Have you ever found yourself emptying the trash at the end of the day? What about printing shipping labels, cleaning dishes, packing boxes, entering receipts or customer data, or loading trucks? (Or maybe all of these things?) And all this is on top of the work you do selling, responding to customers, completing t...
As an owner of EMyth and its Board Chair, this is a meaningful time for me. October is National Women’s Small Business Month. My 35th anniversary at EMyth is a few months away, having spent the first 17 years building the company into a global brand with my former husband, Michael Gerber, EMyth’s founder and best ...
What do oyster farming, planning and your business have in common? If you work in the oyster farming business, then one thing is certain: everything can—and will—go wrong in your business. Wind, rain, tidal swells, oil spills and sea sickness to name a few. Rest assured, there will be an obstacle in your way.
Every business owner goes through periods of doubt and uncertainty. It doesn't matter how well or how poorly the business is performing; sooner or later you will find yourself asking the question: Is all this work really worth it?
Many business owners are not very skilled at thinking and acting like an entrepreneur. Your Primary Aim, the words you use to describe the essence of your life, and your Strategic Objective, your vision for your ideal business, may be your first experience setting priorities and identifying what is really importan...
“I’ve said it over and over. I've told my people how to carry themselves at work. I’ve laid out simple guidelines to create a great environment for our customers. But no matter what I say, they seem more concerned with how much they can get away with, rather than how they can contribute.”
We recently received a request from one of our readers to write about how to take the first steps toward becoming a franchise. I immediately thought of my friend Dino Dakuras, a restaurateur who has taken the EMyth principle of the Franchise Prototype to heart in the process of franchising his own business. Since ...
A family business is any business in which a majority of the ownership or control lies within a single family and there are two or more family members directly involved. We've also heard it summed up in one word: complicated.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. —Henry David Thoreau What defines “success” for an entrepreneur? Success means different things to different people. There's no clear cut, univer...
It's important to understand that from my point of view, the entrepreneur is not a "person" but a part of everyone's personality. The entrepreneur is our visionary, the creator in each of us. We're born with that quality and it defines our lives as we respond to what we see, hear, feel, and experience. It is devel...
A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.
Many of our coaching clients at EMyth are in business with partners. They are husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, people who’ve been best friends since nursery school or simply associates who went into business because they happened to have their entrepreneurial seizu...
Once you commit to a promise, the EMyth Manager’s job is to manage the process—the system—to keep it, improve it, and rally his troops around it. —Michael Gerber
Companies large and small are embracing new green practices, because reducing energy consumption makes good economic sense in addition to being environmentally responsible. Going green can lower energy and tax bills, enhance marketing campaigns and bolster a company's public image.
When navigating through dangerous waters a wise captain keeps an eye on certain signs. The shape and size of certain waves, the color of the water at critical points, the presence of rocks or sandbars, things that can be difficult to spot for the untrained eye. The truly wise captain knows these signs because he o...
After the decision to start a business of your own, perhaps the most challenging decision you can make is whether to sell that business. You conceived it, built it, poured your lifeblood into it, and now find yourself with a viable, profitable enterprise you can call your own. You have built an asset! Now… what to...
We get quite a few questions from our community about how to apply EMyth principles to a one-person business.