Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Book Review: Business Plan Secrets Revealed
The key to successfully starting any business is a good business plan. In his ebook, "Business Plan Secrets Revealed," Mike Elia walks you through the business plan process step-by-step: from gathering the evidence you'll use to build your plan to delivering your plan to qualified investors.
His book provides the basic information you need to write a business plan. But its real focus is revealing how to communicate your plan to investors and convince them that your business is their best investment choice.
When I first opened Business Plan Secrets Revealed, my heart sank. You see, I had promised Mike I would read his book completely before writing a review. And Business Plan Secrets Revealed is no ordinary ebook with one sentence paragraphs, large fonts and hefty margins. It's crammed full of information!
But as I began to read, I was pleasantly surprised. Mike's writing style is engaging and practical, and his explanations simplify difficult concepts. Throughout the book, I felt as though a friend was sitting with me on the back porch, matter-of-factly explaining exactly how to do something. It's the kind of simple practicality that you can achieve only when you fully understand a subject.
Mike's clear understanding of business planning concepts results from experience spanning more than 20 years. Mike helps business owners buy, sell and finance their businesses. He has overseen manufacturing and sales locations in more than nine countries. He is a CPA, holds a Masters in Business Administration, and has served as Chief Financial Officer of two publicly held companies.
Business Plan Secrets Revealed starts with tips for collecting and organizing the information you'll need. From the beginning, Mike concentrates on overcoming your biggest single challenge--bridging the investor confidence gap. In the chapter "Show Me the Numbers," Mike provides some of the clearest explanations of business financial statements that I've ever read If concepts like stockholders' equity or statements of cash flow make your eyes glaze over, then your salvation has arrived.
Later chapters of Business Plan Secrets Revealed really deliver on Mike's promise to help you communicate your business plan effectively. There are complete instructions on writing your business plan, including how to get your plan opened and read, and how to avoid nine common writing mistakes. He explains how choosing the right design can make your business plan easier to read. Mike wraps things up by telling you how to prepare for critical face-to-face time with investors, including developing a 60-second, to-the-point, verbal pitch for your business. Tips on finding investors and a resources section complete the book.
I must admit that several times as I was reading, I would ask myself, "Do I really need this much business plan?" This is not a fill-in-the-blanks-and-print-it-out business plan solution. But then I realized--if I'm serious about succeeding, then I do need to know as much as possible about my business up front. Before I've started spending money. Before I put myself on the line out in the market.
By the way, I did make it through the whole book. And I confirmed that Mike delivers what he promises on the title page: he teaches you how to quickly gather evidence, build a case for your business, and write a readable plan that attracts investors and makes your business the most appealing investment choice. Even if you already own other business planning resources, I highly recommend Business Plan Secrets Revealed.
His book provides the basic information you need to write a business plan. But its real focus is revealing how to communicate your plan to investors and convince them that your business is their best investment choice.
When I first opened Business Plan Secrets Revealed, my heart sank. You see, I had promised Mike I would read his book completely before writing a review. And Business Plan Secrets Revealed is no ordinary ebook with one sentence paragraphs, large fonts and hefty margins. It's crammed full of information!
But as I began to read, I was pleasantly surprised. Mike's writing style is engaging and practical, and his explanations simplify difficult concepts. Throughout the book, I felt as though a friend was sitting with me on the back porch, matter-of-factly explaining exactly how to do something. It's the kind of simple practicality that you can achieve only when you fully understand a subject.
Mike's clear understanding of business planning concepts results from experience spanning more than 20 years. Mike helps business owners buy, sell and finance their businesses. He has overseen manufacturing and sales locations in more than nine countries. He is a CPA, holds a Masters in Business Administration, and has served as Chief Financial Officer of two publicly held companies.
Business Plan Secrets Revealed starts with tips for collecting and organizing the information you'll need. From the beginning, Mike concentrates on overcoming your biggest single challenge--bridging the investor confidence gap. In the chapter "Show Me the Numbers," Mike provides some of the clearest explanations of business financial statements that I've ever read If concepts like stockholders' equity or statements of cash flow make your eyes glaze over, then your salvation has arrived.
