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Letter from the Editor of the Social Venture Network Series

Every year more than one million new businesses form in the United States. Most of them fail within a few years. Conventional wisdom has it that the principal reason for such widespread failure is a lack of capital, but after reading Values Sell, I'm not so sure.

Consider the advice you're likely to get from the average business consultant, banker, accountant, or business school professor: "Keep your costs low, keep your eye on the cash, and keep your customers happy." You may walk away with the tragically misguided impression that building a successful business is a lot like baking a cake, simply combining a teaspoon of this, a pinch of that, and a dash of something else—all readily available ingredients, easy to find on the shelf.

Anyone with any practical business experience knows that's bunk. As Nadine Thompson and Angela Soper make abundantly clear in this inspired little volume, a successful small business requires a whole lot more than a competitive product or service, tight cash management, and good customer relations—or any combination of readily identifiable ingredients.

In fact, as you'll learn in the following pages, success in business depends far more on intangible factors such as vision, commitment, and passion than on any of the more familiar building blocks of commerce. By focusing tightly on the critical question of sales and distribution, Thompson and Soper show how clarity of vision, consistency of values, a collaborative spirit, a passion to teach all who will listen, enduring strategic alliances, and a willingness to empower those around you will compensate for shortages of some of the more traditional ingredients.

Values Sell is jam-packed with colorful and inspiring vignettes from some of America's most enterprising small companies. In these pages, your eyes will be opened and your spirits lifted through the experiences of dynamic enterprises such as Birkenstock USA, Tweezerman, Mountain Equipment Co-op, French Meadow Bakery & Cafe, Tom's of Maine, Earthbound Farm, and Putumayo World Music.

Each of these and the approximately two dozen other outstanding small companies profiled in Values Sell has prospered by building sales and distribution strategies that embody the uniqueness of its vision and the depth of its values. Thompson and Soper will help you understand how the roots of your own approach to sales and distribution can be found within the values you bring to your work and not in any formula or any textbook. If you're running a small or midsized business, or just thinking about starting one, you'll close the covers of this book with a far deeper appreciation of some of the biggest challenges of business today and how you can surmount them.

And one more thing: you'll enjoy reading this delightful little book, and I predict you'll want to pass it along to a friend. It's that good.

MAL WARWICK

Berkeley, California

February 2007