Who Is Michael E. Gerber?
I was born in New Jersey on June 20, 1936. Raised in a Jewish Family, my mother, Helen, my father, Harry, my Grandmother, Bessie, my father’s mother, my older sister, Leah, and my younger brother, Paul, started taking saxophone lessons with a saxophone gifted to me by my uncle. We studied in Newark until my parents told us we were moving to Anaheim, California, where my father was to go to work with my uncle, Albert, my mother’s brother, who owned a furniture store there.
I took a train all the way to California, the whole bunch of us…a train, for goodness’s sake! California was astonishing…so many orange trees! Groves and Grovers, and Groves of them! Something we had never seen before! The sun, the little glowing towns in Orange County, California, where Anaheim sat, directly in the middle of it all!
I was referred to another saxophone teacher, Merle Johnston, who taught in Los Angeles, necessitating me to take a bus there and back every Saturday, to meet with him for a humongous, high-focused hour, unlike any hour I had ever spent before, practicing my embrace or, how I held the saxophone to my mouth, the scales, the scales, the scales, the persistently challenging scales. No, Michael, Merle Johnston would say. Not like that, like this, he would say with his great boozy breath – he drank a quart of beer at every lesson – and before, I think, and for every hour after! Merle Johnston taught some of the most successful saxophonists in the world of jazz, there in Los Angeles, and would from time to time, when I had practiced a particularly difficult piece of music, call one of them up and have me play what I had mastered for them, and then say, yes, he’s only 14 or 16 or whatever age I happened to be at that moment. My music followed me for years after, but not how I believed it would, not professionally, as for whatever reason I got distracted from it and got lost in the direction I took after high school and on to college at UCLA, where I spent a rather dissolute year, until I left to go back to New Jersey, joined the Army, went off to Korea, until my dad had a stroke, and they sent me home, first on leave, and then for good, to go to work to support my mother. I could go on and on... so much to tell, so little to tell, but here we are, thinking, My Goodness, at 88, where in the world did all that go? Back to you later, dear friends. To tell you all the rest of it, that is, if you’re interested!
MICHAEL E. GERBER Now…
Michael E. Gerber is the world’s #1 small business author of 34 books on entrepreneurship and small business management. His New York Times bestseller, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What to Do About It, is utilized in 118 Universities as a foundational entrepreneurial textbook, is translated in 29 languages, and has been utilized in the creation of the curriculum of Michael E. Gerber Companies, ventures Mr. Gerber has founded in order to “Bring the Dream Back to Small Business Worldwide.”
The underlying premise of Mr. Gerber’s books and the business services he and his teams have created is that the vast majority of small businesses fail because of a lack of entrepreneurial leadership. Mr. Gerber’s experience working with tens of thousands of small business clients in 145 countries over four decades has proven this contention to be true: “That most small business owners are “technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure” who have started their business only to create a job for themselves or “to become their own boss,” rather than as entrepreneurs whose desire it is to build and grow a substantial enterprise. To fix that problem and to transform the operating effectiveness of all small businesses - Mr. Gerber’s services focus on changing the owner-client’s point of view by providing them with a new paradigm of organizational growth. Mr. Gerber calls that new paradigm “Going to Work ON™ your business, rather than going to Work IN™ your business®.”
The services of Mr. Gerber’s companies are designed to Transform the Spiritual and Economic reality of any small company. His clients do just that: first, by “starting their business all over again” with “a Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission” commensurate with a robust growth model consistent with that of an entrepreneur; and second, by taking the now entrepreneurial client and his or her revitalized company through a unique process Mr. Gerber calls “innovation, quantification and orchestration” to build the essential systems needed to grow a company that can “work without you, rather than because of you™”, the primary focus of Mr. Gerber’s work.
Meet our People
Luz Delia
President
Meet Luz Delia Gerber, CoFounder | President
Hal Hoffin
Accountant and Advisor
The Legendary Historical Michael E. Gerber Journey and Gift to Humanity for Generations to Come
It was a sunny day when the Unknown became so palpable, which set me up on a Lifetime Journey, one I could have never imagined! All I knew was that selling was a system.
