Customer Reviews

Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing: No-Nonsense Rules from the Ultimate Contrarian and Small Business Guru

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Someone had to write this book. I suppose all this talk about Employee Engagement, stakeholders, and purpose driven workforce was going to drive someone to write a book with very much the contrarian view of these things.

This is that book.

Unfortunately, contrarian does not mean correct. There are a lot of ways you can examine this author's premises and find large, gaping holes. Micromanagement is one. The problem with micromanagement is that any organization of significance - with more than a couple dozen people, is going to have more moving parts than one person can possibly manage, much less micromanage. The model simply does not scale, and this author does not offer anything about when the micromanagement model is to be retired.

A second obvious place you attack is the premise that creating a strict, rule bound, Taylorian workforce is a foolproof path to profits. The evidence is pretty well in that such a model does not work. It is bad for large organizations like GM, and worse for smaller organizations that require innovation and creativity - things that do not emerge in tight, rule bound environments, to create breakthroughs that make a small business have any chance for alpha vis-a-vis his competitors.

Lastly, the advice about paying vendors late - well, that might be a good survival strategy, but when you pay vendors late, they often take notice. Any effort your vendor might have taken to go "above and beyond" the call is going to go away when vendors start prioritizing that effort by how late their receivables are.

The things that make an organization great, extra effort at the margins - simply dont happen in the environment of fear that this author openly promotes. The book is a great manual on how to become a petit tyrant who owns an enterprise of maybe a dozen people, who never does anything but work. Frankly, as much as I would never want to be a worker in this model, I would want to be a boss even less. When you are on your deathbed, you don't go "man, I wish I spent more time at the office managing my workforce by fear".

There are a couple good points, which merited adding a star. Golf is a colossal waste of time - especially for CEOs. Hiring family is also an idiotic idea. Those chapters are patently good advice that, sadly, are buried under a lot of other quite horrible advice.

That all said, there is a market for telling the Petit Tyrants of the world what they want to hear (no wonder this guy proudly consults for the nations "Council of Mayors"). If anything, such a book is a nice one to sit on the bookshelf next to all the "Management by Donald Trump" books the author is seeking to compete with.

Unlike many authors, George practices what he preaches. Every day and relentlessly. Its how his AMS functions.

I worked for George for 2.5 years. Saying it was not fun is an understatement. I made 200-300K, but worked like a fool and was manipulated like a puppet. I never felt respected. I "escaped" as soon as practical.

George was pompous, arrogant, condescending and, yes, very rich.

Give the man his due: The recipe works.

It should - its about as fundamental as you can get. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL...fanatically and relentlessly.

Pay for performance. Predetermined profit. Critical success indicator monitoring. All are concepts that few small businesses are aware of let alone utilize. Small or Big Business: You can't win without them.

A few year ago I purchased a "near-dead" business. I took the basic disciplines I learned at AMS and applied them.

Unlike AMS we respected and celebrated all employees. Like AMS we demanded and paid for superior results. The high performers loved the model; the weak links hugged us before exiting.

PS My "near-dead" business sold in mid-seven figures at the beginning of this year.

Thank you so much, George - you SOB.
















The thing that separatesMake no mistake he lives and breathes this stuff

Cloutier has some good advice for anyone who thinks that the only three things that matter in business are money, money and money. But anyone who follows his advice in managing their small business is almost guaranteed that the business will remain just that - small.

Cloutier says, among other things, that small business managers should never trust anyone and micromanage everything; they should love their business more than their family; that fear is the best motivator; that paying vendors late is "good business practice" and turnover is healthy (forget loyalty - you're only in it for the money); and in a chapter called "I Am Your Work God" (no, I'm not making that up) that the small business owner must be a tyrant who wants people to mindlessly follow directions and not think for themselves.

I assume the small business owners he consults with must be successful at making money, or he himself would be out of business. But I can almost guarantee that not one of his client companies will ever show up in the Fortune 500. Quite to the contrary, if you study the leadership practices of the people who built great companies, they are almost without exception the exact opposite of what Cloutier tells his clients to be.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Mary Kay Ash, Herb Kelleher, Ray Kroc, Tom Watson, Robert Wood Johnson: go down the list of great business founders and you will find people who were not in it just for the money; who did trust and empower others; who did treat people with respect and dignity and who appreciated the sustaining power of loyalty; and who did understand that for the leader who wants to create a business that is "built to last" the three most important things are not money, money and money - they're people, people and people.

I give this book two stars instead of just one because Cloutier does offer some sound advice. In particular, he's dead-on when it comes to the pernicious effects of denial and procrastination, and the importance of making sales a top priority. His "profits first" approach to budgeting makes sense, but runs the risk of promoting short-term decisions that are penny-wise but pound-foolish.

I would donate this book to the local library, but I'm afraid someone in my community might check it out and decide that they had to become a work-god tyrant.

This book is written by a consultant focused on turning around failing small companies. As such the author's views are very extreme, as extreme measures are often needed to save his clients. I do not agree that all the advice applies equally to businesses in less dire situations.

I found most useful the idea of putting profits first in accounting. Most companies project sales, project expenses, and then see where the difference, profits or losses, turns out. This book says to forecast sales, then put in profits (at a level at the high end for the industry), then work to make costs come in at the needed level.

The countless real-world examples of what companies did that did not work for them, and how the author's solutions "fixed" them were enlightening.

The book, as indicated in the title, consistently preaches prioritizing work above all else. While I generally agree with that, I was disappointed that no moral justification was given for it. Also, contrary to the title, while I know work is the most important thing in one's life, I do not think it should be the only thing (though if I had a business in dire straits, I could see it being the only thing until it was stabilized).

