17.08.2014
This weekend I started working through this excellent book by Michael E. Gerber. I am thinking constantly about starting my own business and already took some steps towards it. I realized that I have to become more conscious about the start-up process and what it means to be an entrepreneur. So far this book transformed my view on my current job and the company I am working at.
Key concepts:
- You have three rival bosses in your head: The Entrepreneur, the manager and the technician
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The Entrepreneur is the visionary. He lives in the future, craves control, needs change and sees opportunities.
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The Manager solidifies the base of operation. He lives in the past, craves order, clings to the status quo and runs after the entrepreneur to clean up his mess.
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The Technician makes the product. He lives in the present and is happy working on one thing at a time.
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Gerber delivers a mental framework for looking at a company from the entrepreneurial perspective. It is a top-down approach focusing on the company and how the business has to work, not on the actual products/services produced. First you invision the company in its final stage and then derive the different components. The business is viewed from the customer perspective, what are his problems and how can the business fix these problems. The business is the solution for these problems.
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The business is a refelction of yourself and a bridge between you and the world. It is your own small world where you dreams can be turned into reality. It can also be seen as a dojo, where you go to train every day to enhance your skills.
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The Business Develeopment Program, is a 7steps top-down approach to create a clear vision/plan of a company. It starts with the primary goal, asking yourself what you want to achieve for yourself with the company. Basically you ask yourself what your ideal life would look like. Then you form strategic goals (e.g. revenue) which your company has to fulfill in order for you to achieve your primary goal. Futher layers map out the organizational, management, people, marketing and systems strategy.
Cool quotes:
The typical small business owner is only 10% entrepreneur, 20% manager and 70% technician.
It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy – the owner and the business are one and the same thing.
If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business-you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!
Update: 30.12.2017
Life is good now 🙂 I had my entrepreneurial seizure in mid 2015, 1 year after reading this book for the first time and like Gerber talks about in his book, I first used my technical skills to generate money. One year later mid of 2016 I started creating online courses still being mainly in the technician mindset, but it seems that I could finally detach my ego from being the technician and start being more and more the entrepreneur that I am destined to be. I am feeling comfortable now to delegate and outsource work and not doing everything myself, but to rely on ofter experts. I love working on and not in the business. My next development step in 2018 is to successfully implement lead generation and lead conversion systems and to scale up.
Update: 05.03.2019
I haven’t been able to successfully implement leadgen on a big scale in 2018, but I am about to take another swing at in soon. Stay tuned 😉