The Man behind the E-Myth – unpacking the E-Myth success to The Coaching Institute

[00:01:00] [00:00:00] So that was our conversation. Michael Gerber is a beautiful, beautiful man, beautiful soul. We've had many conversations since then about business and what we need to be thinking about. And over the years, Just getting to know the way he thinks about it is just wonderful. Now in parallel to,  Michael doing what he does

[00:01:32] I was building my business. So I wanted to just talk directly to you about, for those of you who are in business or you work in a business, what the thinking has been  behind building. One of my businesses, which is one that's probably the most well known, which is the coaching Institute and how it's been in parallel with the E-Myth and some of the models and messages that Michael shares.

[00:01:57] So if you're into thinking [00:02:00] sustainably scalably replicability about your business and you know, that staying in the practitioner. Zone the technician's zone is probably gonna run out of road. Certainly if you go on holiday, so does your income, if you want to take a break, so does the money, you know, if you realize that there is an inherent flaw in that model, then stick around, I'm going to share with you just some of the ways.

[00:02:26] I applied the E-Myth as I built The Coaching Institute. So I started out as a coach, same as literally hundreds of thousands of other people around the world is studied selling my time for money. So I would sell an hour session. For a fee. And I think when I first started, it was a hundred dollars per hour and I would acquire a client.

[00:02:48] And in beginning they didn't stay too much because I really didn't. Wasn't very good. That's a very good reason for them not to stay. Ah, then the beginning stay a little bit more. They started perceiving a lot more value in what I was [00:03:00] doing, which is great. And as my skills grew, my experience grew at the number of clients that wanted to stay with me, began to grow.

[00:03:07] And in a very short period of time, I had. A very full list of clients. I think I'd moved my fees. It's very difficult for me to remember 18 years ago, but probably around 250 to $400 an hour, again, still an hourly rate for my time. And it was very bespoke. So it was very much as coaches know, and a jeweller would be in the same position.

[00:03:30] This is very unique  conversation. So you focus on what the client wants to achieve. You tailor, make your coaching and what you bring to it based on the client's preferences and where they want to head and what they're wanting to attain from an experience in the coaching journey and the coaching initiative.

[00:03:48] So it's all very one-off. And of course, as I'm doing it, I can't record the sessions because of very clear confidentiality guidelines, which makes. Perfect sense. So there was no [00:04:00] replicability there, there was no scalability. I couldn't take the Elvis car chain and share with the world what happened there and uses a teaching moment because my clients were private clients having the journeys while I did record the sessions and I'd make sure my client got the session notes and the recordings for themselves.

[00:04:17] And as my fees went up and as I started work with more business coaching clients and leaders in different industries, and my fees were around 400 to 550. Can't really remember now they began to get a recording and they'd get key notes from the session. So I'd go through the recording, make sure I got the keynotes or I'd take them and I'd reflect.

[00:04:38] Back to them, the key, not just key outcomes and commitments, but key messages in terms of who they're being and what to maybe reflect on as they go about their day and bring some mindfulness to it. So began to systemize for each client, but still no replicability there. If I stopped doing the coaching, as Michael Gerber says, if I stopped doing the, doing the, doing [00:05:00] the, doing everything stops the whole.

[00:05:03] The whole thing is gone. It doesn't exist anymore. And so I became very aware of this very early. And I began to think in terms of having read the E-Myth five times in my first 12 to 18 months, based on the E-Myth, where is the replicability here? Where is it that I can systemize so I can step back. And it isn't me needing to be prison for every single minute of money earned.

[00:05:29] How do I leverage what it is I'm learning, what it is I'm creating, what it is I've got experience in now and create a leverage. I don't ever call it passive income. My goodness. There is nothing passive about it. It's earned. How do I create leverage in terms of leveraging my time? How do I leverage my skill?

[00:05:49] How do I leverage my testimonials and success stories? How do I leverage my passion? How do I leverage my ability to seem to learn this in a, quite [00:06:00] a delightful, playful way? How, how do I leverage my style as in my style of coaching, all of those questions began to be my priorities. So instead of thinking, how do I get my next client?

