Not Just a Living: The Complete Guide to Creating a Business That Gives You a Life
Author: Mark Henricks
List Price: $25.00
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ISBN: 0738206652
Publisher: Perseus Publishing (15 August, 2002)
Sales Rank: 74,604
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
Emotion over facts
Mr. Henricks wrote a book with a different perspective on starting a business; Instead of focusing on the manual hard work of starting a business, he focused on the emotional happiness that starting a business can bring. This happiness comes from being your own boss and being able to do more of the things that make you happy. I found the first couple of chapters interesting although Mr. Henricks repeated the same benefits and stories of individuals that made their lives better, which in turn made the book repeat itself.
The last third of the book, Mr. Henricks started to focus on the financial topics. He started to analyze balance sheets and answer questions like "what is revenue?", I then found that this book lost its goal and audience; The goal being emotionally focused on your own business would help you succeed. The audience seemed, at first, to be for individuals who have gone through the initial phases of starting a business and needed a reminder why they started. The financial analysis of a business lost that objective and made this book into a beginner guide to business with a fluff beginning.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Revealing and Instructive Guide
"Being a lifestyle entrepreneur is not so much about being in business as it is being you," writes journalist Mark Henricks in this lovely new book. His guide for budding entrepreneurs straddles a fundamental challenge for books for this audience. How do you address the dynamic personal element of this process while answering the myriad and often generic questions that face all entrepreneurs? Henricks recognizes that starting a business engenders two simultaneous learning processes. Individuals must develop literacy with the business process itself, while developing a personal understanding of what you care about, what you're good at, and so forth. And success stems from mastery in both areas. Henricks, a veteran journalist in this field, addresses this dual learning curve by grounding much of Not Just A Living in his own experience. He writes about the choices he has faced in going solo, becoming a successful owner of his writing in the market. His book does an excellent job of sharing a wealth of instructive information for budding lifestyle entrepreneurs. He tells great stories. He provides spot-on information on everything from using technology to mastering your balance sheet. For folks early in the process of starting up a biz, I recommend it highly.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Living it Up!
Seven years ago today (Oct. 27, 1995), a high school friend of mine and I founded Healthy Options, the first natural products store in Manila. I have a marketing degree and had spent 15 years working for other people both in the Philippines and the United Kingdom. Healthy Options was my baby and my first plunge into going on my own. Seven years later, we have grown into 10 stores with almost 100 full time employees and Healthy Options has become the leader in the natural products industry in the Philippines. As we celebrate our anniversary this month, I find Mark Henricks' book simply priceless and serendipitous. It's a timely reminder for me as to why we put up Healthy Options all those years ago. As a business grows and expands fast, it's very easy to get carried away and start thinking "corporate". At the beginning of this year, I started having mixed feelings and a bit lost as I kept asking myself, seven good healthy years, now what do I do? I'm therefore so thankful to have found the book as it reminded me why I went into business in the first place and it has re-focused my priorities. Thanks Mark. I find the Seven Myths of Small Business Ownership invaluable. And I fully agree that growth, while very important, shouldn't be the ultimate goal of an entrepreneur.
"Not Just A Living" is also a great benchmark for us. We did almost everything Mark Henrick said in the book (eventually) and got many things right (but not always the first time). I particularly feel vindicated about giving franchise (which I strongly feel against) when one of the entreprenuers related her sad experience about the uncontrollable franchisees she had which resulted in her going out of business.
All in all, it's an insightful and enjoyable read. Now I wish Mark Henricks would consider giving lectures about Lifestyle Entrepreneurship to spread the "gospel" even wider.
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Book Index