CHAPTER THREE

The Reluctant Entrepreneur

“I will not learn about fire by thinking about fire
but by burning.”

From The Work of Craft by Carla Needleman

We often let our passion down. Our connection to our passion is so tenuous.

We start a million projects, only to forget two days later, or three months, or a year, why we were passionate about them. Half-completed projects become a way of life, unfulfilled dreams, crowded closets, files that stack up, the sign on the store, once new, now faded, the bike parked in the garage, idle, that we were going to ride, every day without fail. Sum it all up and it comes down to this: we lose interest. Somebody wakes up in us, and sometime later, somebody else goes back to sleep.

It’s the same for all of us, to one degree or another. And yet, how do we explain that we all stay the course successfully at times. Does it mean that entrepreneurs are born, not made? That our passion is highly specific? That the absence of passion is evidence that we’re missing something innate, or that we don’t have the right stuff? I don’t think so. I think there exists in each of us the aptitude for striving, and that the passion is there to fuel it. Understanding your passion is the key. Understanding how it works, the unsubtle and subtle shades of it, is critical to your finding your entrepreneurial gifts.

Sarah, the owner of All About Pies, will help you get there.

 

In The E-Myth Revisited, I first told the story of Sarah, and how I worked with her to transform her relationship to her business.

Taught her a different way of thinking about her pie shop.

Taught her what she needed to do instead of what she elected to do.

Taught her to work on her business, not just in it.

Taught her about the three personalities in every business owner, the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician.

I taught her that, like most small business owners, her dominant personality was the technician, and that all the technician in her really wanted to do was to go to work, to give herself a job: to make pies, sell pies, clean the shop, talk to customers.

And as long as she nourished the technician in her at the expense of her other parts, she would, ultimately, only feel enslaved by a business of her own, not enlivened by it.

It took the entrepreneur, I told her, to free her from the tyranny of routine that the technician willingly submits to.

It took the manager to manifest the entrepreneur’s vision as a system that operates the business.

In short, it took all three personalities playing out their designated role, working in harmony, for the business to fulfill its promise.

Sarah was a great and willing student, and she took what I gave her to heart.

Almost 10 years ago, at the end of The E-Myth Revisited, Sarah and I parted company. Sarah went back to work on her business, not just in it.

She went to work to apply the entrepreneurial principles she had learned during our time together.

But all was not well at All About Pies.

 

Almost 10 years from the day I watched Sarah leave my office for the last time, filled with the energy, desire, and perspective to create a new life, she reentered mine.

I was the keynote speaker at her Association’s annual convention, where I shared the E-Myth point of view with a large, enthusiastic audience of retailers, owners, managers, and employees.

Afterward, Sarah appeared in front of me. I couldn’t believe it.

“Michael,” Sarah said, extending her hand to me. “Remember me?”

How could I forget?

“Hello, Sarah,” I said. “Wow, what a surprise! It’s good to see you. How are you?”

“Okay,” Sarah responded, “but not as well as I could be.” Her hand lingered in mine and then she placed her other hand over both of ours, and said, “It’s good seeing you again, Michael. I’ve missed you.”

Sarah looked exactly as I remembered her, a little older maybe but so were we all. She was an imposing woman, by anyone’s standards. Tall, elegant, with an air of authority about her. Her hair was brushed tightly back from her face, revealing bright, sharp, steady eyes, which look right at you, with interest, without imposing themselves on you.

But there was sadness in Sarah’s eyes I hadn’t remembered seeing there before. Frustration, yes, overwhelm, yes, but not sadness.

I shook her hands warmly. “What’s up, Sarah?” I asked, almost, at the same time, regretting the question. For whatever reason, standing as we were outside of the conference hall, surrounded by a crowd of milling people, yet feeling very much alone with her, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her answer.

“Your talk…,” Sarah began haltingly, “it brought back so many memories of things you and I talked about.”

I hesitated, and then asked the obvious question: “And…?” anticipating the response.

“Yes, somehow, it’s been more difficult than I thought it would be. Than I guess I hoped it would be.” She sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. “I need help, Michael. I need help. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“I really don’t, Sarah,” I said apologetically and sincerely. “I’m on my way to the airport to head home.”

“I promise, it will only take a few minutes,” Sarah said.

The resistance I was feeling must have showed. She said, “Michael, honest, I just need five minutes. Hearing you talk about E-Myth again brought up so many things, so much frustration and disappointment in me….” She stopped talking and looked at me and smiled, knowing she had me.

