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Michael Gerber Interview

Scott: Good evening, everyone. This is Scott Letourneau, CEO of Nevada Corporate Planners.

We have a very special call for this evening, as part of our Top 5% Club.

For those who are new to that term or aren’t familiar with that, our Top 5% Club is a membership designed to help you master two skills to become financially successful.

Skill number one, to accumulate profits in the shortest period of time possible in your business, and skill number two, how to protect it. In today’s environment, if you don’t protect it, somebody probably wants to take it from you; also, as the Top 5% relates to the statistic that 80% to 95% of businesses fail within the first five years.

So, our goal is to help you become part of the top 5% that are still in business and prosperous and succeeding, and doing that for you.

Tonight, you’re going to get a lot of inside strategies and what you can do, a special event you’ll be able to partake in, in the near future, that will shoot your business to a level you never dreamed of.

You do have the ability, if you’re listening to us on the webcast tonight, to send in a question. I’ve gotten several already. If we have time for any at the end of this call, I will address a few of those questions to our special guest.

What I’d like to do is go ahead and welcome our very special guest this evening.

Every revolution has a leader to awaken the spirit, the champion, the cause, to lead the charge. Business visionary and entrepreneur, best-selling author and founder of E-Myth Worldwide, Michael Gerber has been leading a small business revolution before anyone knew there was one. He called it the E-Myth Revolution.

Over the past three decades, he’s touched millions of small business owners throughout the world with his brilliant insight and original E-Myth message, including our company, NCP.

Michael Gerber’s effort, his message, his very life’s work has been to empower business owners to gain more freedom, more money, more time, and perhaps most importantly more life.

And now in his new book, he’s leading a new charge to Awakening The Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies.

I’d like to welcome our special guest this evening, Michael Gerber. Michael, welcome.

Michael: Thank you, Scott. Delighted to be here.


Scott: It’s a pleasure to have you. Michael, I know I have lots of questions for you tonight, to help out our entrepreneurs on the phone. But let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell our listeners how it all started with The E-Myth?

Michael: Well, it started as all things are perceived to start, by accident. First I was doing something, then I was doing something else. And a friend of mine asked me to come visit a client of his. My friend’s ad agency had created successful ads, creating successful leads, but unfortunately the client couldn’t convert them into sales.

So, he knew I was going to be in town. He thought it would be really an interesting experience to have me meet with his client. We’ll call him Bob. He owned a high-tech company in Silicon Valley, which is what my friend’s ad agency specialized in.

I said to my friend that I didn’t know anything about business, so it was unlikely I could be of any help. To make matters worse, I didn’t know anything about high-tech. He said it didn’t matter, I knew everything I needed to know.

So with that, I had everything to gain, nothing to lose. It was going to be an interesting afternoon, so I went. My friend introduced me to his client, Bob, and said, “Bob, listen, I’m going to take off for about an hour. Get to know Michael. Michael will get to know you. And let’s see what happens.”

Long story short, I knew at the very beginning of that meeting, Scott, that I didn’t know anything about business. I also knew that because Bob owned one, he more than likely did. But we started under that basis.

Bob asked me, “What do you know about my business?” I said, “Nothing.” He said, “What do you know about our products?” I said, “Less than that.” He said, “If you don’t know anything about our business and you don’t know anything about our products, how can you help me?” I said, “I haven’t a clue. But Ace, my friend, thinks I can. You like Ace, I like Ace, we’ve got an hour to kill, let’s see what happens.”

And we did. We began to pursue some questions that I couldn’t help but ask.

In the process and by the time I was done, I discovered that I did know something about business, that selling is a system. And what was extraordinary to me was that Bob didn’t know that at all.

In fact, while Bob was an engineer, while Bob operated in a world of systems, it was extraordinary to me that he never really came to the realization that his business was one and that everything he did in his business had to become one.

That momentary epiphany that struck me was enough to start me off in a completely new track, which was to begin to consult with small businesses with my friend and his ad agency; to begin to deal with the thing they really wanted, called sales, not ads.

And in the process of doing that, I discovered another remarkable thing, and that was that nobody I met, who owned a business, really understood the business from the perspective I was bringing to it. They were living in a completely different paradigm.


The vast majority of them that had gone into business to become their own boss but had no clue about what, in fact, is really involved in inventing an extraordinary company.

So, one thing led to another, led to another, led to another. And finally, I had this secondary opinion, or epiphany rather, when I went to McDonald’s and discovered the truth. And that became my calling card.

I’d like to talk to you about what Ray Krok knows. I’d like to talk to you about McDonald’s. I’d like to talk to you about how your business and your life can be transformed immediately, simply by changing your mind about what you do. And that was the beginning.

Scott: That’s amazing. Where did you first learn about systems?

Michael: Well, I first learned about systems playing the saxophone. My saxophone teacher, when I was 12 years old, told me that my job was to practice, and my job was to practice exactly what he told me to practice, exactly how he told me to practice it, exactly how long he told me to practice it if I ever wanted to become one of the best saxophone players in the world.

For whatever reason, that moved me and I began to practice exactly how he told me.

