When your business looks healthy — but isn’t
If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you’ll know that one of my favourite business books is The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.
It’s had a huge influence on the way I think about business — and, in many ways, it’s the foundation of the work we do for our clients at Insight Associates.
Gerber’s central idea is simple but powerful: most businesses are started by technicians — people who are brilliant at the technical work their business does, but who aren’t necessarily sure how to run an actual business.
You see it all the time:
The engineer who builds a manufacturing company.
The doctor who opens a clinic.
The consultant who starts an advisory firm.
They understand their craft inside out. But they’re so focused on doing the work they love that they don’t really think about what’s happening behind the scenes.
The systems, the finances, the management processes — these aren’t the parts of the business that excite them.
Often, they only build these functions once the business is already well established. And even then, they tend to neglect them — giving them far less attention than they deserve.
The result? The business doesn’t run smoothly and struggles to grow beyond a certain point.
Things work — until they don’t. There’s no consistency in how things are delivered, team members do things their own way instead of the business’s way, and knowledge isn’t passed on from one person to the next.
And the owner ends up constantly pulled back into the details, firefighting issues that could have been prevented with stronger systems in place.
In the past couple of emails, I’ve shared stories of businesses that had outgrown their finance function — one with a bookkeeper still following 30-year-old instructions, another still using small-business tools despite turning over tens of millions.
These were classic E-Myth businesses.
Both were run by talented, capable owners. But they were so immersed in the day-to-day work that excited them, they didn’t notice that the finance function was no longer fit for purpose.
That’s a critical problem, because if the part of your business that handles the cash isn’t well run, the entire business will eventually run into trouble.
And the result? The business looked healthy on the surface — but beneath it, the financial structure was shaky, constantly demanding the owners’ attention and making it difficult to make confident decisions about future growth.
That’s the irony.
If you want to keep doing the work you love, you need capable people to look after the business side — as well as the right tools and robust systems to keep everything running smoothly.
You need to make sure the parts of the business that don’t interest you are built properly, so you can keep serving clients and focus on growth with confidence.
That’s exactly what we do at Insight Associates.
We help you build a finance function that runs to world-class standards — even if you have no interest in the numbers. We put in place the right people, systems, processes and tools so everything works seamlessly, without you having to worry about it.
With that in place, a critical piece of the puzzle for your business to run smoothly — and to grow — is complete.
Because when your finances are well managed, clear and reliable, you can stop worrying about unpleasant surprises or financial firefighting. Instead, you’ll have a finance department that works closely with you — helping you grow the business, improve profitability, and make confident, informed decisions about the future.
If that sounds like the kind of structure your business needs, just email garry@insightassociates.co.uk or call our office on 01279 647 447 to arrange a no-obligation consultation.
We’ll talk about how your finance function works today, what needs to happen to bring it up to world-class standards — and how that will help you build a business that runs more smoothly.
You might also like: 4 books that transformed my perspective on business – Insight Associates Limited
