How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business: Unexpected Rules Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know

Rating:
Summary: * * Buy for your business friends * *
Review: Although some have criticized this book as being too simple, I find it makes a great summary of the important things a small entrepreneur must do.

It doesn't take too long to read but it contains lots of practical advice. I underlined mine heavily.

This book is also appropriate as a gift to friends that are starting their own company.

The most important points that I derived from this book were Fox's lists of things to do, and their priorities. I highly recommend this book, and all the rest by Jeffrey J. Fox. He's become one of my favorite business writers.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

Rating:
Summary: Full of Practical Insight
Review: Fox is a doer. He gets results you can tell by the way he writes. He reminds readers of the basics, i.e., that nothing happens until somebody sells something. Every business is always all about the customer. That is the only reason a business is created or continues to exist. But Fox goes beyond this reminder. He adds "how to" wisdom on how to maintain this customer-focus.

His spin on the unique gifts that each of us has has never been explored in the way he presents it. He says that what is easy to you is difficult for other people. Market accordingly! But just because one has natural talents doesn't mean one can be lazy. Talent has to be cultivated.

I like the advise he offers in saying, "Invest your time as you would invest money." He explains the power of the 60-30-10 rule, which consists of 60% of your time on marketing/selling 30% learning and 10% fixing weak areas.

My only reason for not giving the book a five is he lacks the spiritual component. He comes across as a crass materialist. Fox has a lot of insight into this world, but neglects the reality of things unseen.

Rating:
Summary: Another winner from Jeffrey J. Fox!
Review: Jeffrey J. Fox wrote one of my favorite marketing books of all time, HOW TO BECOME A RAINMAKER . . . so when I saw his latest effort, HOW TO MAKE BIG MONEY IN YOUR OWN
SMALL BUSINESS, I just had to get hold of it--and devour all 150 too brief pages in one sitting.

Fox has advice here for those starting a business, as well as those who want to stay that way; i.e., in business . . . he shows you in clear language how to "outfox the competition,"
and he makes it surpassingly simple.

But the REAL key is what he writes in his very last paragraph:
"You don't need a lot of things to start a business . . . but you must have one thing. You must have a customer. Go get that customer."

There were several other useful tidbits of information; among them:
Your business exists for only three reasons: to solve a customer's problem, or to make a customer feel good, or both. There are no other reasons for your company to exist. It is every single employee's job, in any company, to directly or indirectly get and keep customers. So,
if you are the only employee in your company, as is often the case, your job is to sell your company's products or services . . . to solve the customer's problem or to make the customer feel good. You are responsible for generating 100 percent of your company's revenues. You are your company's rainmaker!

Boys and girls who worked as paperboys have an edge. So, too do boys and girls who have worked as caddies, cow milkers, lawn mowers, snow shovelers, babysitters, food servers, crop pickers, dishwashers, grocery baggers. Good child labor produces good adult employees.

Customers love getting a little extra. Customers love doing business with companies that are full of fun surprises. Be like the hairdressing salon in Farmington, Connecticut, that lets each customer leave with a single red rose. The pharmacist who calls a mother to inquire about her child's fever stands out, and gets all of that mom's prescriptions. That's marketing. That's loving your customers, loving your company, and building your business.


Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: People start small businesses for many reasons. Sometimes they're in love with the product - they've always wanted to open a store where amateur potters could buy great mud. Sometimes they've been itching to run free from life in a big corporation and finally quit to start their own shop. Sometimes they get a pink slip and a bit of severance pay, and can't find another job, so they decide to start their own business. Whatever the reason, small business owners encounter some common problems. People who are in love with a product may forget how important customers are. People who've worked for a big corporation may not realize how many support services they have learned to take for granted. People who've run their small business for years may get in a rut and miss opportunities to grow. Author Jeffrey J. Fox's short, easy-to-read handbook of pithy counsel is for all of them. While his brightly-written advice sounds fresher than it is, we find it well worth remembering.

Rating:
Summary: Big Bird Takes on Business Insights -- Yak
Review: Thank God I got this out of the library and read it, not paid money for it (he does encourage business owners to be frugal). This is the kind of book that someone ought to be able to write in a weekend, and if they spend any more time on it than that, sheesh, why? It's one mind-numbing platitude after another, AND misspellings and odd word choices. The guy's specialty is MARKETING, and he may be very good at that, but this book is like being stuck in kindergarten and turning to your fellow students for insight. At least, how your fellow students would express them: simple, declarative sentences with barely anything deep or insightful to express. "Get customers" is the point of the book. Yay. We probably already knew that. Not fully terrible, but if you're really in need of a book THIS simple, let's just say, don't let it be the only book you read. Whoo hoo.

It took me only as long to read as it took my spouse to go to food shopping. Read something by Seth Godin instead or in addition to -- also simply style, but not this simple, and much more to say. (Like Godin's "Purple Cow".)

Rating:
Summary: How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business by Fox
Review: The author explains that the first and most important task is to
identify quickly the target market of customers. Next, it is critical to compute the break-even-point and the minimum number of customers required to cover the costs of entering into the
business. Ultimately, the author inspires us to do what comes easy to us and what is harder for others to do. He breaks down the time commitment into 60% marketing, 30% service and 10% management. In addition, he points out the necessity to work hard
on a consistent basis.

Rating:
Summary: Simple building blocks to success
Review: There was a review here that was unjust. The guy complained about the books simplicity and that it should be reading for kindergarden.

Well I run my own business which is successful (meaning: debt free, great cash flow, wonderful income, will retire in my 40s to pursue all those other life goals). Presently I am buried up to my eyeballs in daily issues like sales projections, new products, marketing, accounting, etc. The trees were obscuring the forest when I picked up this book. It's simple list of things to do was refreshing and I was shocked that out of my University degree and over 30 business books on my shelf, there were a number of simple things I had overlooked.

Other books bury you in chapters, what this book says in sentences. The other reviewer looks like one of those many MBAs who dream of being a CEO of S&P 500 company and believe in making the simple things in business complicated for their own ego.

If you really run a small business then I would pick this one up to re-focus yourself on the simple things to success. It is easy to forget the simple steps when you are busy and you start to wonder away from what makes you successful. This kindergardener is happy to find a point or two that has paid for the book 100-fold.