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100
Best Retirement Businesses
By David H. Bangs Jr. and Lisa Angowski Rogak
Now that a new federal law allows people 65
and over to make any amount of money without having to give any Social
Security payments back, there's one less excuse for not finding lucrative
work after retirement. In this book the authors profile 100 possible
businesses, each explored via an interview with an owner about day-to-day
operation, the pros and cons of each business, ease of start-up, time
and money required, and long-term prospects. The people interviewed
include a clown, an herbalist, a potter, and a boat-builder, and most
of them are solo operators. Buy it
 101
Best Businesses to Start: Small Businesses with Big Futures
By Russell Roberts and the Philip Lief Group
After an opening section teeming with advice on how to generate capital,
create a business plan, and find lawyers, accountants, and bankers,
the author provides information on specific businesses. This includes
guidelines for start-up and operating costs, profit projections, and
working strategies. Roberts provides insights on both established and
emerging fields including Web-page design, ecotourism, and party planning.
This is a revised and updated edition of a book with 100,000 copies
in print. Buy it
 101 Best Home Businesses
By Dan Ramsey
The author divides his recommended home businesses into those requiring craft or physical skills (gardening, kitchen remodeling), professional operations (newsletters, resume writing), and service-oriented businesses (catering, child care). In each business he suggests how to get started, how to market yourself, and projects a reasonable range of earnings expectations. Generally he advises that you should thoroughly learn the business, check out the competition, and learn from the successes and failures of others. It's crucial, says Ramsey, to find a way of making your business distinctive. The author, who has written 25 books on business subjects, advises against home businesses that require large inventories or require a lot of advertising.
Buy it
 121
Internet Businesses You Can Start from Home: Plus a Beginners Guide
to Starting a Business Online
By Ron E. Gielgun
This book discusses the intricacies of doing
business on the Web, from estimating the expense of Web page development
to processing payments, and provides a list of useful questions to ask
potential site hosts. Geilgun, editor of an online magazine for Internet
entrepreneurs, also analyzes 121 businesses that could be successfully
pursued on the Internet, in each case estimating start-up fees, profit
possibilities, and the entrepreneur's necessary professional qualifications.
He also discusses promotional tactics available to each business, personnel
requirements, and opportunities for additional income. Geilgun's book
is for those who don't know much about the Internet, and in covering
a lot of ground it often skims the surface. Still, it's realistic, free
of hype, and frankly depicts the difficulties as well as the potential
of online businesses. Buy it
 The
Best Internet Businesses You Can Start
By Marian Betancourt
Betancourt's book explains how to succeed as an Internet business.
The author deals with setting up a Web site, raising start-up money,
brainstorming business ideas, and creating quality customer service.
Through dozens of profiles of profitable Web businesses, she provides
tips to those who intend to learn by example. The most interesting stories
are about the variety of one-person operations that provide services
like writing résumés or finding the right restaurant for
hungry diners. Buy it
Breaking
Through the Clutter: Business Solutions for Women, Artists, and Entrepreneurs
By Judith Luther Wilder
Wilder's how-to book, geared chiefly for people in the arts, gets
into nuts-and-bolts details about how to write a grant proposal, how
to find microlenders who do not require collateral, and how to use free
Internet resources. Women entrepreneurs will find guidance in how to
use their minority status to get free technical assistance from business
development centers and accountants working in the public interest.
Wilder, who has had amusing business adventures in places as distant
as Cambodia and the Soho area of Manhattan, has interlaced her personal
experiences into the book. The author is CEO of Women Inc., which helps
self-employed women compete in the business world, and previously wrote
For the Working Artist, a guide to help artists in the business
aspects of their careers. Buy it
 Consulting
for Dummies
By Bob Nelson and Peter Economy
Anyone with a skill or talent that can be
turned into a part-time or full-time career can be a consultant, say
authors Nelson and Economy, who also wrote Managing For Dummies.
