E-Myth's Gerber To VARs: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Find Your Life's Work

In this exclusive Business Solutions interview, renowned small business guru Michael Gerber says solutions providers need to change their mindset. They need to move beyond the day-to-day distractions of their business, find their passion, and pursue their dream.

“A dream is impersonal. A desire is personal,” Gerber says. “A dream is about them. A desire is about me. In this ‘me’ generation, it’s all about desire. I want, I want, I want, I want. That’s why I would say don’t go listen to some personal growth guru. Go listen to Martin Luther King. … It’s a very big thing, a very, very big thing. Once I can state my dream, once I can will my dream, I then ask, ‘What’s my vision?’”

Gerber and Business Solutions have formed an educational partnership designed to benefit the entire channel. Gerber will co-produce with Business Solutions a series of free webinars, articles, and podcasts designed for VAR, MSP, and ISV executives.

Gerber, author of the bestseller The E-Myth Revisited, Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, and 23 other books on the subject of small business and entrepreneurship, joined Business Solutions president Jim Roddy for this nearly one-hour interview.

Click below to access audio of the interview, and scroll down to read the edited transcript.

As a special gift to Business Solutions readers, Michael Gerber will answer your questions at no cost. Just click the “Ask Michael” button to submit your question.

Roddy: Hello and welcome to this Business Solutions podcast. I’m Jim Roddy, the president of Business Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we are here to provide actionable information on how VARs, MSPs, and ISVs can sell more products, penetrate starting vertical markets, and improve their business operations.

We have a very special guest today. He is the author of the business best seller The E-Myth Revisited and other books on the topic of small business and entrepreneurship. Inc. Magazine calls him “the world’s number one small business guru,” and he’s impacted the lives of millions of individuals and hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide for over 40 years through his thought leadership.

This year he’s formed an educational partnership with Business Solutions designed to benefit VAR, MSP, and ISV executives. Please welcome to our podcast, and thank you so much for your time today, Mr. Michael Gerber! Michael, how are you?

Gerber: I’m great, Jim. How are you?

Roddy: I’m wonderful – always great to talk to you. My day gets a little brighter when you’re on the other end of the phone. It’s good to talk with you. Michael, we’ve had an ongoing conversation. We’ve co-produced three webinars together talking about this evolution of an enterprise.

I had a conversation just last week with a VAR executive. He’s had a software that’s taken off, and that’s why his company’s growing. But he’s really not leaving anything behind. He’s still working in the business versus on the business. He admitted that to me, and he’s still spinning his wheels there.

If you can, start us off talking about why it’s so important for us to have the conversation that we’re going to have right now – how solution providers really need to start working on the business and making sure they’re building something to leave behind.

Gerber: Well, it’s so apparent to anybody who comes to that point in their lives, in their business, where the serious question about what’s next comes up, meaning they suddenly find themselves sick or they suddenly have an accident, or something happens and their life is completely disrupted.

I once had a guy in a seminar that I was doing – this is years ago, in my early E-Myth seminars. The name of the seminar was “Key Frustrations in a Small and Growing Business and What to Do About Them.” It was a live seminar we did. It was the very beginning of our company.

I’ll never forget this guy in the back of the room. He was sitting there, and it was a small group. It was only maybe 30 or 35 people in the room. But he was so obviously upset. There was this look on his face that told you something was going on. At the end of the seminar, he just sat there. He didn’t leave.

I walked up to him and I said to him, “Hi, I’m Michael. What’s going on?” He said – and he was just full of this experience. He said, “What you just said has just hit me.” He said, “It hit me because I had this extraordinary company growing. Of course, the company was me.

“I was an editor for a major publishing company, and I decided I was going to go on and start my own publishing company. I just began my own publishing company and everything, of course, depended on me, because I was everything. I was the CEO, I was the product development guy, I was the marketing guy, I was the sales guy, I was my own bookkeeper, I was this, I was that. And I was just about to launch this new publishing company when I literally was in an automobile accident and the car was totaled and I was suddenly put up in a hospital.

“All of this just happened.” He said, “I was there for two weeks, and when I came out of the hospital, I went home and I was completely incapable of doing what I had been doing. I had nothing. Suddenly, my world went from the most promise of my entire life to then nothing, and you just told that story, and I was just staggered by the fact that I didn’t see it, that I didn’t own a business, and I wasn’t starting a business, I owned a job.”

