The E-Myth: How to Go From Facilitator to Solopreneur Facilitator

You can't just work in your business. You have to work on it too.

Author

Joe Bartmann
August 09, 2023

Ideas and tools inside:

  1. Why Michael Gerber wants you to change your mindset.

  2. Sara Blakely on leaning into what you don’t know.

  3. Josh Spector and Justin Welsh on things solopreneurs do.

What is the E-Myth and why do you need to know it?

Michael Gerber wrote a book about being an entrepreneur way back in 1986. It’s still a book I see recommended all the time by some of the big-time creators and doers. That’s because it is timelessly powerful for small business owners.

My copy of “The E-Myth Revisited,” a 1995 second edition of “The E-Myth”

Gerber champions the entrepreneurial spirit. He contends that most business owners are not entrepreneurs but technicians. That’s especially true if they work independently. In other words, if you’re a technician, you are continually building your own facilitation skills and getting paid to deliver your services.

That’s cool if what you want is to create your own job. But if you want to grow a business into something more than a job for yourself, then you need to think of yourself as a “solopreneur,” starting right now.

That might be a mind shift for you, and a transformational one. I started this newsletter to help you get there.

Start working on your business, not just in it.

❝

“The reason most businesses don't work is that people are spending time doing, doing, doing, and not designing.”

Michael Gerber

This line from Gerber has always hit hard for me. I mean, we’re facilitators. We help our clients design their work all the time: workshops, projects, mission, values/principles—even the very launch of new organizations. This isn’t a big leap in thinking for us.

Learning to work on your business/organization instead of just in it has also been the greatest launch pad I’ve seen for my clients over the years. It can be yours too. Even if you don’t know how to do it yet.

❝

"Embrace what you don't know, especially in the beginning, because what you don't know can become your greatest asset."

Sara Blakely, Founder of Spanx

11 ways to become a solopreneur.

Here are a couple of recent tweets with some how-to. (or Xeets. Whatever.) Click each image to go to that thread with all the details.

I’ll be coming back to The E-myth in future editions. It’s full of a lot more useful stuff. I hope you start thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur and facilitator.

If you find this newsletter helpful, could you forward it to a facilitator friend or two you know?

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