146: How To Grow From A Company Of 1 To A Company of 1000 With Michael Gerber Of E-Myth

Steve: You are listening to the My Wife Quit her Job Podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. I’m Steve Chou, and today we’re talking with Michael Gerber, who is the world renowned author of the E-myth series of books. You will learn how to create a company from the ground up the right way so that it’s scalable and sellable.

In other news I want to let you know that the tickets for the 2017 Sellers Summit are now on sale at sellerssummit.com. Now what is the Sellers Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets ecommerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level BS, mine is a curriculum based conference, where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an ecommerce business.

In fact every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their ecommerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the Sellers Summit will be small and intimate. Last year we cut off ticket sales at around 100 people, so this event will sell out quickly, so once again that’s sellerssummit.com and go check it out.

And if you want to learn how to start your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free 6 day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100K in profit in our first year of business, so go to my wifequitherjob.com, sign up right there on the front page, and I’ll send you the mini course right away via email. Now onto the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’ve got an extra special guest on the show. He is an author who I have followed ever since I started my first business, he’s an amazing speaker, author and business consultant who has coached more entrepreneurs than anyone I can think of. His book The E-myth Revisited is considered a required reading for anyone wanting to build a business of their own, and it actually changed my way of thinking about small business.

He is the founder of the Dreaming Room, a three month program that introduces you to a new way of thinking about entrepreneurship, and if you don’t recognize who I’m referring to yet, it is the one and only Michael Gerber, and with that welcome to the show Michael, how are you doing today?

Michael: I’m great Steve and thanks for the lovely introduction.

Steve: So Michael I know your work well, but for the benefit of the listeners who may not have heard of you before, can you kind of tell us what led you to write the E-myth series of books and at a high level what the E-myth is all about?
Michael: Sure, well the reason I wrote the book is because we had been working for seven years prior to the publication of the book with small business owners, and when I say working with them I mean we were teaching them a whole new paradigmatic way of thinking about what they do every day.

And so that came to the whole idea of the e-myth, the e-myth is the entrepreneurial myth and it essentially says that despite the fact that most people believe if you own a small business you’re not an entrepreneur, the contrary is true that in fact very few small business owners are actually entrepreneurs. They are what I’ve come to call technicians, suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure, meaning they simply created a job for themselves, another working for a lunatic.

Steve: Meaning themselves, right?

Michael: Yeah of course. And so our work over the past 40 years, we launched our company in 1977, has been to actually transform the state of small business by awakening the entrepreneur within a small business owner so that he or she can approach the act of business development with a completely different perspective about how to do that work.

We have an expression that I’m sure you know; you’re familiar with my work. It says, “Work on it not just in it,” and 99% of all the people we ever meet are just working in it, meaning they are their business, they don’t own one. And so their business is completely dependent upon them, if they are not there, it doesn’t work.

Steve: Okay, so let’s expand upon that a little bit. I know a bunch of people in the audience have probably read your books, what would you say the biggest mistake is that new entrepreneurs make in trying to actually follow your principles and making your business the product and that sort of thing, why are most businesses broken?

Michael: Well the biggest mistake they make is by not following my principles, meaning they might think they are following my principles but there is no rigor to it, understand the rigor is key.

Steve: Do you have any examples of people who kind of fall into this category of people that you’ve worked with, I know you’ve worked with thousands of businesses in the past, so maybe if there is some things like watch out for that you can talk about?

Michael: Well sure, but rather than talking about the people who didn’t do it, let me just talk about just a handful of people who did do it.

Steve: Sure okay it sounds good.

Michael: A perfect example is a company I’m sure you know, Infusion Soft.

Steve: Yes.

Michael: Infusion Soft is a great example for a company that truly internalized my e-myth point of view and then went on to actually participate in a dreaming room with me, and that is not several months process, it’s a two and a half day process. I now call it the new dreaming room to align it more with Beyond the E-myth rather as it was with the original e-myth books.

Infusion Soft came to me about six and a half years ago, and they were introduced to me by a good buddy of mine, and they wanted to spend two and a half days with me with a large audience, not an audience of them spending the day with me, but an audience they are spending those two and a half days with me in what I call the dreaming room.

