I was recently given a copy of “Sack Your Boss” by Jonathan Ross, to review (thanks to The Business Zone)

“Quit your job and turn your passion into your profession” is says on the cover. If I’d seen that when I was still working for a boss I would have totally ignored the book as I loved my job (most of the time anyway). However I was made redundant and started my own business, so the question is “Would this book have helped me when starting any of my businesses?”

Let’s look at what is covered in this book. First off the author asks the question “Do you hate your job enough to sack your boss?”. If the answer to that question is no, then stop reading this review now.

Still reading? OK, perhaps you do want to sack your boss. Jonathan talks about goal setting and the pros and cons of working for yourself vs working for your boss. A few short pages just to check out whether you really want to do this and why.

The next section on “Setting up your business” covers self-management, finance & accounts, professionalism and planning. All very obvious stuff (IMHO). He does talk about mistakes he made when starting to work for himself – I’ve got to be brutally honest and say some (most?) are plain dumb and anyone with any common sense would not have made them. Perhaps I’m being unfair as he was quite young at the time and hadn’t got the life experience I had when I started my first, second and third businesses.

The part that interested me most was in the “Running your business” section – “A crash course in marketing”. Unlike many other business books he draws a clear distinction between marketing and sales (hurray!). He covers 16 different marketing ideas – some of which you will want to use from day one (or earlier) and a few you might want to leave until year 2 or later. They are all cheap (or free), costing mostly your time. “Running your business” also covers selling and growing your business – both useful, but some you may never use, especially if you want to keep your business as you only (he covers a bit of recruitment & managing people). There’s a section on exit strategy, which is a bit confusing – I guess because he hasn’t actually exited his business yet and can’t speak first hand about it (unlike the rest of the book).

My verdict – if you are thinking about starting your own business, borrow the book and read it. If you find it useful, then go and buy it. Me, if I borrowed the book, I’d make notes from the “Marketing” bit and then return it.

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