100,000 half-book giveaway…

10 years ago I wrote the first edition of Crashproof your Business. I’m giving half of it away to 100,000 people gratis. This is the first 70 pages that describe the problems we small business owners face, the ownership stuff that nobody tells you about until it is too late.

Our businesses efforts all have three components:

• what it is that we sell to earn an income, which most of us do pretty well;
• the management of the business, which many of us struggle with;
• the ownership stuff where you stand surety for everything, which is what this book looks at, and which almost nobody knows about until it is too late.

It’s all about how tiny mistakes cause many small businesses to close, and what happens to the owners when that firm closes. What happens to their families, their homes, and even the family pets. It’s about the things that we sign when we are in business for ourselves, often with little understanding. It’s about the way we trust banks, and how that trust is broken. It’s also the bestselling book on the subject in South Africa.

The problem is that I don’t know 100,000 small-business owners or people who want to go into business for themselves. I’m hoping that you know a few.

My publisher won’t allow me to give away the entire book, so I’m giving half of it away. That half contains everything you need to know to understand the ownership risks and problems. If I’d known that stuff just six months before my business closed, I wouldn’t have lost my home, car, bike, and all the furniture. I wouldn’t have taken judgements way over R2million (for rented premises that were soon filled with other tenants).

Why am I giving it away? Well, 20 years after my business closed in 1992, there are 25,000 small-business owners who have used the ideas in the book (and the seminar that preceded the book).

Every week I get an e-mail from one of them telling me how happy he was to give the Sheriff the finger when he (the Sheriff) visited to collect the furniture after his (the seminar attendee) business closed recently. But that leaves about 200,000 small-business owners in South Africa who have no idea what’s really going on behind-the-scenes. 180,000 of those are not going to survive 10 years. Which means it’s just a matter of time before they too transfer all of their personal assets to their business creditors.

This means that these ideas work, and work very well. But I am the only person talking about them. (That is because I think they are so crucial.)

So, if you are planning to go into business, or you know anybody who runs their own business, especially newbies, could you please point them at this book giveaway? The book is practical and written in easy-to-read English.

I used to charge more than R1500 per seminar seat, and the book costs about R160. (Which means that this free giveaway is worth somewhere between R80 and R750 per book.) But, when it saves your house, and your marriage, the knowledge is worth much, much more.

I would deeply appreciate you forwarding this to anybody you know that might be interested. (Although I cannot imagine a business owner that would not be.) They can get their copy here.