Nick HutchisonFounder and CEO, BookThinkers

Meet Michael E. Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Revisited

7 Aug 2020 · 3 min

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2:44

In this episode of the Book Thinkers Life‑Changing Books podcast, host Nick Hutchison interviews Michael E. Gerber, the author of the E‑Myth series and founder of E‑Myth Worldwide. Gerber introduces himself, outlining his decades‑long work helping small‑business owners escape the chaos that has plagued entrepreneurship for over 40 years. The conversation quickly turns to the persistent difficulty of starting and running a small business, a problem that predates the COVID‑19 pandemic. Hutchison notes that his recent rereading of the E‑Myth through a pandemic lens still reveals the same grim statistics about business failures. Gerber explains that many entrepreneurs launch ventures for the wrong reasons—primarily dissatisfaction with a current job and a desire to “get rid of the boss”—only to recreate the same oppressive dynamics by becoming their own boss. The dialogue sets the stage for deeper exploration of the E‑Myth’s core concepts, the myth of the entrepreneur, and how systemic misconceptions continue to drive high failure rates despite external crises.

Chapters

Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books podcast today. For those in the audience that don't know who you are, can you tell them a little bit about yourself?
You mean there is anybody in the audience who doesn't know who I am?
If they don't, they should. I believe that.
Hello. Hello. Well, I'm Michael E. Gerber, the author of the E-Myth books, the founder of E-Myth Worldwide, the creator of Radical You. And an extreme outreach to literally millions of people in business, the smallest of the small, the people who are struggling to get over the chaos that exists in the world today and has existed despite what we think the pandemic has caused, has existed for year after year after year after year over the 40 years that I've been doing this work.
That is quite the life resume. And you brought up a good point in that I've— so for everybody listening, I read the book, I think, 2 times prior to this conversation, and then I just read it last week. And the entire time that I was reading it last week, I was reading it through the lens of this pandemic that we're experiencing. And we read about how small businesses are shutting down, but the statistics that you actually give in the beginning of the book would dictate that that has been happening for a very long time. It's been very hard Despite what you see on social media, to actually start and run a business, a small business.
Yeah, it's very, very hard. And it's very hard for the obvious reasons that I talk about in all of my books, that the people who start businesses started them for the wrong reason. They started them, start their businesses out of dissatisfaction with the job they've got. And they say to themselves, I can do this on my own and get rid of the boss. And then they create themselves the boss and now they're working for a lunatic.
Mm-hmm.
And they have no idea of the problem because they thought the problem was the boss. When in fact, They simply became the problem they left behind. They didn't realize what an entrepreneur truly must become in order to create a great growing company.