Preface

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one
less traveled and that has made all the difference"
Robert Frost

Early in my career I was frustrated by a competitor selling our brand
for a much lower price. After paying a salesman and all expenses, I just
did not see how he could do it so I asked the manufacturer if he was
getting a lower price than us. No, we had the same. “So how can he do
this Larry?” “He can’t Tom. Not for long. That is called going out of
business by design.” That phrase stuck .

Bad design is plentiful in small business and can be heard in typical
comments from OEs: “Just get the business” . “We want to be number
one”. “If I sell enough I will win a trip”. “Go as low as you need to win ”.
“I haven’t raised my prices in years”. “I haven’t got time for their personal
problems”. “I never did understand all that ratio mumbo jumbo."
“Salespeople are overpaid.” “There is nothing you can do about it.” “I
don’t want to fool with all that new tech stuff.” “It’s what my uncle
always said to do.”

Owning a business still seems to be one of the those American Dreams
and it can indeed be so. But more often, as the failure statistics show, it
turns into a nightmare. Some of this is preventable with good business
design and discipline.

OE’s go into business, get going, but still are ignorant about what
sustains a business. Within those areas of design ignorance lie their
demise. It may not be too different from a pilot who knows how to take
off but not stay airborne! Why bother to take off to begin with? Some
70% of us are crashing! Makes no sense, right? The OE knows passion,
product and what he wants to achieve . There are no shortages of people
with these. There are , however, of those who can channel that into a
successful business. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, this is true for those in
business some years too. The Small Business Administration says 56% of
businesses do not make it past four years and 69% more than seven
years. In 2008, according to the Wall Street Journal, 64,000 businesses of
all sizes went out of business. Probably one near you. Business
bankruptcy filings are up 121% over 2006 according to Forbes. These are
serious numbers and should warn OE’s to be ever more diligent in their
decision making. Hopefully, this book can help with that.

What is going on here? Why do small businesses fail at such an
alarmingly high rate? Often, the answer is the OE has, probably
unknowingly, set in motion some bad business designs that lead to
business failure. Or, has based important decisions on a flimsy,
uninformed thought process. These are fundamental flaws that, like slow
moving unchecked malignancies, eventually ruin good people and
businesses as statistics well attest. The good news is that the end takes a
while so there is time to make needed changes.

This book will try to alert you to them! It will try and point your thinking
in the direction of fertile soil. It will try to beef up your thought muscles!
My experiences take place within an office equipment business, e/Doc
Systems, of 30 some employees, with gross profit of about 2 million
dollars that I have owned for 29 years.

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