Michael Gerber: Business Failure

Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited; Why most Small Business Don't Work and What to Do About It(New York: Harper Collins, 1995),pp. 2-3, argues that

Small businesses in the United States do not work; the people in them do...

What we have also discovered is that the people who own small businesses in this country work far more than they should for the return they're getting.

Indeed, the problem is not that the owners of small businesses in this country don't work; the problem is that they're doing the wrong work.

As a result, most of their businesses end up in chaos--unmanageable, unpredictable, and unrewarding.

Just look at the numbers.

Businesses start and fail in the United States at an increasingly staggering rate. Every year, over a million people in this country start a business of some sort. Statistics tell us that by the end of the first year at least 40 percent of them will be out of business.

Within five years, more than 80 percent of them--800,000--will have failed.

Gerber follows this up with what he calls four big ideas. I'll put those out there in the next four days and discuss them a little bit.

Are you interested in this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com