Book Summary: Ready, Fire, Aim - Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat - By Michael Masterson

There is nothing better than fostering knowledge from somebody who has done it before. In the world of swollen information and perceived gurus, it is refreshing to read real life how to advice from somebody that has started businesses and built them up past $100 Million.Why is this important to me?I don't want to waste your time. Michael covers a lot of excellent material in this book. The critical components are around Time and Quality of Life. No matter how you slice it, time is a finite resource. Respecting your own time and building a business is not always easy to do. Most business owners work way too much for the return. Time is something that needs to be a goal. For example, your goal may be to build a $25 million organization by working only 5 hours per day. Initially this may seem way off base but you will find ways to be most productive in those five hours. You will also need to find the right people.By setting and manifesting a true time goal, you will be able to d
ictate your quality of life allowing you to focus on other things. This is no simple task because I have been working toward it for a while and have not hit my goal just yet.Ready, Fire, Aim examines all businesses based on their growth stage. For the sake of time, I will profile each part in summary.1. Infancy- The infancy stage is $0 to $1 million in sales. The core skill that needs to be acquired in this stage is selling. You have to sell to eat. In order to sell effectively, you need a unique selling proposition. This proposition communicates value to your potential customers. If you sell business to business then your customer only cares about three things - increasing revenue, reducing costs and mitigating risks. Structure your USP around those three impacts and you will acquire customers. Selling is more important than the infrastructure. You may have to work out of your house or car until you get enough clients to afford new infrastructure.2. Childhood - This stage i
s from $1 million to $10 million in sales. The core skill in this stage is marketing. You have proven you can deliver to customers now you have to acquire more customers and have additional products to sell those customers. Honing your skills to cross sell and upsell are critical components to achieving this level of sales. On average it costs 7 times more to get new customers than it does to sell an existing customer. This is why the cross/up sells are so important. The Ready, Fire, Aim strategy comes into play at this stage. Basically you cannot afford to go into paralysis by analysis. You have to try things and move to market quickly. This is compounded through social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. If you have product ideas then you need to test them using Google and if they prove to be profitable, move them to market. The real goal here is to make a good product and NOT a perfect product. At this stage, you are too small to make a perfect product. If
you focus there too much then the market will pass you by and you will lose to your larger competitors.3. Adolescence - This stage is from $10 million to $50 million in sales. At this stage, leadership and recruiting are critical to building your business. You cannot afford to do it all. This is the biggest trap that entrepreneurs fall into because of their controlling nature and customer contact. If you take Google as an example, they hired Eric Schmidt from Novell to be the CEO. The founders were excellent at what they did but did not (at the time) have the skill set in running a company on its way to dominating the Fortune 500. The key pitfalls to avoid at this stage are Bottlenecks, Bureaucracy and Politics. Bottlenecks are people and procedures that slow things down. Bureaucracy is any systems or protocol that exists independent of the core purpose of the business and politics is the destructive dynamic that results when people pay more attention to power than profit.4
. Adulthood - This stage is from $50 million to $100 million. At this stage you really need to learn to step out of the way and have excellent people running the company. Warren Buffett is the world's greatest investor yet he does not run companies. His main focus is capital allocation. He has to put the money to work which means he bets on the easiest businesses with large moats (competitive advantage) and jockeys. Warren will not invest in companies with weak management. He wants committed people with bullet proof business models. He recognizes that his strengths are in placing money and not managing businesses. This is a real trade-off because most Fortune 500 executives work around the clock. As a capital allocator in the business you do not have to do this.Ready, Fire Aim is an excellent book that provides real world "how to" information that you can use NOW! In order to sustain quality of life, you need to respect your time even as your business grows.I hope you have f
ound this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is time vs. quality of life. This is a struggle that people have to decide on as they build businesses. Business owners get marked for cheating on their spouses not with other people but with their business. The reason is most people pour 80+ hours per week to make it work. If you have a time and quality of life goal integrated then you will find ways to manage both.

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