A Blueprint For Business Success

Great ideas are two a penny, but great businesses are rare. Growing a great business involves intuition, skill and stamina, with significant challenges to be tackled along the way. Businesses that achieve scale and long-term success share distinct characteristic—vision, strong leadership, an enthusiastic and effective management team, great products or services and a clear value proposition. Against this backdrop, this is not just a book for start-ups, although much of its content is relevant to them. Its main purpose is to help established businesses—those that have already overcome the initial obstacles of foundation. It recognises that if you want to build a great business, there are a host of thing you will need to control and do better than anyone else.

There are many differences between a good business and a great business, but they aren’t beyond a business leader’s control. In From Vision to Exit, Guy Rigby candidly explains how entrepreneurs can develop strategies, plans and tactics to get their businesses to the top. With an easy and engaging style, this book is a definitive and practical guide that covers every business area. From strategy to finance, management to marketing, and business planning to exit, Guy leaves no stone unturned. The result is an authoritative and invaluable tool for entrepreneurs seeking to navigate the minefield of successful growth.

This 359-page book, which is divided into 19 chapters, recognises that business is challenging and that for the majority of entrepreneurs the odds are stacked against them. Alarming failure rates—over 50 per cent of early-stage businesses fail within five years— may be discouraging, yet it is small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that power the global economy. They employ more people than any other type of organisation, and the high-growth businesses amongst them create the majority of new jobs.

The book underlines that in an increasingly competitive marketplace, SMEs can face strong headwinds. And to stay ahead of their competition, they must communicate a clear vision, develop their markets, build their brands, achieve targets, improve processes and secure and maintain their supply chains. And they must do all this without running out of cash. Furthermore, an instinctive desire to learn from the experience of others is a key to success. To substantiate his account, the writer affirms that in the process of writing this book, he quizzed leaders in their field and consulted with successful and inspirational entrepreneurs. The upshot is an authoritative and definitive ‘how-to’ guide, which delivers a road map for growth and a framework for improvement.

This book is an excellent primer for any entrepreneur. It covers an extraordinary range of topics, from writing business plans to bringing plans for investors as to how to achieve international sales. Guy Rigby is the ideal author for such a guide: he has been a business owner and advisor to companies for decades, and brings vast hands-on experience to the task. He is also a qualified accountant, which means the chapter on financial matters has special rigour. In a nutshell, the author has not only provided a comprehensive guide to creating business growth, he has also given readers invaluable insights into the experiences of many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

By Ashok Kumar