The best book on running a business I have read so far
5 stars
It's a great book, the best book on running a business I have read so far
He says there are three characters living in every company starter: The entrepreneur who has the vision, the technician who does the actual technical work and the manager who takes care that everything is planned and done the right way
The Issue with most business starters is, they are mostly technicians who don't do the managing and entrepreneur part too much
E.g. these "technicians" hire other people to do the work they don't like / know how to do
Then the newly hired people are often overburdened with too much work and quit or don't do it as expected (because they don't get managed right)
He says you should act like you are building a franchise because this forces you to create a system for operating your business like writing documentation of the operation …
It's a great book, the best book on running a business I have read so far
He says there are three characters living in every company starter: The entrepreneur who has the vision, the technician who does the actual technical work and the manager who takes care that everything is planned and done the right way
The Issue with most business starters is, they are mostly technicians who don't do the managing and entrepreneur part too much
E.g. these "technicians" hire other people to do the work they don't like / know how to do
Then the newly hired people are often overburdened with too much work and quit or don't do it as expected (because they don't get managed right)
He says you should act like you are building a franchise because this forces you to create a system for operating your business like writing documentation of the operation processes
He also says you should track all important metrics, like sales before and after a change (how can you figure out if a change was positive on the sales if you don't know the numbers?)
An interesting book with interesting ideas that definitely get one pondering what it means to be an entrepreneur, rather than merely a technician who dislikes his manager.
Perhaps the biggest idea in the book is that a successful business is nothing more than a particularly ordered view of a piece of the world. By giving your employees and customers a predictable, consistent experience, you are able help them feel that their world is slightly less chaotic and scary. And as the owner of the business, you get to define what that structured view is. Most of the rest of the ideas in the book are corollaries to this idea (even those ideas mentioned before Gerber introduces this one).
The book is written in easy prose and doesn't take much actual reading time at all, although I spread it across several sittings over the course of a few weeks. I started …
An interesting book with interesting ideas that definitely get one pondering what it means to be an entrepreneur, rather than merely a technician who dislikes his manager.
Perhaps the biggest idea in the book is that a successful business is nothing more than a particularly ordered view of a piece of the world. By giving your employees and customers a predictable, consistent experience, you are able help them feel that their world is slightly less chaotic and scary. And as the owner of the business, you get to define what that structured view is. Most of the rest of the ideas in the book are corollaries to this idea (even those ideas mentioned before Gerber introduces this one).
The book is written in easy prose and doesn't take much actual reading time at all, although I spread it across several sittings over the course of a few weeks. I started slowing down a little in later chapters as Gerber got into some of the more tactical pieces, such as marketing and different types of systems, but mostly that's I don't see myself getting to that point yet for awhile.
As other comments have mentioned, I was a little put off by the serial installments of the fictionalized pie owner "Sarah" that Gerber uses to reillustrate his points at the end of each chapter. The dialogue between Gerber and his alleged client is simply not believable in many parts, and while I understand the usefulness of the gimmick, it probably could have been done away with or lessened as the book goes on.
