Concept
The entrepreneurial seizure
The entrepreneurial seizure is Gerber's term for the moment a technician decides to work for themselves, 'why am I doing this for someone else?', carrying the fatal assumption that understanding the technical work means understanding a business that does that work.
Gerber's E-Myth, the entrepreneurial myth, is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs. Most are started by technicians, the cook, the physiotherapist, the designer, in a moment of frustration with an employer. The seizure is not the problem; it is the ordinary way a business begins. The problem is the assumption that follows: that the craft is the business. A business that does the work also has to find customers, quote, invoice, plan, keep records, and decide where it is going, and the technician has never done any of those. Naming the seizure lets the founder see, on day one, that the business will need a manager and an entrepreneur as well, and that those roles will not appear on their own.
A real-life example
A pastry chef leaves a hotel kitchen after a bad week, sure that she can run a bakery because she can bake. Baking is the part she knows. Pricing, ordering, delivery, tax and the decision about a second bake day are the business, and none of them were in the kitchen.
How to use it
- 1Recognise the moment for what it is: the start, not the qualification.
- 2Write the parts of the business that are not the craft, and admit which you have never done.
- 3Plan the manager's and the entrepreneur's hours from the first week.