The second time I learned it was when my sales manager for Encyclopedia Americana – I, after all, had to make a living too – told me that selling is a system. He showed me exactly how it worked. He told me, “Not that way, but this way. Not this way, but that way. Not the other way, but this other way. This is how it works, this is how it works, this is what we do. Now, you go do it.” And I did it. And lo and behold, it worked.

The third time, I learned from a carpenter who taught me how to build a house. So, I learned it actually playing the saxophone, I learned it selling encyclopedias, and I learned it building houses.

And that was sufficient, over the period of time that I did that, to begin to understand that everything must be a system. And, in fact, guess what? It is.

Scott: In your opinion, in your experience, why do so many business owners miss that? Why do they seem to skip this process of developing systems?

Michael: Well, I think they skip the process of developing systems because they’re focused on doing the work themselves. They’re egocentric, as opposed to business-centric. They’re essentially focused on becoming their own boss, rather than becoming the boss of a business that operates without them. They never truly grasp the idea that you’re creating a business for other people, you’re not creating a business for yourself.

So, I’d say the vast majority of people on the phone actually believe that they’ve created the business for themselves, and they end up a slave to that mindset. The impact of that is profound, and that’s why most people fail: because they haven’t the capability to see what’s simply sitting there in front of them.


Anybody can do this, Scott. Anybody can live in a right paradigm and in a wrong paradigm. Unfortunately, most people live in a wrong paradigm, and they’re continually upset that it doesn’t seem to work, it doesn’t seem to work, it doesn’t seem to work, and effectively blame everybody else for the problem. “I can’t get good people. My banker doesn’t listen to me. I can’t get this, I can’t get that,” etc., etc.

When, in effect, that has nothing to do, whatsoever, with their problem. The problem is their point of view. The problem is the way they think.

Scott: That’s one that requires you to take some accountability, to not blame others or other events for the lack of your results. I agree with you, it comes back to the beginning, which is yourself.

Michael, if somebody’s on the phone and they’re a one-person business owner, how do they go about the mindset of working on the business and also setting up systems?

Michael: Well, the same way I did. When I started E-Myth Worldwide, at the outset, it was named the Michael Thomas Corporation. I was Michael, my partner was Tom. There were just the two of us. We went to work on building the practice of lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment.

We set about building the practice, so we could franchise it. We literally set about building the practice at the very beginning, so we could franchise it; which meant we had to turnkey it; which meant we had to build it so that it would work without us; which meant we, in fact, were going to do exactly what McDonald’s did.

So, no big thing there, other than the fact that nobody had ever done it before in the world we were going to do it in.

So, at the very beginning of my company and the very beginning of any company of any person sitting on the phone right now, today, the whole intent is to stop, to absolutely stop what you’re doing and begin it again.

I can’t give anyone a more powerful message than that, which is to stop what you’re doing and begin all over again with a blank piece of paper and a beginner’s mind. The purpose of it is to build your franchise prototype.

Now, I’ve written that in my books. I’ve written that in each of the seven books that I’ve written. Anybody here who’s read those books has read it. Of course, everybody here who’s read that in the books I’ve written, then says, “Yes, but… Yes, but… Yes, but… But what about this? But what about that?” And I’m saying, “Have you ever called to get help, because the entire process over the past 31 years that I’ve engaged in is to build a system through which anybody can learn how to do this. Any solitary soul in the world can learn how to follow this very simple process.”

And, of course, the problem is that everybody gets distracted. And the distractions pull us off-path. But in effect, all you need to know is I didn’t know anything about this when I started and I’m sure each and every one of you do.


So in one respect, I was really at a loss. But in another respect, I really had everything to gain because I knew nothing that I had to refute. I knew nothing that was standing in the way of what I was there to do. All I had to do was begin to ask the right questions. And anybody can learn how to do that.

Scott: Very good. Let me ask you this. If somebody’s on the phone and they’re either going to hire their first employee or they have two or three employees, or maybe they have a fairly big-sized company with multiple employees, what’s the process? It’s one thing to get yourself to do the systems, another thing to get the employees on the same page, to follow the systems, the salespeople to follow the script.

I will hear, sometimes, people say, “Well, the salespeople don’t want to follow the script. They want their individual personality to come out,” things of that nature.

What’s your response when you hear things like that?

Michael: Well, my response to that, Scott, is essentially, “Wait a second! Let’s go back to the beginning.”

I used to do, at E-Myth Worldwide, the Michael Thomas Corporation, a sales meeting every morning at 7:00. And our direct salespeople, who were on straight commission, had to drive in from wherever they were in the San Francisco Bay Area. And oftentimes, it took them a couple of hours to get there.

Understand the meeting was at 7:00. They had to leave, obviously, a couple of hours earlier than that, simply to get there to experience my abuse.

Now, you’ve got to understand my abuse is really very, very straightforward. It’s, “Okay, tell me what didn’t happen. Tell me what went wrong.”

In that process, people would just resist opening their mouths, because they knew, they just knew, they just knew I would catch them. And effectively, that’s what I did. That’s all I did. I just showed them what they forgot. And what they forgot is benchmark one, and they’d already gotten to benchmark four. Benchmark four said this, benchmark one said that. Benchmark one had to be completed before you went to benchmark two. Benchmark two had to be completed before you went to benchmark three. Benchmark three had to be completed before you went to benchmark four.

