How to Start a Business in Colorado – Entrepreneur Press, 2007 and How to Start a Home-based Event Planning Business
by Jill Moran, Globe Pequot Press, 2007.
There are many resources available if you are in business or thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. Two titles on a general resource and an industry specific resource are reviewed here.
How to Start a Business in Colorado is a step-by-step guide to everything you need to know to start a business in Colorado. Chapters cover current state and federal startup information, statistics, business plans, financial considerations and management, sales and marketing information, office procedures, contracts, legislation, business organization, tax strategies, company policy and licensing information. This book includes forms and worksheets to help you get started on the right track. Chapter twelve includes state, federal and private sources for help with all of your business start up questions. A CD-ROM with 199 essential business forms and worksheets is included in this book.
How to Start a Home-based Event Planning Business is one example of the many titles available to start a specific type of business. Whether you have a wide range of experience in this industry or not these types of books will make sure you cover all of the potential opportunities and challenges. This book will help you identify the necessary skills, the industry outlook, and the challenges of a home office or new business. It also provides help in writing a business plan and setting fees for services. Resources for additional help are also provided. There are many industry specific books to help you start all kinds of businesses both home-based and office based.
Whether you are starting a new business or trying to grow one you currently have you can gain a lot of knowledge and get some new ideas from both of these books.
by Stephen Covey, Franklin Covey, 2007. (Media Player – Playaway)
According to Stephen Covey the phrase “Time Management” is an oxymoron. The phrase should be self management, not time management. Stephen Covey explores the fallacies of time management which are:
1. people who believe that they can find more time to get things accomplished
2. you can bank or save time to be used at a later date
3. people who believe that they can manage time.
You can’t manage time, it marches on when we’re not paying attention and is lost forever. There is always more to do than we have time to do.
So how do we conquer the time we have. Using the techniques taught in this book we can learn to become better self managers. There are four quadrants that make up the designations for every task we do.
This time matrix is
1. necessity quadrant
2. deception quadrant
3. productivity and balance quadrant
4. waste and excess quadrant.
These are defined as:
1. Urgent and important
2. Urgent, not important
3. important, not urgent
4. not urgent and not important.
We need to spend some time placing our tasks in these quadrants and then coming up with ways to drop them or do them more effectively. By doing this we will feel like we can manage time.
Stephen Covey teaches us to use the productivity pyramid to accomplish more of what we want to accomplish. This pyramid includes values, goal setting and daily and weekly planning. The “core four” of the daily and weekly planning includes tasks, notes, appointments and contacts. By learning to direct these four items we will be better able to see where we spend our time and figure out ways to get tasks accomplished without necessarily doing them ourselves. This will allow us more “time” to accomplish the tasks that are most important and valuable to us.
by Jeffrey Fox, Hyperion, 2007.
Jeffrey Fox collected fifty-five lessons from people all over industry. Many were lessons learned first at the dinner table and reinforced throughout life. These lessons are collected from many of the leaders at the top of the business world. Learning what helped create these leaders and how they apply these lessons can help you to grow and gain access to the top limits in your chosen career. He states the lesson and then backs it up with a story showing how it manifested itself in the sharer’s world.
The lessons cover everything from “never overserve yourself” to “buzzsaw the buzzwords” to “act like you own the place.” People quoted include Leslie Blodgett, CEO and President of Bare Escentuals to Jacques Pepin, chef, author and television personality to Jim Donald, President and CEO of Starbucks Corporation.
Buzzsaw the Buzzwords reminds us that not everyone we communicate with knows the industry vocabulary that we are using and we need to watch others when we talk so we know whether what we are trying to get across is being understood. Using buzzwords can be seen as being superficial or looking for shortcuts to get done with the communication. Make sure your customer or employee understands what you are trying to say. Ditch the jargon and clearly communicate.
You will recognize some of the lessons and some will be completely new to you or have a different take on a familiar lesson.
by Jose Cancela, Rayo, 2007.
Jose Cancela is one of the most well respected business experts in the Spanish-speaking world and in this book he addresses the best ways to approach the Hispanic market to grow your business. The Hispanic market now encompasses nearly $1 trillion and covers 43 million Latino consumers. If you choose to advertise strictly in English you will probably hit of a few of these consumers, but if you choose to talk to them in Spanish you will open a whole new market for yourself. Many non-Spanish speakers think that they need to speak the various dialects of Spanish spoken by the many different countries that are represented in the Latino market, but Cancela has discovered that you can use “Walter Cronkite Spanish”. This is a common language between many different Spanish speakers.
To appeal to the Hispanic market you want to focus on family, education and Religion. These three components are very important to the Hispanic market.
There are seven fundamentals that you need to be aware of to be successful in this market:
1. We all use the same dictionary
2. We’re everywhere
3. We love the U.S.A.
4. We vote
5. We have strong family ties
6. We want to be courted in the language we make love in
7. We have real buying power.
Understanding this market will allow you to make the right decisions when you try to develop a marketing campaign aimed at the Hispanic market.
Cancela shares many studies and statistics with us to show the wide varied market that is just waiting to be tapped by the savvy businessperson. Ignoring this every growing market could cause you to be less successful than you have the potential to be.
by Barry Moltz, Recorded Books, 2007.
Entrepreneur and angel investor Barry Moltz covers what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Some people choose to become business owners and are driven to make a business succeed. Others fall into it and don’t really have the commitment or knowledge to make it happen. Using humor as well as stories from his past businesses, Barry illustrates why you need to be a little crazy to make it as an entrepreneur.
He covers all aspects of a business and shows why you need to rely on partners or experts in specific areas to allow your business to achieve all of your goals. Sometimes knowing when to abandon ship is the best outcome you can have.
Although there are no checklists to use Barry covers the basics of what is necessary for someone to succeed as a business owner. He addresses many myths that exist about having your own business and gives realistic guidelines to help you decide if this is what you really want to do. He also shows why passion for the business and having people capital is so important. Once the passion goes it is hard to maintain the momentum necessary to keep a business thriving. If you are not someone who can go from the excitement of a start up company to the more mundane aspects of running a business daily the advice on determining when to step back or leave entirely with be extremely helpful. Listening to this Audio CD will help you determine if you want to take the plunge and become an entrepreneur.
by Denise Lynch, Recorded Books, 2007. Book on CD
This audio is not one you can listen to in your car. Denise uses the first CD to explore the idea of the techniques she uses in later CDs to show you how to achieve meditation levels that will help your focus and address any issue you have decided you want to address during this session. The accompanying music and sounds helps to facilitate a feeling of well being and relaxation and gets you to a state where you can access parts of your sub-conscious that can help you to see issues from a new viewpoint.
Denise helps you to identify and release many negative aspects of things happening in your life and helps you to see ways to empower yourself and create the outcomes you are looking for. Many times we have negative associations with something we are trying to do that are so strong that we end up sabotaging ourselves in accomplishing the task. She teaches techniques to gain optimism and confidence in all aspects of your life. By allowing you new ways to consider all of your options you will learn how to embrace what you really want in life.
A quote from the book is “If your mind has been powerful enough to get you results that you don’t want, it is powerful enough to get you the results that you do want.” — Denise Lynch