Now, here’s the guy repeating my message, Jim. But he’s repeating the message in the most dramatic of ways.

The guy you were talking to last week, while he is having a conversation about the fact that he’s not working on his business but he’s working in it, that he is, in my language, doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy, busy, thinking about “the future’s going to be, the future’s going to be, the future’s going to be,” but doing absolutely nothing today to assure him in any way, shape, or form that the future’s going to be anything other than what the present is now him, the chief technician, cook, and bottle washer doing, it doing it, doing it.

I’m saying this to you right now, and the only time in the world that it becomes apparent, meaning really moving, is when you suddenly come face-to-face with your own mortality.

That’s the only time when I have that really serious conversation with any of the small business owners we’ve talked to. You can call on 100,000 small business owners, and they will listen to it and they will say, “Yes, that makes sense. Yes, that makes sense,” and do absolutely nothing about it, because they’re living in hope.

I’d say to you that there is no more important conversation than the one we’re having right now, to your entire audience. None. It’s not marketing, not sales, not technology, not the industry, not software, not anything – nothing is more important than the conversation we’re having right now. Not because we’re having it, understand, but because in fact, all of your guys out there are focusing on income, not upon equity. Meaning, none of them are thinking about the future other than future success, future sales, future cash flow, future opportunity.

But none of them are thinking about the opposite side of that, which is the truly great opportunity. And that is, to create a turnkey system … that effectively, as a company, is the sole reason for being out there on your own, after all.

It’s a truly, truly, truly important thing, meaning it’s scalable. But it’s not just the software that’s scalable, it’s the company as software that’s scalable. That’s the difference between an entrepreneurial mindset and a technician’s mindset.

The entrepreneur’s mindset says “equity.” Every single effort, every single opportunity, every single system that is developed in the mind of something that’s scalable, that can be, in fact, grown without you, having you to do it, do it, do it becomes that great outcome that very few business owners will ever experience.

You know, I don’t know whether I said this to you before or not, but it was just brought to my attention. That is, the SBA (Small Business Administration) publishes a report every so often, through its Office of Advocacy. Did I speak about that before?

Roddy: No, you haven’t. Can you tell us more about that?

Gerber: Well, the Office of Advocacy publishes a report, which is the statistics about business, all the different kinds of business and what they call a report on the births and deaths of business every year.

There’s an annual report on births and deaths, meaning startups and shutdowns. It’s remarkable, if you look back over the past 10 years. I believe they’ve been doing it now for 20, but you can check. The Office of Advocacy “Frequently Asked Questions.” Just check it out.

The last published report that I happened to see was 2011, but there have been others since. You just check, and you’ll find it. What’s absolutely remarkable is about half a million new businesses are started in this country every year – half a million, 500,000 new companies started up.

But when you look at that, what you also see is that more than that fail every year. In 2011, I believe the number was … 307,000 new companies started, and 370,000 died. They call them births and deaths. 370,000 companies died and 307,000 companies were started. Every year, the numbers look something like that.

Roddy: Yes, you’re correct. It’s -61 net from a birth versus death standpoint of companies.

Gerber: Right, think about that. Now, they say it doesn’t necessarily mean that they went bankrupt. What is true is many just close their doors. Many of them, the vast majority of companies, you’ll see also in those stats, are single-person companies, no employees, other than the owner.

Roddy: Like the gentleman you talked about sitting in the back of the room?

Gerber: Yes, exactly. Think about that. About 70 percent of them are single person companies. That’s really astonishing, when you think about it. They’re just sole proprietors. They’re just one guy. Well, that’s a lot of your audience.

Roddy: Correct, absolutely. The folks who are listening to this, a lot of them – if you think about the size of the channel standpoint, it’s like a pyramid. The biggest ones at the top, there’s a few of those. But a big chunk of our audience, maybe 50%, are under 10 employees and about half of them, if not more than that, are the small folks who are the technicians.

Gerber: The majority of small businesses are 20 or fewer employees. The majority of those 20 or fewer employees are one to five. The reality is that the person who’s listening to us right now, if he’s listening to us right now – because, so often, he’s just doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy, working for a living. He’s not working for somebody else, he’s working for himself, and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: he’s working for a lunatic.

