How does one achieve balanced success in all aspects of life: career, business or financial results, family, health, spiritual, social, and personal development?

As a developing business leader in the dynamic referral marketing industry, Simon Thompson explains some of the essential characteristics and qualitied necessary for success in your own business.

With businesses in nine countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and India, the author draws on 15 years of experience to relate success principles that can help you position yourself for business growth.

In 21 engaging chapters, peppered with humorous anecdotes, he outlines practical ideas for someone evaluating or pursuing referral marketing as a vehicle to achieve his or her dreams and goals. This is not a book on the theoretical aspects of business, but rather a practical guide on the what's and how-to's of getting to the top.

This book differs in terms of content from other books as it addresses the problem of poverty and the financial problems faced by many of the people and communities throughout the world, especially in places dominated by ignorance and lack of security. It also attempts to examine the different social groups that suffer from poverty and to find the appropriate solutions to set up a program that helps all individuals and companies to benefit from it and to tackle the phenomena of corporate bankruptcies and poverty.

This book differs in terms of content from other books as it addresses the problem of poverty and the financial problems faced by many of the people and communities throughout the world, especially in places dominated by ignorance and lack of security. It also attempts to examine the different social groups that suffer from poverty and to find the appropriate solutions to set up a program that helps all individuals and companies to benefit from it and to tackle the phenomena of corporate bankruptcies and poverty.

Doing Your Business is a comprehensive guide that provides step-by-step directions for owning a business. It uses the personal approach to solving the many problems that can confront owners as they travel along the road of satisfying market demands and operational efficiency. It emphasizes that all business owners are not experienced in the techniques of supervision or the skills of management. As such, this nature is shared by many small “Mom and Pop” stores, Dot.coms, light industries, or service entities. Through its pages, readers will find guidance about when consultants should be hired and when the owner may do his or her own consulting to save the costs of outsourcing. Griffith cuts through the maze of getting equipment for a business and reveals how shortcuts may be made to encourage employee participation in finding better ways of doing business. Also discussed are procedures, and many of the prime policies are listed for their inclusion within a company policy manual. Lastly, an outline is given on how an owner may personally rate the business and how he or she may get feedback from the customers. Richly layered and informative, Doing Your Business talks about how to organize any business and how to measure progress while looking at employee needs and training.

Doing Your Business is a comprehensive guide that provides step-by-step directions for owning a business. It uses the personal approach to solving the many problems that can confront owners as they travel along the road of satisfying market demands and operational efficiency. It emphasizes that all business owners are not experienced in the techniques of supervision or the skills of management. As such, this nature is shared by many small “Mom and Pop” stores, Dot.coms, light industries, or service entities. Through its pages, readers will find guidance about when consultants should be hired and when the owner may do his or her own consulting to save the costs of outsourcing. Griffith cuts through the maze of getting equipment for a business and reveals how shortcuts may be made to encourage employee participation in finding better ways of doing business. Also discussed are procedures, and many of the prime policies are listed for their inclusion within a company policy manual. Lastly, an outline is given on how an owner may personally rate the business and how he or she may get feedback from the customers. Richly layered and informative, Doing Your Business talks about how to organize any business and how to measure progress while looking at employee needs and training.

Doing Your Business is a comprehensive guide that provides step-by-step directions for owning a business. It uses the personal approach to solving the many problems that can confront owners as they travel along the road of satisfying market demands and operational efficiency. It emphasizes that all business owners are not experienced in the techniques of supervision or the skills of management. As such, this nature is shared by many small “Mom and Pop” stores, Dot.coms, light industries, or service entities. Through its pages, readers will find guidance about when consultants should be hired and when the owner may do his or her own consulting to save the costs of outsourcing. Griffith cuts through the maze of getting equipment for a business and reveals how shortcuts may be made to encourage employee participation in finding better ways of doing business. Also discussed are procedures, and many of the prime policies are listed for their inclusion within a company policy manual. Lastly, an outline is given on how an owner may personally rate the business and how he or she may get feedback from the customers. Richly layered and informative, Doing Your Business talks about how to organize any business and how to measure progress while looking at employee needs and training.

