds you through that practice. So I'm suggesting Ray Kroc knew something that Bill Gates didn't. Now, Bill Gates, obviously and contemporaneously is, one would say, a great entrepreneur. I'd say that Ray Kroc can be emulated significantly more easily than Bill Gates can.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And because of that, Ray Kroc could create 40,000 stores. Bill Gates never will. But I'm simply saying that then what lives at the heart of that, that we can replicate faithfully every single time. Every single time. Yeah, we teach that.

Yeah, that. That idea of repeatability, making systems out of things, getting it, like pouring I. As you speak, I'm reminded also of the Karate Kid movie where the kid is taught to wax on and wax off. Right? And. And at some point he's like, goes to. He's like, why aren't you teaching me karate? Right? And then. And then he. He has him do something and he reacts naturally because he's not using the thing anymore. It's using him. It's like the motion working through him now.

You got it. It's a script. Yeah, it's a script. You did it. You did it. Wax on, wax off. You did it. You did it. And then it does you. And until it does you, you don't own it.

I got taught to use a. To give a workshop years ago, fairly scripted. And they gave us like an acting, speech making thing. And they said, you know, do this work in the mirror to begin with. Do it 10 times. You know, I would come to do it hundreds of times before I stopped doing that. And the first, like, seven or eight times, I was like, this is annoying, this is stupid, and it's just routine. And then somewhere in there, actually, just before the 10th time, I was like, oh, my God, there's something. There was like a flow that emerged and the presence and a connection with the person in the mirror. Me and very powerful emotion. And then I started engaging, I started to get interested, and I watched people who were very trained doing the same thing and stumbling with it. And then I said for myself a standard that I wanted, that you could wake me at three in the morning from a dead sleep and I could do this thing right, like, beautifully, flawlessly, just, like, letting it go through me. And that's continued to be an interesting kind of thing, like work on mastery so that you're, you know, it just shows up for you.

It's. It. Bill, what you just said is profound. What you said is profound. Not just the practice, but your experience of the practice and you're sharing that experience. That's profound. And I wish more people had that experience because something in you enabled you to have that experience and to grow in that experience, to experience something very few people do.

Yeah, it's interesting, like giving up the novelty need. And I'm an ideator, I love novelty and all that kind of thing, but sort of surrendering to the art. The routine of it is like learning a tea ceremony or something and just embracing all of the fine mastery. I work with a group of trainers and coaches and that kind of thing. And one of the groups in particular has a very significant number of people in the group who are always like, oh, we're just going to do this exercise again. We're going to do this in that way. I've already seen this before and I'm like, yeah, this isn't for you. Like, when I was a DJ in my early 20s and I was sick of playing a song, I asked the music director. I'm like, when are we going to stop playing this modern English song? And he's like, that song isn't for you. That song is for our audience.

And that was brilliant. That was brilliant, too. That song isn't for you. That song is for them.

Exactly. It's like, I don't care if you're bored with it. Practice. Play it again, man.

Yeah, that's the genius. Underlying replicability. That's the genius of understanding, the genius of the system.

Do you still play the saxophone?

No, I haven't. I haven't. I haven't. I haven't played the saxophone. I've got it. I Haven't picked it up for eight years. Yep. Because when I do, it's not the same. When I do, it's me playing the saxophone as opposed to the saxophone playing me. I've lost magic of it. Because the magic of it then was the religion of the practice, the practice. The practice, the practice. The practice. The practice. The practice, the practice. I could say that again to the point where it played me. I didn't play it. So what I remember is playing the saxophone. What I forgot was the saxophone playing me. And that forgetfulness is a tragedy. You lose it.

Mm. So let me ask you about maybe more contemporary stuff. I'm struck by this tension or illusion that things are the same always, and things are always changing. Right. Like, there are moments like September 11th or Covid that feel like they changed everything profoundly in an instant. And yet here we are, still human beings, still doing the same dumb things, still struggling with whatever, still like. And business is still business. When you look at business today, post Covid, and the shifts and the. What differences do you see in light of E myth and beyond E myth?

