Customer Reviews

The Small Business Millionaire

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yesterday was a long day. Up at 4:30AM for a flight down to LA. A day of meetings then back on a plane to get home by 10:30PM. Too wired to sleep and nothing on TV but people talking about Michael Vick. Time to grab a book.

I figured that I would read a couple of chapters then off to bed. A couple of hours later and the book was finished. It is not a surprise that it only took a couple of hours, the book is barely over 120 pages. The surprise is I finished it before going to bed. I was that tired and it was that good.

This is an easy book to read, and it is a good story, but at 120 pages, I do not think it will teach you how to run a business. It does make you think about the business side of business.

There are two really good things in this book, you have to love business nearly as much as you love the business you are in and don't waste money on advertising.

The author's depiction of advertising sales people is classic. "Of course this Ad will help your business, you just have to keep advertising until people recognize your name." Right, but do you guarantee this will bring in customers? "We can't do that, of course. How do we know why someone came in? But, just keep running the ad and I'm sure it will work." I have been there often.

The danger after reading it is that you may conclude that you should never advertise. Not true. Advertising may or may not be great for your business. Maybe the kind of advertising you are doing is not right.

I ran a business where we were spending $15,000 a month on ads. How did we know what ads worked? We asked. We kept track of which ads worked and which didn't. We changed what the ads said. We changed where they ran. We changed when they ran. And, we asked customers how they found us and noted how much they spent. All of this data helped show that the $5000 we were spending a month in yellow page ads was wasting lots of money and the $3000 a month we spent in Val Pak coupons was bringing in 50% of our business. The other 50% came from repeat, word of mouth, and the rest of the $15000 we spent on other types of ads.

Because we asked, we started running much smaller ads in Yellow Pages and moving that money to send out more Val Pak ads. Sales increased. We then set aside some of the budget to experiment with. We used it to try all kinds of things. Those that worked earned the right to continue, those that didn't, well let's just say Edison had a lot of failures too.

There are many good books on advertising out there, Much thicker than this wonderful novel. I like Dan Kennedy's stuff for how to test and write copy. The guerrilla marketing series is also very good.

So why 5 stars? Because this book does a great job at what it does. It is not trying to be a complete business book. It does a great job in showing you that there is a difference between having a hobby that you are good at and turning it into a business. The difference is you have to spend as much or more time doing the business stuff, as you spend on the fun stuff. And if you do not excel at the business side, there will be a lot of pain.

Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford have joined forces to combine a unique blend of entertainment, suspense, drama, and innovative insight in this moving business novel. It is the story of rebounding from failure and disappointment to success and fulfillment using basic business tactics.

The story is based on Frank, a gifted cook, and his daughter Jennifer, a business major at City College. Frank's family restaurant is on the brink of bankruptcy. Frank is offered thought provoking business coaching from a young customer, Jonathan Berkley.

Jonathan subtly refutes basic misconceptions Frank has adopted on finance, advertising, marketing, and employment practices to replace them with principles of commitment in building a staff, choosing a customer base, a new marketing strategy, and providing a quality product and service for success in building the business of his dreams.

The authors have drawn from their experience in industry and consulting to instill good business practices to motivate, inspire, and encourage the reader to succeed.

I found the book heartwarming and touching on the personal side and practical and enlightening on business principles.

I highly recommend this book to all business owners, whether at the bottom on the brink of failure, or at the pinnacle of success. This book is a reminder of the importance of finding a work that brings joy and fulfillment in the process of attaining goals and dreams.

Reviewed by Stephanie Rollins for Reader Views (01/07)

"The Small Business Millionaire" is about a mysterious patron of a failing restaurant who aids the owners in restoring their business. The cook/owner of the restaurant, Frank, just wants to cook. He really does not want to run the business. His daughter Jennifer was just a college student who worked in the restaurant. She then, inspired by the annoyingly mysterious coach, Jonathan, quits college and starts managing the restaurant. She sees it as means to saving the restaurant and increasing her practical business knowledge. This brazen move worries her father. Is Jennifer making a foolish decision?

There are only 121 pages in "The Small Business Millionaire." I thought it would be concise and to the point. This is not the case.

When I began to read "The Small Business Millionaire," I was surprised to see that it was a novel, not a textbook-like guide to getting rich quickly. I read through the first half of the book, hoping that the degrading preaching would end, and the exciting novel would begin. No such luck.

I felt hostage in one of those get-rich-quick seminars. It was as if the doors were locked or the television could not be turned off. The coach in the book would not answer a question in a straight-forward manner. Everything had to be in riddle form.