Buying a company is a demanding, complex process requiring a wide range of skills and abilities. If you understand this process thoroughly, then you are far more likely to make the right purchase decision. Whether you are buying the corner ice cream parlor or a $100 million business, following certain steps will enhance your chances of successfully operating a profitable venture once the deal is closed. This book should help you to visualize what really goes on in the making of a business deal. Basis for the Book Information for the book is drawn from several sources. The book heavily reflects the first hand, practical experience in deal-making by the author Dr. John Psarouthakis. He has led the buying process for about 40 acquisitions and has been a part of a team of a dozen others during his business career as an entrepreneur and business executive. Most of his direct experience comes from purchasing and selling deals for his own two companies, J.P.Industries, Inc and JPE, Inc. In the 1980´s. Psarouthakis founded and built J.P. Industries into a Fortune 500 company by acquiring underperforming auto parts and plumbing products manufacturers, selling the company to a British conglomerate, T&N, PLC, in 1990. Next, he founded JPE, Inc., which manufactured and distributed auto and truck parts for OEM and the aftermarket. Although. Psarouthakis´ experience draws heavily on the manufacturing and distribution of durable goods sectors, many aspects of the process are the same, regardless of the industry. Interviews conducted by co-author Lorraine Uhlaner with entrepreneurs involved in retailing, service and construction sectors and other published information about the acquisitions process also influence the content of this book. The Importance of Careful Planning A carefully planned and executed search process is likely to improve your odds of finding a company with which you can be successful. Too often, people rush into deals only to find out later that they did not purchase what they had expected. They suffer negative business consequences, such as lower than anticipated profits and sales, as a result. The alternative, careful planning, may cost more initially, and require more effort, but is likely to lead to better business results in the long run. Various studies have found that as high as 60% of acquisitions made fail to meet the acquisition performance goals, ROI, ROE, etc., that were set at the closing and which influenced significantly the price paid. Just 25% met or exceeded those goals; the remaining 15% were indeterminate. There is one overriding reason for this high rate of failure and that is overpaying for the acquired company. Overpayment is a result of 1) an overoptimistic expectation of the market, 2) a higher than realistic estimate of internal improvements/developments, and 3) allowing oneself into a horserace leading to an overprice, due to the bidding process that the seller has succeeded to establish. In order to avoid as much as possible the above, this book presents a process based on many years of experience that resulted in the acquisition of over 50 deals and equivalently the sale of such acquired companies. Successful Acquisition Process - 16 Steps One enters into a rather specific process when one decides to acquire a business and particularly the "right" business. You must manage and control the process if the result is to have a good chance to be the desired one. The acquisitions process involved several distinct steps and sub-steps that need to be attended to with extreme care and dealt with expertly and skillfully. These steps are: 1. Know what you want to acquire. 2. Set up criteria to guide you on what you want to buy. 3. Set up a plan on how you will proceed. 4. Identify/build your team that will work, do, and manage the process with you. 5. Develop a network of credible sources for acquisition candidates. 6. Screen carefully and thoroughly the candidates using the criteria set. 7. Conduct an effective preliminary evaluation/due diligence before you spend a great deal of time and money. 8. Negotiations really begin on the first meeting with the owner or his / her representatives. Preliminary agreements take place then and have those in a letter of intent. 9. Have your attorney be involved early in the process and work on the letter. 10. Conduct a thorough evaluation/due diligence. Look for surprises but do not panic. 11. Develop a detail action plan and complete it before you close the deal. 12. Review the value and price of the business with your colleagues. 13. Negotiate the purchase agreement with the full participation of your attorney. 14. Close the deal. 15. Begin implementation of the action plan immediately. 16. Last, but most important, meet as many people of the company as possible during the acquisition process. Do not wait to meet them after you close the deal. Overview of the Buying Process This book will systematically take you through the key steps in buying any company: Deciding what you want to do; Finding businesses for sale; Evaluating business prospects; Negotiating the deal; Financing the deal; Closing the deal, and Development of an Action Plan prior to taking over the business and prior to closing the deal. (What to do once you own it.) Patience: Key to a successful search Perhaps the most difficult part is finding the right business that you want, and having the patience to wait it out until you find the right company. The other steps, such as evaluation, financing, pricing and closing are straightforward. We cannot over-emphasize the danger of rushing prematurely to purchase a company before you have carefully followed all the steps in the process. The process is designed to identify the company that you are likely to have the greatest likelihood of operating profitability and successfully. If you have several leads going at once, you are less apt to rush yourself into the wrong deal or even prematurely into the formal due diligence process, which is the most costly aspect of the deal making, prior to closing the deal. As you run out of money to investigate companies, you will be more likely to jump at the wrong opportunity. A good way to avoid this is to carry out several inexpensive screening steps before getting your accountant and attorney involved in formal due diligence. The importance of careful screening cannot be overemphasized, and indeed is borne out by other research. The importance of keeping the leads flowing The importance of keeping a flow of leads going until you have closed the deal is illustrated from our own direct experience. With one company, we had several sessions of negotiating. We liked the company when we looked at it. But time moved on. Other deals were flowing into the funnel. The seller, in this case, became more and more demanding, which is his right of course. But in the mean time, other companies entered the picture that appeared more attractive to us. We decided not to buy the company after all. Perhaps if we had not had those alternatives, we would have been more apt to go ahead with the deal, even though it would not have been a good one for us. The lesson here is a simple one. Even while you are negotiating a deal, until you have closed the deal, you should keep your flow of leads coming in. It gives you another opportunity to ask yourself, "is this the deal I really should go through with?" It helps you from rushing into the deal and overpaying. This becomes especially true late in the negotiations process. You may have already spend a fair amount of time and money on formal due diligence. But beware escalating commitment. Don´t ever feel locking in or hooked on the deal. Just keep looking. By having several "irons in the fire," you are less likely to get emotionally fixated on any one company. The Buying Process as a Problem-Solving Process Another effective way to understand the buying process is to view it as a problem-solving process. As questions or problems emerge, you try to solve them with the seller. Some deals may encounter un-resolvable problems at which point you may have to drop the deal altogether. Locating the right business is expensive and time-consuming. You want to avoid dropping a lead, especially in the late stages, just because a minor difference in price or point of view between buyer and seller creates an impasse and yet this often takes place. Although you should heed the advice to avoid rushing into a deal, don´t drop a deal either just because of some detail. rapport with the seller, negotiating skill and experience help to reduce the risk of losing out on a deal because of some minor difficulty. Organization of the Book This book is designed and organized to cover the buying process in detail from the moment you decide that you would like to buy a company to the day you take over one. Recommended Reading: 1 Meeks, Fleming, and Nancy Rulenier (sp?), "Am I going to mind sweeping the floors?", Forbes, Vol. 152, pp.142-146 2 P. Haspeslagh and D. Jemison, Managing Acquisitions (New York: Free Press, 1991).