[00:06:13] My focus a lot of the time was how do I leverage all the criteria I've just listed? And instead of scrambling for the next client, I was thinking in terms of. My next client is, how can I leverage that? So I became about the success story, the testimonial, the referral it always became, this became the stepping stone for some form of leverage.

[00:06:38] So I started building my leverage muscle, if you like, because I was really comfortable. I was. Any more money that I'd ever earnt in my life, I was learning so much. I love, love, love working with my clients and everything I was learning was beautiful and just went to the heart of what I believed I was here to do.

[00:07:00] [00:06:59] So it wasn't like I've just got to dump on my clients and never work again for time for money. And I just, as long as I can just make money out of what it wasn't ever like, that it was just. This is beautiful, but this is not sustainable. And I knew it wasn't sustainable. I was about 18 months into my journey or probably a little less.

[00:07:18] I had. 50 clients. I think it was just under that, that I was working with over a period of a month, some weekly, some fortnightly, some monthly, I had 50 clients on the waiting list who had paid in full upfront. Many of them in full, I remember one day taking $50,000. So $10,000  in deposits from five new clients, all knowing I couldn't work with them for another three to four months and great that they coming and I've leveraged my skill and I'm feeling uncomfortable because I can see the floor I'm leveraging my skill and leveraging my experience.

[00:07:58] I'm leveraging my [00:08:00] success stories and it created more work more of me needing to do so. I was becoming more entrenched in what I was doing, more committed to what I was doing because I had clients on a wait list going from months. And the more I leveraged what I was great at, the more success stories, more testimonials, and the more better I got at leveraging marketing.

[00:08:23] The greater the wait list. And so I was literally perpetuating me having to sell my time for money. And I was just chasing constantly every single day back-to-back client sessions. And the problem with that I realized, and probably you already have is if you've got back-to-back coaching sessions, where do you work?

[00:08:42] On the business. So I had worked on creating more of that, but that in itself, that solution, so to become very successful and economically incredibly successful in that space was creating its own problem. It was creating. And you [00:09:00] problem in that I was getting very time. Poor money was going up. Time was going down.

[00:09:04] Whereas when I began, time was up, money was down now had completely reversed. And so there was always a rush every day, a scrambled to seal the clients to try to do the marketing, to Take care of the administration take care of the finance, which I was terrible at at the time there was this constant chasing.

[00:09:22] So my success became my number one problem. That's, that's how I view it as I look back on it. And I think I saw that at the time as well, but it was wonderful and it was great working with so many clients. I loved every minute of it. Awesome. And I just remember one Friday afternoon, I'd done back to back clients for solid week.

[00:09:39] It was Friday afternoon, my last coaching session. And for the first time ever are a member zoning out of being fully present for my client. I still kind of feel guilty about this. I remember zoning out and actually having a thought this isn't sustainable. I literally thought about myself. In the midst of a coaching session, [00:10:00] whereas right up until then for over a year, if I'm in a coaching session, it's all about the client.

[00:10:06] And I just fade away. And here I was having a moment where it's about me and that was really disconcerting for me. And it was quite unsettling. I didn't do anything about it in the session, of course, but over the weekend, It was a lot to process that I had. It was like being at warp speed  if anybody knows Star Trek here or whatever it is you going at warp speed.

[00:10:26] And then you drop out a warp. I was coaching to me is warp speed. Is this beautiful other otherness? It's his, the dimension. And I felt out of it into regular dimension and I felt the ickiness I can feel it now. So I thought that's feedback. I need to really think about what it is I'm going to commit to moving forward.

[00:10:45] I've now learned I have a skill around this. I have experience around this. Now. I have many, many referrals, many people who love the message who are enjoying my style. So unless I continue to experience the same [00:11:00] problem and maybe more moments falling out of phase. I need to really think about what it is I think working on the business is, and that was the biggest wake up call for me.

