Enterprise Books

Comparative corporate governance has captured the interest of economists and legal scholars during the past two decades. With intensified economic globalization, it has become apparent that the public corporation, one of the keystones of the modern market economy, has produced very different systems of assigning authority in the firm around the world. In POLITICAL POWER AND CORPORATE CONTROL, Peter A. Gourevitch and James Shinn offer a powerful political explanation that challenges the assumptions of a literature dominated by economic theory.

According to the predominant account, corporate-governance systems can be classified in two groups, the diffuse shareholder model and the concentrated blockholder model. The former is characterized by dispersed ownership of publicly traded firms and developed capital markets, whereas the latter is characterized by companies that have one or several large, core shareholders and capital markets that are somewhat less developed. In a global perspective, diffusion of ownership is rare and essentially confined to the large economies of the United States and the United Kingdom, whereas the blockholder model persists in much of the rest of the world, including the large continental European economies and Japan. Diffusion of ownership is often seen as the endpoint of an evolutionary development because firms belonging to a purportedly superior system should be able to outcompete others in the global marketplace. This view has led Henry Hansmann and Reinier Kraakman to announce the impending "end of history for corporate law" ("The End of History for Corporate Law," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL 89 [2001]: 439-67).

Political scientist Gourevitch and former CEO Shinn propose a more complex picture that incorporates political mechanisms and the interests of other groups besides managers and shareholders, most importantly employees. Much of the economic and legal analysis of comparative corporate governance takes U.S. corporate law as its baseline, which in the popular perception leaves nonshareholder constituencies on the sidelines....

Gourevitch and Shinn share Mark Roe's view that political factors mainly determine corporate governance, but they try to make the analysis more complex. The institutions of corporate governance in a particular country depend on the political coalitions that managers, owners, and employees form and on which coalition wins the political struggle. The authors therefore identify three possible intercoalition cleavages: class conflict (owners and managers versus workers), sectoral conflict (managers and workers versus owners), and property and voice conflicts (owners and workers versus managers)....

All in all, POLITICAL POWER AND CORPORATE CONTROL provides a refreshing view of comparative corporate governance that strongly contrasts with the economic accounts dominating the field. It is a highly innovative and enlightening book that may be recommended to anyone interested in the debate.

The way corporates do governance is linked to the political makeup of their home countries, argues Peter Gourevitch and James Shinn in their important new book. Practices can't be imposed successfully from the outside or homogenized to some global standard; they bubble up from politics and pressures on the ground. Gourevitch, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego and Shinn, ex-CEO of Dialogic and now visiting professor at Georgetown University, uncover complex relationships between key market players. Are workers and investors natural allies, for instance? Well, in markets where job protection laws are widespread, safeguards for investors are weak. On the other hand, global capital moves like a magnet to companies and markets that feature the most minority shareowner protection-thus creating jobs. Read this to find the web of ties to political power that promises global diversity in governance practices for years to come.

According to Gourevitch and Shinn, "corporate governance - the authority structure of a firm - lies at the heart of the most important issues of society"... such as "who has claim to the cash flow of the firm, who has a say in its strategy and its allocation of resources."

The corporate governance framework shapes corporate efficiency, employment stability, retirement security, and the endowments of orphanages, hospitals, and universities. "It creates the temptations for cheating and the rewards for honesty, inside the firm and more generally in the body politic." It "influences social mobility, stability and fluidity... It is no wonder then, that corporate governance provokes conflict. Anything so important will be fought over... like other decisions about authority, corporate governance structures are fundamentally the result of political decisions." If the authors haven't hooked you on the importance of corporate governance by these statements on page 3, you aren't breathing.

I have long argued that creating sustainable wealth and maintaining a free society both require that institutional investors act as mediating structures between the individual and the dominant institutions of our time, the modern corporation. Democratic corporate governance will reduce the corrupting influence of unaccountable power on government and society. At the same time, by transforming corporations into more democratic institutions, institutional investors will instill them with their own values and will unleash the wealth-generating capacity of "human capital."

The model Gourevitch and Shinn set forth in Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance uses corporate governance as the dependent variable. "The arrow of causation flows from preferences to political institutions to corporate governance outcomes."

Whose preferences? Key, are those of owners, managers, and workers. How? "To obtain their preferred corporate governance outcome, they have to win in politics" by mobilizing allies outside the firm in systems the authors categorize as largely majoritarian or consensus. A dynamic feedback loop is thus created: "institutions shape policies that influence preferences. At the same time preferences induce institutional arrangements that increase the chances of preserving the policies desired by the preferences."