Buying a company is a demanding, complex process requiring a wide range of skills and abilities. If you understand this process thoroughly, then you are far more likely to make the right purchase decision. Whether you are buying the corner ice cream parlor or a $100 million business, following certain steps will enhance your chances of successfully operating a profitable venture once the deal is closed. This book should help you to visualize what really goes on in the making of a business deal. Basis for the Book Information for the book is drawn from several sources. The book heavily reflects the first hand, practical experience in deal-making by the author Dr. John Psarouthakis. He has led the buying process for about 40 acquisitions and has been a part of a team of a dozen others during his business career as an entrepreneur and business executive. Most of his direct experience comes from purchasing and selling deals for his own two companies, J.P.Industries, Inc and JPE, Inc. In the 1980´s. Psarouthakis founded and built J.P. Industries into a Fortune 500 company by acquiring underperforming auto parts and plumbing products manufacturers, selling the company to a British conglomerate, T&N, PLC, in 1990. Next, he founded JPE, Inc., which manufactured and distributed auto and truck parts for OEM and the aftermarket. Although. Psarouthakis´ experience draws heavily on the manufacturing and distribution of durable goods sectors, many aspects of the process are the same, regardless of the industry. Interviews conducted by co-author Lorraine Uhlaner with entrepreneurs involved in retailing, service and construction sectors and other published information about the acquisitions process also influence the content of this book. The Importance of Careful Planning A carefully planned and executed search process is likely to improve your odds of finding a company with which you can be successful. Too often, people rush into deals only to find out later that they did not purchase what they had expected. They suffer negative business consequences, such as lower than anticipated profits and sales, as a result. The alternative, careful planning, may cost more initially, and require more effort, but is likely to lead to better business results in the long run. Various studies have found that as high as 60% of acquisitions made fail to meet the acquisition performance goals, ROI, ROE, etc., that were set at the closing and which influenced significantly the price paid. Just 25% met or exceeded those goals; the remaining 15% were indeterminate. There is one overriding reason for this high rate of failure and that is overpaying for the acquired company. Overpayment is a result of 1) an overoptimistic expectation of the market, 2) a higher than realistic estimate of internal improvements/developments, and 3) allowing oneself into a horserace leading to an overprice, due to the bidding process that the seller has succeeded to establish. In order to avoid as much as possible the above, this book presents a process based on many years of experience that resulted in the acquisition of over 50 deals and equivalently the sale of such acquired companies. Successful Acquisition Process - 16 Steps One enters into a rather specific process when one decides to acquire a business and particularly the "right" business. You must manage and control the process if the result is to have a good chance to be the desired one. The acquisitions process involved several distinct steps and sub-steps that need to be attended to with extreme care and dealt with expertly and skillfully. These steps are: 1. Know what you want to acquire. 2. Set up criteria to guide you on what you want to buy. 3. Set up a plan on how you will proceed. 4. Identify/build your team that will work, do, and manage the process with you. 5. Develop a network of credible sources for acquisition candidates. 6. Screen carefully and thoroughly the candidates using the criteria set. 7. Conduct an effective preliminary evaluation/due diligence before you spend a great deal of time and money. 8. Negotiations really begin on the first meeting with the owner or his / her representatives. Preliminary agreements take place then and have those in a letter of intent. 9. Have your attorney be involved early in the process and work on the letter. 10. Conduct a thorough evaluation/due diligence. Look for surprises but do not panic. 11. Develop a detail action plan and complete it before you close the deal. 12. Review the value and price of the business with your colleagues. 13. Negotiate the purchase agreement with the full participation of your attorney. 14. Close the deal. 15. Begin implementation of the action plan immediately. 16. Last, but most important, meet as many people of the company as possible during the acquisition process. Do not wait to meet them after you close the deal. Overview of the Buying Process This book will systematically take you through the key steps in buying any company: Deciding what you want to do; Finding businesses for sale; Evaluating business prospects; Negotiating the deal; Financing the deal; Closing the deal, and Development of an Action Plan prior to taking over the business and prior to closing the deal. (What to do once you own it.) Patience: Key to a successful search Perhaps the most difficult part is finding the right business that you want, and having the patience to wait it out until you find the right company. The other steps, such as evaluation, financing, pricing and closing are straightforward. We cannot over-emphasize the danger of rushing prematurely to purchase a company before you have carefully followed all the steps in the process. The process is designed to identify the company that you are likely to have the greatest likelihood of operating profitability and successfully. If you have several leads going at once, you are less apt to rush yourself into the wrong deal or even prematurely into the formal due diligence process, which is the most costly aspect of the deal making, prior to closing the deal. As you run out of money to investigate companies, you will be more likely to jump at the wrong opportunity. A good way to avoid this is to carry out several inexpensive screening steps before getting your accountant and attorney involved in formal due diligence. The importance of careful screening cannot be overemphasized, and indeed is borne out by other research. The importance of keeping the leads flowing The importance of keeping a flow of leads going until you have closed the deal is illustrated from our own direct experience. With one company, we had several sessions of negotiating. We liked the company when we looked at it. But time moved on. Other deals were flowing into the funnel. The seller, in this case, became more and more demanding, which is his right of course. But in the mean time, other companies entered the picture that appeared more attractive to us. We decided not to buy the company after all. Perhaps if we had not had those alternatives, we would have been more apt to go ahead with the deal, even though it would not have been a good one for us. The lesson here is a simple one. Even while you are negotiating a deal, until you have closed the deal, you should keep your flow of leads coming in. It gives you another opportunity to ask yourself, "is this the deal I really should go through with?" It helps you from rushing into the deal and overpaying. This becomes especially true late in the negotiations process. You may have already spend a fair amount of time and money on formal due diligence. But beware escalating commitment. Don´t ever feel locking in or hooked on the deal. Just keep looking. By having several "irons in the fire," you are less likely to get emotionally fixated on any one company. The Buying Process as a Problem-Solving Process Another effective way to understand the buying process is to view it as a problem-solving process. As questions or problems emerge, you try to solve them with the seller. Some deals may encounter un-resolvable problems at which point you may have to drop the deal altogether. Locating the right business is expensive and time-consuming. You want to avoid dropping a lead, especially in the late stages, just because a minor difference in price or point of view between buyer and seller creates an impasse and yet this often takes place. Although you should heed the advice to avoid rushing into a deal, don´t drop a deal either just because of some detail. rapport with the seller, negotiating skill and experience help to reduce the risk of losing out on a deal because of some minor difficulty. Organization of the Book This book is designed and organized to cover the buying process in detail from the moment you decide that you would like to buy a company to the day you take over one. Recommended Reading: 1 Meeks, Fleming, and Nancy Rulenier (sp?), "Am I going to mind sweeping the floors?", Forbes, Vol. 152, pp.142-146 2 P. Haspeslagh and D. Jemison, Managing Acquisitions (New York: Free Press, 1991).

