Working 5 to 9 by Emma Jones

No ? you haven?t misread the title ? it really is Working 5 to 9 ? How to Start a Business in your spare time by Emma Jones, founder of the home business website Enterprise Nation and author of the very successful book Spare Room Start-up.

From the Facts and Figures in Chapter 1 last year 5 million people were building a business at night and weekends in addition to their day job ? that is a staggering 20% of the population. The reasons for this are many; people fear redundancy, people are looking to move away from employment and towards the flexibility of being their own boss and for others it is the extra money that drives them.

Section 2 of the books gives 50 examples of businesses that you can start in your own time, and this includes 60 profiles of people who have already successfully started and are running their own businesses in these areas. As well as hearing how ?real people? have achieved this each example has a great list of links, websites and places to go to find out more and even Twitter lists of people to follow in certain sectors.

Having found inspiration and ideas from this section, Next Steps in part 3 is the main advice and guidance section and contains some valuable advice about how to make the leap from idea to business. It gives a great overview of all the essentials like a business plan, some of the legal and tax requirements marketing yourself and managing your business around a day job. It also has a section on web presence and all things related to on-line business. The book finishes with over 10 pages of Useful links.

This book is great for people just thinking about starting up their own business, either as an extra to work, or to build up whilst at home looking after small children. There are many people who know they want to do something different but don?t know what the next step is; this would be a great place to start.