After 14 months of hard work and preparation, this week I officially launched my book “Tame your tiger – how to stop your product business eating you alive”. I still can’t believe that there is a book out there in the world with my name on the front!

My biggest wish for “Tame your tiger” is that it is genuinely useful to you as you work on your product business.

For this blog post I’ve pulled together some Q&As to give you an idea of who the “Tame your Tiger” is for, what it’s about and how to use it.

Who is the book for?

The book is designed for anybody who’s ever asked themselves – ‘why does my business not make more money?’ It’s that simple!

It is specifically tackling the challenges faced by small businesses who sell products. Whether you sell via a website, in your own or someone else’s bricks and mortar store, or a combination, then this book is for you. It’s also for you whether you sell other people’s products, make your own or have yours manufactured.

If you are first starting out, this is a great introduction to how product businesses make money and will set you up from the get-go. If you have been running your business for a while, I bet you’ll learn something new!

What is the book about?

I’ve taken 20 years of retail experience and distilled all of that knowledge into an accessible, easy to use book on how to make your product business more profitable. The book looks at why product businesses can become “cash hungry monsters”, how to “calculate profit margins”, how “promotions and other selling activities” affect how much you really make with every sale, the danger of a “build-up of unproductive stock”, how to get yourself a “powerful stock plan”, how to do a “break-even analysis”, it tells you “four ways to grow your sales” and of course “Tame your tiger” will tell you how to implement all of that invaluable knowledge!

The book is full of case studies which will help bring to life everything I talk about – you really will be able to see yourself and your own product business as you work through the book.

This is the publisher’s description of “Tame your tiger”:

‘Does your product business feel unpredictable, slightly terrifying, and hungry for money? If so, you’re not alone.

Retail is the fastest growing small business sector, and for good reason. With accessible selling technology and billions of people shopping online, reaching your ideal customer is easier than ever before.

But the truth is that making money in a product business is harder than it first appears. And without profits, your business becomes incredibly difficult to manage and almost impossible to grow.

Fortunately for you, big retailers have spent decades developing methods of monitoring profit margins, forecasting and growing sales and managing stock to maximise their bottom line.

In this book, small-business retail expert Catherine Erdly shows you how to easily apply those big business tools and perspectives to understand your business, get clear on what you need to do to grow profitably, and, ultimately, tame your tiger’.

You can even take a sneak peak at a sample of “Tame your tiger” right here.

How do you use the Tame your Tiger Book?

To get the most out of “Tame your tiger” you need to have an open mind about your business and you need to be kind to yourself – do not spend anytime dwelling on why you may not have “crunched your numbers” in the ways I suggest – reading this book will liberate you from any fears or worries you may have about the numbers side of running your own product business.

Each chapter ends with exercises and tasks encouraging you to look at your own business – it’s totally up to you if you want to work through chapter by chapter or ready the whole book in one go then return to the exercises! There are also practical actions points on various issues that may have already arisen in your business or may do in the future – so you can return to this book again and again.

“Tame your tiger” is intended as a practical tool to help you self-diagnose issues within your business – you can identify, with certainty, areas for improvements and have the knowledge and tools to tackle them.

So – don’t delay, order your copy of “Tame Your Tiger: How To Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive” right now!