The Blog of Xangis

There are a lot of crappy business books out there in the world, many of them by folks who have no idea how to say anything useful. Most of them say the same thing as any other business book, regurgitate the same platitudes, and describe vague, general concepts without including any of the nuts and bolts or giving you enough to build an action plan from.

Not so with the book in my hands now, Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales by Ryan Allis. This book is, believe it or not, ACTUALLY USEFUL. In fact, it says more than pretty much every book on my shelf combined.

Sometimes I wonder why I would even bother reading a book written by a 65-year-old billionaire who has no clue what it’s like to start from scratch anymore. Mind you, it’s not just the elderly that suffer from platutudophilia and a dearth of practical, applicable information. In fact, one of my recent reads, Millionaire By 26: Secrets to Becoming A Young, Rich Entrepreneur by Ken Hayashi, is pretty much completely devoid of any useful information. I don’t recommend it.

Rather than being just a nuts-and-bolts book, Zero to One Million also goes into some detail about how the economy works. It has the first GOOD explanation I’ve read regarding why economic policies based on mercantilism (which has always sounded pretty reasonable to me) don’t make sense.

This book touches on pretty much every aspect of building a company from scratch including marketing, financing, business plans, product/service selection, leadership, and legal issues.

I’ll be putting the information I’ve picked up from this book into practice post-haste. I hope my friends and acquaintances who are considering building a company read this — it’s easily worth 10x the cover price.