Treating the categories of owners, managers, managers and workers as homogeneous blinds us to coalitions. Through an analysis of available datasets, the authors demonstrate that outside owners are more likely to ally with workers to support transparency. Workers seeking to preserve their jobs are more likely to ally with managers; whereas, concern for pension funds motivates transparency and ability to exercise shareholder voice. Firm-centered managers prefer blockholding owners; those seeking maximum pay tend to support minority shareholder protections and vigorous labor markets.

Variation in corporate governance is not necessarily a function of economic stages, technology, or legal framework. Instead, Gourevitch and Shinn provide substantial support for the argument that "corporate governance arises from incentives created by rules and regulations that emerge from a public policy process, reflecting the power of alternative coalitions."

Although most academic writers and the press emphasize minority shareholder protections, Gourevitch and Shinn emphasize the need to also account for "degrees of coordination," which shape incentives to concentrate shareholding or sell down to a more diffuse market. These include product-market competition, price and wage mechanisms, labor relations, and social welfare systems. Each coalition seeks to persuade society-at-large to provide public policies in corporate governance that favor their own interests.

Systems shift when economic conditions change in big way. One of their most interesting discussions concerns their assertion that pension funds, which they define to include all forms of deferred compensation plans, may be most important as the next phase unfolds. "To understand the future politics of corporate governance debates, we will have to track fights about pension reform." "Pension plan regulations may turn out to be the tail that wags the corporate governance dog."

Defined benefit plans held 27% of all U.S. equities in 1989-95 but fell to 21% more recently. Mutual fund ownership, on the other hand, has climbed from 8% in 1990 to 28%. As more defined benefit plans (often jointly administered with employee or union representatives) are dropped, the future of corporate governance reform may lie with mutual funds. That tail, using the above analogy, seems to wag whenever management speaks.

They are required by law, as fiduciaries, to represent the interests of the investors whose money they oversee, not their own business interests, which may including landing contracts to administer 401(k) plans. Recently, Vanguard, Putnam, and Fidelity voted against shareholder proposals that would require directors standing for election to stay on only if a majority of votes are ''yes.'' Clearly, these funds were not voting in the best interest of owners. Mutual funds used to turn over 17% of their portfolio each year (1950-1965) but averaged 91% per year in 1990-2005, prompting John Bogle to remark the "rent-a-stock industry has little reason to care" about good corporate governance.

Gourevitch and Shinn find that "as worker-citizens acquire assets, they develop preferences for shareholder protections, thus adding pressure to the potential for a transparency coalition" and "assets in the hands of institutions that are accountable to their owners are likely to pay more attention to governance than are assets in the hands of autonomous managers." Perhaps an actual power shift will follow as mutual fund investors demand a role in mutual fund governance and those funds begin to represent their true preferences with corporations. If that happens, we might see a book that looks in reverse, tracing the effects of corporate governance outcomes on political institutions. "Socially responsible investment" will then take on new meaning and dimension.

In the meantime, Gourevitch and Shinn, note enough interesting correlations and observations to make the book must reading for any corporate governance policy analyst, especially those with global concerns. Here is a small sample:

-Blockholding and minority shareholder protections are negatively correlated.
-Minority shareholder protections and share price are positively correlated.
-Blockholding dips after increased minority shareholder protections are likely the result of sales by "new money" entrepreneurs, rather than old money blockholders (who may fear the tax collector).
-Blockholding may be preferred when uncertainty is high.
-State-owned enterprises are the most aggressive users of ADRs.
-Money flows toward firms and countries that provide shareholder protections. "No other group can have quite this direct an effect on the economy...the economic vote of investors counts greatly against the mass of votes in elections."
-Where job security is strong, diffusion is weak, and minority shareholder protections are weak.
-Weak intermediate institutions of finance, investment, pensions and stockmarkets are correlated with little voice for shareholder rights.
-"The U.S. Securities regulation system assumes that institutional investors and reputational intermediaries are the agents of investors." "Yet it has become increasingly clear to many observers that these private actors have multiple, complex incentives..."
-"As much as 10 percent of the total ownership of U.S. public firms was transferred from the existing stockholders to senior managers through stock option grants between 1990 and 2000."

