Test of a True Entrepreneur: Can You Step Away?
Can your business run indefinitely without you at the helm? Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth, outlines the steps you need to take to get there.
Business owners, especially those just starting out, often make the mistake of getting caught up in the day-to-day operations of their business—the work of running the business—so much so that they don’t take time to consider how the business runs.
Are you guilty of putting your nose to the grindstone and forgetting to come up for a look around?
If so, it is critical that you understand the point I’m about to make. For if you do, neither your business nor your life will ever be the same.
Your business is not your life.
Your business and your life are two totally separate things.
At its best, your business is something apart from you, rather than a part of you, with its own rules and its own purposes. An organism, you might say, will live or die according to how well it performs its sole function: to find and keep customers.
Once you recognise that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.
This is where you can put the model of the Franchise Prototype to work for you.
Working on your business rather than in your business will become the central theme of your daily activity, the prime catalyst for everything you do from this moment forward.
How do you work on your business?
Pretend that the business you own—or want to own—is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 more just like it.
Not almost like it, but just like it. Perfect replicates. Clones.
In other words, pretend that you are going to franchise your business.
And if you are going to set up a model that is the prototype, there are rules you must follow:
Continue reading this article at INC.com after the break!
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