The following definition is from Wikipedia.
E-Myth in the business vernacular refers to the Entrepreneurial Myth, and refers to the idea that most businesses fail because the founders are technicians that were inspired to start a business without knowledge of how successful businesses run.
The mythic and often disastrous assumption is that people who are experts regarding technical details of a product or service will also be expert at running that sort of business. Many small business owners eventually realize that just as they had to learn their technical skills, they have to learn business growth and management skills.
E-Myth is also used as a verb, i.e., to 'E-Myth your business' means to build internal systems that control processes as they do in a franchise operation, so that results are predictable. A result of systematizing workflow is that owners are freed from most daily operations to spend more time on strategic issues.
The methodology was first articulated in the 1985 book The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber who has since founded an organization called E-Myth Worldwide that promotes subsequent E-Myth publications as well as speaking events for Gerber. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Myth)
A lot of what I write about concerns creating repeatable systems to produce consistent results. It is a little like preparing a recipe for a cake. When you bake a cake you use a recipe. If you have a “recipe” (system or process) for each of functions that employees of your company perform than the function can be repeated the same every time even if you lose the employee that normally performs the function.
The best example is the restaurant with the golden arches. They have a process for each food item. To cook a hamburger you put it on a grille at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time then flip it and cook the other side for a certain amount of time. You take it off, put it on a bun, apply a squirt of three different color condiments, add a pickle and you have the same hamburger in Chicago, New York or San Francisco. It is not that they hire great high priced chefs. The results are in the systems. If one of the workers is gone the next one can step in and follow the system.
If you can create similar systems for all your processes you will be able to control your quality, created repeatable results without depending on high price help, you will own the processes and have a company that does not rely on you! You can take that vacation or even sell the company.
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber can be purchase on Amazon.com for $7.99 last time I checked. The book was a revelation to me because I recognized myself as have many of my peers.
