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Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit For Entrepreneurs (2010)

by Norm Brodsky(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1591843200 (ISBN13: 9781591843207)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Portfolio Trade

review 1: Excellent business advice that's applicable to almost all entrepreneurs. I wish I had read this book twenty years ago. I think the most eye-opening point of the book for me was the dangers of measuring business success by sales. As a life-long salesman and entrepreneur, sometimes it's hard to change hats and differentiate between being a business owner and a salesman. This book explored many facets of this dilemma that I had never considered. I recommend this read to anyone in business or thinking of starting a business.
review 2: This is the most practical and readable book for entrepreneurs I've read. And I've read a lot of them; my job is to consult to entrepreneurs.He walked through lessons and insights that he often learned the hard way. The way he writes ... moreis very easy to understand, but far from simplistic. He makes it clear why people would misunderstand an issue--he's not judgmental at all and explains the forces causing confusion. But then he shares thoughtful reasons why we should avoid that trap. Best of all gives specific tips on what to do instead.Topic by topic, this book marches from choosing an initial concept to finding capital to first hires to growing past the first few staff to shaping culture to creating a salesforce that is healthy and loyal to working with outside experts (like lawyers and accountants and consultants). Time and again, he offers wisdom, backed by insightful stories and flavored with transparency and humility.Lessons range from: expect that you are being over optimistic and get objective, outside review before you run with your first business plan; there's a life or death difference between sales and profitable sales (avoid the trap of selling unused excess at discount); and accountants are trained to be great historians, not great futurists (use them as they're intended to be used).I do have one STRONG disagreement with him. He has a section on why not to be real friends with your employees--to keep distance between you and them. His explanations (with supporting stories) say that it is much harder to make the hard choices (e.g. dealing with poor performance or not promoting unqualified people). I'd totally agree that it's harder to do that with friends. But I know from years of doing it myself that it's possible to be true friends and still make the right choices. In fact, I've fired people and remained friends more than once. It seems like in that section he violates one of his other principles in the book--don't create a systemwide policy to solve for a weakness in one person or area in the business. Grow their abilities instead of hampering the entire organization.That being said, anyone who is thinking about starting a business MUST read this book. less

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