Who is Bo Burlingham and what you can learn from him: Bo Burlingham is a shining example of what can happen when a person does not take no for anRead More
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]]>Bo Burlingham is a shining example of what can happen when a person does not take no for an answer and simply finds a new way to do their own thing. After years working for Inc during the early 1980s as an executive editor, he resigned that position down to an editor-at-large in order to pursue his own interests.
From there, he wrote many successful books about life in the modern business world, giving out helpful tips to all of his readers about how employees can own their own companies. There is a great deal that an entrepreneur can learn from Bo Burlingham, so let’s focus on the five most crucial lessons.
It would have been easy for Bo to get comfortable and settle down at Inc. After rising to the position of Senior Editor, Burlingham could have allowed himself to become satisfied. Most people would have been fine with remaining in that position and thinking of ways to advance the company that gave them the job.
It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make it to any sort of senior editing position at a major publication. Most would not have wanted to see all of that effort potentially go to waste while they take the time to chase after a dream.
However, Bo Burlingham is not most people. Instead of settling in, getting comfortable and allowing himself to fall into complacency, Burlingham decided to strike out on his own path, leaving Inc to publish his own books. Had he not had the courage to do this, he never would have had the time to write The Great Game Of Business, a book that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Burlingham wrote a book entitled Small Giants. In this book, he does a deep dive into what makes small businesses successful. One of the main reasons he discovered? Smaller companies are more able to train their focus on being the absolute best at what they do. Whereas larger companies may find that it is more important to be everything to everyone, a smaller company spends their resources on performing one particular task.
By specializing, smaller companies are able to stand shoulder to shoulder with their larger counterparts and experience many of the same benefits. People are not looking to make purchases from the largest company possible. The consumer is all about finding the best quality at the most affordable price. The company that provides a top notch service and does not allow themselves to be hemmed in by traditional success definition is the one that will prosper over the long haul.
Small Giants delved into a variety of smaller companies, with the objective of showing readers how all of these companies were able to become so successful, so quickly. Whether it is a record company, a deli or a microbrewery, there are a variety of principles that define prosperous small businesses.
Even a tiny company can go about the same tasks as a corporate giant and experience continued success. While these tasks take place on a smaller scale, a company still must raise the necessary capital, invest the funds wisely and choose the right times to expand their operations or make pivotal acquisitions.
One of the most pivotal that an entrepreneur can take from the works of Bo Burlingham is that it does not matter how big or small a company is. The route to success is the same as it would be for a large company. Small business owners are encouraged to take the lessons that have worked for big companies and apply them to their own situation.
A common mistake made by entrepreneurs is that they do not trust their employees to get the job done. In Burlingham’s book, The Great Game of Business, he outlines the benefits of an open book management style. He did not come up with these strategies in a Fortune 500 boardroom or at a high end business meeting.
Instead, Burlingham investigated the plight of a company known as International Harvester. When all of the employees of this heartland factory stood to lose their jobs forever, they banded together and came up with a solution: the open book management style.
When employees feel like they are truly an integral part of the equation, their performance becomes much better. Burlingham has preached the importance of allowing your employees to know about how the company is functioning as a whole. This keeps them from being taken by surprise when certain events occur.
When Burlingham came together with Norm Brodsky to write Street Smarts, he did so with one goal in mind: showing people that there is no magic list of bullet points that an entrepreneur can hit that will guarantee their long term success. He preaches the importance of your overall mentality when trying to start a new business and displays the importance of street smarts.
Being book smart is not enough. An entrepreneur needs to know how to read people and judge a situation that may not come with a helpful handbook. Burlingham also teaches his readers that there will be mistakes made along the way and that these mistakes do not have to come to define you. It is how you rebound from these errors that determines your level of success.
Preview Finish Big with Bo Burlingham himself
Buy Finish Big by Bo Burlingham on Amazon today
Visit BoBurlingham.com to learn more about Bo and his books
Visit SmallGiantsBook.com to learn more about Small Giants
Visit TheKnack.info to learn more about Street Smarts
Visit EvolveUSA.org to learn how Evolve is using Finish Big to build its organization
Follow Bo Burlingham on Facebook and Twitter
The post 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Bo Burlingham appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Finish Big according to Bo Burlingham: Introduction In this episode Bo Burlingham takes a deep dive into his book, Finish Big, whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Bo Burlingham takes a deep dive into his book, Finish Big, where he discusses how great entrepreneurs exit their companies on top.
In his book Burlingham dissects dozens of interviews he made with entrepreneurs that have left their companies and pieces together actionable information that all business owners must know about creating a solid exit plan. The goal of the book is to help you find the right time to exit a business, overcome the stress of leaving a company, and leave your company in better shape.
This book is perfect for seasoned entrepreneurs who are close to meeting all their business goals and are ready to start planning an exceptional exit from their organization.
There are very little amount of books out there on exiting your business and the ones that are out there are all about the financial side of it. This book focuses on the emotional side of things after exiting your business. There are true stories of people who have sold their business and explain what they went through good and bad.
I tried to set the book up so that the reader could jump and in out where needed but you can also read straight through.