He’s income-focused, he’s not equity-focused. He’s not building something for the future. He’s just sustaining himself day to day. Interestingly also, Jim, he hates this conversation. On the one hand, we’re having a conversation to benefit the people in your audience, but the guy we’re talking about hates this conversation.

More than likely, he just turned off, because he stopped listening, because he’s terrified of the conversation of growth. I mean, literally terrified of the conversation of growth, because growth to him means the unknown. The only growth the independently operated self-employed individual knows is growth that he creates, and growth that he sustains. It’s all about him.

Roddy: They’re the best salesman, they’re the best technician, they’re the best accountant inside the organization. They’ve got to insert themselves everywhere.

Gerber: If it’s got to be done, he’s going to do it. The problem is when it’s got to be done, but he doesn’t know how to do it. It doesn’t get done, because when he brings somebody in to do it, now he’s spending income that he would have for himself.

Everything’s personal in a small business like that, everything. The money he spends is his money. The money he loses is his money. To make a decision, to make a choice to step out into the unknown, to actually begin to do work he doesn’t know how to do – and he doesn’t know how to do this work that I’m talking about here – is terrifying to him.

But until and unless he’s willing to begin to learn how to do this kind of work that I’m talking about, the work of business development, the development of a true company that is independent of him, until he’s ready to do that, he’s just another statistic.

That statistic gets older and older and older and less likelihood, less willingness to step out into the unknown, the less interest in investing his own income and doing something he doesn’t trust can be done effectively. He’s a loner, she’s independent, she’s accustomed to depending upon one person and only one person, and that’s yourself.

And now we’re suggesting that something else has to happen, and they have to learn something else. Wow! How do you do that?

Roddy: Michael, can I ask – you’ve communicated this effectively to small business folks for years. I feel like I’m completely unequipped to answer this question, because I was self-employed for five-and-a-half years and didn’t build many systems. I did it from the age I was 22 to 27.

Then, I was fortunate that I took a job with a company – so I wasn’t building equity, I was working for where I am now, Jameson Publishing – but then, four years after that, I was 32 years old. I was diagnosed with colon cancer and I think back, “Oh my gosh, if I was self-employed, it would have been gone. Everything would have been gone.”

I have it burned into my brain that I know we have to build systems inside our company, we have to hire people who are able to maintain those systems, help build those systems. Outside of somebody getting in a car wreck or having some brush with death or they realize that they have a loved one they need to take care of or they see somebody close to them going through this, what things get through to these folks?

It’s been a struggle for everybody inside of our channel. How do you get these small, less sophisticated folks to actually improve their business and work independent of them and be a turnkey business?

Gerber: Well, the only way that we’ve been able to do it – and we have been able to do it, thank God, over the years. I’ve been doing this work for more than 40 years now. The only way is you touch a spirit of invention, of creativity in them, that essentially appeals to the part of him that wants to create something meaningful.

Even when I say it, it almost feels empty. How do you describe to somebody the feeling, that exquisite feeling of creating something that is bigger than you? It’s the feeling that every entrepreneur has. It’s the feeling that every individual has, who creates something out of the blue and what I call a blank piece of paper, a beginner’s mind, and to see it begin to take form.

But you understand, they do that not out of fear that they’re going to lose everything, but out of the joy that they’re going to create something. It’s not fear that we appeal to, it’s reality that we appeal to. That is, most people are simply getting by and surviving.

There’s something more to life than that. And that something more than life to that can be learned. It can actually be learned. You can actually begin to discover something inside of yourself that you have not exercised, you have not worked for, you have not worked toward, you’ve never experienced in the way that I’m describing it.

And all that you need to do is to ask yourself, “Is there a part of me that really wants to do something significant, something meaningful, something that could have an impact on the world, something that I could get great joy from creating? If it were possible, would I do it?”

If the answer to that person, after we’ve told these stories and the story of Ray Kroc and the story of Steve Jobs and the story of on and on and on, again and again, after you suddenly realize that there was nothing different about any of those guys, than anybody else – they didn’t have any skills that anybody else didn’t have. They didn’t have any education that anybody else didn’t have. They just had an idea.

