Symptoms you're suffering from the E-Myth and what you can do about it
Running a business takes more than technical work skills. To grow something productive and long-lasting, you must understand the inner workings of how to run a successful operation. Other components, like knowing how to design systems, organise tasks, lead people, manage finances and deliver value shouldn’t be ignored if you want success.
What is the E-Myth?
The Entrepreneurial Myth is the assumption that business owners start with tangible business skills.
But that’s not the case.
Most businesses are started by people with technical expertise - and no experience in running a business or managing people.
It’s like baking a cake with only half of the ingredients. It’s not going to work.
Symptoms of the E-Myth include:
- Customer satisfaction has dropped
- Business systems aren’t working ie: you’re wasting time with manual handling
- Essential tasks are pilling up
- You’re experiencing burnout or resentment for the job
- Staff are unhappy and unmotivated
- You feel like you can never be away or take a holiday
- Your business has stopped working for you
Fortunately, there are ways you can avoid the E-Myth trap. The best businesses are built on smart and reliable systems - here’s what you should focus on:
Use tools to simplify the job
Automating business tools is no longer a luxury, but a necessity in today’s environment.
Reserve your time, energy and resources for balancing top duties. Use tools to streamline how you do business and automate whatever tasks you can.
Start with monotonous jobs that are chewing into time, which will allow employees to do more productive tasks that need critical thinking or human touch.
Look at your business as a whole
The most important thing is for a business to do what it’s intended to do.
Look at your business in its entirety to gain a big-picture perspective. This enables you to treat the business as the product, and review what work must be done to make it work.
Make sure you:
- Focus on meeting your customer’s need
- Plan with established goals and workable timelines
- Streamline communications
- Market your product (your business) and compete for the customer’s attention
- Prioritise the purpose of your business
Balance your business personalities
According to the idea behind E-Myth, there are three personas every business needs. A healthy business is a balance between all three.
- Entrepreneur - the creative personality, craves control (creates the vision and business goals)
- Manager - organiser and planner, craves order (maintains structure)
- Technician - lives in the present and tinkers, craves to be working on one thing at a time (has the expertise to get the job done)
Identify the three personalities in your business and delegate the right person for each role. While it’s normal for there to be some overlap, an owner or manager shouldn’t be wearing all the hats. You must have an effective management component in place to free you from the business to have a life outside of it.
Document and delegate
Learn to document and delegate all the technical and managerial work.
Keeping track of processes and outlining the specific steps for each task keeps your business scalable. Even if there’s only one way of doing something, documenting what you do, why you do it and how you do it makes it easier to train employees down the track for replicable procedures.
Create systems
How organised are your processes?
Effective systems are integral to business survival because they allow for continuous improvement. Systems support the big picture and help achieve goals like increasing your audience, growing profits or decreasing waste.
These systems are split into three categories - hard, soft and information.
- Hard systems - focus on unliving things like computer systems or the appearance of your office
- Soft systems - are flexible and useful for ideas, branding, business processes and training systems for hiring people
- Information systems - include tracking and managing data, cash flow reporting, inventory control and forecasting
Udio creates software systems for class and session-based businesses. Get in touch if you’re looking to instruct, analyse and improve every part of yours.
FAQs
Pressing questions? Check out our most-asked questions
When your timetable sits at 85 to 90% capacity across most slots, your margins have held for 12 to 18 months and your team can get through a week without you, you’re in a good position to start looking.
Fill the time slots you already have, add classes where waitlists build and keep families enrolled for longer. A second site makes sense once demand clearly spills past what one venue can hold.
Look at five things: demand, competition, local demographics, access and operating costs. Together they tell you whether enough families nearby want what you offer and can get to you, and whether the site can pay its way while it fills up.
Plan for 6 to 12 months of operating capital on top of your setup costs. That gives the new site time to find its feet without pulling cash from the first.
Give it time before you call it. A new site usually needs a few terms to fill, and slow early numbers are normal. If it’s still struggling after that, its own budget will show you whether the issue is the location, the timetable or the cost of running it. Your 6 to 12 months of operating capital is what stops a slow second site from pulling down the first. It’s also worth asking about exit or break clauses before you sign the lease, so you have a way out if you need one.
Sue