Their treatment of the definition of corporate governance from various perspectives is also an eye opener. Here's a flavor of that discussion:

-Where the political scene is capital versus labor, "the investor coalition defined corporate governance in terms of 'meeting the challenge of financial globalization,' adherence to the OECD Principles, fulfilling 'international standards of governance in the global competition for capital.'"
-From a labor power position, "blockholders and foreign portfolio investors were castigated as selfish oligarch in league with the heartless IMF and the faceless gnomes of Zurich."
-Those favoring the corporatist compromise made much of managers and workers "being in the 'same boat' together, of corporate governance choices that ensured that firms 'served the nation' in a 'stable' economy - with owners dismissed as oligarchs or 'speculators.'"
-Countries shifting transparency coalitions and managerism alignment "witnessed predictable invocations of corporate governance that protected 'the little guy, ' the individual investor,' the widow and orphans," such as speeches by U.S. SEC commissioners.
-"Meanwhile across the alignment divide, managers compete to hijack the notion of corporate governance for their own purpose...'building shareholder value."

Shareholder value is partly about efficiency. But Gourevitch and Shinn raise serious issues of distribution, job security, income inequality, social welfare. Will firms of the future be efficient at creating a healthy environment and general prosperity or efficient at putting money into the pockets of CEOs? Political Power and Corporate Control provides a groundbreaking guide, based on empirical evidence, for anyone concerned with the direction of corporate governance and society.

My mother in-law was over at my house and we started talking about Y2K. See asked me to explain how this will affect her.

The problem I've always had is trying to explain to a non-technical person what it really is.

This book explains in simple terms what Y2K is all about and how to prepare for it.

I have also fond myself quoting from this book to my co-workers.

Pam Wylie has written an excellent book on Y2K. It discusses what the problem is, how wide the impacts might, and how to deal with it. The orientation is the average citizen, small business person and community organizer. She knows that Y2K can be dealt with, and her goal is help them get the problem solved. Pam is not one of the doom-and-gloomers that are so prevalent these days. Pam deals with the technical details of Y2K in a straight-forward, easy-to-understand manner.

This book is a must-read for small businesses and community organizers.

Time is really short, folks. Get your copy, and get crackin!!

This is a great book! I found the section on CROW (Century Roll-Over Weekend) extremely valuable and concise. I have referred to this book many times on the job and at home. I have shared it with a community leader and would recommend it to anyone interested in practical advise for stepping into the Year 2000.

This is a superb book. It's short easy to digest and contains just the right amount of detail. IT looks after key positions like Lucena and Philidor but also goes into the plans for
several key rook endings. Emms Survival guide to rook endings is more comprehensive but i much prefer this book

This book will not waste time on hundreds upon hundreds of tedious Rook and Pawn positions and variations. It will, however, give you the ideas on how to play these types of endings. Ideas are easier to memorize than variations - with the right idea, the correct variation will not be so hard to find. It even teaches how to play the "inferior" side of a rook ending. This book helped me improve not only my endgame play but also enhanced my game overall. Best buy for the buck. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This book helped me to understand rook & pawn endgames like no other before it. I had previously read Pandolfini's Endgame Course, Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals, Tarrasch's Game of Chess, and Reassess Your Chess (which has a few pages on the subject). These are all good books. But I never fully comprehended rook endings until I read this book. I finally understand the Lucena & Philidor positions and Why They Are So Important. And much more... This book is cheap, short (only 70 pages), and chock full of extremely useful information. I am a strong B player and just beat my first expert due to this book!

This is an appropriate book for all ages. My 7 year old loves to read the book to me every night. She is also enjoying listening to the download and reading along. Highly recommend this book. It would be a great holiday gift.

Our kids love to read this book every night before they go to bed. Any more coming?

Prayer Power is great way to help kids pray. Jilly has an awesome way of communicating so both kids and adults can understand how easy it is to pray to our loving God. It brings a smile to my heart! I love that there is also an eLIVE book, a free audio book download.

Davenport presents a practical roadmap for process improvement and process innovation which I have found very useful as a practitioner. Although not prescriptive, the text provides practitioners with useful very insights which can form the basis of an organisation's business process innovation/improvement methodology.

Thank You to Tom Davenport.

This is a wise author who wrote a great book in the early 90's. It was eclipsed a bit by Hammer and Champy's "reengineering the corporation." It has never been given the press it rightfully deserves. I read this book in 1997 and have found it to be useful over and over again. This is a book of important business insights regarding process improvement through technology. Keep in mind that the book was written prior to the internet becoming mainstream. This author saw the future and wrote about it before it happened on a wide scale.

