Other-capital

Surprisingly, the advice contained herein -- if made more generic in your mind -- is excellent advice for entire areas of your life. Sounds hokey, true. But honestly, boiled down the advice can be listed as:

1. Identify what the problem is. Do your research until you really understand the causes of the problems and their many effects.

2. Identify how you will know when you have made the problem better. How will you know when the problem has been alleviated? What intermediate steps need to be taken? How will you measure your progress along the way?

3.Identify what tools are available, and which are still needed, to move towards a resolution, or diminution, of the problem. Be specific here. Vague generalities are useless, but the brass tacks of a solution are absolutely priceless. Who has access to these tools? Who can make difficult things easy?

4. If you are asking for someone to help you with this problem, present the whole equation to them in a light that makes the most sense to *them*. This doesn't mean to lie, or exaggerate. It only means to focus your proposal in a way that makes them see it most personally.

5. Proofread what you have written, to be sure it says what you want it to say. Then proofread it again. And again. Get it right, because it is a hard and fast representative of you. This should be true in everything concrete you put out in the world with your name on it.

Now, all of this can be applied to writing a grant proposal. And much of it can be applied to the other things in life. Filling a job position, finding a home, working out a deteriorating relationship, educating yourself or your children ... you name it.

It's so rare that a book directed at an audience of specialists resonates with so much broadly applicable truth ... and it was such a delight to find it. I plowed through this book last night, reading every word, applying its advice mentally to all sorts of issues in my own life. I am pleased to report that it opened my eyes to solutions that had eluded me until now.

Wonderfully written, amusingly told, full of great advice to writers of all persuasive materials, this book is a gem.

This book was so startlingly useful that I had to buy it. It will likely become your most dog-eared fundraising guide.

The heart of the book is a clear guide to how to write a great proposal, but other valuable topics are covered, including newsletters, case statements, interviews, and the like.

In one section, the authors mix genuine examples of great fundraising writing with an imaginary proposal to fund the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. They not only convince you to help build the Brooklyn Bridge, you're ready to buy it.

The bridge is not for sale, but this book is. It is well worth its price of two fast food lunches. Buy it, read it, and be happy.

I just resgined from a firm to start my own practice. While there, I was discussing this book with one of the firm's Partners. When I suggested the radical idea of no timesheets, he replied, "how will you know the people are working." As this book effectively points out and analyzes, firms just aren't hiring the right people!

The book does get a bit redundant at times, and does put forth some ideas that seem a bit crazy (such as 100% money back gaurantees in your engagement letters if the client doesn't like the service). However, I think that overall the book does make some very excellent points. Firms that are courageous enough to make changes based on ideas generated from this book may be the "firms of the future"

Finally, despite the title, this book is for CPAs and CPA firms. Lawyers and other service providers will not get as much out of it. For those starting firms, or for those looking for ideas to improve their current firms, this book should help.

After reading the first two editions of Ron's book, I didn't think he would be able to improve much on the message of switching to Value Pricing. Boy, was I wrong! He and Paul Dunn have done an amazing job of getting the reader to think differently. As with the radical theme of trashing the timesheet in "The Professional's Guide to Value Pricing", they do a masterful job of convincing you why the old "Revenue Equation" must be replaced with the forward-thinking "Profit Equation". They go on to introduce other new topics not found amongst professional services firms such as developing your Intellectual, Structural and Social Capital, emphasizing effectiveness over efficiency and of course Value Pricing. As is typical of Ron's writing style, and complemented by Paul, their reasoning for making this paradigm shift is well supported and well reasoned.

I've been using practicing Value Pricing for about 5 1/2 years now and I can tell you that it works. In my own firm, I've slowly begun implementing some of their new concepts but with a new perception. I'm convinced these principles will work for me and they can for you as well.

After reading this book, you'll definitely want to keep it handy as a useful reference guide!

Although aimed at the professional firm, the book is relevant to all service businesses.

