Our Story

Here are some key moments from along the way

  • Point One

    1977-2011

    History
    The E-Myth Academy was founded by Michael Gerber and Thomas Travisano in San Mateo, California. The partners had a vision to create an affordable (and scalable) education program that taught business management skills to struggling entrepreneurs. The E-Myth Revisited becomes the 5th best selling business book of all time.

  • Point Two

    June 2011

    A New Start
    EMyth brings in a new management team. Our first priority was to transform the corporate culture - to open up the space for a new kind of pride in what we do. This created opportunities for innovation and evolution in a company that had become too bureaucratic over the years.

  • Point Three

    October 2011

    The Move
    We relocated the company to Ashland, Oregon. After several decades in the San Francisco Bay Area, EMyth found a new home on Main Street. While our clients are businesses at all stages and sizes, the opportunity to center ourselves in a small town gives us a way to connect to the experience of other small and mid-size business owners in a new way.

  • Point Four

    December 2011

    The Autopsy
    We knew we had unscalable and antiquated systems and a demoralized culture. We brought in business technology strategists to give us options. What if we could reimagine our business - with no constraints of time, money or people - who could we become? We started laying the groundwork for using technology to amplify our message in an entirely new way.

  • Point Five

    May 2012

    Breaking Ground
    The new management team launches EMyth Reimagined and forms two internal working teams called Eden and Earth. The Eden team sets out to imagine and formulate a new vision for our product platform - how do we deliver our service in 2012 and beyond? The Earth team assesses and develops each iteration based on available technology, resource constraints, and of course, cost.

  • Point Six

    July 2012

    The Rollout
    We start the process of rolling "EMyth Reimagined" out by consolidating our product line, previewing changes through video and an in-depth article series. We begin the process of migrating our CRM to Salesforce, our billing platform to Zuora, and begin the development of the new emyth.com.

  • Point Seven

    Fall 2012

    Launch
    EMyth Reimagined goes live. It begins with the official launch of our new website, followed by the release of our digital coaching platform, and the first New Coach Intensive to expand our resources to serve more clients. We complete the first phase of our technology transformation, ending an incredible year of changing how we do business, and then sharing that with you.

  • Point Eight

    2013 and beyond

    Continued Evolution
    We're already thinking about which additional components to add to the next release of the coaching app, how we'll bring our service out to our markets, and filling out our team to support the growth we expect in the years to come.

Leadership Team

Some background on our executives

Learn more about our leadership team

From a variety of professional and personal backgrounds, we are united by a vision to not split work and life. We each have our stories of success and heartache in our business backgrounds, and we bring those with us every day at EMyth. Our passion is to help people change how they feel and think about business. Our goal is that each business we have the privilege of working with is made better for the people who own it and work there. Our dream is that the growing community of EMyth'd businesses becomes a force for change in the U.S. and global economy. Our counterintuitive approach is to work with one business owner at a time. Our commitment is to always be working on ourselves, so that we are never teaching something we haven't embodied.

Ben Ostergaard

Chief Executive Officer

"My passion is making real change possible for those that seek it. By striving for deeper and more real relationships, I am leading EMyth to help change what it means for business leaders to own their business, own their role, and own their relationship to their business. I want every business owner to find their own passion and through its expression, find the right business mix of people and systems, innovation, creativity, organizational discipline and financial accountability. I love translating visions into reality, problem solving and bringing my business experience together with my love and passion for people. My professional background includes 15 years in strategy and management consulting in the fields of IT, healthcare, education, financial services, government and manufacturing; I have also spent time as an outdoor educator. I live in Ashland with my wife and our daughter."

Ben Ostergaard

Jonathan Raymond

Chief Brand Officer

"I'm dedicated to evolving EMyth's message and amplifying it through simple and beautiful applications. I love the challenge of pushing our clients to deeper levels of ownership, pushing ourselves to deepen and modernize the tools we provide our coaches, and the feeling when it all comes together to change one person's life. After a brief career in law, I've spent the last 12 years in start-up and transforming companies in the clean energy, ecommerce, and mobile technology spaces. I live in Ashland with my wife and daughter, and am a very amateur barista."

Jonathan Raymond

Liz Seidner Davidoff

Strategic Partnerships

"I have a passion for helping businesses achieve their potential by providing the right tools and marketing strategies that bring them the results they need to succeed. My mission is to drive visibility and excitement around the EMyth brand through engaging and innovative global campaigns, effective media strategies and new channel development. For the past 20 years, my Sales and Marketing experience has spanned both large and small technology, entertainment and media companies. I love developing fresh ideas that are grounded in proven fundamentals that contribute to our clients’ success. I live in the Bay Area and enjoy world travel, movie-going and great food."

Liz Seidner Davidoff

Tricia Huebner

Director of Corporate Training

"My role is to expand our brand through strategic partnerships, media relations and events. I love building relationships and having powerful conversations with entrepreneurs about our unique approach to leadership and ownership. I've been with the company for the past 10 years as a coach, trainer and seminar leader working with our clients to help them transform their businesses by transforming themselves. Their passion and courage inspires me every day. My professional background includes advertising, public relations, nonprofit management, organizational development and training. I live in Ashland and love spending time outdoors hiking and backpacking."

Tricia Huebner

Slade Machamer

Director of Coaching

"I try to begin each day asking if our coaching and education reflects our deepest values and making sure we embody what we teach. What inspires me is the diversity of courageous business owners who come to us looking for something real, something practical, something that will really bring about change in their organization. I am driven to finding new ways of reaching out to all corners of the globe and discovering how ownership, self-responsibility, and care know no borders. My professional background is in technology staffing, consulting sales, training, and management of recruiting teams. I live in Ashland with my wife and am always on the lookout for a rare bird, a fine Pinot, and a good story."

Slade Machamer

Nathan Heinrich

Director of Technology

"I ensure that every piece of technology EMyth depends on is running quickly, efficiently, and securely. My professional background includes a wide range of technology experience, from IT to Web to Multimedia. I love playing with new cutting edge technology and employing it in the workplace to achieve dramatic gains in efficiency and client experience. I make my home in Ashland and when I'm not looking at some sort of screen, I enjoy playing basketball and spending as much time as I can with my wife and three kids."

Nathan Heinrich

Our Location

Our new home in Ashland, Oregon

Sunshine and Great Food

Our offices are located in downtown Ashland, Oregon - about halfway between Portland and San Francisco. It's a beautiful 4-5 hour drive from either city or you can fly right into Medford (MFR), which is about 15 minutes away. If you're in town - Ashland is a popular spot if you're traveling on the west coast - please stop by and see us.

Work With Us

We're always looking for new "owners".

our culture

As you can imagine, this is a unique place to work. As a company that stands for some big ideas and sets a high bar for what we mean by self-responsibility, caring and ownership - we are looking for a certain kind of person to work here. Of course you need to meet the skill requirements for the position, but it's more about who you are than what you do. We look at your resume as the start of a conversation about who you are, what you want out of your career here, and how open you are to evolving. Oh, and we have a lot of fun.

Our Current Openings