Buying a company is a demanding, complex process requiring a wide range of skills and abilities. If you understand this process thoroughly, then you are far more likely to make the right purchase decision. Whether you are buying the corner ice cream parlor or a $100 million business, following certain steps will enhance your chances of successfully operating a profitable venture once the deal is closed. This book should help you to visualize what really goes on in the making of a business deal. Basis for the Book Information for the book is drawn from several sources. The book heavily reflects the first hand, practical experience in deal-making by the author Dr. John Psarouthakis. He has led the buying process for about 40 acquisitions and has been a part of a team of a dozen others during his business career as an entrepreneur and business executive. Most of his direct experience comes from purchasing and selling deals for his own two companies, J.P.Industries, Inc and JPE, Inc. In the 1980´s. Psarouthakis founded and built J.P. Industries into a Fortune 500 company by acquiring underperforming auto parts and plumbing products manufacturers, selling the company to a British conglomerate, T&N, PLC, in 1990. Next, he founded JPE, Inc., which manufactured and distributed auto and truck parts for OEM and the aftermarket. Although. Psarouthakis´ experience draws heavily on the manufacturing and distribution of durable goods sectors, many aspects of the process are the same, regardless of the industry. Interviews conducted by co-author Lorraine Uhlaner with entrepreneurs involved in retailing, service and construction sectors and other published information about the acquisitions process also influence the content of this book. The Importance of Careful Planning A carefully planned and executed search process is likely to improve your odds of finding a company with which you can be successful. Too often, people rush into deals only to find out later that they did not purchase what they had expected. They suffer negative business consequences, such as lower than anticipated profits and sales, as a result. The alternative, careful planning, may cost more initially, and require more effort, but is likely to lead to better business results in the long run. Various studies have found that as high as 60% of acquisitions made fail to meet the acquisition performance goals, ROI, ROE, etc., that were set at the closing and which influenced significantly the price paid. Just 25% met or exceeded those goals; the remaining 15% were indeterminate. There is one overriding reason for this high rate of failure and that is overpaying for the acquired company. Overpayment is a result of 1) an overoptimistic expectation of the market, 2) a higher than realistic estimate of internal improvements/developments, and 3) allowing oneself into a horserace leading to an overprice, due to the bidding process that the seller has succeeded to establish. In order to avoid as much as possible the above, this book presents a process based on many years of experience that resulted in the acquisition of over 50 deals and equivalently the sale of such acquired companies. Successful Acquisition Process - 16 Steps One enters into a rather specific process when one decides to acquire a business and particularly the "right" business. You must manage and control the process if the result is to have a good chance to be the desired one. The acquisitions process involved several distinct steps and sub-steps that need to be attended to with extreme care and dealt with expertly and skillfully. These steps are: 1. Know what you want to acquire. 2. Set up criteria to guide you on what you want to buy. 3. Set up a plan on how you will proceed. 4. Identify/build your team that will work, do, and manage the process with you. 5. Develop a network of credible sources for acquisition candidates. 6. Screen carefully and thoroughly the candidates using the criteria set. 7. Conduct an effective preliminary evaluation/due diligence before you spend a great deal of time and money. 8. Negotiations really begin on the first meeting with the owner or his / her representatives. Preliminary agreements take place then and have those in a letter of intent. 9. Have your attorney be involved early in the process and work on the letter. 10. Conduct a thorough evaluation/due diligence. Look for surprises but do not panic. 11. Develop a detail action plan and complete it before you close the deal. 12. Review the value and price of the business with your colleagues. 13. Negotiate the purchase agreement with the full participation of your attorney. 14. Close the deal. 15. Begin implementation of the action plan immediately. 16. Last, but most important, meet as many people of the company as possible during the acquisition process. Do not wait to meet them after you close the deal. Overview of the Buying Process This book will systematically take you through the key steps in buying any company: Deciding what you want to do; Finding businesses for sale; Evaluating business prospects; Negotiating the deal; Financing the deal; Closing the deal, and Development of an Action Plan prior to taking over the business and prior to closing the deal. (What to do once you own it.) Patience: Key to a successful search Perhaps the most difficult part is finding the right business that you want, and having the patience to wait it out until you find the right company. The other steps, such as evaluation, financing, pricing and closing are straightforward. We cannot over-emphasize the danger of rushing prematurely to purchase a company before you have carefully followed all the steps in the process. The process is designed to identify the company that you are likely to have the greatest likelihood of operating profitability and successfully. If you have several leads going at once, you are less apt to rush yourself into the wrong deal or even prematurely into the formal due diligence process, which is the most costly aspect of the deal making, prior to closing the deal. As you run out of money to investigate companies, you will be more likely to jump at the wrong opportunity. A good way to avoid this is to carry out several inexpensive screening steps before getting your accountant and attorney involved in formal due diligence. The importance of careful screening cannot be overemphasized, and indeed is borne out by other research. The importance of keeping the leads flowing The importance of keeping a flow of leads going until you have closed the deal is illustrated from our own direct experience. With one company, we had several sessions of negotiating. We liked the company when we looked at it. But time moved on. Other deals were flowing into the funnel. The seller, in this case, became more and more demanding, which is his right of course. But in the mean time, other companies entered the picture that appeared more attractive to us. We decided not to buy the company after all. Perhaps if we had not had those alternatives, we would have been more apt to go ahead with the deal, even though it would not have been a good one for us. The lesson here is a simple one. Even while you are negotiating a deal, until you have closed the deal, you should keep your flow of leads coming in. It gives you another opportunity to ask yourself, "is this the deal I really should go through with?" It helps you from rushing into the deal and overpaying. This becomes especially true late in the negotiations process. You may have already spend a fair amount of time and money on formal due diligence. But beware escalating commitment. Don´t ever feel locking in or hooked on the deal. Just keep looking. By having several "irons in the fire," you are less likely to get emotionally fixated on any one company. The Buying Process as a Problem-Solving Process Another effective way to understand the buying process is to view it as a problem-solving process. As questions or problems emerge, you try to solve them with the seller. Some deals may encounter un-resolvable problems at which point you may have to drop the deal altogether. Locating the right business is expensive and time-consuming. You want to avoid dropping a lead, especially in the late stages, just because a minor difference in price or point of view between buyer and seller creates an impasse and yet this often takes place. Although you should heed the advice to avoid rushing into a deal, don´t drop a deal either just because of some detail. rapport with the seller, negotiating skill and experience help to reduce the risk of losing out on a deal because of some minor difficulty. Organization of the Book This book is designed and organized to cover the buying process in detail from the moment you decide that you would like to buy a company to the day you take over one. Recommended Reading: 1 Meeks, Fleming, and Nancy Rulenier (sp?), "Am I going to mind sweeping the floors?", Forbes, Vol. 152, pp.142-146 2 P. Haspeslagh and D. Jemison, Managing Acquisitions (New York: Free Press, 1991).

