A Smack Upside the Head for Main Street Business Owners

I call myself an accidental author. It was never my ambition to produce a book. But I wrote Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing ($24.99 hardcover/HarperCollins Publishers) because this country's 23 million small business owners needed a smack upside the head. They're in deep denial, and they're blaming the recession for problems they've largely created themselves.

I love small business, and I have the utmost respect for the hardworking people who own them. My whole life I've been lured by the excitement of building something, the day-to-day hand- to-hand combat of increasing sales, cutting staff, making tough decisions, and the emulation of success. For me, it's all about the challenge of building something from nothing and making it grow bigger, and stepping into the trenches to help something that's going south turnaround and head north.

In my role as a turnaround expert primarily for Main Street enterprises, I've worked with over 400 kinds of small and medium-sized businesses over the last 30 years. Through American Management Services, the practice I founded, I've seen the inside of limousine services, hair salons, dog biscuit factories, you name it. I've stood on docks for my clients, counting heads of lettuce. I've stayed up all night at truck stops making sure sticky fingers don't get in the till. I'll do just about anything to make sure my clients get back on the path to profits.

About 10 years ago, our company formed a strategic alliance with the US Conference of Mayors called Partner America, designed to motivate mayors in cities to help small business and give them necessary tools and information to do better, pay more taxes and develop economies in cities across the country. The experience highlighted a few things I had long suspected. More than half are not focused on profits. They measure success by the size of their building, their sales, and the number of employees they have. But profits are a long second. They believe that the more you love your employees, the nicer and more lovey-dovey you are as a manager, the more successful you will become. And it is a belief system that flies in the face of my experience with the 6,000 businesses we have worked with over the years.

Seeing this, we decided to create a seminar series about the mindset and true life approach that a small business owner must have to survive, grow and prosper. What these small business owners needed was a a strong antidote to the notion that the more you love your employees, the more productive you'll be. They need to exorcise the myths that ideas count more than grit; that if you are working your business correctly you don't have to worry about financial management because the money will take care of itself. There is always great lipservice paid to profits, but business owners' actions don't follow through with making money as the end goal. They deny when business is not going well. They don't have real plan. They allow themselves too many non-business distractions like family, golf, and vacations, to get in the way of progress.

My "shock and awe" strategy in these Partner America seminars would invariably draw gasps from members of my audience, but it got their attention. And when I circled back to these towns months and years later, those same business owners would come up to me and say, "George, you were right, I fired that family member/took charge/gave up golf... and now my profits are growing. I just wish I'd heard your advice sooner."

I started noticing that more than half of the audience members were taking fastidious notes. At the end of my talks I would get dozens of people asking me for a hard copy of the power point. People had always encouraged me to write a book but, like most small business people, it wasn't one of my ambitions because I just didn't have the time or the attention span. Then, soon after I found a reputable literary agent, I started seeing signs of economic turmoil on Main Street. Many businesses were on thin ice as the excesses of the five year party were coming to an end. I began to feel a sense of urgency. The time for a book like the one I had in mind was now.

I was determined this would not just be some how-to manual. Instead, I wanted to create a catalyst for a major shift in mindset among business owners. For three decades my turnaround firm has served thousands of small and medium-sized businesses across the country, and in my opinion many of the problems these business owners were having stemmed from reading too many management books. Their losses could almost always be traced back to wrong-headed but well-meaning advice by management consultants and business school professors who wouldn't know a small business if it fell on them. Few books on the topic of small business can applied to the real world problems that Main Street faces now. Much what does exist on the bookstore shelves was a recipe for financial failure.

If anything, the tone of "Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing," is even more blunt and unapolagetic than my lectures. I decided I had to shake business owners by the lapels with the same shocking tactics I use my lectures. I had to turn the business advice book genre on its head. Small business owners are the backbone of our economy, and they're not getting the help they need. The least I could do was help them snap out of their state of denial and help them to help themselves. If I offend people, so be it. I didn't write this book to make people feel cozy in their mediocrity. I wrote it to wake them up!

My bestseller is already creating controversy. Reuters calls it "a literary slap in the face to small and medium-sized business owners."

Well, good. They needed it.

Publishers Weekly calls it "a forceful debut" and says " loaded with valuable advice on how to get back on track and stay in the black in any economic environment." Booklist noted that "many of his regulations will amaze, shock, and awe small business owners. . . Harsh ways to work? Yes, yet all his principles are founded on a success that's hard to argue with." Fortune Small Business/CNN Money says, "the author's larger message -- that success in business requires relentless focus on the bottom line -- is worth hearing in these hard times. Cloutier's book is a brutal, albeit cynical, wake-up call." WebCPA says, "His advice may sound blunt and brutal, but from the many real-life examples that pepper the book, it's clear that one of the biggest problems businesses face is being in denial about their problems, and a smack or two is often the best solution."

This is exactly the message I set out to deliver.

I'm no Tony Robbins. I don't need readers to like me, but I do want them to listen to me. I've developed some strong, controversial, and 'tough love' points of view on what small businesses need to succeed on their path to turnarounds and much greater profitability. This is a tell-it-as-it-really-is and contrarian book on what I've seen happen, and some of my advice will clearly upset conventional thinking. Some examples:

-- Teamwork is Vastly Overrated (a team is only as good as its weakest link)
-- Love Your Business More Than Your Family
-- The Best Family Business Has One Member
-- You're Not in Business to Pay Your Vendors
-- Give Up Golf, Retreats, Off-Sites, and Trade Shows (they're a waste of time)

Small businesses employ 60 million Americans -- almost 40% of our workforce. Small business is the third largest economy in the world, trailing only the U.S. and Japan. It produces 50% of GDP and generates 70% of new jobs. This book is intended a call to action for small and mid-sized business owners to change their ways or face more decline and failure. Because, recession or no recession, as I say in my book: "It's not the economy, stupid. It's you!"

Some readers may squawk. But to write a book that makes them feel comfortable with where they are now would do struggling business owners a great disservice. They can thank me later, when their business grows into double digit profits and they're sitting on a tidy pile of cash.

For more information about the author, go to visit www.turnaroundace.com

 

 

Comments

[Trophoto]

Let me see if I get the gist of this. Its all about me and my profits and my employees don't mean Sh#t.
Sound like the 1980 redux. Greed is good profits maximized at all costs. This guy is penny ante Gordon Gecko. Did he write a book or something. I couldnt tell from his post.

[anfractuous]

All I know is, when consultants are hired, employees are fired. Though your method may be original, you don't sound any different in that regard. A good job of self-promotion though...

[RandVictims]

Yes! That's exactly what we need in America, - more businesses behaving like Walmart.

You are TRULY a revolutionary!!

[Jim Thomas - Huffpost Blogger]

Tough is fine when it balances love. It looks like you want to tip the balance too far. What small business can use right now is some real love from our federal government. Small business is half are GDP and almost all of our new jobs in a recovery. That deserves some loving.