Transcript:

Rick: In the E-Myth Revisited you talk about how seriously the leader took the operation of the business, and how the business is an expression of what that leader believed in. And how that leader took the communication with each of his new employees so seriously. How would you grade the average manager in a company in terms of coaching and onboarding employees relative to what you wrote in 1977?

Michael: As I say, it’s a process. It begins with the fact that the first day an employee starts with you. He or she is what we’re calling a blank piece of paper and beginner’s mind. I’m taking everything that they’ve done before that they came here and discounting it completely.

I’m not taking what they’ve done as their great value. I’m taking the fact that they’re here at all is their great value. Because they’ve had to prove themselves by a certain set of measures, measures that we’ve acquired in the process to define who they are and where their value to us.

Which means that at the very beginning we’re going to start them just like that, with a blank piece of paper in beginner’s mind. Welcome to our company. Welcome to a completely new world. Welcome to a world where what you’ve done isn’t important.

And in fact what you’re going to do isn’t important. What’s important is how you grow to do what you wish to do as result of your time with us here.

We know you’re not going to be here for the rest of your life. Nobody is any place for the rest of their lives. We know that.

Our absolute conviction is that we’re going to alter the course of your life by what you learn here with us in your life. And in that process add immense value to our mission, while adding immense value to your words.

You’d be given the conversation like that. And it begins with an introduction to how we engage here, our culture you might call it. And what we do to influence, expanding your operating intelligence, to expanding your connection with everyone here, to expand your relationship with our community, to expand your love of learning because we’re going to teach you stuff you’ve never learned before.