The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance & Business: Wealth Creation Techniques for Growing a Business (Hardcover)

by Steven Rogers (Author) "In a recent survey of business owners, the functional area they cited in which they had the weakest skill was the are of financial management-accounting,..." (more)
Key Phrases: cash gap, postmoney valuation, purchase order financing, United States, New York, Clark Company (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

No-nonsense guidelines for growing a business from scratch

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Entrepreneurship remains the wave of the future, but as with anything in business, long-term success requires mastery of basic fundamentals. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance And Business balances quantitative with qualitative issues and provides a straightforward, practical overview of the business and financial knowledge required to become a successful entrepreneur.

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Professor Steven Rogers, a leader in the field and one of BusinessWeek's 10 best entrepreneur educators, goes beyond generic small-business issues to focus on highgrowth start-ups and innovators. Integrating hands-on aspects such as business valuation models and cash flow analysis with qualitative issues of marketing, management, and strategic planning, he provides:

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• Clear explanations and examples of the differences between entrepreneurial and corporate finance .
• Proven strategies for developing an effective business plan .
• Innovative techniques for structuring a deal and financing a new business .

From the Back Cover

Techniques for Working within the Rules of Starting a Business--and Making Those Rules Work for You

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As an entrepreneur, you love the high-wire balancing act of launching a business and then helping it come to life and flourish. Less exciting, however, are the nitty-gritty finance and business details necessary to keep that business from sinking.

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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance and Business provides you with simple and effective guidelines for minding the books. Written by Steven Rogers, a proven entrepreneur and Top 10 BusinessWeek entrepreneurship educator, this proactive and technique-filled guidebook focuses on the down-and-dirty fundamentals of starting and operating a business. It provides fascinating and firsthand coverage of important details including:

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• Business Plans--What they are, what they can do, how to prepare one .
• Financial Statements--How to develop them, how to analyze them .
• Money--Where and how to find it, techniques for maintaining positive cash flow .

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Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. But if you are--or plan on becoming--an entrepreneur, there are certain inescapable rules of finance and business that you must learn in order to succeed. Discover what those rules are and how to use them as a tool for long-term growth and success in The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance and Business.

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"The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business and Finance is a simple and practical approach to understanding entrepreneurial finance. As an entrepreneur, you need to know financial formulas and how to use them to spot problems or seize opportunities. This book aims to help you get there..."--From the Preface

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The amount of work involved in visualizing, launching, and growing a business is staggering. Yet all of that work can be undone if simple yet fundamental financial and business techniques are underappreciated or, worse yet, ignored.

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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business and Finance shows you how to lay the foundation for a strong, successful business. From crafting a meaningful business plan to taking the necessary steps to raise your business to the next level, it discusses:

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• The dual objectives of a business plan and how to ensure that both are fulfilled .
• Differences between debt and equity financing and how and why to use each .
• Real-world methods for structuring a deal to benefit both the financier and the entrepreneur .
• Valuation techniques for understanding what your business is truly worth .
• Essential resources for finding the detailed information you need .

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Working for yourself remains a demanding and difficult career path. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance and Business strives to make it easier by outlining the fundamental matters you must control from the beginning--or risk having them control you. Drawing on solid research, up-to-the-minute case studies, and his own experiences as the founder of numerous businesses, successful entrepreneur and Northwestern University professor Steven Rogers reveals what must be done, how to do it, and what to do when things go wrong.

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Just because you are making your own way as an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to go it alone. Let The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finance and Business show you everything you need to know to maintain control of the numbers end of your new enterprise--and prevent inevitable financial barriers from blocking your entrepreneurial dream before it has a chance to flourish.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (August 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071380817
• ISBN-13: 978-0071380812
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #384,817 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accessible, all-around guide to setting up a business, August 30, 2003

By	N. Tsafos (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Steven Rogers, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, has put together a comprehensive handbook for aspiring entrepreneurs. Written in plain language that does not assume prior knowledge of business or economics, this guide covers all the major topics that entrepreneurs face in setting up and managing a business: writing up a business plan, compiling and understanding financial statements, making a company profitable, valuing a company, and raising money.

On the one hand, Professor Rogers has written a reference book that assembles much of the information that people intuitively know. In that sense, the guide can be useful to people who want to make sure they are "not forgetting something." On the other hand, though, this guide tackles many issues that quite a few entrepreneurs look down upon: for example, accounting. Professor Rogers not only explains how entrepreneurs should handle the mundane aspects of business like accounting, but also elucidates why entrepreneurs should pay attention to those aspects at all. In doing so, he alerts entrepreneurs about the kind of problems they may face and recommends action to prevent them.

Professor Rogers has compiled anecdotes, business quotations, industry data, and mathematical formulae (which he explains in detail), to write an accessible guide for aspiring business owners. This balance, between serious and humorous, and fact and theory makes the book both fun to read and very useful -- a definite read for those daunted by the prospect of starting their own business.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Manish Ajmani, March 16, 2004

By	"manishajmani" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

A must for every Entrepreneur or anyone who inspires to be one. Easy to read with examples from real life situations. The book walks through all necessary steps for either starting or acquiring a business with all the help to avoid any pitfalls.

The book not only details on the financial side (wealth creation)of the entrepreneurship but also stresses on the social obligations of job creations.

It scores 11 out of 10.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncommon information for an entrepreneur to start and succeed, March 24, 2008

By	Gopi N. Sethumadhavan "GS" (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

My copy of the book is completely marked up with my notes of useful information. This is a simple entrepreneurship + finance book meant for anybody interested in buying, selling or running an entrepreneurial business. Rogers makes finance so simple that he presents only what is relevant and cuts of the rest. I have done a few graduate finance courses and do a lot of finance for work too, yet I found this book useful in bringing in practical issues that I have not seen in other finance books? I look it as a good entrepreneur's guide that tells you a lot of the little tricks of the trade.

What sets this book apart is Rogers background in entrepreneurship. Having successfully owned 3 companies his views on what are important really hits the bull's eye.

Awesome book, I recommend it to all aspiring entrepreneurs.