I really like this books format, way of story telling and the wisdom it imparts.
It tells the story of a business owner who worked very hard to start and run his design agency and decided it must be possible to sell the business and retire early.
Unfortunately he soon realizes that his agency does a lot of things, but is not as profitable as he thought it was. By finding a mentor he learns step-by-step what’s necessary to increase the value of his business.
This book helps to gain a vision of how the own journey could look like. I think a vision is crucial to formulate the right goals and actionable tasks along the way. So this book gave me a lot.
Take-aways
- Focus on one specific product/service to achieve excellence
- Optimally target a niche
- Specialize
- Create a process that can be repeated, refined and scaled
- Teach other people to perform this process without you
- Create specialized teams for
- … Sales
- … Management
- … Implementation
- Incentivize
- … through competition
- … through bonus salaries
- If planning to sell, let employees benefit
- There must be a reason to sell → more sales, larger market, more capital to expand
- There must be an outlook to profit from a sale → more sales, larger market, more capital to expand