Customer Reviews

The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide: Seize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams!

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are a LOT of guides to starting your own business out there. In the past ten years, I've read most of them. And I have yet to start my own business, unless you consider blogging a business. Maybe non-profit?

Most of the guides I've read end up sounding like a pep rally for self employment. They talk up the positives and downplay the negatives. And I think that's the benefit of this book -- the negatives are shown. But the negatives aren't presented as problems -- they're presented as obstacles that can easily be surmounted with the proper amount of forethought and planning.

Stephanie Chandler writes as someone who has experience -- she's started her own business after what most would call a successful career in Silicon Valley. She did her research when she went out on her own (which is what most budding entrepreneurs fail to do). She found out why businesses fail, and what can be done to prevent that failure. She talks about overcoming the fear of starting a business from scratch. She speaks positively of franchising as an option for entrepreneurs (though it's not THE option).


Another strength of this book is the inclusion of "Entrepreneur Profiles" in each chapter. These profiles show what successful small business owners went through in getting their business going, and what problems they had to confront. Knowing that someone else has traveled the path already, and faced many of the same obstacles, can help to motivate potential entrepreneurs to take the final step.

58% of all Americans have at least considered starting their own business. If more of them had read this book, and adopted Chandler's policies (especially in researching available opportunities), more of them would be successful small business owners.

This was exactly the book I needed to help me start my pet sitting business. It gives very practical advice that helped me decide that starting the business was something I was ready for as well as some great advice for getting it off the ground. The books is easy to read and written so that even someone without a lot of business experience can understand it - I found myself not wanting to stop reading! The section on marketing was especially helpful and opened my eyes to consider marketing areas/tools that I wasnt even aware of. I also enjoyed the profiles at the end of each chapter. They made me feel that if that person could do it so could I. I highly recommend this book if you are considering starting your own business.

My father recommended this book to me as he has been a small business owner for over 20 years. I set a pack of flags next to me when I first started reading this book to mark any information that I could actually apply, as I went through the process of opening my own law office. There are so many flags sticking out of this book, that it looks like a beautiful bird's tail! I learned things about small business loans, free resources such as how to sign up for trade publications, and much more. The entrepreneur profiles were inspiring, and helped me to stay grounded and enthusiastic through both the exciting times and the struggles of opening my own business.

The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide: Seize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams by successful entrepreneur Stephanie Chandler is an ideal guidebook for anyone wanting to start a business, and is inclusive of every step necessary on the way to bringing that business venture to success. Readers will learn how to reduce personal anxiety associates with starting up their own company, discover invaluable resources for starting up their own business, learn how to gain advice and assistance from experienced business owners, and ultimately realizing their personal aspirations of having and operating their own business. Highly recommended and informative reading, especially for the non-specialist general reader with entrepreneurial ambitions.

I am a CPA by background and I have owned my own service business for a number of years and I am now planning a new business startup. This book is very helpful both to the novice and to the experienced.

It provides a summary of all the key items that must be considered in the startup process, many of which I had forgotten through the years of running my former business. The entrepreneur profiles at the end of each chapter are very helpful in learning about the actual challenges and pitfalls that these people encountered during their business startup process.

I highly recommend this well researched book.

Very well written resource. This would make a great outline for a course in school. Each page kept my interest. You can tell the author enjoyed writing this book. From business plans to operations to financing to leasing and insurance to sales and marketing to licensing requirements, this book has it all. To make the book fun, she included Entrepreneur Profiles and let them share their success stories in a nut shell. It is very encouraging to read. Hope to see more from Stephanie Chandler.

this book is very informative & helpful as is her website

This book has lots of resources for anyone who is interested in starting their own business. Besides the checklists, there are profiles of successful entrepreneurs, Web links and more....

The book is good to start with.
Pros: has links to some resources, easy to read
Cons: very basic, doesn't give too much information

Just loved this book!! It was so easy to read. All the help given in this book i.e., websites, books, magazines, how to set up "my favorites" for organization of the intranet, etc. was just astounding to me. I'm one of those people who buys the books that have "for Dummies" in the title! One more thing,the profiles. They were so were so inspiring, as is the author herself!