The Journey to MyEKC

​Just before I bought my fist business, I was given a copy of The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber.  I quickly bought into the idea and necessity to gradually transition my role from “technician” to “manager” to “entrepreneur” in order to create a business that would free me to live my life at times apart from the demands and stress of my business.    However, it was not until a meeting I had with Michael Gerber several years later that I learned the importance of effective communication and the true meaning of leadership.  I learned that every person in my business needed to clearly understand my vision and needed to buy into my vision in order to have an organization “where everyone is rowing in the same direction”.  This was my “aha” moment!  I realized and I bought into the idea that it was not enough for me to know where our company was headed, why something was so important or how we were going to get there.  My people needed to know, understand and buy in too!

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When I returned, I made it very clear in an employee meeting that we were going to visibly transition to becoming a “system driven business”.  A business where every process would not only be documented, but would include why the process was so important to our success and what a satisfactory result for each process would look like.  A business where our culture and my vision would be clearly communicated and thread into each and every process.  A business where every employee would understand and buy into why their role was so vital to our success and again, this level of accountability would be linked to our systems and performance agreements.

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Once again our business surged.  It all seemed to be coming together; documented vision and culture and documented systems, performance agreements and an employee handbook.  Driving my business.  All in binders!  However, as we grew in both number of employees and number of processes.  As we grew to a second location and with salesman scattered throughout the country.  As we added managers to our organization.  It became all too apparent that our process to document, communicate and manage our business by filling binders with information was becoming unwieldy and less and less effective.

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Never one to give up, I believed that technology was the solution.  We had tried a technology solution developed by a consultant that I had worked with for years.  But his solution was too focused on his business model and severely lacked my number one business priority at the time.  Namely, to develop a simple and user friendly tool that facilitated my desire for more efficient and effective communication between me and my employees. 

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MyEKC was developed with simplicity of use in mind.  I can tell you first hand that documenting your business and sharing your vision and culture can be difficult enough.  All the reason more, why an application tool to manage the process should be user friendly, accessible to every employee, no matter where they are located and be extremely functional and adaptable to any type of business.  I can tell you that every employee in my business knows how to access their MyEKC account.  They understand that within their MyEKC account they will find information that speaks specifically to them.  Further, I can tell you that because of the easy functionality of MYEKC, today we have managers and employees that are regularly writing, editing and innovation systems within the MyEKC application.  Also, through MyEKC, I know that each employee in my business understands and buys into what is being asked of them on a daily basis, because MyEKC records each employee’s individual acceptance of each and every process. 

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Being a pragmatist I recognize that my connection to my business cannot last forever.  I also know that that there are several paths a business owner can take.  Regardless of the path I take, whether I sell my business or transition it within its current framework.   I view the effort to create a system driven and well documented business as both rewarding and extremely valuable.  Through this process I have evolved from the guy doing it, to the guy telling people what to do, to the guy that can generally be free from most day to day worries and can often be free to live his life in ways he had always dreamed.  This has made my business very functional, easier to transition and proportionally more valuable should I ever decide to sell.

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We all measure success differently; Sales growth, profitability targets, number of employee, number of locations, and so on.  I started my business in 1996 because I had lost my job.  After years of success with a fortune 100 company, I found that my termination was much easier for them than it was for me.  I did not want to go through that feeling of helplessness again without a fight.  In my case, business ownership was in my blood and seemed like the only viable solution.  I decided right from the start of my business, that I would measure my success by reaching a point where I felt I had gained more control of my life.  I had a father that owned a grocery store that once told me that sometimes he felt like the business owned him rather that he owning the business.  I wanted to avoid that feeing at all cost.  I wanted more control of my life.  My dream was to create a world that I would enjoy being part of and so would each person that said “yes, I want to join your company”.  My dream was to create a business that would serve my life and the lives of my people and then allow us to go home to live those lives.  I have been very lucky.  I have been able to fulfill these dreams by building a secure, stable and well documented business. 

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MyEKC is a tool.  A tool that documents and shares what you believe is important to you and what you deem is vital to the success of your business.  It works regardless of your industry or the size of your business.  It works regardless of your dreams or how you measure success.  To those of you just beginning, to those somewhere in the middle and to those recognizing that a life changing transition may be in your not too distant future, I hope that MyEKC is the tool you have been looking for to help you gain better control of your business and your life.

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Most Sincerely,

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Joe Cerino

President

HAR Adhesive Technologies

Cleveland, Ohio