It's not every day you hear from a legend.
In this episode, you will.
INC Magazine calls Michael E. Gerber, “The World's #1 Small Business Guru” and deservedly so.
He's a New York Times Best-Selling Author of The E-Myth Revisited, which has sold millions of copies and has co-written other impactful books including The E-Myth Bookkeeper.
During his over 40 years of teaching the value of systemizing your enterprise, Michael has helped transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses across the globe.
In this powerful interview, you’ll learn...
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Why you're invisible as a bookkeeper and how you can break through that perception by becoming a leader in your client's eyes
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The importance of changing your “technician” mindset and not operating your business like a job
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And why you should be the chief aggravator in your industry
To find out more about Michael, his books and courses, you can visit any of the below:
Learn how to get The E-Myth Bookkeeper Free.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Michael Palmer: 01:23 I’m Michael Palmer, your host, and I am super excited about today's guest. He is a true giant in the universe of entrepreneurship, inc magazine calls him the world's number one small business guru. He's the author of the Mega Bestseller, the e myth revisited, and five other E-Myth books concerning small business and entrepreneurship. He's also written 14 industry specific e-myth books including the e myth bookkeeper, which is co-written with proof of keeping cofounders, Debbie Roberts and Peter Cook. Thanks to this gentleman's iconic work. He has impacted the lives of millions of individuals and hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide for over 40 years. It is with great pleasure. I welcome Michael E. Gerber to the Successful Bookkeeper podcast. Michael, it's great to have you.
Michael E. Gerber: 02:21 Well, it's wonderful to be here and delightful to speak with you, Michael, and we spoke together. Was it packing? When was that? 2000..
MP: 02:31 2013
MG: 02:33 2013. My goodness. Time flies and we had a wonderful conversation then and certainly we have reason to have a wonderful conversation. Now given the book, I'm the Amos bookkeeper and given your studying book, which I just wrote a testimonial for because I believe it's truly remarkable.
MP: 02:57 Thank you so much Mike. Really it’s, it's a little bit of goosebumps I have to say because listen, I owned a small business with my mother. Uh, it was coffee on Kelly, a little little bistro. And when we built that business at the beginning, I was lucky enough to read e-myth revisited and went through it and I'm like, this is it. I got my mother to listen to you on audio. Uh, when she was at the coffee shop, she was listening away and we implemented your philosophies into that business and it changed my mother's life in terms of making that business workable, profitable, and a pure joy to work in. And so sure, her business grew like a weed as a result of that. So it's, I have a really big place in my heart for your philosophies and lovely. And I think that's why I, uh, I'm attracted to the work that you do and I've been following you ever since I found you because that's super.
MG: 03:49 Is your mom still with us?
MP: 03:51 Yes, she is. And she, she has, she accident out of the business. She did really well with the, uh, the business. And now she, she is retired and, and living her life and enjoying life.
MG: 04:02 How's hooper or give her my love, please.
MP: 04:04 I will. Absolutely. I'm sure she's listening. She will be. Anyways, so enough about that. And I know they always say, uh, we got a share, but I just had to share that with you Michael. It's a, it's a pleasure. Thank you.
MG: 04:16 Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, people do share those stories with me and their countless stories just like that, but many, many, many don't always show up at an event perhaps and speak. And somebody will come up after the, the speech and say, Michael, you just completely changed my life and Blah, blah. And they start to tell the story. I said, well, how long ago did that happen? He said, Oh, 12 years ago or 14 years ago. I said, how come you never wrote me?
MG: 04:51 Well,
MG: 04:52 we just didn't think care. I mean, can you imagine that we just didn't think you'd care when you've had such a profound impact as you've told me about your mom.
MP: 05:04 Yeah, absolutely. And it's just so I'm reminded that we don't thank the people who've made the big differences in our lives enough.
