The Facts of Business Life

The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows that You Don’t.

I like this book a lot.

The first clue that told me I would like it, a lot, appeared in the introduction.

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.

See? That’s a grownup perspective. That perspective comes from the author's own hard-won success over a number of years, through good economies and bad, and competing in a very tough industry: automobile industry.

Said another way, one of the reasons I like it is because of what he does not offer: easy solutions. This is not a self-help book. There are no 6 tips to live the life of your dreams type babble. He offers no cookie-cutter templates, no eezy-peezy recipes for business success. There aren’t any. Adults know that.

Instead, the author, Bill McBean, respects his reader’s intelligence and the book publishing world by offering facts.

He offers 7 of them. 7 Facts of Business Life. I’m going to list them here; they are so good.

• If you don’t lead, no will follow.
• If you don’t control it, you don’t own it.
• Protecting your company’s assets should be your first priority.
• Planning is about preparing for the future, not predicting it.
• If you don’t market your business, you won’t have one.
• The marketplace is a war zone.
• You don’t just have to know the business you’re in, you have to know business.

Did he miss one? I don’t think so. But if you see one, see if it wouldn't fit under one of these 7 facts.

He devotes a chapter to each fact, offering twenty to thirty pages of intelligent discussion on a business owner’s perspective with that fact, that perspective and how it relates to the others.

I’m not alone in my opinion that this is a book worthy of my time to read it, my time to write a testimonial for it. Look at the others who praised it - Steve Forbes, Ken Fisher, Mike Maroone - COO of AutoNation and more.

I haven’t finished reading it, yet. But I will. I want to respect the book and the author by taking the time to read and digest his perspective on these facts. He’s respected me, us, sharing his time and wisdom in a format that can save me, you if you read it, a lot of heartache and money while at the same time... possibly...sustaining successful businesses and possibly creating a few extra jobs along the way.

I hope you read it. I hope a lot of business owners read it.