September Monthly Must-Reads: Best Books for Small Business Owners

Business and careers experts often stress the importance of lifelong learning. But, as a business owner, you have a lot on your plate, making it difficult for you to make time for learning and professional development.

You need a strategy that’s simple and can be folded into your everyday life–try reading. One simple way to keep up with current innovation, management and workforce trends is by reading the right business books for your situation.

With our Monthly Must-Reads series, we aim to save you time by covering well-known and new business books. We share each featured book’s main focus and key take-aways, so you can determine within a minute if it’s relevant to you—really, whether it’s worth your valuable time. This month, we’re sharing The E-Myth Revisited as one of our best books for small business owners, and you can also check last month’s must-read: Blitzscaling.

Business Book:

The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber

Focus:

Exploring why 80% of small businesses fail and what pitfalls new business owners should avoid

Main Idea:

Even if you understand and perform technical work wonderfully, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can successfully start and run a business around that type of work.

Great for Small Business Owners Who:

Are still in the early stages of business planning.

Synopsis:

Voted as the #1 business book by Inc. 500 CEOs, The E-Myth Revisited opens by dispelling the “entrepreneurial myth” with what author, Michael Gerber, calls the “Fatal Assumption: if you understand the technical work of a business, [then] you understand a business that does that technical work.”

Gerber argues that new business owners must prepare to take on three different roles to achieve success:

• Technician (e.g. an expert)
• Entrepreneur (e.g. a “big picture” thinker)
• Manager (e.g. the one who sees to the details that get things done).

While walking readers through a typical business’s lifespan, Gerber points out that successful companies run on repeatable processes and achieve success using proven business models. Beyond hard work, Gerber argues, business owners must focus on three ingredients to create a thriving business: rules, regulations and a plan.

Key Take-Aways:

• Successful small business owners balance their time between managing employees, getting things done and performing big picture thinking.
• Work on your business, not just in it. It can be tempting to let yourself remain distracted by the day-to-day tasks of running your business—think ordering inventory, serving customers and making sales—but in order to succeed and grow their companies, business owners must make time to work on their businesses. Working on your business includes high-level thinking like strategic planning, market research and developing unique selling propositions.

Reviewers Say:

“I own a small service business with around 15 employees. I had been struggling for years doing all managerial work myself so that it was done up to my standards. We did great work but at the expense of my sanity! A mentor told me to read this book. The E-Myth was the driving factor that took my small business, which had been controlling my life, and transformed it into a business I could run remotely. If you own a small business, you need to read this book as soon as possible.”

“I owned my own successful retail business for 12 years and this was the Resource Book that helped the most. Here’s the core message – it’s easy to spend time working IN your business, but If you want it to grow, you need to block out critical time to work ON your business.”

 

Kapitus Monthly Must-Reads:

August – Blitzscaling

September – The E-Myth Revisited

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