A Start Up Life

The Essential Online Solution: The 5-Step Formula for Small Business Success
Rick Segel and Barbara Callan-Bogia

This book has not been one of my favorites, but I cannot really figure out why. All of the advice about building a professional, effective website and spreading the buzz about your business seems good to me. There’s info on SEO, word of mouth marketing, banner ads and adwords and adsense. Maybe it’s just not that applicable to my situation at the moment.

The five steps to small business success according to Segel and Callan-Bogia are:

1. Uncovering Possibilities – Which looks at online buying and selling as a while and how you can fit into that picture.
2. Building Practical, Powerful, Professional Web Sites that WORK – How to initially build your site, make it more effective, and avoid common errors that detract from your site.
3. Positioning You as the Source: Creating Expert Status – Using blogs and podcasting.
4. Creating the Buzz with Clicks and Clends – Discusses how to position yourself online and how to use pay per click and viral advertising.
5. Sell, Sell, Sell – Covers how to use eBay and other programs to get your business going.

The section critiquing different websites for positive and negative qualities is very helpful for someone who is not familiar with the internet. Even if you have done a moderate amount of online shopping however, you already should have a pretty good feel for what makes up a good website. Advice given is that your site needs to be user friendly, personalized, simple and straightforward. Many good examples of sites that have these characteristics are given. It would be nice to have some bad examples to look at, but out of courtesy to the owners of those sites, they are only described in the The Essential Online Solution, not named.
All in all, if you’re not pressed for time, there are some interesting things to learn from this book. However, it is not a quick read, at least for me it wasn’t, and you probably know a lot of the information in it already. To be fair, part of the reason it took me a while to read was that I kept reading things I probably should do to promote myself and things to apply to my websites. I would stop reading, thinking when I got the chance I would make sure to redo the CSS code on my quantum tutoring site to enhance my SEO or other things like that, but I was never motivated enough to actually do them and eventually I’d go back to just reading.

The Engine of America: The Secrets to Small Business Success from Entrepreneurs Who Have Made It!
Hector V. Barreto

The Engine of America: The Secrets to Small Business Success from Entrepreneurs Who Have Made It! was written by former Administrator of the US Small Business Administration, Hector V. Barreto. I found Barreto’s book inspiring and full of useful information. With the stories of some of the most successful small-business entrepreneurs, he teaches the keys to successfully start up a company or grow an existing one.

The Engine of America gives a lot of the same advice that you hear all the time about running and starting a business. Therefore, it is a great book for someone just starting out. Additionally, the advice, although repetitive for those entrepreneurs who have been in business a while, is given in a way that keeps you entertained. Stories of successful entrepreneurs remind us that anything can be done, and help us keep an optimistic point of view.

Barreto gives sound advice about studying to learn what you need to know and planning your business venture to increase likelihood of success. Then he addresses the need to take risks, but to take calculated risks rather than just a shot in the dark. One aspect of business I don’t think of a lot is employees. I am far from that point, but Barreto addresses how to share your vision with your employees and how the people around you are a critical key to your success.

A large portion of The Engine of America is dedicated to specific tools for success that every entrepreneur can benefit from. From how to contact SCORE for free advice from successful businesspeople to how the Small Business Administration (SBA) can help you obtain financing to what government programs are available to small businesses. From his insider’s point of view, Barreto helps unlock the mysterious process of dealing with government organizations and programs.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s an easy read, but it contains a wealth of useful information. I especially enjoyed the quoted advice from successful entrepreneurs such as Earl Graves, founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, and Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples.

You can read an excerpt of Chapter 4 Challenge the Conventional Wisdom or go to www.theengineofamerica.com for more information.