Steve: Can we talk about what the dreaming room is first before you go on?

Michael: Sure, the dreaming room is really the first half of a process for creating a company that works, I call the strategic half, and I’m saying that without it, in the absence of that process most companies will fail. The dreaming room really works around the four personalities that exist within a true entrepreneur.

I call them the dreamer, the thinker, the story teller, and the leader. The dreamer has a dream, the thinker has a vision, the story teller has a purpose, the leader has a mission. I’m saying every entrepreneur, no matter what their company aim is, no matter kind of a company it is, no matter what industry they are in, every entrepreneur is a dreamer or thinker or story teller and a leader or they are not an entrepreneur.

And so our first job obviously is to awaken the entrepreneur within every small business owner on the planet, and we do that in the dreaming room and now in the new dreaming room.

Steve: And does that imply that those traits can all be within everybody, or do you need to …

Michael: Everybody, and everybody does ask that question, what if I’m a dreamer but I’m not a thinker, what if I’m a thinker but I’m not a dreamer, what if I’m a this and I’m not a that, and I’m simply saying get with the program. In other words Steve they all have to be there, because without one part of you, there is no venture possible, there is no enterprise possible, you can’t buy that, you have to develop that.

And so it’s a process of you might say personal growth toward the evolution of a great enterprise, and until you’ve done that you don’t really understand what I’m talking about. So you have to simply a measure of trust, the guy has been doing this for 40 years. Everybody speaks about the E-myth. If you haven’t read the E-myth you don’t know anything on and on and on and on, so at least I’m saying somebody got to simply give me a pulse and say okay I’m going to do that Gerber.

Well that’s what the Infusion Soft guys did. When they came in it was a very small company, they didn’t know where they were going, and because they didn’t know where they were going they obviously didn’t know how they were going to get there. They thought they were a software company, in the dreaming room they discovered in fact something significantly different than that, and they discovered their dream, their vision, their purpose and their mission and their minds were blown.

In fact today Clate Mask, the CEO and one of the key share holders of Infusion Soft says that there are three major contributions that led Infusion Soft to where it is today, and one of those was Michael Gerber in the dreaming room.

Steve: Okay, so back when they were a small company or just a software company, which one of those elements were they lacking actually that you helped them with?

Michael: They were lacking all of it.

Steve: Oh really?

Michael: They didn’t really have a dream, they didn’t really have a vision, they didn’t really have a purpose, they didn’t really have a mission. Understand these words, everybody has heard but not in the context in which I use them. So let me give you an example of that, in my case my dream way back then in 1977 when we started out – in short at the very beginning my dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide.

My vision was to invent the Macdonald’s of small business consulting. My purpose was that every independently owned small business can be as successful as a Macdonald’s franchisee, or if they truly get it as successful as a Macdonald’s franchiser itself. And finally my mission was to invent the business development system that was absolutely critical to grow any company.

And that’s how we started out in 1977, and it’s the wager of that, that has created our company and our ability to do the work that we have done and the ability to do what we did with a company like Infusion Soft, like 1-800-Got Junk and on and on and on and on, company after company after company, we’ve worked with over 100,000 clients since we formed our company in 1977.

Steve: Do those aspects of your business, do they ever change over time or are they kind of like steadfast things that you decided in the beginning?

Michael: No they never change.

Steve: They never change, okay.

Michael: My dream is the same, my vision is the same, my purpose is the same, my mission is the same. Some of the how we do those things change of course as new technology comes forward, as the internet has changed, as this has changed, as that … How we do what we do is altered, but the core baseline for what we do and why we do it hasn’t changed at all.

Steve: So is the reason why you need to figure this out because it dictates all of your decisions going forward, is that the fundamental principle?

Michael: But of course, it’s the heart of it.

Steve: Okay and so people go to your dreaming room like Infusion Soft and you allow them to discover for themselves what these primers are with their business, and then what is the next step?

Michael: Well we don’t allow anything; we take them through a rigorous process. The process generates insights, perspective, a paradigm that is an internal experience for the people who are there. We don’t tell them what their dream, vision, purpose, and mission are.

