Getting Ready: A Getting-into-Business Guide

Riзa Night is a Toronto-based communications consultant who teaches
courses in business writing and in successful freelancing. She edits
CBRA.

This boxed set packs an enormous wallop: its four slim volumes should be
required reading for anyone planning to start a business. No ivory-tower
academic, Kennedy has had hands-on involvement in manufacturing,
wholesaling, retailing, and service businesses, both local and national.
He presents plenty of no-nonsense advice in a highly readable style.

Getting Ready looks at the psychological and personal qualities of
successful entrepreneurs, complete with hard-nosed self-assessment
quizzes. Working through these exercises could save readers from
disastrous errors in choosing a business. Getting Started covers
important practicalities like licenses and permits, profitable pricing,
and location. The stance of “positive realism” that Kennedy
prescribes throughout is effectively reflected here in a terrific
chapter on “What to Do When Things Go Wrong,” along with extensive
advice about managing the risks that so often sink small businesses (for
example, accumulated debt and tax liabilities, property loss or damage,
losing a major client, and economic downturns).

Getting Money and Getting Sales discuss financing (including business
plans and venture capital) and marketing issues (e.g., choosing a
business name and logo, advertising, getting publicity, sales skills,
and customer service), respectively.

Each of these topics could clearly expand to fill several books.
Kennedy, however, offers an admirably effective overview of all four.
The appendixes that round off each book direct readers to many
additional resources.

The books do attempt to include both U.S. and Canadian information
wherever necessary—e.g., in discussing patents, trademarks, and
permits—and, in most cases, they succeed well enough. But Canadian
coverage occasionally shows inexplicable gaps. The section on getting
professional help in a business crisis, for instance, offers detailed
information on the U.S. Small Business Administration’s SCORE (Service
Corps of Retired Executives) program, but fails to mention its Canadian
counterpart, the Federal Business Development Bank’s CASE (Counseling
Assistance for Small Enterprises) service. And when discussing
bankruptcy, Kennedy again gives only U.S. information.

Nevertheless, he has done an excellent job overall. Without neglecting
the practical matters ordinarily covered by such books, he also
masterfully handles less-tangible but equally crucial areas, like
psychological readiness for the demands of entrepreneurship, that are
covered much more rarely—and seldom this well. His advice is sobering
and inspirational in equal proportions.