Going into business or expanding a business is an easy process. It does take some forward planning and personal fortitude to make it happen. Documenting your plan and working on your plan will help make your business successful. This book describes the items that need to go into your business plan and will eventually become part of your plan of execution. These items should be researched and well documented in a format that represents a business plan as described in the book. The topics discussed in the book apply to small businesses and large corporations. A business plan is a document that describes all of the aspects of your business. Items such as financial data, products and services, location, and activities that will be conducted during your business operation and should be included in this document. The book is laid out in an outline format. Each topic in the book can be a topic in your business plan. The descriptions in the sections can be replaced by the information that is specific to your type of business. After you have sufficient data, you can use this plan to obtain financing, do additional detailed planning, and eventually molded to use as a guide for daily operations. If you already have a plan or existing business or business unit, this book will help you to improve your current plan for additional successes. If you see topics which may not apply to your type of business, it is still good to include these subjects in your plan to show that you have considered the topic and documented that it does not apply. Since many businesses fail due to lack of planning, now is your opportunity to create a plan that will better equip you with the knowledge you can use to make a success and prevent failure. Financial planning may be the most important topic since the principle of having more income than expenses is part of the basis of running a business. Understanding how and where income will be achieve and what your expenses will be is crucial to having a positive cash flow — making money! This subject is covered in this book along with other supporting topics, which contribute to the success of running a business. Scenarios are included in several chapters. These show that as you make your plan, you will need to include different options, one or more which may come to fruition as you start your business. These may also include contingencies, or options, which you exercise based on real cost and income numbers. A plan should include as many facts as possible and enough scenarios to show that you have considered the variance that comes with any business. Variance could include number of patrons, number of employees needed, or changing cost of goods and doing business. The financial cost of doing business could include rent, office materials, cost of goods to be sold, or other intangible costs. Once you have read through the book, you may want to use the book as a reference guide. You can review topics, which may be more complicated and require you to further document your plan. You should add topics that apply to your type of business and document those items in your specific business plan. A good business plan now is better than a perfect business plan that is continually updated and never gets quite ready for use. There comes a time when the businessperson has to complete his/her documentation and start execution—taking action. Your plan can always be updated as you proceed with your activities of opening your new business. Start your plan, make your outline, and fill in the details as you obtain the information needed. Once you are satisfied that you have covered the subjects needed for your type of business, set your plan into action. Follow your plan, and you get your new business started. Now get yourself motivated and start Going Into Business To Stay in Business!

Going into business or expanding a business is an easy process. It does take some forward planning and personal fortitude to make it happen. Documenting your plan and working on your plan will help make your business successful. This book describes the items that need to go into your business plan and will eventually become part of your plan of execution. These items should be researched and well documented in a format that represents a business plan as described in the book. The topics discussed in the book apply to small businesses and large corporations. A business plan is a document that describes all of the aspects of your business. Items such as financial data, products and services, location, and activities that will be conducted during your business operation and should be included in this document. The book is laid out in an outline format. Each topic in the book can be a topic in your business plan. The descriptions in the sections can be replaced by the information that is specific to your type of business. After you have sufficient data, you can use this plan to obtain financing, do additional detailed planning, and eventually molded to use as a guide for daily operations. If you already have a plan or existing business or business unit, this book will help you to improve your current plan for additional successes. If you see topics which may not apply to your type of business, it is still good to include these subjects in your plan to show that you have considered the topic and documented that it does not apply. Since many businesses fail due to lack of planning, now is your opportunity to create a plan that will better equip you with the knowledge you can use to make a success and prevent failure. Financial planning may be the most important topic since the principle of having more income than expenses is part of the basis of running a business. Understanding how and where income will be achieve and what your expenses will be is crucial to having a positive cash flow — making money! This subject is covered in this book along with other supporting topics, which contribute to the success of running a business. Scenarios are included in several chapters. These show that as you make your plan, you will need to include different options, one or more which may come to fruition as you start your business. These may also include contingencies, or options, which you exercise based on real cost and income numbers. A plan should include as many facts as possible and enough scenarios to show that you have considered the variance that comes with any business. Variance could include number of patrons, number of employees needed, or changing cost of goods and doing business. The financial cost of doing business could include rent, office materials, cost of goods to be sold, or other intangible costs. Once you have read through the book, you may want to use the book as a reference guide. You can review topics, which may be more complicated and require you to further document your plan. You should add topics that apply to your type of business and document those items in your specific business plan. A good business plan now is better than a perfect business plan that is continually updated and never gets quite ready for use. There comes a time when the businessperson has to complete his/her documentation and start execution—taking action. Your plan can always be updated as you proceed with your activities of opening your new business. Start your plan, make your outline, and fill in the details as you obtain the information needed. Once you are satisfied that you have covered the subjects needed for your type of business, set your plan into action. Follow your plan, and you get your new business started. Now get yourself motivated and start Going Into Business To Stay in Business!

Going into business or expanding a business is an easy process. It does take some forward planning and personal fortitude to make it happen. Documenting your plan and working on your plan will help make your business successful. This book describes the items that need to go into your business plan and will eventually become part of your plan of execution. These items should be researched and well documented in a format that represents a business plan as described in the book. The topics discussed in the book apply to small businesses and large corporations. A business plan is a document that describes all of the aspects of your business. Items such as financial data, products and services, location, and activities that will be conducted during your business operation and should be included in this document. The book is laid out in an outline format. Each topic in the book can be a topic in your business plan. The descriptions in the sections can be replaced by the information that is specific to your type of business. After you have sufficient data, you can use this plan to obtain financing, do additional detailed planning, and eventually molded to use as a guide for daily operations. If you already have a plan or existing business or business unit, this book will help you to improve your current plan for additional successes. If you see topics which may not apply to your type of business, it is still good to include these subjects in your plan to show that you have considered the topic and documented that it does not apply. Since many businesses fail due to lack of planning, now is your opportunity to create a plan that will better equip you with the knowledge you can use to make a success and prevent failure. Financial planning may be the most important topic since the principle of having more income than expenses is part of the basis of running a business. Understanding how and where income will be achieve and what your expenses will be is crucial to having a positive cash flow — making money! This subject is covered in this book along with other supporting topics, which contribute to the success of running a business. Scenarios are included in several chapters. These show that as you make your plan, you will need to include different options, one or more which may come to fruition as you start your business. These may also include contingencies, or options, which you exercise based on real cost and income numbers. A plan should include as many facts as possible and enough scenarios to show that you have considered the variance that comes with any business. Variance could include number of patrons, number of employees needed, or changing cost of goods and doing business. The financial cost of doing business could include rent, office materials, cost of goods to be sold, or other intangible costs. Once you have read through the book, you may want to use the book as a reference guide. You can review topics, which may be more complicated and require you to further document your plan. You should add topics that apply to your type of business and document those items in your specific business plan. A good business plan now is better than a perfect business plan that is continually updated and never gets quite ready for use. There comes a time when the businessperson has to complete his/her documentation and start execution—taking action. Your plan can always be updated as you proceed with your activities of opening your new business. Start your plan, make your outline, and fill in the details as you obtain the information needed. Once you are satisfied that you have covered the subjects needed for your type of business, set your plan into action. Follow your plan, and you get your new business started. Now get yourself motivated and start Going Into Business To Stay in Business!

