Found Money Steve Wilkinghoff

Found Money: Simple Strategies For Uncovering The Hidden Profit And Cash Flow In Your Business by Steve Wilkinghoff

Preliminary Book Review

I get offered many books to review, both by well established and up and coming authors.

I had to ask for a review copy of "Found Money" (or at least drop an extremely heavy hint) because I was intrigued at the marriage of finance and marketing.

You see Steve and I occupy the same positioning.

Steve is a Chartered Accountant in Canada, I'm a Chartered Accountant in the UK.

Steve is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and so am I.

Steve has big name author friends (Michael Gerber wrote the foreword of Found Money, Michael Port and Jay Conrad Levinson are among the big names giving praise for the book on the back cover) and I don't.

Guess that's one of the reasons why Steve has a book published... and I'm just thinking about getting a book published.

Preliminary Review Of Found Money

I wanted to draw your attention to Found Money before I've written my full review.

There are risks here... while Steve Wilkinghoff and I start in very similar places.. it may be that we draw very different conclusions from our knowledge and experience.

What's In Found Money?

A quick run down on the chapters as that gives me a frame to write my review.

1. What's the purpose of your business? I thought Steve and I were going disagree here and we might on the fringes.
   
   As an accountant Steve's view is that the overriding purpose of a business is to make money whilst I have a more customer centric view - see my blog What Is The Purpose Of A Business although Steve shifts his view and so do .
   
   Bottom line? A business must find a reliable way to make money and can then decide how it should be spread around the stakeholders.
   
   
2. When does your business make money?
   
   
3. Making money: net profit
   
   
4. Making money: return on investment
   
   
5. Making money: positive cash flow
   
   
6. Is your business making you money?
   
   
7. Which products make you money? (And which ones don't?)
   
   
8. Gross margin math
   
   
9. Which customers make you money? And which ones don't?
   
   
10. Your customer profitability map
    
    
11. Found money math (it's fun really)
    
    
12. Your pricing bootcamp
    
    
13. The end of the line.. and just the beginning

My intention will be to keep coming back to this review of Found Money and adding to it as I read the chapters.

I have found the space between Steve and me in our finance-marketing hybrid thinking.

Steve's more of a finance man than me and I take more of a marketing / strategic view.

You can tell that by looking at the chapter titles of Found Money and comparing it to my Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity .

My Review Rating For Found Money By Steve Wilkinghoff

It's too early to give a review rating yet. I like to read the book and give the ideas some time to percolate.

But I think there is a huge potential market for a profit based finance book.

So much of what I look at on the finance for non financial managers is all about the terminology and techniques.

The what but not the why.

I believe small business owners and entrepreneurs need to know how to manage for profit and while the answers lie in better marketing, there is no escape from understanding how a business makes money.

What Others Think About Found Money

Three reviews on Amazon.com to date and all of them at the five star level.

Nice comments as you would expect and it's pleasing to me to see people appreciate the hybrid of finance and marketing.

See for yourself at Amazon.com (affiliate link) and it is also available from Amazon.co.uk (affiliate link) but there are no reviews.  

Comments

[Steve Wilkinghoff]

Paul, you're bang on about how critical it is for business owners to understand the link between finance and marketing. After all, marketing is the basis for creating the financial results business owners ultimately enjoy (or wish they could).

An understanding of that link is like having the "secret code" to a prosperous and "in-control" business.

Thanks for your review. And I'm looking forward to connecting with you when I'm London over the next couple weeks.

Steve Wilkinghoff, C.A.
www.foundmoneybook.com

[Paul Simister]

Thanks Steve for your comment and I was sorry to have missed you when you were in the UK.

I don't agree with everything in your book but I applaud the way you've written the book so that I don't think any small business will dismiss finance as boring or irrelevant in future.