The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Guide to Having it All: Seven Strategies For Living A Balanced Life
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by:
ISBN:
0-7414-4365-1
©2007
Price:
$15.95
Book Size:
5.5'' x 8.5''
, 254 pages
Category/Subject:
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Entrepreneurship
H. Les Brown presents seven essential, practical strategies that entrepreneurs can use to change the way they approach the challenges of an over-committed life.
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Abstract:
The Frazzled Entrepreneur’s Guide to Having It All goes beyond a self-help manual for small business men and women. The book is a guide to help busy professionals think strategically and to create a successful, balanced life. H. Les Brown presents seven essential, practical strategies that entrepreneurs can use to change the way they approach the challenges of an over-committed life. Readers will find here more than solutions: they’ll discover a new way of looking at the world around them.
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Customer Reviews
The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Guide
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11/26/2007
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Reviewer:
Thomas Hoyer
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(corrected) Most of us don’t consult an owner’s manual until we encounter a problem we cannot solve; until we are at our wit’s end. Most of us have computers but few of us have any idea, beyond the basics, of what they can do for us. That information is buried in those thick “how to” books. The makers realize this and give us “quick start” pamphlets so we’ll at least learn enough to keep us from returning them to the store. This is how we live, but we don’t pretend to think it’s an intelligent way to live. We wish there was an easy way to do it right.
There’s good news if you’re an entrepreneur. Les Brown has written an owner’s manual that you will be able to read and that will absolutely help you make your life and your business work better.
Les asks the obvious question: “Do you have enough time to do what’s important to you?” For most people, the answer is “no,” and most of them cannot fix the problem because, however stressed, they feel secure and stable in their environment and they fear change. But change is constant and in ways large and small it affects every person’s life and business. Learning to acknowledge change and adjust your life to deal with it is the basis for this book.
Einstein is quoted as having said: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we are at when we created them.” If things are not working well, it is likely that the problem has changed and that the method we have been following to solve it must be changed, too. This observation seems simple, but one of the hardest of things to do is to rise high enough above what you are doing to get a true perspective. To do so requires a conscious effort. How often have you tried to repair a device only to discover, after much fruitless work, that the electric cord snaking behind the sofa was unplugged? No matter how hard you work to fix the device, you will fail: you will fail until you discover the problem.
Much of this book’s power is in showing the reader in very clear terms what skills are essential to achieve success. In many cases it helps to distinguish means from ends. The first day of my marketing class, the professor pointed out to us that salesmanship was widely misunderstood as being able to sell “iceboxes to Eskimos.” To emphasize the process of finding a way to get a customer to buy something is to miss the point. Marketing is the process of discerning a real problem or unmet need; of inventing or producing a product or service to resolve it; and, of helping customers see they need it. The basis of any successful approach is the desire to add something useful to the world. It is this approach that has made Bill Gates the wealthiest person on the planet. It has also given him the insight and skill to establish and run his foundation.
The Frazzled Entrepreneur’s Guide to Having it All is very much a working person’s guide to developing the skills needed to operate a life that has a business in it. It is written in short, strong sentences. Its chapters are concise and each one ends with a summary and a set of questions designed to help you recap and then apply the principles within. If you are ready to read it, it cannot fail to give you insights that help you. The title refers to seven strategies; the book contains much more of value.
The first four chapters are a short and powerful guide to learning how to gain the perspective you need to see yourself and your business objectively so that you can make sense of your plans and motives. The next seven chapters lay out the seven strategies for thinking about the world that surrounds you and making the right decisions. Next come four chapters on project planning, risk, and resource management -- useful because the excitement of figuring out how to build a better mousetrap doesn’t relieve you of the need to do so in the physical world.
The Frazzled Entrepreneur’s Guide to Having it All is the best concise guide to analyzing personal and business problems and working through to the answers that this reviewer has found in forty years. Les Brown has managed to capture the key ideas and describe them in clear, simple language. He knows the secret. The average reader is not going to look at the instructions until things stop working right. When the reader does look, he or she expects to find the answer in short order. If you’re that person; if you need answers now; this is your book.
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