Any business person can draw from the wealth of knowledge in this book.

The book is a must read for business analysts, managers, and project leaders in the Information Technology field.

This book, Hammer and Champy's book, Books by H James Harrington, and some of the newer Six Sigma books can form a great curriculum for those professionals undertaking process improvement initiatives in their companies.

Change is constant. When will process improvements cease to be needed? This book looks at the dynamics of process innovation/change and how it pervades organizations.

In economic downtimes, innovation can spur growth. Leaders in companies can improve their competitive advantage through process innovations and benefit from the efficiencies and savings gained through process improvements.

This is a well-written book on the subject of process or business reengineering. It is written in a non-technical language, wastes few words, and covers the entire spectrum of topics that are essential to a successful reengineering effort. The discussions place a significant emphasis on the role that information or computer technology play today in the reengineering effort, particularly how this technology can facilitate the overall effort. I found the book largely sticking to the overall thread however at times it did become a wee bit academic to flip through the sections. All in all, a very good read.

a must for any apo consultant/user. Describes a-z in detail and keep it simple. Written from a teacher's perspective unlike a practitioner's. Strongly recommend.

I worked from 2000 thru 2006 for a company that implemented four of the APO modules. Our training was hands on without formal SAP training and so even though I worked with the product daily there was a lot about what to do that remained a mystery. The SAP on-line help just doesn't cut it.

This book has been great. Although my main focus has always been SNP, so much of any APO implementation requires the same actions to take place. This book lays out what has to be done and why in a very clear and understandable way.

It was well worth the money.

I am a PP/DS consultant in Korea.
I feel thirsty general guide book for this subject and found it finally.
Both overall constitution and details are very good with SCM 5.0 version.
I'd like to recommend this book to all beginner and skilled PP/DS consultant.

I come from an art background, and I'm always a little worried about becoming the proverbial, "starving artist". This book provided me with a wealth of knowledge to get started on the right foot. I'm writing up my first year's business plan, creating a portfolio, and will begin marketing soon. This book is an excellent resource for anyone getting started.

I found this book very informative with many professional examples. It gave me an insight into all the necessary steps to start my own woodworking business. Well worth the money!

This was a Christmas gift to my son, our family handyman who loves to dabble in wordworking. Family and friends have encouraged him to quit his job as an Engineer and do this full-time. He has accumulated an impressive collection of carpentry tools and books on "How to build....." (You name it and he has a book on how to build it.) Of all his books, this is the only one that provided him with a thorough insight of the business aspect of woodworking. He said this book is the only one that gave him the proper "business tools" to decide whether or not to make a career change. He hasn't made a career change yet, but reading this book has helped him understand the industry a lot better and what he will have to do to turn his hobby into a viable business to support his family.

As Dean of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University in California, Ira really does get what it takes to survive in today's business climate.

Finally, one place to turn to for a scholarly yet inspiring look at the social responsibility movement. Jane Nelson and Ira Jackson have pulled together the fractionated resources, rationales and best practices into a cohesive guide. It's the big shoulders on which the next iteration of capitalism can build. A valuable resource for the practitioner, and inspiration for the 'global citizen' in all of us. Elsie Maio

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)-how well businesses behave in the marketplace as citizens and what they contribute, beyond how they actually run their businesses-has been on the corporate agenda for several decades, and served as a proactive way for corporations to demonstrate core `values' beyond the profit incentive. Some companies, such banking institutions, came to table reluctantly, and only after being coerced by the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which mandated that banks increase lending broadly in inner-city (and often impoverished) communities where they did business. Other international companies, such as Anita Ruddick's worldwide chain, The Body Shop, took it upon themselves to aggressively do business in a principled, values-defined way.

Not all corporations were so inspired, of course, to do good; and most businesses viewed CSR as being limited to charitable donations and philanthropy, not to a systemic and strategic choice for embracing social values to create core value for stakeholders. In the late 1990s, when American saw their financial wealth increase by $3 trillion a year for the years 1998-2000, at a time when the Dow had rocketed to the11,000 level, stakeholders were less concerned with how well the corporation was doing for society.

But those days are over, at least for the foreseeable future, and businesses now must react to public demands for better governance, transparency, and accountability. They have to do this on their own, building trust from stakeholders, enlarging their reach to fuel economic growth, tapping their `distinctive competencies' to harness innovation for public good, and do so while adding real value (in the form of profits) while they create values, grow stock price, improve employee satisfaction, and enhance their global brands as a fundamental part of doing business.

