I stopped by my parents house last night to dole out the goodies my wife and I bought for the family while on vacation and I saw that my dad had left me his copy of The E-Myth Revisited. Just last week we had lunch to discuss some of my entrepreneurial ventures and he said that has to be the first book I read. I opened it up and couldn’t put it down! It perfectly described the way I feel about business and entrepreneurship and the trials that go with it. In the first chapter, Michael E. Gerber talks about the entrepreneur’s fatal assumption.

That fatal assumption is: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.

Gerber is speaking to the tendency of technical workers starting businesses doing the same technical work. Naturally, a bakers starts a bakery, a mechanic starts a body shop, and a software engineer starts a software engineering firm. The problem is that the technical work of a business and the business itself are two completely different things. The technician fails to see this, and the business becomes a new place to go to work. I strongly suggest you get this book, as it has already had a major impact on me in just a few chapters.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you an entrepreneur because you don’t want to have a job? Well if you start a business as the technical worker, your business will become that job you don’t want. This then begs the questions What is the difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner? For the answer, I’ll send you to MindPetals and let David Askaripour answer that.

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