They had an idea, and that idea captured their imagination, and they just began it. They began it without the fear of loss, without the fear that they were going to not have, get, whatever. It had nothing to do with “me” at all. It had nothing to do with them at all. It had to do with something beyond them, an idea.

It’s the idea at the heart of everything that makes everything change. I mean, ideas are alive, Jim. Ideas are palpable. Ideas are alive, they mean something. Nothing happens without an idea, and no ideas happen unless one’s awakened to the possibility that there’s so much waiting to be created here in the world.

I was talking to an engineer, we were talking about in one of our Dreaming Rooms, this idea that came alive. It’s called extreme engineering. The whole idea was built upon a reality that engineers graduate from university and get a job, an engineer could get a job today, boom, just like that, and they start with great pay.

But those engineers who leave school and start with great pay and a great first-level engineering job in a company that hires engineers, what’s true, this guy tells me – and this guy is a senior executive in a major manufacturing firm, earning top, top six-figure income. He’s been doing it for 50 years, close to.

Now, he’s at the end of his time and is getting to retirement. He came to the Dreaming Room just to begin to pursue “what if I were to?” What if I were to create something other than what I’ve got? He came to the realization that the vast majority of engineering firms, where engineers were employed, these engineers spent a long time becoming useful.

He said it’s astonishing that engineers graduating from school know so little. They have so little practical experience. They have so little understanding of the laws that govern mechanics, electronics, etc. He said they are so absent of skills. One of the pieces of homework I asked him to do was to read The Martian. Did you read The Martian?

Roddy: I did not, no. I saw the movie just recently with my wife and daughter.

Gerber: Get the book. The movie is nothing compared.

Roddy: It must be a great book, then.

Gerber: I told him to go read the book, and he read the book, and then he went to see the movie. Instantly, it just became apparent to him that there’s a business in taking graduates from engineering school – call that business “extreme engineering,” the Extreme Engineering Institute, or call it whatever you want. It’s not formulated yet. It’s simply an idea.

We actually put those graduates through living hell, like the US Navy Seals do in Hell Week, and you really push them up against their limits. In this conversation we’re having, I said, “Isn’t it astonishing?” Here we are in Southern California, suffering from a drought. Now, how in the world, with all of our technological knowledge, with all of our engineers, with all of the understanding and wisdom that we have, could it possibly be true that California is suffering from drought? Why is it? How could it possibly be? Isn’t it astonishing to you that we haven’t figured out how to solve that problem?

We have an engineer who graduates from whatever, four years, five years, seven years, in higher education. What is it? What’s missing in this picture? The guy couldn’t be suddenly challenged by that one fact that I just shared with you. Now, this sounds absolutely inane to the guys we’re talking to, all of whom are tech guys. Gerber – what a stupid question. What a stupid question, my foot!

That opportunity that I just mentioned, about the drought, exists in every area of our lives. It’s all just simply waiting for someone to apply his imagination, his interest, his passion to discovering how to solve that problem, how to create a solution for which there is no problem – FedEx.

Now, how somebody could be alive, walking around in a body like you and I are and not be stimulated to pursue the solution to every single problem? Do you realize, for example, that 73 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock today? You mean, nobody’s solved that problem?

We could go on and on and on. All you do is widen and expand your interests in what’s going on in the world, and you suddenly begin to see all of the extraordinary opportunities that exist out there.

Do you realize that if every single one of the guys, the guys who are self-employed in your database, if every single one of them were to simply add one person in their company, the economic impact that would have? Just one?

Roddy: Yes – the amount of businesses that they touch, when you think about every reseller is touching multiple businesses, and so if they’re able to offer efficiencies or improvements or make somebody more profitable who could then, in turn, hire more people, grow their business. Even that could have – just the ripple effect that it has is really something.

But like you said, it all starts in that idea of trying to figure out something that hasn’t been figured out yet, and taking a shot at building something. But too many times, people are caught up in the tactical, day-to-day part of the business.

Gerber: Yes, and so when you think about that, that’s one of the reasons I’ve been doing the work that I’ve been doing. When you think about the work that we’ve been doing, The E-Myth work that we’ve been doing, the profound impact we’ve had on tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny companies, taking them out of their comfort zone – understand, they’ve got to be taken out of their comfort zone. They can’t get there from here.

