Build a Business, Not a Job - Hardcover
Build an Owner-Independent Company and Get Your Life Back!
According to the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index, the average small business owner works 52 hours a week, with more than 20 percent working seven days a week. The U.S. Census Bureau says 88.6 percent of all U.S.-based companies still require the owner to be there as the primary person responsible for core functions like producing their product or service, managing the day-to-day operations, or managing the financial aspects of the business.
If you're a business owner who wants to accelerate your company's growth, but do it in a way that enables you to get your life back, this book is for you.
Join Wall Street Journal best-selling author David Finkel and former chairperson of the National Association of Manufacturers Stephanie Harkness as they give you a concrete, step-by-step map to empower you to build an owner-independent company and get your life back.
You'll Learn:
- The only sustainable way to escape the Self-Employment Trap™
- The 4 most costly excuses that hold business owners back
- The 8 essential building blocks upon which to scale your company
- 25 formats to package your business systems
- A powerful 1-page quarterly action plan format
- 6 time mastery strategies to free up a full day each week to build your business
- How a skilled surgeon tamed his medical practice not by working more, but rather by working less and empowering his systems, team, and culture to do more
- How a contractor escaped the 70-hour-a-week trap, doubled his sales, and cut his work hours in half (and how you can too)
- How a second-generation manufacturer took over his family business and brought it from the brink of failure to record profits
- How a niche software company owner grew her company's market value tenfold, while at the same time enjoying a greater sense of time freedom than she ever thought possible
- And much more ...
These two world-class entrepreneurs will show you how to sustainably grow your company, increase your profitability, and enjoy more time freedom. You will learn how to truly build a business, not a job.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Author:
What a strange world it is that I'm here today contributing to this book designed to help business owners like you take your businesses to the next level. You see, I came to the world of business in the most unexpected way--through public education!
I was a home economics teacher in San Jose, California. I spent 13 years in public education, leaving it to start my first business, Expressions in Fine Jewelry. A gemologist friend and I created a high-end jewelry company serving personal clients. For six years, I flew around the world meeting our clients, sometimes carrying as much as $3 million worth of jewels in my briefcase. Exciting as that may seem, it got old after a while. The business needed me to be there at every step, every day, day after day. So when my husband Jack took early retirement from General Electric where he worked as a quality engineering manager, we made a decision that totally changed our lives.We chose to build a business together.
We looked around at various opportunities--from doing our own start-up, to buying a franchise, to purchasing an existing business. In the end, we opted to buy a small injection molding plastics manufacturing company near our home called Pacific Plastics and Engineering (today called Juno Pacific).
I look back and think what in the world were we doing?! We didn't know anything about injection molded plastic manufacturing; we had never co-owned a manufacturing business before. In my heart, I still felt like a school teacher, for heaven's sake! But both Jack and I had a deep belief in each other, and we knew we didn't want to live our lives wondering what if . . . You've met those people, right? They spend the long days of their later years wondering and sighing if only . . . and I wish we had . . .
Well, we didn't want that to be us,so we stepped out into the unknown and invested $60,000--my entire retirement savings through my teacher's pension--to buy this company and go after our dreams.
I wish I could tell you it was all roses and champagne from there on, but it wasn't. Our first few months in business, we learned that all those customers the seller had told us about were less than happy with customer service. And the financial books he had shown us were more fiction than fact. Faced with these challenges, we did what most self-employed people do--we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Jack took over the operations and began the painstaking process of mastering manufacturing injection molding plastics products. And I stepped into the role of running everything else--sales, marketing, financial management--as well as providing big-picture leadership of the business.
It took us three years of hard work,but we turned the business around. At that point, we needed to make a decision.Did we want it to continue as a mom-and-pop business that revolved around Jack and me, or did we want to step up and build a business that was bigger and more substantive than just the two of us? We decided to grow and scale the business.
Back then we didn't have the road map you have in this book. We didn't know how to build our core business infrastructure and systems. No one showed us the distinction of building not for control, but to establish intelligent business controls to empower the business, not just Jack and me as owners.
Still, over the following three years we managed to figure those things out and turn Juno Pacific into a highly successful,high-end manufacturer that runs 24/7 in the United States and has operations in India. Over time we re-positioned the company to be the go-to source to launch new projects in the laparoscopic medical device and biotech world. For the past few years Jack and I enjoyed the cash flow, satisfaction, and freedom of owning an "owner independent" company. We traveled the world, keeping in touch with the business to make sure it stayed on track, trusting the team, systems, and culture to guide and operate it day in, day out.
Then in 2011 we received an offer to purchase the company for more money than we could have imagined, and we accepted the offer, closing in the spring of 2011.
Why am I sharing all this with you?Because if I can do it, so can you. Just imagine: I was an ex-schoolteacher with no formal training in business who 25 years earlier had stepped out in faith with my husband and bought a small manufacturing business. With some painful trial and error we had grown the company into a dominant niche player. Now here we were, harvesting a high-eight-figure windfall from the sale of the company.