A new approach for helping corporations to achieve that ambitious task is Profits With Principles: Seven Strategies for Delivering Value With Values, by Ira A. Jackson and Jane Nelson, both fellows at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, a book that uses case studies of companies that have created incremental value for their firms while bringing values into the way they do business.

They also suggest that companies have to react to a crisis in confidence facing business, that while "two-thirds of Americans think that corporations make good products and compete well in the global economy . . . only one-third feel large corporations have ethical business practices." Those attitudes inevitably affect share price and sustainable competitive advantage, issues that reflect directly on company worth, shareholder return, and brand equity. In fact, Jackson and Nelson suggest that intangible assets-the very kind CSR activities help create-contribute significantly to corporate value, with some 50 to 90 percent of value being based on those assets, depending on industries. "They are often spoken about in terms of different types of capital," they say of these intangible assets, "intellectual capital or human capital; social capital or relationship capital; and environmental capital."

To leverage these assets, businesses have to start thinking in a new way about creating long-term profitability and sustained competitive advantage. In fact, corporations have to begin thinking more like entrepreneurs, who exploit opportunities to create a new way of doing business, and who use what is termed "incongruous situations" to drive growth strategies in innovative, revolutionary ways. For businesses, this will mean fostering an intrapreneurial effort from within the organization, using the techniques and vision of entrepreneurs and driving change from inside existing corporate models.
One important prescription being suggested is external innovations corporations can use to create value while effecting positive social change and benefits. Jackson and Nelson's suggestion, for instance, to "spread economic opportunity," shows how companies can have a profound and direct effect on economic and social systems, not only in the immediate communities in which they do business, but also beyond with a national and global reach.

A salient example the authors provide is the case study of how BankBoston achieved a startling resurgence in profitability and influence "consistent with values and a concern for purpose beyond profits." The case study describes how the Bank established a new paradigm by beginning to address serious societal concerns, among them the difficulty experienced by inner-city minority residents of obtaining credit and mortgages. BankBoston proactively answered that need by setting up First Community Bank, a bank-within-a-bank designed to address the specific needs of the once-marginalized, largely-minority population of urban Boston.

What has now become Fleet Community Bank since the 1999 merger of Fleet and BankBoston, Jackson and Nelson note, "has grown to 157 inner-city branches, with 1,500 employees in five states. It has $5 billion in deposits, a $14.6 billion commitment to mortgage and small business lending-one of the largest by any bank-and an innovative inner-city investment bank." And the value created for shareholders by embracing values? BankBoston's share price, which in the early 1990s had been as low as three dollars a share, by the late 1990s climbed to $118 a share and saw a market capitalization exceeding $15 billion.

Another innovative principle, "engage in new alliances," calls for shifts in thinking about social responsibility and the way businesses impact on the communities where they operate. Here the authors suggest a change in the way corporations make philanthropic contributions, so that instead of the "stand-alone, one-way transactions" common to traditional corporate giving, `strategic partnerships' are established between the business and the recipient. These relationships are much more dynamic, sustainable, and beneficial-both for the recipient nonprofits and for the businesses who become their sponsors.

The core belief here is that companies concerned with both profit making and providing social benefits-creating value and values-outperform businesses that focus exclusively on financial gains. That view is supported by other studies which looked at the relationship between the financial and social performance of ninety-five companies. Reviewing the findings of that research, Lynne Sharp Payne, a professor at Harvard Business School, wrote "that only 4 of the 95 studies found a negative relationship between social and financial performance. Fifty-five studies found a positive correlation between better financial performance and better social performance."

No one suggests that transforming corporations into socially-responsible entities is an easy task. But each time a Ken Lay walks into a Federal courthouse to answer for grave corporate misconduct, it is yet another compelling argument why companies that do not embrace a strategy for delivering value with values do so at the risk of losing competitive advantage, brand equity, and a leadership role in the global marketplace.

This book is inspiring!
It is one of those rare books that you feel you must re-read at least once every year.
The author uses her own life experinces to provoke the reader to reflect and gain perspective on their life.
It is such an easy read and pulls you in right from the beginning.

This is a book that will touch everyone that reads it! The author uses experiences from her own life that all can relate to and skillfully points us toward a way to live more fully. Her examples are great reminders that we all experience loss and it's OK to grieve our losses. The more important question becomes how are we truly going to live? A quick read that will bring smiles and tears and will refocus you on the things in life that really matter.