Unfortunately, there was much advice which I strongly disagreed with such as:

- motivating employees through fear (threat of losing their job) rather than positives such as profit participation
- treating employees as mindless ("don't think, obey")
- "Micromanage, and micromanage some more"
- "Turnover is a good thing"
- "Teamwork simply doesn't work in most businesses"

Probably the worst aspect came in the last chapter when describing the initial problems of a client, the book says "The owner .. was a great micromanager. ... He had no effective management team." This after previously preaching micromanagement as great and teams as worthless. While some of the points used in justifying his positions are solid, many positions such as the two just mentioned are exaggerations. While those exaggerations may have been helpful to his clients, I'm not convinced they work for a more general audience.

I didn't buy this through Amazon. On the contrary, I found it while browsing Barnes & Nobles. The title stuck out to me. So, I picked it up.

First off, this book, in my opinion, this is a very good introductory book. Some parts are so good (like "sane" micromanaging, firing bad employees and family members, and a few others) they should be essential. Others, I think depend on the industry or business.

All in all, I really liked it. The book is pure content; all muscle, very little fat. Cloutier pulls on his years of experience from his company to demonstrate many points.

What I think was missing, and cost the book a star, is not establishing a balance. Cloutier is adamant about business over EVERYTHING. Period. I think it would've been an improvement if he inserted a chapter that detailed balancing your personal life and business life. Like Dan Kennedy promotes, structuring a business around your wants and needs and not letting IT rule YOU.

Cloutier has a good message and is very passionate about them. For the measly price of $15 or so on Amazon, you can extract a few solid nuggets.

During 2008 and 2009 I led a difficult turnaround of my $30M sales manufacturing company. Reading Cloutier's book in 2010 I see the author address all the mistakes that I made over the past 20 years. I also found new opportunities for improvement that I will immediately begin to implement. Cloutier's rules are based on thousands of client experiences, and I can validate them from my own personal experience. Cloutier recognizes the all-important reality that small and medium size businesses are different animals than Fortune 500 companies. Small business requires very strong leadership, intense personal focus, and significant, quick changes when things go wrong. Many assertions challenge the conventional wisdom and none are sugar coated. What Cloutier outlines in this book is the hard truth, and evading this reality will not change it. I know this from experience. My only complaint is that this book wasn't available years ago.

Don't be misled by the single star (a star is required), I thought this book was ridiculous. It assumes that everyone running a business is a dummy. But the biggest problem that I have is the complete sense of imbalance and win/loose mentality that basically pits the business owner against everyone, not only his customers, employees and vendors but his family as well. This is NOT the book for somebody who is trying to create and build a business - this is written for the businessman trying desperately to salvage a business that has been neglected or mismanaged to the extreme, and has run out of options and even then I would not recommend this book. What a shame that this is considered good advice on how to run a business! No wonder the USA is getting it's butt kicked all over the world. Thank goodness there are business people with a soul, and a desire to create and build.

I have a small business that is in operation for two years. I never went to business school. I do everything intuitively. After two years on my own I was desperate for some business advise. My dad is no longer alive and I felt I had no where to turn. I was literally crying out for help. Through surfing the internet I came across George Cloutier. I watched a little video and immediately wanted his book. It was a great investment and I will keep it on the shelf in my office. Anyone in business should read this book. I am plugging all my cash leaks and beginning to see a profit. The book may not make as much sense to someone who is not yet in business. But once you are in business everything he says is well worth listening to. They don't call him a business Guru for nothing.
For me it was 100% on the mark! Love this book!

Wow, I was hoping to find something a little more substantial in this book.

Maybe this stuff worked in the 1950's with a large mostly male workforce, but I'd have a hard time seeing it being effective today.

With section headings titled:
"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt"

And advice like "Why aren't you working on Sunday's" or "Why are you playing golf"

Or broad summary statements such as:
"Let your competition play golf while you stay in the office stealing their customers."

Oh..how "rose colored glasses" that sounds.

This book doesn't balance modern motivational techniques with concrete business advice.

With younger generations entering the workforce all the time, this information becomes more obsolete and more "square peg in a round hole"... it just doesn't fit.

My company was approached by AMS (AMS is the company owned by Mr. Cloutier) to conduct a preliminary interview to asses if we qualify for their consulting program with Partner America. We felt that the meeting went well and we were very excited about the possibility of being able to learn some new/better business practices from them, until the sales rep gave us a copy of this book...

There were very few things that I could take away from this book as sound advice for a company that is not on the verge of bankruptcy. If your company is not making a profit because you think that no one respects you as an owner then I think that some of the hard line methods expressed in the book might help you turn the company around, but if you keep the majority of their philosophy in place after getting out of the red, it could be detrimental to the long-term growth of the company.

If you have been running a successful business and care about the people that work for you then stay away from this book. It will not give you any insights on how to run your business better.

The reason for my vehement opposition to this book is because I am concerned that a green business owner that follows this path is not going to be very successful in the future and definitely very unhappy throughout the process of owning a business.

I am ashamed that Mr. Cloutier is a graduate of one of our nation's top MBA programs, Harvard Business School. It is alums like Mr. Cloutier that exhibit such poor judgment and create an undesirable perception about what these programs really try to teach their students. I also attended a consensus top 5 MBA program - not HBS but I have a great deal of respect for their program, faculty and alums - and we learned that knowledge of the market, understanding your customers and their needs, and sound financial acumen are just some of the tools needed to be a successful business owner, not the cut-throat measures expressed in this book.