Customer Reviews

The Most Successful Small Business in the World: The Ten Principles

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Practitioners of small businesses - this book is poison for you. You know that starting, financing, and operating a small business successfully is a contact sport, not a dreamy attempt to change the world.

My partner and I run a restaurant, which is a labor-intensive business with high costs for fresh organic ingredients, and it takes meticulous planning to make a profit. Before this, we had an export-import business for seven years. It failed because we had big ideas and high hopes, but lacked the short-term financial discipline and long-term planning. It's fine to dream big and fantasize; but for that you don't need a book. And don't do it during business hours.

I heard about this book in a workshop given by a SCORE counselor. A woman, who also attended the workshop, raved about it and tried to summarize the main ideas in the book. She was not able to tell us why reading this book would help, other than that it inspired her to come to the workshop and start her own business and make it big and become rich. The SCORE instructor did not know this book and suggested that we read the E-Myth Revisited book instead. Although it's old and a little conceited by claiming to solve all small business problems, it's still worth reading (I agree).

Last Sunday I went to a bookstore and spent time with this book. A lot of the content is trivial, there's some spiritual nonsense and pipe dreams, and overall, for me as a practical woman, the book irresponsibly raises exorbitant hopes for exorbitant successes, which will make the fall down to earth ever more painful.

Another thing put me off (I was originally a Lit major): The book is written in an abominable style. It's not an effort to explain difficult concepts in a simple way; it's a clumsy way to make something difficult (e.g., running a restaurant) sound trivial. Mr. Gerber repeats his assault on English on his ridiculously arrogant about-us web page, where he says that "He love beauty impeccability!"

Bad things, it seems, also come in threes. After the goofy "Awakening the Entrepreneur Within" and the bizarre "E-Myth Enterprise" comes this newest calamity, modestly entitled "The Most Successful Business in the World: The Ten Principles." If you detect an allusion to Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments to his dumb people, who were dancing around a golden calf - well, then you guessed right: Gerber has made the chrysalis from business coach to white-clad guru and now to a false Messiah, who thinks that rational people with reasonable doubts towards know-it-alls are stupid.

His messianic conceit becomes clearest in the mini-chapter "An Invitation from the Author," pp. 153-154, where he claims "The miracles are happening every day. I see them. I participate in them. I stand witness to them." And then, in an embarrassing mumbo jumbo that Gerber calls a "poem I wrote some years ago: When you woke up this morning, all was before you. The sun, the moon, the stars (...) so that you could emerge from your sleep to engage, to play your part, to begin to dance, the holy promise, the whirling, the song, the breath." For Pete's sake, does he think he's God? Yes, he is: a God of Mammon and Genius of Sales. For here he is "inviting" you to become a member of his club and register for a Dreaming Room experience that'll costs the paltry sum of $5,000 (five thousand!) for 2 ½ days. Just before that, on page 148 in an "Epilogue Concerning Success," he is buttering you up by calling you "an amazing individual" and "excited beyond belief," yet also "fearful" and "confused." But do not despair: "Here we are (...) The Ten Principles will guide you. (...) When you are in doubt, the Ten Principles will remind you that there is no need to doubt." Then one of his trademark mixed metaphors: "Put your mind and heart to the wheel of your imagination." And in case you hadn't noticed, with many repetitions, because you may still not get it (are you stupid?): "This is not a theoretical conversation. No, it's not theoretical at all. This is not a classroom. This is not a school. This is not for your entertainment" (where did that come from?) "This is for you and your world. Our world." Coy reference to Genesis?

The next section has the ominous title "When We Begin Something, We Begin It." Oh my: Now there's talk about "the sweet song", "the soul that breathes fire in you," "to feel the kiss of imagination within you," at the end puckering up a saccharine "With love." And suddenly, substituting edge for end: "Have we gone off the deep edge?" Answering himself, with customary repetitions, in case you didn't get it the first time: "Oh, yes. Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt, we have taken a leap into a world, where business does not speak. In which business doesn't have a word."