If you attended Paul Dunn's seminars and read Ronald J Baker's books, then this will be a useful refresher. If you haven't - then oh boy what a ride! Let the journey begin.

In addition this book introduced to me the concept of Intellectual Capital, a framework that I'll certainly use in the future.

As to the advice in the book, it ranges from the blindingly obvious ("Don't print your business plan on paper that's wrinkled or stained with coffee") to the bland and fairly obvious ("Shop around for the best bank loan rate") to the downright goofy ("Be sure to take all the free promotional items you can while visiting banks to get their loan rates").

The book is sprinkled throughout with "motivational quotes" and a sort of cheerleader attitude, but not much real information or help. It seems to be aimed more at the person who thinks they have a great idea but is afraid to talk to a bank at all than the person who's in a small business and needs financing. The general writing seems to take the "you can do it if you just have the gumption and use some of these little tricks" approach.

I thought Arkebauer's "Going Public" had more information on small business financing in general than this book did, even though "Going Public" is mainly oriented towards real IPOs.

The author provides "insider" tips of how and where to locate capital for your business. The Resource Guide is a very comprehensive source of micro lenders, government loans, and free resources for each state. By providing an extensive Resource Guide along with the "how to" information, you have everything you need to start finding money for your business.

The book also lists a number of things to avoid in seeking capital for a business.

The Resource Guide alone is worth the price of the book. I was very impressed at the number of sources that are liseted for each state. If a person is intimidated with the "money game," this book is invlauable in providing the information that gives one the self-confidence a person needs in order to deal with investors.

This is akin to a recipe book written by someone who thinks cooking is impossible, so all he can really write about is grocery shopping. NOT recommended! A much better book is "Trading on the Edge" by Deboeck.

The only cool thing about the book is that you can use it to impress your friends/enemies with the title and loads of arcane equations inside.

the title of the book is mis-leading... it would be as if
a calculus textbook were to call itself "calculus in the markets"
simply because they have a section on compound interest...

2) there is a lot of hand-waving in the theory that is covered.
the author does cover a lot of ground, so it is understandable
that more details and explanations of certain subjects are
not provided. this book *is* a good bibliographic reference,
for example if one is interested in a particular topic, it
could be looked up in this book, and references to all the
seminal works are given.

3) there are better books out there that cover similar subject
matter, and *are* centered on the marketplace: for example,
Mandlebrot's "Fractals and Scaling in Finance", Lo and
MacKinlay's "A Non-Random Walk Down Wallstreet", William Brock
et al "Nonlinear Dynamics, Chaos, and Instability", and
several books by Edgar Peters.

If you are interested in the mathematics of chaos and
dynamical systems, this might be a good book for you.
However, this book is densely packed with mathematics
and unless you have a very solid mathematical background,
Peitgen, Jurgens and Saupe's wonderful book "Chaos and
Fractals: New Frontiers of Science" might be a better choice.
This book covers the basic mathematics of dynamical systems
but does not delve into graduate level mathematics.

If you are thinking of buying this book because its title
mentions markets and non-linear financial time series,
save your money. The author spends five very mathematically
laden chapters discussing dynamical systems. There is nothing
solid on applying the mathematics of dynamical systems to
financial time series other than the observation that they
sure seem chaotic. At the very end the author weakly suggests
that dynamical systems theory might be applied to market
information, but he provides no examples.

People who develop successful market models usually don't
publish much on them, since there is a lot to be gained
by trading them. So one cannot catagorically state what has
and has not been done. However, I know of no case where
dynamical systems mathematics has been used to successfully
provide predictive models (e.g., models you can trade and
make money on) of financial markets. This book certainly does
not live up to the promise of its title.

There are a number of good book on time series analysis and
modeling. For example, see "Wavelet Methods for Time Series Analysis" by Donald B. Percival, Andrew T. Walden. This book
does not deal with financial time series directly, but it does
deal with "non-stationary" time series.