E-Myth Revisited Report
In this report, I have two main parts from each section, a before part and an after part. The “before” part basically describes my outlook towards business and entrepreneurship before reading The E-Myth Revisited and the “after” portion basically describes the various aspects of my changed thinking and the changed outlook towards business and entrepreneurship after reading the book.
Baking has been my passion and I have acquired some good baking skills over the years. People also say that I do it well and that I should have my own bakery or patisserie in the future. Since many years, up until I read The E-Myth Revisited, I thought I could successfully own a patisserie because I am good at baking. I would originally like to say that I know everything about baking, but now I fall short of saying that because “the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more” says Gerber. In my view, the most important thing would be to produce the best-baked goods in my locality and for that I would only trust my own recipes and baking techniques. I briefly planned to myself to open a patisserie on a small scale, where I would be working IN the business; doing all the baking myself to make the perfect baked goods, while hiring someone to manage the business’ accounts and money and some employees to help with the logistics. But after reading this book, I realized that if really wanted to do all the baking myself, then I would rather get a job at a local patisserie and work there as a baker instead of being an entrepreneur. Although producing the best product is crucial, I learned that the technical work, in my case baking, is not it. If I continue to do that baking throughout the life of the business, my business would certainly remain stagnant in its infancy stage and never grow out to expand and/or mature. A good business builder personality is one who can be an entrepreneur, a manager and a technician in balance. This has broadened my idea and activated my thinking as to how I am going to acquire that “good business builder personality” that can sustain the business beyond just be a great baker past the infancy stage of the business.
Moving on to building a business model, this is the type of business I had planned to myself – a local sole proprietary or a family owned patisserie located in a particular city, selling only a limited variety of baked goods, with each good being the best it can possibly be. In my view, I would think of getting my one store to excel and become so well known that it makes its way to being the number one dessert place on every tourist’s restaurant visiting list. Like for example, Georgetown Cupcakes. I would think of becoming that one place for which customers are willing to wait in line for hours. My ideas and thinking only revolved around being that one, and building on that one and nothing beyond that. I thought that focusing on that one and giving my 100 percent to that one would be it. But I had never even thought about the franchise perspective that would increase the chances of success. I would think that a franchise perspective is only used when you are actually looking forward to build a franchise chain and not any other kind of business. I learned that treating and viewing the business as the prototype of a franchise that will multiply in the future will only push and motivate the entrepreneur to maximize his or her own efforts and work ON the business.
Moreover, the book mentions about how good businesses deliver a consistent and uniform service to the customers. I believe that if a good business fails to be consistent for once, it may begin to lose its customers forever. A small example – Iggies Pizza located in Mt. Vernon, Baltimore is rated as one of the best brick oven pizza places. It is a small family owned restaurant, and it is one of those