I was absolutely religious about that.

Scott: I see.

Michael: The problem is that most people aren’t religious about that. They’re not even attentive to it. They don’t even understand the logic tree.

So, understand if you’re not systems-focused, then you’ll miss continuously what’s missing in that picture. And the question always is, “What’s missing in that picture?” And always, I would go back to the first benchmark, and always I would discover they left it too soon. They didn’t get what they needed.


So, the question becomes what do you need in the first benchmark of your selling system? What do you need in the first benchmark of your client fulfillment system? What do you need in your lead generation system, to make certain that the leads you’re generating are exactly the leads that you want?

Effectively, as you begin to work on your company, on the entire idea of your company, on the dream of your company, the vision of your company, the purpose of your company, the mission of your company would spell out the process that has to occur before you even start your company. And if it hadn’t occurred before you even started your company, it needs to occur now.

You have to go to the dreaming world. You have to go to that place where companies are invented.

Scott: Yes. And we’ll talk about that quite a bit in a few minutes in the extraordinary experience everybody will have an opportunity to partake in.

Let me ask you this. In your book, you talk about the fatal assumption that a technician makes before they go to start a business. Tell us more about that.

Michael: The fatal assumption is because they understand how to do the work of the business, because I understand how to sell real estate, because I understand how to fix a car, because I understand how to cook a meal, because I understand how to do the work of the business, I understand how to build a business that does that work.

So, the cook opens up a restaurant, the auto mechanic opens up an auto repair business, and on and on and on and on.

It’s pretty simple from then on. You build a business that you do. And in the process of doing, you forget why you built it in the first place. The reason you’re building a business in the first place is to solve somebody’s problem in a way that nobody else has solved it.

Hear that, it’s so simple. The reason you invent a business in the first place is to solve somebody’s problem in a way that nobody else has solved it, and therefore would cause people who have that problem to come to you.

So, you’ve got to ask yourself the question, “What is my business there to do,” not “What am I there to do.”

So you see, the technician, suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure, who suffers from the fatal assumption, builds a company that revolves around them. And you’ll find them working in that company day after day after day after day, trying to make it work but essentially being caught up in the fact that it doesn’t. And the reason it doesn’t is because their mindset is all wrong.

Scott: I see. That makes sense. And is that compounded by the fact that most people are starting businesses for the wrong reasons: I don’t like my boss, I’m not being paid enough, my spouse says go out there and make some more money, my real estate is upside-down.


Does that compound the effect, all of these wrong reasons why people are out starting businesses?

Michael: Right. And it is what it is. So, the Coffman Foundation, which is the largest foundation focused on entrepreneurship in the United States, tells us, with their research, that a half a million new businesses are started every year in this country, every month in this country. Excuse me. Six million a year. It’s astonishing.

When I started my company in 1977, the numbers weren’t anywhere near that.

So, more and more and more people are starting their own business, each of them starting from lack, meaning “I don’t have, therefore I’ll get.” This has nothing to do.

Starting a business the way an entrepreneur starts a company is completely different than the way a technician starts one. So, the entrepreneur starts one with an idea, a rich idea, a powerful idea, a profound idea, an invention, the invention of a business that does what it does better than anybody else can.

In the process, then goes about inventing that idea. My dream. My dream is… My vision. My vision is… My purpose. My purpose is… And my mission. My mission is… And then, launches that company at the very beginning, very, very, very small as a practice, and then goes about the process of perfecting the practice.

I would say that of all of the companies I’ve seen in my lifetime, I’ve rarely ever met an effective practice that is a startup, that actually did what it did in a perfectly organized and effective way.

I’d say, in fact, that what it did depended upon people to do it. And those people, if they weren’t there, would effectively create a problem that couldn’t be solved by another person because they were making it up.

What I’m saying is that entrepreneurs invent businesses to work in a perfectly organized, systematic way, as a practice that can then be scaled into a business, which can then be scaled into an enterprise.

So, it’s a very methodical but imaginative process that they begin this business in.

Scott: And I believe in your books, you talk about McDonald’s being an example of that.

Michael: Yeah. McDonald’s is an example of that. Starbucks is an example of that. Mrs. Field’s Cookies is an example of that. Google is an example of that. McDonald’s – and It goes on and on and on – is an example of that.

All you have to do is look at any extraordinary company, and you can be absolutely certain that primarily it was built upon a system that could produce a result faster, cheaper, better than anybody else could.

Scott: What if your vision, Michael, is not to create? Some people might be on the phone thinking, “I don’t want to create a McDonald’s or Starbucks, something that massive.” How is the thought process different, if it is at all?


Michael: Well, it isn’t different. Because, in fact, Ray Krok started with one store, to get the little store right. He got the little store right, so that he could create 50 stores, 1,000 stores, 10,000 stores.

In other words, you’ve got to do the same thing. You’ve got to do exactly the same thing that Ray Krok did. You’ve got to go to work on the business, not in the business, to produce a perfect operating system.

A perfect operating system is not something that is horrendously difficult to do. It’s something, however, that’s absolutely necessary to be done. Because if you don’t do it in that first one, you’ll never be able to build another one.

