I just finished “E-myth Revisited”, after reading “awaking the entrepeneur within”.  Awaking the entrepeneur within was written after E-myth, and when I began reading it, I wondered if it made a difference that I was reading it first.  Well, it did.  In Awaking, Gerber goes through steps that an entrepreneur would follow to realize his dream of building his business.   I couldn’t believe that Mr. Gerber even considered charging people $5000 to take a seminar that would help them realize their dream, as he mentions in his book he would charge for this service.  I couldnt’ believe that people would actually pay that amount of money, instead of doing the work themselves with the help of the very book I held in my hands.  As I was getting inspired, after a while I was getting bored.  This book was describing a business that seemed to have nothing to do with me.  I wanted to be small.  I expected to stay small.  I had no intention of building my business idea into something that would change the world.  I just wanted to work at something that I could control and possibly stay at home doing.   It wasn’t until I read E-Myth Revisited that I discovered that I was setting myself up to fail.  I was just the “technician” that Mr. Gerber was describing.  And as he described the story of “Sara”, I immediately saw my father and his business.  I saw how Sara’s mistakes in her business were the same ones my father made.  My father had a very successful business, and somehow, it slowly died.  I thought that I knew why it died, and that his story was singular.  But reading Mr. Gerber’s explanation of what stages a small business goes through made me see that my father ended up being another statistic.  His story was not the exception.  In some ways, I wish I could have known then what I am learning now, and perhaps helped him somehow.  But at least I can now help myself and try to keep my future small business from also being another statistic.  It’s hard work.  As Gerber explains, the technician must change.  I must change.  And it’s hard.  It’s like telling a fat person to think skinny.  It’s trying to deprogram your whole sense of self and reprogramming something foreign and unpredictable and unsure.  It’s not the best feeling, but it’s necessary to succeed.  A relative who read my blog said that all my new interest in business is just a phase that I’m going through and I will get over it.  I believed her.  It must have been, since it’s so not me.  But if I ever want to have a small business, I cannot get over this phase.  I need to invite the change.  I need to review the philosophy over and over and keep reading and learning until I’ve imprinted it into my being.  Writing about it helps keep me going too.  To anyone out there reading this, thanks for just being there.