Rework is a book written by the founders of 37Signals, a company that makes online collaboration software like BaseCamp. They also write about running small businesses on their blog Signal vs. Noise. It is readily admitted that this book is a condensed and tightly edited version of topics from their blog. I don’t read their blog regularly, but had heard of it when I came across this book while browsing inside Barnes & Noble.

This is a short book with a casual writing style, complete with about 60 “chapters” that read just like blog posts. Many of the posts chapters make it a point to contradict common “rules” within the entrepreneurial and/or MBA-driven world. Here are few overall ideas that I noted, which the authors support with their own experiences.

• Don’t learn from your mistakes. Learn from your successes.
• Don’t make your business big. Small is okay.
• Don’t do surveys or market research. Make something you would want to use.
• Don’t wait for perfect to launch. Just make a decision and correct course as needed.
• Don’t make your product do everything, especially if it means you’ll have to do it half-ass. Make it do important things, well.
• Don’t hire based on GPAs or degrees. 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs did not come from an Ivy League for undergrad. The most common undergraduate school among them? University of Wisconsin.

I don’t use any of the 37Signals products, but they have their own niche, and they make what seems like good money at it. I believe their target sweet spot is for people who are self-employed or wish to work in a small but passionate small business that has no intentions of hiring 500+ employees or filing for IPO. This book is not for those with Facebook or Twitter-like aspirations, but if you’re trying for something smaller, I would recommend reading this book.

I bought The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber at a outdoor market because it was a finance “bestseller” and I’d seen it on a few reading lists. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf since (along with many others…), but once I picked it up and read a chapter, I went ahead and finished over the next two days.

Why Businesses Fail

The “E-Myth” stands for the Entrepreneurial Myth, which I’ll paraphrase as the belief that all a successful business needs is a hardworking, skilled, fearless entrepreneur. When we think successful small business, we think of Bill Gates or Richard Branson of Virgin. Is it really that simple? 40% of small business fail within one year. 80% of them fail within 5 years.

This book states that, in reality, a successful business needs three roles to be fulfilled:

• a technician which understands the technical aspects of the business,
• a manager which plans and organizes, and
• a entrepreneur who provides the vision and energy.

You might think you have all of these characteristics already, but these roles are often in conflict with each other. Most businesses start out with only one role really filled – that of the technician. A plumber starts a plumbing company. A baker starts a bakery. A graphic designer starts a design shop. Usually, the motivation is that they don’t want a boss. The end up have a poorly trained boss – themselves.

When things get hard, usually the technician wins out. The perceived solution is to work harder, do everything by yourself, so that you can “do it right”. This is where many businesses start to fail. Now, if you’re really stubborn and hardworking, you can make this stretch out for a long time. You’ll also be really tired and unhappy.

I actually see this first part of the book as separate from the next part. It teaches you to look at how you are running your businesses. Are some of the roles being too strong, or being neglected? The manager tends to micromanage, and the entrepreneur tends to be the frustrated dreamer.

The Solution

Okay, so now what? How do you take your business to the next level?

Gerber says to look at the franchise model, and uses McDonald’s as an example. Don’t focus on the fact that you may hate the food there. The true power of McDonald’s is that every single aspect of the business was broken down step-by-step and laid out that a random person off the street could “read the manual” and open up their own McDonald’s restaurant. Where to locate the restaurant. The layout of the kitchen. The menu. How each hamburger is ordered, stored, cooked, assembled, and finally delivered to the customer.

What’s your system? If you were to train a reasonably smart person without any knowledge in your field, how would you break down your business to them? What is the unique value proposition that you offer, and how do you achieve it? What does each roleplayer do? As the saying goes, “Explain it to me like I’m a 10-year old.”

Recap

I view this book as “big picture” type of book that will definitely get you thinking differently about your business and business goals. Since it is also relatively short and easy to read, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to work in a small business, or is already working in one. (It’s also really easy to find at the library or used for cheap – try Amazon or Half.com.)

The book is definitely more applicable to a small business where you plan on one day being more “hands off”, like a restaurant, a store selling widgets, or a big design agency. But even for the many people out there who are perfectly happy being a one-person show, you can still apply the concepts of this book. You can break yourself down into what your special roles or tasks are. Write it down. You may not have ever thought of yourself in this way. Then you can focus on those areas, and either get rid of or outsource the tasks that you don’t need.

Now, some critics will call this book common sense from a self-appointed guru. In this way, I feel this book is a bit similar to Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I didn’t really like the rest of his books, but the idea that you should buy assets that grow instead of liabilities like cars or gadgets can be helpful. But reading it was definitely a net positive for me, as was reading The E-Myth Revisited. Both are not the best writers out there, but still manage to convey their message.