Mr. Green's straight talk and financial insight enabled me to understand what my bank wanted to see and why. His methodical approach to determining why, how much, and from where to get financing lowered my borrowing requirements and helped save me money. The alternatives to bank financing suggested in the book continues to generate new ideas that I can use to leverage my capital.
In the end, I realized that all of the information and structure required by the bank ultimately will make my business stronger. Anyone needing to borrow more than $100,000 for their business would benefit from reading this book.
This book contains a lot of information that is presented in typical "banker talk". If you are not all that financially savvy then you may have to re-read certain sentences and passages to understand what the author is talking about. He fails to give adequate examples and case studies to help readers envision real-life circumstances that other people have gone through. Examples are probably unnecessary but I've always thrived on examples and case studies.
What is comes down to is this:
1.) This book contains a lot of useful information that is not written for the benefit of the reader. It is written much in the same way as college texts - professors writing to impress other professors, bankers writing to impress other bankers. This book could have been written with more clearly for the everyday man and woman. At least that is what I come away feeling. I've read better and more concisely written books that are more easily understood.
2.) Only barely touches up on obtaining money for start-ups. Start-ups are about only 5-10% of the book at most. There are better books out there for this. The SBA Loan Book is one.
Read this book if you already have the basics and terminology down. This book does have a lot of information and advise. My only beef with it is the long-winded and inconcisely writing style of the author.
2 stars for writing style and useful information (though the same information can be found in other better written books)