The Birth of E-Myth began taking its form. So our first company was called The Michael Thomas Corporation! I was Michael, and he was Thomas.
We set out to transform small businesses globally. We created our Intention in transforming the lives of small business owners. We were clear: (a link to take the Visitor to access and download our Dreaming Room Manifesto)
Tom and I went to work at The Michael Thomas Corporation to fulfill our Dream, Vision, Purpose, and Mission. We invented what we thought of as The McDonald’s of small business development services.
D: The Dream: To transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide
V: The Vision: To invent the McDonald’s of small business development services
P: The Purpose: To inspire all small businesses to create their Story
M: The Mission: To follow our Mission toward the evolution of their Great Growing Company
Our System was Magical. With a Fax and Modem we coached people globally as we created our first coaching company.
The system progressed, and progressed, and progressed, as we discovered what needed to be done for those we thought of as “The smallest of the small”. It was the most exciting thing I had ever done. One day, a guy sat down in one of my seminars and asked me how I’d like to write a book about it. “Sure!” I said. So he went back to his publisher, and we agreed to do it. “I’ve got a title for it,” he said. “Let’s call it The E-Myth!” “Why The E-Myth?” I asked him. “Because that’s what you guys do,” he answered. And so, The E-Myth book was born. And I went to work ON my first book. And as we did that, we changed the name of The Michael Thomas Corporation to Gerber Business Development Corporation
During that time, Tom left to start his own company, which led us to change the name of The Michael Thomas Corporation to The E-Myth Academy. The E-Myth took hold of everything we did. Folks bought my first book and lauded us with praise and acknowledgment. E-Myth began to grow, and grow, and grow.
People reached out to us from around the world. Holy Moly! And as our clients grew, our staff grew too, and grew and grew and grew.
Thus, The E-Myth Academy was born!
A decade later, it became very clear that one had to “Work ON It, Not IN It”® in your business and that it was essential to capture our learnings into our first book, The E-Myth (link to purchase the hardcover 25th Anniverasary book on our website)
The Entrepreneurial Seizure)
It was time, and Michael knew he was up to something! He knows that people go into business for the wrong reason-we called it The Entrepreneurial Seizure®; read page 11—because you know the Technical work that goes into business, which is a Fatal Assumption. Today, small businesses continue to fail, for the exact reason!
So this book was created on the what and how to build a business that gives its owner more freedom and produces consistent, predictable results.
So, Michael creates a True Masterpiece! TODAY, with over 5 million sales, translated in more than 29 languages globally, used in over 118 Universities, 3 High Schools, a “must read” in many small and large companies, serving people in more than 145 countries. The Love Story Between Michael and Sarah becomes profound for every reader. Enjoy!
- Inc., #1 book for CEOs, 500 fastest-growing companies
- Wall Street Journal, 1 of the top 5 most important business books
- Inc Magazine, a featured and author of weekly articles on small business…
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And a whole bunch of stuff took place as new books followed on the heels of book after book, and as Michael spoke and spoke and spoke around the world, doing it, doing it, doing it.
Our programs transformed, and transformed, and transformed, as we invented the very first small business coaching company on the planet! And as we did, challenges came from every side of the planet. Challenges from emerging coaching companies, from inside our company, from management, from our people, from our outreach, from our in-reach, from what we thought we knew and what we didn’t know. And still, “WORKING ON IT” pursued us with vengeance. It was E-Myth’s religion. But not knowing consumed us. It discovered an immense number of fractures in its management system, its people development and leadership system, and its financial system!
“Fix it!” Became our everyday curriculum. And persistence became our Will! And I wrote and published two more books: The PowerPoint and The E-Myth Manager.
And The E-Myth Revisited continued to blow the corners off the map! Holy Moly became Holy Sh--!
And a whole bunch of stuff took place as new books followed on the heels of book after book, and as I spoke and spoke and spoke around the world, doing it, doing it, doing it.
