Tools Books

If you want to understand all aspects of woodturning, Darlow shoehorns an amazing amount of material in the pages of this book.FOW is nicely laid out, in full color and takes nothing for granted in teaching you the way to turn.

While there are a number of one-shot titles out on turning - turning bowls, turning pens etc., this book is the one to get as the required "Bible". Comprehensive, it covers all the major areas and is very practical. Mike was a professional turner for 7 years, so he teaches you how to consistently turn out high quality, good looking work.Forget the quickie, single subject titles until after you've read FOW. Highly recommended

Many business people will recognize Paul Tulenko from his syndicated small business newspaper column. A highly-respected small business columnist (I have personally clipped and saved many of his columns), Tulenko also writes a free e-mail small business newsletter (tulenko.com) and has worked with many professional organizations, such as the SBA and SCORE, to help entrepreneurs.

Tulenko's new book, "Get More Business Right Now!" isn't a book that tells people how to start a business and make a billion bucks. Rather, he assumes the reader currently owns a business and is struggling financially. Tulenko gives ideas and planning to help a struggling entrepreneur decide what to do while "... the alligators are nipping at your heels, and you absolutely must get something done right now... . Your goal is to get some money in the bank as soon as possible, tomorrow morning would be great."

Tulenko writes: "... crisis management says to do what is needed right now, and clean up the mess later."

Tulenko says you should call in your markers and try to benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. He suggests reviewing all of your contacts and seeing who can help. (This is much like the career advice that, if unemployed, you should tell everyone you know you're looking for work, because you never know from where the job leads might come.)

Another suggestion is to pursue a particularly lucrative client. Tulenko offers some good advice on selling to larger companies and overcoming bottlenecks that might prevent a purchase decision from being made. Sometimes, a big sale can save a struggling company.

Tulenko suggests launching a pilot program fast, possibly offering a new service to your customers. He says to consider deeply discounting your products or services (and, possibly, offering a discount for immediate payment). If you discount, Paul suggests an advertising blitz to make customers aware of your reduced prices to generate more business. (If reduced prices and heavy marketing don't help, it's probably time to close up shop or try something else. I know many business owners will argue that they don't have the money for advertising. But, marketing doesn't have to be expensive. Tulenko mentions one entrepreneur who spent $6 to print fliers, which generated $3,000 in business for his summer lawn-care company. Effective advertising/marketing should generate profits and is money well-spent.)

Tulenko writes: "If you are 'cash poor,' the chances are that happened because of poor planning on your part. Face it and admit it. This is not a black mark that will scar you forever, but if you don't do something about it now, it can potentially cause you to fail in other ways."

Other survival options aren't as fun. Tulenko says a struggling business owner should consider:

--Downsizing your business, making it smaller and more efficient. Reducing your rent or employee expense are options Tulenko suggests.

-- Getting an outside opinion. You might be too close to your business to be objective to see what's being done wrong. Tulenko suggests SCORE as one source of help.

--Start a multi-level marketing home-based business to generate some money. Tulenko says to select your program carefully, but that many multi-level marketing jobs can earn $25,000 to $100,000 a year. (For a good salesperson, any commission-based sales job is probably something to consider.)

--Take another job. Tulenko writes: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with working in a hamburger joint, an all-night grocery, a gas station, or any similar job. Face it, if you need the money, you need the money." Tulenko suggests that you consider the effect of such a job on your business reputation and also consider 'low-profile jobs.' For example, if you're a struggling financial advisor, you probably don't want any of your clients to bump into you while you're pumping gas.

--Quit. Tulenko writes: "True entrepreneurs don't ever say quit. In their mind they close shop for a while, then proceed to work their buns off to gather a few bucks together and start over again, possibly in a totally unrelated business." Tulenko acknowledges that some people will decide working for someone else is a better alternative for them.

Tulenko writes about goal setting. He says goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, targeted). Surviving an alligator attack gives you a chance to reevaluate what's important in your life.

Tulenko concludes: "It's easy to start a business of your own, it's just a matter of saying, 'I'm in the Widget business' ... It doesn't even really take a lot of money to get started. ... The tough part of entrepreneurship comes when you have to produce income at a high enough rate to pay the everyday expenses of your business [and earn enough income to eat, etc.]"

Much of Tulenko's advice should be followed even if you aren't struggling. You should pursue lucrative clients aggressively. You should launch pilot test programs to see what profitable products and services you can offer. You should aggressively pursue word-of-mouth marketing for your business. And, you should always try to make your business more efficient. If you do this, as the skin lotion ad says: "Later, Gator."

I was wrong. This book is for entrepreneurs in trouble. While much of Tulenko's invaluable advice can apply to almost any entrepreneur, this book targets a very specific niche market: businesses in crisis. Most business books focus on long-term thinking, which the author acknowledges is important. This book focuses on short-term thinking for those entrepreneurs who have to do something "Right Now!" or "like tomorrow morning at 7:00 A.M." if they ever want there to be a long term.

