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Great Business Books Get You on Track

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Last week I went on an industrial-strength road trip to visit my Mom in Champaign, Ill. She’s getting up there in years and wanted to meet her newest grandbird, Lola. Since unfortunately I can’t fly with my birds Lola and Murphy anymore (don’t even get me started on THAT subject!), my only option was to drive the 1,000+ miles each way from Boulder, Colo to Champaign. Good thing Murphy and Lola talked—they were great company during our 30 hours on the road together.

Actually I kind of enjoy road trips. It’s a wonderful chance to see small town America, catch up on long overdue phone calls, and listen to audiobooks. One of my choices was a business book titled The Breakthrough Company by Keith McFarland.

I learned some fabulous things listening to The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers. The book profiles nine Inc. 500 companies (including Chicos, Polaris and Intuit, among others) that went from small entrepreneurial ventures with median revenues of $14.4 million to mega-successful companies with median revenues of $700 million.

The book is chock full of juicy tidbits on how you can operate your business like a Breakthrough Company. A few of them that really stuck out in my mind:

- ERECT SCAFFOLDING–A scaffold is designed to keep a structure from falling apart. An entrepreneur needs scaffolding in terms of a support group that a one can turn to when they need advice from a peer (versus an employee). This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart and one that will be the subject of my next Pet Style News column. Examples would be YPO, EO, Vistage, and The CEO Forum.

- TAKE CALCULATED RISKS —Keith gives two examples of companies that took carefully calculated, strategic gambles that paid off big time. When a group of former employers took over Polaris snowmobiles, it was on life support. The snowmobile industry was in decline, with no happy ending in sight. An engineer with the company got the idea to add ATVs to the line—a total divergence from their core model. They went for it and it was a huge success. They had a few stumbles along the way, but in the end, it was a big win.

When Scott Cook started the software company Intuit in his garage, he was 49th on the list of financial software companies. A few years into the business, Microsoft came in and tried to buy them. Three months of due-diligence later, Microsoft made an insulting, low-ball offer. By this time they had examined the company thoroughly and had in-depth knowledge of their business. I thought it was a pretty crappy thing to do. Intuit turned them down and Microsoft vowed to crush them. The next year Microsoft introduced Microsoft Money. The book details how Intuit beat Microsoft at their own game, primarily by listening to their customers to make sure they produced exactly what their customers were asking for. This past June, Microsoft announced they would cease selling Microsoft Money in 2010. What’s interesting is that Microsoft is offering their Money users a $10 off coupon towards the purchase of Quicken. Love it!

The Breakthrough Company is just one of many fabulous business books available that will help you take your business to a new level. If you haven’t read any of Jim Collins or Malcolm Gladwell’s books, I would highly recommend them too. I always feel so jazzed after I read book chock full of great ideas.

If you don’t have a lot of time to sit down and read, listen to books in the car or while you are doing chores. I downloaded mine to my iPod, bought a little inexpensive speaker from the Apple Store, and hit the road.

Jim Rohn, a business writer and speaker who passed away this week, had a great quote on this topic:

Poor people have big TVs; rich people have big libraries.

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