TheLoop21.com

By: Kam Williams (Add to your loop)
Sat, 02/06/2010 - 10:41

Owen O. Daniels, author of 'The Entrepreneur Guide', at Baghdad Airport.

“Are you someone seeking to start your own business and frustrated with the lack of straightforward answers to your countless questions? Or are you a business owner whose time is too consumed with researching how to spark growth instead of actually performing the right actions that will aid in success? Or is there an entrepreneur inside of you that doesn’t know where to start?

…The Entrepreneur Guide will walk you through the entire journey of building your own business from the ground up… This guide breaks down the most difficult tasks and possible future obstacles so that producing success from scratch becomes simple.

Now don’t get us wrong, there will be blood sweat and tears involved—more tears than anything else. Bu now you have the best tools and the right answers at your fingertips.”

Excerpted from the Introduction (pg. 1)

There’s been a bumper crop of books published lately by Black authors offering all sorts of relationship advice. But in order to be able to afford to do all that dating, you might want to make a little money first. And for folks so inclined, The Entrepreneur Guide arrives like a refreshing and worthwhile change of pace.

The book is the brainchild of Owen O. Daniels, who recently returned to the States after serving his second tour of duty over in Iraq. Besides rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, the author has also earned a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from John Jay College in New York, and a Master’s in Computer Science with a minor in Business Administration from Webster College in St. Louis.

This unique combination of skills obviously came in very handy in enabling Daniels to craft a sensible step-by-step resource designed to address any question which might arise in the mind of a budding entrepreneur en route to making that first million. Succinctly written in layman’s terms the average educated person can understand, the user-friendly text virtually takes you by the hand and walks you through the typical start-up process in sequential fashion.

Thus, it starts by having you assess your basic business idea before coming up with a plan and then picking and registering a name, if warranted. It subsequently helps you decide whether you might need to incorporate or protect any intellectual property via patent trademark or copyright.

From there, the guide moves on to a variety of marketing concerns, and pertinent issues involving insurance, taxes and employees. Detailed-oriented Daniels even devotes attention to internet access, domain names, office furniture and barcodes for your products. As an attorney/MBA and small businessman myself, I was quite impressed overall, and can guarantee that The Entrepreneur Guide arrives stocked with some solid advice.

That being said, however, as the author states in his intro, your success ultimately will still be contingent on your work ethic and willingness to spill some blood, sweat and tears.

The Entrepreneur Guide
2010 Edition
by Owen O. Daniels
Edited by Latasia D. Brown
The Small Business Zone, Inc.
Paperback, $29.95
204 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 978-0-615-32297-1

Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the African-American Film Critics Association, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In addition to a B.A. in black studies from Cornell, he has an M.A. in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a J.D. from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, N.J., with his wife and son.

Originally published at AALBC.com

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