Design Yourself Out of the Business with Michael E. Gerber

Designing yourself out of the business

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:33Bill Gallagher: Well, there we are once again. Hey, everybody. What if the smartest move you could make is to design yourself out of the day to day? This is what Michael Gerber says is the moment that really matters. When you step back, turning your business into a system instead of just a job for you, that's the moment it finally becomes scalable, valuable, and actually supports your life. That's what we're talking about today.

00:59Bill Gallagher: Hi, everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with the world of growing your business, right? What does it take to grow it and scale it, whatever stage you're at? So you'll find more than 630 shows wherever you're getting this right now. So like, subscribe, turn on notifications—YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you're getting it, you can find them there. You can also go to our website. Our website has our monthly workshops on scaling growth, drawing on the ideas from the book Scaling Up. And we'll tell you more about Michael's stuff later, but our website is scalingcoach.com. Scalingcoach.com is where you'll find all that and more.

01:43Bill Gallagher: All right, listen. I'm joined now by Michael Gerber. You know him, you recognize him. Probably read the book. Inc. Magazine called him the world's number one small business guru. He's the author of E-Myth Revisited, more than 28 other books, millions of copies sold around the world. He's the founder of the original E-Myth Academy and today's Michael Gerber Companies. They work with entrepreneurs in more than 145 companies. And he's the creator of a new program, The Dreaming Room, a flagship entrepreneurial intensive program to help you grow your business. So Michael's all about working on the business, not in it. Welcome to the show, Michael.

02:25Michael E. Gerber: Hello, hello, hello, Bill.

02:27Bill Gallagher: Glad we finally made it. We finally made it. We've been trying to make this thing connect. We've been having technical difficulties. Michael's very patient coming back, and I'm really committed to getting this conversation with him up and out there for you. So thank you. Of course, they don't know any of that, just you and me. Except now we've told them that that's the case.

How a problem at Bob's company led to the E-Myth

02:51Michael E. Gerber: And here we are.

02:53Bill Gallagher: Yeah. So, Michael, take us back. You've shared before, you've shared a million times in your life, but it matters, these stories. How did you get your start? What's that fundamental lesson, the beginning of it all, where you saw this? And the invitation that changed your life?

03:14Michael E. Gerber: Well, my brother-in-law, Ace Remus, had an advertising agency in Silicon Valley. This is 52 years ago, Bill.

03:27Bill Gallagher: 52 years.

03:30Michael E. Gerber: Asked me to solve a problem of his. He said that they created leads for his clients, but his clients were having difficulty converting those leads into customers and into clients. Would I come visit one of his clients by the name of Bob and see what the problem was? And I said, hey, I don't know anything about business. How can I help him? He said, Michael, you know more about business than you think you do. Just let's see what happens.

04:13Michael E. Gerber: So I gotta say to you, Bill, when somebody says to me, let's see what happens, he's talking about the way I've lived my life since the very beginning of my life to this very moment as I'm speaking to you. Let's see what happens. So that intrigued me. So I said, sure, Ace. And we went to see Bob, and Ace introduces me to Bob, and Bob says, hi, Michael. I say, hi, Bob. Ace says, listen, guys, I'm gonna take off for an hour. Let's see what happens.

04:47Michael E. Gerber: And so Ace takes off. Bob asks me the first obvious question: What do you know about my business, Michael? And I said, just like I said to Ace, nothing, Bob. And he said in a rather discomforted way, well, if you don't know anything about my business, what do you know about my product? And I said, less than that, Bob. So let's just find out what happens, right?

05:19Michael E. Gerber: And so I began to ask Bob questions about this, about that, about this, about that. And I simply discovered something that blew my mind. Bob didn't know anything about his business either. He thought he did, but it became obvious he didn't. All of his answers to my questions were anecdotal.

05:42Bill Gallagher: Yeah.

05:43Michael E. Gerber: So I finally asked Bob, Bob, do you have a selling system? And Bob says to me, what's that? And I said, that's the way your salespeople engage your leads to convert them from leads into customers, and you convert those customers into clients. He said, can you help me create that? I said, sure, Bob.

06:16Michael E. Gerber: And so Ace picks me up. He says, what happened? I said, he hired me to create a selling system for him. He said, Michael, how in the hell are you gonna do that? You don't know anything about his business. You don't know anything about… I said, Ace, that's what I told you, and that's what I told Bob. But what I learned is that I knew more about Bob's business than he does. And so I agreed to work with Bob to create a selling system.