And yet, he spews them out, words. Lucky for us, this book is mercifully short. You pay about a dime per page, or about a dollar fifty per principle. With these principles (examples follow below), Gerber has left his contrarian stance from his one-book wonder "The E-Myth Revisited" far behind (namely that most businesses fail because their owners are mere technicians, not true entrepreneurs, thus falling prey to a temporary illness call "entrepreneurial seizure"). Now, as we have seen above, he preaches about heart and soul and meaning and the kiss of imagination. You wouldn't expect that when you see his first principle: A business is worthwhile only if you have plans to grow it 10,000 times (yes, ten thousand) its current size. This seems to be the extension of his former obsession with franchises and his admiration for the multiplication of cheap hamburgers, his paradigm for telephone coaching. Since you, dear reader, are not used to abstract thoughts ("This is not a theoretical conversation."), Gerber, who has used poor baker "Sarah" and hapless "Manny Espinosa" and "John Anderson" and "Merle" as proxies for his "thoughts", now shoves in front of us a dull mechanic named "Joseph" to make his point. Try to understand from the chapter why such "10,000 times" megalomania is absolutely necessary for a business to have meaning - well, it's not easy, and it's pure nonsense. Alas, he complaints, "Most businesses, no matter their age, stay adamantly small." (Adamantly!)

The Second Principle stresses that "A Small Business Is No More Effective Than the Idea upon Which It Is Built." The Third Principle stresses Systems, which is old hat (and not wrong), and so it goes on, in an English that is either childish of the Dick-and-Jane style or bloated, with quotes from Paul Coelho, Charles Bukowski, Einstein (of course!), Nietzsche, the New Oxford American Dictionary, and on and on. Principle 10 is especially succinct and beautifully put: "A Small Business Creates a Standard Against Which All Small Businesses Are Measured as Either Successful, or Not, to Upgrade the Possibility for All Small Businesses to Thrive Beyond the Standards That Formerly Existed, Whether Stated or Not." Where was the editor when s/he was needed most?

When I first received the book, I thought of leaving it alone, because it is again just like a shameless marketing pamphlet applauded by the usual sycophantic suspects who also make their thirty or more pieces of silver by pandering to a gullible audience. But then you read about the promises and announcements of great resources and business tools allegedly available on his website, a variety of "Michael Gerber Companies" and "Ventures" complementing this book, and you find - NOTHING but registration forms for the Dreaming seminar, where, as participants have described it, Gerber either pontificates or humiliates people and ridicules their efforts. Now you feel like warning the reader. His newest ploy: He, as a one-man business department, will confer the fictitious degree of "Master of Business Design" on you, but not for the love of you, but for the modest fee of - $245,000! As Gerber himself says: "Have we gone off the deep edge? Oh, yes. Oh, without a doubt." Adamantly.

In the Brief Introduction, p. xxii, the author promises: "In this book I intend to teach you exactly how to conceive and then build the Most Successful Small Business in the World." Nothing of the sort will happen.

The next 150 pages are a rambling monologue (masquerading as a pretentious dialog with "you, dear reader") of an elderly befuddled man. There are fleeting references to his heroes Ray Kroc and Sam Walton (and yes, once also to Mother Theresa), but the gist is this:

1. Your business must have a higher meaning and purpose and be "in the service of God" (Principles 6, 7, 8);

2. You should go to Michael Gerber's website and pay him money, for instance $5,000 for a short 2 ½ day "dreaming room" experience that'll wake you up.

Gerber's awkward ruminations about God are so pitiful and naïve that they'll make any first-semester student's musing about God over beer with his football buddies sound like the dissertation of a trained theologian. And Gerber's diatribe against "the greed of our current administration in Washington, D.C." (p. 138), which "put us - in fewer than 200 days - into $10 trillion of debt" (p. 127), plus his call for "divine passion", makes him the best business coach in the world for the Tea-Partiers.

By publishing this absurd manifesto of a rich and thoroughly confused man, who wants to stir God into your business plan while promoting a brazen hucksterism for the Michael E. Gerber Club, Wiley Publishing (motto: "Knowledge for Generations") has done the entrepreneur no favor. This is easily the worst small business book in the world.