That’s really the problem in all small businesses. They’ve never built the first one right, so they can never scale it to grow to any degree whatsoever, so they fail.

Scott: Would it be true that even if they didn’t want to scale it, if they didn’t approach it in the mindset you described, they’ll probably never be successful, at least will not optimize profits, and more than likely will end up being another statistic. Is that accurate?

Michael: Absolutely. Absolutely. They will be another statistic. But I would beg the question why wouldn’t they want to grow it, if they could? In other words, if it’s easier to grow McDonald’s than it is to do what most small business owners do, why wouldn’t they do it?

I’d suggest they wouldn’t do it because they’re afraid. And they’re afraid that they won’t know how. And they’re right.

But they should have thought like that before they even started the first one. Because it’s inevitable that if you fail to do the essential things that are critical to be done at the very beginning of the company, your company will fail.

So, it begins before you start. It begins before you open your doors. It begins in the very beginning, where the startup is you.

Scott: Yes. I agree 100%. It’s so insightful to hear you explain these, again, even after I’ve read most of the material.

I want to point out something that I thought was very interesting in the book about the technician and the entrepreneur. Can you explain, for a moment, why the entrepreneur should never buy a franchise?

Michael: The entrepreneur should never buy a franchise because an entrepreneur is a creator. A creator creates. He or she lives to create. He or she does not live to manage an operating system that somebody else created.

So, entrepreneurs that buy a franchise almost always – almost always – end up destroying the franchise they buy and coming into serious conflict with the franchisor.

No, an entrepreneur should never buy something somebody else created. An entrepreneur is, in fact, a franchisor instead.


Scott: Very nice. Michael, can you tell me about the meeting you talked about in your book, with your mother, Helen, back in the Spring of 2005 and the awakening you experienced?

Michael: Yeah. I had come to a certain point at E-Myth Worldwide. I brought in a CEO, brought in an executive team to take over the operation of the company. I was just tired of operating it. And I realized I wasn’t going to go as far as I wanted to go, given everything else I had in my mind.

So, I did that. I did that. And when I did that, I came to realize that I didn’t know what to do. I happened to be visiting my mother at that point in time. This was in 2004, going into 2005.

We were talking about it, and she was very, very loving, very responsive. She said, “Excuse me, Michael, it’s hard for me to say this, but I don’t believe you. I believe in something else entirely. I believe you just simply haven’t come face-to-face with the reality that you can do anything you want to do now. Anything at all. And I don’t think it has to do with simply stopping what you were doing. I think it has to do with starting something that you have no idea you want to start. But it’s there, if you begin to look for it.”

And I began to look for it. It was an incredible experience, as I felt that, because I felt that at that point in my life, that I’d accomplished something significant, but it wasn’t significant enough. I’d done something significant, but it wasn’t big enough. I’d created something significant, but I hadn’t truly taken it to the level that I wished it to go. And operating the business was not what I was called to do. Something else was there.

And suddenly, it came to me. And I say suddenly. It wasn’t a matter of a minute, it was a matter of a couple of months, as I began to dig down deep and dig down deep into my imagination. It came to me that what I wanted to do was to approach what I’d already done by beginning it all over again. I wanted to go back to the beginning and ask myself a question, “If you were to start E-Myth anew, how would you do it?”

With that, I had this sudden insight that I wanted to create a Dreaming Room. That was a place where I would engage with people who truly were thinking about doing something, but couldn’t really put their finger on it, didn’t really quite know what it was, didn’t really quite understand what was calling them, what was moving them, what was exciting them. They felt stuck.

I wanted to meet with people who were stuck – either stuck in their relationship, stuck in their job, stuck in their business, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck. But I wanted to find people who were stuck and I wanted to discover what it would mean to get them unstuck and to give them something that they didn’t really realize they already had.

So, I decided to do a Dreaming Room. The Dreaming Room I just made up in my mind, just as I make most things up. And the Dreaming Room is a place where you get unstuck.


Now, I know there are lots of people on the phone who are stuck. But understand they’re stuck, and they’re even so stuck that they’re incapable of becoming unstuck because they’re afraid if they became unstuck, holy shit, what would happen.

I’m saying that in the Dreaming Room, that’s what happened.

So, my first Dreaming Room was in December of 2005, and I had about 35 people in that Dreaming Room. I’d never done it before. It was Friday night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday. I went into the Dreaming Room with a question – a question that essentially said, “What would happen if a beginner’s mind and a blank piece of paper were the only thing we had?”

I had no objective, I had nothing else in mind other than to stimulate the awakening of the entrepreneurial imagination in every single person in this room to a degree that had never been stimulated before. I had not experienced doing that. I had never done an event like that before. And then, I did. And the experience was absolutely mind-blowing.

That led to 30-some-odd more, to the point where it’s now ready to be replicated, scaled. And that means that I won’t be doing Dreaming Rooms, somebody else will be, and somebody else will be. And somebody else will be the licensee, who will become the leader of Dreaming Rooms. And I’ll have Dreaming Rooms going on around the world, to awaken the entrepreneur within the world.

Scott: That’s a fabulous vision and mission. Can you tell us a little bit about what came from Disney and the Imagineering room, and the part that that kind of played in putting all of this together?