They’ve got to be out of their comfort zone. Their comfort zone is what they’re comfortable doing, because they can pretty much depend upon their ability to produce the result, but they can’t depend upon anybody else producing that result. They’ve never been able to get somebody else to do it, and it’s not worth the trouble, most people would say.

By the time I’ve told them, by the time I’ve taught them, by the time I could teach them, all they do is go out and be in competition with me. Everybody tells me the negative outcome of doing a positive, because their experience tells them that. They have to get out of their experience, in order to create a new experience.

That’s the reason I created The Course. The Course obviously was intended to give anybody who would even begin to think about the possibility of growing beyond where they are, to be able to invest a little tiny bit of money to actually walk through the process of going from a company of one to a company of 1,000.

Then, of course, the idiot always says, “Yes, but I don’t want a thousand people.” I said, “Stupid, I didn’t mean you had to have 1,000 people, if that’s going to be your response to it.” No, what about two? How to go from a company of one to a company of two? Or, forget about two. How about going from a company of one to a company of five?

Because exactly the same thing has to happen to go from a company of one to a company of five as it is to go from a company of one to a company of 1,000. The logic is identically the same. When you truly immerse yourself in The Course – which is about three and a half hours of me just railing at you – when you literally sit down and go through The Course, you’re going to discover the secret to expanding beyond belief.

The most extraordinary thing is anybody – anybody – can do it. It’s mechanics. All that’s missing is the passion for it. The only reason the passion is missing is because he’s so consumed in this comfort zone of working for income, rather than for equity.

The ridiculous thing about it is it takes the same amount of time. It takes the same amount of time for work for income as it does to work for equity. But the difference between the outcome is exponential. Why would you do that? Well, you can do that simply because you’re going to get that much more from the amount of time that you’re going to invest, but that’s not the point.

The point is, the minute you begin to do that, you begin to think differently, and the minute you begin to think differently, you begin to create differently. The minute you begin to create differently, you begin to have a profoundly different impact on the world around you, on every single person you touch.

Become a leader. Everybody has a leader within, if they were only willing to exercise a little bit of out-of-comfort energy to pursue something they’ve never seen in themselves before.

Roddy: Michael, let me ask you this, because I agree with that 100 percent, and this will tie in with The Course. I remember seeing a graphic that has the innermost circle as your Comfort Zone, the outermost circle is your Panic Zone, and in between is the Courage Zone, which is really the step going outside of your comfort zone.

It seems like there are a lot of people who perceive there’s no courage zone. There’s simply a comfort zone and a panic zone, and any step outside my comfort zone just becomes an absolute panic. Does The Course, in part, help folks realize that there is that courage zone, and help them know that anybody can do it and help give them that confidence?

A lot of times, people somebody who’s built a business and they think, “They’re a genius. How in the world could I possibly do that? These people are so much smarter than me,” but it’s really not. Like you said, it’s way more mechanical.

I might have woven in three questions in there, but I’m hoping you can expand upon that, because people don’t take that first step, because they think it’s going off a cliff, rather than when they realize it’s just a place they haven’t been before and it’s actually a greener pasture.

Gerber: Well, yes, and what’s most important to think about in that regard is there is no cliff. There never has been a cliff. A cliff is perception of a cliff. There is no cliff. There is no cliff here that you’re going to jump off of. There is no extreme action you’re going to take from where you are right now, to if you were to do what I’m describing. There’s just step one.

The most important thing to understand is the cliff is the cliff of your belief system. You’re leaping off the cliff of your belief. That is, if you were to do something other than what you do and the way you do it, you’re creating havoc or danger or catastrophe or imminent collapse or whatever. It’s just not true.

So when you asked in The Course do I give them the ability to see the difference between my comfort zone and my panic zone, what you call my courage zone, it doesn’t even take courage to take these first steps. It just takes a mind. Understand, it doesn’t take courage to say, “Okay, let’s do step one,” because it proves itself every step of the way.

You don’t conclude step one until you’ve concluded step one. Meaning, step one is very specific. Step one is you’re going to discover what your dream is. Step two, you’re going to discover what your vision is. Step three, you’re going to discover what your purpose is. Step four, you’re going to discover what your mission is.

