Beneficial counsel for business owners.
In this guide, a financial professional introduces a wealth framework for entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are often driven by creative ideation, sometimes at the expense of a long-term wealth-building strategy. Nasser, a certified financial planner as well as an entrepreneur, addresses this challenge head-on with a multicomponent system he calls WISE—“Wealth Integration System for Entrepreneurs.” Targeting established business owners with a net worth, including their companies, between $10 million and $100 million, the author describes his system eloquently and with a high degree of clarity. Part 1 of the book presents an insightful overview of the risks and rewards facing entrepreneurs, noting that “traditional planning methods are reactive in nature.” Nasser suggests his approach helps fill in the “key gaps” and is more comprehensive. Part 2 offers a richly detailed discussion of the six components of WISE: “Balance Sheet Strategy, Liquidity & Cash Flow, Lifestyle & Legacy, Exit Strategy, Asset Protection Strategy, and Lifetime Tax Strategy.” Devoting a chapter to each component, the author includes advice, illustrative examples, and a helpful list of questions each area addresses. One of the more sensitive elements for business owners is likely to be exit strategy. Here, Nasser demonstrates his keen understanding of how entrepreneurs might think about such issues as succession, business continuity, the sale of a company, and, potentially, a “second act.” Part 3 depicts how the parts of WISE integrate and can be applied in seven specific stages. It is a structured approach that may cause some readers to balk; according to the author, “Skipping a step, doing it in the wrong order, or shortcutting the process will often lead to” a negative or “less than optimal result.” Despite this stringent caution to diligently follow the process, the WISE method does appear to be a sensible, objective way to assess the broad value of business ownership. As the author wisely observes, “Business owners don’t just invest in a business because of return on investment. They invest in a business because it’s a passion, a calling and, in many cases, a way of life.” Entrepreneurs looking for wisdom and guidance will find it here.
Beneficial counsel for business owners.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0146-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Wise Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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