MG: 05:12 Yeah. Well that, but it's not even the thank you that I miss. Um, what people perhaps don't understand is that inspiration is important to me as it is to anybody on the street. I mean, everything that I've ever done is a product of inspiration. But as you grow and as you grow older, I just passed my 80th birthday. Those experiences are treasured beyond anything that I can ever imagine. Treasure because people are setting, look what you help me do. Look what you with help may do. And you feel it when they say it because it's so true. Look what you helped me to do. And Michael, you're doing the very thing with all of the bookkeepers you're working with.
MP: 06:01 Yeah, that's a, it's a great point. And I don't think I've actually thought of it that way, is that it's a, it's a further investment in the inspiration of you back to me. It's, it's a, um, kind of a giving of and receiving of, of energy, uh, which, which I think is, is an ex, you know, and I think that's a lot of what I've noticed, the work that you've done later on after e-Myth, uh, and then e-Myth revisited is this whole concept of the energy and the spirit that, that we have as entrepreneurs. And really why really, I mean, obviously I wanted to have you on the podcast that you were the first person I thought of to have on the successful bookkeeper podcast and you know, making sure that people know about your work and can access, uh, the philosophies because really you've, uh, you've, I've locked that for so many people and as we're talking about, I mean, I'm just thinking, boy, if people started to thank you, you, you need to read a lot of emails. You don't have to open up. You'd be like Santa Claus. You'd have to open up, you'd have to have a whole team of valves, opening letters, uh, based on the amount of people that you've impacted.
MG: 07:06 Yeah. But, but that's cool.
MP: 07:08 That'd be totally cool. Absolutely. I'll apply for one of those help physicians. There you go. You got it. Awesome.
MG: 07:15 Would you like to ask me today?
MP: 07:17 You know, you have an extraordinary history, so helping businesses and I'd like to just share a little bit of that, that little bit of that journey to becoming one of the world's most respective authorities on small business.
MG: 07:31 Well, it, it's really very interesting in one sentence, um, you know, all of my life it's been looking for what is called the holy grail, but not so sacred, but constantly asking the question, why am I here? Why am I here? What am I meant to be doing? Why aren't I doing it? What would it feel like if I were doing it? And that's been true all of my life. Um, it's this constant question and this constant question and I went from doing just ordinary things, but having had an extraordinary impact from the people who I managed to bump into from my saxophone teacher to my in sales manager at Encyclopedia Americana, to the guy who taught me how to frame a house and on and on and on. These people, for whatever reason, inspired me and taught me things that I just didn't know and would never have discovered had they not been so rigorous in their pursuit of them.
MG: 08:48 So each of them were true believers in what they do. My saxophone teachers said, I only teach people who want to become the best saxophone players in the world. In order to do that, you gotta practice, you gotta practice what I tell you to practice. You gotta practice how I'd tell you to practice. You gotta practice how long I told you to practice. And then you come up here once a week from Anaheim to Hollywood to get beat up for an hour and then you'd go back and do it again. And that was the invitation to become taught how to play the saxophone when I was 11 years old. That was the first extraordinary experience. And he was the most, um, oh when Cheryl teacher, anybody had ever, I mean, this guy didn't quit. And the truth is he didn't even like me. He didn't like to teach kids.
MG: 09:43 He taught pros, guys who played in the studios, he taught the very best of the best. So I had that experience and that experience I'd made for the next experience and the next experience to the next experience. And as I went through that whole process, it wasn't until, um, really in mid-life then I was interested in business at all. And that's one I'm very close to. The friend of mine, um, Guy who married my younger sister, my brother in law asked for him to come visit one of his high tech clump companies, clients because he couldn't convert leads that aces ad agency was creating for and to sales. And I looked at ace and I should, the paid side, I don't know anything about high tech and I don't know anything about business, so how can I help them? And they said, you know more than you think kids who just come visit with them, man.
