This booklet is written for humorous purposes. Extensive use is made of sarcasm and quite often things people cherish are made to look silly. Dreams of wealth, fame, and power can fuel ambition, but success can depend on training, hard work, luck, knowing the "right" people, and moral flexibility.
This booklet should provide an overview of the challenges to making everything from a lemonade stand to a multi nation corporation succeed.
The first thing is to define success. In business most people consider money the measure of success. We should consider all the ways money can be made.
Earning it as wages from someone else.
Selling something for more than you paid for it.
Renting out as do bankers, landlords, and hookers.
Taking it from the wages of others.
Building something other people want.
Stealing using fraud, theft or force.
Inheritance
Marriage
Receiving it as a gift.
Some businesses are run at a loss as a cover for criminal activity such as a flower shop run as a front for a bookie joint.
Most often businesses are intended to make money on their own and often are arranged with overlapping methods. Typical manufacturing would make use of numbers 4 and 5.
Most business is done in the market place where goods and services are bought and sold. This market can be anything from the stock exchange to the yellow pages to a farmers market to selling drugs in a school play-ground.
Anywhere and anyplace a financial transaction can be completed can be considered a market. This explains the persistence of Amway distributors and insurance agents.
While not frequently considered as a business, governments make their presence known as they are also in the market to obtain money, usually using methods 4 and 6. However, one can make a case for number 7 if inflationary practices are considered.
Money attracts scoundrels like manure attracts flies. The more of it, the greater the infestation. If there weren’t enough difficulties trying to make a business function, success often brings the additional problem of trying to repel boarders that can come in the guise of “fair weather friends”, those who seduce and betray, and even a full frontal assault.