You’re Too Busy Making Money. No Business Can Survive That. - Build a business that makes money while you're on vacation - Get a grip on why businesses never grow up, and how yours can. - Move your business from survival, through success, to significance. - Grow a business quickly that you can enjoy for decades. Making Money is Killing Your Business is built on profoundly simple ideas that have been around forever and ignored as being too simple to work. Chuck Blakeman has learned the hard way that profound things are always simple. These few things will revolutionize any business willing to give up complexity for effectiveness. Making Money helps business owners move from a focus on trying to make money to building a business that does it for them while they’re on vacation. It debunks the idea that small business is a 30 year grind, and introduces the concept of building a business in just three to five years that runs itself. Making Money also replaces the traditional concept of retirement with using your business to quickly build your Ideal Lifestyle, moving you and your business from survival through success to significance. Your business should throw off both time and money, not just money. This book helps business owners make more money in less time, get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place, and build a business they can enjoy for decades.
This is a great small business operations manual. The exercises in the book are the equivalent of attending a training or corporate workshop, only more helpful. I thought the book could have been about 20% shorter but the author is intentionally repetitive. So it makes for a good vacation read rather than a weekend read. (I have increased my rating from 4 to 5 because I implemented Chuck's advice with great results, and I have read other business books. This one is so superior in content that an upgrade was in order.)
For the entrepreneur who wishes to move to investor in her own business. As an advocate for systems, I found this book refreshingly simple and true. The principles in it show you where your resources should be invested- and as the title suggests, it’s not all about making money. You must create time to stand back from your business and take a hard honest look at, it as well as to work ‘on’ your business.
If businessman ever would like to retire, Blakeman's book can reveal some ways of doing so. He points out many principles of building a business whereas business owners can take a lengthy vacation. For example, making one's employees stakeholders can help them care more about one's business. Small business owners will especially benefit from reading this book.