2 out of 4 stars
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Mitche Graf is a successful businessman and motivational speaker, and The Unleashed Entrepreneur is his latest book. Despite having an extremely well paid job, Graf found that his workaholic lifestyle was not making him happy, so he resigned in order to became an entrepreneur. Upon becoming a father, he had an epiphany and decided that he must restructure his work-life balance to free up as much personal time as possible. The aim was, quite simply, to increase his enjoyment of life while remaining lucrative. After all, you only live once.
As I’m at a crossroads myself, and looking to rejoin the workforce soon, I felt this book might provide some handy pointers. Indeed it did, but while the book promises to ‘share a vast plethora of cutting-edge business ideas’, what I actually gleaned was more in the way of some nuggets of useful information.
In the first place, this book is not aimed at the common herd. It is a self-help book for successful and profitable entrepreneurs who are sadly overburdened with work. The first 20% of the book is spent in telling the reader how this book is going to tell them oodles of really good stuff. As I read on, I started to feel like I’d clicked on one of those internet links that promise a life-changing piece of advice, yet 40 pages later, you’re wondering if they’re ever going to get to the point.
Finally, the book gets going and does start to share some very good ideas. I particularly liked the statistic that ‘80% of your outcomes are from 20% of your efforts’. Graf then offers ways to identify that 20%, focus on it and then delegate the less productive 80%. There is also advice on how to modularise your time and how to avoid wasting it. The main message of the book can be summarised into ‘organise your time, streamline your processes, do what you enjoy and delegate what you don’t’.
The rest of the book is taken up with anecdotes from his own life, some work related allegories, and the usual encouragement to ‘be positive’, ‘embrace change’, ‘have a sense of humour’ and ‘take risks’. Good advice, but they are to be found in every motivational speaker’s repertoire.
All in all, I felt that the book didn’t contain enough new information to justify itself, and that it was aimed at a remarkably small market. In addition to my other criticisms, there are a large number of grammatical errors which I felt seriously detracted from the author’s authority.
I am giving this a rating of 2 out of 4 stars (fair). I wouldn’t recommend the book myself, but I know that there are others who love this sort of thing. I didn’t feel that there was enough content to rate 3 stars (good), but it still had its moments and could be entertaining. In fact I would have given it 2.5 if I could because of the entertainment value.
At risk of repeating myself, this book may appeal to successful and profitable entrepreneurs who wish to reduce their stress levels.
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The Unleashed Entrepreneur
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I really enjoyed your review; and appreciate your insights!
