Meticulously researched and crystal clear, a good investment for anyone in the business-buying business.
Gibson’s niche how-to guide makes the intricacies of acquiring an established company easy to understand and a little less daunting.
With 30 years of experience in business development and brokerage, Gibson has written a specialized book for prospective buyers who have a specific business in their sights. He discusses three reasons people buy businesses—the pursuits of autonomy, happiness and wealth—and gives plenty of advice for deciding when to buy based on business cycles, economic indicators and the buyer’s (and seller’s) motives. Primarily, though, he concentrates on the enigmatic minutia that might make the eyes of would-be entrepreneurs glaze over. Imagining a cabinet shop called Doozy Manufacturing Company (“Doozy”), Gibson provides helpful explanations of the role of business brokers, the lay definitions of “small business,” “fair market” and “ROI,” and how to decipher prospectuses and other financial statements. Gibson displays his knowledgeable, accessible style by illustrating how to determine the earnings capacity of a business—“What could Doozy earn in the future?” In discussing how to cautiously forecast Doozy’s annual and monthly expenses, he reminds entrepreneurs that “the owner gets paid last.” Mostly, Gibson serves as an excellent teacher, explaining that “not being had” means being able to understand “the elements of value” and “opinions of value,” particularly how both are calculated and interpreted. He provides case studies, a convenient glossary and a helpful appendix, complete with samples of promissory notes and a boilerplate for a purchase contract. For the nonfinancial aspects of determining the right business to buy, he asks potential buyers to consider such things as their complementary skills, desired work environment and location, which, even though these aspects may not be as critical as the financial characteristics, Gibson still advises that they “should be looked at in depth” before moving forward. Patience is key, he stresses; taking the time to study, negotiate and “perform more adequate due diligence” leads “to making a successful investment.”
Meticulously researched and crystal clear, a good investment for anyone in the business-buying business.Pub Date: July 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1426936197
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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