80% of small businesses fail within the first couple of years. For startups, business is a battle for survival. People like you have discovered the value of Sun Tzu's ideas in running their own business. These are some of the things results they have reported.

Sales is always a major concern for business owners. Results matter. Ashley Alexis is a small business owner and she reports that our training has been "helpful" saying: ".. believe it or not, sales have almost doubled!"

Paul Seth is another small business owner who has discovered that studying Sun Tzu leads to business real success over time. This success can come quickly, but it works over time as well. He wrote:

Absolutely love Sun Tzu. I only developed an interest over the last year or so but the more I read him, the more he is helping. I run a recruitment company and have expanded from 7 to 35 people in the last 3 years. I am looking to expand my company to 100 employees over the next 3 years and strategy will play a key part in its viability.

However, the most interesting testimonials are from people who have used Sun Tzu ideas and our approaches to applying them to build entirely new, successful business from scratch or turn around failing business.

Allan Elder is a great example of a new business builder. In the interest of full disclosure, Allan is also a business professor at the UC Irvine and has become one of our master trainers. However, his first experience in applying Sun Tzu's methods came from using our Nine Formulas book to create a new business.

His wife is a doctor who was working at a traditional medical clinic. After reading our book, she and Allen decided to start a new type of medical clinic. They designed the entire business around Sun Tzu's concepts. Even when Allan, as a business professor, says he didn't personally think something was a good idea," they stuck to Sun Tzu's system. The result:

"We started this business from complete scratch, nothing, nada. Now we have grown to the point where we need to bring in more physicians and the income has outshined everything else we have done in our careers."

Consider that she is a doctor and he is a professor, their financial success with Sun Tzu is impressive.

"Our business model is also praised at conferences where others want to do it but are terrified to try because it is so counter intuitive it simply doesn't make sense. Yet, it works!"

Not only do the business owners love this approach, but their employees love it as well. Kevin Morris is a new manager from C and L Companies. He wrote to say how much he appreciated our materials. He tells us about how serious his CEO is about getting everyone in the company to develop their strategic reflexes.

I now have a new management position with a young progressive company, and the CEO of the company lives and breathes this book. He just implemented a plan for us to once a month write a report based upon (5) principles from this book."

As we explain in our science section, the method of training employees in Sun Tzu ideas is called constructing mental scenarios. One of the reason Sun Tzu's models are so valuable in business is that they give people a common language and framework for thinking through various competitive situations.

Experience, well-education managers also find this system powerful. Ratinder Paul Singh Ahuja is a Ph.D. and is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Reconnex Corp. He realizes that strategic planning only goes so far. He finds the vocabulary invaluable, writing to us:

"I've studied many books on the various translations of Art of War. Your set is the best as it arms us with the vocabulary of strategy and a way to understand what is happening in a chaotic world around us. Its daily reading for me now! Any free time I have I spend on your [StrategySchool] material. I wish I had come across your books earlier. One of my goals is (as is articulated in your material) to make my reactions to changing environments fast and accurate."

In a lot of cases, business owners write us to explain how these ideas give them a completely new perspective on their business. As with Mike Whitehouse who describes it this way:

"..it is as though Gary has come up to me and said "hey you use binoculars this way round"! WOW! I can now see the whole business environment, and life's stuff in a totally new perspective!"

Kobe Zimmerman, runs a foreclosure business called InlandHELP who learned that by using Sun Tzu's approach he could completely turn around his business. He says that before he was "getting eaten alive." Why? In his own words:

"Without getting into to much detail, I was blind as to my position. By not asking questions, I was not seeing the terrain for what it was, and after weeks and even months of hard work, I was losing deals."

After learning Sun Tzu's lessons about developing position awareness, he started acting differently and quickly his entire business turned around. Again, in his own words:

"After getting a clear picture of both my and the homeowners' positions within the environment and also considering and preparing for how these positions will change with time, I can decide if all 5 elements are aligned for probable success. I can't thank you enough. This is perfect for my company, and, well…I am speechless!"

Which seems like a good place to end this article.