Why Every Life is a Legacy and Every Business a School

Transcript:

Rick:  Michael, great to see you again. Thanks for spending some time with us today.

Michael:  My delight, great, thank you.

Rick:  What I was hoping to do was ask some questions relative to some of your great works like the E-Myth Revisited, over 3 million copies sold. And tie that in with the people element. And some of that you’ve touched on in Beyond the E-Myth. I had a ton of burning questions around taking those entrepreneurial dreams and visions, and how maybe we translate that to great employees like A players. And maybe why great, motivated, aligned, inspired people are so important to organizations.

Michael:  Super. Ask away.

Rick:  I love the quote in your new book Beyond the E-Myth, “Every life a legacy, every business a school.” For growing companies that are scaling up how can they better support their employees and creating their own legacies as employees inside of the company?

Michael:  You know and I know that the employees are attracted to opportunity. And the opportunity isn’t just the opportunity to make up more money than they’re making presently, though that is there. The opportunity to participate in something beyond the ordinary. 

When Steve Jobs did Apple the small group of people in that garage participated in something beyond the ordinary. Steve Job’s vision is the picture he created that was played so theatrically well at the Super Bowl in Apple’s first commercial there. And everybody’s familiar with that.

They’ll understand from the standpoint of a person working at Apple to know that Apple is the David to IBM’s Goliath. It gives them a sense of calling, a sense of purpose, a sense of mission, a sense of value and excitement.

They get to do that. That’s what they’re there to do. You can’t beat that. It’s got to be there. And it’s not there in 99.9% of all companies on the planet.

Rick Crossland Interviews Michael E. Gerber: All Videos

Rick Crossland is an internationally known expert, approved YPO speaker, and thought leader on A Player talent. A leading certified Scaling Up coach and the author of the acclaimed business book The A Player, Rick’s innovative approach to recruiting, interviewing, validating, and developing high performers—A Players—has been featured in leading business publications such as Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Fortune.com, Recruiter.com, Columbus CEO, and Leadership Insights. With clients around the world, his expertise helps businesses scale by building high-performance teams that drive superior results. Follow Rick on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).