The Facts of Business Life Read Free Page B

These facts are:
    1 . If you don’t lead, no one will follow.
    2 . If you don’t control it, you don’t own it.
    3 . Protecting your company’s assets should be your first priority.
    4 . Planning is about preparing for the future, not predicting it.
    5 . If you don’t market your business, you won’t have one.
    6 . The marketplace is a war zone.
    7 . You don’t just have to know the business you’re in, you have to know business.
    As you can see, some of these facts cover traditional areas like leadership and control or management, while others are less conventional, like those concerning the war zone and the importance of protecting business assets. As the book explains, each of these facts is important, but as important as each one is, their real strength lies in how they are interrelated and how they work together. That is, in addition to their individual value as guidelines for entrepreneurs, they demonstrate that being a successful owner isn’t about being good in one or two business disciplines but in all seven of them, as well as about understanding how they depend on each other.
    You may understandably ask why I’ve chosen these seven facts out of the many disciplines of business. When you own a business, and I have owned several successful ones, you learn that you must be able to prioritize, and these seven facts, or concepts, represent the priorities I believe every owner, new or experienced, should never lose sight of. In addition, these particular concepts benefit both would-be and experienced owners in several different ways: (1) they are easy to implement; (2) they are easy for employees to understand and work with; (3) the more you understand them, the better chance you have for success; (4) they work in unison and form a solid foundation on which to build a business; and (5) they will produce the desired results.
    The other important point to bear in mind regarding the seven facts is that they are organized strategically. That is, the first fact concerns leadership because without leadership and vision you cannot define success. In other words, it’s leadership that determines the company’s eventual destination and what it will look like when it gets there. Leadership is always followed by control, or management, which essentially outlines the day-to-day blocking and tackling that must be accomplished in order to achieve success as you have defined it. The third fact concerns protecting assets, because if your assets aren’t protected, you are essentially leaving your investment at the mercy of your employees and forces in the marketplace over which you have little or no control. After protecting assets comes planning, because planning creates the road map, based on objectives and goals, that determines how your business will attain success, as well as maintain it. The fifth fact covers marketing, because very little can happen without customers and the sales revenue they provide, and marketing and advertising focus on attracting customers and creating a market presence. The fact that the market is a war zone comes next because, while it’s one thing to attract customers, it’s another to sell them and keep them as customers, and it’s important that you understand this distinction. And, finally, the seventh and last fact—the importance of having a good general understanding of business—makes it clear that implementing all the previous facts can be done most effectively only when they are used together and backed up by a broad understanding of all the various facets of business.
    The other reason The Facts of Business Life is unique is that it introduces the concept of a business life cycle, and the five levels every successful business goes through as it starts, grows, and matures. These five levels are divided into two groups. The first, which represents planning levels, includes “Ownership and Opportunity” and “Creating