Knowing the author personally has only given me a greater appreciation for the book that she wrote. Jana took over a teaching position at a time that the special education students and teachers (myself included) were at the final stages of losing a dearly loved friend and fellow teacher to breast cancer. Her warm spirit and deep insights into this experience helped us to see it as a time to remember our love for Judy and what she helped to accomplish in the time she was with us.
Jana gave me a copy of the book while I was in the depths of grieving and as I read it (all in one night) so many things about how I was feeling became clear. I was not alone in my journey through this grief. Others had felt the same way. I cannot recommend this book more highly for everyone, even if you have not experienced the death of a loved one. This is more than a manual for coping with death. It is about the celebration of life.

This is a workbook. If you want a real plan to make money online, go through the steps in this workbook and you'll end up with a real business, which will pay you every month!

This is not some kind of fantasy guide, where some "guru" tells you about a pipe dream that will most likely never happen for you. Nowhere does this book say you'll make a million dollars in your underwear or anything like that. This book is about the creating income which comes in a little at a time, adding up to more and more money for you, the more you follow the process.

Yes, the system works. I know because I've done it. My friends have done it. My own father has done it. It's that easy.

What's the trick? You simply have to follow the process. You can't try to shortcut or outsmart it.

This book is not for everybody. If you're looking for some kind of fantasy, where you drive around in a luxury car or hang out on a sailboat all day, this isn't it. This isn't the book for you, if you want to become a "guru" in this business. Sure, it can help you get started on all of this stuff, but it's not the end game.

So who is it for?

I recommend this book for anybody who is looking to get started at online marketing, or simply wants to make a few extra bucks online. It will take you a little time (maybe 5-6 weeks) to see results, but once you do, you'll want to do the process over and over again.

I found this book to be very helpful. As the previous reviewer mentioned, it is a workbook, so if you're looking for somebody to tell you exactly what to do, it may not be for you. But if you're looking for something that will help you to develop a PERSONAL BUSINESS PLAN that meets your needs and is both easy and fun to follow, I think you'll enjoy it.

So many of these "online marketing" books are total BS, designed as lead generation tools for the authors to get your name and address and sell you something additional. Many are mashed together compilations of various authors, with each taking a chapter. Others are 200-page sales letters. And even worse, some are just transcripts of recorded conference calls (also sales letters).

This one has actual info which you'll find helpful. It has quick and easy ways you can get a business started which will actually make you money, not a pipe dream that will only cost you money. It's not a fairy tale, so if you're not willing to do a little work, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a customized plan that will help you to make money quickly, this is it.

About me: I have been making money online for a few years now. I am not an expert, but not exactly new either. My friends wonder how I am doing it and this is a book that I recommend to them. Making money online really is simple, if you know how to do it. :) This book will show you how.

When I received this book, I promised myself I would use it first then come to Amazon to write an honest review. It's been six weeks since it arrived.

With the help of this book, I chose a niche (rose gardening) to market in, created a blog, promoted that blog like crazy and, as of yesterday, have made just over $1000 in affiliate commission from the ebooks, products and infoproducts I write about on my blog. I am so thrilled! Next month, I know I will make more.

I wouldn't have gotten this far if it wasn't for this book.

Like so many people, I got lured into Internet marketing by reading all the stories about how easy it is to make money online and how some Internet marketers are making a million dollars in one day. I wanted to get in on that. But where do you start? When I began doing research on how to make money online, I got so overwhelmed. I took a lot of courses, listened in on many teleconferences and bought a lot of how-to infoproucts. My head was spinning from the many directions I could choose from and all the things I had to learn.

"Quit Your Job" simplified things for me. I'll be honest, I was hoping this book would be a "how to make money" recipe book that I could follow easily and money would be waiting for me once I completed all the steps. This book does give instructions that work (things like how to do article marketing, building a mailing list, getting traffic to your site). But most importantly, the second part of each chapter has questions that the reader is encouraged to answer on their own. Those questions helped me to stop and think about what kind of online business I want to create and what I was willing to do to build it.

It was the chapter on how to find a profitable niche that changed everything for me. Once I finally understood how to pick a good one, it was such a relief. And then the fun (and the work) really began.

This book gave me the chance to stop spending hours online endlessly researching and got me focused enough to take ACTION.

I became familiar with David Hooper through his books on the Law of Attraction. I am so glad he came out with this one because even after my very first affiliate sale (which was only $11.11!) I knew making money online was going to make my life better.