When my husband and I travel, we spend a lot of time in bookstores. I'm always in the self-help or the business/marketing section. In September 2006, we were in Chicago, and I found The E-Myth Revisited on a table marked the "best" business books. What caught my attention was the headline: "Why Most Small Businesses Fail.” Kukis By Maru was 12 years old at the time, and successful, but I wanted to learn how to really make it failure proof!
I’ve read The E-Myth Revisited at least 12 times, and I’ve given it away as gifts—people just love it! But I feel that the book tells you what, and I wanted to know how. That’s why I enrolled in the coaching program.
The 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak helped us, even though the entire country (besides supermarkets) closed for three days. That weekend we lost tens of thousands of much-needed pesos! But the outbreak gave me a unique opportunity to gather everyone on my staff for three full days. That turned out to be fantastic! You can not always choose the circumstances, but you do have the freedom to choose your attitude and how you react to those circumstances.
We started bi-weekly meetings with our staff (30% of whom are students). We’d just started developing systems after a wonderful "Transforming Frustrations Process” meeting, but we couldn't go as fast as we wanted through the process. This three-day “break” gave us time to revise, talk, and ask the important questions. We did things like practice "the perfect ribbon making" technique and we left with a wonderful, positive feeling from everyone. I’ve challenged them to help Kukis become the oasis of optimism and good cheer that is so needed these days!
My EMyth Coach has always urged me to get everyone involved, but I would never have closed my stores to have a three-day seminar! This situation gave me the unique opportunity to communicate with my staff as a group to talk about why and how things were changing to the EMyth way.
Afterwards, we had the best Mother’s Day sale in four years! Everyone was in tune, trained, informed and self-assured. And here’s the best part: I wasn’t even there! I was in Vancouver!
There are SO many things I didn't know. And the worse part is that I thought I did! The business was thriving because we worked really hard at being the best and giving the customer "a little bit more." That worked fine when there was only one store because I chose to be there 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I was the system!
Because of EMyth now I know how to delegate, communicate with staff, plan, get to know and understand my customer and budget. There are a lot of people who will tell you what to do—only EMyth tells you how to do it, the system is brilliant.
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