“Run you company as if you mean to sell it tomorrow.
Run your company as if you mean to keep it forever”
~ Norm Brodsky, Entrepreneur and author of Street Smarts
There are, in my possibly not so humble opinion, very few true entrepreneurial development handbooks that provide enough meat and embedded practicable advice that empowers them to serve as recipe books for a business owner wanting significantly to improve the operations and value of their business. Two of my favourites to date are Doug Tatum’s No Mans Land and Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants, both best in class for providing thinking frameworks for understanding the challenges of running businesses in a particular way (No Man’s Land for mastering the challenges of growing from small to scale and Small Giants for building an outstanding human scale business and re-imagining the possibiities of growth through cultural integrity and business intimacy), along with, perhaps Jim Collins’ Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 as a handbook for leadership. There are very few books which serve as manuals for ambitious SMBs looking to scale to become outstanding businesses in their own right and highly attractive - investment grade - acquisition targets for professional buyers, whether strategic or financial to boot.
One such rarity is entrepreneur-turned-investment banker Zane Tarence’s “17 Reasons Your Company is Not Investment Grade & What To Do About It” published by Own Purpose Publishing in 2020.
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