Later chapters of Business Plan Secrets Revealed really deliver on Mike's promise to help you communicate your business plan effectively. There are complete instructions on writing your business plan, including how to get your plan opened and read, and how to avoid nine common writing mistakes. He explains how choosing the right design can make your business plan easier to read. Mike wraps things up by telling you how to prepare for critical face-to-face time with investors, including developing a 60-second, to-the-point, verbal pitch for your business. Tips on finding investors and a resources section complete the book.
I must admit that several times as I was reading, I would ask myself, "Do I really need this much business plan?" This is not a fill-in-the-blanks-and-print-it-out business plan solution. But then I realized--if I'm serious about succeeding, then I do need to know as much as possible about my business up front. Before I've started spending money. Before I put myself on the line out in the market.
By the way, I did make it through the whole book. And I confirmed that Mike delivers what he promises on the title page: he teaches you how to quickly gather evidence, build a case for your business, and write a readable plan that attracts investors and makes your business the most appealing investment choice. Even if you already own other business planning resources, I highly recommend Business Plan Secrets Revealed.
Book Review - Net Entrepreneurs Only
Everyone loves to read other peoples success stories. It provides us with evidence that amazing things do happen to normal people. By learning what they did to succeed we come one step closer to success ourselves. Such is the case with the ten stories told in Net Entrepreneurs Only – 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of their Success by Gregory K. Ericksen and Ernst & Young.
Ericksen interviewed ten of the most successful entrepreneurs at the turn of the century and presents their stories with a unique but effective use of lengthy quotes from the entrepreneurs. The quotes leave you with a feeling of having actually interviewed the entrepreneur yourself rather than reading a story about them. Each story is about 20 pages long but reads more like 10 pages because of the big print and free flowing pace.
The 10 entrepreneurs chronicled in the book are Jay S. Walker (priceline.com), Mike McNulty and Mike Hagan (VerticalNet), Christina Jones (pcOrder), William Porter and Christos Cotsakos (E*Trade), Gregory K. Jones (uBid), Russell Horowitz (Go2Net), Ken Pasterna (Knight/Trimark), William Schrader (PSINet), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), and Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner (broadcast.com).
Each entrepreneur has a unique story of how and why they saw the internet as a viable place to start a business, and each had a different way of getting there, but after reading all ten stories you can see some common threads between these extremely successful net entrepreneurs. Although this book was written at a time when internet business success was substantially easier (the book was published in 2000), many of the core competencies that these entrepreneurs possess can be applied in any era to any industry.
Each is extremely passionate about what they do to the point that they inspire others around them to have the same passion. Each is not afraid to take a risk, regardless of whether or not other people disagree with it. Along with that, each knows that failure is inevitable when taking risks and understands that future success depends on the ability to learn from failure and move on.
Another interesting thing that was mentioned in three of the ten stories is the fear of being blindsided by an opponent that they can’t see coming. They all talk about the proverbial kid in his basement or garage that comes up with the technology that puts them out of business. When talking about Mark Cuban, Todd Wagner said:
“I know Mark worries, among other things, about the proverbial 12-year-old in the garage [coming up with technological breakthroughs] and us being blindsided.”
This commonality is particularly interesting, and I suspect it comes from the fact that many of these entrepreneurs WERE THAT KID and they fear the second coming of themselves more than anything else. They probably fear that this “kid” will have the same passion and determination that they once had, and that, more than anything else scares them.
If I had read this book when it was written I would certainly have recommended it to any young entrepreneur. However, years later I recommend it EVEN MORE. I think that it’s a must read for anyone looking to go into business or currently in business.
The thing that you can do now that you couldn’t do when the book was written is find out what’s happened to these entrepreneurs and their companies in the time that has passed since the book’s publication. One of the biggest joys of reading this book was trying to guess whether or not these companies still existed and whether or not the same entrepreneur was still running them.