Steve: Of course.

Michael: They do, but it’s the process through which we stimulate and inspire them to discover something they didn’t know before they came in the door so much so that Infusion Soft if you were to walk into their company today which is now doing 100 million in revenue with close to 1000 employees and hundreds of contractors, you discover on their wall, our dream, our vision, our purpose, our mission written explicitly on the wall so that everybody can see it.

Steve: So once you’ve figured these things out about yourself and your company, what is involved next in taking it to a business of one to a business of 1000?

Michael: Well that’s cool; I call this the tactical component of this thing we’re talking about.

Steve: I would imagine most people that come to you are probably interested in tactics, right, is that correct?

Michael: Oh yeah everybody want more sales, I mean that’s all everybody wants, more sales, more sales, that’s why – in fact the primary business service out here on the planet is we’re going to show you how to get more sales, more sales, more sales and we don’t do that at all, because in our case what we’re essentially saying if we will define a way to get you more sales, we destroy your company, because you couldn’t handle them.

Steve: I see.

Michael: And you couldn’t handle them because you’re not organized to handle them.

Steve: Because the process is not in place?

Michael: Right, the system is not in place, so that’s the second half; I call it the job, the practice, the business, the enterprise. What we used to do, we used to fix broken businesses, in other words the whole business of E-myth for years has been fixing broken small businesses. And so we’d start out to fix the broken small business, step one step two and step three etcetera, we’ve stopped doing that. We don’t fix broken businesses any more, we start new ones.

So we’d say to anybody coming to us, look we’re not here to fix your broken business, and we can guarantee you it’s broken and I can demonstrate that in a thousand ways, but that’s not a problem if you do that process right now. Let’s just accept the fact that you’ve got a business that you’re doing whatever you’re doing, it’s producing whatever it’s producing, I’m going to call that business old co.

What we’re going to work on though is new co, we’re not going to fix the business you’ve got, we’re going to create the company you want, so we’re going to start it a new and we’re going to start it a new by discovering what your dream, your vision, your purpose and your mission are. Once we have done that we’re going to start to go to work on your company from step one with a blank piece of paper on beginners mind to first determine what your client fulfillment system is, I call that the job.

So we’re going to go on, on the job to design, build, launch, and grow and turnkey your client fulfillment system, that is what you deliver to your most important customer, turnkey…

Steve: So the concept of Infusion Soft … go on sir … yeah before you go on I was just going to say in the concept of Infusion Soft here the delivery system I guess would be their email marketing software?

Michael: Of course, but not just the software, the whole methodology by which they work with a client.

Steve: So the on boarding process?

Michael: Well the on boarding process, the continuous improvement process, the continuous help that they provide, no not that way, this way, no not that way, this way, the constant process by which they engage their client to become a significantly more functional representation of what Infusion Soft was created to do.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of old co and new co, Infusion Soft, did you tell them to throw away their old or was this…

Michael: No it wasn’t throw it away, it’s never throw it away, just keep and let it do what it’s doing. In the meantime we’re going to create new co over here, and as we build new co gradually old co is just going to disappear.

Steve: Okay I understand, so sorry I interrupted your thought.

Michael: No but a great question. So the job, so first we’re going to create the client fulfillment system, and we’re going to turnkey it, we’re going to document it, we’re going to be able to transfer it to another guy, another guy, another guy, another guy meaning inside of the company the people who are responsible for delivering the client fulfillment system will have a turnkey methodology in order to deliver it with integrity to every single client that they get, you follow?

Steve: Yes, so do you work on all these things before you even get your first customer because the way a lot of people work is they just try to get customers just to validate what they are trying to do first and then put the process into place.

Michael: Yeah, you’re getting customers validating the job, the client fulfillment system, but even if you’re giving it away, you’re testing it, validating it, quantifying it, reassuring yourself that the way you do it actually has the impact you intended it for their house.

Steve: Okay, so this is like ongoing process, it is not something you have in place before you get your first customers, right?

