--- title: "CTRL ALT SURVIVE" summary: "This is not a conventional business book, and if you intend to survive your small business, you can't afford to be a conventional business leader. CTRL ALT SURVIVE is an audacious, occasionally hilarious, and always honest look at what it takes to turn a business into something that matters. It's about finding the advantages hidden in plain sight, fostering human connections, and taking the sort of calculated risks that will keep you up at night before paying off in ways that defy imagination." subtitle: "The Secrets of My Small Business Success" status: "available" isbn: "9798339896753" publisher: "Convilo, LLC" published: "2024-10" amazon_url: "https://www.amazon.com/Ctrl-Alt-Survive-Secrets-Business/dp/B0DJN78S48" preview_url: "https://nathanphinney.com/media/ctrl-alt-survive-preview.pdf" url: "https://nathanphinney.com/books/ctrl-alt-survive/" author: "Nathan Phinney" author_role: "COO, AllSafe IT" author_url: "https://nathanphinney.com/about/" same_as: ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanphinney"] expertise: ["IT", "InfoSec", "Managed Services", "Cybersecurity", "Business Operations", "Technology for Escrow Companies", "Technology for Nonprofits"] updated: 2026-10-10 --- This is not a conventional business book, and if you intend to survive your small business, you can't afford to be a conventional business leader. CTRL ALT SURVIVE is an audacious, occasionally hilarious, and always honest look at what it takes to turn a business into something that matters. It's about finding the advantages hidden in plain sight, fostering human connections, and taking the sort of calculated risks that will keep you up at night before paying off in ways that defy imagination. ## Explore the Book Enjoy a free preview and read a few pages of Ctrl Alt Survive: The Secrets of My Small Business Success [Look Inside The Book](https://nathanphinney.com/media/ctrl-alt-survive-preview.pdf) ![CTRL ALT SURVIVE open to pages 52 and 53](https://nathanphinney.com/media/ctrl-alt-survive-open-to-pages-52-53.jpg) ## Contents 1. **The Bear Who Wanted To Be A Bear.** How a dinner-table plan to build an IT company and sell it within ten years took shape, and why Phinney chose a name and brand that made clients feel like the smart ones for hiring Bright Bear. 2. **Talking Cars and Helicopters.** Phinney's working answer to what technology is for: a force multiplier for helping people, and the company tagline that came out of it. 3. **California.** Why where a business starts matters, and how one reluctant favor for a networking contact became Bright Bear's first six-figure deal and made Phinney bolder about asking for referrals. 4. **Dabbawalas.** Building a team that knows why its work matters, plus the standard five-service stack and first-day skills every Bright Bear employee had to learn. 5. **Riding The Jet Ski.** Why a small MSP should stop pretending to be big, and what a 16-person account-transition call revealed about a larger competitor's cost to serve. 6. **The Price Is Right.** Moving from billable hours and expiring blocks of hours to managed services, and the per-device pricing and bundling lessons that followed, including a deal lost over the price of a desk phone. 7. **Focus.** Saying no, picking a vertical, and the nonprofit and escrow playbooks that made Bright Bear known as the IT company for nonprofits and a sought-out name in escrow, plus the 80/20 lesson Phinney learned too late. 8. **The Sorcerer's Apprentice.** A plain-language take on automation and large language models, what they are actually for, and why the manual process has to be locked down before anything is automated. 9. **Failure Is Optional.** Tenacity as an operating strategy, from the lean early years of side jobs to consolidating datacenters after the acquisition. 10. **You Can Buy Customers.** What Phinney learned about paid customer acquisition and funnel math after the sale, and why he counts building Bright Bear on referrals alone as a missed opportunity. 11. **The Irish Goodbye.** Starting with the exit in mind: a short course on how an MSP is valued, what changes in the years before a sale, and how Bright Bear's buyer was found. 12. **Walking Each Other Home.** Impostor syndrome, the real cost of starting a business with friends, and why people come before technology. First edition, October 2024. Published by Convilo, LLC. ISBN 9798339896753. ## What Readers Are Saying ![Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI](https://nathanphinney.com/media/ivan-misner-portrait.jpg) > Nathan shares here a blend of hard-won insights and practical strategies for entrepreneurs who understand that people and relationships are key to business success. Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI and NY Times Bestselling Author ![Dr. Joseph O. Chapa, author of Is Remote Warfare Moral?](https://nathanphinney.com/media/joseph-chapa-portrait.jpg) > In 'Ctrl Alt Survive,' with candor, wit, and wisdom, Nathan Phinney shares his own hard-won lessons on how to grow your business in a time of rapid technological change. Dr. Joseph O. Chapa, author of "Is Remote Warfare Moral?" ## What You Will Find Inside - **Discover the power of overlooked ideas**: Learn how the smallest, most unassuming concepts, those that others might dismiss, can become the foundation for lasting success. It's not just theory; it's about recognizing potential where no one else is looking. - **Navigate the chaos with confidence**: This isn't a polished tale of easy wins; it's a gritty, real-world guide for pushing through uncertainty and disorder to build something meaningful. The book offers practical insights for when everything seems off-track but is actually setting you up for breakthroughs. - **Cut through the noise**: Forget the corporate buzzwords and empty phrases. _Ctrl Alt Survive_ delivers raw, actionable advice without the fluff. If you're tired of books that overpromise and underdeliver, this one will give you the straight talk you need to scale your business with intention. ## About the author **Nathan Phinney**, COO, AllSafe IT. - Co-founded Bright Bear Technology Solutions (2010 to 2020), which reached the CRN MSP 500 and Ingram Micro SMB 500 lists before its 2020 acquisition by Datapath. - 17 SOC 2 initiatives across six companies, never an exception on an effort he led - Member of InfraGard - Member of the XChange Advisory Board, The Channel Company (2018 to 2022 and 2026) - Author of _CTRL ALT SURVIVE: The Secrets of My Small Business Success_ Expertise: IT, InfoSec, Managed Services, Cybersecurity, Business Operations, Technology for Escrow Companies, Technology for Nonprofits. Featured in: CRN (7 articles, 2019 to 2026), Backblaze, Bigleaf Networks, GTIA, Orange County Business Journal. See https://nathanphinney.com/press.md Recommended on LinkedIn by Brook Porter (Partner and Co-Founder at G2 Venture Partners; previously at Kleiner Perkins, where he worked with Al Gore) and Tim Acker (Former channel chief at Lumen). More: [About Nathan Phinney](https://nathanphinney.com/about.md) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanphinney)