Michael Gerber has a whole new mind.

I recently attended a one-day seminar,”Awakening the Entrepreneur Within,” given by the small biz guru. Gerber is best known for his books, The E-Myth and The E-Myth Revisited. These are the bibles for true entrepreneurs, individuals who have moved past being the “technician,” doing the hands-on work to deliver a service or product, to being the systems innovator, where the task at hand is to create a scalable system that produces consistent results. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, was Gerber’s role model for the systems innovator.

Gerber’s newest thinking has added meaning to the equation. His big point—if you are spending time building a business, make it mean something to the larger world than just efficient commerce. Transform the world by creating a system that fills a world need. His new role model is Mohammad Yunus, the man who brought micro-lending to the Third World. In 2006, he and the bank he founded, Grameen Bank, won the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

With this concept, Gerber moves from advising individuals about business to coaching them in life. To do this, he depends on tapping into feeling and story-telling, two right-brain competencies. 

To help entrepreneurs find that piece of the world that they want to transform, Gerber has created a three-day workshop called The Dreaming Room.  I’m signed up to attend in November. I expect it to be feeling-centered, to anchor the dream before the thinker in me gets too far down the road.

Even though it’s a few months off, the one-day experience has already shifted my thinking about my work and my business. What’s missing in the world that I feel passionate about? What’s the meaning of my company?  I realize that my dream can be 100 times bigger and 10 times more meaningful. I’ll use this blog as a way to play with my ideas, to flesh out the dream. Stay tuned.