The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (Summary and Notes)

My rating: 7/10

Available on: Amazon

This book is about systemising your business and providing consistent value to your customers. This will allow your business to run efficiently, like a franchise, and allow you to live your life, not have it consumed entirely by your business. Useful insights for any business owner.

Will I be making any changes after reading this book?

• Treating my YouTube channel as a business by systemising my production and publishing workflow.
• Creating an operations manual, aka a "YouTube Playbook" to document the systems and processes that goes into running my channel.

Notes

Provide consistent value to your customers

Your customer will return to your business if they know they can expect good quality, every single time. If the processes in your business are all over the place and not laid out properly, your customer may end up getting a different experience every time.

This unreliable experience can create uncertainty and scare customers away. Customers want to keep coming back if they know they are going to get a consistent experience every time they use your product or service.

For example, in my YouTube videos, I aim to provide value by:

• Providing viewers with a useful link/template
• Being well researched and evidence-based
• Providing personal insights and experiences
• Being authentic and relatable
• Good production quality
• Concise and compelling storytelling
• Improving by using feedback that I receive

And conversely, I try to avoid these things which would NOT be valuable:

• Unrelated, random video topics that my target audience would not want to see
• Clickbait titles and videos and not delivering to those in the video
• Being a sell out
• Promoting products which I don’t actually care about or use
• Forcing viewers multiple times to like/subscribe or sign up to something
• Wasting my viewer’s time or not getting to the point
• Providing links that don’t work or things that aren’t actually useful
• Not being relatable
• Blatantly copying others
• Fluff or waffle that isn’t helpful or doesn’t have personal insights
• Making a video for the sake of making a video
• Providing false information or not researching things properly
• Low production quality
• Making videos too long or too quick and short (either of these aren’t user-friendly)

Don’t be just a technician

You might have decided to get into business to move from working a job for someone else to working for yourself by doing what you love. But you don’t want to go from working a job to doing the thing you love but also then having to do everything else (accounting, finances, marketing, taxes). This ends up being extra work and ends up being a chore.

Many people tend to make this mistake of being the “technician”, rather than balancing the entrepreneur and manager side that comes with running a business.

Balance your priorities and understand why you got into business in the first place — to create.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

You aren’t going to know how to do everything, especially if it’s not in your expertise. Seek help for technical things such as accounts and sales. Ideally, seek help from someone with more experience than you.

Also outsource the things you hate to do yourself.

Systemise your processes

Ray Kroc thought about how to systemise McDonald’s to be a systems-dependent business, not a people-dependent business. That way, it is replicable for its franchisees.

He defined systems and processes to ensure high quality, consistent output every single time. He thought about even the minute details such as how long to cook the fries and hamburgers for, how to place the pickle, etc. such that the customer will get a reliable experience every time.

Work on your business, not in it

Your business is not your life. They are two totally separate things. The purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but the purpose of your business is to serve your life. Work on your business, rather than in it.

Create consistency using an operations manual

Create an operations manual to provide a model where you provide consistent value to your customers. All processes should be documented in this manual such that it can be operated by people in the business.

Consistency is key. Your business should provide a predictable experience, so spend time on ensuring that minute details are considered including brand colours, how you serve your customers, etc. Customers expect that, and they come back for a consistent experience.

For example, have an operation manual with checklists for each staff member to follow. This will standardise the process and ensure accountability that tasks are done.

Create an organisational chart

Create an organisational chart. Doing so helps identify the divisions in your business. Even if it’s a one-person business at the beginning, scope out all the work that needs to be done in your business and categorise them into different positions.

Initially, you might be filling all of these positions yourself. However, as you outsource and hire people in the future, you can replace your name with someone else’s, and you already have all the tasks laid out for that role.

And if you’ve done your operations manual properly, you already have checklists with tasks for each staff member to follow. Remember, the aim is to systemise the processes in your business to make your business run for you.

Make your customers feel heard

Listen to your customers. Pay attention to their preferences and deliver an experience which is unique to them. That stands out as it makes them feel heard.

E.g. the author went to a hotel, and they provided his favourite brandy, newspaper, mints, etc. It wasn’t the items themselves that were particularly valuable, but the fact that he had been heard and such attention to detail had been taken care of.

A practical example is asking for customer feedback and implementing on those suggestions. This will make customers feel heard and create a more personable experience for them. Know your customer’s demographics and their needs. Satisfy their perceived needs in order to provide value to your customer.