An entry-level book that's easy to read, Consulting For Dummies
begins by explaining what a consultant is. The authors give advice about
assessing your skills, setting fees, writing proposals, creating a professional
image, and making an office at home. They also emphasize the value of
asking questions, soaking up information, and listening more than you
talk. Nelson and Economy apparently have a thing for lists of ten, for
they supply readers with Ten Ways to Use the Internet, Ten Ways to Build
Business with a Client, and Ten Biggest Mistakes a Consultant Can Make.
Two of the latter are: having only one major client and failing to market
for future business even when you have a good client list. The book
includes interviews with established consultants. Buy it
 Finding Your Perfect Work: The New Career Guide to Making a Living, Creating
a Life
By Paul and Sarah Edwards
The husband-and-wife gurus of self-employment have produced a comprehensive
guide to matching personalities with careers. Taking full advantage of it
requires a measure of commitment from the reader: Much of the 500-page text
consists of a series of exercises and self-analyses designed to help readers
decide for themselves what they want out of working life. The guide also
lists more than 1,600 self-employment occupations with measurement scales
for rating their compatibility with particular personal styles, resources,
and expectations. The exercises are interspersed with case studies of people
who have made the transition from employment to self-employment.
Buy it
 Guide
to Self-Employment:
A Round-up of Career Alternatives Ranging from Consulting & Professional
Temping to Starting or Buying a Business
By David Lord
Written for those who want to work for themselves but don't
know what they want to do or if they would be good at it, Mr. Lord's
book addresses the advantages and disadvantages of professional independence
and describes the options for those who want to try it. The book also
includes several quizzes designed to help readers determine whether
they can work effectively on their own. Buy it
 Harvard
Business Review on Entrepreneurship
This book is a collection of essays about entrepreneurship
by Harvard Business School professors and Harvard Business Review
contributors. Amar Bhide writes on start-ups, William A. Sahlman on
business plans, James McNeill Stancill on venture capital. Other writers
address technology, strategy and venture planning. Buy it
 Home-Based
Travel Agent: How to Cash in on the Exciting New World of Travel Marketing
By Kelly Monaghan
In clear language, Monaghan's guide explains selling, booking, dealing
with suppliers, and avoiding mistakes; and it advises on how to get
a commercial travel agency to appoint you as an extension of its operation,
a step that's usually necessary for the home-based agent. This book
helps the fledgling independent travel agent navigate through the muddle
of time zones, three-letter airport codes, passport and visa requirements
-- and even tells you the significance of all those numbers and letters
on airline tickets. Buy it
 Home
Business, Big Business: The Definitive Guide to Starting and Operating
On-Line and Traditional Home-Based Ventures
By Mel Cook
The goal, says Cook, is getting to the big
time, no matter how tiny a kitchen-table micro-business you begin, and
he laces his book with inspirational stories about legendary successes
such as Rebecca Matthias of Mothers Work, Philippe Kahn of Borland International,
and Lillian Vernon of mail-order fame. He supplies details on 100 home
businesses, offering advice about financing, advertising, and marketing,
filing taxes, and getting the right furnishings and equipment; and he
stresses how to keep costs down. Cook points out opportunities for the
elderly and physically challenged. This revised and expanded edition
includes a new section on the use of the computer and the Internet.
The author is a retired CEO who has worked at The New York Times, the
Times-Mirror Company, and ITT. Buy it
 The
Joy of Working from Home: Making a Life While Making a Living
By Jeff Berner
What are the two pitfalls that trap many home-based IPs? According
to Jeff Berner, they are the two extremes of working at home -- never
getting started and never stopping. Berner includes anecdotes and case
studies galore in a book that teaches readers to find the proper balance
of business and personal life. Aiming to be at once practical and inspiring,
the author writes of business plans, zoning regulations, and marketing
techniques and makes observations on self-discipline, isolation, interruptions,
and financial security. The combination works but the practical advice
is light and sketchy.
