WILEY Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat

Description

Whether you’re thinking about starting a new business or growing an existing one, Ready, Fire, Aim has what you need to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors. In it, self-made multimillionaire and bestselling author Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth. Along the way, Masterson teaches you the different skills needed in order to excel in this dynamic environment. Review: Très intéressant - Un livre qui s'étudie. Intéressant et motivant. Super clair et simplifié. Review: Answers two big questions - I'm a fan of the author and I looked at this book many times before buying it. My problem was that it has always been expensive and I prefer my books in kindle format. I tried the published summary of the book and it convinced me that the author has a powerful message which I really needed to discover in full. So I bought the audio book, enjoyed it so much that I bought the hardback as well. The book sets out to answer two big questions: 1) How do you start-up a business from scratch? 2) How do you take an established business to the next level? It sets four different stages for the business (which I agree with) but I don't agree with the financial values quoted. I feel they are too big and generally I prefer to think about size in terms of the number of employees. I feel it's a better guide to the complexities involved in managing the business. The book goes on to look at employee numbers but I think there is an inconsistency between revenue and employees. These levels are: 1) Infancy - just starting out - getting to $1 million in revenue 2) Childhood - the fast growth stage - from $1 million to $10 million 3) Adolescence - $10 million to $50 million 4) Maturity - $50 million to $300 million The book focuses on the main challenge in each stage i.e. getting your first sales, adding more products to become profitable, developing systems and getting the business to run itself and continue to grow. The book was published in 2006 and that's five years before Eric Ries published his book "The Lean Startup". Both have the united theme that the earlier you test your product idea with real customers, the better it will be. Unlike the Ries book, this book focuses o the sales and marketing issues. It argues the entrepreneur must become the expert in selling, to such an extent that sales and marketing should take up 80% of your time. This isn't what many people want to hear but the product and service just need to be "good enough". Don't waste time on perfecting it in your eyes without selling. This is also the message from The Lean Startup where the concept of the Minimum Viable Product is explained. With this in mind, the book explains how to develop your Optimum Selling Strategy (OSS). You just want to know how to sell your particular product in your particular market and you must not spread your learning and activities too widely on too many different marketing and selling techniques. The Optimum Selling Strategy is based on answering four questions: 1) Where are you going to find your customers? 2) What product will you sell them first? 3) How much will you charge for it? 4) How will you convince them to buy? This is the vital task in the first stage, infancy. Moving on to Childhood or the fast growth stage, the challenge is to identify, develop and sell more products. These two stages are were the vast majority of the text is focused. This is getting the business established and consistently profitable. The author has interesting ideas in the Adolescence stage too but the final stage is glossed over in a few pages. This is a great book and I recommend it very highly. I very much approve of the emphasis it puts on sales and marketing. As management guru Peter Drucker said, there is only one purpose of a business and that's to create customers. Quite simply, without customers there isn't a business. There are some excellent marketing books available to read but too often they encourage you to try too many techniques too quickly. Once you have one method working, I certainly believe you should add a few more but getting that first method is critical. Many of the stories from the book come from the author's experience in information marketing. He is one of the people behind the remarkably successful Agora publishing empire. However the concepts explained apply much more widely. Paul Simister helps frustrated business owners who are stuck, get unstuck.