Michael: No it’s an ongoing process, and I describe that ongoing process very, very clearly in Beyond the E-myth book, so that anybody who is listening to us right now, if they get the book, they will be able to understand much more clearly what the dream is, what the vision is, what the purpose is, what the mission is, what the client fulfillment system is, the process by which you do the work that I’m describing here.

Steve: Okay, don’t worry we’ll link all that stuff in the show notes with a link to the book.

Michael: So the next step is practice, and the practice is what I call the three legged stool. Now we’ve created the turnkey client fulfillment system, that’s absolutely critical, that’s why I said that everybody wants to get sales, sales, sales, sales but they don’t have a turnkey client fulfillment system, so even if they got sales they wouldn’t be able to replicate their ability to deliver the result that in fact they are designing their company to do.

So they’re setting it off on a completely awkward and dysfunctional path. So I’m saying these steps are so critical and absolutely essential if somebody is going to create a company that ultimately will become a leader in what it sets out to do. You got to do it, so the three legged stool is lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment.

Sure now that we’ve tested, validated, secured the ability of our client fulfillment system to work, now we’re going to put the pedal to the metal and attract more people to buy it, and that’s the three legged stool, lead generation, attracting people to our door, lead conversion, converting them into customers, client fulfillment, converting those customers into clients.

You can begin to see it as the franchise prototype. So effectively the six step in this process is step one is the dream, two is the vision, three is the purpose and four is the mission, five is the job, the client fulfillment system. Six is the practice which is the client acquisition and client fulfillment system integrated into one thing, that’s your franchise prototype. One you turnkeyed that system, you can now put the pedal to the metal and grow your company into a business.

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So in the book you often mention the franchise prototype and when you use the word franchise, are you kind of using it loosely here, because when I think of franchise and you mention this in the book Macdonald’s all the time, when you use the word franchise, are you talking how like the franchise business model or in terms of just making your business scalable and allowing other people other than yourself to run it?

Michael: Franchising is simply a model for expanding the reach of your company, it’s a distribution model. So when I say franchise, note that Starbucks isn’t a franchise, those are all company owned stores, and understand but those company owned stores operate like a franchise, there is a barrister in every single one of them.

Every single one of them are identical to every single one of them so that business model that they have developed is in fact their franchise prototype. Once they roll that franchise prototype to store number two, they were going into the process I’m describing now which is the development of your business, and the business resides in the turnkey systems of lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment, but also with the turnkey management system.

Steve: Okay, can we talk about the turnkey management system a little bit; can you talk about exactly what that is in an example maybe in Infusion Soft company concept since we we’ve been talking about that company?

Michael: Absolutely, the turnkey management system is our ability to assure ourselves that every single one of our practices think chiropractor, think graphic designer, think whatever, whatever business you are in, every one of them is utilizing the system we’ve designed, built, launched and grown for the very purpose of replicating ourselves faithfully with great integrity everywhere we live.

The management system determines that in fact that is happening, so it’s the oversight that’s critical if the business is going to have integrity in the operational deliverable that effectively we’ve designed, built, launched, and grown, you get my point.

Steve: So does that imply then – is this all based on metrics that you set up for your company then?

Michael: Of course they are metrics that we set up for our company, but the metrics that we learn as we implement what I’ve
just described and it speaks to us, we’re quantifying it, how many of those, how many of those, what is the conversion from this to that and on and on and on and on. We begin to understand the metrics of our business and we manage to do it.

Steve: So the concept of your company for example, what were some of the metrics earlier that you used when you were going out and consulting other businesses?

Michael: All right very, very simple. We would call on a small business down the street, way back then at the very beginning we had what we called marketing associates who knocked on doors. They would walk into every small business, every business in our trading zone and effectively they had this script and they would invite them to a free seminar.

So we had to measure the number of calls that were made, the number of business owners that were talked to, the number of invitations that were delivered, the number of enrollments that were made, the number of people who showed up at the seminar and the number of people who showed up for the needs analysis that we would do following the seminar, the number of people who having done the needs analysis and on and on and on, you get my point?

Steve: Yes I do, so how do you know what metrics are good, like how do you determine what your goals are or what metrics you should expect to see?