Looking back, I recognize that anyone can build an owner-independent business if they set their minds to it and follow the known steps to do so. What amazes me is how consistent the challenges are that face a business, regardless of industry, and that there are known solutions to the challenges you'll face. Creating a structure,accountability, and processes makes all the difference. Too many business owners make things harder for themselves by holding on to the belief that their business is different.
Jack and I built systems and feedback to run a multi million-dollar business that was truly independent of the two of us. Sure, we loved seeing results grow, but we took the known steps to develop our company. We groomed a solid, core leadership team that could run the business day in, day out. We made the company systems reliant, with strong processes and procedures that allowed it to produce exceptional value consistently for our customers and other stakeholders. And we developed a clear mission and culture that guided our company's operations, even when we were out of the country on extended vacations.
I first met David as a client of Maui Mastermind®, when in 2004 Jack and I attended the Maui Mastermind Wealth Summit. At $30,000 per couple, the Wealth Summit may be the most exclusive business owner retreat around. Over the next few years, I enjoyed participating in the event, gaining great insights and connecting with a wonderful peer group of ambitious yet caring business owners. When I was invited to become a Maui Advisor in 2007, I was honored. I had gained so much from the community that I loved sharing my experiences with other business owners who were working to grow their businesses and designing the lives they wanted.
Which brings me to this book. You're going to love it, by the way. It's like finding the secret treasure map that every business owner dreams of but rarely finds. In it you'll discover a clear,concrete map that will take you through the entire life cycle of your business from launch to exit.
This is the book I wish someone had handed to me 26 years ago when I started out in our own business. Not only would it have saved me from painful, costly mistakes,but it would have relieved so much of the doubt and uncertainty I felt because of all the conflicting advice I received over the years.
After being involved with a number of successful start-ups in Silicon Valley, including the growth of our manufacturing business, I can tell you from my perspective as a serial entrepreneur that this map and these distinctions are incredibly powerful. They work.
But it's up to you to put these ideas into practice--to invest the time and focused attention to follow this map and apply the concrete strategies to your business.
What's the payoff for all that effort? A multi million-dollar owner-independent business that you love owning again.
It is possible for you--you justneed to take the first step and apply what you learn in this book. - Stephanie Harkness, PebbleBeach, California
About the Author:
I was a home economics teacher in San Jose, California. I spent 13 years in public education, leaving it to start my first business, Expressions in Fine Jewelry. A gemologist friend and I created a high-end jewelry company serving personal clients. For six years, I flew around the world meeting our clients, sometimes carrying as much as $3 million worth of jewels in my briefcase. Exciting as that may seem, it got old after a while. The business needed me to be there at every step, every day, day after day. So when my husband Jack took early retirement from General Electric where he worked as a quality engineering manager, we made a decision that totally changed our lives.We chose to build a business together.
We looked around at various opportunities--from doing our own start-up, to buying a franchise, to purchasing an existing business. In the end, we opted to buy a small injection molding plastics manufacturing company near our home called Pacific Plastics and Engineering (today called Juno Pacific).
I look back and think what in the world were we doing?! We didn't know anything about injection molded plastic manufacturing; we had never co-owned a manufacturing business before. In my heart, I still felt like a school teacher, for heaven's sake! But both Jack and I had a deep belief in each other, and we knew we didn't want to live our lives wondering what if . . . You've met those people, right? They spend the long days of their later years wondering and sighing if only . . . and I wish we had . . .
Well, we didn't want that to be us,so we stepped out into the unknown and invested $60,000--my entire retirement savings through my teacher's pension--to buy this company and go after our dreams.
I wish I could tell you it was all roses and champagne from there on, but it wasn't. Our first few months in business, we learned that all those customers the seller had told us about were less than happy with customer service. And the financial books he had shown us were more fiction than fact. Faced with these challenges, we did what most self-employed people do--we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Jack took over the operations and began the painstaking process of mastering manufacturing injection molding plastics products. And I stepped into the role of running everything else--sales, marketing, financial management--as well as providing big-picture leadership of the business.
It took us three years of hard work,but we turned the business around. At that point, we needed to make a decision.Did we want it to continue as a mom-and-pop business that revolved around Jack and me, or did we want to step up and build a business that was bigger and more substantive than just the two of us? We decided to grow and scale the business.
Back then we didn't have the road map you have in this book. We didn't know how to build our core business infrastructure and systems. No one showed us the distinction of building not for control, but to establish intelligent business controls to empower the business, not just Jack and me as owners.
Still, over the following three years we managed to figure those things out and turn Juno Pacific into a highly successful,high-end manufacturer that runs 24/7 in the United States and has operations in India. Over time we re-positioned the company to be the go-to source to launch new projects in the laparoscopic medical device and biotech world. For the past few years Jack and I enjoyed the cash flow, satisfaction, and freedom of owning an "owner independent" company. We traveled the world, keeping in touch with the business to make sure it stayed on track, trusting the team, systems, and culture to guide and operate it day in, day out.
Then in 2011 we received an offer to purchase the company for more money than we could have imagined, and we accepted the offer, closing in the spring of 2011.
