Reid Traut Reviews E-Myth Revisited
Reid Traut reviews the book E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It on his new blog. The review is here.
Gerber’s main thesis is that many people go into business for themselves because they are good technicians, meaning they are good plumbers, accountants, or whatever, so they decide to go out on their own. This includes lawyers too. They reason that if they do good work, then clients will beat a path to their door. However, many of these businesses fail, according to Gerber, because the technician fails to wear the other two other hats needed to run a business: In addition to being a good “technician”, you must also be a manager and an entrepreneur. … I see this with lawyers all the time. We think that if we provide good legal work, then people will tell their friends, and the clients and money will roll in. The fallacy is that without wearing the entrepreneur “hat” these law practices or small firms will never generate enough clients and income to build a successful business. Sometimes the opposite happens: The business comes in so fast, but the systems and procedures are not in place to handle the flow of clients. The lack of management eventually turns off clients who take their business elsewhere.
Thanks to Jim Calloway for pointing to the Reid’s new blog. Both weblogs are worth adding to your aggregator / read list.
I spent 18 years in various large and small business as a data processing professional and manager before going into law. I am astounded at the number of attorneys that believe that its all common sense and have no need for any education on the subject of managment! They treat employees terribly and wonder why they have bad attitudes!
Good points, Tom. Recently, I've really tried to focus on how to run a good office. It's not something that comes natural to us lawyers.