� Adv ance reviews of Certain to Win

� Annotated T able of Contents

"The book is both an excellent primer for those new to Boyd and a catalyst
to those with business experience trying to internalize the relevance of Boyd�s thinking."

Chuck Leader, LtCol USMC (Ret.) and information technology company CEO;
"A Winning Combination," Marine Corps Gazette, March 2005.

Certain to Win [Sun Tzu�s prognosis for generals who follow his advice] develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business.

The success of Robert Coram�s monumental biography, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, rekindled interest in this obscure pilot and documented his influence on military matters ranging from his early work on fighter tactics to the USMC�s maneuver warfare doctrine to the planning for Operation Desert Storm. Unfortunately Boyd�s written legacy, consisting of a single paper and a four-set cycle of briefings, addresses strategy only in war. [All of Boyd�s briefings are available on Defense and the National Interest.]

Boyd and Business

Boyd did study business. He read everything he could find on the Toyota Production System and came to consider it as an implementation of ideas similar to his own. He took business into account when he formulated the final version of his �OODA loop� and in his last major briefing, Conceptual Spiral, on science and technology. He read and commented on early drafts of this manuscript, but he never wrote on how business could operate more profitably by using his ideas.

Other writers and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd�s concepts and suggesting applications to business. Keith Hammonds, in the magazine Fas t Company, George Stalk and Tom Hout in Competing Against Time, and Tom Peters most recently in Re-imagine! have described the OODA loop and its effects on competitors.

They made significant contributions. Successful businesses, though, don�t concentrate on affecting competitors but on enticing customers. You could apply Boyd all you wanted to competitors, but unless this somehow caused customers to buy your products and services, you�ve wasted time and money. If this were all there were to Boyd, he would rate at most a sidebar in business strategy.

Business is not War

Part of the problem has been Boyd�s focus on war, where �affecting competitors� is the whole idea. Armed conflict was his life for nearly 50 years, first as a fighter pilot, then as a tactician and an instructor of fighter pilots, and after his retirement, as a military philosopher. Coram describes (and I know from personal experience) how his quest consumed Boyd virtually every waking hour.

It was not a monastic existence, though, since John was above everything else a competitor and loved to argue over beer and cigars far into the night. During most of the 1970s and 80s he worked at the Pentagon, where he could share ideas and debate with other strategists and practitioners of the art of war. The result was the remarkable synthesis we know as Patterns of Conflict. Discussions about generals and campaigns, however, did not give Boyd much insight into competition in other areas, like business

Now you might expect, at first glance, that business is so much like war that lifting concepts from one and applying them to the other would be straightforward. But think about that for a minute. Even in its simplest description, business doesn�t really look much like war. For one thing, there are always three sides to business competition: you, customers, and competitors. Often it is vastly more complex, with a multitude of competitors who are customers of each other as well. It may even be desirable to be �conquered� by one of these competitors in a lucrative merger or acquisition. Finally and most important, it is rarely possible to �defeat� the other player in the triangle, that is, to compel an unwilling customer to buy. Attempts to pressure customers into paying too much or into buying more than they need often open a window for competitors (as the US airline industry is belatedly discovering.) Generally all we can do is attract � offer products and services to potential customers, whose decisions determine who wins and who loses.

What this means is that the strategies and tactics of war, Boyd�s included, are destructive in nature and so never apply to business. Expressions like �Attack enemy weaknesses� have no meaning, except as metaphors and analogies. Across different domains, such literary devices are as likely to be misleading as helpful.

Boyd�s Strategy Still Applies

Business is not war, but it is a form of conflict, a situation where one group can win only if another group loses. If you dig beneath Boyd�s war-centered tactics you find a general strategy for ensuring that in most any type of conflict your group will be the one that wins.

Although Boyd made a number of new and fundamental contributions, his is an ancient school, extending back in written form 2,500 years. It is built around two primary themes:

• A focus on time (not speed) and specifically, using dislocations in time to shape the competitive situation. These effects, by the way, are quite different in business than they are in war.

• A culture with attributes that enable�even impel�organizations to exploit time for competitive advantage. Within Boyd�s culture, members will seek out or invent specific practices that will work for it.

If you look at a particular group of military practitioners, including Sun Tzu, Belisarius, Genghis Khan, N. B. Forrest, T. E. Lawrence, the Blitzkrieg generals, the Israeli Defense Force, many modern guerilla commanders, and the US Marine Corps since 1989, and compare them to certain highly successful businesses, as noted in Peters, Hammond, Stalk & Hout, and particularly to Toyota, you will find remarkable agreement on these two elements.

Why You Should Read this Book

This book will give you a firm foundation in Boyd�s strategy, starting with its military roots, but it is not a how-to manual. There could never be such a manual for strategy since all sides could use it and so would derive no strategic benefit. Anything you can write a how-to manual for is tactics or even technique. Strategy begins where these leave off.

You should read this book if you�ve found other books on business strategy lacking something. You should read it if you appreciate that Sun Tzu seems to be revealing fundamental truths, but it�s not clear what they have to do with business. You should read it if you intend to run your own show � without the decision making by committee, shunning of responsibility, and breakdown of ethics and trust that you see around you every day. You should read it because you�ll find ideas you�ve never seen before, and besides, it�s not that long.

