Zero to One Million is a guide for aspiring entrepreneurs that explains, step-by-step, how to build a company to one million dollars in sales. This book, based on the author’s experience building a company from $0 in sales to $1,000,000 in sales in fourteen months, is essential reading for every business owner and every aspiring entrepreneur.

This book not only tells the story of this successful company and the author’s two companies since, but tells how and why every element worked and examines every process, every system, every technique, and every strategy in a manner that can be applied to any business, whether you have just a fledging idea, mature local company, or high potential start-up. This book shows how anyone can build a million dollar company, or if already there, expand sales even further.

This book is organized into five parts. Part one begins with the author’s story. It narrates how he went from being a normal eleven year old playing video games and living on a small island on the west coast Florida to a Vice President of Marketing for a company in the nutraceuticals industry at 17 that went from zero to one million in sales in just over a year, to being the CEO of a high potential investor-backed software start-up at 19. This section of the book will be most relevant to persons who do not presently run their own business and would like to, or to younger readers.

Part two begins by explaining the development and framework of today’s competitive market economy. It provides a philosophical basis for entrepreneurship and the competitive market economy, and discusses the challenges of corruption and poverty. It tracks the development of globalization over the past two centuries, and explains how the world and how business has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of a new era in 1989. It notes the development of a new generation, a ‘new breed of entrepreneurs’ and what one must know to succeed in such a global era. These chapters serve to give a framework for understanding our economic system and the dynamic forces that are shaping it—very important knowledge for entrepreneurs who wish to succeed in that very global economic system.

In part three, the book moves from explaining the framework of the global economy to detailing the steps needed to build the framework for one’s business. This section of book explains how to find and evaluate opportunities, write a business plan, develop a product, form your company, obtain funding, and launch your business. The chapters within will take you from the point of not being sure what to sell or do up to the point where you are ready to open your doors for business. This essential due diligence, planning, and infrastructure building is detailed as a step-by-step guide, applicable to any type of start-up or small business.

Part four covers marketing. Too many aspiring entrepreneurs create an innovative product, do their market research, raise the money, incorporate their company, build the infrastructure, and bring on great people, but fail to ever get sales going. This section details how to complete market research gain competitive intelligence, execute marketing campaigns, build customer relationships, and watch return on investment. Ryan’s expertise is further shown in the extensive chapter on Web Marketing which includes a guide to creating your web site, getting to the top of the search engines, building links, leveraging permission-based marketing, and launching an affiliate program—the same steps that the author used to build the nutraceuticals company to $1MM in sales and the same steps currently being taken at his latest software venture.

Once you have succeeded in executing your marketing plan, your company will be entering a period of growth. How you manage that growth and how you adapt to these changes will determine whether you can sustain that growth or will run into problems such as cash flow shortages, high employee turnover, or competitive price wars. The second half of part four will explain how to create the new infrastructure that is needed to take your company to a harvest or IPO ready state, build the proper systems and processes needed to grow your organization, develop new products, and branch out into international markets. Finally, part four ends with a wonderful review that provides one hundred steps to building a company to one million dollars in sales.

Part five is perhaps the most important section for the young entrepreneur. Covering the topic of personal development, it presents the strategies used by successful entrepreneurs and business persons. It covers the important skills of planning, goal setting, networking, having a bias toward action, and dealing with failure. The author explains his experience and what he has learned along his journey, as well as profiles the strategies for success of many other successful entrepreneurs.

Zero to One Million is a book unlike any other on business or entrepreneurship. There have been books about entrepreneurship, books about economics, books about personal development, and case studies about successful companies, but never have these topics been combined in such a step-by-step, detailed guide. Whether you are fifteen with wide eyes and big dreams, thirty with an MBA and a vision, or fifty-five venturing out on your own after a lifetime in corporate America, this book will be invaluable resource and inspiration.

Though nothing can ever be guaranteed without your action and perseverance, you will find steps within that have been used time and time again to build companies to one million dollars in sales and beyond. I wish you the best of luck as you begin your journey of building your own company toward its first million.