06:49Bill Gallagher: Yep.

06:50Michael E. Gerber: And that's what I did. And as I began to do that, it came to understand that Bob didn't have a management system either. And he didn't have a financial system either. And he didn't have a marketing system either. Ergo, this is how we do it here, this is how we do it here, this is how we do it here, creating a brand.

07:19Michael E. Gerber: Which is the heartfelt brand, Bill, are the systems that differentiate your company from everybody else. And without those systems that differentiate your company from everybody else, you don't have a brand. You're just doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy, busy, like 99% of all the people who launched their own companies thinking that they're gonna get rid of the boss, create freedom of the boss, and they create a job for themselves.

08:01Bill Gallagher: Yeah.

08:03Michael E. Gerber: You know, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. And so that's where working on it came from.

08:14Bill Gallagher: So what was it about you, your background that had you thinking about systems, looking for a system, asking about systems? What is that that went in? Where did you get that mindset or that way of thinking about the business?

Why memorizing a script taught Gerber about systems

08:32Michael E. Gerber: Bill, I got that at the very beginning of my life. I got a job selling encyclopedias. And I answered an ad. I went to meet with the guy who ran the ad. He interviewed me. He said, I think you could do this very well. And he said, go home and memorize this. And he handed me a small script, 15 minutes long.

09:04Bill Gallagher: Oh.

09:04Michael E. Gerber: He said, memorize it. Now I understand that was very easy for me because I had been studying the saxophone from the age of 11. And so I memorized music. And because I memorized music, memorizing a small script was a breeze for me. So I went back to the manager and repeated what I memorized. He said, absolutely great, but now do it this way. And he gave me this way, which was the very same words, but spoken in a different way.

09:51Michael E. Gerber: And I thought, wow, this way. And then he gave me a 30-minute script to go home and memorize. And I did. But I memorized it this way. Now you just heard how I expressed that.

10:13Michael E. Gerber: And it's the expression of those words that create the life in the script. And the life in my relationship with the script. So it's not just the mechanics of it. It's the heart of it. The meaning, the inflection, all that.

10:40Bill Gallagher: Yeah.

10:41Michael E. Gerber: You got it. You got it. You got it. And that's where I got what I got when I listened to Bob and realized that Bob had no idea about that. And I realized, but he could. If I were to take that and create that for him. You understand he hired salespeople with sales experience, who also had technology experience. And he figured out that they would be able to do the job because they had that experience. What he didn't understand is you don't hire somebody with experience. You hire somebody who's committed to learn your script. Your script is everything. Nobody I ever talked to in a small business, none of my clients understood that. Nobody ever said that to them before. And it was absolutely a brilliant insight for me because I never realized that about small business owners before I met with Bob. And that created the E-Myth for me.

12:08Bill Gallagher: So and by script, you mean not necessarily just like a specific sequence of words, which you learned around the encyclopedia, but for the script for the business, you're thinking about a whole sequence of things that are done, said, like that. Right?

12:24Michael E. Gerber: No. I'm speaking about a script. The actual words a salesperson uses. The actual words a coach uses. The actual words a manager uses. Say this like this, and something will happen like that. And that becomes the branded message that's crucial living at the very heart of your company. And the more you're capable of doing that, the more you're capable of replicating that. And the more you're capable of replicating that, the more you're capable of scaling that. And I don't mean this rigid, rigid mechanics of it. It's not the mechanics of it, it's the spirit of it. You know, Jobs said the passion. What he was speaking about was the soul of an entrepreneur, the soul of a company, the soul of a product. And so that's what I learned to do.

13:48Bill Gallagher: So you learn a script, specific words, and you learn to deliver it in a specific way, style, feel, intonation, intention, emphasis, like all that. And then you're able to deliver it at some point with the soul, the intention of it, not necessarily robotically after you've mastered it. Yes?