I don't normally comment in these venues, but was taken aback by the nasty attacks on Michael Gerber. It wasn't even about the book, but about the person. (Makes the attacker look very small, but that's his problem.) I read the book and found it inspiring. Plain and simple. If you are offended by the mention of God, don't read this book then, because Gerber is inspired. Yes, by God. Imagine that! You won't find it over-done in the least, but there are some who actually bristle at the very mention of the Divine, and get very distracted from the main message. And the main message is actually in the title of the book. I always say that if you take away one thing, from a book or seminar, that will improve your life, it was well worth it. Twas a bargain to gain new insights from Michael Gerber for under 20 bucks. One example of what I walked away with was reading very specific guidelines for finding a market and creating a successful business that can sustain the nightmarish economic responses to the acts of our wayward politicians. (My political view, not his.) Go for it!!!

Let me start off by saying that I am a great "E-Myth" fan and was really able to benefit a lot from that book and Michael's teachings.

But what happened here???

Unfortunately, I will have to agree with other "1-star" reviewers that this book is way below-par. There is a lot of philosophical rambling that really doesn't make much sense. I mean in this day and age, which small business owner wants to find answer to the question "Do we need a Government?" and how does that help his/her small business?

I really hope that Michael comes out with better books in future. I will still give him another chance since his advice in E-Myth really helped me a lot but this book should come with a refund coupon in it.

I'll start by saying that I really liked the e-myth and that I was expecting something along the lines of a presentation of pragmatic business practices and ways to think about business (ten principles). Had I merely been disappointed by the fact that this new work was not what I expected, I could have still given a positive review IF there had been something useful for business in this book.
The book started out ho-hum and by about four or five chapters in, I was thinking that it was just basically a refresher of the same ideas he had already presented (Sarah the pie maker becomes Joseph the auto mechanic) with a little ranting about the financial crisis, A LOT of advertising of himself and his services, and what seemed to be just basic information on how to prepare a business plan. Ok, not great stuff, but not awful either.
Then comes a rapid descent into a ridiculous philosophical, theological, political gibberish that's just his own opinion, although he states multiple times that what he says he KNOWS to be true. Don't ask HOW he knows, just know that he KNOWS. Then he finally says that he knows it to be true because he's experienced it himself - as if that fact alone makes it true for everyone. His hubris is obvious and annoying at many points in the book, not least of which where, at one of the beginning-of-the-chapter quotations, he actually quotes HIMSELF.
Then towards the end of the book you get to the REAL point he wants to make, which is a strictly POLITICAL point.
I read the book "The Knack" by Norm Brodsky, which I thought was even better than The e-myth. One of the best points I got from that book was not to let your lawyer (or accountant) give you business advice because you're paying him or her to give you legal advice because he/she has legal expertise. You have other people to give you business advise because those people have business expertise. In this book Michael Gerber is like a business expert that thinks he is qualified and sought after to provide philosophical, theological and political advice because he has had success providing sound business advice. If you read this book, just be warned that you won't get any further insight into business than the e-myth provided. The object of this entire book is to make a POLITICAL point.

Very average book i wish i hadn't wasted my time with. Most of it is pointless drivel and what few good points that are made are mostly common sense. Lacks any real substance but rather preaches that anyone can create a brilliant, successful business just by wanting to and changing their mindset - without any practical explanation or evidence about how to do it. Very disappointing given the good things id header about Gerber.

There are few errors in critical thinking more insidious than the ad hominen fallacy, of which Dr. Toad's review is a poignantly clear and overly verbose example. Ad hominen arguments attack an individual personally, not the individual's ideas. Dr. Toad's review begins and ends there--warning us of the supposed mosaic, or messianic, or commercial, intent of Michael Gerber. Those who value honest reviews will note--when clicking on Dr. Toad's moniker--that the only others he has listed on Amazon are of Gerber's books. So beware croaking toads, they are usually found in ponds polluted with their own muck.

Gerber's newest book, on the other hand, offers some pleasingly inspiring, yet succinct and easily read, advice on how to think about the entrepreneurial enterprise. Gerber did not invent the "ten principles" format, nor is he the first to use it--think of the "top 10" lists which at the end of each year occupy the minds of most trend watchers. The principles Gerber elaborates are well worth considering for anyone contemplating the entrepreneurial leap: anti-myopic thinking, system thinking, sustainability, employee training, the role of an enterprise's vision and visionary, social responsibility, abandoning the mercenary ethic, etc.

