A useful, informative startup primer blending nuts-and-bolts knowledge with cleareyed motivation.
Learn both the specifics of setting up a hair-sales business and the larger ethos of entrepreneurship in this self-help book.
Moran, co-host of the Hair Biz Radio podcast and founder of Private Label Extensions, a wholesaler of wigs, extensions, and cosmetics, offers advice to people planning to open a retail hair-sector business and anyone else with the startup bug. Much of the guide covers basic mechanics, including legally establishing your business, opening bank accounts, registering a domain name, and building a website. The author also discusses higher-level business issues, such as whether to carry inventory and deliver products yourself or farm those tasks out to drop-shipping companies, the niceties of crafting a name and logo—avoid eccentric spellings that potential customers won’t remember, he cautions—and which advertising platforms to use. (Facebook ads are “the only advertising worth paying for” when your business is starting out, he asserts.) And he reminds readers of the importance of consistent performance, especially in communicating and engaging with consumers. He recommends handwritten thank-you notes to customers and massive blogs with weekly 1,000-word posts to keep readers returning to your website. Moran goes on to explore some deeper mental and emotional aspects of starting a business. He suggests that budding entrepreneurs closely observe and analyze other businesses and constantly ask, “How did they do that?”—whether “that” is an eye-catching display or an attractive lighting scheme. Most of all, he contends, startup entrepreneurs need to set actionable goals, make detailed plans, have realistic expectations—anticipate endless hours of work before you even quit your day job—and learn to live with and overcome the inescapable fear of doing something new and risky. The author brings a wealth of hard-won experience to the subject from his own business successes and failures, and he deftly conveys it to readers. His prose is lucid, straightforward, and replete with aphoristic distillations of wisdom. (Those seeking feedback on their businesses’ performance from friends and family should “be careful of false validation, the tendency of people to shield those they love from uncomfortable truths.”) The result is a lively and judicious how-to that will give readers a superb introduction to the rigors of the marketplace.
A useful, informative startup primer blending nuts-and-bolts knowledge with cleareyed motivation.Pub Date: April 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-54-452008-7
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