14:13Michael E. Gerber: Never robotically. Never robotically, Bill. That's the point of it. Never robotically. With the spirit that lives at the heart of great music, with the spirit that lives at the heart of great poetry, with the spirit that lives at the heart of every magical moment that you're sharing heartfully but identically as Ray Kroc built McDonald's. Hear me. McDonald's today is identical to the same as McDonald's yesterday. Unless or until they improved upon the script. And the script in McDonald's makes it possible for McDonald's at billions upon billions upon billions of hamburgers sold to do this magically, incredibly, lyrically, powerfully thing that McDonald's has created. People say, yeah, but McDonald's. But McDonald's. I say, yeah, but McDonald's my ass. When somebody says that to me, they absolutely don't appreciate what Ray Kroc did.

What Ray Kroc and McDonald's teach about replication

15:47Bill Gallagher: You get it? Oh, I 100% get it. Like, Ray Kroc took a thing. Right? And he created a really rigorous system, and he honed and refined the system. And he taught people to use the system, and he created systems around every part of it. Like, the way they greet the customer, the way they make the food, the way they deliver the food, the way they manage the companies. Right, the way they build the locations, the partners. Right? Every part of it. And this is how we do it here.

16:16Michael E. Gerber: McDonald's. This is how we do it here. Apple, Bill. This is how we do it here. Starbucks.

16:23Bill Gallagher: This is how we do it here. Yes. So I mean, look, if you go to Chicago, they have a test kitchen where they work on new menu items, which they roll out from time to time. They try various new things. But they develop them in a systematic way. They test them. They roll them out systematically.

16:43Michael E. Gerber: Of course. Of course.

16:46Bill Gallagher: What are they doing? They're working on it, not in it. They're working on it, not in it. They're working on it, not in it.

16:49Michael E. Gerber: And that miraculous process of reinventing it, reinventing it, reinventing it, and suddenly it appears after they tested it and validated in some of their units to the point where they can say, it's time. And they roll it out.

17:11Bill Gallagher: So I read about a story in there, and I wonder how it's connected if it's true, like, whatever. The cross country coaching van, you did, like, a listening or some kind of tour. And is that can you say anything about that?

17:25Michael E. Gerber: I can't say anything because that doesn't make any I don't even remember where what you're referring to.

17:33Bill Gallagher: It's Internet lore about you that you crisscrossed the country talking to small business in a van or something.

17:42Michael E. Gerber: Oh, well, that lore is true. I went out, holding events. And those events were dreaming rooms. And I held those events throughout the world. And I held those events testing it, testing it, testing it, improving upon it, improving upon it, improving upon it, improving to the point where it became a turnkey system. And that system now is replicable. And that replicable system is absolutely stunning because it awakens the new entrepreneur in small business owners to a degree never made possible before. And I call that the dreaming room.

Sarah's pie shop and the technician trap

18:26Bill Gallagher: Let's come back to the dreaming room. Let's leave that as a little tease for a minute and talk about Sarah's pie shop.

18:35Michael E. Gerber: Well, Sarah was the quintessential small business owner who was doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy, busy. Her pie shop, making pies, making pies, making pies. Sarah worked twelve hours a day doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, making pies, selling pies, managing the people in the store, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. And I met Sarah, and Sarah had read one of my books. She came to me, and she said, it's driving me crazy, Michael. What do I do? I said, let's talk that through. And in my book, I talk Sarah through the process of going to work on her store rather than in her store. And the engagement with Sarah was meant to become a platform upon which the engagement with every reader of every one of my books be awakened to the opportunity to transform the state of who they were from a technician to an entrepreneur, from a technician to a manager to an entrepreneur, to engage in the process, the evolution of growth, which effectively is what you're talking about when you talked about scaling. The evolution of growth from a company of one to a company of 1,000. And in my book, Beyond the E-Myth, the evolution of an enterprise from a company of one to a company of 1,000, I address exactly what you're talking about every time you meet with everyone you meet with on this podcast.

20:43Bill Gallagher: Yeah. I think it seems really, like, not a thing people think about when they just start out. Right? They start out to make their pies or do whatever they do, and they don't think about, like, oh, I'm not making a pie. I'm building a business. Right? What are the parts of the business that need to get addressed? Right?

21:00Michael E. Gerber: You got it. The business hear me, Bill, this is so important. The business is your product,

21:07Michael E. Gerber: Not the pies. The business is your product, not the pies. I'll say that one last time. The business is your product, not the pies. Not podcast, not the coaching. The business is your pies. And once you understand the business… I'm sorry, is your product. You can then go to work on your business to create a product out of your business, which means you ultimately have something to be acquired. Here we go. Suddenly, it's free from Bill, free from Gerber, free from Murray, free from Mary, free from anyone and everyone who's doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. And that liberation is crucial. Because ultimately, you get to the point, Bill, where you don't want to do it anymore. You want it to do it.

