Book Review: From Vision to Exit: The Entrepreneur?s Guide to Building

It?s a tough world out there for us business owners and entrepreneurs. We need to know that we?re not alone, and that there?s support out there for us. It?s that need to connect with other business owners that we join organizations like this blog?s publisher, the Small Business Advocacy Council.

But note I said ?world? which I meant both figuratively and literally. The figurative part we experience every day. The literal part is that we?ll all part of the growing globalization of entrepreneurship.

Here?s what Intuit says about this global trend in their publication, The New Entrepreneurial Economy:

Small businesses will no longer be confined to Main Street, or the mainland, as online storefronts and social networks help small businesses drive a new wave of globalization.
This new global wave is spotlighted this week starting today, November 14, 2011 through November 20, 2011 under the umbrella Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). It?s the world?s largest celebration of entrepreneurs who innovate and create jobs.

This initiative, launched in 2008 by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Carl Schramm, the president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation whose blog, Growthology, is included on our own blog roll. There are now 115 countries involved with nearly 24,000 partner organizations planning more than 37,000 activities that directly engage more than 7 million people.

And that?s the context in which I want to place Guy Rigby?s just published book pictured above, FROM VISION TO EXIT: The Entrepreneur?s Guide to Building and Selling a Business.

Mr. Rigby, with whom I talked this past week via Skype, is a chartered accountant (the U.K equivalent of our CPA). He knows of what he speaks. He?s had an unusually varied career as a business owner, advisor to entrepreneurs, and has built and sold his own accountancy firm. He now heads up the entrepreneurial services group at Smith & Williamson, a diversified financial services group based in the U.K.

Guy takes us through the life cycle of a business, from vision to exit and all the stops in between. His book is a practical guide to the journey we all are on, and it ?translates? well into our American business owners? experience. In this tough economy we?re in, Guy?s book can be a big help.

And being the entrepreneur that he is, Guy offers us a ?two-fer?. If you buy the print copy of the book, you can download a digital version at no extra cost.