Business-plan

Our banker said the plan we wrote with this book was "the best plan he had ever read" and approved our loan before we filled out the application, without a credit check! This simple, easy to understand guide will be especially helpful to first-timers and people with short attention spans (like myself). This book got us $120,000 in startup capital and, 4-1/2 years later, a company worth $3,000,000. Buy this book!

No joke. I have to say, I'm no idiot. But writing a business plan was the most difficult thing I had ever had to write in my life. And I'm a professional journalist/writer. However, this book really helped me structure my proposal, leave out the non-core information, research my market and --very important-- understand what I could leave out of the b-plan. While the book de-constructs the business plans of other extremely successful companies, it doesn't bog you down with too much information. It presents useful, crystallized examples from those plans. The Best Practices, so to speak. Anyway, the best news: I just got funded for my web business (and in this down market, too!). It's called www.mediabistro.com and the comment I heard over and over from the VCs I spoke to was: "GREAT business plan." I have Mr. Gumpert to thank for that. --Laurel Touby

This book was recommended to me by an executive with 30 years of experience and 8-digit net worth as the "bible" for starting a business. I have used this book twice during the past 6 years to assemble successful business plans. The lessons in the book are not industry specific or date specific, but rather the wisdom that applies to any business. Some of the insights in the book were later worth a lot of money to my companies. My compliments to the author for not just putting together templates or example plans, but rather teaching the entreprenuer how to think.

How To Protect And Manage Your 401(k) is a straightforward guide by Elizabeth Opalka (a CPA and experienced tax lawyer) written especially for those 401(k) account investors seeking to protecting their hard-earned funds from the volatile fluctuations of the market, employer misconduct, excessive fees, and other financial hazards and missteps. A practical and "user friendly" guide written for men and women at all skill and experience levels of money management and retirement financial planning, How To Protect And Manage Your 401(k) is emphatically recommended for novice investors and has a great deal of value to offer even the more experienced 401(k) holders.