The business is your product not the pies

22:13Bill Gallagher: A million percent. Yes. I think about that. I think about the moments. Right? There's a very specific moment once a year where I think about the broad vision. There's times in the year and every week where I think about the vision for the business, what am I building. Right? And then I think about how I'm going to structure the business and what the parts are. And then there's moments like this, where I'm leading a podcast or I'm speaking on a stage or I'm interacting. And those are really distinct things. Now I'm the craftsperson, like the baker. I'm making a pie. I'm making a podcast. I'm leading a workshop. And then the other times, I'm imagining the whole thing. And then sometimes I'm working with people, putting it together. And then I now have people who, like my sister Wanda, who's always booking the clients and managing the pre and post things and that kind of thing so that I can go out and do it. But I still, with my kind of business, switch between the visioning, imagining, and designing a thing, then to actually doing it. And then at that point, I start to turn over the management of it to her. So she manages me. Bill, here's what's coming up in the next few weeks. Here's what you need to think about. Right? So we're flipping the roles in that case. I think when you have a small team, I have about six people that I work closely with who run some part of my business and that I'm central to it, but I'm also the creator of it. And there are parts where it's happening that I'm not doing, but it's very much still connected in that way. Right? Not separate.

23:55Michael E. Gerber: Every single one of those roles are systems. A million percent. And which are free of Bill.

24:06Bill Gallagher: Yes. We do this at this point in this sequence. It does this.

24:11Michael E. Gerber: Yeah. It does this. I'll say it one last time. It does this. And until it's liberated from Bill doing this, it's not something that can be acquired. Because it doesn't own it, Bill does. And until it owns it, Bill can't get rid of it. Because the guy who's going to acquire it, the company who's going to acquire it says, yes, but Bill, what happens when you're gone? How do I do this? How do I do this? How do I do that? Well, Bill says, yeah, well, that's what I do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what you just said to me. This is what I do. You see, understand, this is what I do. I got to get the hell out of here. Let's tell you, my wife, my partner, said to me, Gerber, it's time. I said, time for what? She said, time to get rid of it. I said, get rid of what? Get rid of the stupid… It's what you've been talking about all these years. It's time to quit. It's time to be acquired. And I said, okay. And she said, not later. This year. Then the question is, well, how the hell do we do that? It became obvious, Bill. That's the question everyone needs to ask before they get to that point where they say it's time. I'm saying it's time right now for Bill. It's time right now for every single owner of every single business on the planet. That's the key, Bill, to what you talk about when you talk about scaling it.

26:21Bill Gallagher: Yes. So I would say most of the companies that I work with are far larger. Right? And we're working on a sale. We're working on rounds of investment. We're going through things, and they're much bigger businesses. And it's very easy for them to soak up the idea of pulling themselves out of the business and making everything a system of systems. But there are a few people who are a little bit more like me who have a smaller business, and they might want to both sell it and be working. So on the one hand, I want to create something, like even with my work as the coach, that lives beyond me, that continues. A system, a thing that's happening, whether I'm there or not. But I also, I don't know how you feel about it, but I kind of feel like I kind of also want to be doing something. Like, I want to have a job. So, but there's a tension. Like, I don't want to create a thing that requires me until the day I die, but I kind of like the idea of working in some fashion, a changing, evolving fashion until the day I die, but the business and me not being totally tied like that. Like, having it… I don't know. Do you have any coaching for me on that?

