The Domino Guy

Posts Tagged ‘Summary’

Executive Summary

            The Sassy Ladies’ Toolkit for Start-up Businesses is a very relevant, useful tool for anyone interested in being her (or his) own boss.  The book takes the idea of starting a business and breaks it down into steps.  The authors use the metaphor of a journey to aid the entrepreneur in starting down the road. 

            The book starts off having the prospective business owner visualize a variety of things.  She should visualize herself performing the job she has chosen and where that will get her in her life.  It also encourages the use of positive thinking and has her change negative thoughts to positive affirmations.  In each chapter there is encouragement, bolstered by pertinent advice.

            Throughout the book and at the end of each chapter there are exercises to maintain focus to accomplish the task at hand.  The questions posed at the end of each chapter ask not only to state what was discussed, but how the business owner will apply the ideas put forth, to her particular endeavor.  The exercises require a good amount of thought and provide a practical means to accomplishing each individual step.  Approached properly, performing these exercises would seem to make the business start-up process almost fool-proof. 

            Not only do the authors offer advice, they have quotes of other successful women in business throughout the entire book.  At many points the authors give their own personal opinions on a topic, many times differing from one another greatly.  The other women business owners reinforce the ideas the authors are conveying and expand on them to foster a deeper, more precise basis of the information offered to the reader.

Executive Summary

            What is success? According to Webster’s online site, it is a favorable or desirable outcome.  In most businesses, success is often measured by how big or large a company is, but Jamie Walters dare to think differently.  In her book, Big Vision, Small Business, she goes in detail about strategies for small businesses to stay small, but remain vital, healthy, and rewarding.  The objective of this book is to redefine success, no in terms of revenue and numbers, but in ways that affect and change our communities.

            In today’s culture, we tend to give success a materialistic value.  “The bigger the company’s payroll or revenues, the more it consumes, then the more successful it – and its leaders must be.”  Many of our small business make contributions and positive changes to our neighborhoods, cities, and even our country.  According to Walters, some of the smallest businesses offer opportunities through ideas, lifestyles, innovations, and different practices, many things large corporations cannot or even will not.  She’s not necessarily saying that one, small or large, is better than the other, but there are different strokes for different folks and for her small is better. She believes big vision small businesses have four “keys” to being successful.

The first key is about engaging in inspired visioning and planning.  This key outlines the twelve priorities of big vision, small business.  It also answers questions like “How do you, as a business owner, want others to experience your enterprise?” and “How does your business affect your community?”

Executive Summary

Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through a Better Business Modelwas written by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. John and Randy met in California in the late 2006, when John was spending several weeks in California researching business models. Randy believed starting and growing a successful entrepreneurial company is a process that can be learned, and he learned some things he was eager to share. John Mullins is an associate professor and holds the David and Elaine Potter Foundation Term Chair in Entrepreneurship at London Business School. He has also published three books and more than forty articles. His researches won national and international awards. Randy Komisar is the author of the bestselling book The Monk and the Riddle, about the heart and soul of entrepreneurship. Getting to Plan B is the product of the experience and the knowledge of John and Randy since 2006.

In this book, John and Randy discuss how and why plan A probably won’t work. The book stated that; “the research on new products success and failure indicates that it takes fifty-eight new products ideas to deliver a single successful new product”. Breaking through to get from plan A to plan B is about discovering or developing a business model that really works and not by duplicating the models already in existence. Business model is the pattern of economic activity, cash flowing into and out of your business for various purposes and timing. The book gives many different important business terms and their definitions, which help identify the right way to build a successful business plan. The authors discussed that there is a process that can lead to the discovery of a new and more attractive customer offering, and a potentially attractive plan B. This process can be followed systematically by outlining its four key building blocks:

Executive Summary

Paul Hawken wrote the book “Growing a Business.” He was able to learn first-hand about the do’s and don’ts of having his own business. He was pushed into his first business with little interest in business. Hawken was hindered with asthma at six weeks old. He needed a special diet and found it hard to find unless he was willing to spend several hours shopping or spending money on high-priced foods. Therefore, he opened the first natural foods store in Boston.

Hawken mentions in the book that thirty seven percent of all employed men and nearly half of the working women want or intend to start a business. The future of American business is standing at the threshold, not sitting in the boardrooms. “Growing a Business” is a book about growing business and the term “growing” implies about paying attention to the world around us, learning from others, and changing ourselves.

Hawken believes that American businesses employ our people, maintain and raise the standard of living, and give us the technical and practical means to solve our problems. Being a good human being is good business. The self-owned and -operated business is the freest life in the world. Being in business is not about making money but a way to become who we are.

When deciding to open a business, one must begin at the beginning. They must be able to understand what a business plan is and be willing to give it all with the whole body, mind, and soul. One must know all the fundamental details in order to give them away later.