Michael: You make it up at the beginning, you make it up. So as an example we’re rolling the new dreaming room out to 150 markets, and that means we will open our doors in 150 cities and deliver a new dreaming room in every one of those cities once each month. We know that that dreaming room we delivered to 50 participants, and so we’ve set the objective for 50 participants. We know that those participants will pay $3,000 to participate in that two and a half day experience, and we’re projecting that 30% of those participants will enroll in Beyond the E-myth program.

So we’ve set out some goals, let’s call them that and we’ll measure our performance against those, and as we begin to measure our performance against those, we’ll look at what constituted our performance, meaning there is a leader of a dreaming room. Did the leader use the dreaming room system they were trained to use and on and on and on and on?

All of these measures come to bear on our performance in every one of those markets nationally, internationally because we’ve tested them, validated them, and improved upon them every single step of the way through what we call continuous improvement.

Steve: You brought about a couple of interesting points there, but one thing that just was fascinating to me is you are releasing this dreaming room in 150 places, is that correct?

Michael: We will over the next two years.

Steve: So can we talk about your process, I mean do you have a huge organization that handles all these things, like what is your process for just even releasing it to 150 places, that sounds like a lot of places to roll out?

Michael: Yeah indeed it’s a lot of places, but it’s not 250 places or 1000 places, so in one respect it’s not a lot of places, but how do we do that? We do that by growing that and bootstrapping it.

Steve: What is your role in this process, you develop all the materials and then you train a bunch of people or do you train one person…

Michael: Don’t say your role because in fact it’s not my role. I’m doing the first four new dreaming rooms myself. We’re videotaping those, audio taping those, we’re scrutinizing those, and we’re scrutinizing the impact they have on the audience. We also have a lead generation, lead conversion system in place to attract people to come to those dreaming rooms, and we’re testing that and validating that every step of the way as well so we’re preparing to grow.

Steve: So this is the franchise prototype stage?

Michael: [inaudible 00:30:27] that’s what we’re doing; we do exactly what I’m suggesting everybody needs to do Steve.

Steve: Okay and in terms of your lead gen, I’m just curious about your own organization, this book is obviously part of that, but is it primarily through email, word of mouth, what are your primary lead gen mechanisms.

Michael: Our lead gen is everything that you could imagine we’ve done in doing what we’re doing right now, so this very podcast interview is part of our lead gen process. I told you I have done about 30 podcasts, now that’s me, I’m speaking to you and you sharing what I’ve spoken about to your folks and them sharing what they heard with their folks and on and on and on and on.

You do that 30 times, 40 times, 50 times, 1000 times and you begin to understand that what I’m doing is I’m telling the story, I’m the story teller, I’m telling the story. Steve you tell the story, when you do a blog you’re telling a story and when you do whatever you do, when you ask me questions you’re really moving it to a telling a story.

So effectively you started your company for the purpose of doing something that you can define as your something, and the way in which you do it you can define as your way of doing it, and I’m suggesting that’s the beginning of the prototyping process. But to the degree it doesn’t go beyond Steve, it’s not an enterprise, you follow?

Steve: Yes.

Michael: So the whole objective of this is not for Michael to do this work, the whole objective of this is to build an
enterprise that does this work and lives without me, that’s why we say every life a legacy.

Steve: But Michael needs to be very heavily involved in the beginning right to develop the franchise prototype?

Michael: Of course I’m the entrepreneur, Michael was very involved at the very beginning just like I get involved in the beginning of whatever I’ve done…

Steve: This is funny we’re talking about each other.

Michael: But not to build a company dependent upon Michael.

Steve: Right, so let’s say I haven’t done your franchise prototype which is your course and your dreaming room right now, how do you kind of scale from there going on?

Michael: It’s very, very simple. You do a second dreaming room, a third dreaming room, a fourth dreaming room, a fifth dreaming room. In short now I’m in San Diego, then I’m in Anaheim, then I’m in…

Steve: But it’s not you at this point?

Michael: No, no it’s not me, these are certified new dreaming room leaders, and these are people who have learned the script by actually studying the script. And the script is what; the script is me doing it.

Steve: So let me ask you this, you mention the word script, does that imply that these leaders are just going off of a set protocol, or is there room for creativity there?

