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The Guru Guide to Entrepreneurship

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The Guru Guide to Entrepreneurship

A Concise Guide to the Best Ideas from the World's Top Entrepreneurs

Wiley,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Top entrepreneurs all give basic advice: Work hard. Be original. Meet a need. Watch your pennies. Keep your customers. Only, when they say it, it sounds easy.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

This is entrepreneur advice straight from the horses’ mouths. In this case, the horses are 70 well-known entrepreneurs who reveal their success secrets on everything from identifying a good business concept to raising money, getting and keeping customers and managing people. Authors Joseph H. Boyett and Jimmie T. Boyett draw on material written by and about these start-up monarchs and end each chapter with a concise summary of the lessons that a reader should glean from their stories. In addition, they include a useful appendix with summary bios of each of the men and women cited or quoted in the book. getAbstract invites budding entrepreneurs to enjoy this book while picking up some invaluable pointers, while more experienced businesspeople are encouraged to browse its pages and collect some dandy quotes to throw around the conference table.

Summary

Selecting the Top Gurus

Individuals who have created their own successful businesses have wisdom to share and are generous about sharing it. The world’s greatest entrepreneurs cited here include some familiar names, such as Paul Allen and Bill Gates (Microsoft cofounders), Marc Andreesen and James L. Barksale (Netscape cofounders), Roy and Walt Disney (you know what they co-founded), and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, of course). Other "gurus" cited include Mary Kay Ash (Mary Kay Cosmetics founder), Arthur Blank (Home Depot co-founder), Richard Branson (Virgin Group founder), uber-investor Warren Buffett, Michael Dell (Dell Computers founder), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), Jeffrey P. Bezos (Amazon founder) and even P.T. Barnum (founder of the circus touted as "The Greatest Show on Earth").

These gurus were selected by defining the term entrepreneur broadly to include not only those who started a business, but those who took it over and successfully built it up. Here, an entrepreneur is someone who enters a business - any business - in time to form or change substantially that business’ nerve center.

Should You Become an Entrepreneur...

About the Authors

Joseph H. Boyett is a cofounder of Boyett & Associates, a consulting and research firm that specializes in helping companies implement state-of-the-art management and organizational practices. He has been a consultant to a number of Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, British Petroleum, Merck, EDS and Bell South. He is the author of ten books, including Workplace 2000, Beyond Workplace 2000 and The Guru Guide. Jimmie T. Boyett is a cofounder of Boyett and Associates and co-author of six books, including Beyond Workplace 2000 and The Guru Guide. She is a recognized expert on business-process reengineering and the application of leading-edge information systems technology.

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