Saved my Life

I am a small business owner just like the woman he describes in the book. After listening for 20 minutes I felt hope for my business, by the end of the book I had a plan in action to turn that hope into prosperity. This book saved my business and my sanity.

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99 people found this helpful

Attitude changing but no practical solutions

This book illustrates business ideas through a story between a teacher and a student, much like that of The Goal. But the author put too much effort into developing the characters and too little into teaching the business. There were lots on how Sarah smiles, and grins, and have the looks of someone on the verge of enlightenment, and on and on. There were lots on describing the pitfalls of the average business owner. But there were very little on solutions to solve these problems and almost no examples given to demonstrate how to apply the solutions in practical situation in day to day business.

The idea is to set up your business in a way you can put everything about the business in an operations manual. You need to do it in a way such that if someone else was given the manual, he/she will be able to run the exact same business. This way, your business will have repeatable and predictable results. If you were on vacation, someone else will be able to run the business with same results. The author spent may be 20 minutes on illustrating these ideas, and the rest of the 8 hours describing how excited Sarah became hearing these.

If you'd like to read about the touchy feelys, pick up a real novel. If you want to have practical ideas about how to run a business, pick up a real business book. If you'd like to spend 8 hours learning the ideas I've already outlined above, get this book.

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85 people found this helpful

Life Changing, I Gotta Say

I had heard about this book for years, but Gerber's writing style, with its endless dependent clauses, bothered me. However, when I got the audio book, and heard him reading it, and got the way it was meant to be taken in, I got it.

This book has radically helped me in the past month and a half since I read it, and dramatically changed how I look at my (*CURRENTLY*) one-person business. I cannot recommend this book enough to those of you who started a small business without any entrepreneurial training or experience.

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61 people found this helpful

E-Myth Revisited Review

Excellent read and recommend listening to it once a year. Challenges small business owners to work yourself out of your job and to delegate. In order to build a self sufficient company with total freedom, one must develop systems that the "least" qualified employee in your organization can follow. It's all about the SYSTEMS in your company.

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35 people found this helpful

A must have business book.

I was going into this book with apprehension, a fear that this was yet another "I'll show you how it is done and you will live a great life forever". But I decided to buck the critic on audible who said it was awful and got it. Well I was surprised. It gives you the basics on running a business, a department, or anything...really. It shows you some of the obvious things that you never think about and then allows you to expand on them for yourself. It's a book that I have read a number of times...well listened to, but the first that I took notes on. E-Myth Mastery is next.

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33 people found this helpful

A novel about advice given to a pie lady

The author clearly wanted to write a novel. The book is complete with descriptions of thoughts, fantasies and even detailed descriptions of smiles and sighs of the pie lady. It takes an eternity for the author to make a point. The whole book can be summed up by saying: If you start a business because you are good at and enjoy something; in order to be successful you will need to hire someone else to do that something so you can focus on management and growing the business. The goal is to make a business that runs so well that it can run without you and be franchised like McDonalds.

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32 people found this helpful

Total Garbage

I can't believe how awful this book is given its reputation. Not only is it saccharine and patronizing with its absurd frame story about "Sarah" the pie shop owner, but it contains almost no tangible, useful information at all.

I thought it would be practical advice about running a business that doesn't have many people in it, thus being "small." Turns out E-Myth is entirely about setting up a very specific type of capital-S, capital-B Small Business- one where the same product/service is sold over and over again, ideally by the cheapest, least skilled drone employees, where the owner can remove themselves from the business as much as possible and then eventually sell it to someone else for a profit.

There are few high-level bits of information that are useful, but they could be summarized in about 15 minutes and ideally, by someone more eloquent. The rest is bloated, redundant text and wanking about how wonderful franchise businesses are.

I guess if you want to run a telemarketing office or a used car lot or a faux TGI Friday's, maybe this is of use. But if you happen to want to run a creative business, where the talent of yourself and your coworkers actually matters, there's little of use to be found here.

And the coup de grâce is the closing, where Gerber tries to upsell you on his expensive "coaches" and seminars. The entire book is a glorified time-share pitch. Barf. This is almost certainly a total waste of your time, seek wisdom elsewhere.

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25 people found this helpful

Bring your shovel

Would you try another book from Michael E. Gerber and/or Michael E. Gerber?

Absolutely not. My conclusion is Gerber is a talented used car salesman. If you are selling used cars then this might be the book for you.

What could Michael E. Gerber have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

The book drags on and the stories and unnecessary detail are very forced. He also goes to great lengths to make himself appear like some kind of super hero. At one point in the book he is telling a "story" of a "man." The man is amazingly talented at everything but also easily distracted. BUT, let's not forget he's amazingly talented and in the end, everyone is in awe of him, even if they think he will fail they are in awe. I'm not kidding. He actually says something similar to this. Well, that person Gerber is talking about is himself. He even milks the big reveal of who the "man" is at one point. Yes, at times in this passage he makes it sound like he's being self deprecating which he is very deliberate about but the real message is how amazing he is.What I found particularly grating about this part was 1) Wait, how amazingly talented at EVERYTHING are you? I didn't get it the first 100 times.2) The guy has had three wives and 5 children amongst the three wives. Awesome dude. 3) The guy introduced his third wife as "much bigger than the others." That was the first thing he said about her. Again, it's directly aimed at winning points for Gerber to show how mature he has become and grown up. How about, still very shallow?

How did the narrator detract from the book?

I don't know what it is about these guys that write self help and business books but they all come across as slimy. If he was your neighbor, you wouldn't want your kids around him type of slimy. Sorry, just my opinion. Luckily, I listened to the book on 2x speed and had no problems with understanding the audio (thank you audible). On 1x, Gerber is laborious. His tone gets really annoying. At one point he was narrating a list of bullet points and each line was read with the same, forced enthusiasm/creepiness to exact replication. It was like listening to a goofy robot on a broken record.Also, in the scenes where he is talking to the pie shop owner, I just got this creepy feeling about the whole presentation.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The E-Myth Revisited?

There is a scene where Gerber goes into a inordinate amount of detail about the listener viewing their own coffin. I get what he was trying to do but it was just a little too odd and forced. He could have skipped that part and just gotten straight to "what do you want people to remember about you?" Yes, I know, visualization but it was used incorrectly. It made pursuing that particular exercise much less desirable.

Any additional comments?

If you are a "no questions asked, I can sell anything" type of person, this might be for you, especially if you need some really basic guidance.If you have any degree of skepticism, you will have a hard time getting through this. It's not that there isn't value here, it's that you might come to the conclusion that although some of the content is helpful, the messenger is a charlatan. At first I gave this an overall score of 2 stars but I stopped listening to it after Gerber told the passage where he turned water into wine. If I can't complete a book, it shouldn't get more than a star.

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24 people found this helpful

Must listen for would be entrepreneurs

The audiobook is a bit too long. The stories about Sara's problems are a bit too long and too emotional at the first sight. However, when you look closer, you realize the story is about someone like you. If you try to think like Sara, the main character, it is about life and meaning of life. Then, you understand the real substance of what the author is transmiting using an emotional story. There is knowledge inside: how to start a business; how to not be consumed by your business; how to balance business with life; how to grow; how to be successful etc.
It is the true substance of the book that made me to upgrade from 3 to 4 stars.

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22 people found this helpful

Must have/Life changing book

This book was *very* good. It's perfect for people who want to start a business. The author's narration was easy to listen to and really made the listening experience enjoyable.

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21 people found this helpful