A “fractional CFO” offers useful snippets of financial advice to small business owners.
Homza, who works on a contract basis as a “fractional” (part-time) CFO for small businesses, debuts with a book that acts as a kind of armchair adviser. More an assemblage of bite-sized essays than logically organized chapters, the book is an easy but potentially enlightening read for the busy business owner. The author touches on a smattering of both financial and organizational topics and issues, including financial statements, financial plans, key indicators, receivables, payables, working with a banker, effective management teams, setting strategy, problem-solving, and more. Homza writes with a strong, authoritative voice in a no-nonsense style, dishing out counsel clearly borne of professional experience. “Get the entire organization focused on a few key numbers so that everyone has an appreciation for the results of the organization,” he says. When businesses are “languishing,” Homza observes, “I see that the problem with many is that they have no Push. No one is setting the tone or holding people within the organization accountable for goals and objectives.” The author draws a distinction between working in a business and on a business: “Too many small business owners find themselves working in the business. This means they are working on day-to-day operational issues,” he says. “Ask yourself: what you are doing today which will alter the course of your business over the next three to five years?” And as for those office plants, “one of the first things that I look for when I walk into an office is whether anyone waters the plants…what I am really looking for is whether anyone goes above and beyond to take care of little things that are usually not in anyone’s job description.” Some readers may think these pithy observations are tossed out casually and lack substance, but most small-business owners should be able to find ample wisdom in these pages.
A business how-to for some and a collection of helpful reminders for others; makes for an engaging light read.
Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9897069-0-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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