Michael: There is no room for creativity. Just like there is no room for creativity at Macdonald’s or Starbucks etcetera, there is a business model and the business model says the barrister doesn’t change your name from barrister to waitress; she didn’t get to do that.

Steve: Right.
Michael: Very creative, choosing to wear some stupid outfit, you understand?

Steve: Yeah I understand that.

Michael: It’s absolutely clear, so understand that what we’re doing is creating a template, a turnkey template that we can then expand worldwide.

Steve: So let me ask you this question, I’m an engineer so these are some of the things I think about, so given that people are using a script and everything is a template, is it hard to attract people as part of your organization?

Michael: No it’s easy; oh it’s just blatant simple.

Steve: Okay and what is the process then, how do you convince someone who is really, really out there and wants to do their own thing to come work for you or is that just not the right people that…

Michael: Well you understand it’s a process and so everything is a process. The process is simply a system over time, so understand if I’m going to attract somebody to become a new dreaming room leader, then I’m going to determine what the demographics of that individual or those individuals are, and I’m going to then go out in the market where we are going to open our door to seek out our finalists and we’ll do that using a system. The first thing is this, the second thing is this, the third thing – you follow what I’m saying?

Steve: Yes.

Michael: And all of it is turnkey, so even the process by which we audition these individuals is turnkey, everything is turnkey. Everything is developed, refined, designed to work in a very specific way so that we can be assured that when we get a leader in Cincinnati, that leader measures up to the kind of person we’re looking for and the absolute clear result we’re intending to produce.

So a dreaming room in Cincinnati is the same as a dreaming room in Cleveland is the same as a dreaming room in San Mateo, is the same as a dreaming room in Santa Rosa etcetera. It is, it is, it is, and it is because it’s organized in that way to produce a very specific result we’re looking for.

Steve: Okay so literally…

Michael: Practically so and that is we’re continually working on the new dreaming room even while we’re delivering it, and so there is the system for improvement, for continuous improvement as well and every leader will participate in that. So everybody is getting a chance to work in a harmonious way to continually improve upon what they do to improve upon the results they produce.

Steve: Okay so you have a feedback mechanism in place essentially, right? All of your satellite dreaming rooms you probably get together and you share feedback and then improve and enroll these…

Michael: You’ve got to, you’ve got to, you can’t grow without this, you understand the…

Steve: Yeah totally it makes sense.

Michael: That’s when I say the franchise, the franchise, the franchise, you can’t grow without this. I could send anybody to any dreaming room anywhere and they would have the same experience or be it the same experience given the difference they bring to the room, you follow me?

Steve: No I do follow you, I’m just trying to think of this model in terms of like a software company for example because they aren’t like separate franchises so speak, right? So when you’re talking on the concept of like in Infusion Soft it’s a little bit different because there is only one central area. I guess the way the software is delivered is like a franchise, right?

Michael: No it’s really not different and we would have to get really, really, really specific for you to take that in. It’s absolutely clearly transferable to any kind of company on the planet, and we have done this with every kind of company on the planet and absolutely faithfully, rigorously stood on the platform that I’m sharing with you here, and as we do that you begin to see that it applies everywhere, it’s a universal system.

Steve: Let’s talk about your book for a little bit; this book is targeted to people who are solopreneurs essentially, right?

Michael: Well they don’t have to be, we’re taking that as the worst…

Steve: Worst case scenario.

Michael: Worst case scenario, they call themselves solopreneurs, I immediately diffuse that word by essentially saying it’s contradiction in terms, entrepreneurs are not solo, period. No entrepreneur ever succeeded as a solo anything, so effectively if a guy calls himself a solopreneurs he bought a pitch, and that’s an info marketing pitch. It’s effectively saying creating a lifestyle mentality about being there on your own all alone doing what you do and how splendid you are, and I’m saying bullshit.

Steve: Sorry, this is what I want to ask you Michael, so along those lines how do you coach people to think bigger. Some people just want to create a business that allows them a lifestyle so to speak.

