How to Stop
Being Shit
at Business
The brutally practical guide for accidental business owners that didn’t sign up for this.
This isn’t going to make you brilliant at business. Its ambition is considerably lower: to stop you being shit at it. Fewer guesses, fewer emergencies, more of the basics done properly, and a business that doesn’t require its most important employee to be permanently exhausted.
What you’re signing up for
You started a business because you were good at the work. Nobody mentioned that you’d also just become Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations and the person Googling why the printer won’t connect.
So you made it up as you went along. And for a while that works. Customers arrive, money comes in, the van gets nicer. Behind the scenes you’re still asking: “What am I actually supposed to be doing?”
The book walks through the fifteen responsibilities every owner has inherited, using the SAG system to make you score what actually happens, not what you’ve been meaning to implement since February. Along the way: the six numbers that tell you where the money goes, the fuck-off fund, markup versus margin, leaving evidence everywhere, selling the next step, the bus test, the one-page job description and a first scorecard. Then it helps you pick the one gap that matters most and write a plan you’ll actually use.
Your SAG score might get worse as you read. Good. That’s progress.
Contents
You don’t need a new personality. You need a reasonably organised repair list.
Fifteen problems and a closed book is an elaborate way of achieving nothing.
Every chapter ends with a SAG check, and the book finishes with the Final SAG: the same fifteen areas, this time with evidence. Then you choose one area, write your Less-Shit Plan and book a review date.