E-Myth

E-Myth Paper

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber helped me answer many questions I had with starting my own business and to really be able to run a successful business at that. However, I have a lot to learn being a successful entrepreneur. I am in my senior year at BYU and plan on pursuing a professional career in tennis, as well as start my own business. The book helped me to gather more details and information about the situations I will be in, what I have to expect and what I should be aware of personally. Owning your own business and making sure that you do not own your own job, buying yourself a job are lessons this book makes evident and helps us to realize what we need to do to become successful entrepreneurs.

I have little to no experience in running my own business. I have my own side business of stringing tennis rackets, and a want to create my own tennis shop or service that deals with racket customization. Since I owned my own racket-stringing machine at the age of 16 I have strung my own as well as others rackets. I charged ten dollars for the labor on the rackets and than depending on what string they chose they would also be charged for the string. I have always customized my own tennis rackets, and offered the service to others, but they would just pass on the opportunity. In customizing my own rackets, I have seen the difference it can make in ones game. I have just had a hard time getting everyone else to experience customized rackets. Most people are scared of doing it.

Since coming to BYU I have pursued my business as much as I would have liked too. I have been very busy with school, and playing tennis for BYU. However, having this experience though strengthened my will to do something like this after my time at BYU. The book helped me with understanding many different points I had not considered before, which probably will help me to be successful in my career. Especially chapter ten of the book, The Business Development Process, grabbed my attention, because it leads you through the different stages of having a good idea and how to develop it from there.

With the idea of innovation, that concept fits perfectly into what my racket customization business needs. Each time a customer comes to get a racket strung I could let them know that there is a new service being offered that will greatly help the their games. The first customization could be half off and than if the customer would like the rest of their rackets customized they could buy a package deal. I need a way to really have customers experience what it is like to play with a personally customized racket, and how it will help them to improve. There are so many variations that are possible in racket customization, every persons racket can be as unique as them. These variations are differences of weight, balance, color, schematic, stiffness, head-weight, racket length, string patterns, etc..

The next thing in my business I would have to do is clearly identify A. the business we are in and B. who is our customer. The book talks about the "Opportunity Worth Pursuing". My business is a service to customers in a racket sport who