Michael: Well, my brother-in-law, Marty Squire, is the vice chairman of Disney Imagineering, been with Disney for 50 years. Walt hired him directly out of UCLA, where Marty was the publisher of the Bruin, and took him to Disneyland in Anaheim, and he became the publicist, Marty did, and then stayed with Disney year after year, after year, even after Disney died.

He continually told me stories about the park, about the man, about what he did and what he didn’t do.

He told me a story once, about when Walt Disney was in a meeting with some of his people, and the meeting wasn’t going well. And Walt got very, very aggravated and he told everybody to leave and come back the next morning at 8:00, and start again.

When they got to that room, there was a sign on the door that said, “Welcome to the Dreaming Room.” When they went inside, there was Walt, with stacks of business cards before him. And those stacks of business cards were for their new position as Imagineers in Disney Imagineering.

And Walt said to them, “We’re going to begin this process anew. We’re beginning with what we don’t know, and we’re going to pursue the impossible, simply because that’s what we do. That’s what we do at Disney Imagineering. We pursue the impossible and create something none of us had ever seen before. And in the process, if anybody


says, ‘Yes, but,’ they’re out of the Dreaming Room. Because yes but is not how great things are created. I wonder why. I wonder what. I wonder how. I wonder what if is how things are created. And that’s what we’re here to do, to question, to question the impossible and to send it reeling.”

And that story just moved me. That story has become the hallmark of my career, my life, my vision, my purpose, my dream, my passion. And I’m absolutely determined that’s what I’m here to do on the face of this earth. I’m to awaken the entrepreneur everywhere I go, to stimulate people to begin to do something, to see something and to experience something they’ve never experienced before.

And I’m talking about people who’ve been around the block. I’m talking about people who are accustomed to making a living, accustomed to making results, accustomed to creating a company or not.

I’m talking about anybody and everybody. Because anybody and everybody has been to the Dreaming Room. And what happens to them in that space is something they never anticipated.

Scott: Yes. Can you tell me about one example, which is an amazing story, to give people an example of dreams and what’s possible, of Mohammad Yunus?

Michael: Well, Mohammad Yunus was not in the Dreaming Room, but I’ll give you the whole story.

Mohammad Yunus invented Grameen Bank. He invented micro-lending. It’s extraordinary. Here’s a guy who invented micro-lending and a process for assuring himself and every single person he loaned a micro-loan to, that they would become financially successful. And that means in a limited way.

That is for the woman who was impoverished and had absolutely nothing but family, but children, he could provide her with a micro loan to enable to take care of herself and grow, to take care of her children and grow.

Millions upon millions of women, impoverished, have been lent just enough to do just the right thing to help them to become financially independent. Sufficient so that they could take care of their children, take care of their life in a way that they had never done before.

He did that. He invented that. And his banner says that poverty is a thing of the past. There’s absolutely no reason for people to be impoverished. In fact, through his extraordinary system, he can absolutely predict that 99% of the loans given out are repaid – 99% of the loans given to impoverished women with no credit, who prior to this time had never had access to any capital whatsoever, were provided with just enough capital, $70, $30, $102, whatever that spare amount was that would enable them to have enough to buy the material they needed to make baskets, to raise a few rabbits, to raise a couple of chickens or whatever and whatever and whatever and whatever, become self-dependent, independent of all of the political, religious, financial sources and obstacles in their way.


So, Mohammad Yunus invented a life for all of these women. What an extraordinary, extraordinary thing. And anybody could do that. Anybody can do the impossible, if they can understand what Einstein said, that imagination is more profound and powerful than knowledge ever is. Imagination is the key.

So, in the Dreaming Room, that’s what we do. We pursue the impossible, to move people through their imagination, into a place they’d never been before, to suddenly discover the infinite range of options that exist for each and every one of us.

It’s extraordinary to see. It’s amazing to see.

Keith Sheal, one of my first Dreaming Room participants, who owned a small company, very, very small, it was primarily him. Rent-A-Geek. He’d fix computers.

Well, Rent-A-Geek started out with Keith having to make a living. He moved from Louisiana to British Columbia, had to make a living in a new country, and what he knew how to do was to fix computers.

So, he’s fixing computers, fixing computers, fixing computers, making a living, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy, busy. Everybody knows about that.

And then he read The E-Myth and suddenly said, “Holy cow! I can build a company that fixes computers!” And then he came to the Dreaming Room and he said, “Holy cow! I can build an enterprise that fixes computers.”

So, here’s a guy who goes from doing it, doing it, doing it, one guy, the shop, himself, on his own, all alone, doing what he knows how to do, to building the infrastructure for an international company. His last computer was fixed in Estonia. Most people on the phone don’t even know where that is. Estonia. He fixed it online, as he fixes computers throughout the world, in South America, in Asia, in Europe, etc. and so forth.

And his expanded reach with the system he’s inventing is beyond belief. All of that has come from triggering his imagination and inspiring him to see what, in fact, he can’t see, given the restrictions that he’s placed upon himself automatically, by his past experience.

Scott: Can you expand upon and maybe why it’s difficult – and I think, to me, because I have the experience, this only happens at the Dreaming Room – to have a beginner’s mind?

