When the business is doing well, you feel like you’re on top of the world. You don’t think about the bad times, you just think about being at a place where you can’t be touched. Unfortunately, being an entrepreneur, you know too well the roller coaster effect of your business. As you creep up the ride to the top, it’s slow going. You’re there for a moment and then, you excel downward at a rapid speed. Living on the edge makes it difficult for most business owners and that’s why many go out of business within the first couple of years. According to StatisticBrain.com, 44% of all small businesses fail within the first three years.
In small business expert and author of How to Get Unstuck – 25 Ways to Get Your Business Growing Again, Barry Moltz helps the reader identify situations and get “unstuck” from them.
What I love about this book is that the author is so in tune with the small business market. Every point he makes during his 25 tips on getting stuck and getting unstuck, he is right in the heart of what happens to almost every business. In each chapter, he talks about the problem and then compliments it with the solution.
In an early chapter, Moltz discusses the “emergency” factor. We all know it. It’s when someone calls or something happens and we need to stop everything in order to resolve it. In effect, everything on our “to do list” goes to the waste side. He suggests asking if the emergency is really an emergency. He also talks about various distractions that stop you from getting things done. Moltz suggests having a “to don’t do” list, which I thought was pretty clever. He suggests grouping things in order of priority and stop reacting to things.
Some of the chapters include: Risk-taking, creating a brand and sticking with it, keep calling people who don’t respond (and try to get to a no), make sure to become a trusted advisor, don’t get addicted to social media, hire “A” players, hire slow/fire fast, fire customers if warranted, customer service is imperative, evaluate the use of smart phones for employees, and changing your fixed overhead.
Barry Moltz also has a section on management style. He writes, “don’t be like Steve Jobs.”
One chapter that resonated with me was Moltz’s chapter on sales. You get stuck on feeling like you’re not a sales person and you are shy and can’t sell, when in reality, you don’t have much of a choice and if you believe something, you can sell it. Hot to Get Unstuck suggests that you separate yourself from the business and in that way you don’t personalize the sales process.
I also liked that at the end of each chapter, Moltz provides a case study that re-enforces what was discussed in the chapter. It helped clarify the points in a concrete way.
How to Get Unstuck is a must have book for every business owner. Reading it and then referring to specific chapters later on, will make you feel like you have a consultant on hand while saving you thousands of dollars!