[00:11:12] It was a wonderful gift at the time and in hindsight. So what I did was I began to figure out how do I do one too many? And you're probably hearing these go well, that's obvious it wasn't obvious to me at the time. So I started figuring out one too many and I started figuring out. This is all pre zoom Skype.

[00:11:35] Any of this, it literally was trying to work out how to do a recording. Cameras were ridiculously expensive. There was no iPhone care. None of the technologies that we take for granted today. So really was becoming a technical issue, solving one to many. And remember there was not really that much internet marketing back then either.

[00:11:55] This is wiggling back dinosaur time. So it was, how do I [00:12:00] reach people to know there's going to be a workshop and then how do I leverage the workshop and repurpose it? So I record it, transcribe it, turn it into lesson plans for the next facilitator, turn into a workbook of the third training gets run again.

[00:12:14] And so that became the journey parallel to that. I began to leverage my skill. As a coach and as a network or a marketer, and I was bringing some quite large gigs and I began to put together a coaching agency. So that was my second attempt at leveraging. So I began to have an agency of coaches, I think at the peak, we had 30 coaches and I was earning 25% commission off every hour of coaching.

[00:12:41] I was able to grow. Give them, which is really good deal because the coaches didn't have to do any marketing. All they had to do is qualify by I had about 12 criteria for coach to qualify, to be part of my agency. I could refer them to the work, as long as it was a match of the client. They [00:13:00] didn't have to market.

[00:13:00] They said shop and start coaching. So that was tremendous. And that had about, as I said, 30 coaches peak and I earned  and tremendous money from that. And that was really learning the power of leverage because that was me leveraging skills other than time for money. So I had a agency of coaches around the world, mainly in Australia who were.

[00:13:20] During the do, and I was coordinating it. I was managing the contracts. I was managing the website. I was managing them getting matched to clients. The third version of this that I began to think about play with and utilize was building a product. So I built my various, I still even on the market anymore, which I think may be a good thing, but it's called empower.

[00:13:41] And so I build empower. I lost money for the first month ever in the history and only month ever. My businesses lost money. Was the month I built empower. So back in the day, it was down to office works to get the CDs. By the jewel case, I printed my jewel case covers myself. [00:14:00] There was no professional way of doing that.

[00:14:02] And then I had to replicate all the CDs and it was a 12 CD set with workbooks to back it up. And I started what was the right? I think it was two 97, $297 Australian. I think I began selling that. So if I had a workshop. I would sell, Mpower and it was empower the magic of you. I think it was. And so the, and that did not create a lot of income, but it was me learning leverage.

[00:14:28] I didn't mind learning the lessons. I consider all businesses are  schools. And so I was learning the power of leveraging my skill into a product. The fourth way was I began workshopping. With coaches who wanted to build their businesses. And so instead of working with them individually, which they would have been happy to have done to have hired me, I began bringing them in for group sessions.

[00:14:52] And now I reflect, there were two types of sessions. One was how to build your business, which I helped them with. Another one was coaching skills. There [00:15:00] wasn't much coach training in Australia at that time. And I filled that gap. And again, I recorded it. I didn't turn that into a product. For whatever reason, but I began recording it.

[00:15:12] So I had all these different ways of thinking about leveraging. This is in reflection. We learning the skill of leverage, and I began to create this rule for every hour in, I had to work an hour on my business. And so I began to balance my coaching hours, which now the fees were quite high. An hour of coaching.

[00:15:33] required  an hour working on my business. It could be building a product working on the agency. Taking the agency. I think we went into the United States a little bit as well with it. How to leverage workshops and repurpose them just any way I could thinking about working on it, or it could be just expanding the website.

[00:15:55] So the offerings on the website, didn't just include my time for money back in the day when it was [00:16:00] just me and associates. So that's how it first began to transition away from me. And so my coaching hours came down a little bit as I began plugging into doing workshops for some global companies, which was great tremendous opportunity to learn workshopping skills.