The Eightfold Path and the Dreaming Room

27:39Michael E. Gerber: But of course. So what do I do after I sell it? Yeah. Whatever you want. What do I do after I sell? Whatever the hell you want, Bill. But you understand, that's an interesting question then. So what do I want? And that's the Dreaming Room. So in short, I would take Bill through the Dreaming Room. And the Dreaming Room was built on what I call the Eightfold Path. And the Eightfold Path is built upon the eight discrete personalities of an entrepreneur. The dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller, the leader, the designer, the builder, the launcher, the grower. I walk you through a process through which you discover the dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller, the leader, the designer, the builder, the launcher, the grower in whom? In Bill. And suddenly, Bill has a completely new view of the world you're setting out to create, which becomes the avenue, the path you take to discover who Bill is, what Bill's going to create after you sell this sucker. But you understand, before you sell this sucker, it becomes an intriguing process to walk through to create the platform for creating your great growing company. Ergo, to scale it. And so the Dreaming Room becomes the scaling empire that you utilize to create the platform for growth. What is your dream? What is your vision? What is your core purpose? What is your mission? What is your job? What is your practice? What is your business? What is your enterprise? And so that intriguing process went out around the world, what you spoke about, the tour. Testing it, testing it, testing it, testing it. And I came to this conclusion as I did that and as I met small business owners doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, and I realized I had to awaken the new entrepreneur in each and every one of them. How is that going to do that? And that's when I asked the question, so what is an entrepreneur? Nobody really ever answered that question. The obvious answer is that they're creators of companies. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what actually is an entrepreneur? I kept asking myself, well, an entrepreneur is a dreamer, a thinker, a storyteller, a leader, a designer, a builder, a launcher, a grower. What's your dream? What's your vision? What's your purpose? What's your mission? Etcetera.

31:05Bill Gallagher: Well, so is it distinct for you? So the entrepreneur is all those things, and they imagine and birth a business, right? But it seems to imply that if you stick around too long, then you inhibit it also.

31:24Michael E. Gerber: Well, if you stick around too long doing the wrong things without a dream, without a vision, without a purpose, without a mission, you understand? If you stick around doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, you're doing the wrong things, Bill. You're just absorbed in it, consumed by it. Your business becomes your boss. You've got rid of the boss when you put where you worked. You created a new boss. And now you're working for a lunatic. My job is to liberate you from that lunatic.

32:11Bill Gallagher: You mean me? The lunatic, that's me.

32:15Michael E. Gerber: Of course. But of course, everybody. Not just Bill, it's everybody. Yeah. You know, Elon Musk says 98% of all companies will never create what the 2% create. The 2% create something extraordinary. 98% of us never will. Never will. And that's why, over ten years, 99% of all small businesses will go out of business. And those who don't will be consumed again by doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, hating it, not knowing how to get free of it. That's what I speak about in the Dreaming Room, how to get free of it.

33:07Bill Gallagher: I always feel like when I think about my companies in the past and the present, really, and when I think about all the companies that I've worked with in my friend's business, things like that, like, that's an enormous number. And I noticed that unless they intentionally start thinking about growing it to sell it early on, then what happens inevitably is they do it, they make some money, it goes some course, and they deal with various problems. They may have ups and downs as they go through periods and economies and shifts in the world and things like that. And then at some point, they're presented with a problem that's too big. They don't know how to tackle it, or they just no longer have the physical emotional energy. And then they're like, okay, I have to get out of it now because they didn't think about and plan to get out of it some other earlier intentional point on the upswing before they'd realized their fullest potential. And now the company is either worth much less than they wanted or it's, in fact, worthless.

34:18Michael E. Gerber: Exactly. That's the point. You're stating the problem. It's the point. They didn't even speak about it at the beginning. It only happened to them when they suddenly came to the point of holy shit, now what?

34:42Bill Gallagher: Now what? Yeah. And we encounter this all the time. People are like, hey, I want to scale up. I want to scale. I want to grow my business. Okay, great. But, like, so when do we sell it? When do we get out of it? Oh, I don't know. We'll worry about that later. Let's just get it growing now.

Old co versus new co and the work of imagineers

34:58Michael E. Gerber: Yeah, why? Why get it growing now? To make more money. To make more money. It's money-centric. You understand a great growing company isn't money-centric. It has a great dream that lives at the heart of it. So I asked that, so what's your dream, Murray? He said, what do you mean? What's your dream? What's the great result you intend to produce? I never thought about that. Well, let's think about that. What's the great result you intend to produce? My great result, way back at the beginning, way back in 1977 when I started this company, my dream was to transform the state of small business worldwide. My vision was to invent the McDonald's of small business development services. Visually, emotionally, functionally, and financially. My purpose was the story I've shared with you here, that most small businesses don't work. People who own them do and they're doing the wrong work. I will fix that. My mission was to teach that to every small business owner who's open to the possibility that they have a dream, they have a vision, they have a purpose. You follow me?