MG: 10:46 And that was the experience I had in which the Enos was actually born. I sat with that guy, the CEO of that company. He asked me, what do you know about my business? Nothing. What do you know about my product? Less than that. How can you possibly help me? Haven't a clue, but Ace thinks I can. Ace took off for an hour, so we're stuck with each other. Let's find out. And I just began to ask him questions and just began to ask questions. I just listened to the answers. I listen to the answers. I began to realize this guy had a serious problem and what I suddenly understood is that his serious problem is he didn't understand what I had learned. And that is that selling is the system. Now, I don't know why I never associated that knowing that truth with business for some reason, I just never thought about the business of it.
MG: 11:48 I just thought about the work of it. But selling is a system and I told him that showing is the system. Your problem comes from the fact that you haven't truly created a system for doing what you do, and that's why you're unable to convert the leads that he’s created for you. First of all, the leads that he's created for you haven't been created for the sales process that must follow. Those leads have been created for the product you're selling. And so what you need to do is think about the process, which is really only a system over time. And you'll be getting to see that heck, a kid could sell your product with the bright system. And that's when the whole thing was triggered. You said to me, well, do you know how to do that? And my answer was, sure. Anybody can figure that out. And he said, well, I can't. Why don't you do it? So when he's picked me up, yes we, what happened? I said, Bob just hired me. He simply means he hired me as a consultant, a sales consultant, to invent his sound system for him so he can convert the leads that you're going to be creating for age was astonished because he said, yeah, but you don't know anything about his product. You don't know anything. And Ace. That's what I told you before we started this process. And that was the beginning of emails.
MP: 13:24 Wow.
MG: 13:25 So that was the beginning of EMS. I began to work with Bob on bubs. This is not in Bob's business to invent the selling system, but eventually, turn Bob's business completely around, but also turned Ace’s advertising agency, complete the around because suddenly saw something that he'd never seen before. And then another client, another client, and then another client didn't know. The process of doing that began to realize this is universal. This isn't just about high tech or wasn't about furniture, wasn't about restaurant, wasn't about it, was about everything. It was true for every single client. He's had an h neighbor, sod and his clients never saw it. And I came to the realization that in fact I just discovered something that was rare.
MP: 14:23 Hmm.
MG: 14:24 And so I decided to go off him
MG: 14:26 to do test that. And that was the beginning of all of it.
MP: 14:36 it's a, it's, I, I do remember the story from your books, uh, but hearing it firsthand, certainly a few things. It's amazing just how one's life unfolds and you, you see something you've never seen before. It's an epiphany or an awakening to something. But as well, just the story has so much message and the story around building a system-dependent business and, and this concept of working on your business. Super Valuable. And I think that leads to the great next question here, which is, you know, so many businesses don't have systems and have implemented these philosophies. And so, you know, in your opinion, what do you think the major barriers are that prevent people from implementing your philosophies?
MG: 15:25 So the one and only obstacle to implementing that mindset or that philosophy is the absence of the entrepreneur, the creator, the Imagineer as well. Disney calls, um, an entrepreneur calls that individual who sees through different eyes what's waiting to be seen, but as missing for most people. And it's that bookkeepers are so hopeless quad pup and doing it, doing it, doing it, don't they don't think about the looseness of it. They think about the work of it. And so the theme is, is the entrepreneurial myth, which is the core of everything I just shared with you. What I discovered in every one of those small businesses way back then, at the very beginning, pop and Jody and BM and Marilyn and so forth and so on, is that they weren't entrepreneurs. They were technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure, meaning they went out on their own because they knew how to do the work and they decided they're going to do the work on their own for themselves so they can become their own boss and take home all of the money and only after some period of time we can discover, wait a minute, something's wrong the year.
MG: 16:54 What is it? Well, what they presume it to be is that they've got too much work to do and they can't find good people to do that work. But in reality, it is not that they have too much work to do or that they can't find and keep good people to do that work. If they don't understand the work from the top down, they only do the work from the bottom up.
MP: 17:20 Hmm.
MG: 17:21 And because they do the work from the bottom up, they're caught up in this Midwest. That's the old farmers for the trees syndrome. And so every single bookkeeper listening to us right now simply needs to understand that this completely new world waiting for them out there and that world is so much more abundant than the world there were kind of stemmed to, but it's not the world of a bookkeeper. It's where all the bookkeeping enterprise and that bookkeeping enterprise is something stunningly we markably different than simply doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. Busy, busy, busy, busy as I've spoken about in old e myth books.