Your dream is first. Your dream has a form, so we can agree, when it’s done, I now have a dream. My dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. I now know what my dream is. Before I conclude that, meaning before I say, “Okay, my dream is,” whatever it is, I can’t even begin to ask what my vision is.

Without a dream, there is no vision. I can’t ever discover what my purpose is, because without my vision, there is no purpose. Without my purpose, there is no mission. The dream is the first step in The Dreaming Room.

We’re in The Dreaming Room right now, with a blank piece of paper and beginner’s mind. I’m now going to ask myself, “What is the great result I want to produce in the world? If I were to produce a great result in the world, what would it be?”

I recommend that every single person listening to this, every single one of you, without fail, go online and get Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Listen to it. That’s what’s missing. That’s what’s missing everywhere.

“I have a dream,” Martin Luther King said. Listen to it. You’ll understand, then, what Steve Jobs had. You’ll understand what Bill Gates had. You’ll understand what Sam Walton had. You’ll understand what – and on and on, the founders of every great company. “I have a dream,” they said. They may not have been as passionately explicit as Dr. King’s was, but listen to it and you’ll understand what’s missing in this picture.

That’s what’s missing in this picture, and it’s passion. Anything else is working for a living. Anything else is dead meat. Anything else is the opposite of a meaningful life. Listen to Dr. King. You do that, Jim. Go do that today. Listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream.”

Roddy: Yes. When we publish this podcast, we’ll have a link to it, so folks don’t even have to do a lot of searching for it.

I was actually showing part of that speech to my daughter. I have a 10-year-old daughter, and we were going through it. And I have it up on my bulletin board here in my office, it’s a picture of Martin Luther King and it says, “Yes, we can realize our dreams.” It’s interesting that you bring that up.

And the passion that you talk about, he couldn’t have said that speech in a monotone way. There was no doubt that there was clear passion behind that. It wasn’t just words.

Gerber: There’s no doubt. This s what he was there to do. There’s no doubt. It was just, “This is what I’m here to do. This is why I’m here. This is why I’m alive.” That’s what’s missing in every single one of these guys we’re talking to. Do you understand? That’s what’s missing.

Roddy: He left the comfort zone – to get into the story of Martin Luther King – he left the comfort zone of his father’s church to go to almost essentially a startup church, a new church, and become the pastor there. People were saying, “Are you crazy? You’ve got this sweet gig right here at home,” but he had this dream. It’s interesting that you say that, because it doesn’t necessarily take courage or is scary to write down a dream. That’s something that you said, that anybody can do it.

Gerber: It’s not scary to write it down, but understand that writing it down is insufficient, because it’s the opposite of what a dream is. A dream isn’t just something that you write down; a dream is something you live.

The problem is that most people don’t have a dream. Literally, do not have a dream. If their dream was to go out on my own and start my own business, there’s very little of a dream in that. There was a desire in that. There’s a difference between a dream and a desire.

A dream is impersonal. A desire is personal. A dream is about them. A desire is about me. In this “me” generation, it’s all about desire. I want, I want, I want, I want. That’s why I would say don’t go listen to some personal growth guru. Go listen to Martin Luther King. It had nothing to do with personal growth. Now, an unfortunate thing about Dr. Martin Luther King, he wasn’t an entrepreneur. He, unfortunately, made it about government …  meaning law, meaning institutionally.

He institutionalized his dream, suggesting that the only way his dream could be realized is if the government woke up. The government woke up and destroyed his dream. The only way his dream, Martin Luther King’s dream, could have been realized is if every individual heard it and took it personally, their own personal responsibility.

Had that happened, everything would be different today. It’s a very big thing, a very, very big thing. Once I can state my dream, once I can will my dream, I then ask, “What’s my vision?” Well, my vision was, in my case, to invent the McDonald’s of small business consulting.

I’ve said this before on these recordings of ours. But I know that nobody really gets it. When I say to create the McDonald’s of small business consulting, I’m not saying turn out cheap consulting, e.g. turn out cheap food.

