I launched my present company, E-Myth Worldwide, in 1977 to transform the way small business owners do the work of growing their companies.

Since then we have coached, trained and taught over 50,000 small business owners in more than 145 countries on how to transform their business to produce consistently better results.

What we learned from those 50,000-plus owners could fill a dozen books.

But, the gist of it all is simple: every small business is started with a dream, and persists or fails each step along the way from that point on given the consequences of that dream in the reality of the business created. The business either worked, or it didn’t. The business either satisfied the owner’s wish, or it didn’t. The business was either a safe place to be, or a dangerous place to be. Whatever became true about the business, the Second Dream was created in reaction to the circumstances. What we discovered is that the dreaming most of us do is incremental, as opposed to strategic. The Incremental Dream has less to do with a macroscopic view…the whole of my life…than it does with a microscopic view…the next step in my life. This type of Dreaming is forged more from the dissatisfaction I’m experiencing in my life…the job I hate…the relationship which imprisons me…the money not being enough…the work being a drag…as opposed to being forged by a desire in my life…I wish to walk the ends of the earth…I wish to climb the highest mountains…I wish to be loved and love like the greatest lovers who ever lived….not because I’m not being loved…not because I’m stuck in the flatlands…not because I hate my life…but because I’m moved by something bigger than myself, and can’t ignore it…it’s with me all of the time. It sings to me. It is always present in me.

Thus, the Strategic Dream, effects my entire being in many ways too numerous to understand. Call it The Big Dream. Few of us have ever had such a Dream, and if we did, we very quickly either turned it into an Incremental Dream, or threw it away as unrealizable.

In the case of our Technician, The First Dream is the one that creates the business. This is the Dream of the Technician; the one which says I want to become my own boss, doing work I love to do for myself, rather than work I have to do for someone else. This is the dream an employee has to become his own boss. It sounds like this: “I want to become my own boss. I want to get rid of the job, and replace it with work I enjoy doing, doing it for myself, not someone else.” In this case, The Job represents constraint. Ease in the Job – “I’m good at this, but I’m not being paid enough.” – represents possibility. So, in this state, the employee is extremely effective at the work he or she does for someone else, and is confident that he or she could do this work for herself and if she did could earn significantly more money while having more free time than she currently has (I hate having to report to a boss and have him control how much I earn; I’m not being paid enough for the work I do; I’m not being appreciated enough for the contributions I make to the business I work for); less aggravation (because she doesn’t have to report to a Boss who doesn’t know nearly enough about what she does, and therefore is continually making stupid decisions which I would never do if I were in his position;) And so, the Technician is moved to act, to start out on her own, to form her own business, to do the work she loves to do in a business of her own. That is the nature of the First Incremental Dream: to go out on my own and to be Free! It is born of the dissatisfaction of working for someone else, of being constrained by the employer and being very good at what she does. At the singular moment when the opportunity presents itself (something happens on the outside that is propitious; something happens on the inside that is extremely negative) the Decision is made. It is almost as though there was not a decision made, but an act moving one forward. First I was here, and then I was there. There’s no way in most cases that one can explain it. It simply felt like the right thing to do. Talking to hundreds of thousands of people who had made that choice, the majority of the answers to the question: So why did you take this step? The answer almost always was…”It felt like the right thing to do.”

Incremental Dreams are dreams that take us from a position we don’t like to a position we imagine to be better. There are mega-millions of people in the world idly dreaming about becoming independent and living the good life...moving to America…starting their own business…going on American Idol…all of which is to become someone we’re not because the someone we are hates being who we are, and knows deep down inside that there’s a better life to be had if only.

So, the First Dream moves us from where we are to where we want to be instead. The Technician goes from being a disgruntled and effective employee to being self employed, or the owner of his or her own business.

And the moment that happens, he or she has realized his Dream! It’s that fast. And that’s how you know it is the product of Incremental Dreaming; it happens the moment you take the step. First I was employed by someone, and then I was self-employed. I am now living my Dream! But, are you? Of course you are, because you have a business card which says: Murray’s Automotive. And who works in Murray’s Automotive? Why, of course, Murray! He has his Dream. And then he goes to work, and a second Dream is created. Murray suddenly dreams of having more business than he currently has. Murray imagines earning twice as much as he is currently earning. Murray dreams about moving from Not Enough Business, to an Awful Lot of Business. And, of course, Murray is willing to do whatever it takes to produce an Awful Lot of Business. To work 24 hours a day if need be. To work 7 days a week if need be. To burn the candle at both ends if need be. And, of course, the business begins to grow, and Murray is on his way to producing an Awful Lot of Business; he realizes Dream Number Two. Which, of course, as we see this unfolding we realize that Dream Number Two is also an Incremental Dream because it’s born out of I’m not producing enough business to pay the rent and to pay me and to pay all of the other payables I’ve got to pay…so I’m actually making less money now than I was making as an employee for my old boss, but, that won’t last long if I grow my business to the point where I’m doing an Awful Lot of Business, so the dissatisfaction with the circumstances he is faces with as a result of pursuing his First Incremental Dream creates his Second Incremental Dream, which, of course, in most cases like this, is realized almost immediately. For when Murray commits to working harder than he has ever worked in his life before…and doing it for almost nothing…he creates the space for all that business to roll in…”If you’re willing to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and charge me less than the competition” Murray’s new customers delightedly say, “Well, of course you can have my business!” And Murray’s business grows and grows and grows to the point where he is now faced with another problem he hadn’t anticipated: He’s got more business than he can handle himself! Which leads Murray to his Third Incremental Dream; a dream of getting free of all the work he has unwittingly created, a Dream of getting more help. A Dream of hiring people to eliminate his distress at being the chief cook and bottle washer in his company. A dream of getting back his life. And that Dream is immediately realized in that Murray does hire someone, a bookkeeper, or a receptionist, or a service manager, or a salesperson. Whatever is bothering Murray is what Murray does. Murray’s dreaming is always about eliminating distress. Which is the core component of the incremental dream. The incremental dream continues like this: The business doesn’t work, the owners do. And they’re doing the wrong work. They’re working in their business, not on it. They’re technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. They made the erroneous assumption that because they know how to do the work of the business, they know how to build a business that does that work. So the electrician becomes an electrical contractor. The lawyer opens up a law practice. The cook opens up a restaurant. The result is devastating to most. Instead of a business, what they have created is a job. The worst job in the world. Because they’re working for a lunatic. In short, the technician suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure has a dream, that by creating his own business he will be free…free to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it. Free to make as much money as he wants. Free to take time off when he wants it, to live exactly how he wants without any restrictions imposed by the boss in the job he had before he went out on his own. What he finds is something quite different. Now, his business is the boss. His customers are the boss. The bank is the boss. His employees are the boss. Everybody wants something he now needs to learn how to give. The demands of a small business can be excruciating for a small business owner who hasn’t learned how to accommodate them. What also happens is that the dream that started his business becomes a nightmare.

