E-Myth Part 2: The Entrepreneur, The Manager & The Technician

Most business owners all have an Entrepreneur, a Manager and a Technician inside of them, and find themselves bouncing between the 3 different business personalities. In a perfect world, we would all have a balance between the three. Often, we find business owners getting “stuck” in one personality, and this can often create a negative impact on the business.

In this article, I will explain the characteristics of each personality, how they work together, and what to look out for in your own business.

The Entrepreneur

The entrepreneur thinks of the business as the product. They create an impelling Vision and infuse it throughout the organisation. They think of big ideas and new ways to do things, and create opportunities. 

The Manager

The manager focuses on people, systems and strategies to achieve results. They take the Vision (set by the entrepreneur) and turn it into action. Without the manager, the entrepreneur has no hope of creating what they need.

The Technician

The technician does the hands-on work of the business. They use the systems created by the manager to produce and deliver the product or service. Many business owners often find themselves in this personality, and it can be hard to break out of this. 

Why many business owners are technicians

Most people start their business based on their technical skills – hairdressers open hair salons, builders start construction companies, chefs open restaurants. They become so involved in “doing the work” that they haven’t stopped to create an impelling vision (entrepreneur), or create systems and processes to run the business smoothly (manager). 

And it just doesn’t stop. The technician will continue doing, doing, doing. Even as we speak, the technician inside of you wants to go back to work.

The Vision

Walt Disney said, “Go to the dreaming room.” Every single one of us needs to go to our dreaming room. We need to spend time in the dreaming room and do exactly that. We need to begin to dream. We need to awaken our inner entrepreneur. 

Bill Gates had a vision. Sandy Weil had a vision. Every extraordinary idea in the world comes from a person who engages with the question: What do I want?

Ask yourself this: What is my vision? What do I want? What would I love to leave as my legacy in the world?

There is no answer to that question immediately because you haven’t worked on it sufficiently. You haven’t gravitated to it sufficiently. You haven’t experienced it sufficiently. 

Getting your life back

A while ago I worked on the E-Myth Mastery Program with a landscape contractor, who had a small company in Brisbane. The owner believed they had no possibility to ever get out of the circumstances they were in. Their business was eating them alive. They had no time with their family and they couldn’t bear it. When they started their business, they just kept going, going, going, doing, doing, doing.

Recently, I read a quote by the same business owner, “When I started this process, I had no idea where it would end up. My company was doing a half a million dollars a year in revenue. Today, some three years later, my company is doing close to three million dollars in revenue. My profit is increasing daily. But the true profit from this experience, this vision that I dared not have before I began the process, when I realized I had to begin the process, I now spend time with my family. I have my wife back. I have my son back. I have my life back.”

Entrepreneurs design a business that can work without them.

“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” – Peter Drucker

The System

As we say in the E-Myth Manager, your job is not to manage people as you begin to grow your enterprise. Your job is to manage the system as you grow the enterprise. The system runs the business. The people run the system. 

Systems allow you to produce consistent results. Having clear, well crafted systems in place allow you to infuse your vision and values throughout the organisation, without it having to depend on you to get things done. Systems help free you from your business, allowing you to  “work on your business, rather than in it”

“Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results predictably.”- Michael Gerber

Start to understand the macro and the micro, and see the strategic and the tactical. See the inventor as the entrepreneur, the enabler as the manager, the producer as the technician, and understand the relationship between all three. 

You will then come to the fact that living as you live, doing what you do, being in your own life, in your own world, without having that oversight, that ability to leap up on the desk and look down on the world, all you can see are the trees.

There is no forest. There’s just next, next, next. Stop.

The Solution is Systemic Thinking. Keep an eye out for our next article where we dive into the Business Development Process.