Reddit reviews The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
We found 11 Reddit comments about The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Not sure if you have already but you should take a quick read as The E-Myth Revisited basically talks about your exact situation.
If you're only going to read two, I'd recommended: E-Myth and Positioning.
The first will teach you how to think about, structure, and systemize a business.
The second will teach you how to create products / services that customers actually WANT and how to market to them. It captures very succinctly everything I learned about developing products and brands at P&G.
Credentials: I've worked in the consumer product industry for 10+ years and have started multiple businesses of my own.
Is this the book you're talking about? It sounds like a good one.
read "The E-Myth revisisted" by Michael Gerber https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About-ebook/dp/B000RO9VJK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536329620&sr=8-1&keywords=the+e-myth+revisited
It is a short book that talks about why small business fail and how to not fail and not burn out. Essential reading for anyone looking to start a business, especially a retail/service business.
Don't spend money up front that you don't have. It's better to start small and expand than to start big and be stuck with a lease you can't cover.
Please, please, please do yourself a solid and read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. It has nothing to do with e-commerce but rather what happens when ambitious individuals start their own business and the pitfalls they encounter as the business grows and has to hire people and do boring business stuff that founders generally don't like. Seriously, it's super useful.
Even if you don't agree with the main thesis of standardizing and automating your business, having a road map of the challenging mental space that you will navigate as a founder will be very useful.
Don't make me buy it for you ;)
Well, it just so happens that I have a list prepared to tweet out—figured I'd share here as well :)
How to Win Friends & influence People
Never Eat Alone
The E-Myth Revisited
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
Tribes
Linchpin
A Whole New Mind
The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing
The millionaire Next Door
Cashflow Quadrant
Why We Want you to be Rich
Drive
Rework
The 4 Hour Work Week
Entreleadership
Thou Shalt Prosper
Driven
How to Get Ideas
The Go-Giver
Come over to r/smallbusiness, and definitely read The E-Myth Revisited.
Work on your branding and messaging first, target a specific audience and make sure that you are somehow different before you go investing a ton of time into marketing something that is bound to be doomed.
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I recommend you read the books The 22 laws of marketing, Magnetic Marketing, and the e-myth by michael gerber.
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Yes those are links to amazon, if you don't want to buy it on amazon just go to the dollar store. Get the books and learn marketing. It will help you avoid the guru speak and start building a real business.
I always recommend the E-Myth Revisited. I think its critical to the proper mindset of being a business owner, but that's just me.
Sorry for the long post. Take it for what it's worth, this is just one person's experience 15 years in:
$50-$70k is certainly possible if you know what you're doing.
However, if you're going to freelance, you're going to be up against those bargain-basement Fiverr guys until you can grow your skill set and command a premium.
Honestly, I don't see "website development" as a growing field. The low end is a race to the bottom. You're never going to make real money chasing local businesses such as pizza shops, hair salons, etc...
The Mom & Pop's and Small Businesses can't pay, so they DIY with WIX or WordPress, or go to Fiverr or Freelancer.com. The ones that actually seek out a developer are not worth your time or your effort, and they want everything for nothing.
Mid-size business don't want to pay because they think they should be able to get everything at Fiverr/Freelancer prices.
They want to know why you want $10k to do what someone else offered to do for $1k. It's a bitch (and often a complete waste of time) to educate them on why they're paying more and what it means for their bottom line.
When the above people eventually have trouble, well, that's been my bread and butter for the past 3 years. I get a lot of word of mouth work as a "fixer" of sorts. The rest of my income has been internal web application development for smaller companies (things like client portals, data collection, inventory, etc...), but those jobs are a bit more rare.
My favorite example (which is a little worse than my typical client): "My developer no longer has time to maintain my site, and things are broken everywhere. My SEO has tanked and I'm losing more money in sales every month.
This site had 76 active WordPress plugins (and some were most definitely duplicate functionality) on top of a do-it-all theme AND Visual Composer (yes both). This site was assembled by an "agency".
So, yeah, this is what you're up against. Ruthless, sometimes unscrupulous people who will tell the client everything they think the client wants to hear, and then desert the client when things eventually fall apart.
This isn't a rare thing. Like I said, it's been my bread and butter for a while now and I hear the same stories from colleagues.
Anyway: to give you an idea where I'm at: I have 15 years experience in web development and graphic design. I have a design education through High School and Vocational School. I also have an MCSA (which provides me with a ton of relevant knowledge).
I have enough experience and education to provide meaningful data and solutions with clear explanations. I don't make a move without a reason, and it shows in my proposals.
That's freelance Web Development in 2019.
My advice: If you find that your passions can lie in one of the paths at the following link, become a rockstar on that path.
This link provides a great overview of what is required to become a developer in 2019: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap
Start off working for an agency and get some real-world experience, learn as much as you can about things that are peripheral to your chosen path where you can (because the more you know about how your role fits with other roles, the better).
Resist the desire to become a full-stack developer until you have many years under your belt, and the room in your educational bandwidth to take on more learning about things not directly related to your chosen path.
Once you've gotten some real-world experience, then start considering a career freelancing. Keep in mind that freelancing is more than developing and designing.
A lot of your time will be devoted to sales, marketing and accounting, so you'll need to become at least adept at those fields as well.
A couple of great resources for those thinking about freelancing:
The E-Myth Revisited. This should be essential reading for anyone looking to strike out on their own.
Mike Montiero's, Fuck You Pay Me. Should be mandatory watching.
Lots of valuable information at The Futur YouTube channel.
Personally, my plan at this point is to get out of "doing" entirely and move into consulting for larger businesses and startups with money to burn.
There's too much to keep up with. The technology moves so fast that it's impossible to learn everything and keep up with the intricacies of the latest frameworks, techniques, standards, etc... .
The plan/build process consumes too much time and has become too specialized for one person to handle effectively (if they're really trying to turn out quality results and not just slapping sites together).
My plan is to become the planner and let other people do the work.
I’ve found [the ebook on Amazon](The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RO9VJK/) for those who would be also interested.
Thanks for your recommendation!