---

For seminars and presentations on Certain to Win, including Col John Boyd�s Patterns of Conflict, please contact:

Jeannine Addams,
J. Addams & Partners, Inc.
Telephone: (+1) 404-231-1132
E-mail: jfaddams@jaddams.com< /p>

Interviews:

Sonshi.com
LocalTechWire

Also by Chet Richards, A Swift, Elusive Sword (Washington: Center for Defense Information, 2001/2003)

Biographies of John Boyd:

Robert Coram, Boyd - The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (New York: Little, Brown, 2002)

Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, August 2004; original hardback, 2001)

Please visit our related web site:

Slightly East of New

� Adv ance reviews of Certain to Win

� Annotated T able of Contents

"The book is both an excellent primer for those new to Boyd and a catalyst
to those with business experience trying to internalize the relevance of Boyd�s thinking."

Chuck Leader, LtCol USMC (Ret.) and information technology company CEO;
"A Winning Combination," Marine Corps Gazette, March 2005.

Certain to Win [Sun Tzu�s prognosis for generals who follow his advice] develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business.

The success of Robert Coram�s monumental biography, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, rekindled interest in this obscure pilot and documented his influence on military matters ranging from his early work on fighter tactics to the USMC�s maneuver warfare doctrine to the planning for Operation Desert Storm. Unfortunately Boyd�s written legacy, consisting of a single paper and a four-set cycle of briefings, addresses strategy only in war. [All of Boyd�s briefings are available on Defense and the National Interest.]

Boyd and Business

Boyd did study business. He read everything he could find on the Toyota Production System and came to consider it as an implementation of ideas similar to his own. He took business into account when he formulated the final version of his �OODA loop� and in his last major briefing, Conceptual Spiral, on science and technology. He read and commented on early drafts of this manuscript, but he never wrote on how business could operate more profitably by using his ideas.

Other writers and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd�s concepts and suggesting applications to business. Keith Hammonds, in the magazine Fas t Company, George Stalk and Tom Hout in Competing Against Time, and Tom Peters most recently in Re-imagine! have described the OODA loop and its effects on competitors.

They made significant contributions. Successful businesses, though, don�t concentrate on affecting competitors but on enticing customers. You could apply Boyd all you wanted to competitors, but unless this somehow caused customers to buy your products and services, you�ve wasted time and money. If this were all there were to Boyd, he would rate at most a sidebar in business strategy.

Business is not War

Part of the problem has been Boyd�s focus on war, where �affecting competitors� is the whole idea. Armed conflict was his life for nearly 50 years, first as a fighter pilot, then as a tactician and an instructor of fighter pilots, and after his retirement, as a military philosopher. Coram describes (and I know from personal experience) how his quest consumed Boyd virtually every waking hour.

It was not a monastic existence, though, since John was above everything else a competitor and loved to argue over beer and cigars far into the night. During most of the 1970s and 80s he worked at the Pentagon, where he could share ideas and debate with other strategists and practitioners of the art of war. The result was the remarkable synthesis we know as Patterns of Conflict. Discussions about generals and campaigns, however, did not give Boyd much insight into competition in other areas, like business

Now you might expect, at first glance, that business is so much like war that lifting concepts from one and applying them to the other would be straightforward. But think about that for a minute. Even in its simplest description, business doesn�t really look much like war. For one thing, there are always three sides to business competition: you, customers, and competitors. Often it is vastly more complex, with a multitude of competitors who are customers of each other as well. It may even be desirable to be �conquered� by one of these competitors in a lucrative merger or acquisition. Finally and most important, it is rarely possible to �defeat� the other player in the triangle, that is, to compel an unwilling customer to buy. Attempts to pressure customers into paying too much or into buying more than they need often open a window for competitors (as the US airline industry is belatedly discovering.) Generally all we can do is attract � offer products and services to potential customers, whose decisions determine who wins and who loses.

What this means is that the strategies and tactics of war, Boyd�s included, are destructive in nature and so never apply to business. Expressions like �Attack enemy weaknesses� have no meaning, except as metaphors and analogies. Across different domains, such literary devices are as likely to be misleading as helpful.

Boyd�s Strategy Still Applies

Business is not war, but it is a form of conflict, a situation where one group can win only if another group loses. If you dig beneath Boyd�s war-centered tactics you find a general strategy for ensuring that in most any type of conflict your group will be the one that wins.

Although Boyd made a number of new and fundamental contributions, his is an ancient school, extending back in written form 2,500 years. It is built around two primary themes:

• A focus on time (not speed) and specifically, using dislocations in time to shape the competitive situation. These effects, by the way, are quite different in business than they are in war.

• A culture with attributes that enable�even impel�organizations to exploit time for competitive advantage. Within Boyd�s culture, members will seek out or invent specific practices that will work for it.

If you look at a particular group of military practitioners, including Sun Tzu, Belisarius, Genghis Khan, N. B. Forrest, T. E. Lawrence, the Blitzkrieg generals, the Israeli Defense Force, many modern guerilla commanders, and the US Marine Corps since 1989, and compare them to certain highly successful businesses, as noted in Peters, Hammond, Stalk & Hout, and particularly to Toyota, you will find remarkable agreement on these two elements.

Why You Should Read this Book

This book will give you a firm foundation in Boyd�s strategy, starting with its military roots, but it is not a how-to manual. There could never be such a manual for strategy since all sides could use it and so would derive no strategic benefit. Anything you can write a how-to manual for is tactics or even technique. Strategy begins where these leave off.

You should read this book if you�ve found other books on business strategy lacking something. You should read it if you appreciate that Sun Tzu seems to be revealing fundamental truths, but it�s not clear what they have to do with business. You should read it if you intend to run your own show � without the decision making by committee, shunning of responsibility, and breakdown of ethics and trust that you see around you every day. You should read it because you�ll find ideas you�ve never seen before, and besides, it�s not that long.