Buy it
 Moneymaking
Moms: How Work at Home Can Work for You
By Caroline Hull and Tanya Wallace
Time-management is a problem for every IP, but for a mother working
at home, it can be an enormous problem. The authors -- two mothers who
have worked for more than a decade at home -- cover everything from
choosing the right business, setting prices, handling problem customers,
and coping with a less-than-supportive husband. The book features checklists
and quizzes designed to ground the reader in reality, as well as the
experiences of other mothers who work at home.
Buy it
 Money-Smart
Secrets of the Self-Employed
By Linda Stern
Stern's book about how an IP should handle
money includes tips on checking accounts, record-keeping and accounting,
taxes, billing, creative credit-card juggling, and how to collect from
your clients. The author is especially good on how to deal with fluctuating
income; her advice on that subject includes 1) try for monthly retainers
from some ongoing clients, perhaps in exchange for a cut rate and 2)
keep looking for business even when you're overwhelmed with work, in
order to smooth out the cash flow. Too many IP's, she says, start looking
for work when the desk has been cleared of projects. Stern, a Washington-based
financial journalist, has produced a book that's well above the average;
even the design and layout of the book are highly professional and reader-friendly.
Buy it
 The
New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace
By Thomas Petzinger Jr.
The New Pioneers chronicles the unsung new leaders in small and medium-sized businesses who are leading an "irreversible revolution against a century of dehumanizing corporate values and practices." Petzinger says these vanguards of change are creating a robust and rewarding new economy through millions of uncoordinated reforms and leaving the lumbering corporate dinosaurs behind. Buy it
 On
Your Own: A Guide to Working Happily, Productively & Successfully from
Home
By Lionel L. Fisher
With chapters like "Tuning Your Psychic Engine" and "Outracing Mental Roadblocks," this is a psychological approach to working at home. Fisher doesn't write much about marketing and business plans -- instead, he covers such subjects as discipline, procrastination, and loneliness. The author also provides tests and quizzes to determine your emotional aptitude for the life of an IP. He writes thoughtfully and can be amusing while delving into the pleasures, the pressures, the perils, and paybacks of being boss free. Buy it
 Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambition
By Harriet Rubin
Soloing is above all an adventure of self-fulfillment, according to this unabashedly self-celebratory book. Rubin interweaves her own personal story with the experiences of such rugged individualists as Steve Jobs, Martha Stewart and Nike's Phil Knight. The author tells you how to know when you're ready to go solo, how to deal with anxieties about being on your own, and -- a highly practical bit of advice -- how to get your boss to initiate the separation, so that you are eligible for severance and unemployment coverage. Here's the author's advice on making plans: "There shall be no Plan B. Only people who have Plan B need one." Formerly the head of the business books imprint for Doubleday, Rubin is a contributing editor to Fast Company. Some of this material originally appeared in Inc. Magazine. Buy it
 Spare Room Tycoon: The Seventy Lessons of Sane Self-Employment
By James Chan
What it's really like to go it on your own is explored in this supportive and folksy book. The author offers an inside look at how to find peace, satisfaction and fulfillment as an independent professional. Not a book of balance sheets and business plans, it features instead dozens of stories about workplace pioneers living the independent life, their trials and tribulations, and how they define success. Chan describes himself as a captain of industry, "though my craft is more like a rowboat than an ocean liner. My empire is small, but I do rule it. And I would rather be captain of my dinghy than a junior officer on the Titanic." (Wouldn't everybody?)
Buy it
 Strikingitrich.com:
Profiles of 23 Incredibly Successful Websites You've Probably Never
Heard Of
By Jaclyn Easton
Who's making money online? Easton, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times,
examines 23 profitable cyberventures. Profiles include "Ask the Builder,"
a home improvement Web site, and "The Knot," an online wedding shop.