Michael: It’s difficult because we’re built in a completely opposite way. In other words, we’re born and we begin to learn. As we learn, we save it.

So understand, we’re saving mechanisms. That’s what memory is. We learn our way.

So if you get burned on the stove, you don’t touch the stove again. If this happens, and it’s bad, you don’t do that again. If that happens and it’s good, you do that more.

So effectively, we learn by the responses we get from the world. The problem is we don’t learn what we don’t know. We don’t learn what we don’t experience. We don’t


learn what doesn’t feel good. We don’t learn all the things that are available for us to learn if, in fact, we care to look.

So, my job is to stimulate the process from the very start. To actually begin with a beginner’s mind means to abdicate all responsibility for everything your body has said to you. Your body is saying, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” Your body says, “Dreaming is bad, because it gets you into trouble.” Your body says, “Go to work. You’ve got to make a living.”

We keep on doing those things we’ve been engrained to do. And I’m suggesting we need to do, in fact, exactly the opposite. We have to be counterintuitive. We have to do exactly the opposite of what everything we’re told we need to do.

So, when our parents tell us this and when our teachers tell us that, I’m telling you that what we need to do is exactly the opposite of what they say, because that’s what, in fact, enables us to be able to see what we can’t see going down the path they circumscribe for us.

We must become free. We must become free. And the only way is to do the opposite of what everybody else says.

So, let me give you an example of that.

Everybody told me, at the outset of our company, E-Myth Worldwide, that you can’t do that. You can’t create a turnkey system for every kind of business, because every business is different. You can’t create a turnkey system for every business because every market is different, every product is different, every service is different, every person is different, etc. and so forth.

So in essence, they lived in a world of presumed differences. And I lived in the world of presumed similarities. I felt that, in fact, because everybody had a different problem, that there was a different way to pursue it. A different way to pursue it universally, as opposed to separately and distinctly.

So, I began to see that as the greatest force for what we could do. If we could discover the similarity between all markets, the similarity between all managers, in every kind of business, the similarity between everything and anything that anybody could point to, then we would discover a universal way to deal with it.

And that’s exactly what we did. My essential philosophy has always been, yes, but then what? If what you’re saying is true, then obviously what it’s going to require is somebody with experience in your particular kind of business. If what you’re saying is true, it’s going to take somebody who really has been skilled in your kind of business. And if that’s true, that person is going to become more and more expensive. And the problem is you can’t afford it.

So, if you can’t afford it, then what are you left with? You fail.


So, I had to find a way that they could afford it. I had to find a completely different mindset that I could apply to the transformation of small business worldwide, because I had a dream.

At the very outset of my company, I had a dream, and that was to transform small business worldwide. And I had a vision, which was to invent the McDonald’s of small business consulting. And I had a purpose, which was to transform the life of any single person who decided they wanted to start a small business, so that they could actually succeed at doing it. Anybody can succeed at doing it.

And finally, I had a mission. And that was to invent the turnkey consulting system, a turnkey consulting system that I could teach a novice how to use and to become a master of. And in the process of doing that, transform the lives of their small business client.

And to the degree they could do that, at the cost of a minimum wage kid, the world would be transformed. So, that’s what I set out to do. And holy shit, we did it.

Scott: Yes, you did. Better than anybody else. Absolutely. Let me ask you this. You talked about it a little bit, but it relates to the Dreaming Room.

Why don’t entrepreneurs dream? You talked a little bit about it in different areas. Are they just stuck in all this negativity, bad experiences, the patterns? How come they just don’t dream, and why is it so essential to go to an experience like you have to trigger that?

Michael: The difficulty is that you can’t describe something somebody can’t see. The essence of the problem is not that entrepreneurs don’t dream, they just dream about the wrong things.

Scott: I see.

Michael: So, I call this the age of the new entrepreneur. I want to define this age, the next 200 years, as a revolution. Not an evolution, but a revolution. An evolution would be an evolution from where we are to where we’ll be. A revolution is something distinctly different than that.

I say this is a revolution. And it’s not just me speaking about it. Because, in fact, The E-Myth has been a revolution. More people starting businesses today have read The E-Myth than any other book in the world.

The E-Myth is a revolution. The problem is it isn’t happening fast enough.

So, I want to start with people who haven’t started or people who have started and come to the realization that they’ve got to start it all over again.

There’s a right way to start and a wrong way to start. And the dreaming that I’m describing in the Dreaming Room is completely different than anything they’ve thought about this way before. I call it intentional dreaming. It’s an intentional act of foregoing


everything you believe you know to be true, and beginning to ask the question, “What’s missing in this picture?”

What’s missing in this picture is the hugely productive entrepreneurial question that everybody must begin to ask.

What’s missing in this picture could be focused on any segment of our life, any human being, any activity, any problem, any concern, any frustration.

What’s missing in this picture is the dynamic that has to occur. What’s missing here? What’s missing here? And beginning to ask that question with a little bit of patience that I’m not going leave the dreaming world until I discover an answer to that question, that will then pose another question, which is, “What’s missing in this picture, then?”

