In my review of
Summary: Awakening the Entrepreneur Within Michael Gerber
posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave it 3 Stars.
Here is my review.
A condensed version of the entrepreneur’s creation process without the waffle
I admire Michael Gerber’s thinking and insight but I’m a critic of his writing.
Incredibly the indulgence increased from The E-Myth Revisited to E-Myth Mastery and increased again in Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies. The good ideas become harder to dig out and you need more resilience to make it through to the end.
This summary excludes all the claptrap to focus on the process of how entrepreneurs create thriving businesses. Sadly what it reveals isn’t particularly insightful.
I know because I paid a lot of money to attend one of Gerber’s Dreaming Rooms where he was developing his ideas to write this book. Whilst it was interesting to see a smooth operator at work in his white suit, it was a disappointing and unproductive experience . I arrived feeling like a frustrated entrepreneur who hadn’t found “the big idea” and that’s exactly how I left. My impressions were shared by others in the room and some even tackled him on the lack of substance at the start of the second day.
Two types of people might be interested in this book:
1-those who have a big idea and want guidance on how to develop it. If that’s you go straight to Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money by Pat Flynn.
2-those who were like I was and feel a calling to be an entrepreneur and have the desire to create something extraordinary but haven’t found the problem that excites them. Neither the full book or this summary really help. It’s supposed to come through the dreaming process but it doesn’t have a systematic search for a problem to solve. At the moment I can’t think of another book to suggest.
Shortly after I attended the Dreaming Room, I found out that I wasn’t cut out to be an entrepreneur. I did an assessment called the Kolbe index which looks at how you respond to problems (see Conative Connection: Acting on Instinct).
Two of the measures were the opposite of what was needed but Kathy Kolbe, the developer of the index, told me were perfect for my role (then and now) as a business coach and advisor. First was my bias towards finding out more information rather than taking immediate action and second, the way I handled concepts was much more like an architect than a builder. I found it easy and exciting dealing with the concept in my mind but I had little inclination to build it physically.
If you’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur but you haven’t been inspired, you might be like me. Many of us can see a situation with problems and see a solution conceptually but are not sufficiently motivated to take action.
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