In reality, the quality at McDonald’s is higher than the quality at 99 percent of all companies on earth, meaning they consistently produce within the fraction of error exactly the same that they’ve promised they would produce, in over 30,000 locations worldwide. Can you imagine how exquisitely managed a company like that has to be?

Roddy: I’ve talked to owners of independent franchises for McDonald’s and yes, they have a buttoned-down system. It is pretty special, and that’s why they do so much training. But their system is wonderful.

If folks who are listening to this could build a system inside of their business, like you said, they wouldn’t have to be doing it, doing it, doing it. Other people could produce the same result that you would, that you’re scrambling to do 70 hours a week.

Gerber: Yes, other people could produce the same result in the same way with the same outcome that I can, provided I put my mind to that. It’s where we put our mind to that makes the difference.

I’m saying to every single sucker listening to me right now, if you don’t go out and buy The Course for $295, buy The Course and sit for three and a half hours and listen to it and then sit again and listen to it, and then a third time and listen to it – if you don’t do that, shame on you.

You’re just saying to yourself, “No, I’m just going to stay the way I am. I’m just going to stay the way I am. I’m just going to stay the way I am.” I’m saying the way you are doesn’t cut it. The way the world is doesn’t cut it. Something more is waiting to be done, and it’s waiting for you – not for me, not for Jim, not for Ray Kroc, not for – name it. It’s waiting for you. This is about you. It’s not about anybody else. This is about you.

Everybody else is going to have to take care of themselves. This is about you. The minute you get that –  this is about you, this is your personal responsibility for walking around in your shoes every day, this is about you – whatever your name might be, it is about nobody else. It’s about you, and every single day you let go by without doing what I’m describing, you’re failing yourself.

You’re failing yourself, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you make, no matter what you’re doing for a living. What you’re doing in your business, whatever you call it, no matter how good you think you are, you’re failing. You’re leaving yourself behind, and every single day that goes by and you failed to listen to this clarion call of mine, you’re violating an agreement you made on the day you were born, in the image of God. You were born to create something beyond yourself. That’s the deal. That’s what you get to do.

Roddy: Just a couple points on that one. On this webpage, we’re going to make it very easy for you. There’s going to be a link for you to register for and purchase The Course: Beyond The E-Myth: The Evolution of an Enterprise from a Company of One to a Company of One Thousand . That’s one point, so it’s going to be easy for you.

Michael, one of our company philosophies here that we have is, “We endeavor to help people find their life’s work and make a significant contribution to their life’s work.” We’ve always guided our managers if you’re keeping somebody here and it’s not their life’s work, every day is another day that they weren’t working towards their life’s work, and you couldn’t steal anything worse from somebody other than that, because we all have just a finite amount of time.

It sounds like what you’re saying, and I know we’re coming up on an hour here, so if you could have this be our closing point – too many times, people steal that time from themselves by not taking these steps we’re talking about. Is that how you see it, of folks not trying to find their life’s work?

Gerber: That’s it. Find your life’s work, and you haven’t found it yet. That’s what I’m saying, and you haven’t found it yet. If you found it, then you haven’t found how best to pursue it with every bit of energy you’ve got. Just listen to Dr. King and you’ll see what’s missing in this picture. Just listen to him and you’ll hear what’s missing in this picture. You’ll feel what’s missing in this picture.

That’s all I’m really saying to you. Then there’s a way to do it. Wonderful, Jim. Thank you very much.

Roddy: Yes, thank you very much, Michael. Folks, that’s all the time we have for today. If you want to learn more about best practices for improving your organization, click on the link to The Course.

You can also visit the Business Solutions Building Your Business Resource Center. Featured on that resource center are past interviews and webinars we’ve produced with Michael, so you can even get more of the story as well. You can go to that at www.BSMinfo.com/go/business.

Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s always great to talk with you.

Gerber: My delight, Jim. Thanks.

Roddy: Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for listening. Goodbye, everyone.

Special Solution Provider Offer! Michael Gerber has extended a special offer to Business Solutions subscribers for his product called “The Course: Beyond The E-Myth: The Evolution of an Enterprise from a Company of One to a Company of One Thousand.” For $295, you can learn what Gerber calls “the secret sauce for creating a Great Growing Company.” For more information or to purchase The Course, please click here and you will be redirected to Michael’s website.