MP: 18:14 Absolutely a bang on. And it just leads us to the next question, which is in my head was, you know, how do we interrupt? How do we interrupt that? And you started to allude to that, that there's, there's something, first of all, it's exciting because there's something beyond the morass beyond the doing it, doing it, doing it, this enterprise that you're speaking of. And let's talk a little bit about the book you wrote with Debbie Roberts and Peter Cook called Myth Bookkeeper. And you know, what can bookkeepers expect? What kind of journey are they going to go on with you, Debbie and Peter?
MG: 18:50 Well, the wonderful truth about it is when you ask what can you do to et cetera and so forth that you've already done it with the publication of the myth bookkeeper, why most bookkeeping businesses don't work and what to do about it. Would the publication of your new book telling the story of Debbie and what she and Peter went through the process of inventing a great company, whether it's an agreed Chubb. Once you have done that, then it's simply a question of continually, continually, continually taking every bookkeeper out here, unblocked planet through that story, through that process, we did that the very beginning. You know when, when E-myth was the Michael Thomas Corporation. When I just left a and started a new business, I started with a guy who ace had brought in to replace me as his ad agency and as the guy who learned what I was doing, he asked me where I was going and I said, well, I'm going to go start a business doing this. And he said, I want to go with you.
MG: 20:10 We blindside that said, I want to go with you. And we did and we created the Michael Thomas Corporation. Now, what do you do to get a bookkeeper to pay attention? Well, the Michael Thomas Corporation, we did a seminar after we had many, many different ways. We went out in the street knocking on doors. We, we sold it for this, we sold it for that. We did this, we did that. But effectively the most powerful thing we did way back then, and I'm talking about starting out in 1977 so this a long time ago, one down the street invited people to a free seminar, not just any people, owners, owners only, and we invited them to a seminar in the seminar was called key frustrations in a small and growing business or what to do about them. And then that seminar which I created and I actually performed until we replaced me with all the people who did the seminar instead of Michael Gerber in that seminar, I would say welcome to keep frustrations in a small and growing business and what to do about them.
MG: 21:22 I'm Michael Lee Gerber, I'm neat. I'm the co-founder of Michael Thomas Corporation. We call ourselves a business development firm and when you think business development, you typically think of sales. The business development guy in a company is the sales guy. He's the one who gets new business. But when we speak about business development, we speak about it literally. It's the development of a business. And what we've discovered is really truly remarkable that most people who own an app or it's their own business, have no idea why they experienced the frustrations. Favorite con, they think it's because they can't find good enough people. They think it's because they can't, don't have enough capital. They think because of the competition, they think about this and they think about that and all of the reasons that we've ever been given, all the frustrations that everybody experiences. But he, right now at the outset of this seminar, I want to tell you that in fact, none of those frustrations matter one day because they're not the problem. They're only the result of the problem. The problem is and will always be and has always been the people sitting in this room. So what's the problem? Your road, the reason,
MG: 22:59 Sure. Experiencing your frustration and what I'm going to do is share with you the price you're paying for it, how to make the difference. And that started to shed the norm.
MG: 23:18 So you understand the only way you will get a bookkeeper, a chiropractor or a heart surgeon, a software guy or hardware
MG: 23:30 guy, any human being on earth who owns his or her own small business. The only way you'll get their attention is to hit them right between the eyes with the truth of it, and that's what we did. That's why I call myself the chief aggravator. Hmm. Because you've got to shock people into awareness that in fact, every single bookkeeper on the planet out there independently in business, what they call a business but isn't really a business at all to job. Every single one of them need to be woken up and that's what the book will do a little bit of, and that's what your book will do. A little bit of that to be an emotional awakening. It's got to come to realize the price they're paying for doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it for doing the job they do so dutifully for keeping busy doing the job they do so beautifully, you've got to wake them up to understand the price they're paying for that.
