2 out of 4 stars
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The Why-What-Where-and-How of Owning and Operating a Successful Business
by Joe Seric
I have to admit, I chose my Business minor mostly just to fill in required credits. My language major, even with Core classes, was nowhere near the 125 credits required to graduate. When I chose Joe Seric’s The Why-What-Where-and-How of Owning and Operating a Successful Business to review, I expected to get a short, 40-page summary of all the classes I spent so much time (and money!) on. Accounting, Finance, Management, Law… and Seric even put it all into laymen’s terms to make it easier to read.
Unfortunately, although the short how-to guide was easy to understand, it was not necessarily easy to read. Seric uses incorrect grammar and awkward terminology very often and although you can understand his explanations, the writing style can sometimes be distracting. Rather than just fixing a few typos, I feel like Seric would actually have to rewrite a few of his more complicated sentences for them to make sense.
Another problem I had was that, when I downloaded the book as a .pdf and opened it, the book came out as each page showing two full pages. I had to zoom in and scroll sideways after turning each page, and that also made the book hard to read. It almost looks as if the author took screenshots of the page as he was working on in his publishing software and put those together in a .pdf file. I would have definitely preferred separate, clean pages without the grey, Microsoft Word-looking borders around them.
Looking past the format and grammatical errors, I realized Seric’s advice was something that I had never come across in my classes. For example, although we often talked about competition in my classes, in the “Where” section of his book Seric talked about real life competition that you could come across in even the tiniest of towns, and how to avoid it. Also, the Appendix at the back of the book had great advice for those looking to purchase an existing business. To me the Appendix was the most informative part of the entire guide, filled with dos and don’ts that I personally never realized would need to be considered when taking over an existing business.
Overall, I would give this book 2 out of 4 stars. Unfortunately, although the book was written in more simplistic terms, it does not teach you how to write invoices or keep track of account receivables, so I would definitely recommend this to someone who already has a Business background. It most definitely focuses on bigger issues of setting up and maintaining a business rather than everyday transactions and necessary knowledge. Also, because the Appendix at the back was so useful, I would recommend this to people wishing to purchase an existing business, because it may have some valuable advice that could save you from a whole lot of trouble later on.
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The Why-What-Where-and-How of Owning and Operating a Successful Business
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