Curtis R. Nelson
The Recipe for Business Success
ISBN: 978-1-61623-035-7
“This book is for all businesses” is a bold claim to have at the beginning of a book and is the reason I picked up a copy of The Recipe for Business Success by Curtis R. Nelson, the CEO of the Entrepreneurial Development Center in Cedar Rapids, during EntreFEST this past June. I haven’t met the author in person and didn’t get to connect with him during the conference, but I know about his work from a number of mutual connections. I figured that this book would be the best way to try to get inside his head and see how he’s made a name for himself over the years. Once I read that first line, I was definitely hooked.
The Recipe for Business Success is a few years old at this point, published in 2009 as the concept of the startup was starting to differentiate from a traditional small business. Because of this, the book seems to occupy this weird, transitional area between startups and small businesses, where parts of the book feel right at home with what I teach new founders about starting a startup, while other parts of the book are definitely too advanced for early startups. The chapter on Strategic Fit is great for startups, discussing the need for product-market fit and understanding the customer segments you plan to target. The Business Plan chapter was a step back into the days before the Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas – before the development of the Business Model Canvas and its derivations, startups and small businesses had to write lengthy business plans in order to raise money from traditional sources like banks. Thankfully, we now have the Business Model Canvas to use as we talk to potential customers, so new entrepreneurs can spend their time testing and iterating on ideas rather than in front of Microsoft Word.
The chapters on finding the right talent and the differences between managers and leaders are perfect for businesses that have found product-market fit and are filling key positions with new hires – again, too advanced for new startups. In finding the right talent, Nelson really hit on something that stymies many fast-growing startups and small businesses: balancing the founding team and early employees is crucial, but not to get completely hung up on the hiring process. You want to make sure all of your bases are covered, and you want to create the right kind of culture early on, so early hires are very important. However, you don’t want to spend too much time on the process, as there are still very few of you available to run and grow the business. This ties into managers versus leaders – early-stage businesses need leaders who are committed to improving and growing their teams, not managers who are there to just moving in the same direction. Again, these are important for fast-growing startups who have found product-market fit but were too advanced for early-stage startups still on the search for customers.
The chapter on resources felt way ahead of its time, somewhat discussing concepts very similar to the “seven capitals” discussed by Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway in The Startup Community Way several years later. You could call The Recipe for Business Success an MVP for early and mid-stage startup texts, as Nelson truly had some foresight into the entrepreneurial community that wouldn’t be discussed elsewhere for years to come. I refer to it as an MVP and not the true “version one,” as many of the examples in the book were very corporate in nature – again, the modern startup culture we know and love today hadn’t fully formed in 2009. Tech startups were a thing mostly on the coasts, while large corporations still dominated the discussion in the rest of the United States at that time.
Overall, 9/10, would recommend to anyone struggling with a business that seems to be progressing too slowly or even declining. The ability to give your business a score at regular intervals makes this book one that you can reference time and again when you feel things beginning to slow down, in order to give yourself and your business a reality check in the current marketplace. Even though this book is nearly 15 years old, it’s still a great “book for all businesses.”