I am sure that there were many great lessons to learn from "The Small Business Millionaire," but I could not get past the fact that the book was written for the lowest common denominator. Why insult your readers by dumbing down the material?

Regardless of how poorly written, "The Small Business Millionaire," Chandler and Beckford are superb coaches. To learn from Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford, skip reading "The Small Business Millionaire." Read "9 Lies that are Holding Your Business Back." You will learn so much more. I also recommend visiting their website.

Book received free of charge.

I stumbled across Steve Chandler's writings as I was meandering one day through the local bookstore. I was frustrated and disillusioned by my small business and wondering if I should continue it. I accidentally (if you believe in accidents) found his book, "9 Lies That are Holding Your Business Back...", co-authored by Sam Beckford. The first chapter deeply offended me; so I knew that I needed to buy it. These guys knew way more than I did about business and I wanted to learn every bit.

This discovery led me to other Steve Chandler treasures and I promptly purchased this book, The Small Business Millionaire. First of all, we meet our hero, Jonathan. I was shocked to discover his obsession with the hit show Magnum P.I., because I currently am watching the entire series via DVD with my husband.

Jonathan's character obviously has a 'wealth mentality' and he assists his friends, Jennifer and her father Frank in their restaurant business. Anyone who has ever owned a business will see their thoughts mirrored in Frank's comments throughout the book. Anyone who hasn't lost hope in their business will eat up every word uttered by Jonathan. Jonathan obviously has a good heart with an excellent business mind; the challenge for us is not only to listen, but to be brave enough to follow his advice.

My small business has improved dramatically in the short timespan that I have read this book. I'd like to see where I am in a year from now, as I apply these techniques to my everyday life. This book is worth every penny, along with "9 Lies" and "Reinventing Yourself". Thanks Steve:)

Annie Bathgate

This book is absolutely amazing. An easy to read novel loaded with PROVEN business principles rather than mere theory written by someone who has done it, AND you don't need an MBA to understand it. This book is what true mentorship is, principles which have actually been used successfully by someone presented in an easily understood format, leaving the choice to you, the reader, to implement and succeed, or to not implement and stagnate.

As a business owner, I loved the way this book put all of Steve and Sam's advice into a real-world format. Too often, with a non-fiction/self-help book, it's easy to get lost and to wonder, "How do I apply this information to my business?" With a fiction/story format, it's sometimes (and in my case, often) easier to see oneself in the same situations as the protagonists. Through such a vicarious experience, I am able to generate more ideas that can be directly applied to my business. As an English Teacher, I've always felt that if knowledge, be it practical or purely academic, were written in story format, students of any age would more readily comprehend. This book does just that. And on top of all that, it's a fun, quick read! As such, I highly recommend this book!

I am a young, proud business owner with two growing business - a dance studio with my wife, and an advertising firm with four other colleagues. As an advertiser, I was taught in school that everything for every business was about branding. I have struggled with this for years in the field because our small business clients were not seeing any immediate benefit from the services that we provided. It was torturing me. How can all my teaching be a lie?

Then I read this book. It finally clicked. Branding has little to no business in small business. Its the large businesses that are spending money on and worried about branding. They've already grown their business, now they want to grow brand equity! But for small biz, we are in a fight for survival! We need to learn how to reach our ideal customers, hire the right help, develop the proper process, and all the other things this amazing story teaches us!

The irony is that because small biz didn't need my firms services, we were stuck in a rut. We weren't growing as fast as we wanted. They weren't our ideal customer! Duh! Now we have re-focused our marketing efforts to big biz and were're growing again!

Thanks Sam and Steve. You've done it again!

This book could be the most valuable 3 hours of your small business life. In an easy to follow narrative you follow the real life challenges and successes of a small business owner by watching a guru turn it around. Don't miss it.

This is as enjoyable as the E-myth. Its story equally enchanting. The writing flows descriptively and conversationally. I was quickly turning the pages to discover another business myth dispelled by a life-truth.
Whatever your business, you will find yourself either diving into it or walking away from it. This work is a good yardstick to use in sizing up your business AND your passion for it....because without the latter, you're in the wrong line of work!
A refreshing common sense approach, written by two winners in their fields!!!

Would I rather just have straightforward advice if I wanted to start a business like the restaurant depicted in this book? Not on your life. Small Business Millionaire, similar to Who Moved My Cheese, The One-Minute Manager, and a handful of others in the genre of motivational literature, taps into a great teaching tool: the story as object lesson, as proof of solvable problems, as hypothetical example. For that, I have high praise for this work.

Jack Cooper