Forbes - Cuts to the Guts of Business

Ok - I'm a nerd. I have read Forbes cover to cover since I was 17 (My dad's copy). I am now 43, and have successfully built and sold a small business. I attribute much of my success to Forbes.

This is a magazine that puts business strategy front and center. Other business mags try to make media stars out of the CEO du jour. Instead, Forbes puts real writers into the field, to find out who, what, when, where and WHY.

Having grown up in a business environment where substance was always preferred over fluff and self-promotion, reading Forbes is like having that familiar "voice of reason" whispering in your ear when making business decisions. Forbes demands that business strategy decisions make sense, by looking at the numbers that result. The business profiles are essentially condensed case-studies.

In addition, because Forbes has real reporters on staff, who do real reporting, you get info in Forbes 6 months ahead of the reports that show up in mainstream media. It's amusing to watch the network news tout a story as breakout news, and think, yeah, I read about that in Forbes months ago!

Forbes writers are THE BEST wordsmiths in the business. They are concise, generally level, and irreverent at the same time. They have been trained well to ignore the PR smokescreens that are always in their face.

What I don't like is their "400 richest" and "100 Top Earning" celebrity editions. Boring, meaningless, and I could care less. But it gets them a lot of publicity in the idiot-serving, celebrity-chasing mainstream press, so I guess it's a minor distraction that advances the overall magazine.

If you want to be entertained, read something else that demands less thought. If you want to learn to think strategically about your business, then read Forbes, especially the business profiles.