Progressively, what happens is magic. We discover that part of ourselves that is so lost. And that is truly the awakened entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial personality – the dreamer, the thinker, the performer, the storyteller, and the leader. The dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller and the leader. The dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller and the leader. And those four individuals within that entrepreneurial personality begin a process that is so rare, so original, so unique, that it’s impossible for anybody listening in on the phone to understand what the impact is.

The impact is internal. It’s an internal impact that transforms the way I relate to the world. That’s what has to happen to a true entrepreneur in the process of inventing something extraordinary.

Now understand you can apply it to anything. All one has to do is to look at any company, any company at all, and begin to ask that question. “What’s missing in this picture?” And you begin to see.

The beginning of that seeing creates another question. And then you begin to see that. And then you begin to see that. And then you begin to see that. And then you begin to see that. And the process has an indelibly enlivening impact on the entrepreneur who’s waking up to that fact.

This is what I’m here to do. I’m here to see the world through entrepreneurial eyes. I’m not here to make a ton of money. I’m not here to do stuff because it’s exciting. I’m here to make a difference.

Every single one of us, every single person on this phone is here to make a difference. And the problem is that most of us spend our lives without ever having done that, not even a difference to me.

The reality is I’m saying that you can’t make a difference to you until you focus on somebody else.

The true entrepreneurial victim is focusing your attention on somebody else.

Scott: Yes. Yes. And for me, I would add my experience in the Dreaming Room, and others on the line may be in the same situation, even if you have a very successful


company, sometimes there’s a part of you that feels there can be so much more, your impact can be so much greater. Maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know there has to be more, or you’re capable of producing a better result and helping people become more successful. And I think for me being in the Dreaming Room experience, it allowed me to start with the beginner’s mind and say, “What really is possible?”

Like you said, a truly magical experience for myself. I don’t think I would have ever gotten that anywhere else.

Michael: Well, I don’t know, and I won’t say you didn’t or wouldn’t. But I will say that’s been the experience of every single person who’s come to the Dreaming Room up to this point in time. And now, I know the efficacy of it. Now I know the profound impact it can have. And now, I’m ready to expand it worldwide.

Scott: It’s going to be amazing. What we’re going to do, in a couple minutes, we’ll answer a couple questions, those who are on the webcast. And I’ve had several questions sent to me.

Michael, do you want to tell people about the special offer you have for our listeners and what they need to do, and how to get to a Dreaming Room?

Michael: Well, I’d love for you to tell them. I will tell them that March 28th, 29th and 30th are a very special Dreaming Room. It’s going to be held in San Diego. And all of the information, you can get.

I will say that there is a special offer with the publication of my new book, which just came out March 4th. It’s absolutely critical to me to get that book get out there and around in a way that I’ve never done before with any of my books. And I think everybody on the phone probably knows that my books are among the top five business books of all time.

But this whole conversation about awakening the entrepreneur within is very, very important to me. So, I want to spread this word, this message, to get people to be awakened to begin a spirited new adventure in this age of the new entrepreneur. It’s absolutely essential for me to do that.

So, if you will simply tell them what the opportunity is, Scott, I’d really appreciate it. That will save my voice.

Scott: I will certainly do that.

Michael: And then I can respond to their questions.

Scott: I’ll certainly do that for you. Michael has put together a very unique offer, which is when you buy 75 of his books, he will give you a ticket to the Dreaming Room. I believe it’s at least like a 60% discount. Typically, what you’d pay to go to the Dreaming Room and – which I love this part about it, which shows you, again, what Michael’s all about – to take 74 of the books and give them to others, whether it’s clients, customers,


fellow business owners, people wanting to become entrepreneurs. It’s all about, at least from my interpretations, spread the message and the word.

So, when you go to buy the 75 books, I would say what makes the most sense, Michael, is to fax your office that receipt of the 75 books with your information. And then once you obtain that, your office will coordinate with a ticket to one of the Dreaming Rooms coming up. Would that make sense?

Michael: Absolutely. That’s a great way to do it. I’m sure there are many other ways to do it. But if somebody’s moved to do it, this is the time to do it. We’ve got a Dreaming Room coming up March 28th, 29th and 30th in San Diego. And I’d love to see every single one of the people on this call there, to begin a process that will blow your minds.

Begin to get unstuck in a way that you never thought possible before, and to experience that happening with everybody around you.

Scott: If you want to, to make it simple, why don’t you just fax it to our office at (702) 220-6444. Again, this is the fax number for NCP. (702) 220-6444. When we get it, we’ll forward it to Michael’s office at In The Dreaming Room. And again, when you purchase 75 books, is there a preferred place to do that, Michael? I know there’s many places online.

Michael: To buy the 75? We’ll arrange all of that. All they‘ve got to do is say, “I want the 75, and I want to come to the Dreaming Room,” period. And give us the contact information and their credit card, and we’ll get the books to them and we’ll get them to the Dreaming Room.

Scott: That sounds fabulous. Obviously, when we contact you, we’ll give you more details and the prices of the books. Obviously, you want to know what that’s going to be.

Michael: They’re $24.95, Scott.

Scott: $24.95 for the books.

Michael: Plus tax and shipping.

