Small Business Owner's Manual: Everything You Need to Know to Start up and Run Your Business

by Joe Kennedy

ISBN: 1564148130
Format: Paperback, 311pp
Pub. Date: June 2005
Publisher: Career Press, Incorporated

Paperback, June 2005
B&N Price: $19.99
Buy at Barnes & Noble.




FROM THE PUBLISHER
An Owner's Manual provides fast, practical and direct advice and that's what you get with this book! The Small Business Owner's Manual is useful for newly minted entrepreneurs as well as seasoned business owners and can be read from cover-to-cover or to quickly lookup information in the midst of a crisis. For example:

• Choose among 13 ways to get new financing and the 17 steps to building a winning loan package.
• Weigh the pros and cons among 8 legal structures, from corporations to LLCs.
• Write winning ads and analyze 16 advertising and marketing alternatives including the latest in Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
• Develop a powerful business plan in half the time.
• Learn to sell products and services by considering 10 possible sales and distribution channels.
• Discover the latest trends to quickly and inexpensively set up a web-site and e-store.
• Get taxes paid on time, collect from deadbeats, protect the business from litigation and get legal agreements with teeth by effectively finding and partnering with CPAs and attorneys. * Get a quick overview of the 14 top forms of business insurance including workers comp and medical. * Looking to lease? Exploit a comprehensive review of the top 18 critical factors used to evaluate locations and 24 of the most important clauses in lease agreements.
• Understand the legal side of hiring, firing, and managing employees and contractors.
• Minimize taxes by learning the ins-and-outs of business income taxes, the top 5 payroll taxes, sales and use taxes, common tax dodges, and the latest loopholes for business owners. Filing schedules, form names, form numbers and download links are also included.
• Credit cards are critical these days - so learn how the system really works and minimize chargebacks, disputes and headaches. Includes 35 important definitions and 12 ways to minimize fraud.
• Lots more too!

ACCREDITATION
Joe Kennedy has more than twenty years of experience in operating and working with hundreds of small businesses, a degree in finance and an MBA. He knows how entrepreneurs think and their drive to get to the essence of an issue, make the right decision and quickly move on. Impatient business owners will prefer this book since only the most relevant information is provided. A few bigger books are out there but this one is not puffed out with clutter and other information you already knew. With years of experience in the IT industry Joe knows a lot about the Internet too so the content here is better than web-based searches.The Small Business Owner's Manual is great for those starting a business, operators of existing enterprises, or as a gift.

B&N CUSTOMER REVIEWS

Roman Francisco, MASS Computer Business Owner 9yrs, October 13, 2005
Finally a really useful promotinal book gift

When I signed up with an Internet company they sent me a copy of this book as some kind of promotion but it's well worth the full retail price. Sometimes "sign up" gifts turn out to be not so good but I do get a lot of mileage out of Kennedy's new book. Many entrepreneurs (like me!) are very good in one particular area, say e-commerce, but are not so aware of the many other facets of running a business – and that's why this book is great. I am an Internet kind of guy but "The Small Business Owner's Manual" or "TSBOM" as they call it has a lot of relevant info on building and promoting web sites and e-stores, however there are also has several chapters of very solid material in the other dimensions of running a business – like forming the entity and "hiring and firing" and minimizing taxes and my favorite part is when the book explains a businesses' "unique selling proposition."

Nancy Hilton (nancyhilton@ericbruner.com), well known arizona catering co, August 25, 2005
a useful gift for once!

I received "The Small Business Owners Manual" from a bank rep. They were giving it away as a promotional item which turned out to be a good idea and I heard it is distributed a lot in this way. Even though I've had a successful catering business for many years now the book was really helpful. I was always worried about whether various people and "companies" that worked for me were really employees and not contractors. The book has a lot of info on this, and explained clearly that they are employees and I am liable for taxes despite their "contractor agreement." I kind of thought I "knew it all" after all of these years but I really like this book and it was a useful gift and so it stays on my desk! It seems there is always something new or worrisome to check out and Kennedy's book is usually the best place to start the research.

