Just read “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Berber. It’s a great book for anyone who’s starting up a business, and how the reasons that got us into a business might not be the reasons that will propel the business forward. 

He talks about the inner battles between the Entrepreneur, the Technician and the Manager within us. The Entrepreneur is the dreamer, the visionary, the innovator, the risk-taker, who lives in the future; the Manager like control, order, SOPs, details, and worries about the past; the Technician enjoys the work, the craft, and prefers to focus, especially on the present. Most of the time, we start a business because we’re good at something. Baking pies, for example. The Technician (in this case, the baker) loves doing the work, baking pies. This side dominates the conversation, and goes on to start a Technician’s business. Indeed, in the book, the author mentioned that it is rare to have all three personalities in balance. Usually, “the typical small business owner is only 10% Entrepreneur, 20% Manager, and 70% Technician.” 

But unfortunately, the business won’t scale and prosper if we just left the Technician to it. There’s a crucial difference between working for your business versus working on your business. We’ve merely switched jobs instead of creating a business (that can grow beyond the bottleneck of you). 

All these points were just from the first chapter of the book, and already I feel like I’m being schooled hard. Like a slap across the face. Because the Technician’s work was why I went into business. And it continues to be the predominant reason why I work. Because of passion. I enjoy what I do—creating products, coding, designing—and want to continue doing more of it. That’s why I find marketing and monetization difficult to do, because that’s a distraction from the perspective of the Technician. The Technician just wants to focus on one thing, do it really well, enjoy the process, and keep working and not worry about all the other aspects of a business. I see this not just in myself but in many indie makers and entrepreneurs (thanks to communities like Makerlog, WIP and Indie Hackers which makes the whole entrepreneurial journey transparent). Develop that next feature and then another, try this new tech stack, refactor that messy code. But whether it moves the needle on the business objectives, debatable. I’m guilty of it myself.

I guess that’s why I unconsciously felt like I need to institute some habits for marketing and monetization. Only upon reading this book did it provide the bigger picture of the imbalances that I’m trying to correct. I was trying to let the Manager have a stronger voice. But over-doing the Manager has downsides too, especially for someone who’s more Technician and Entrepreneur-oriented, because the Manager imposes boring order on what was once an enjoyable or exciting venture respectively. I think I had over-done the Manager a bit recently, which explains the low energy and slump I feel about my products. I probably started off with 60% Technician, 30% Entrepreneur, and 10% Manager initially, but flipped too much to 60% Manager, 30% Technician, 10% Entrepreneur, all of the time.

It’s all too easy to over-correct into one personality, much harder to juggle the intricate balance of all three.

But what does balance between the Entrepreneur, the Manager and the Technician look like? Each having 33.3%? Of what? Time? Mindspace? 

Or is it more of a seasonal, musical chairs approach? Each personality having their time for a day, week, month or quarter, and then rotate accordingly?

Perhaps the rest of the book will shed light. Must keep reading…