Coming! “Be Your Own Turnaround Manager”
I have to do a little shameless self-promotion here. I have written a book titled, Be Your Own Turnaround Manager: A Common Sense Guide to Managing a Business Crisis, and it will be released in a couple of weeks. At that time, it will be available at Amazon, and other places as well. I will also have a direct link from this site to the book on Amazon.
For many years, I specialized in helping businesses that were in crisis and heading towards bankruptcy. Several of these businesses are used as case studies in the book. Although this book is directed toward small businesses with employees, I have presented many fundamental business precepts that can be valuable to any business.
To give you some idea of what this book is about, I have included, below, some of the front-page copy that will be on the publisher’s web site when it is completed:
Small Business Bankruptcy or Other Business Crisis Looming on Your Horizon?
Be Your Own Turnaround Manager is one of the few business books that deals with the issues that small businesses face daily, but that no one wants to talk about. It helps you recover from small problems so they don’t become disasters.
If your business is already mired in a crisis, Be Your Own Turnaround Manager provides an alternative to filing for bankruptcy.
Be Your Own Turnaround Manager doesn’t present any new management fad, magic formula, or acronym approach that can save your enterprise once it is in crisis-it requires a step-by-step business recovery plan.
Regardless of whether you’re a small business owner, run a non-profit organization, or a segment of a larger corporation, any business crisis you face can be managed long before it gets out of control. The business recovery plan set forth in Be Your Own Turnaround Manager helps small business owners answer these questions:
- What do I do when I can’t pay my bills?
- How do I face my employees when there is no money for payday?
- What do I do when I can’t pay my past due bank loan?
- What if the bank no longer wants me as a customer?
- How do I know if I have a real business crisis, or just some “hard times?”
- How do I know when I should file for bankruptcy?
- How do I handle HR and government agency demands if my business is in crisis?
- With my business in crisis, what do I do first?
- How do I plan and execute a crisis management/turnaround program?
- How do I know when I need outside help?
- How do I execute an orderly shutdown if I just don’t want to go through a crisis turnaround program?
- What is a business recovery plan and how do I implement it?
These concerns, and many more, are addressed in Be Your Own Turnaround Manager. Actual case histories are presented and referred to extensively as examples of how others solved these kinds of problems. In addition, checklists are included in each chapter to assist you in developing real solutions to your own problems.
I will post an update as the release process progresses.
By the Way, What is an Entrepreneur?
There has been quite a bit of chatter on the Internet lately about Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited. In his book, Gerber proclaims that unless you have employees, you are NOT an entrepreneur. Without hiring employees, you are merely a “technician” doing what you always did. He goes on to say, “The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.” This should come as shocking news to the 21.1 million non-employee businesses (70% of the total) in the U.S. (not to mention the world).
No, I do not believe Gerber’s premise for a second. Dozens of blogs and web sites offer definitions of what an entrepreneur is. There are also multiple dictionaries with definitions of the title, entrepreneur. They all say pretty much the same thing. Here is a compilation of those definitions:
An entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business, usually with considerable initiative, while taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.
Michael offers a very good approach for growing a business by hiring employees, but I think he does a real disservice to the majority of small business owners who do not want to take on employees, or do not intend to grow beyond a certain point. These are the same businesses that pump a trillion dollars a year into the United States GDP. I can’t imagine what the world contribution is.
Being an entrepreneur is hard work and takes a lot of time, passion, money, and intestinal fortitude to become a successful businessperson. I believe every shop owner; every market vendor, every home-based business owner, and every non-employee business owner in the world fulfills the above definition and deserves to be called “Entrepreneur.”
Consider This!
A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau states that, for 2006, Non-employer Business Receipts neared $1 trillion.
This data comes from an annual report of nearly 300 industries made up of 18.2 million sole proprietorships, 1.4 million corporations, and 1.2 million partnerships, which comprise the 20.7 million U.S. businesses that have no employees. This is almost 70% of the total number of U.S. businesses.
Not bad for a segment of the business world that receives little acknowledgement or attention from business writers and the general media.
Why Another Business Blog?
Obviously there are already way more business blogs on the Internet than a person could ever read, so why would I start another one? Well, here are my reasons:
- Too many small businesses are failing-5 million businesses fail each year in the U.S. This blog is the only source that will present this number and, over time, I will show exactly where this number comes from.
- My heart aches when I go into a new business and quickly realize that it probably will not be there 6 months from now-hopes and dreams shattered. Unnecessarily.
- Over 20 million U.S. businesses (70% of the total) have NO EMPLOYEES-yet, most of the current business web sites and blogs deal with businesses that have employee, IT, management, and growth issues.
- I keep hearing and reading about the many people who want to start a business, but are held back by fear of failure.
- I’m frequently surprised at the naiveté and lack of basic business knowledge shown by many web sites, blog commenters, and business forum participants. I just read that only 2% of online businesses will ever achieve anything worthwhile.
Why is this? Why do so many businesses fail? Why are people afraid to start a business? Why is there such a poor understanding of what makes a business successful? Why…?
I firmly believe it is a lack of knowing and/or applying the very fundamentals that successful businesses are founded on. I also think that much of the current information presented today either ignores the importance of these fundamentals, or glosses over them to get to the “cool” stuff like information technology, corporate culture, diversity, employee issues, motivation, how to become an Internet millionaire, and the like.
For untold numbers of people who would like to start a business, but are afraid of failure, most current business topics only make them more fearful. For the 5 million businesses that fail each year, these topics are of little concern and never addressed their real problems anyway. For the 20.7 million non-employer businesses, most of these subjects are also of little interest. For the remaining employer businesses-many still do not have a grasp of good business fundamentals.
That is why I’m starting this blog. Through decades of experience in multiple industries I have gained a certain amount of fundamental knowledge about starting and running a business (some of that knowledge came from also dealing with failing businesses) and I want to pass on as much of that basic knowledge as possible.
I also know there are a few great resources on other blogs and web sites, as well as off-line, and I want to point readers to these as well. Beyond this, I hope to challenge readers of this blog with topics from the world at large that may have an impact on their business, their families, and their lives.
So, there you have it. I want to present ideas and concepts that can help the small business owner become successful…and if only one person succeeds because of what they read in this blog, the effort will be worth it.
My Book
Any business crisis can be managed before it becomes fatal . . . Be Your Own Turnaround Manager tells you how. Click here for more information.