MG: 24:42 That's a completely different world. Right. They're right where they are and they don't see it at all. So your job, our job is to get them to see it. My new book, which will be published, um, knock on wood in December of 2016 not that far, but that's close. It's called beyond the e myth, the evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1000. And essentially what I'm saying, every single human being who believes why do own their own business or already does own their own business, that there's one absolutely clear outcome. That's the outcome your mum experienced had she not gone to work on her little restaurant was a restaurant, right? That's right. Little beast. Joe, you got it. Yeah. Little Bistro had she not gone to work on that little Bistro to turnkey that little beach drill so she could manage that little bs drone to a degree that she had never been able to manage it before.
MG: 25:54 Had she not done that, she would've never been able to sell it the way she had. And so everybody you eye, every single one of us in business has to be trained to think about our exit strategy. I really brilliant guy in Australia who wrote a book on exit strategies and I had a conversation just a little bit ago and he tells a story in his book about how he had built a small business. He and his partners and they went out to get a valuation of the business, but it was today and the valuation came back from south hundred and $47,000 that's what was worth today. It looks at valuation, said, we just spend five years of her life building this thing and you're telling me it's only worth $147,000 that we mark a plea. They then sold that company only about 18 months later for $7,000,800 and some odd thousand dollars.
MP: 27:12 Wow. Remarkable. What
MG: 27:13 the world was the difference between the professional valuation and the price. The guy who bought it was willing to pay for it. The difference was the difference in their strategy. Meaning they talk in a completely different way when they went out to position their company to the prospective buyer and that positioning made all the difference. I'm saying that's true for every single bookkeeper you have, every single individual who owns a small company you've ever met. In fact, it's that strategy going to work on it, but in this case, going to work on it rigorously in a completely different way than most people would tell you. And that's what our focus is now. Pairing Your Company for Sale, erector company for sale and the way you think that just the way you do and the way you do that makes all the difference in the world.
MP: 28:27 I'm sure that your book is going to be bought by every single listener on this podcast because it is. I mean, it's brilliant. And what a great story and I, I'll, I'll be interested to, to read the book that you're talking about from Australia and look forward to your upcoming book.
MG: 28:45 You got it.
MG: 28:46 And it's, it's interesting Michael too, because you know, one of the great books that were written, the seven habits of highly effective people, I think the last secret or start a secret, it's a habit the seventh habit is thinking with the end in mind. Yup. And so this is, this is it
MG: 29:03 and obvious. I mean it's so obvious, isn't it? The minute somebody says the obvious, um, you begin to see the obvious, the reality is that obvious was there to see before anybody ever identified it as one of the seven whatevers.
MP: 29:19 You got it, you go at it. And I think what's interesting is how so many businesses, like you say, they're in, they're in their seizure doing it, doing it, doing it. They just live, maybe in a fantasy about the possibility of, well, I'm just going to sell this and it's worth, you know, how do they even evaluate or value what it's worth? It certainly not measures it on their time, blood, sweat and tears. And so the impact I think you're going to have and what this impact that this even conversation will have on our listeners is the value of that time to just think about selling the business and what you want to sell up for and becoming an, uh, an expert in doing your research and becoming educated around how you can maximize the sale of your business. Think about the return on that investment of time, the 18 months, 18 months they went from, what was it, one four, one 7 million, 7 million, and what was it like a, an hour or an hour, a thought of an hour to think we need to think about this differently. I mean, that's a pretty darn good ROI.
MG: 30:25 Very, very cool. Well, then they came to the realization that the buyer or the who the buyer was, was critical. And we all know about the strategic buyer. The buyer is critical because the value is created by the buyer in the buyer's mind because the seller has built the product, called his business with that buyer in mind. And so suddenly this business became extremely valuable to a buyer whose own business was going to be affected positively by the acquisition of that business. So the question becomes then, so who is going to value from the acquisition of your company and what's the value that your, the acquisition of your company it's going to provide to their company? And one of the key decision-makers and that is does it have the ability to scale? So if your company hasn't the ability to scale, that means to grow, to replicate like McDonald's.
