Save Your Small Business: 10 Crucial Strategies to Survive Hard Times or Close Down and Move On

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1. Bat January 7, 2010 6:14 am

   Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

   I’m very impressed with this book. It is well organized, well written, and it covers its subject matter well. I’m a stickler for book organization, and I would probably organize it a little differently if it were my book, but it’s content rich and easy to read. I encourage you to examine the “Search Inside” feature Amazon offers for this book. There you can take a look at the Table of Contents which includes an introduction, 13 chapters, and an appendix. I loved the Appendix entitled: How to prepare a profit and loss forecast and cash flow analysis. I wish more business plan books had a good solid chapter like it. The basic thrust of this book is covered in the following chapters: 5. Concentrate on what is really profitable 3. Control your cash flow 9. Handle layoffs fairly – and keep the best people 4. Minimize liability for your debts 13. Dealing with debt: Bankruptcy and its alternatives 8. Don’t waste your money on ineffective marketing I think the book went a little bit far by including Chapter 12: How to close down your business. This topic for me wasn’t really part of the subject matter of the book that was supposed to be about SAVING your business – not liquidating it. And if one feels the chapter should have been included, then I would have liked to have seen a chapter on selling a business in order to unload something that was unprofitable. By the way, a whole book could be written to cover these two topics, i. e. , liquidate/sell an unprofitable business. Although I liked Chapter 8, I thought it could have been better. It’s a tough subject to write about since nobody is supposed to waste money in marketing EVER. But when a business is tanking one must take particular care in not wasting precious limited resources. And marketing is one place that waste usually occurs. Just make sure that cutting waste does not involve amputating a “critical organ” of the business. Over the years I have read a number of titles written and published by Nolo. Lately I have been disappointed in a number of them. However, this book is a real gem. I cannot say enough good about it. 6 stars!

2. Tuvya January 7, 2010 7:28 am

   Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

   This book is intended as a guide. It’s for small business owners trying to decide how to respond to the recession. Change is forced on us. We can’t know how long the recession will last. This NOLO book gets us thinking about our options and provides good advice. The main options identified are selling, hibernating, hanging in there until prosperity returns and getting out. In the majority of cases (but not all), selling is not an option because there’s really no liquidity. The idea of hibernating is to cut costs and keep the business alive while putting our energies elsewhere. Most of the book deals with strategies and tactics for hanging in there. I think the topics regarding getting out were particularly useful. It’s worth reading the chapters devoted to hanging in there. Of course, many small business owners have read these topics before, such as managing cash flow and prioritizing debt payments. Maybe now it’s more meaningful because of a sense of urgency. I think the best points made about hanging in there were that most people choose that route and that we should be careful to avoid overworking ourselves. Maybe it’s just in our nature to keep fighting and not give up the business. Even if we do everything necessary to keep the business going, it helps to know all about liquidating and dissolving the business. Knowing how to get out and maybe even having a contingency plan might be a psychological lifesaver. It’s good to know what to expect and it would be ideal to do it in an orderly way, if that’s what it comes down to. That’s the most useful part of this book in my opinion.

3. Yu jie January 7, 2010 8:54 am

   Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

   “Save Your Small Business” is loaded with good advice, but the range of small business types is so broad it’s difficult to sort out the information that may help any one specific reader. I run a small business that creates web sites. My clients run small businesses of various other sorts, mostly different types of manufacturing. Some of them have gone out of business recently, others are hurting, and my business has dropped as a result, so I was reading with these real world scenarios in firmly in mind. Yet sorting out which information was valid for my business situation versus which applied to them or other types of businesses makes for interesting, but not necessarily useful, reading. Reading about the particular problems of a restaurant might intrigue me, but it doesn’t help me. The authors did try to cover a range of business types so you *will* find information important to you, no matter what your business is, but you’ll have to sort it out. Yet the advice in the book is good, if quite broad and general in application. The parts, strangely perhaps, I found most useful were about evaluating whether to keep going or pull the plug on your business, and then how to shut down. These can be emotional decisions–though it’s emphasized they shouldn’t be–and having a calm voice to remind one of what to do and how to do it can be immensely valuable. Good writing. Good reading. Good advice.