Technician Founders Leading Cause Of Death Of Most Startups?

By Author: Venkat Ramana
Total Articles: 2
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Michael Gerber, renowned as the world's #1 Small Business Guru, has identified a critical pattern in why over 600,000 small businesses in the USA fold up every year. His insights are especially relevant for technician-turned-founders.
Imagine this: You are a very good baker (technician). Work in a cake shop. Customers of the shop are crazy about your cakes. Your friends, family everyone knows how good you are at cake making. In fact a lot of customers come to the shop because of your cakes.
There comes one day, where the Boss is tough on you or someone told when you have everything to do it yourself, why don't you do your own biz. You take the plunge.
You start your own cake shop and you are on cloud 9. You are your own boss and no need to listen to someone else. Your friends and others shop at your place and the business is brisk. You have achieved your dreams!
You love the job so much that you end up doing everything and spend 12 hours at the shop. One fine day, you feel lazy and you just want to lay in the bed for a little longer time. Your wife asks - who will do your job if you lay in the bed? ...
... It hits you, you have not left your job, you still doing a job but now you cannot just send a last minute leave notice.
Deciding to change the situation, you hire someone with awesome experience or someone you trust to manage things. The things you don't like or you don't want to get into - book keeping, payroll, taxes, general management. This person gives you lot of comfort and you bake the best cakes. You are flying again!
In a year or two some angry customers, insulted vendors, overdrawn bankers start pinching you. On investigation, you find your best hire has made some wrong choices. Your heart is broken. You cant fire him nor retain him. If you fire him, many others will go along with him eventually as you have never built a rapport with them. You were busy baking cakes.
The person may himself before any of this happens, quits saying hes getting paid more elsewhere or he wants to startup on his own.
You scale down and happy doing small. But then its one person doing 10 things. If you scale its a problem, if you stay small, you will burn out and quit.
Gerber explains that successful businesses need three roles: The Technician (doer), the Manager (organizer), and the Entrepreneur (visionary). As a technician-founder, you've neglected the other two crucial roles.
The key is to build a business that doesn't rely solely on your technical skills. Create systems and processes that anyone can follow, much like McDonald's does. Your goal should be to make yourself replaceable in the day-to-day operations.
The refusal of the Technician turned entrepreneur to imbibe the roles of other important personas leads to failure.
Solution: In the simplest terms - Copy the Mc Donalds model. Design all the process to the last task and create a prototype system that can be enabled by any ordinary person. The discretion of people in the system is minimal if not zero. Further advice in the book The EMyth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.
I have been here, still trying to get the other roles. I was a technician for most of my time. Faced fraud in my company, legal issues due to the failure of others I trusted, hired before the role was ready and then stuck and spent time trying to create a role for person than for a purpose. The list seems endless. Well I hope I will be able to step up to some extent this time. Wish me luck.
Relate to it? Or know someone who is going through this?

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