 | The Accidental Entrepreneur: The 50 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business |
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Product Description
Like many business owners, Susan-Urquhart Brown never expected to end up as an entrepreneur. Launching her own business spoke to her passions, but she soon realized there was much more to being a successful owner than she ever expected. In The Accidental Entrepreneur, she takes all the mystery out of going solo. For those who are just beginning to consider starting a venture as well as those who want to take their organization to the next level, she offers advice on what works and what doesn't. With hard-won wisdom and empathy, she shows readers: • the 8 questions everyone should ask up front • the top 10 traits of the successful entrepreneur • how to obtain a license and sellers permit • the best way to create a business plan • 10 simple ways to get referrals • the 6 secrets of marketing a business • smart tips for investing and finance • ways to avoid burnout • how to avoid the 7 biggest pitfalls in business Starting one's own business should be exciting, not scary. This is the one book that will show readers how to create a successful and fulfilling venture they can be proud of.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #14347 in Books
- Published on: 2008-05-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 192 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780814401675
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Review
"…a must-read for its simple and encouraging tone, which takes the mystery out of running your own business." -- Curve magazine
"This is the best $20.00 you'll ever spend on your business. Hit the business section and pick it up now." -- www.PCB007.com
About the Author
Susan Urquhart-Brown (Oakland, CA) started her own company in 1995. As a business coach and mentor, she has encouraged thousands of people to build the business of their dreams. From 1998 to 2001, Susan wrote an advice column in The San Francisco Chronicle for entrepreneurs called, "Going Solo."
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS AN "accidental entrepreneur"? The answer is: a person who never expected to be self-employed or thought of herself or himself as an entrepreneur.
An accidental entrepreneur is not a born or natural entrepreneur, or even someone who is comfortable, at first, selling products or services. Accidental entrepreneurs don't set out to be entrepreneurs; rather, they find themselves working on their own by chance or reluctant choice, and only gradually come to find that they enjoy it. At that point, they realize that they need to learn what they don't already know—everything they can, in fact—in order to make their business a success.
Here are a few examples of accidental entrepreneurs:
• A communication specialist takes a retirement package, and a few months later she agrees to do a project for her former boss. The boss, enthused about the specialist's work, recommends her to someone in another company. Soon she is working on projects for three companies. One day it dawns on her that she has a consulting business. This is fine with her. But so far this work came strictly through referrals. How can she market herself to other companies?
• An engineer has not been able to find work in the high-tech industry and needs money to pay his mortgage. He takes a substitute-teaching job at a ¬ local school and discovers that many of his students need tutoring in math. He starts an after-school tutoring program and discovers that he really enjoys working with students, especially those who are math-phobic. He ¬ realizes that he could build a business around this. But how?
• A therapist, counselor, or coach finds herself enjoying working one-on-one with clients and wants to build a private practice. She keeps her "day job" while slowly developing a referral base. At some point, she knows she wants to do this work full-time, but she doesn't have enough clients to support herself to this degree. What steps does she need to take in order to accomplish this goal?
• A corporate refugee has a vision of living a quieter life, away from the city and the long commute. She manages to move with her husband to a small tourist town. However, this new area offers very few well-paying jobs. The couple realize that they need to make their living on their own, and decide to open a gift store, although neither of them has any retail ¬ experience. They decide to invest their savings in this store. What do they need to learn in order to make the store a moneymaker and to keep its doors open over time?
In all these cases, and many more like them, the decision to be an entrepreneur comes about gradually, as events change, priorities shift, and the need to make a living creates new needs and new possibilities. In almost every one of these cases, there's a lot to consider before just jumping in, if the business is to get off the ground and keep on going.
Passion and motivation are the first considerations. Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon. You might run to lose weight, to get in shape, to prove you can do it, or for a cause. These are all good reasons. But do they have sticking power? Is your heart really in it? Before you take your first running step, it would help to ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" If your answer is, "Because I'm enthusiastic and passionate about it," then you will have a good chance. When your heart is truly connected with your goal, then you are willing to train, to run, to move past your obstacles, to reach the finish line, and to celebrate your success—and then do it all over again! (The next time, however, you can learn from your mistakes and get to the finish line faster).
You may begin your entrepreneurial career by accident, but it's important to make this move intentional as soon as possible. For only once it becomes intentional will you give your business the kind of care it needs, and make it possible for it to give back to you the kind of profit and enjoyment you hoped for in the first place.
Being an entrepreneur is far more creative than doing a job for someone else. Your business is a reflection of who you are and what you're passionate about, as well as the unique expertise you have to offer the marketplace. If you are a sole proprietor—or, as I like to say, a "SoloPreneur"—you make all the decisions, you do most of the work, you solve the problems, you take the heat when things go wrong, and you bask in the glory when things go right. It's exciting and scary, but you are doing what you love.
How to Use This Book
I wrote this book so that everyone whose heart's desire is to have a successful business has the opportunity to create, sustain, and grow the business that best fits their expertise, passion, and the needs of their perfect clients or customers. This book is for entrepreneurs who have from zero to twenty employees.
This book will boost your confidence and give you the tools and techniques to reach your goals, one step at a time, as well as stories and practical tips from entrepreneurs who have taken the leap and have successful businesses! The book can be digested in bite-sized pieces. Look at the table of contents, then turn to the section that interests you most. Read one whole section at one sitting, or just read one chapter. Do one exercise. Prioritize the ideas, tools, or techniques that fit your business strategies and that you would like to implement. Apply the ideas directly to your business. Then add them to your action-item list or business plan.
