Thinking Like an Entrepreneur: How to Make Intelligent Business Decisions That Will Lead to Success in Building and Growing Your Own Company [Paperback]

If you're thinking about starting a business, the first few chapters will do a great job of helping you think about the risks in quitting a "safe" job and starting your own company. It's not as risky as you might think. This isn't the book to read about business licenses or accounting systems - it is much more important than that! It really is as the title suggests a book about thinking like an entrepreneur.

I've been in business for more than 10 years, but I'm still making mistakes and trying to learn new things. A mark of a good book for me is the number of pages that I dog-ear to mark interesting ideas. My copy of Thinking Like an Entrepreneur has at least 20 pages marked, and I've referred back to it many times since I finished reading it. It will definitely go on my favorites shelf of business books. I've already recommended it to my entrepreneur friends.

The author's style is to mix stories about experiences from actual entrepreneurs with good step-by-step walkthroughs of "thinking like an entrepreneur". It is 272 pages with 27 chapters. Each chapter can stand alone, making it easy to focus on the areas you're really interested in while skimming the ones that don't apply so much to your business. Peter seems to have a technology background, but I think any businessperson will find a lot to learn in this book.

My favorite chapters include:

* Don't Get Bournouillied - an interesting discussion of risk

* Men are cheaper than guns

* The importance of margins - Most books don't cover this VERY important topic

* Expectation Values and Decision Making

* Personality and Business Choice

* You Know Enough, But Keep Learning Anyway

* The Role of Luck in Business

* An introduction to the Nature of Compounding and the Time Value of Money

* Relationship Marketing - The cost of losing clients

* The Value of Time

This is a very readable book. It is entertaining while having good solid information on important topics that you'll find yourself rereading several times. Highly recommended!

The 266-page book is divided into 27 chapters, each covering a specific topic. That makes about 10 pages per chapter, which translates into material that's easily understandable and digestable. Topics covered range from risk assessment to basic accounting (very basic indeed, but an excellent way to start especially becuase many of us find accounting unbearably boring) to managing resources to, yes, writing a business plan. The author mixes his philosophical musings along with anecdotes and hard business lessons (like calculating NPV and profits). His constant humor and approachable style make the book very easy and fun to read.

The emphasis of the book is on how an entrepreneur should *think*. Of course, thinking often is not enough; action is also paramount. But starting with the right mindset increases the chance of success -- and also helps one live more happily. The author points out very early on that we all fear failure, and this fear holds most of us back from starting our own businesses. He then delves into how we can overcome this fear partially by analyzing the risks associated with an adventure. This approach makes the subject much less boring than one otherwise expects and also makes the material easier to absorb. As Zhuangzi, the ancient Chinese philosopher, once said, "Starting with the right mind set increases your chance of success tenfold." The constant mind coaching from this book is what I appreciate the most.

The author writes as he speaks, so there are a few grammatical and punctuation errors, but overall this book is highly readable and you may be like me and not want to stop in the middle of a chapter. Each chapter should be read at least twice. In this regard, this book reminds me of Dale Carnegie's classic volume on achieving popularity: full of useful and practical information so that you can never re-read it too many times.