One of the first episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast featured an interview with Michael E. Gerber talking about one of the most extraordinary business books of all time – The E-Myth Revisited. So it feels very appropriate that we end 2016 with Michael talking about his new book, Beyond the E-Myth: The Evolution of an Enterprise: From a Company of One to a Company of 1000.
Michael turned 80 in 2016, but both the book and the interview demonstrate that his passion for helping small business owners achieve success hasn’t dimmed since The E-Myth was first published in 1985, in fact the sense of urgency and passion is if anything greater.
There are big questions in this episode, and the turn of the year is the perfect time to face them.
I’m saying, well, it’s about the end game, is it not? It’s about the fact that none of us are going to live forever and certainly our companies are not going to live forever. And certainly when we begin to ask the question legacy, the question becomes very serious. No matter where we find ourselves, at what age we find ourselves, we understand we’re working toward an exit strategy. We’re working toward the end. It’s the long view, which must be inculcated into our short view…
[So] look at yourself more seriously. Stop thinking about how you’re going to get by and start pondering what you’re going to leave behind. That’s not a financial question. It’s not an economic question, even though that’s there of course, but it’s in fact a social question. It’s an existential question. Who am I? Why am I here? What is this all about? Until you bring that to bear on everything you do every day, you’re simply succumbing to a state of mind which allows you to avoid asking those questions because they’re too difficult to answer.