Toby Tatum

This book is the story about the rise and fall of the Sizzler restaurant chain as told from the perspective of a Sizzler franchisee. The story begins with the inception of the restaurant, its rise to becoming the foremost budget family steak house restaurant chain in the country and its catastrophic collapse by the mid-nineteen nineties. The book describes the compounding sequence of strategic errors leading to collapse and thereby serves as a lesson for the management of any company of how to avoid the same fate.

The tacit assumption among business owners and their bookkeepers generally seems to be that the primary objective of financial performance reporting is to facilitate the production of an income tax return. To this end, the primary objective of the income statement is to report the company's net profit. This assumption is misguided. The primary objective of the income statement should be to report the company's cash flow. Quoting Dr. Pablo Fernandez, recognized as among the world's leading authorities on business valuation"There is a financial accounting maxim which, although it is not absolutely true, comes very close to it and which is a good thing to remember, net income is just an opinion, net cash flow is a fact"The purpose of Turning Black Ink Into Gold is to show small business owners how high-quality financial performance reporting can improve their company's profitability and market value