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Rating: 
Summary: An indispensable book
Review: I am a retired executive quite mentally alert and keen on doing something useful with the rest of my life. This book is excessively stimulating in pointing out business opportunities which initially I had not considered,It is probably the book that provides the most in-depth review on the topic. I enjoyed in particular the part that matches your entrepreneurial type with the field of opportunities. This analysis is to my knowledge quite unique and was very useful to me. The info about franchising and franchises is so clearly presented that it denotes on the part of the author a clear, concise intellect. Real life data is most useful and complements a book that is essential to making an informed decision. A must buy.
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Summary: Usable info for only 23 businesses
Review: Rhonda Abrams' newspaper columns are so well written, packed with information, and sensible that I have clipped and saved many of them over the years. I had high expectations for this book.
It promises to "find a business that's right for you." Unfortunately, there is little connection between the self-analysis sections of the book and the business sections. Although it tells which general business areas are good for each E-type, it does not tell which E-types (or other attributes) are good for each business. Since it doesn't work both ways, the book doesn't help you make a match.
A possible exception would be the 23 individual businesses profiled in enough detail to guess whether they would be right for you. They are mostly independent contractor-type jobs such as animal groomers or Web site designers with a few larger businesses such as general contracting and restaurants thrown in.
Another criticism is sloppiness: punctuation and capitalization style suddenly changes from question 34 to 36 of the E-type quiz, headings in the abilities inventory worksheet are the same as those on the interest inventory worksheet, and page number references to worksheets are wrong. Furthermore, the worksheets seem repetitive and the index is skimpy; you probably won't be able to use it to go directly to your pet business idea.
On the positive side, the information it did provide seemed realistic. There is no false encouragement. And a worksheet for brainstorming peripheral approaches for businesses was especially helpful. If for some reason one of your interests isn't suitable for a business, perhaps you could teach about it, provide equipment for it, maintain it for someone else, and so on.
Overall, though, unless you're interested in one of the 23 businesses you are no better off after reading the book than before.
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Summary: The "What Color Is Your Parachute" for business owners
Review: So many of the start-your-own-business books out there focus on *how* to get a business up and running--but here's one that focuses on deciding *what* business to start, which seems to be just as critical to launching a successful business as anything else.How do you determine if your business idea will work? How do you turn your past work experiences and training into a business that will be successful? How do you take all your ideas and determine which are best? How do you turn the things you love doing into a way to make a living? Abrams' book answers these questions (or, rather, shows us how to answer them ourselves) through a series of self-analysis exercises, discussions on what makes a small business successful, and reviews of the most popular industries and businesses for new entrepreneurs. I'm impressed with how Abrams manages to exercise both sides of our brains in guiding us towards our final business idea. She gives us a lot of right-brained introspective self-discovery tasks to help us understand what we'd like to do and be good at, but also delivers plenty of left-brain oriented data and statistics to help us understand the realites of how our ideas will work out in the real world. I'm especially grateful for her "can-do" attitude. She makes it clear that you don't need to be a Type A, salesmanish, work-a-holic to own a successful business. That alone was worth the price of the book.
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Summary: Such a helpful book! Right on!
Review: The whole book is so well laid out and helpful, and it completely met and exceeded my expectations. I have used one of the author's other books--The Successful Business Plan--in college, so I have some idea of her style: clear, honest, and very inspiring. I was afraid that there would be a lot of MLM pyramid-type schemes, but the businesses in this book all seem to be viable. She backs up the selected businesses with government outlook and industry data, which really helped me look at my options with a well informed perspective. And if a business is very hard or expensive to start, or has a high failure rate, it says so--no sugar coating in this book. But the real gem in this book is the E-Type test. Very perceptive. Abrams has discovered the way for me to match my goals and skills and tendancies with a good sized list of practial business options. This is a great book for anyone who wants to start a business and doesn't know exactly what kind, or for someone who already has the business idea but wants to verify that it's the right one!
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Summary: Great information for entrepreneurs
Review: This book is full of information that is helpful in learning about or selecting a business to start. It is broken into seven steps that help readers learn about themselves, their ideas, and a variety of small businesses that may fit with their aspirations. I found the "popular business categories" and "popular individual businesses" sections to be full of interesting and useful information including details and statistics about the business, references to places to find more information and ideas to help you in starting that type of business. There is also a section on franchises that I found interesting. I'd recommend this book to someone who is looking to start a business but needs help in sorting out their strengths and areas of interest, and to someone who is looking for a great resource of information on about different types of small businesses.
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