Knowing that there was the dot-com boom and subsequent crash around that time, I figured there was less than a 50/50 chance that these businesses were still around. I’m not going to ruin the individual surprises, but there was a fairly vast array of directions that these companies and entrepreneurs went after the dot-com crash.
Some of the entrepreneurs we’ve all heard of (Mark Cuban), and some of the companies we know still exist and are very successful (eBay), but many the average reader won’t be familiar with. Doing the research to find out where they are today adds an extra dimension to the book that a reader wouldn’t have experienced if they read it when it came out.
Net Entrepreneurs Only – 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of their Success by Gregory K. Ericksen and Ernst & Young is an extremely interesting for anyone who enjoys a good success story. However, it’s truly inspiring if you are that entrepreneur who strives come up with the next innovating breakthrough that puts one of these ten entrepreneurs out of business.
Ericksen interviewed ten of the most successful entrepreneurs at the turn of the century and presents their stories with a unique but effective use of lengthy quotes from the entrepreneurs. The quotes leave you with a feeling of having actually interviewed the entrepreneur yourself rather than reading a story about them. Each story is about 20 pages long but reads more like 10 pages because of the big print and free flowing pace.
The 10 entrepreneurs chronicled in the book are Jay S. Walker (priceline.com), Mike McNulty and Mike Hagan (VerticalNet), Christina Jones (pcOrder), William Porter and Christos Cotsakos (E*Trade), Gregory K. Jones (uBid), Russell Horowitz (Go2Net), Ken Pasterna (Knight/Trimark), William Schrader (PSINet), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), and Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner (broadcast.com).
Each entrepreneur has a unique story of how and why they saw the internet as a viable place to start a business, and each had a different way of getting there, but after reading all ten stories you can see some common threads between these extremely successful net entrepreneurs. Although this book was written at a time when internet business success was substantially easier (the book was published in 2000), many of the core competencies that these entrepreneurs possess can be applied in any era to any industry.
Each is extremely passionate about what they do to the point that they inspire others around them to have the same passion. Each is not afraid to take a risk, regardless of whether or not other people disagree with it. Along with that, each knows that failure is inevitable when taking risks and understands that future success depends on the ability to learn from failure and move on.
Another interesting thing that was mentioned in three of the ten stories is the fear of being blindsided by an opponent that they can’t see coming. They all talk about the proverbial kid in his basement or garage that comes up with the technology that puts them out of business. When talking about Mark Cuban, Todd Wagner said:
“I know Mark worries, among other things, about the proverbial 12-year-old in the garage [coming up with technological breakthroughs] and us being blindsided.”
This commonality is particularly interesting, and I suspect it comes from the fact that many of these entrepreneurs WERE THAT KID and they fear the second coming of themselves more than anything else. They probably fear that this “kid” will have the same passion and determination that they once had, and that, more than anything else scares them.
If I had read this book when it was written I would certainly have recommended it to any young entrepreneur. However, years later I recommend it EVEN MORE. I think that it’s a must read for anyone looking to go into business or currently in business.
The thing that you can do now that you couldn’t do when the book was written is find out what’s happened to these entrepreneurs and their companies in the time that has passed since the book’s publication. One of the biggest joys of reading this book was trying to guess whether or not these companies still existed and whether or not the same entrepreneur was still running them.
Knowing that there was the dot-com boom and subsequent crash around that time, I figured there was less than a 50/50 chance that these businesses were still around. I’m not going to ruin the individual surprises, but there was a fairly vast array of directions that these companies and entrepreneurs went after the dot-com crash.
Some of the entrepreneurs we’ve all heard of (Mark Cuban), and some of the companies we know still exist and are very successful (eBay), but many the average reader won’t be familiar with. Doing the research to find out where they are today adds an extra dimension to the book that a reader wouldn’t have experienced if they read it when it came out.
Net Entrepreneurs Only – 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of their Success by Gregory K. Ericksen and Ernst & Young is an extremely interesting for anyone who enjoys a good success story. However, it’s truly inspiring if you are that entrepreneur who strives come up with the next innovating breakthrough that puts one of these ten entrepreneurs out of business.
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