Well, let me say this. And. And I want you to hear it in the way that I'm saying it. Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed because the ritual that I've just described and you've commented upon is, in fact, as contemporary as it was 40 years ago. It's as perfectly meaningful today as it was 40 years ago, is as effective today as it was 40 years ago, that the religion of it is as moving, as meaningful today as it was 40 years ago. What's missing in this picture today is that we are lost from it. When you said the Karate Kid, it rung a truth for me, because the Karate Kid, if anybody's listening to us, actually watched that movie, but remembers what occurred to them when they watched that movie like you did, were you able to remember them? It'll become as vital for you today as it was then. So in my sense, in my sensibility, nothing's changed. Anybody who reads the email today revisited today will have the same profound experience of it that they did the day it was published. Now, that's quite astonishing when you think about that, but I hear it all the time, and what they say is identically the same. So hear me. The people who read it today who are inspired by it today are inspired by it today for the very same reason as they were when they first read it.

Yeah. However many years ago.

Yeah. Identically the same. So nothing has changed.

Yes. I was.

Meditation today, for example.

Yeah.

Impact of meditation today is identically the same as the impact of meditation the first time we ever heard of it. The very same. How transformational is that? To understand that, to live within that. It's profound.

Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's fascinating. Like. Right, so me, my curiosity, the encyclopedia, all of that unchanged. Right. The fact that the contents of the encyclopedia are now available to me anywhere in the world at any moment on my handheld thing in my pocket, that's different. But it hasn't fundamentally changed me, my relationship to information, to other people like that.

Right, you got it. You got it. And that could be, in one hand, depressing as hell. On the other hand, it could be as inspiring as hell. Because if that's true, then the transformation of a human being is as alive today as it was a hundred years ago. Get that? The transformation potential of a human being is alive and meaningful today as it was 200 years ago. And if that's true, holy shit, are you kidding me? You get that? How exciting is that?

Yeah, except our tools are totally different. Like what I can accomplish, the amount of time, energy it takes for me to do certain kinds of things not so fundamental. And. And the ability to keep connections and friendships and things like that. Like some of those are expanded greatly, you know, the.

Not really. Our ability to create friends is no easier today than it was without these tools.

No, no, no. Not to create friends. I think about, like. But the number of people that are sort of in my awareness today versus you, like that I could quickly reach. I could send a text to somebody on the other side of the world, say, hey, could you arrange this for me? I want to get there, do that.

Yep. So you have the ability to reach more people today than you did then.

Yeah.

But you have no more ability to touch the people you reach today than you did then. The technology doesn't make them more touchable, More reachable.

No, it makes available. Yeah.

Because there is a method through which you can find them today. But finding them is different than touching them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And touching them is different than moving them.

You mean. You mean like being inspiring them, inspiring them? Uhhuh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you have to know something to inspire them that's no more available today than it was a hundred years ago. I'm saying you might say, no, that's not true, Michael, because, because, because. And they're all the big causes that you talked about earlier. All the big causes. But of course there are all these. Because, yes, but. Because no, but. Because this, because that, etc. And so forth. But I'm essentially saying people don't read more today than they did 40 years ago.

No, there's only so much time in the day. Right. But the. Yeah, and there's more noise now than ever. But the touching. Right. Happens when somebody has a great conversation, when somebody shares a vision for the future that lights you up, when somebody is real with you and vulnerable. Right. All of that touches, moves and inspires people, propels them into action, engages them when they connect what they're interested in to what the company's up to. Right. Those are the human aspects of things beyond the systems.

Well, but look at the state of our country today, and if what you just said is true, then there's something obviously grandly missing from what you just shared with me. Look at the condition of our country today. Look at the condition of our people today. If what you said is true, then something sorely. Is sorely missing in all of this.

Yeah. Did we go off business there? I feel like there is some deep. There's a deep and interesting thing that I would go down, but does it. Should I follow down that you said.

Did we go off business there? Well, actually, we didn't go off business there because you go off people, you go off business.

It does feel like in the social and political sphere and then going into media, that we are also discovering that fear is a very powerful tool. And fear and othering and things like that are like a dark side force maybe compared to the inspiring, touching, connecting the other side, that's sort of kind of love and light.

Ish. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. Let me couple on and on and on about that. But yeah, yeah. Let's just say in our heart space, which is, how do you create a great company?

Yeah. When you look today at so many teams remote, not face to face, what are you concerned with? From the perspective of e myth, how do you deal with remote virtual teams? They're not really virtual, but they're remote from each other.

