Take the manual with you

About the book

Nobody hands you a manual when you take charge. Maybe you started a business. Maybe you fell into running one. Maybe you got promoted to lead the team you used to work beside. Either way, the hard calls are now yours, and nobody taught you how to make them.

The BBG Owner's Manual teaches you to think like a detective: step outside yourself, separate facts from assumptions, run the what-ifs first, argue against your own plan, and only then decide. Then it shows you how to run a tight ship, get real about money, win and keep customers, lead people, and keep moving when times get hard.

Why "BBG"? It stands for Business Book Guide. The manual pulls together the most useful ideas from respected business and management books, puts them in plain language, and adds what only experience teaches. Every chapter has a worked case, a step-by-step how-to with words you can use, the most common mistakes, and questions to work through for your own business or team.

Who it's for: owners, managers, supervisors and team leads who learned on the job and want a practical system, not theory.

What's in the workbook

• 30 chapters that match the manual, so you can read a chapter and then work it.
• Questions to work through, with lined space for real answers.
• Fill-in scripts to rewrite in your own words before the real conversation.
• Mistake checklists and a "try it this week" planner for every chapter.
• Blank Dossiers, a 12-week scorecard and a 90-day plan.

Type in it or print it

The workbook PDF is fillable. Every answer space is a typing box sized for a real answer, every checklist has boxes you can click, and the 12-week scorecard has a cell for each number. Fill it in on your computer, save it, and come back to it whenever you like. It works in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, in Preview on a Mac and in most web browsers. Prefer pen and paper? Print any page, or order the paperback.

Both are written for owners, managers and supervisors who learned on the job.