Move Beyond Being the Technician
One of the books that has had the biggest impact on me has been The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber [affiliate link]. I read this book when I was already starting to build out systems for my Amazon FBA business, and the book confirmed that I was on the right path. In addition to that, it really clarified why it is that so many small businesses and new ventures fail. It all has to do with people holding on to the role of the technician.
What is a technician?
In The book, Gerber talks about there being three main roles that a business owner plays:
- The Entrepreneur — The one responsible for the vision, asking the “what if” kind of questions. The creative drive behind the company.
- The Manager — The pragmatic one. Responsible for keeping things in order and being a check against the entrepreneur’s chaotic nature.
- The Technician — The one who actually does the work to bring the Entrepreneur’s vision to life.
A successful business owner balances all 3. But most people just starting out, especially those leveraging their skills from a previous employment position, lean too heavily on the technician role. This is usually because their passion is what led to them having skill in that area, and they started the business to build on this passion. Nothing wrong with that!
The problem lies in the fact that the heart of a business is not in the doing, it is in the growing of the business. As business ramps up, the technician finds himself getting busier and busier until he is overwhelmed by the role, and eventually starts to hate the thing he was most passionate about in the first place.
How to avoid this?
The secret, then, lies in systems. This is where the entrepreneur and manager roles step in and figure out how to have the business run itself. The ideal business operates as a franchise. The long term goal is to sell a business, so you want someone new to be able to step in and have everything in place for them to be successful. If the whole business relies on your blood sweat and tears, then you are not able to step away, and the business has little value in the eyes of a buyer or new investor.
It can be hard to step away from doing what you love, especially when you know that others can’t do it as well as you. This, again, is why systems are so important. As you do the work, document the processes. Figure out where areas of unclarity exist, and clarify these. Make every step in the process repeatable and scalable.
This is what I’ve tried to do as I’ve been working on my Amazon FBA business. Every time I do something, I document it in Process.st. I try to be very detailed in the steps, thinking of what an entry level VA might be able to do by just following the checklist. This is step 1.
Step 2 is where the real magic happens. I try to think about why a human is needed at all in these processes. A lot of the time you can go one step further by making the processes not only repeatable, but automated. Imagine a process that, each time it is finished, a new process needs to be started. This is where Zapier comes in. Zapier allows you to integrate multiple apps, in a user-friendly UI, with no technical knowledge needed (although, what you can do skyrockets when you take advantage of writing custom Zapier scripts!). Tie into your project management software or CRM. Trigger new Process.st checklists. Create new rows in your database. You name it! This is where you can truly start adding value to your business by eliminating the need to spend you personal time, or the cost to hire a VA or employee.
Here, I must give a quick shoutout to @Roguewealth, who turned me on to these tools.
In the end, the specific tools you choose don’t matter. What does, is that you are thinking in terms of creating systems to grow your business, as opposed to thinking like a technician about the work that you are doing inside the business. In other words, work on the business, not in it. If you have not read Gerber’s book, please do yourself a favor and get a copy of it. This is a game changer.
What about the rain makers?
I was recently listening to Russel Brunson’s Marketing Secrets podcast and I caught an episode he titled “How to Make it Rain.” In it, he mentioned the technician from Gerber’s book, but he added his own spin — what he called the Rain makers. Rain makers are the people who bring in the business. These are the sales people and marketers. In this episode, he is contrasting the limits of what one can earn as a technician to what one can earn as a rain maker.
Russel describes the rain makers as people who can position themselves as having no cap to their income, due to the fact that there is no end to the amount of business a good rain maker can bring, and counsels those that are trying to grow themselves as a business to excel at making it rain. This is good advice, and I think it applies just as much to the entrepreneur. To truly be successful, you need to be passionate, not only about what it is your business does (the product), but about growing your business (sales & marketing). You need to start to love the process of marketing and selling your product.
If you are not passionate about growing your business, you will have a hard time being successful as an entrepreneur, because you will constantly be wanting to go back to the technician role. Technicians can be highly successful on their own, but they have to either be in a highly sought after field (think doctors, lawyers) or be one of the top at their craft. If you truly want to be an entrepreneur, you must think of your business as your product.