The First Dream was to become his own boss. (The Technician’s Dream…Freedom from the Job.)…The business is started.

The Second Dream was to create more revenue than he has ever had before. The business becomes more complicated

The Third Dream is to create more control by hiring people. The owner begins to lose control.

The Fourth Dream is to make the business smaller. More people means less control and increased costs. Get small again. Going back to the beginning, The Fifth Dream is to find a different business. This business is not much fun, and the work is killing me. Find something you “love to do!”

The Sixth Dream is to grow the new business. And the cycle begins all over again.

* * * * *

In looking at the reality of this scenario one could come to the conclusion that the reason most small businesses fail is because the dream was unrealistic; it was too big. In fact, the opposite is true. The reason most small businesses fail is because the dream was too realistic, it wasn’t big enough. To become your own boss is insufficient because the moment you start out on your own you’ve fulfilled your dream. The minute you start your own business you are your own boss. The question is: Now What? What’s the next dream? Now that you are your own boss, what do you do about it? What’s the dream you have for your business? At this stage, the dream becomes to grow. To get more business. And you do, and you achieve your dream. Now what? Well the next dream is to create order out of the chaos more business creates for you. And here’s where the Dream begins to falter. Because, as your business grows, you begin to discover how little you really understand about your dream. More business creates more work. More work creates more complexity. More complexity creates a demand for you to understand more than what it takes to make a sale, or fix a transmission, or balance the books. More complexity demands that you learn how to think about complexity, how things work, together, to produce results, seamlessly. More complexity means more things break down. More of your time is spent trying to fix problems. More failures at fixing problems creates more frustration, more doubt, more fear that you’ve gotten into something bigger than you, that you could lose your business unless you get control of your business. At this point the dream turns from growth to getting smaller, getting back to that place where you were happy, where you had a modicum of control, where things were simple, when you had only one job, not three or four, when your job was relatively easy. When you were the boss.

In short, dreaming got us into business, but it was Incremental Dreaming, or what we might call, Next Step Dreaming. ……It was like Mazlow’s hierarchy, which takes us from survival to actualization, from the most essential in life to the most inspiring in life. It has been said that at the bottom of Mazlow’s Pyramid one cannot see what’s above, but from the top of his Pyramid one can see everything below. To see, in this case, means to feel, to understand, to experience. I would argue the case that one can see the top of the pyramid from the bottom; it simply hasn’t enough energy in it to cause us to forget our immediate circumstances. If it were a magnet, the top hasn’t enough power to attract this metal filing I am where I am…I’m simply too far away for it pull me to it. I need to close the distance between myself-where-I-am to myself-where-I-could be in order to be pulled toward my goal much faster. I can only do that through Intentional Dreaming. I can only accomplish that Higher Aim by seeing it, wishing it, Dreaming about it, conceiving of the power of it, the light of it, the Joy of it…what it must be like to become one with it…to reach that higher state of an enlightened human being. To become one with God.

* * * * *

Your dreams change as your circumstances do. First you wanted to become your own boss. Then you became your own boss and wanted to grow. Then you grew and wanted to get control over the increasing chaos. Then you found you didn’t know how to control the chaos and dreamed about order. But to get order you dreamed about getting smaller, because that is where the order is, you surmised. The smaller you got the worse it got; then you dreamed about getting rid of the business. But then you realized you were stuck, that there was no place to go. So you began to dream about doing something else. Then you did something else, and you dreamed about getting bigger. Then you got bigger and began to lose control. Then you dreamed about getting control.

* * * *

What would it mean to dream myself out of my circumstances, to dream intentionally as opposed to referentially? What if I could learn to dream with my whole self, rather than reacting to circumstances I created by one part of myself? What if I could see the entire spectrum of my life and the purpose of it from the very first step.

Enter the role of Intentional Dreaming.

Join us…In The Dreaming Room ®”

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