In Selling Won’t Save Your Business, “Super” Joe Pardo answers questions business owners have about building a viable and successful business beyond just selling. The book’s title is very appropriate because, as Joe points out, selling a lot of your product won’t help your business if you don’t have an effective team to handle customer service and don’t have the right processes and procedures in place to prepare for the growth that results from sales. As a result, Joe takes the reader on a journey to the TOP by dividing the book into three parts that focus on Team, Offer, and Process.

After a foreword by Lee Cockerell, retired Executive Vice President of Walt Disney World® Resort, Super Joe jumps right into telling it like it is by asking readers to remember why they started a business in the first place, what is the biggest stressor in business, and what they can do to empower themselves in business.

Joe refers to the content page as a roadmap, and instead of having chapters, he calls each section a “pin” on that roadmap, a place to stop and master to move forward on your journey to business growth.

At the heart of this book is a plea for the reader to become self-aware. Joe reminds readers to ask others for feedback on their own strengths and weaknesses, to ask for help, not to work themselves to death, and to focus on influencing others. That influence affects the business owner’s team members and their success, so the first part of the book focuses on how to create a successful team, which is an extension of the business and its owner. As Joe says, “Your business is a tree, and the roots of that tree are made of strong relationships.” Being a business owner also means being a leader, which means you have to push yourself and do the work yourself. Says Joe, “Sometimes you’ll need to replace him due to a worker shortage or an emergency. In such situations, it’s important that your team understand that you’re not going to sit around and have them do all the work. However, this doesn’t mean you have to be working on your business all the time and not on your business. A great leader knows how to find the balance that will earn respect.”

Being a leader means inspiring your team, and it also means trusting that team to do what you would do when you don’t have time to do it. Giving power to others is often difficult for leaders, but Joe points out that when you try to micromanage your team, you take power away from your managers; that causes team members to question their managers and do what they think you want, even though they may not always know what you want. Therefore, you need to empower your managers by letting go of all power.

Change is always hard for organizations, so if you want to implement the changes Joe recommends, you’re going to have to deal with people who don’t like change.

Consequently, Joe spends a lot of time talking about how to incorporate change into his business without ruffling the feathers too much. To illustrate his point, he shares his own story of implementing change in his family’s business and how, despite some ruffled feathers, the process became a success.

Regardless of the changes you make, the ultimate goal is to provide customer satisfaction. In Part 2: Focusing on Offer, Joe talks about how to price products correctly and how to align his team with customer service delivery. The best advice Joe gives here is how to teach his team to focus on the customer’s perspective when delivering service.

In Part 3: Focusing on the process, Joe reminds us that it’s vital that business owners always look for ways to not only change but also improve. To do that, you have to have clear processes. Once the processes are in place, team members are clear about their tasks, and then the business can run smoothly. As a result, you won’t need to micromanage; then you will have time to work on your business instead of working on it.

There’s a lot more I could talk about here: great tips on hiring, firing, and promoting team members; advice on the incorporation of technology to your business; and tips on how to increase your earnings by improving your training. Throughout, Joe peppers his “Super Joe Says,” which are like modern proverbs for business owners. Each pin ends with exercises so readers don’t just have a read but a learning experience, allowing them to see their own businesses and find the answers they need. As a result, they will close this book with the tools to take their businesses to new levels of growth and their own lives to greater fulfillment.