Inflation is still squeezing margins, supply chains keep shifting under our feet, and “economic uncertainty” has basically become a permanent line item on every board meeting agenda. So when a business veteran who has actually weathered all of it decides to write the whole thing down, it’s worth paying attention.

That veteran is Terry Conway, and his new book, “Business is Simple: From a Family Cottage Business to World Processing and Markets,” lands at exactly the right moment for entrepreneurs, family-owned operators and anyone trying to figure out how to stop reacting and start competing.

Conway is not a theorist. He became a CFO at 31, a business owner at 41, and spent decades building, defending and growing companies under real pressure. He’s the former CFO of Perdue Farms and the longtime owner of Handy Seafood, a small cottage company he transformed into an international operation running across 17 countries. Along the way, his high-risk expansion work through Thailand and India earned him the nickname “The Indiana Jones of the seafood business,” which is, frankly, the coolest business-book backstory of the year.

The Three-Part Structure

Conway argues that what gets taught in business school and what actually happens in the arena are two very different things. “If an organization needs revenue, it’s a business,” he says. “But competing for revenue is rarely taught at business schools; it must be experienced under pressure.”

His framework — what he calls “the essence of business” — comes down to three concepts:

– Continuously improve the value of products.
– Process those products at a competitive advantage.
– Develop leads for sales to close.

That’s it. No 47-step pyramid, no buzzword salad. The discipline is in actually doing all three at once, every day, while the world keeps changing the rules.

The “All-Abouts”

To keep teams aligned around that structure, Conway introduces “all-abouts” — bottom-line focal points designed to cut through noise, encourage free-flowing communication and keep every function of a business pointed at its core purpose. Pair those with his two favorite core values — “Trust is the cornerstone of everything” and “free flowing collaboration to innovate and use innovations for competitive advantages” — and you have a culture-and-operations cheat sheet drawn from decades of trial, error and survival.

Part Memoir, Part Survival Story

What makes “Business is Simple” more than a how-to manual is the war stories. Conway retraces the betrayals, regulatory minefields, fierce competition and expensive mistakes that shaped Handy Seafood’s rise to a multinational brand pulling in $60 million in sales by 2024. It reads like a memoir for entrepreneurs, a manual for leaders, and a survival guide for anyone running a family business that wants to make it to the next generation.

“Testing the structure had many enjoyable moments,” Conway says. “The thrill of making it work, the joy of working with cultures in 17 countries, spreading the brand world-wide and building longevity for the family made the hard work worthwhile. I hope this book helps propel your growth.”

Whether you’re a recent grad trying to translate the classroom into the boardroom, a founder fighting for market share, or a family business leader thinking about succession, Conway’s three concepts are the kind of practical, hard-won wisdom that holds up when the economy gets weird.

“Business is Simple: From a Family Cottage Business to World Processing and Markets” is published by Publish Your Purpose and is available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Simple-Cottage-Processing-Markets/dp/B0GM3FYY1P

For more on Terry Conway, visit http://www.terryconway-bis.com.