[00:16:19] Now, as I did that, that immediately presented itself to me, what I needed to teach myself. So I went immediately and did the most advance speaker training I could find, I did the most advanced coaching training I could find I trained in NLP. I started getting trained in family therapy systems. It just everywhere I went it was about, okay.

[00:16:40] The skill really is the ultimate leverage the skill and the experiences of coaches. The ultimate you put the time in you build your skill and your experience, and you get the testimonials that forms really the. platform from which everything else can launch. So I just began investing more and more [00:17:00] in this so that this could get replicated in many more ways.

[00:17:05] That's how I looked at it. So as I said, speaker training as much as I could  NLP family therapy, advanced coaching business skills. I did anything I could do. I trained my brain, realizing the ultimate leverage was here. The real estate between my ears. As result of that, I began to get more efficient, efficient, and effective at filling workshops and running them.

[00:17:31] And at having people want to come back and at re-purposing them. And so that began to expand. The agency began to drop away. Empower definitely dropped away. Me working ahead of record, the sessions dropped away and the other leverage points dropped away. But me teaching coaches clearly became a passion of mine, me teaching coaching.

[00:17:58] Very clearly was my [00:18:00] song very naturally. So I trusted that and I didn't, you know, I wasn't thinking I'd make more money in, for example, business coaching, which I would, I thought, but that's my passion and that's clearly, there's a market there. And if I can leverage myself, then I can fill that space in the market.

[00:18:20] And so that became, began to flourish. That's where I began to put my energy, my time and my working on the business into which became the coaching institute.com.edu. We're going to be moving that. I think we're going to keep the  Coaching Institute and we're also going to move to the international coaching institute.com.

[00:18:40] So ICI. But I don't know if they're both going to go in parallel, but the ICS give you the next iteration and the next version of even more leverage. But anyway, let's stay with this. So the coach Institute came about, so I moved from back in the day. It was Sharon Pearson, associates.com.au Then it became the coaching institute.com.au because I realized [00:19:00] if I kept my name and I know my name changed to Remi Pearson  but back  then it was Sharon Pearson that if I kept that name, then it was always going to be me that will wanting to hire.

[00:19:11] And it was constantly going to have to be bespoke   very tailored made, and very special to each client. Which beautiful for the client, but very, very limiting in terms of my time and what I wanted to do. So the Coaching Insitute Institute resolved the name problem, because now clients are getting the Coaching Institute, which is, which is no longer.

[00:19:34] Promise of me personally, but a promise of what I've produced. And so within that I built programs. I had a leadership program that I sold into a number of companies. I still ran it. I never quite replaced myself. We'll learn how to in that area, which is a shame I'd like to have done that I ran an NLP trainings.

[00:19:53] Then I did replace myself in the NLP trainings, which was fantastic for awhile. While what else? [00:20:00] Are those personal development in there. And then always what remained was me teaching coaches. And that began to flourish. Very clear. So all this other stuff was going on. I think I would have made easily a million dollars profit in the year that this was happening, which was tremendous from my, when I began, when I was making $0.

[00:20:19] So I had that happening, but I was just getting so much more mindful and connected to how was the dollar produced, who was responsible for producing the dollar that. Became so important. And so what I began to do, so I developed at the Coaching Institute three different programs. If you're a coach, you develop three different programs.

[00:20:39] You don't have to teach coaches. You can teach any group in the community, but it's three levels, three different price points, three different levels of access to you. The bottom level has the least in the beginning will still have access to you because you're running it, but he should have the least access to you a little bit more at the middle level and the most access at the top.

[00:20:58] And you may add a fourth level, which is [00:21:00] purely access to you, which would be where I am at more. The client can hire me for three months for $50,000. Kind of thing. And anyway, let's go back. So I began with practitioner, advanced practitioner, master practitioner, levels of coach training. I ran all of it. I was doing all of it, loved it because I knew I was building a business for the first time, from the beginning based on creating a turnkey system to replace myself.

