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There are so many opportunities how can one choose?

Written by: Michael Gerber

Article Overview: Every time I lead a Dreaming Room® this question comes up. It’s usually asked by someone who has difficulty making up his or her mind. Who is so overwhelmed by the flood of thoughts that run through the mind as to be completely incapacitated by the sheer weight of them? At least that’s how it feels when you’re inside that person, as we all are from time to time. I call it the Reluctant Entrepreneur. I talk about that syndrome a lot in my latest book, E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Business.

There are so many opportunities how can one choose?

Every time I lead a Dreaming Room® this question comes up. It’s usually asked by someone who has difficulty making up his or her mind. Who is so overwhelmed by the flood of thoughts that run through the mind as to be completely incapacitated by the sheer weight of them? At least that’s how it feels when you’re inside that person, as we all are from time to time. I call it the Reluctant Entrepreneur. I talk about that syndrome a lot in my latest book, E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Business.

But, as you’ll read in E-Myth Mastery, the overwhelm has nothing really to do with the bewildering number of opportunities; it has more to do with the terror of actually pursuing the one you’ve already got – the business you’ve already created which is just idling there at the curb waiting to grow.

It came to me like a shock. Why is it that over the past 30 years having worked with tens of thousands of small business owners to help them transform their dysfunctional business into an incredibly functional one, they rarely go on to grow it beyond the very first one?

Why is it that after successfully prototyping their business, what I call building their franchise prototype, very, very few of them actually follow through and franchise it, or open up 3 or 5 or 10 more?

They could, you know.

They have already done the hard work; the work of building their turnkey business operating system.

So why don’t they grow?

As I said, it came to me as a shock when I looked at that question in the light of the work I’m doing now. The work I call The Dreaming Room®. The reason they don’t grow the way they could is because there is no vision of growth. Let me say that again: there is no vision of growth.

And that’s why I call them reluctant entrepreneurs. Because they are reluctant to take what they perceive as the risk of losing what they’ve worked so hard to build to go where they’ve never gone before. To scale their business as it is ready to do, despite the fact that it is simply waiting to be done.

And that, dear friends, is why I am writing you this manifesto.

To let you know, time and time and time again, that the reason for building your single operating business into what Ray Kroc called, “The most successful small business in the world,” is to grow it.

Why else would you do all that work?

Why else would you go to work ON it as opposed to just IN it if you weren’t getting ready to reap all of the exciting benefits of scaling your business, of letting it grow?

Don’t you realize that if you can build one to work, you can much more easily build 10 to do the very same thing? And, in the process, expand your reach exponentially while getting prepared for the fulfillment of every entrepreneur’s dream…the realization of your exit strategy?

And that’s going to be my mantra from this day forward. Did you get your prototype done? Are you ready to scale it? Are you ready to reap the benefits of working ON it so you no longer have to work IN it, so you can begin to pay yourself back for everything you’ve invested in it…and more?

Have you?

Are you ready to?

Do you need my help?

I’m ready whenever you are.
Just let me know.

Here I am at the end of the first night of my Leed’s Dreaming Room®, getting excited all over again.

Aint life grand? Could it be any better than this?!

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Article Tags: business operating system, disciplines, dreaming room, e myth, entrepreneur, flood, franchise, neve, prototype, risk, sheer weight, shock, small business owners, tens of thousands, terror, turnkey business, world class business



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