BChase, a small business owner, July 6, 2005
The most amazing book for Small Business

I just started a business and have been reading many books of this type in the last few months but I like this one the best. Kennedy's place in the market is that he has owned and operated many Small Businesses, and has worked with many others in just about all industries it seems. So he talks from the perspective of someone who has actually lived through all of this and he writes from the perspective of an entrepreneur who knows how to manage people and operate businesses. That is a lot different from someone who writes because they are a writer or because they need to sell extra books at seminars.

Consequently, Kennedy knows how to keep it short and tell what an entrepreneur needs to know - not too much and not too little. He is right in that business owners want to know enough to make an informed decision and keep moving. Kennedy has an MBA in marketing and you can see this in separate chapters dedicated to sales and marketing. Related, he is very up to date on the Internet and e-commerce and says somewhere that he knows everyone can do searches these days and he doesn't want to just provide the same material that can be easily found in a Google search, and I found this to be true. On the other hand he knows business owners don't want to read an entire book on a particular subject and they don't want a lot of extra fluff to puff out a book. So he keeps to the essentials and therefore covers lots of territory in 312 pages rather than overkill just a few areas. I like the writing style since it is very fast and informative yet easy to follow.

There are also many real-life stories that he tells in a humorous way that reinforce lessons from the book. There are many other books out in this same niche but this is the only good one I could find written by someone who actually has current experience in operating and growing a small business.

Jay Kinney, owner of trucking firm in Illinois, June 9, 2005
Great Advisor For Trucking Co and Its Customers

I own a trucking company and we just bought 50 of these books as a "thanks for 15 years in business gift" to our customers. I liked TSBOM (as author Kennedy refers to it) because it gives a lot of useful information about all of the areas of concern to any business operator. I'm a big reader and sometimes when I finish a book I come away with that feeling of "gee most of that stuff was obvious" but that was not the case here. We used a lot of the information from the chapters on e-stores and web sites to finally build a site for my company (not the most sophisticated but we are up now and it only took about 30 minutes!) and after all these years I FINALLY understand the big picture on payroll and income taxes.

The book also advises on where businesses can stretch our tax expenses a little and I liked this because we pay too many taxes. This alone paid for the book.

There are also good chapters on the best ways to spend money on marketing and sales, and how to shop for and lease a new office/store/warehouse. We also have collections problems sometimes and TSBOM gives good advice on getting tough with bad clients and quickly finding the right attorney even in other areas.

Finally, we needed to buy two new trucks and I used this book to consider many different financing sources like leasing, banks, SBA loans etc (we went with a collateral lender).

The only problem with this book is that it is maybe a little too intense sometimes and I had to study some parts rather carefully. The writing is clear though so maybe the book is simply describing the way things really are and does not simplify.

This book would certainly be useful to just about any new and on-going business owner, or someone who is thinking about going into business but wants to know what lies ahead.

An established Florida entrepreneur, June 8, 2005
Small Business Information Firehose

I've read many business books over the last few years from the best known writers, but this is now one of my favorites. I am always on the lookout for good business reference material since there is SO much to know these days, and making an innocent mistake (underinsured, employee lawsuits, taxes etc.) can easily put a firm out of business. Kennedy's "TSBOM" (as he calls it) is a completely new book by an author who has a lot of experience and is very up to date in some of the most critical areas, like how to "hire and fire" without getting sued; a very informative chapter on Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, web sites and e-stores; 2 GREAT chapters on how to increase revenues by improving your sales/marketing/advertising efforts, and even legal advice on what to do about deadbeat customers or problems with vendors or even your landlord.

Since Kennedy spends a lot of time on the Internet I guess he knows not to just rewrite the same old stuff that can be easily found in a search engine so everything is packaged in a consistent and customized (for business owners) way. I found the book easy to read and useful and it did save me a lot of time.

This book is more up-to-date than similar titles, and you do get A LOT – it is well over 300 pages not to mention the web site where you can download legal agreements and documents and spreadsheets etc. Most of this is real content too. In many other books I've seen at the end of the book you say to yourself "gee most of that stuff was kind of obvious and anyone would know it" but that is not the case here. So I would recommend it to just about anyone who is starting in business or for old-timers, those who need a desk reference.