A summary of things you should know about Do Less Better according to John R Bell: Introduction In this episode John R Bell takes a deep dive into his book,Read More
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]]>In this episode John R Bell takes a deep dive into his book, Do Less Better, where he explains why sacrifice in the right places cuts through complexity and clears the way to competitive advantage.
In his book Bell provides a tool-kit of road-tested strategies for keeping companies lean, creating cultures of innovation, and knowing when to expand and yet, remain streamlined. The goal of the book is to teach you how to “think smaller,” when everyone around you is firmly entrenched in the “do more” strategy in order to become more agile, adaptable, and resilient than your competitors.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are struggling to outweigh the competitors in their market and need a new yet effective approach to reinvent their current strategy.
It’s certainly not the first book on focus and nor will it be the last but I think the element that separates it from the rest is how people can successfully cut through complexity and achieve focus.
I’ve written it to flow as a beginning to end read and I think that will benefit every reader.
The most important takeaway is the fact that leaders and managers don’t have to keep doing more and more to be affective and successful. Doing less and doing it better is a viable strategy at all levels within the company.
I begin the book by establishing the breadth and depth of complexity, the fact that it’s pervasive. Complexity in business is a cancer that stifles and if you leave it unchecked it can bring a company to its knees so I establish that as the main problem. The other thing is that companies have chosen diversification as the means to grow and these seem to be the ones that suffer the most.
The second chapter I call The Steel and Steal of Strategic Sacrifice. The whole idea here is that the strategy is a steal because good strategies cost no more to develop than bad ones.
None of this happens without leadership so I move to a leadership chapter. It certainly helps when top management buys into the idea of doing less better and if top management does it can become the culture of the company.
From there we go into The Urgency for Action chapter. I suggest that it doesn’t matter whether you’re entrepreneurial or not, success comes from those who think like entrepreneurs. And until the digital age innovation was the way of the entrepreneur. Giant corporations have a habit of gobbling up competitors and dominating markets and in the process many of them have lost their competitive edge. I go through the reason for the complexity; I talk about the strategy being important and leadership leading the way.
Chapter six is for marketers but it will benefit every reader because I reiterate the power of differentiation and I titled this chapter KISS is not a Rock Band. If you want differentiation you have to ask yourself this question. What are you prepared to sacrifice to get it? You have to be prepared to give up a benefit or two or three.
That leads into branding which everyone knows is big business today and my chapter on it is about those who do it well and explains why others have lost their way.
Towards the end of the book I make it clear that there is more to clarity and coherence than cutting back product lines, markets, and projects. I make the point that coherent companies align every function and every aspect of their organization with their capabilities.
The last book is titled Regrets: I’ve had a few. In this chapter I share with the reader some of the regrets and mistakes I’ve made along the way so that you can learn from my mistakes.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 7:35
“20% of the new initiatives deliver 80% of the rewards. Choose carefully and you save money, reduce complexity, and ride the fastest race horses to the future. “- John R Bell
I am a retired CEO of a consumer packaged goods company that was sold to Kraft back in the 90’s. After the sell to Kraft I decided to become a management consultant and I did that until I retired about two years ago. By the time I hung up my hat I’d helped a couple dozen companies including Campbell Soup, Starbucks, and Interbrew. I love to write and still like to play games such as golf and tennis.
Earlier in my career I was faced with the challenge of turning around a near bankrupt company. This company had too many products, too many brands, and too many categories. So by closing or selling the majority of the brands we trimmed that company down to a shadow of its former self. We decided that we were going to be an expert in one category and at the time that happened to be coffee. By focusing on coffee and nothing else we were able to swim out of the raging river of red ink and we called that means to the end the do less better strategy. I describe that as the opposite of doing more with less or even doing more with more and that whole idea stayed with me for the rest of my career. So when I became a consultant I saw a similar pattern of unnecessary complexity in both troubled and successful businesses and I think today business complexity has reached pandemic proportions and there has never been a greater need for simplicity and focus.
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Buy Do Less Better by John R. Bell on Amazon today
Visit DoLessBetter.ca to learn more about the book and download a free chapter
Follow John R Bell on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Road to Reinvention by Josh Linkner
Aligning Strategy and Sales by Frank Cespedes
Invent Reinvent Thrive by Lloyd Shefsky
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Sell Your Business for an Outrageous Price according to Kevin Short: Introduction In this episode Kevin Short shares his book, Sell YourRead More
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]]>In this episode Kevin Short shares his book, Sell Your Business For An Outrageous Price. In his book, Short unveils over 5 years of research in selling businesses combined with over 25 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions. Unlike other books that teach you how to sell your business, this book takes you one step further to prepare business owners like you in getting more than twice what your business is worth. Sell Your Business For An Outrageous Price is the perfect book for business owners looking to sell their organization that are making between 10 and 100 million dollars in revenue.
Nobody to our knowledge has written a book about how to get an outrageous price for your business. There are a lot of books out there about how to sell your company but nothing out there with the recipe of how to prepare yourself to see if you can get more than twice the average.
I would recommend reading it from start to finish because it builds as you read along.
Making sure that the seller always has their antenna up when looking for the right buyer.
There are four pillars to this whole concept in the book. In the first pillar Kevin starts with Michael Porters theory of competitive advantage and competitive theory. You must figure out if there is something that you’re doing that would be attractive to a large buyer.
The second pillar talks about having a very well qualified large buyer. You will not be able to get an outrageous price from a private equity group or a financial buyer. At the end of the day paying 10 or 20 million is not a big deal to a multi-billion dollar corporation. You must do your homework and research as to properly identify these qualified buyers. It is also important to develop a good strategy that will get the attention of these buyers. Ideally you want to entice the buyer to approach you about buying your company.
The third pillar is the seller. The seller must be prepared to in a way play poker with the professional buyer. When messing with this amount of money, it’s not going to be easy and the seller must be prepared for the competitive fight.
The fourth pillar is about having the right professional team to make this happen. If you don’t have the right investment banker and attorney you will have a hard time making this happen. Make sure that your attorney trusts the investment banker and is ok with going along with this. If everyone is not on the same page the buyer will realize that.
“Don’t get sucked in by the buyers’ speech.” – Kevin Short
I am the Managing Partner and CEO of Clayton Capital Partners. I have been in investment banking, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, for 25 years. I’m married and a father of four girls who keep me busy all of the time.
I’ve done hundreds of deals in my M&A career and about 10 years ago I began to see this phenomenon of taking a company to market, expecting to get a 5 multiple of earnings and someone bids a 10 multiple. This made me wonder why one computer would be able to rationalize paying twice as much than the average multiple. About five years ago I started researching this information and started writing this book.
The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter
Negotiauctions by Guhan Subramanian
Buy Sell Your Business for an Outrageous Price by Kevin Short on Amazon today
Visit ThinkOutrageous.com to learn more about Kevin and his book
Follow Kevin Short on Twitter
For questions contact Kevin by phone at 314-725-9939
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Walk Away Wealthy by Mark Tepper | The Final Act of Ownership by Jerry Baltus | Show Me The Money by Alan Barrell
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Important Things You Need To Know When Selling Your Business
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