cover image Start Small Finish Big: 15 Key Lessons to Start and Run Your Own Successful Business

Start Small Finish Big: 15 Key Lessons to Start and Run Your Own Successful Business

Fred DeLuca. Warner Books, $25.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-446-52402-5

DeLuca was only 17 when he started what is now the Subway restaurant chain in 1965; he needed money to attend college and a friend offered to back him with $1,000 to start a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Conn. That beginning led DeLuca to an enormously successful career: in addition to being president of the chain, he runs MILE, a nonprofit organization that offers loans to entrepreneurs. According to DeLuca, there are 15 essential principles for anyone starting a small business, some of which, DeLuca confesses, he learned the hard way (he had never made a submarine sandwich before opening day of his first shop). Among these pillars: Believe in Your People; Never Run Out of Money; Keep the Faith; and Profit or Perish. DeLuca uses his own business experience as well as that of other successful entrepreneurs--e.g., the founders of Kinko's and Little Caesar's--in addition to those of less well-known business people. Written in a conversational style, the advice isn't especially original or creative. However, would-be millionaires who are sitting at their kitchen table wondering if they should take that big step and start a business will find the book both instructive and inspirational. Agent, Bob Diforio. (Aug.)