Get More Business Right Now! defines an all-out blitz, based on seven assumptions and four steps. The first step is to define a service that an entrepreneur can undertake immediately -- not necessarily a service he traditionally does, but one that his client base will want.

Tulenko is a well-respected syndicated business columnist, and he has been a mentor to over a thousand entrepreneurs as a small business consultant. His words are the words of experience.
He covers all the fundamentals of crafting a benefit statement, setting goals, identifying target markets and partners, cold calling, where to get help, etc.

Readers will even find advice about moonlighting, in the event an entrepreneur needs income from another source if necessary. (This is something very few business books will tell you, but Tulenko is a tell-it-like-it-is type of author.) He also reminds us that it is not a sin to quit.

The book includes an extensive appendix on "The Essence of Marketing", but anyone serious about this subject should pick out a book on that subject alone.

What impressed me the most about Get More Business Right Now! is the detailed advice Tulenko packs in ... right down to how to save money on flyers by printing different colors on different days.

Tulenko is at his best, in this reviewer's opinion, when he gives some straight talk on advertising agencies and their propensity for displaying awards: "Remember, you want success, not prestige." Tulenko shares the very practical view of the great David Ogilvie (see the classic "Confessions of an Advertising Man")

This is no literary work of art, so don't bother submitting it for a Pulitzer Prize. However, it is one of the most useful business books I have ever read. Get More Business Right Now! is a good book for bad times. And there is enough useful advice for me to recommend it to any entrepreneur in any kind of times

The reviewer is David Leonhardt, author of Climb your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness.

However, this is a difficult book to review since, as the title suggests, it is both broad and ambitious. Although there is no real danger of acquiring a full 'science toolkit for the mind', there is a splendid amount of well-presented science herein, and the best parts really do what the title suggests, and will teach you how to critique the not-so-good parts if you are persistent enough, which is even more entertaining than watching Star Wars and Lord of the Rings back-to-back. To score the book as a whole I gave each essay a mark in the range from one to five. The mean essay score is 3.2, but ten of the essays scored 5/5, so I give it an easy 5 stars on a value-for-money basis. (The modal mark is 5, the median 3. Six essays scored 1, six scored 2, eight scored 3, four scored 4. The essay on quarks by Alan H. Guth baffles me, so that might well be a five too for all I know, but I gave it a one on the basis that he should not be so out of step with the others - I understood the other three or four physics essays well enough.)

My top ten essays are:
1. 'What Happened Before the Big Bang?', by Paul Davies (physics).
2. 'The Joy of Water', by P.W. Atkins (physical chemistry).
3. 'Who Do We Blame For What We Are?', Jack Cohen (genetics: how DNA really works and why Jurassic Park cannot happen).
4. 'The Puzzle of Averages', by Michael S. Gazzaniga (danger in calculating averages from raw data and assigning meaning to results. Cases studies from psychology of language development in children, and physiology of human brain asymmetry. This essay does explicitly demonstrate the use of a tool for scientific reasoning.)
5. 'Ceteris Paribus (All Else Being Equal)', by Pascal Boyer (how to construct a hypothesis and move it towards a theory. Demonstrates use of simple coherent generalizations to separate the wheat from the chaff yet still recognise the weight of 'an embarrassing, unexplained fact'. Wonder stuff, an indispensible tool for the mind, you don't have to agree with his psychology of religion.)
6. 'Minds, Brains, and Rosetta Stones', by Steven Rose (philosophy meets psychophysiology: the mind-body problem and anti-reductionism, ie, levels of meaning and explanation in the various sciences. Sends B.F. Skinner, E.O. Wilson, and Jim Watson packing with a frog's leg.)
7. 'Study Talmud', by David Gelernter. (Computer science. Wow - any propeller-head who can explain the usefulness of Talmud study for the precision use of language in science and make me want to read up on the programming language specification for ALGOL60 and the supplementaries by D.E. Knuth as exemplars should get a prize. Supplies references with essay. Amusing sideswipe at the sociobabble of multiculturalism in postscript.)

GOTO StudyTalmud

8. 'What Is Time?', by Lee Smolin (physics).
9. 'Special Relativity: why you can't go faster than light', by W. Daniel Hillis (physics). Not as complicated as I thought, to my relief.
10. 'How Long Will The Human Species Last? An argument with Robert Malthus and Richard Gott', by Freeman Dyson. (On the right selection of a priori probabilities and assumptions in forming theory, cf Pascal Boyer. An elegant deconstruction of Robert 'Gloomy Science' Malthus' famous work on population growth, and Gott's similarly pessimistic and overly simple mathematical model of Man's not-special place in the universe.)

And here's what I liked best: At the end of each essay is a short bio sketch of the scientist/author. Included in those bios are the titles of other books written by those authors...and most of them write science books for laymen.