The 3 Personalities of Every Online Writer— How to Find Harmony
I had to fire my Entrepreneur and beg my Technician to come back!
Michael E. Gerber introduced this framework in "The E-Myth Revisited." I've adapted it to fit the online writer's world to give writers -like me-, who are transitioning from amateurs to professionals, clarity.
I regret little in this life, but had I done this a month earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of frustration.
Understanding this framework lets you pinpoint precisely what is wrong with your approach. Failing to understand it might keep you stuck in a place where extra effort alone can't help you.
If writing is your hobby, keep doing what you're doing.
If you want it to pay the bills, it's then a business, you're an entrepreneur, and this is for you.
Understanding The 3 Personalities Of Every Solopreneur
The problem is that everybody who goes into business is three-people-in-one: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician. While each of these personalities wants to be the boss, none of them want to have a boss. — Michael E. Gerber
The Entrepreneur ( The Dreamer )
The reason why we are here in the first place.
Her main job is to wonder. Her jargon is tuned for the future tense. She thinks, "I wonder what kind of business will…" and "If I.. then when".
For us writers, She is responsible for scaling the reach of our content and creating a sustainable business model out of it. She decides what kind of monetization is best suited for us, which partnerships we should strike up, and what our brand should be like.
She looks at Medium from a top-down view and thinks we need to write 1000 articles by XX/202X to earn X dollars.
Her job is to have ideas, change things, and try different approaches constantly.
The Manager (The Content Planner)
The reason why we don't go insane.
His vocabulary includes derivatives of the words Time management, KPIs, and Systems. He knows to take the chaotic ideas of the Entrepreneur and rearrange them into a practical plan that delivers results on time.
He lives in the past and hates change because his mission is to put together a system and watch it do its thing.
For us writers, he plans what content must be written on which day and at what time. He ensures that other non-work related activities, such as meditation or workouts, do not collide with our writing plans. He keeps track of the numbers, deadlines, stats, and goals.
For him, the job is an outcome to reach.
Everything in our lives, from clothes to sunlight exposure, must be optimized to bring out the best performance and efficiency.
The Technician (The Writer)
The reason why we have a civilization.
The skilled doer. The one who actually gets the job done. He would say things like — "Thinking is counterproductive" and "I will do it myself"
He is the reason why most people who go into businesses fail too. His confidence in his skills blinds him to all the work that goes into a business to run it.
His arrogance of doing it all by himself turns his business into a job until he burns out and quits because he lacks the skill set to run it.
“To be a great Technician is simply insufficient to the task of building a great small business. Being consumed by the tactical work of the business, as every Technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure is, leads to only one thing: a complicated, frustrating, and, eventually, demeaning job!” — Michael E. Gerber in the E-myth Revisted
All he cares about is writing, coding, or designing. He is most content when he comes home, having done his job for the day. He lives in the present.
He is our writer, researcher, editor, and proofreader. He is the one who is spending the most extended amount of time writing, rewriting, and taking courses to improve his craft.
Superpowers and Flaws
“Typical person who goes into business is 10% entrepreneur, 20% manager and 70% technician” — Michael E. Gerber in the E-myth Revisted
Without an entrepreneur, it becomes impossible to grow meaningfully
She prepares us for scaling and dealing with new challenges in a creative way.
She is troublesome when the rate of ideas becomes faster than the rate of iteration. This makes our manager panic.
It happened to me, I had many ideas, but I wasn't going anywhere with them to the point that it got frustrating and painful.
She is at her best when she brainstorms headlines, remixes articles into tweets, leaves private notes for other writers, analyses the demand behind a highly viewed article and starts a newsletter!
The manager's superpower is his ability to make the Technician's life easier.
By optimizing for flow states.
He prepares a batch of breakfast burritos on Sundays to last a week. He even goes on amazon and buys a wall calendar to track the habits, does weekly and monthly reviews, and reassesses and refines the approach to ensure we meet our written target goal.
He goes overboard when he confuses his job with the technicians.
He might prepare headline templates or set a daily word count target or time target. He relays on Chatgpt to do most of the work and cut corners. He is perfectly happy to trade quality for quantity to stay on track.
He fantasizes about artificial general intelligence one day replacing the Technician. He respects him, but for his plans, he considers him to be lagging.
The Technician's highest potential, however, is not outsourcing but mastery.
Nothing brings him more joy and meaning than honing a specific craft for decades.
Sure, his job is doing the work but also learning how to do it. That is what makes him indispensable, after all.
Everyone, unfortunately, gets in the Technician's way.
The Entrepreneur with his untested ideas, the manager with new plans, and the distractions from social media, friends, and even food breaks.
Because what he loves more than his work is having done the work.
I came here 60% entrepreneur, 30% manager, and 10% a technician.
See, I didn't know that. So when I was doing my yearly review, I read all my pink dreamy ideas that I am nowhere near, which made me frustrated and felt like I was just full of it.
Understanding this made one thing clear:
I had to fire my Entrepreneur and beg my Technician to come back!
So his flaw is how susceptible he is for not showing up!
He isn't lazy, but he demands to work on a single specific thing at a time and in the way he sees fit. He has no respect for the manager or the Entrepreneur. They need to understand and appreciate what it takes to do their job.
It's so easy to piss off your Technician.
Closing
“If we were able to balance all three personalities equally, we would be incredibly competent. The Entrepreneur would be free to forge ahead into new areas of interest. The Manager would be solidifying the base operations. The Technician would be doing technical work’’ — Michael E. Gerber in the E-myth Revisted
The earlier you are in the journey, the more dependent you are on your Technician. Therefore, treat his time and skill with respect. Don't ask him to multitask or burden him with unreasonable demands.
Once you start gaining some traction, it becomes increasingly worthwhile to play the manager. A little order to your larger efforts will bring better results than large order to little efforts. Always prioritize action.
After some organized effort, some results will show up, you'll start feeling like a professional, and here is when you'll start needing your Entrepreneur the most.
He will give you direction and a destination to strive for.
For now, I am suspending my Entrepreneur and letting my manager create the ideal environment for my Technician to have the practice he needs. I am not worried about my Entrepreneur, I trust that he'll naturally take his seat at the 100-article mark.