Description
There are countless theories about what makes small businesses succeed. But for credible, practical advice you can actually act upon, you need to talk to the real experts, the entrepreneurs who turned winning ideas into the fastest-growing. most profitable companies in the United States. Authors Geoffrey Smith of Forbes and Paul Brown of Business Week have interviewed the founders of nearly 150 top growth companies, and in Sweat Equity they have distilled their collected wisdom on starting a business from scratch and making it a success. Write Brown and Smith:
"You'll find no buzzwords here. No broad-brush concepts. No thoughts from an ivory tower. What is here is the hard-won practical advice on what to do and what not to do from the men and women who have done it themselves."
Sweat Equity covers the four stages every emerging company goes through: coming up with the idea, marketing it, managing the business profitably, and that hardest feat-doing it all again. The authors, and the entrepreneurs they interviewed, take you step-by-step through the entire process. They show you how to develop and execute your idea, get financing, solve management problems, and finally how to find and keep your marketing niche. In short, how to handle all the challenges you can expect when you go from just thinking about starting your own company to actually trying to make it happen. In the dozens of case studies of successful enterprises, you'll hear what the entrepreneurs learned on their way up. Some samples:
โข Don't set out to be rich. Set yourself a commercial goal and accomplish it.
โข You don't need an original idea. Improving an old one is enough.
โข Ask yourself these critical questions: Will a lot of people be willing to pay for this product-enough cash for your company to grow on? What will you do if something goes wrong?
โข Companies get in trouble more in prosperous times than in recessions; they think the good times will last forever.
โข Expect to make 90 percent of your mistakes on people judgments.
โข Practice strategic thinking, not planning. Have a vision of the company's future that you are always updating.