36:41Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

36:44Michael E. Gerber: That's what I share with every single small business. That's what you would share with every single business who responds to the word scalable. So let's define what I mean by scalable and why it's such a crucial word in the system from the very beginning of any company doing anything on the planet anywhere in any country. I think there's a definition of scalable that then becomes work to everything you teach, everything you do. It teaches, it does. The system at the heart of it.

37:33Bill Gallagher: Absolutely. Tell us.

37:36Michael E. Gerber: Spare me for sharing with you, Bill, what in fact Bill's opportunity is. And Bill's opportunity becomes so exquisite when you begin to think about it. And in there resides the inspiration that lives at the heart of what Bill is here to do.

38:02Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. I think getting at that, like figuring out what do you care about, like what is that that you're out to do, and then what's your piece of it, and what's your role in it? I think that's absolutely.

38:20Michael E. Gerber: Yeah. Bill, join me in the Dreaming Room. Join me in the Dreaming Room. I start one on May 2. Join me in the Dreaming Room just as a participant. Not as a thought leader, not as a thought jester, but as just a participant, a student. And you'll discover it. And when you discover it, Bill, I mean this in all sincerity. When you discover it, it'll blow your ever-loving mind. And when it blows your ever-loving mind, it will blow your students' minds. And as you blow your students' minds, you have created a new definition of scale. Because you have devoted yourself to determining why you're here. Bill will say to himself, I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a purpose, I have a mission, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

39:33Bill Gallagher: So I feel like I have maybe not organized or expressed in the way that you have that, right, but I have parts of it, right? So I think that most business owners work too hard and still feel stuck. And my job is to help you build a strong team and organize things so you scale with ease. You grow your business but without sacrificing your life, like, without having a miserable life, without torching your family and your health relationship and that kind of thing, right? And I think that the thing that lights me up, right, is helping leaders fulfill whatever they want. And I feel like that's my, like, when I help other people do what they do, like, I have a huge multiplying effect. And I have a particular thing I'd like the company to do before I am done, while I'm still alive, that we have helped 5 million, you know, like, that as a specific path on a never-ending thing to help business leaders, right? And then I have, like, okay, we have these kinds of programs and we market in this way and we get, and then we have some of those things seem to be working and some don't work that well, right? So I don't know. Is that speaking to some of what you are talking about there?

41:05Michael E. Gerber: Oh, it is. It is. But understand when you speak about all that. Yeah. I talk about TWOCO, capital T-W-O, capital C-O, TWOCO.

41:10Bill Gallagher: TWOCO. What's TWOCO?

41:12Michael E. Gerber: TWOCO is old code.

41:18Michael E. Gerber: And new code. What you describe is old code. I'm not diminishing the value of it, but I'm saying that's what you've done. I'm saying that new code, however, is what you're here to do. Old co is the past. New co is the future. New co is a blank piece of paper and beginner's mind. New co is what imagineers create. You know about Disney Imagineering?

42:06Bill Gallagher: Yep.

42:07Michael E. Gerber: My brother-in-law, Marty Sklar, led Disney Imagineering from the day he started with Walt, when Walt hired him directly out of UCLA. Marty went to work for Walt, ended up leading Disney Imagineering for years. Marty lived at the heart of the Imagineer. I ended up then talking about this thing that I've been speaking to: the coach, the mentor, the imagineer—the three levels of creating company beyond anything we've ever imagined before. A coach does what everybody does. A coach does the ordinary. A mentor reaches beyond the ordinary to approach the extraordinary. The imagineer walks you beyond anything you've ever thought of before. The coach, the mentor, the imagineer. So there are three layers, you might say, of help beyond the coach, beyond the mentor, and in fact, the imagineer. The story goes that imagineers would go to Walt and say, "I got it." Walt would say, "Let me see it." And they'd show Walt what they got, and Walt said, "Seen it before. Get rid of it." And he's in the back, destroyed, because he had seen it before. He's about seen anything and everything before. So he drove his imagineers to go beyond what they ever imagined doing before, pushing it, pushing it, pushing it—pushing the level of their imagination, the level of their creativity beyond anything they ever imagined doing before. And the tension that lived at the heart of Imagineering created the most extraordinary results. Walt drove. Marty led that. Think about that. Then you begin to appreciate what I'm talking about, because that's really what you're here to do.