MG: 31:40 If your company doesn't have the ability to scale, then it doesn't have that great, um, Donald you perceived by the potential acquisition partner or acquire of your company. It's got to be able to scale. You've got to be able to replicate. It can't depend upon you, can't depend by Michael Palmer can depend on Michael Gerber can't depend upon any of the people, Deborah or whatever can't depend upon you. It has to depend upon the system. This is how we do it here. Because once that's done, then it's scalable. 20 Times, 50 Times a thousand times, 200,000 times, 1000 times like McDonald's did.
MG: 32:35 So that's the power of that model, the turn
MG: 32:40 key models that, so exclusion when it's applied in an
MG: 32:48 industry in a, in a business and an enterprise and a job that is not ever thought to be like that. You can't do that here because so dependent upon our people and our people are experts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's always the need inhibitor. That's always the obstacle to being able to think this way. Yeah. You can't do that here. Yeah. But we're different. Yeah. But our market is more sophisticated. Yeah. But and on and on and on and on. And I'm just saying that's the great opportunity. Once you can see that obstacle, simply step around it and say, yes, but what if we could? Because if we could, can you see the incredible before the end, she Asian that's created between what we do and what everybody else does.
MP: 33:45 That's fantastic, Michael. I mean, I've got all sorts of thoughts are going through my head on multiple levels as I am not surprised. Just in terms of my own business and the work that I do. And, uh, it's, it's, it's fantastic. And I've got a couple more questions and then one and then I want to talk about your, the course, which I'm a program that you've recently launched that I'm taking now and I want you to share about that, that program. But before that, I just, I think it's an interesting, uh, bookkeepers are in an interesting position and I think there's an opportunity that gets missed a little bit here if for them. And that is there they are small business owners and they work for small business owners in a very intimate, a very important component of their business. And I'm trying to think what you called it in email mastery is the um, the financial leader. Yeah.
MG: 34:39 It's a natural leader.
MP: 34:39 The financial leader is that they have an a, they have an up, they have an opportunity to be pushing forward this whole concept of a system for their customers and helping them spur on the financial leader, which increases their value in eyes of, of the owner. And it makes a difference for the businesses. And the employees that work for those businesses. And so I just want your take on that.
MG: 35:04 Well, let me give you my take on that. Let me tell you the obstacle, the barrier to what you've just described, which also obviously is the positioning for the opportunity that you've just described. A bookkeeper is never thought of as a leader, a bookkeeper. In many businesses, this isn't even thought of as an important bookkeeper just as a job they've got to get done. In fact, the vast majority of small business owners where most bookkeepers work, um, don't even pay attention to the books, meaning the output of the bookkeeper. So the books, the financial information, um, the income statement, whatever isn't thought to be by unfortunately the vast majority of small business owners key to the decision making that they do. In short, they don't even value the information. So if they don't value the information because they've never utilized the information for truly operating the business in a more effective manner, that how can they possibly value the person who brings them that information.
MG: 36:34 The only thing every bookkeeper will experience is if they don't get the books done on time. If the owner can't complete his tax return on time because the bookkeeper failed in some way to fulfill their responsibility, then the bookkeeper gets attention. Otherwise, the bookkeeper doesn't get attention at all. Now the other piece of that puzzle is that because most book bookkeepers aren't leaders, they've never learned about leadership and so they don't perform a leadership won't Lin relationship with their clients. And that calls for a whole slug of repositioning. We positioning in the mind of the bookkeeper repositioning in the mind of the small business owner. And that's what we were talking about when I talked about key frustrations in a small and growing business. If I were speaking to bookkeepers at that seminar, meaning bookkeepers who own their own bookkeeping practice, I would be saying identical, the very same thing I'm saying to you right now. How does it feel to be invisible? You follow me?
