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Dare To Be Your Own Boss

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION, CREATE A NICHE

Clearly and cogently written, a thought-provoking book that provides useful guidance to entrepreneurial risk takers as well...

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

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This combination self-assessment and idea starter should spark the interest of anyone with entrepreneurial drive.

Debut author Sullivan, herself an entrepreneur and small-business trainer, enters a crowded category but sets her work apart with its good intentions. Rather than supply the how-to advice commonly found in most be-your-own-boss books, Sullivan explores the motivational aspects of pursuing the entrepreneurial dream while also providing a wealth of business ideas. In the book’s first section, Sullivan offers such entries as “10 traits for entrepreneurial success,” “six benefits and six drawbacks” of being your own boss, and “14 keys to ignite your enthusiasm and passion.” Part 2 digs into the details of where an entrepreneur’s passion may lie. Here, Sullivan walks the reader through “12 areas of opportunity,” including both general and specific conceptual ideas. For example, the first two chapters in this section make a useful distinction between focusing on selling to consumers versus selling to businesses, while another chapter addresses selling to governments. Other areas key in on current trends that suggest possible areas of business opportunity: e.g., food and family farms, pets and companion animals, assisting seniors and people with disabilities, and “promoting a sustainable future.” A chapter entitled “Serving Needs of the Global Population” puts forth the concept of “social entrepreneurship.” The book’s final section concerns the entrepreneur’s assessment of the viability of a chosen idea. Here, Sullivan lays out a process for idea evaluation, offers helpful advice about how to do market research to determine an idea’s value, and provides an alphabetical listing of “50 Steps to Starting Your Business.” She includes a helpful multipurpose spreadsheet that can be used to rate areas of interest and ends with an extensive resources section. Sullivan applies a refreshing amount of altruism to her choice of categories that should give would-be entrepreneurs a sense of purpose as they consider what direction to take.

Clearly and cogently written, a thought-provoking book that provides useful guidance to entrepreneurial risk takers as well as a treasure trove of potential business ideas.   

Pub Date: March 26, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-9907542-0-6

Page Count: 344

Publisher: Synergy Books, LLC

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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