Michael Gerber's (EMyth) 16 Step Business Building Strategy

Michael Gerber's 16 steps to building a business
 
The following comes from Micahel's newest book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within, but is peppered throughout all of his writings. Last year I spent a weekend with Michael and a couple dozen other folks in a "Dreaming Room" and I have a number of these books.  For those of you on BetterNetworker.com who would like a FREE book for the cost of mailing then just let me know.
 
Building successful home businesses requires the same strategy as any good solid business. On this page I have listed what is the gold bar for starting a business concept from scratch.. If you are considering such a task as this (that is, starting from scratch without a business model that is already in place) then I highly recommend you read Michael Gerber’s EMyth books and his latest book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within, possibly attend one of his “In the Dreaming Room” weekends and then employ the following list precisely. This is the premier system for building a small business from scratch whether offline or online, away from home or in the home.
 
The Golden Pyramid Strategy (by Michael Gerber)
 

1. Identify Old Company (who you were or the business you did before).
2. Make a list of every single vertical niche market (customer) you could conceivably provide your new service to.
3. Identify your trading zone.
4. Pick the 10 most appealing customer categories.
5. Pick the one most appealing category.
6. Learn everything you can possibly learn about this one category.
7. Design your client fulfillment system.
8. Design your lead conversion system.
9. Design your lead generation system.
10. Test the effectiveness of your new practice.
11. Document your practice.
12. Create your Surrogate Practitioner Agreement.
13. Recruit your first Surrogate Practitioner.
14. Train your first Surrogate Practitioner.
15. Build your business management system.
16. Replicate your business.

 
The idea here is to take each step in the order shown as a formula for building successful home businesses, following Michael’s thorough description under each item and build the business from the bottom up with this solid foundation (pyramid). This is the current process I am personally following in order to build an entirely new business built upon a dream, developed into a Vision and Purpose and made to come to life through a Mission.
 
This really is exciting stuff for some of us but frankly is not for everyone. Many folks simply want to have a business already established that they can “step into” and start operating. The internet has an abundance of these but what you should look at as you do your research is to be sure you can see the listed items above built into the business. You won’t be able to “see” each one because of the nature of the work that has to be done to build a business, but for the things that you can see (the lead generation system, the fulfillment system, etc) this can be used as a testing to be sure the business you are considering is built upon solid ground. Many business plans throughout the internet simply are not substantial. They are money making systems for the owner himself alone. 
 
Search for those businesses that require that you do something to make it work. If it is promoted as though you do not have to do anything watch out! It simply does not make any sense that you do not need to do anything to make something work. There are varying degrees of what must be done but no business model that is conceptually promoting the idea that you need do nothing can be very serious. At the very least, you will need to generate leads in some way and this is the essence of what much online business is all about.
 
If you are contemplating a start from scratch operation please feel free to call or email me and I will take you through a simple review to assess where you are in the process and make a recommendation to where you go from here.