Why am I sharing all this with you?Because if I can do it, so can you. Just imagine: I was an ex-schoolteacher with no formal training in business who 25 years earlier had stepped out in faith with my husband and bought a small manufacturing business. With some painful trial and error we had grown the company into a dominant niche player. Now here we were, harvesting a high-eight-figure windfall from the sale of the company.
Looking back, I recognize that anyone can build an owner-independent business if they set their minds to it and follow the known steps to do so. What amazes me is how consistent the challenges are that face a business, regardless of industry, and that there are known solutions to the challenges you'll face. Creating a structure,accountability, and processes makes all the difference. Too many business owners make things harder for themselves by holding on to the belief that their business is different.
Jack and I built systems and feedback to run a multi million-dollar business that was truly independent of the two of us. Sure, we loved seeing results grow, but we took the known steps to develop our company. We groomed a solid, core leadership team that could run the business day in, day out. We made the company systems reliant, with strong processes and procedures that allowed it to produce exceptional value consistently for our customers and other stakeholders. And we developed a clear mission and culture that guided our company's operations, even when we were out of the country on extended vacations.
I first met David as a client of Maui Mastermind®, when in 2004 Jack and I attended the Maui Mastermind Wealth Summit. At $30,000 per couple, the Wealth Summit may be the most exclusive business owner retreat around. Over the next few years, I enjoyed participating in the event, gaining great insights and connecting with a wonderful peer group of ambitious yet caring business owners. When I was invited to become a Maui Advisor in 2007, I was honored. I had gained so much from the community that I loved sharing my experiences with other business owners who were working to grow their businesses and designing the lives they wanted.
Which brings me to this book. You're going to love it, by the way. It's like finding the secret treasure map that every business owner dreams of but rarely finds. In it you'll discover a clear,concrete map that will take you through the entire life cycle of your business from launch to exit.
This is the book I wish someone had handed to me 26 years ago when I started out in our own business. Not only would it have saved me from painful, costly mistakes,but it would have relieved so much of the doubt and uncertainty I felt because of all the conflicting advice I received over the years.
After being involved with a number of successful start-ups in Silicon Valley, including the growth of our manufacturing business, I can tell you from my perspective as a serial entrepreneur that this map and these distinctions are incredibly powerful. They work.
But it's up to you to put these ideas into practice--to invest the time and focused attention to follow this map and apply the concrete strategies to your business.
What's the payoff for all that effort? A multi million-dollar owner-independent business that you love owning again.
It is possible for you--you justneed to take the first step and apply what you learn in this book. - Stephanie Harkness, PebbleBeach, California
David Finkel is an ex-Olympic-level athlete turned business multimillionaire and is one of the nation's most respected business thinkers. A Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best-selling author of 10 business books, including coauthor of SCALE: 7 Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back, with Priceline.com cofounder Jeff Hoffman.
David is the founder and CEO of Maui Mastermind® (MauiMastermind.com), one of the world's premier business coaching companies, which has worked with more than 100,000 business owners, helping them grow their companies and get their lives back. David's business coaching clients enjoy an average annual growth rate of 64.2 percent while at the same time increasing their companies' "Owner Independence" by an average of 97.4 percent per year. Over the past 20 years, David and the other Maui coaches and advisors have personally scaled companies with an aggregate market value of $63 billion.
His weekly business owner e-letter is read by 100,000 business owners around the world, and his syndicated business articles on Inc.com and Huffingtonpost.com garner over 150,000 readers every year. His work has been featured in such prestigious media outlets as the Wall Street Journal, International Business Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fox Business, MSNBC, and Inc. magazine.
An in-demand keynote speaker, David's message of how to grow a business by strengthening its core systems, team, and culture has galvanized business audiences around the globe.
He and his wife Heather and their three sons live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Stephanie Harkness has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 35 years, with eight successful businesses under her direct leadership. For 25 years, her primary focus was JunoPacific, which runs a 24/7 operation serving the medical device and life sciences markets where precision engineering, short lead times, and class 1000 cleanrooms are required by exacting customer requirements to support FDA contract manufacturing and assembly.
Co-owned with her husband Jack, their company, with 300 employees, shepherded more than 100 start-ups through funding by venture capitalists with the expected outcome of acquisition or IPO. She led in the development of their corporate boards and executive teams. The majority of customers were successful in raising capital, building products for FDA approval, and securing a successful outcome for shareholders.
Five years ago Stephanie and Jack sold this thriving company to a private manufacturing enterprise focused on growing its presence in Silicon Valley by having the top brand in the country for medical device projects in its portfolio.
Stephanie's past awards include the Freedom Award presented by the National Association of Manufacturers (two other recipients have been Ronald Reagan and Henry Ford), and #5 in the Business Journal Top 50 Women Business Owners in California; she was named Customer of the Year and featured in Wells Fargo Bank's Annual Shareholder Report, as well as National Woman Business Owner.
A former client of Maui Mastermind, Stephanie has volunteered as a Maui Advisor since 2007, paying it forward to other business owners and helping them make their businesses more successful.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBradstreet and Sons
- Publication date2016
- ISBN 10 0692895833
- ISBN 13 9780692895832
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number3
- Number of pages160
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