MP: 37:55 Oh, Man you know, just to the T. Yeah, and it's, it's, I think you unpack that so well to help our listeners get what they're up against. And really anyone who's listening to this really, is that a precipice of extreme change in their industry and their business when they get that, what you just said, they will change their enterprise, their business, their, their incomes forever.
MG: 38:27 Absolutely. But you understand that the challenge,
MG: 38:31 massive challenge here we have a, we have a massive challenge. This is, this is not an
MG: 38:36 individual issue. This is a, an industry Gospel industry issue that they're up against it. Yes.
MG: 38:45 And that's the opportunity. She, you have the opportunity to completely alter that reality, but it chased slugfest because it comes with a shift of consciousness being called for. But most people simply can't wake up long enough to experience. So you become, in my terms, the chief aggravator in your industry, you'd become the one who's telling the story, which essentially is saying, guys, this whole thing is changed. The game is different. The game is completely different than the one you entered into when you started out in quotes as a bookkeeper. The worlds completely different plays for you today and tomorrow it's even gonna be that much more different because it's intelligent systems are determined to take over every mechanical role that every human being has in the work that they do as robots, doled cars.
MG: 40:02 What do you think is going to happen in your business? Welcome to the 21st century. You better believe it.
MG: 40:16 Wow. So I'm, yeah, I'm simply saying that that's your message. That's your story. And it's not just become a better technician. May need to work better is that
MG: 40:26 that completely relate to the function that's being performed and the impact that it will have, should have, could have on the people who depend upon them. So you need to become consumers centric, not work-centric. And consumer-centric means that you must take on the role of the chief aggravator with your small business squad software is doing what you accustomed yourself to do. Now how do you lead the use of that to better inform a business owner about the decisions he or she has to make? So you see, we need to become all more strategic as the bookkeeper on the planet needs to become more strategic, needs to become a financial operational leader to brings an awareness of consciousness, of decision making to the operation of a small company. If that company is going to survive, let alone if that company's going to thrive, anybody can pick up that metal. You understand that Michael?
MP: 41:54 I do.
MP: 41:55 It's just there to be a dad and it's just waiting to be at. Anybody can pick up that mantle. But once that metal is picked up, it's going to require an enormous shift in the consciousness of the person who does that. And when I speak of consciousness, I mean just that human consciousness awareness, understanding related this.
MG: 42:20 Yeah, it's, it's really exciting. And I think it's, there are some big shoes to fill in terms of taking that mantle and taking forth and being that leader. And I think the work that we're doing, I mean that's what this podcast is all about, is to inspire that in and our listeners too to do that. And it's, it's such a, it's such an honorable role to play and it's, there's so much opportunity for the, the business owners in the, the families of the employees that work for those, those businesses.
MG: 42:51 who listens. It's just an extreme opportunity for everyone who doesn't. It's a tragedy.
MP: 42:58 ABS. Absolutely. Bang on. So, Michael, this is officially our longest podcast and I am so grateful for your generosity of your time and I know that you know, with the years of work that you've done, we could probably go for hours and hours. Let's talk about how people can get more of you and more of the work that you're doing in this message that you have. And I think and talk about the course. I know you've got that new book coming out. We're going to have a link to that. We're going to make sure that's on our website for people to get quick access to. But tell us about the course. I'm begun to take the course w to tell us about it and why you started it and what people can expect to get from it.
MG: 43:41 Well, the course is the next step. It's taking what I've done, all the work I've done and condensed it into a very clear process. Um, in the e-Myth work that we have done, we have, we've taught people how to do just an immense number of things. And I came to this realization, I mean maybe it's the fact that I just turned 80. I just came to this realization, I've got to cut through the chaff. I've got to get right down to the heart of it. I've got to truly provide a small business owner with a path that in fact can be implemented by anyone, must be implemented by anyone, would the ultimate outcome being the sale of a bank company. And so we that, and then I wrote the script for the course, which became a video three and a half hours long, designed to do two things to inspire any bookkeeper right now listening to us and to teach any bookkeeper listening to us right now about the absolutely essential steps needed, step one, step two, et Cetera, et Cetera, et Cetera, to build your company for sale.