Nor is the use of poetry or aphoristic language reason for finding fault--the greatest thinkers and writers of the past 3 millennia have often used the same device to communicate difficult to grasp concepts at a more visceral level of understanding. Beyond being a useful literary device, anyone who has ever struggled with the birth and nurture of an entrepreneurial enterprise knows the importance of an inspiring and validating voice to drown out the all-too-common croaking of naysayers.

No doubt readers of Gerber's previous books will find some repetition. So what? Repetition is a cornerstone of building the complex cognitive schema necessary for launching and managing entrepreneurial ventures.

If you are looking for an easy and inspiring, yet provocative, read, about the entrepreneurial enterprise, try Gerber's newest book. If, on the other hand, you prefer to criticize that which you cannot even dream of, let alone achieve, take a seat on a Lilly pad next to Dr. Toad's.

Michael Gerber has clearly been reading too many spiritual and new-age books in his spare time of late and absorbed ideas from them that he has transplanted into a book supposedly about creating an economically successful small business. It is apparant that he has had some form of 'inner awakening' or shift in his view of the world. He is 73, and has clearly seen through the shallow joys of materialism and now is asking himself - and readers - the big questions.

"What is the meaning of work?"
"Can a business have meaning?"
"Does life have meaning?"
"Can a human being mean something?" p. 74


I see what he is trying to do - get people to create business from their 'Divine Self' rather than their 'Animal Nature' but c'mon. To me spiritual realization and viable business creation are almost mutually exclusive things. When 99.9% of the world cannot even relate to the concept of spiritual realization I think he is alienating a lot of readers. Even as someone who has read a lot of new age books, I couldn't believe how much he overlooked his real target market, what they wanted and what would solve their problems. A book that opens up a can of worms on existential and philosophical dilemmas is probably not what they were looking for.

Mr. Toad seems to have missed the point of Gerber's new book. Rather than FIRST trying to see the topic of the book from the author's point of view, Mr. Toad obviously had his mind made up before he read Gerber's first words! How can a book reviewer claim any kind of professional stature if he can't even get what the author was saying in the first place?

I read the E-Myth when it first came out years ago. Since then, I've read five of his books, and I just finished reading this new one. I come away from this new book with a deep appreciation for how much courage this man has to reveal his own convictions about how deeply in trouble our country is, and how desperately other countries need to see a renewal of the American business mindset.

Mr. Gerber is trying to get Americans BACK to the vision of Free Enterprise that our Founding Fathers gifted to us. Those founders clearly had a profound faith in God. And so does Mr. Gerber. So what? Doesn't Mr. Toad believe in any higher power than himself? I'm afraid that jumping on his toadstool is only about as high a viewpoint Mr. Toad has of the absolutely necessary subject Mr. Gerber is dealing with in his book.

As to Mr. Gerber's style, I must say that his most recent books are not as "textbookish" as his earlier ones. His newer books have more flair, more personality, more self-revelation. But isn't that what we want of a massively successful business leader after 30 some-odd years? Of course! Over 70,000 people who have been personally helped by Mr. Gerber can't call be wrong.

We WANT to know what makes him tick. We WANT to know how he sees the world, life, God, the angels, the planets, the stars. Mr. Toad is clearly out of touch with where people are moving to nowdays in their thinking. A recent survey showed that the majority of people today reject the old, outdated model of making as much money as possible, getting the big, beautiful home, the fancy car, and doing all of that with no thought of ethics, morality, the environment and the animals.

MOST people today crave some form of spirituality, and Mr. Gerber is NOT the only one who is writing about spirituality and business. Many are beginning to do so. He is just ahead of his time. Anyone who reads this book with an open mind will come away with several clear questions: "What am I doing to make my business be of better service to my customers?" "Am I really able to integrate what I believe in my faith with how I am conducting my business?" "Am I really serious about making my business become a true service to help others reach their goals in life?" "Am I really using my business to make this world a better place for everyone else?

You see? Mr. Gerber is forcing us to take a deeper look at our motives, our assumptions, our bigotries, our prejudices, our weaknesses. Anyone who doesn't like what this book says, might simply be afraid that it will reveal their own prejudices.

Anyone who really wants to build a truly successful business in the New World dawning upon us will see this new book as a welcome introduction to a thrilling endeavor in being part of a growing worldwide movement to promote Free Enterprise in as many ways as we can.