In other words, this book is designed to be useful, practical, accessible, and encouraging, and, most of all, to guide you from being an accidental entrepreneur to being an intentional entrepreneur with a thriving business.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
By Jeff Lippincott
I liked this book. It is full of content and it is well-written. It seems to be an updated version of a smiliarly titled book the author wrote back in 2004. See "The Accidental Entrepreneur" with ISBN: 0975977806. The 2008 version has a new chapter added - the 7th in the following list of chapter titles:
1. Introduction
2. What is an entrepreneur, anyway?
3. Ready, set, go!
4. Taking care of business
5. What do you bring to the party?
6. Market and sell your socks off
7. Get connected to the Web for profit
8. Making room for more business
The author is a self-employed business coach and mentor to wanta-be entrepreneurs. Basically she does for pay what I do for free as a SCORE volunteer. Most of what she discusses in her book is what I discuss with my SCORE clients. About the only thing we differ on is the extent to which a person should put effort into preparing a business plan. The author suggests that the entrepreneur should not go overboard on preparing a plan. Whereas I believe great time and effort should be put into dreaming, consolidating, researching, writing, proofing, and editing the 25-35 page written business plan for a startup. Maybe we differ because the author seems to separate a business plan from a marketing plan? And she seems to emphasize in her book how important a marketing plan is to a small business. In fact, she devotes all of Chapter 6 to it. And now that she has added Chapter 7, she has TWO chapters devoted to small business marketing. I, on the other hand, consider marketing plans to be a subset of a business plan.
The book gets its name from the fact that the author at one point in her life sought career counseling and almost overnight she became an "accidental entrepreneur" by starting her own business coach and mentor firm. In this book we are told what many wanta-be entrepreneurs need to hear about the realities of starting a small business. By reading this book the wanta-be entrepreneur will be able to avoid making mistakes in starting their venture, and do many things correctly.
I would have liked the book better if the "Target Your Market" section at page 58 had been a little more developed. I found the coverage to be kind of weak frankly. I particularly liked the coverage of "Which business structure is best for you" at page 40. And my favorite parts or chapters of the book were 6 and 7 regarding marketing and self-promotion. I also enjoyed reading the section on "Minding your Ps and Qs" which stressed the importance of planning. Poor planning is one of the most common causes of business failure. And without good planning it is difficult to be persistent in a meaningful way. So mind your Ps and Qs. 5 stars!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
By Daniel B. Beaulieu
I really like this book and as an entrepreneur cannot stress enough how helpful this book would have been to me when I started my business many years ago
This book is for those of us who woke up one morning and found ourselves owning our own business. Funny as it sounds isn't that what happens? I know that many of you in the rep business for example were sales people with real jobs for many years and then for a number of reasons: company cut backs, a principal who offered to set us up in business if we would agree to represent him or we went to work for a large rep firm and ended up either running it or splitting off to start our own firm. Others of us got an idea that we were passionate enough about to go out on that limb and risk everything to "follow the dream" Whatever the reason we became entrepreneurs...accidentally. So here we are, what do we do now?
We pick up and read Susan Urquhart- Brown's book The Accidental Entrepreneur that's what we do if were smart. This book is filled with as she says 50 things I wish someone had told me about starting a business. Fifty very valuable things I might add. Here are some examples:
* Eight questions to ask before you start a business. This is an excellent chapter on defining yourself, your business and your goals.
* Avoid seven common pitfalls in business. Basically this is:
o Know what you sell before you sell it
o Know what it will take to succeed
o How to use connections and so on.
As well as a number of other chapters presenting a real meat and potatoes approach to starting and running your own business.
What I enjoy are the examples the author uses to make her point and demonstrate how others have succeeded using her experience and direction. These include the story of Mary Foley and Cheryl Thompson who started [...] (great name!) an online club for business women who want to be "outrageously in charge" of their lives.
And David Riklan the owner of Self-Improvement online Inc. talks about his " Crossroads in business" which is the books term for the time when he knew he was ready to leave the safety of his corporate job and strike out on his own. By the way this was after five years of working evenings and weekends to start his business.
This book is just filled with stories about people just like you and me who struck out on their own and started their own business.
Reading The Accidental Entrepreneur provides us with not only great examples and guidelines of how to be a successful entrepreneur but it also provides something even more valuable. It provides through us with passion and inspiration to strike out and succeed in our own businesses. I like that. I like that a lot.
This is the best $[...] you'll ever spend on your business. Hit the business section and pick it up right now.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
By Patrick Galvin
As an entrepreneur for the past decade, I find that I have to do so many different things to keep my business thriving. At times, it can be quite overwhelming to know what to do next. The Accidental Entrepreneur is an excellent guide for navigating the many decisions that I need to make.
This book is also particularly useful for prospective entrepreneurs who are trying to decide what business opportunities to pursue as well as how to turn entrepreneurial dreams into a reality without wasting time and money. Author Susan Urquhart-Brown has a clear writing style that flows nicely. She mixes sensible advice and real-world examples quite adroitly.
The Accidental Entrepreneur is definitely a keeper for my business library!
http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/0814401678
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