MG: 45:03 Now I call it from a company of one to company 1000 biggest effectively. I'm saying, we're not going to fix the company you've got. We're going to start it. Do so. Just imagine it being a skunkworks where you're going to actually start something brand new and you're going to begin it from scratch. How would you do that? The course explains that process. The course is in fact and provides the tenants that are being communicated in the new book that I'll publish, but the course is an emotional journey to a process that absolutely is critical for you to go from where you are to where you never thought you would be. Step one is the dream. Step two is the vision. Step three is the purpose. Step four is the mission. Step five is the job. Step six is to practice. Step seven is the business.
MG: 46:04 Step eight is the enterprise. I walked you through that entire process from starting out with the dreaming room as I call it, a dream, a vision, a purpose, a mission. The True Soul of an entrepreneur is a dreamer, a thinker, a storyteller, a leader. I need you to understand who those people are. They live within you. You just don't talk to them very much. Gosh, you're so busy doing it, doing it. Donut donut. So step over here. Sit Down with me in the course and let me lead you through the process. So you'll be able to see that it's actually that a process and a process is nothing other than the system over time. Let me walk you through it. Once you're done with that, then you can graduate from the corps and enroll in the program. And the program is the step by step process of implementing the course right there in the company you own by completely transforming it.
MG: 47:12 So that's good news. You don't have to fix your broken business. I say broken business simply because they all are and invent the new business that is going to prepare you for sale. And when I say that, understand, I know that nobody who owns a business even thinks about preparing for a sale. There's so busy thinking about income, they don't have the tongue or the intentions to think about equity. So my role now is to get you to think about with e the value of what you own, the assets you're going to create rather than income. The earnings that you're going to do between now and then. So the entirety of it. My goal is to think about equity, not about income while you're making a living, let's go over here and build what you're about to sell. And once you put on those two hats, the hat of the income seeker and the hat of the equity seeker, you understand the trick. That's absolutely essential. You have to be able to do two things at once. And so that's what the courses and the course is only $295 and all people have to do is say, Michael Palmer. I want to get the course and anybody listening to you just coming to Michael Palmer and say, I want to get the course and Michael, you'll then send us those names and we'll get the course to everybody you said to us.
MG: 48:51 Absolutely. And we'll
MG: 48:52 We’ll want them to come through you, not directly to us because then this relationship, you're a colleague of ours and we're a colleague of yours.
MP: 49:02 Oh, it's brilliant, Michael and it's our pleasure to do it and we'll definitely have the link and all the information that our listeners will need to get access to that. And uh, I can say just from knowing and working with and being a partner of Debbie Roberts, uh, and pure bookkeeping, uh, when Peter Cook handed her your book all those years ago and she read it and she got it and she implemented it, she built the, she put on the income hat and she put on the equity hat and made very good money from her business and then eventually accepted the business at a very, very good, uh, amount of money that she had built all those years. And she was, she was rewarded on both hats, which is what I think people need to be aware of and what they can get by the sounds of it from the course. And like I said, I've just begun to take the course and I'm already enjoying your monologues, Michael, this has been extraordinary. I want to thank you so much for being on the show.
MG: 50:03 Oh my delight, Michael, and thank you. And of course, we're going to have a deep, deep relationship in the years ahead. I've promised my wife that I lived to 160 too, so I'm going to be busy. We'll be busy together truly with both those hats in mind that the income creator, the head of the equity creator, and something magical will occur. So thank you.
MP: 50:33 Thank you, Michael. So that's another episode of the successful bookkeeper podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com/questions, give us some feedback, let us know what you think. And of course, you can get all of the things that we've talked about at links and information on how to get in touch with and work with all of Michael's work and see and read about all of his books at thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com under the episodes. Just search for Michael's episode. And, uh, you'll have all of that there. So thank you for listening. We really appreciate it and we'll see you next time.