Well, we deal with them in very much the same way as we dealt with them 40 years ago. It's easier to deal. To deal with them, meaning online as opposed to on site. I don't have to knock on Jerry's door. I can knock on his digital door. So not his digital door to knock on. But of course, there are digital resistances to my knocking on that digital door. And there more noise at his door today than there certainly was way back then. But having said that, there's also the problems associated with more noise coming his way because more people are reaching out to him digitally than ever reached out to him manually physically back then. But having said that, I'm simply saying that the technology also makes it easier to do so. Easier is not necessarily more effective. We've learned that. Easier is not necessarily more effective, but we can learn more about that as we are doing more of that. But it requires something of us that was required back then. And the something of us is no different than what it was way back then. It ain't going to happen digitally. It's going to happen spiritually. It's going to happen heartfully. It's going to happen in the human ways it always has happened, needed to happen through the practice of those ways. And until and unless we practice those ways and develop the medium through which we practice those ways will never improve in those ways, Ergo, will never improve our mastery of those ways because we'll not spend our time doing that. Well, my saxophone teacher said, you don't make music, Michael. Music finds you. You practice. But you said about practice, that skill, that, that script, that you suddenly discovered something in yourself and about yourself that you've never discovered before. Practice, the ritual, enabled you to do to a degree you'd never knew before. That's magic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recapping as we run out of time here, there's four big groups of people you're dealing with. Customers, employees, suppliers, and your lenders or shareholders. Right. That represent different perspectives. And you're connecting them together with your dream, your vision, purpose, mission for the company. And you're building systems around that relentless repeatability of all of that stuff. And that is kind of the heart of the business from e myth and beyond. E myth perspective. Yes.

Well, it's at the very heart of it. And it's the method that I described to you, the method I've described to you I call the Eightfold Path. And another time, we can have a deep conversation about the Eightfold Path. But understand it as I stated it to you. I have a dream, a vision, a purpose, a mission, a job, a practice, a business, an enterprise. And it's the evolution of that enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000, and the ritual inherent within it that is transformational, literally transformational.

You know, you hear such a beautiful progression there. It starts with a dream, and then at some point you've created something big and beyond. That's the enterprise. And now many people carry and hold that dream in a collective way. And if you sell, retire, die, like, whatever, it can continue.

That's what they're buying.

Yeah.

You understand, to the degree that's alive, that legacy is alive. Every life a legacy, every small business, a school. You see that on my website. Every life a legacy, every small business, a school. To the degree you've kept that alive within and without our company, our enterprise. It speaks to the one who comes to you and says, tell me about that. And hear me when they come to you and say, tell me about that, it doesn't matter who you're speaking to because everybody can. Everybody is heartened by that. And because everybody is heartened by that, the one who's coming and asking you to tell them about that is heartened by that. It's, oh my God, where did that come from? Where did that come from? How did you guys create that? And then I can tell them through the Eightfold path, the dream, the vision, purpose, the mission. And on.

The, you've been a, an inspiration to me and both you and your, your works and to the many companies that I've worked with over the years. And I'm so glad that we finally connected and had you on the show to share a bit of it today and to start that, to bring it to life in a more intimate, connected way.

Thank you. It's been a delight.

Beyond e myth. E myth revisited. We'll put them there. Emyth Revisited. Beyond e myth. Beyond Put up.

Put up in the dreaming room.

In the dreaming room, okay.

And in the dream room are the first four steps. The dream, the vision, the mission.

Okay.

Because that's what we want people to who want to awaken the new entrepreneur within them. Join me in the dreaming room. It's a six week process. 90 minutes a week. I need you through that. 20 people at a time. $5,000 for that six week process. And what's going to happen when that happens is you're suddenly going to experience it as a living entity within you. And that will lead you toward the second four steps. The job, the practice, the business, the enterprise, the evolution of an enterprise from a company of 1 to a company of 1000. In the dreaming room. Build. Tell your folks that. Have them join me.

We'll put it in the show notes as well. So you got it on screen if you're watching and of course, if you're listening, just go google that stuff and then look for it in the show notes and we'll put the links and everything in there. Michael, thank you for joining us so much in the conversation. A couple other shout outs to Seth and Cameron at Storeon, to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who created the whole Scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that came before it that brought us together. And to all of you listening, watching, thanks again for listening watching. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.