CTRL ALT SURVIVE

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.

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Enjoy a free preview and read a few pages of Ctrl Alt Survive: The Secrets of My Small Business Success

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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

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

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.