---

For seminars and presentations on Certain to Win, including Col John Boyd�s Patterns of Conflict, please contact:

Jeannine Addams,
J. Addams & Partners, Inc.
Telephone: (+1) 404-231-1132
E-mail: jfaddams@jaddams.com< /p>

Interviews:

Sonshi.com
LocalTechWire

Also by Chet Richards, A Swift, Elusive Sword (Washington: Center for Defense Information, 2001/2003)

Biographies of John Boyd:

Robert Coram, Boyd - The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (New York: Little, Brown, 2002)

Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, August 2004; original hardback, 2001)

Please visit our related web site:

Slightly East of New

� Adv ance reviews of Certain to Win

� Annotated T able of Contents

"The book is both an excellent primer for those new to Boyd and a catalyst
to those with business experience trying to internalize the relevance of Boyd�s thinking."

Chuck Leader, LtCol USMC (Ret.) and information technology company CEO;
"A Winning Combination," Marine Corps Gazette, March 2005.

Certain to Win [Sun Tzu�s prognosis for generals who follow his advice] develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business.

The success of Robert Coram�s monumental biography, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, rekindled interest in this obscure pilot and documented his influence on military matters ranging from his early work on fighter tactics to the USMC�s maneuver warfare doctrine to the planning for Operation Desert Storm. Unfortunately Boyd�s written legacy, consisting of a single paper and a four-set cycle of briefings, addresses strategy only in war. [All of Boyd�s briefings are available on Defense and the National Interest.]

Boyd and Business

Boyd did study business. He read everything he could find on the Toyota Production System and came to consider it as an implementation of ideas similar to his own. He took business into account when he formulated the final version of his �OODA loop� and in his last major briefing, Conceptual Spiral, on science and technology. He read and commented on early drafts of this manuscript, but he never wrote on how business could operate more profitably by using his ideas.

Other writers and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd�s concepts and suggesting applications to business. Keith Hammonds, in the magazine Fas t Company, George Stalk and Tom Hout in Competing Against Time, and Tom Peters most recently in Re-imagine! have described the OODA loop and its effects on competitors.

They made significant contributions. Successful businesses, though, don�t concentrate on affecting competitors but on enticing customers. You could apply Boyd all you wanted to competitors, but unless this somehow caused customers to buy your products and services, you�ve wasted time and money. If this were all there were to Boyd, he would rate at most a sidebar in business strategy.

Business is not War

Part of the problem has been Boyd�s focus on war, where �affecting competitors� is the whole idea. Armed conflict was his life for nearly 50 years, first as a fighter pilot, then as a tactician and an instructor of fighter pilots, and after his retirement, as a military philosopher. Coram describes (and I know from personal experience) how his quest consumed Boyd virtually every waking hour.

It was not a monastic existence, though, since John was above everything else a competitor and loved to argue over beer and cigars far into the night. During most of the 1970s and 80s he worked at the Pentagon, where he could share ideas and debate with other strategists and practitioners of the art of war. The result was the remarkable synthesis we know as Patterns of Conflict. Discussions about generals and campaigns, however, did not give Boyd much insight into competition in other areas, like business

Now you might expect, at first glance, that business is so much like war that lifting concepts from one and applying them to the other would be straightforward. But think about that for a minute. Even in its simplest description, business doesn�t really look much like war. For one thing, there are always three sides to business competition: you, customers, and competitors. Often it is vastly more complex, with a multitude of competitors who are customers of each other as well. It may even be desirable to be �conquered� by one of these competitors in a lucrative merger or acquisition. Finally and most important, it is rarely possible to �defeat� the other player in the triangle, that is, to compel an unwilling customer to buy. Attempts to pressure customers into paying too much or into buying more than they need often open a window for competitors (as the US airline industry is belatedly discovering.) Generally all we can do is attract � offer products and services to potential customers, whose decisions determine who wins and who loses.

What this means is that the strategies and tactics of war, Boyd�s included, are destructive in nature and so never apply to business. Expressions like �Attack enemy weaknesses� have no meaning, except as metaphors and analogies. Across different domains, such literary devices are as likely to be misleading as helpful.

Boyd�s Strategy Still Applies

Business is not war, but it is a form of conflict, a situation where one group can win only if another group loses. If you dig beneath Boyd�s war-centered tactics you find a general strategy for ensuring that in most any type of conflict your group will be the one that wins.

Although Boyd made a number of new and fundamental contributions, his is an ancient school, extending back in written form 2,500 years. It is built around two primary themes:

• A focus on time (not speed) and specifically, using dislocations in time to shape the competitive situation. These effects, by the way, are quite different in business than they are in war.

• A culture with attributes that enable�even impel�organizations to exploit time for competitive advantage. Within Boyd�s culture, members will seek out or invent specific practices that will work for it.

If you look at a particular group of military practitioners, including Sun Tzu, Belisarius, Genghis Khan, N. B. Forrest, T. E. Lawrence, the Blitzkrieg generals, the Israeli Defense Force, many modern guerilla commanders, and the US Marine Corps since 1989, and compare them to certain highly successful businesses, as noted in Peters, Hammond, Stalk & Hout, and particularly to Toyota, you will find remarkable agreement on these two elements.

Why You Should Read this Book

This book will give you a firm foundation in Boyd�s strategy, starting with its military roots, but it is not a how-to manual. There could never be such a manual for strategy since all sides could use it and so would derive no strategic benefit. Anything you can write a how-to manual for is tactics or even technique. Strategy begins where these leave off.

You should read this book if you�ve found other books on business strategy lacking something. You should read it if you appreciate that Sun Tzu seems to be revealing fundamental truths, but it�s not clear what they have to do with business. You should read it if you intend to run your own show � without the decision making by committee, shunning of responsibility, and breakdown of ethics and trust that you see around you every day. You should read it because you�ll find ideas you�ve never seen before, and besides, it�s not that long.

---

For seminars and presentations on Certain to Win, including Col John Boyd�s Patterns of Conflict, please contact:

Jeannine Addams,
J. Addams & Partners, Inc.
Telephone: (+1) 404-231-1132
E-mail: jfaddams@jaddams.com< /p>

Interviews:

Sonshi.com
LocalTechWire

Also by Chet Richards, A Swift, Elusive Sword (Washington: Center for Defense Information, 2001/2003)

Biographies of John Boyd:

Robert Coram, Boyd - The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (New York: Little, Brown, 2002)

Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, August 2004; original hardback, 2001)

Please visit our related web site:

Slightly East of New