Finish Big

In our last three giveaways, we've had some of the all-time-great business book authors. We featured Noel Tichy, author of the classic Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, and his new book Succession: Mastering the Make-Or-Break Process of Leadership Transition. We featured Guy Kawasaki, author of the classic Art of the Start, and gave away 20 copies of his new book The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users. And we featured Nir Eyal's Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which looks like it may become a classic.

This week, we have another name in the pantheon of business book authors, Bo Burlingham. Bo helped Jack Stack write his classic on Open-Book Management, The Great Game of Business, twenty years ago before going on to write one of the great books on entrepreneurship—Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. He is now back with a book that helps entrepreneurs exit the companies they built, which along with death and taxes is one of the certainties of any entrepreneurial existence.

Every entrepreneur exits. It's one of the few absolute certainties in business. Assuming you've built a viable company, you can choose when and how you exit, but you can't choose whether. It's going to happen. You can count on it.

Most entrepreneurs want their businesses to survive beyond them, but the mind- and skill-sets that lend themselves to building a business from scratch don't often translate to exiting that business happily and healthfully. Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top helps you see the difficult terrain ahead, and teaches you how to smooth it all out with aplomb before leaving. Not just professionally, but personally and emotionally, as well. Chapter Two, "Who Am I If Not My Business?," delves into this:

Many people whose primary aim is "to build something memorable and lasting" don't lose their passion for it. They want to keep working in and on their business as long as they can.

But they, too, will exit someday, even if it means getting carried out on a stretcher. And unless they've made preparations by then, there's little chance that their businesses will last much longer than they do. More to the point, they will leave in their wake a huge mess for someone else to clean up. It requires a higher level of self-awareness to anticipate the danger and take the steps necessary to make sure that such a disaster in not what you will be remembered for.

Beside and in-between the excellent books he has contributed to the field, Bo Burlingham has also been documenting the entrepreneurial renaissance in America as editor at large for Inc. magazine since 1983, just four years after that venture launched. He has seen entrepreneurs come and go, succeed and stumble, and he is the perfect person to help you through this tricky transition, whenever it may come.