Mind Matters

Michael E. Gerber has crafted an entire career in and around the topic of entrepreneurship. His latest book is Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. He certainly has the concept of networking down cold. On the cover above the title is a blurb from Jack Canfield, no slouch himself when it comes to entrepreneurship. The foreword is by Ken Blanchard, another heavy hitter in these circles. Inside are 55 other endorsements. A bit of overkill, if you ask me. This book does have some good information but is also a sales pitch for Gerber’s latest venture, The Dreaming Room. For a mere $5,000, you, too, can work for two and a half days with Gerber, then form your own Dreaming Group with six people you want to help you achieve your dream. And each of them will have to come to the Dreaming Room. After all this has taken place, you will purportedly have the support of an international Dream network. You can also revisit the Dreaming Room at any time, providing you bring another dreamer with you. It sounds like an awful lot of cash going into Gerber’s pocket to me.
Gerber breaks the entrepreneurial personality into the Dreamer, the Thinker, the Storyteller, and the Leader. But his examples show these traits as occurring in partnership rather than in an individual.
Nearly half the book discusses in depth another company that Gerber is creating, or maybe is just imagining in order to illustrate his ideas.
The most valuable insight I got was that entrepreneurship is not about the one who creates. It is about the one who consumes. You can dream all you want but if nobody is buying you won’t succeed.

Labels: business, dreaming, entrepreneurship, Michael E. Gerber