On Dec 9th, 10th, & 11th, we launched our very first “Live Dreaming Room” with 35 people we met at a Keynote October prior. 63 live events followed over the next 5 years. A Huge Breakthrough!
Reaching the #10 New York Times Business Bestseller list.
2007 ~ We moved from San Francisco to Carlsbad, CA
2007: Now what? New Beginnings
Now what became Michael E. Gerber Companies? My new and fourth and Final Spouse, Luz Delia, is the amazing creature that she was, and she is, and we went to work on the world of “the smallest of the small,” like crazy, to EXPAND the Dream, Vision, Purpose, and Mission in ways E-Myth never did. And we published three dozen other new books: Awakening the Entrepreneur Within, and Beyond The E-Myth, and Making it on your own in America, and Zen and the Art of Small Business, and more, and more, and more
INVITED BY INC. MAGAZINE TO WRITE A WEEKLY COLUMN ON BUSINESS.
2009 ~ The E-Myth Author Vertical Market took form
The CoAuthor is an opportunity for any small business owner who has successfully created a great company and is desirous of growing to grow. They can partner with Michael E. Gerber to create, design, build, and launch The McDonald's Franchise Prototype Vertical Market E-Myth books, like The E-Myth Real Estate Agent, and The E-Myth Veterinarian, and The E-Myth Chiropractor, The E-Myth Bookkeeper, The E-Myth My Home Cleaning Business, our First Franchise Prototype, and more. (For a list, go to CoAuthors Showcase, “Are YOU the One?”
It’s going strong, and we created a Facilitation Program to deliver the New Dreaming Room face-to-face or online with our new product. 100 Souls took us on!
Michael knew that the next step was to design how to build, grow, and launch a business. Beyond the E-Myth takes you through the process of the Job, The Practice, the practice, the business, and the Enterprise.
We created the most spectacular process of them all. We call it The Eightfold Path®. Eight consciously defined steps toward the Evolution of an Enterprise®. The Dream. The Vision. The Purpose. The Mission. The Job. The Practice. The Business. The Enterprise. All to be completed, one step after the other. The logic was irrefutable. How in the world could you create Step Two until you completed Step One? Step Three until you complete Step Two? But, of course, you couldn’t! And coming face to-face with that logic, it became face-to-face with the inevitable. Suddenly, after all this time, Luz Delia and I uncovered The Secret. The Secret underlying the huge and persistent Failure rate of small businesses worldwide and all of the so-called solutions to the small business tragedy. We called it First This Step and Then That. One singular step at a time. “Do it this way or fail!” became the song we sang at Michael E. Gerber Companies, which by now has become known as GERBERWORKS™!
- To date, we have completed 22 CoAuthor Vertical Books
- We are showcasing our CoAuthors to create their McDonald's Franchise Prototype, our dream for the last 15 years!
- June 20, 2024: We Celebrate Michael E. Gerber's 88th Gift of Life!
- We are being acquired by the Perfect Soul to Carry the Torch 50–100 years out.
- We're in the mist of launching “Our Children~~THEIR Future. Foundationcreating Wealth for mine, yours, and all the Children!
Empowering Global Entrepreneurs
DREAM: To transform the state of entrepreneurship worldwide through the successful creation, growth, and sale of millions of new ventures that transform the rate and success of economic growth worldwide.
VISION To invent the McDonald's of entrepreneurial development services through
a vast and growing network of Economic Growth Centers worldwide.
PURPOSE: To successfully inspire, teach, train, coach and mentor the entrepreneurial growth capability of all student-clients to raise the level of success for each beyond anything ever achieved before.
MISSION: To successfully invent, build and implement the necessary array of entrepreneurial development systems and services in the form of events, programs and products required to transform the entrepreneurial capability of all our company's student clients, deliverable at a cost everyone can justify and afford.
Meet Michael E. Gerber
Dubbed the 'World's #1 Small Business Guru' by Inc. Magazine, our founder, Michael E. Gerber, is the author of "The E-Myth Revisited," a New York Times mega-bestseller for two decades running, as well as nine other worldwide best-selling E-Myth books on small business entrepreneurship, leadership, and management.