Deadline News Journalist
GROWTH strategist Craig Alexander Rattray has written a new book with the aims of helping business owners transform how they operate.
Calling on over 30 years of experience advising ambitious and expanding SMEs, Work Smart. Work Less. Make More. reveals the Glasgow-born cash flow specialist’s secrets to success.
It is the latest in a series of books from Rattray, all with a similar theme of helping create successful entrepreneurs, and the first since he left Scotland to set up a new life in Greece in the spring of 2025.
He said: “This isn’t a book about working harder, it’s about something most business owners don’t talk about – the moment the business that they built for freedom starts taking it away.
“Most business owners don’t have a work ethic problem, they have a business that depends too heavily on them. And over time that becomes exhausting.
“Longer hours, more pressure – and they realise this isn’t what they set out to build. I have sat with hundreds of business owners over 30 years who were quietly falling apart inside a business that looked healthy on paper.
“I’ve seen this pattern across multiple businesses. And I’ve lived it myself. That’s where this book comes from. Not theory but experience.
“Most business owners would like to work a bit less and make a bit more. This book will help owners build a business that gives them back time, control and freedom.
“If a business currently depends on the owner for everything, this will make sense.”
Rattray, who created the successful Know Your Numbers training programme and The Freedom Circle, runs his business from his new home on the island of Crete and added: “I used to work more hours on a Saturday than I do in most entire weeks now.
“That’s not luck. That’s not laziness. That’s 30 years of learning how to build businesses that run without me, and finally putting all of it into practice.
“I’m involved in multiple businesses and my own one runs largely without me, day to day. I live in Crete and can honestly say I have genuine freedom. I want to help others get there, too.
“It’s my fourth book and the one I’m happiest with. I genuinely believe it will help create the life people promised themselves by helping other business owners avoid some of the mistakes and traps I fell into.
“Life is too short to spend most of it overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed out and permanently ‘busy.’ This book isn’t about building a bigger business, it’s about building one that gives owners their lives back.
“If this book helps even a handful of business owners reclaim their time, freedom, and peace of mind, writing it will have been worth it.”