What could I say?

“Why don’t we sit down over there for a few minutes?” I pointed to a set of couches in the lobby, took her elbow, and started walking.

As we sat down, Sarah began talking. Her intensity built up with each word, her feelings welling out, her passion for what she was saying to me all-consuming.

“The last time we talked, I left feeling completely in control of myself and my business. I knew that what you had shared with me was going to make all the difference in my business and in my life. I knew that the confusion I had felt from the day I started my business was a thing of the past. I could see clearly, for the first time, that I was called to work on my business, not in it as I had been doing. I made the commitment to myself that I would do exactly what you said. I saw the wisdom of it and felt the excitement that the clarity created for me, like nothing else I had ever experienced.

“I went back to my business, knowing deep in my heart what I was going to do, even though, admittedly, I had no idea of how I was going to do it. I even printed up a little sign that I put over the cash register, and over my desk, that said, “Work ON it, not IN it!” as a constant reminder to myself that my role was not to go to work in the business every day, but to go to work on the business every day, to build a business I could replicate, as you said again today”—she smiled—to be run by ordinary people, doing business in an extraordinary way.

“For some time, that’s exactly what I did, Michael. I built manuals, I built special trainings for my small staff. I measured everything I could. I became an E-Myth Maniac. My girls laughed at me, every chance they could: ‘Did you ask Michael Gerber about that? Do you think Michael Gerber would do it that way?’ You would have been embarrassed by how often your name came up at All About Pies, Michael. The driving question was always, What would Michael Gerber say about that?

“And, I loved it!” Sarah continued.

“It felt like a huge adventure. My business stopped being all about work, and all about pies. It became all about development, growth, getting our little business ready to become a big business, doing what great businesses do.

“And then, something began to change. Slowly at first, so slowly that I didn’t even notice it. So subtly that none of us really noticed it. But it changed. And I didn’t realize until much, much later what actually happened.

“What happened was that I went from doing it, doing it, doing it as a technician, to doing it, doing it, doing it as an entrepreneur. I changed one kind of work for another kind of work. Even though I was building systems like crazy, and even though I was documenting everything we did, even though we were doing what I thought you had taught me, I was slowly but surely becoming as overwhelmed by working on it as I had when I was working in it. I had shifted my intention, as well as my attention, but the intensity, the overwhelm, was exactly the same as before. Somehow I had lost my sense of purpose in my passionate pursuit of getting everything exactly right.

“And I didn’t know what to do about it.

“To tell you the truth, Michael, when I found out that the Association was inviting you to speak, I made up my mind that day to come here, and to talk to you, because I need you to help me break free of this place I’m in. I need help in moving to the next step. I came here determined to ask you for help, once more, but this time, to see it through to its conclusion.”

Sarah paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Michael, you can’t say no, you’ve just got to say yes, no matter what it’s going to cost me. I can’t keep struggling like this!”

Sarah smiled, painfully, but, cleanly.

“Don’t say no,” she said.

 

I shuddered to myself thinking about everything Sarah and I would need to confront, to work through, to overcome, in order to even engage in the process she was contemplating.

“Sarah,” I began, “I can see things have gotten pretty painful. And I so appreciate your sincerity. Honestly. And I’m honored that you would think so much of me to ask me for help. But knowing what I know about what you are asking for, and how much time and care it would take, and the projects I’m already committed to…and that I don’t have all the time in the world left. Knowing all that, I just don’t think….”

She stopped me in mid-sentence and laid her hand on mine again. “Michael, I have no illusions about what I’m asking for, and I also know I have no reason to expect that you should give it to me. But, somehow, I know that it is exactly what we should do, and I’m simply asking you to trust enough to take the first step with me. If it doesn’t feel right to you then, so be it. I will drop it in a second. But, somehow, I believe in my heart that this is going to be well worth your time. I don’t know how exactly, but I feel it. Could we just take the next step?” She moved her hand away from mine, but the touch of it was still there, warm and insistent.

I sighed, smiled, and said, “Okay, call me when you get back and we’ll set up a time to talk. But no promises,” I said, still very much ambivalent.

I got up, as did she, we hugged, and I said, “I’ve got a bear of a schedule over the next several weeks but call my assistant and she’ll fit you in.” I gave her my assistant’s name and her direct line.

“But no promises,” I said again as if to convince myself that there still was a possibility that I wasn’t in this for the long haul.

Sarah smiled brightly. “I can’t wait,” she said.