If it was only one thing that you could take out of the book I would say it is that you need to start preparing for it early. There is no point that is too early to start preparing and thinking about your exit.
What you will find throughout the book is stories of real people having real experiences in exiting their business.
The introduction is the story of how the book came to be written. I wanted to know the difference between a good exit and a bad exit and in order to do that I had to figure out what a good exit was. I came up with five qualities of a good exit and one is that at the end of the process you feel as though you’ve been fairly treated and appropriately rewarded for the work that you did in building the business. Number two is that you have a sense of accomplishment and you can look back with pride on what you did when you had the business. Number three you are at peace with what has happened to the other people who were on the journey with you. Number four is that you have a new sense of purpose outside the business. And finally it is important to some that the company is still thriving without them.
Chapter one begins with a story of a very good exit and the title of the chapter is Every Journey Ends. You must think about your experience as a business owner as a journey and it’s a journey that has a beginning, middle, and an end. Building a company is the middle of the business and the end of the business is when you decide to leave that company. The other thing I want people to understand is the exit is a phase of the business and not an event. You have the startup phase, you have the growth phase, you have the maturity phase, and you have the exit phase. There are four stages to the exit stage; the first one is what I call the exploratory phase which is when you are educating yourself about what the possibilities are. The second stage to the exit phase is the strategic phase which is when you have an idea of the kind of exit you want and you go about building into your company the qualities that are going to allow you to have that kind of an exit. The third phase is the execution phase, when you actually go out and look for a buyer. Most people start at the third phase without going through phases one and two and it’s a huge mistake. The fourth phase is the most difficult and that’s the transition phase. That’s after you’ve sold the business, what happens between the sale of the business and whatever comes next.
When I looked at the difference between the good and bad exits I came up with seven and a half factors and I really structure the book around those factors. So chapter two is titled Who Am I If Not My Business and it’s about the importance of knowing who you are, what you want, and why. This is something that I have found over and over again in all the years that I have been covering entrepreneurs. Those who do best in terms of building a business and do best in terms of exiting a business have worked very hard on trying to figure out who they are, what they want, and why. The second factor has to do with building a company that’s sellable and what I mean by that is one you can sell when you want, to whom you want, at a price you want. There is something called a forced sell and that happens when something you totally don’t foresee comes along when you have a very good company and all the sudden something happens that catches you by surprise and then you are forced to sell it. It’s very important to understand what a sellable business is and I write about the eight factors that go into it and I also give you other places to go to learn about building a sellable business. The third factor has to do with time. Most business owners do not give themselves anywhere near enough time to do the preparatory work and when I talk about time I am talking in terms of years, not months. The fact is there is no point too early to start at least the exploratory phase and you can do that even before you start the company. The next point is related to not having enough time and that’s about having a successor. And for a lot of people you need to give yourself a lot of time to have a successor.
Chapter six has to do with making sure you get the advice you need and I make a very strong case in here for making sure you have a guide who has been through himself or herself before. These guides have a perspective on it that is different from the perspective you will get from an exit professional because they know the exit doesn’t end with the deal. It’s not over for the business owner and you need somebody guiding you who will understand that. The next factor has to do with what happens to the other people who you’ve been on the journey with. Nobody builds a company alone and you need to be at peace with whatever is going to everyone else who has been with you on the journey.
The sixth factor is what I call Let the Seller Beware. If you are selling a business it’s easy to forget that the buyer is also selling themselves, they are selling themselves that they are going to be a good owner of the company. It’s very important to understand why the buyer wants your business.
The final chapter is called Over The Rainbow and after the sell itself which is sometimes the hardest part. I’ve realized in writing this chapter that there are a lot of things that people get out of their businesses that they are not aware of until they don’t have them anymore. For example a sense of purpose, an identity, a tribe, a sense of accomplishment, and structure and when you suddenly don’t have those things and you haven’t prepared yourself adequately you can feel totally lost. The people who have really good exits figure out how to get them back and usually, because they have money now, they are able to get it back and do what they did before at a higher level.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 08:20
“You should build your business as if it’s going to last forever but you could sell it tomorrow.” – Bo Burlingham
I am an editor at-large at Inc. magazine and been on staff for 32 years. I co-authored a couple books and I’ve also written Small Giants.
It began with my sometime co-author Norm Brodsky. I had been writing a column with him in Inc. magazine for almost 20 years now. Back in 2006 Norm decided to sell his company and he and I decided to write about it on a month by month basis. From those writings we got a tremendous amount of reader response and I realized that there was a huge appetite out there for understanding the experience of selling a company.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Buy Finish Big by Bo Burlingham on Amazon today
Visit BoBurlingham.com to learn more about Bo and his books
Visit SmallGiantsBook.com to learn more about Small Giants
Visit TheKnack.info to learn more about Street Smarts
Visit EvolveUSA.org to learn how Evolve is using Finish Big to build its organization
Follow Bo Burlingham on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Exit Strategy Handbook by Jerry Mills
Walk Away Wealthy by Mark Tepper
Selling Your Business For More Than It’s Worth by Michelle Seiler-Tucker
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Important Things You Need To Know When Selling Your Business
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The post A Preview of Finish Big with Bo Burlingham appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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