[00:21:29] So practitioner, I focus there the beginning level, I think back then it was a certificate four of life coaching. And not the practitioner coach. I think it was purely through the registered training organization stream. Now we have both, but anyway, so I had the practitioner I ran, every class, had every class recorded, had them all transcribed.

[00:21:52] I turned them into lesson plans and facilitated guides criteria for success. And I began recruiting my first facilitator [00:22:00] to run just that class. I monitored that class to make sure I meant the benchmarks. If it didn't, I gave them feedback until I met the benchmarks. I had them fill out a form after every class showing that hit the benchmarks, that classes now leveraged.

[00:22:15] And I did the same for, I think it was 24 classes at the practitioner level. Then there's the mentoring at that? level your receive a mentor, two mentors for three sessions, each a total of six sessions. I think that's how it is now, but that's what it was then. Okay. I mentored, I had trainee mentors watching me.

[00:22:33] I had criteria documented on what they needed to bring andan entiretie a checklist of three pages. And I only delegated mentoring once that had been attained practitioner I'd replaced myself. And then I found a trainer. So you probably know him, Joe  Pane and  he began to run the, the training upfront. Now there's already a flaw in the model.

[00:22:57] Because the worst number in business is the number one [00:23:00] and having one trainer, he can run one training. That's a flawed model. Now it's been like there for a long time. We're moving towards changing that with the ICI, but that's where I didn't follow the E-Myth because I wanted to keep the show of that live training.

[00:23:17] And so right there, I've created a single point of failure in the business. So that's the note to self. The number one is the most dangerous number in business. One person doing one thing. That's if that's not replicable and scalable, you've got your first problem. So I did that and then I did the same for advanced prac.

[00:23:36] I do the same for master prac and again, live trainings, single points of failure so doing that freed me It meant I haven't counted recently, but back then, it would've meant 150 hours of coach training was being delivered. That wasn't me. And I think it went up to like 200 hours. So [00:24:00] there's literally hundreds of hours of coach training going on every month at The Coaching Insitute 

[00:24:05] and I don't know the schedule, it's not my job to know the schedule that's happening because of this leverage I took care of earlier on. Now, if you work in an organization, you got to think the same way, the single point of failure. Is it documented? Is there criteria for what you do that if you were to delegate it to somebody else will leverage your skill at creating the system, they could start doing it.

[00:24:32] Or have you got the situation where you're beautiful at what you do skilled at what you do, but if the organization or you were empowered to hire someone else to do it with you, because the workloads grown is a systemized, could they come in and now benefit from how you've replicated yourself? Or are you going to have to spend hours and hours and hours and hours not leveraging your time, trying to do [00:25:00] your own.

[00:25:00] Function and teach them everything from scratch, because you did not document that's on you. That's the power of this. So if you leverage well, you can move forward in the organization. If you don't think in terms of leverage, how do you move forward? Because the moment you afford say you get promoted into a different role or a more senior position, but you haven't leveraged your skill and experience into systems that person's going to be dropped in, have no idea to succeed, and you can't succeed at managing them because you're going to spend your whole time doing a for them.

[00:25:36] Correcting them having to explain it to them is this Chinese whispers, mess that I see too many times and none of it is necessary. So I encourage wherever you're at whatever you're doing. Think in terms of your skill being leveraged. Into a system and don't design it for your personality. Don't design it for your flare.

[00:25:58] Don't design it because it [00:26:00] suits you design it for the next person who's going to need to step in and do it as well as you and replicate those results. That's the key mission. And that's how we get to experience our true selves because at truest cells can't be experienced in doing the, doing the, doing the doing and never be at a step back and see how we're doing it and empowering others to do it, or being able to let go of some of it

[00:26:25] cause it's actually not as effective as if we don't step back. We don't ever get to critique the work, which is doing it and we're doing it. And there's, to me, a level of insanity to that, unless that's your thing and which guys. Do your thing, but if you're still listening, I'm guessing it's not. So if you're creative and you've got flair about you even more, so you need to find a way to break it down into a system.

