A business book recommendation from Dan Beaulieu

From The Business Section
The Accidental Entrepreneur
By: Susan Urquhart-Brown
Published by AMACOM, a division of American Management Association
Copyright 2008
Price: $17.95
179 pages with index

This book is for those of us who wake up one morning and find 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 once sales people with real jobs for many years. Then due to a variety of reasons--company cutbacks, for example--you find yourself ready for a new challenge. A number of scenarios can occur: A principle offers to set you up in business if you will agree to represent him or you go to work for a large rep firm and end up either running it or splitting off to start your 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 read Susan Urquhart-Brown's book The Accidental Entrepreneur if we're 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 of the advice offered in the book:

• Eight questions to ask before you start a business--an excellent chapter on defining yourself, your business and your goals.
• How to avoid seven common pitfalls in business:
  • Know what you sell before you sell it.
  • Know what it will take to succeed.
  • How to use connections.

Many of the book's chapters present a real "meat and potatoes" approach to starting and running your own business.

What I enjoy about the book 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 bodaciouswomensclub.com (great name!), an online club for business women who want to be "outrageously in charge" of their lives.

David Riklan the owner of Self-Improvement Online Inc. talks about his "Crossroads in Business" which is the book's 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--the passion and inspiration to strike out and succeed in our own businesses. I like that. I like that a lot.

This is the best $20.00 you'll ever spend on your business. Hit the business section and pick it up now.