45:13Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Before we run out of time, let's take people through the specifics. So Michael E. Gerber Companies is the website. We'll put the link on the screen later, we'll put it in the show notes, that kind of thing, so people can go find it. If you're listening to this or watching it, it'll be readily there for you. Talk to people about the Dreaming Room program. It's there on the website. It's a program that you set up. You describe it as a master class. You've been alluding to parts of it. Describe the particulars. What actually happens? How long does it take? What do people do? What does it cost them? That kind of thing.

What happens in the Dreaming Room program

45:47Michael E. Gerber: Great. Well, it costs them $5,000 for Dreaming Room 1 and $5,000 for Dreaming Room 2. In Dreaming Room 1, I walk them through the dream, the vision, the purpose, the mission. That's the platform upon which growth will occur. In Dreaming Room 2, I walk them through the job, the practice, the business, the enterprise. At the heart of the job is the client fulfillment system. At the heart of the practice, what I call is the three-legged stool: lead generation, lead conversion, and client fulfillment—what I call the business format franchise. Because essentially, I'm saying that every single company on the planet could be in the creation of their business format franchise prototype. The practice is that. The next step is the business. What's a business? I say a business is nothing other than up to seven turnkey practices: lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment times seven, plus a turnkey management system, which then walks you to the enterprise. What's an enterprise? An enterprise, I say, is up to seven turnkey businesses plus a turnkey management system plus a turnkey leadership system. When you walk through those processes, those eight steps, you're then ready to create your great growing company. Your great growing company is built upon a type that we've created in this process. The prototype starts with the dream. The dream is a great growing, a great result. Until you know what the great result of all this is, you can't go to step two. You understand? Until you go to step two, you can't go to step three. Until you go to step three, you can't go to step four. Step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, six, seven, eight. Everything is built upon the one preceding it. Never done before, Bill. Everybody's fooling around. Everybody's trading shit, and they don't even know what the shit was that they started with. What's the great result you're here to produce? What's the vision you have in order to produce it? What's the vision? Visual, emotional, functional, financial. What's your vision visually? What's your vision emotionally? You follow my point. Process. That's what happens in the Dreaming Room. And it is such a stunning experience for every single person who goes through it, because it drives them to ask questions they've never asked before this way.

49:20Bill Gallagher: Are they doing it alongside others? I assume they are.

49:25Michael E. Gerber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Typically, eight people, nine people, 22 people.

49:30Bill Gallagher: Small number of people, recognizable. You're feeling it. You're seeing each other, feeding off each other. Of course. You're getting that experience in a living environment.

49:40Michael E. Gerber: Well, the environment is just absolutely extraordinary. So it's $5,000 for Dreaming Room 1, $5,000 for Dreaming Room 2, chump change for an experience nobody else has ever had before. Now I lead the Dreaming Room.

49:56Bill Gallagher: You do.

49:57Michael E. Gerber: Great. Licensing others to lead the Dreaming Room in exactly the same way that I lead it. So it isn't Gerber intensive, it's Dreaming Room intensive. Bill could become a Dreaming Room leader. Terry could become a Dreaming Room leader. Bill could lead Dreaming Rooms. And I'm saying that were Bill to lead your own Dreaming Room, it would become the heart of scaling. And you'd know that once you've done that.

50:39Bill Gallagher: All right. Before we run out of time, the place to go get more, to check it out, michaelegerbercompanies.com is the place to go. We'll put it on, again, on the screen in the show notes. That's where to go check out The Dreaming Room, sign up, get your info, have them find dates, that kind of thing for you. Michael E. Gerber Companies dot com.

50:57Michael E. Gerber: But but but, Bill, it's michael@michaelegerbercompanies.com. That's the email. That's what they go to: michael@michaelegerbercompanies.com.

51:14Bill Gallagher: Got it. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today and talking and sharing.

51:20Michael E. Gerber: Enlightened. Yeah, that's it.

51:22Bill Gallagher: So much. Also, big thanks to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, who created the whole Scaling Up framework, who got me into this mess, and who brought us here and kept—

51:35Michael E. Gerber: Say hello to Verne for me.

51:37Bill Gallagher: I will say hello to Verne. I'll be talking to him later today. And thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. If you want to know more about our work and that kind of thing, scalingcoach.com is our website. And keep watching, keep listening. Until we talk to you again, keep scaling.

52:03Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.