Before The Wave: Launch

As a thank you for being a Jumpstart reader, I have made Before the Wave available on Amazon at a special reduced launch price. It will be increasing soon, so consider this my gift to you and your chance to get your copy before the price goes up.

She was unsinkable.

So was Woolworths. Carillion. Thomas Cook. BHS. Wilko. The Body Shop. ISG.

Every one of them was a going concern, right up until it was not. And when it went, it did not just take the business. It took the suppliers who relied on it. It took the people it was owed money to. And in the end, it took the mortgage, the home, and the family depending on it.

Here is the truth nobody tells a company director. The day your income stops, your children’s needs do not. School fees, mortgage, food. All still due. The business does not care that it is the one that sank.

If the words “business book” make you want to close this tab, you are exactly who this was written for. No theory, no spreadsheet you will never open again, no consultant’s jargon. One book, in plain English, read in the bath tonight, acted on this weekend.

Because right now, in calm water, your business feels solid. So did every name above, a year before it happened. The only difference between them and you is whether you read this before the wave arrives, or after.

Mark Smillie has spent forty years sitting across the table from more than 3,000 company directors. Every one of them, a year before disaster struck…

…would have told you their business was solid too.

Here is the one thing worth knowing before anything else. What sinks a good business is almost never bad luck. It is denial. The quiet voice that says “this does not apply to me” does more damage than any recession.

And here is the part most directors never hear. You do not need an MBA to fix that. You need about twenty minutes and this book. No homework, no jargon, no spreadsheets. Just plain English, one page at a time, written the way Mark would say it to you across a table, because that is exactly what he has done, three thousand times over.

Most directors already have a lifeboat sitting right under their nose and have never once seen it for what it is. It costs about the same as a decent dinner to put in the water. Mark shows you exactly where to look, and how it makes your business stronger while the water is still calm.

The water is rising for everyone right now. Economists are warning of another recession. Trading is the quietest it has been in years. Almost nobody is doing a thing about it. The businesses that come through are not the lucky ones. They are the ones who got ready while things still looked fine.

Inside, in plain English, you will learn:

• How to spot the warning signs in your own business, months before they become a crisis
• Where the real money in your business is actually hiding, and how to get at it
• How to build your lifeboat while things are good, and you still have the headspace to do it properly
• The personal guarantee you signed without realising what it meant, and the handful of other traps that catch directors out under pressure
• Who to trust when it hits, and which advisors are quietly working against you
• How to protect the one asset everything else depends on: your own mind
• A plain-English glossary for the letters that arrive when things go wrong, and what your real options actually are

The captains who carry a lifeboat are not the nervous ones. They are the ones who have seen rough water and know exactly what the sea can do.

Read this in the bath tonight. Build your lifeboat this weekend. Sleep better for the rest of the year.

And if you do not think it was worth a hundred times what you paid for it, tell Mark, and he will refund you in full. No questions asked.

Build your lifeboat before you need it.