cover image Fired Up!: From Corporate Kiss Off Entrepreneurial Kick Off Take Charge Your Destiny Our Do

Fired Up!: From Corporate Kiss Off Entrepreneurial Kick Off Take Charge Your Destiny Our Do

Michael Gill. Viking Books, $22.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-670-86548-2

Gill and Paterson formerly worked in advertising, and their background is apparent here in the persistent underlining of certain themes and the insistence that all entrepreneurs develop a brand identity and a ""USP""--a unique selling proposition. The book sets out to be a guide to what you can expect to experience from being self-employed. The results of many interviews with independent business people, ranging from owners of one-person services to proprietors of large manufacturing plants, are scattered anecdotally throughout the text. Chapters take readers through the psychological need for internal rather than external validation; how constant worry (distinguished from fretting) makes winners; the many handicaps of the home office; and how to choose those vital professionals--bankers, lawyers and accountants. Perhaps the most important chapter details how to write a mission statement and make a strategic road map defining your own business. At the end of the book is ""The Ultimate Test,"" which consists of 11 questions to determine whether you have the right stuff to become an entrepreneur. If, at the end, you can answer definitely either yes or no, this guide will have served its purpose for you. (Sept.)