Scott: With tax and shipping. So, it’s a tremendous opportunity. Again, it’s more than 60% off what you’d typically pay to go to the Dreaming Room. And it’s a great opportunity to join Michael in a very unique experience, whether you’re starting out, you’re struggling, you’re doing $30-million a year and you know you could be a $500-million-a-year company changing the world, I would certainly recommend it for everybody on the call to take advantage of that opportunity.

Michael, let’s take a look at a couple of questions, then we’ll wrap up the call with a few final comments in a moment.

One is, “I’m starting a fast, casual dining franchise restaurant at a seemingly difficult time, given the current economic climate. How do you suggest I stay competitive during


this time? Do you think those of us in this industry will be better positioned to get the consumer dining dollar than a full-service, more expensive restaurant?

Michael: I have absolutely no idea. The question is clearly one that you need to ask. What is it that our system is going to do? What is it that our franchise is going to do? What is it that my restaurant is going to do? And how is it going to do it, that’s going to cause people to come to us, rather than to go someplace else?

What is it that’s absolutely, clearly, powerfully capable of positioning you to become so highly-differentiated in the mind of the people who come through your door, visually, emotionally, functionally and financially, that truly marks you in an age, a time when the money is tight? That’s a critical question. And that’s why this is the best time to do it, because you’re going to have to ask and answer questions you wouldn’t ask and answer in a time when it’s not tight. It’s absolutely perfect.

Most people who start a franchise, no matter what it might be, do not start a franchise with the kind of rigor that a McDonald’s was started with.

You have to ask yourself, “Where’s the rigor?”

Scott: I would agree 100%. Let’s look at the next question by Katherine. It says, “I mentor families and individuals impacted by autism and Asperger syndrome. Currently, I work one-on-one. However, I see a much broader application of my work through seminars, articles and books. What steps do I take to get from one-on-one service delivery model to one-to-25 or more?”

Michael: Well, first of all, change your mindset from one-to-one and change it from 25 to 1,000. In other words, change your model from a service that’s dependent upon you with added methods that enable you to do what you do, and turn it into a company.

The idea you’ve given us is not a business, it’s a practice. It needs to be built so that others can do it, if you’re going to grow it. And the only reason you’re doing what you want to do is to change the lives of the people who are suffering from the problems they have.

So, your accountability is to figure out how to grow it. It’s a perfect example of what happens in the Dreaming Room. Come to the Dreaming Room, and you’ll discover the way to get free of the picture you have in your head.

Scott: Very, very important. Let’s take one more. How do you set attainable profit targets?

Michael: Attainable profit targets is simply more of what I was describing earlier. Essentially, the question can only be asked in the context of what profit is.

I don’t think very many people in a business really understand how much money they really make. You set a standard for a profit before you ever begin to build the system. You set a standard for the return on your investment before you ever begin to build a system. You build a system to produce that standard.


So in essence, you make up your mind how much it’s going to be before you ever start. And then, you build the system to produce that.

Scott: Obviously, most people do it backwards.

Michael: Absolutely.

Scott: Amazing. Well, again, to participate in a very unique, moving experience, to take your business, your life to a whole new level, I certainly recommend you take up on Michael’s offer to join him in a Dreaming Room. It’s an experience I had the pleasure of last May. I have notes on it. I’ll never forget it. Michael, I’ve got your picture up on the bookshelf. I look in your eyes every day, and I get these unique messages to keep going forward and make the vision, the purpose, the mission and the dream to happen.

So, I wish everybody on the line would have the opportunity to do that. And you do. All you have to do is fax to NCP, which is (702) 220-6444, just a short fax message, you’d like to take advantage and purchase the 75 books, with your contact and credit card information. We’ll give you the final details, if you need it, with tax and shipping, to get those books to you. Then you’ll get a Dreaming Room ticket to use in the upcoming events that are happening.

If you have any questions about that, you can call our office at (888) 627-7007. In addition, I will be sending a follow-up email out to everyone.

Michael, any last thoughts you’d like to share with our listeners this evening?

Michael: Absolutely. I want you to know that by making the commitment to buy 75 books, Awakening The Entrepreneur Within, and giving 74 of them away to people who are important to you, you’ll participate with me in this revolution, which I call the age of the new entrepreneur.

And many, many things are going to come from that. Many extraordinary things will come from that as we develop a relationship. More and more and more opportunities will be made available to you over the years ahead. As Scott is participating, so would I love it for you to participate, so that we can all begin to make this entrepreneurial revolution occur in a way that will absolutely blow our minds.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. I never do. But I don’t need to, nor do you. All we need to do is to begin the process.

Scott: Absolutely. With that, Michael, I really appreciate the opportunity for you to share with everybody on the line tonight. I’m excited to hear from those who are going to take part in Michael’s offer. Please call me, email me personally. I’d love to hear from your experience after you join Michael in this extraordinary event, and your ability to help out your clients and customers with the books also.

Thank you once again, Michael. And everybody have an outstanding evening.

Michael: Thanks, Scott.

Scott: You’re very welcome.


Michael: My delight. Bye-bye.

Nevada Corporate Planners 7477 West Lake Mead Blvd. Suite 170

Las Vegas, NV 89128 (702) 367-7373 Office 888-627-7007 Toll Free

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