Michael: I got it Steve, I got it and it’s a great question, it really is a great question and the reality is I can’t get them to want more than they’ve got, but I can inspire them to see the limitation of what they presume they want by expanding their availability to something they never thought they wanted, and in the process of doing that something can happen.

And so that something can happen frankly it’s exactly what happened in Infusion Soft, the guys told me they really didn’t want to grow any bigger than they were, understand didn’t really want to grow any bigger than they were, they had no idea whatsoever that they were going to grow to become 100 million and then a billion dollar company when I first met them.

Steve: How did you convince them?

Michael: I’m sorry I didn’t convince them at all; suddenly they woke up to the possibility. It’s waking up to the possibility that’s extraordinary. Have you heard of Landmark?

Steve: No I have not.

Michael: Have you heard of EST [ph]?

Steve: No I have not.

Michael: Okay, so Steve I’m going to sit here as you’re on your way, look up Landmark, they are right there where you are, they are in fact worldwide. Have you heard of [inaudible 00:41:49]?

Steve: I have not; maybe I should make a list of these things.

Michael: Hey Steve man I’m telling you, yeah this is big stuff. Well if you heard of Landmark and you go to the forum, the
forum is an event all about possibility and you walk out of that with completely new framework. You begin to understand that all the “choices” we make are really choices to live in our comfort zone, and I’m saying to live in our comfort zone is in fact the worst thing any of us can do because it prevents us from seeing what’s possible.

So when I look at Steve and I don’t even know you Steve and I don’t have your picture in front of me, but when I look at
Steve I’m saying Steve is somebody he has never even met before. As successful as you are and the possibility of that is a mine blower Steve, that’s what the dreaming room is all about.

Steve: Okay, I have to check out these resources then, are they similar to the dreaming room then or no?

Michael: I’m sorry.

Steve: The resources that you just asked me about, are they similar to the dreaming room?

Michael: No.

Steve: No.

Michael: They are personal growth.

Steve: So Michael we’re coming on 40 minutes here, I want to be respectful of your time. Can you lay out like a roadmap for someone who wants to get more involved in e-myth and your coaching, where should they start?

Michael: Absolutely positively, all they need to do is to go to www.beyondemyth.com and they will be connected, they will be able to get the book; they will be able to read the book. In fact we have a special I think going on right now, what’s that, automated book.

Steve: I’m sorry.

Michael: What’s that automated book you can buy it for $1.99.

Steve: Oh on Amazon you mean the eBook.

Michael: Yeah you get it for $1.99, just do it.

Steve: Okay well that’s a steal you guys.

Michael: Yeah I mean that’s a steal, just freaking do it, and then the minute you do that you’ll understand this much, much better and will begin to pause a question for you, what is the possibility awaiting you, and how do you proceed to pursue it, and many people don’t want to do that, then just forget it since it’s not something we talk about.

Steve: Okay, by the way the book is a pretty quick read and it goes by really quick, so I highly recommend everyone go and check it out.

Michael: Thanks Steve, you enjoyed it?

Steve: Yeah I did, I did, I read on the plane in fact.

Michael: Oh wonderful, give my best to your wife and stay in touch with us. Check out Landmark if only to speak to the whole idea of extreme possibilities, and you discover that in fact you’re going to want to bring stuff like that to everyone you work with and wrench him out of their comfort zone to see the possibilities that are just waiting there unattended to for everybody.

Steve: It sounds good Michael. Thanks a lot for coming on the show, really appreciate your time.
Michael: My delight Steve, thanks, bye, bye.

Steve: All right take care.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. I’ve actually been a huge fan of E-myth Revisited ever since is started my ecommerce store and it was an honor to finally meet and chat with Michael Gerber one on one. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode146.

And just a reminder that tickets to the 2017 Sellers Summit are now on sale at sellersummit.com, the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets ecommerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. The event will be small and intimate, and I promise you that the speakers will focus on actionable strategies to improve your ecommerce business and not high level BS. So head on over to sellerssummit.com, and check it out.

And once again if you are interested in starting your own online business, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com, and sign up for my free six day mini course on how to start a profitable online store. Sign up right there on the front page, and I’ll send you the course via email immediately. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.