[00:26:48] And you're probably thinking, but it's creativity. Like I used to with coaching it's coaching. It's so personal. I don't know where it's going until I'm coaching. Actually, there is a system. There is a system for onboarding a client for how do [00:27:00] you open the session? How you get curious about where the client wants to go, then there's a whole bunch of techniques that can help the client get there that you can document and how to wrap up session how to forward thinking to the next session, how to put the whole coaching.

[00:27:13] This is all I have systemized. All of this many, many times, whatever role you've got, especially if you're telling yourself it's high creative, it is on you to start breaking it down into its component parts and ask yourself. What's the first thing I do document it. What's the second thing I do. Document the beginning.

[00:27:34] You might just have three to five or seven big steps, but then start filling out those steps. In more detail, you might just have step one, walk into the room. Step two, appraise the layout of the room step. If you're doing interior design, step three, think about color. I don't really know, but let's say it's that.

[00:27:52] But then on the, each of those headings, those categories, you start filling in with more and more detail. You've just created your very [00:28:00] first leveraged system. So then when you bring on board, another interior designer, they are going to follow the system. And so it becomes not the Remi Pearson   system for interior design.

[00:28:10] I don't have one, trust me, it becomes the whatever unique name you give that system. And that system becomes replicable. I was I have a beautiful massuer who comes to my home. I won't name her because I don't want, what she's about to do is very personal to her. But I was, I did some business coaching while I   was getting massage and.

[00:28:31] It's easy to think. A massuer is very personal can't be replicated, but there are that we worked out, there are things that can be replicated. They went through. What would that replication process look like? And then who would you onboard to trust with having a go at your system? And immediately as result of that my massuer worked out, her income would double within six months just by taking care of that leveraged moment.

[00:28:58] So whatever role you've got. [00:29:00] I would question and start thinking about what we're don't don't do the easy thing I couldn't possibly leverage. Where could you leverage? What can you leverage in your home? I leveraged my wardrobe. My wardrobe has done by color, length and design. The whole thing when I go in is literally a system.

[00:29:18] So I know where to pull the coordinates from the whole thing. My kitchen is so small, but it's exactly the same. It's done by. I need to go. If I go to it's so many to get to breakfast, it needs to be easy to reach, not too much effort because its the morning if you're making tea and needs to be around that station.

[00:29:36] So it's ease of just the whole thing. Think through in terms of systems and then bring the same to your role. Now, as a result of doing that, now I'm thinking of going the next level with ICI international coaching institute.com. And we haven't launched a yet, but where we're hitting. Is removing all of the single points of failure and really focusing on mentors and facilitators.

[00:29:57] So it's a tremendous opportunity for great [00:30:00] coaches if they want to get involved, because we're going to be focusing on the mentors and facilitators who are going to bring to life this fully systemized, a way of transforming people from, I want to be a coach to being extraordinary coaches. So. That's how I brought to life.

[00:30:20] E-Myth revisit. Thank you, Mr. Gerber. Very grateful. There is always another level. I know that. And that's wonderful. I own a number of businesses that to different degrees have been. I call Gerber-ised  so I own a carwash, definitely that has had the E-Myth put across it. It's very, very systemized. It is very replicable as a couple of other businesses to different extents where this is occurred and it makes all the difference because everything then becomes more predictable.

[00:30:50] Income becomes predictable, which is a gift. If you're in business, you'd know this. Where the results are going to come from becomes predictable. We get very good at [00:31:00] certain skills. We don't have to get good at everything. That's a wonderful gift to give ourselves. And as we specialize and get very skilled in this one specialty, we get easier.

[00:31:11] It becomes easier to market, and it's easier for people to find us because that's what we're known for. So all these other things that I started working on began to drop away because. This is our core. We teach people how to become transformational coaches and that all began 18 years ago. So I hope this has given you a case study or an example of how to think about the E-Myth and the other works of Michael Gerber. [00:32:00]