How Not to Start and Run Your Own Business – Scott Cundill

If you know anybody who is keen to start a small business then an essential book for them to read is Scott Cundills ‘ “How Not to Start and Run Your Own Business”.

Scott is a South African entrepreneur and small business owner who has been through it all. His frank, no-nonsense and hilarious novel is a wake-up call for anybody who has grandiose ideas about launching their venture.

There are some pearlers of wisdom including “Get yourself a hot personal assistant so that you can at least feel motivated to go to work” and you will find yourself laughing through the book while learning as you go.

Scott is becoming an increasingly influential player in the small business sector and with many people now being faced by the reality that they may have to launch their own enterprise to sustain themselves, Scotts book gives some insight into some of the key factors that will be needed to give you half a chance of survival.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R99.

Title: How Not to Start and Run Your Own Business
Author: Scott Cundill
ISBN: 978-1-920153-01-4

We rated the book a four out of five and highly recommend it as a birthday gift or stocking filler!

Jim Collins - How the Mighty Fall

Considering the tough economic environment and the impact that this is having on peoples business and personal lives, this might be an interesting book to look at:

Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed. Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course? In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins' research project - more than four years in duration - uncovered five step-wise stages of decline: Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success; Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More; Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril; Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation; and, Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death. By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline.

There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover - in some cases, coming back even stronger - even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4. Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

About the author:
Jim Collins is a student of companies - great ones, good ones, weak ones, failed ones - from young start-ups to venerable sesquicentenarians. The author of the international bestseller Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last, he serves as a teacher to leaders throughout the corporate and social sectors. His work has been featured in Fortune, Business Week, The Economist, USA Today, and Harvard Business Review. You can find more information about Jim and his work at his e-teaching site, www.jimcollins.com.


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• Good to Great
• Built to Last

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