All profiles address tough questions about costs and revenues, and discuss
mistakes as well as successes. The common feature of all 23 online businesses,
Easton reveals, is excellent customer service. With an introduction
by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. Buy it
 Survival
Jobs: 154 Ways to Make Money While Pursuing Your Dreams
By Deborah Jacobson
You don't have to wait tables while you are
waiting for your career as an IP
to soar, says Jacobson. You can supplement your income with a satisfying
job that may even prove to be useful to your future as an IP. Being
an apartment manager, for example, could help develop your administrative
skills, and yet not take all of your time. Being a limo driver, video-store
employee, or airport employee at dawn, midnight, or on weekends can
help with the rent and groceries while keeping you free during normal
business hours for your principal career. The author, who has traveled
this road herself, offers frank no-nonsense advice on a wide range of
stopgap job possibilities, with ideas on how to get started, duties
and responsibilities, likely salary ranges, necessary skills, and sources
for initial contacts. Buy it
 True
Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients,
and Your Career
By David M. Maister
This book lauds old-fashioned values and deplores the quick buck.
True professionals, says the author, are technicians who believe in
what they do. Contrary to views sometimes expressed in the marketplace,
giving every client your best and never compromising your standards
is good business in the long run. Invest in self-betterment, and the
money will follow. The primrose path of maximizing billable hours creates
inefficiency, erodes customer confidence, and eventually hurts your
reputation -- and therefore your profit margin. Maister, a top consultant
to professional service firms, has written a rousing sermon that IPs
ought to give their attention. Buy it
 Un-Jobbing:
The Adult Liberation Handbook
By Michael Fogler
"This is a book with different ideas about how one pays the bills,"
writes the author. Fogler provides a number of ideas on how to live
without a full-time regular job, some information on how to make ends
meet, and a lot of inspiration about how to live in accord with your
personal values. The author also works as a musician and conducts workshops
on his free-spirited philosophy. Buy it
 We
Are All Self-Employed: The New Social Contract for Working in a Changed
World
By Cliff Hakim
Hakim promotes an "attitude of self-employment" whatever your work
status -- a workstyle that celebrates flexibility and combines independence
with interdependence in a workplace that's less hierarchical but more
demanding. According to the author, everyone in the current business
environment is de facto an IP -- employable as long as they provide
value, expendable when they do not. Buy it
 White-Collar
Sweatshop
By Jill Andresky Fraser
Wonder how your wage-slave friends are holding up under the strains
of mergers, downsizing, insane work schedules, shrinking benefits, and
corporate double- and triplespeak? Well, wonder no more. Jill Andresky
Fraser has spent five years documenting the fact that the 'cubed life
leaves a lot to be desired. And we mean a lot! The book features
numerous interviews with miserable wage slaves, which give a vivid,
sad picture of their plight. Fraser discusses the economic and historical
reasons that have created such a work world, and even traces a "path"
out of the white-collar sweatshop. Of course, if you're an IP the state
of dependent professionalism is no concern of yours. (Surprisingly,
Fraser doesn't see IP-dom as much more than an anxious -- and radically
unstable -- alternative to corporate life.) This book will remind you
of how lucky you were to have dodged the white-collar workshop. And
for those of you who've still got a foot in the corporate door, it might
give you a final push toward professional freedom. Buy it
 Working
Solo: The Real Guide to Freedom & Financial
Success With Your Own Business
By Terri Lonier
In Working Solo, Ms. Lonier, a consultant to small
and independent entrepreneurs since 1981, guides the inexperienced IP
through the processes of choosing and structuring a business, raising
capital without bank loans, getting and keeping clients, managing time,
and keeping financial records, filing taxes, and finding insurance.
This edition includes a section about Limited Liability Corporations
(LLCs). Buy it
 Working
for Yourself: Full-Time,
Part-Time, Anytime
By Joseph
Anthony
Many people in the corporate world dream of going out on their own;
many others are forced into it by corporate downsizing. Either way,
making the transition requires planning and the proper mind-set. Kiplinger's
Working for Yourself is a complete source of information for
anyone interested in starting a business, and attempts to help readers
answer the all-important question: Should I do it? Thoroughly updated
and revised, Kiplinger's Working for Yourself contains tips,
ideas, worksheets, and checklists to help keep readers on the path to
personal success and fulfillment through self-employment.
Buy it
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