The road leading to entrepreneurship is filled with many obstacles and trials. With best efforts and concentration, the road can be traversed by entrepreneurs but the trip may not be fruitful because of many factors.
Author and entrepreneur Michael Derner in his book "The Lonely Entrepreneur" explains that businessmen can successfully tread the road to entrepreneurship by changing their attitudes, focusing more on action not planning. Based on his own experience as a founder of a health incentives company in the tumultuous 1968 financial crisis, he propounds solutions to problems encountered in most businesses.
The book focuses on two main principles: to identify the wrong attitudes one is using to conduct his business and to make sure that passion, pleasure, pressure and pain do not get in the way to progress. The book maybe full of theoretical propositions but it is easy to comprehend and can easily lead the entrepreneur to action.
The book's ideas do not exclusively apply to one's business but can also be used as a p guide to personal relationships. It provides insights on how family enterprises are managed by siblings or close relatives.
Derner said that he was prompted to write the book because he understands the struggles going through the minds of the entrepreneur and his difficulty of finding solutions to problems he usually encounters. He stressed that in most cases where businesses have failed or in danger of failing, the problem lies most likely to be in the entrepreneur's outlook of managing the business.
Critics say the book presents the science of marketing in a simple manner choosing simple narratives rather boring details usually found in a marketing textbook. The section on "Find Playgrounds Where Other People Aren't Playing" is a good example of the market research strategies preceding the selection of the right businesses to go into.
Reactions to the book are varied but most people are impressed by the author's depth of understanding.
