The Ugly Truth about Small Business

Full title:
The Ugly Truth about Small Business
(50 Never-Saw-It-Coming Things That Can
Go Wrong... and What You Can Do about it.)
Author: Ruth King

What I like about this book is that there are many lessons to learn from and many experiences to read about. This book is segregated into two parts – Part One and Two.

Part One is a collection of the featured entrepreneurs’ stories (none of which I am familiar with). At the end of each related experience, the highlights are listed down and there’s a handy ‘what I learned’ list – very akin to an executive summary in a listed format. In addition, there’s even a segment called ‘applying the lessons to your business’ – so that new entrepreneurs do not make the same mistakes as these old-hands did. The listings are correlated to the story prior to it, thus you can easily make your references. And since most, if not all, stories are short; you learn more at a faster rate and are able to do your referencing more rapidly.

Part Two of this book is extremely handy. It summarizes perfectly and clearly what entrepreneurs can do about the things that may go wrong. My favorite is Chapter 5 – Greatest Myths of Owning a Business. Those who want to venture into business should read this first and smell the coffee!

However, due to the abruptness of each experience related in Part One, I was unable to empathize much with each character/subject. I was not able to follow their passion, their flow of thoughts and often, not understand why they did certain things in a certain way. Perhaps, not enough background (family, support etc.) is given to each one, so much so that I could not comprehend their outlook in life/business at times. Furthermore, I was not thoroughly familiar with the industries featured, thus was not able to ‘appreciate the lessons’.

.: The TRUIzM
An excellent book for those who are into quick learning and have less patience in reading. I did had a hard time ‘getting into gear’ when I was reading Part One, for the reasons mentioned above.