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How I made it - 40 successful entrepreneurs reveal all
Rachel Bridge
Publisher: Kogan Page
ISBN: 0-7494-4311-1
Price: £14.99
Reviewer: Keith Lawson
This is a book for the bedside table to be read at bedtime so one can dream. This would be an excellent gift for the aspiring businessman or woman.
It is a life-affirming tome - one that reveals the truth of the saying: 'It's not how many times you fall down, but how many times you pick yourself up that matters'.
None of the entrepreneurs featured were bailed out of early problems by their parents, so their stories of convincing hard-nosed bankers and accountants to back their schemes should encourage the faint-hearted to persist.
The book is a collection of tales from the How I Made It section of the Sunday Times by its enterprise editor, Rachel Bridge, so the style is lightly journalistic - it's not a text book, or a map to success. But it does make it an easy and pleasurable read. If you give it to someone who is wondering about making the leap into running their own business, it may help them to make a decision.
Once you have read the book, practise your statistical analysis skills to calculate the average age of the entrepreneurs. I noticed that most of them were of my own generation (1950s), and began to feel like I had let the side down! But then again, some of them have only just become successful in recent times, so maybe... just maybe...
Keith Lawson is a training consultant in Dorset. He also provides business and management training in foreign countries through the British Executive Service Overseas.
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