Another desk at the office is empty this week. Another co-worker packed up, leaving the place short-handed.
Another downsize and another reason for worry. What will you do if you’re next? You can’t just start over but you can’t retire yet, either.
So read the new book “Be Your Best Boss” by William R. Seagraves, and see if you have what it takes for a new beginning.
William Seagraves likes to drive.
When he’s with friends or colleagues, he’s always the first to offer his car, which is a good metaphor for his worklife: he likes to be in the driver’s seat in business. Yes, he enjoyed some autonomy in his last position, but he says, “I could not stand [the] lack of control.”
Seagraves left his corporate job and tried his hand at being an entrepreneur (“That scary 12-letter word”) in a few different ways before he discovered something he liked. Today, he runs a successful company that helps entrepreneurs get started; in this book, he offers guidance on deciding if owning a business is for you.
First: what’s your pain? Are you being forced out by younger workers? Downsized? Or are you disillusioned with corporate life? What are your passions? Knowing answers to those questions will help winnow your options and overcome the “Yeah, Buts.”
Be Your Best Boss
by William R. Seagraves
c.2016, Perigee
$15
208 pages
Look at your skills and experiences and understand that you’ve already won half the battle. You know how to play nice with others. You’ve grown a thick skin, “practiced making money,” and learned the rules of a lot of games. Many of the traits you’ll need to be an entrepreneur are inherent in you now.
Next, take the quiz Seagraves includes and understand that “size matters.” Are you more of a “Company of One” kind of person? Would you be better as “Boss of a Few”? Is a “Business of Many” more your style? And what about a franchise? Know the pros and cons of these entrepreneurial methods, take things “one step at a time,” keep in mind that change is the “only constant,” and remember that “… a smart business owner always plans for the exit, and there are more options than you might think.”
Self-employment: the most frustrating, irritating, horrible, wonderful, awesome, terrific thing you’ll ever do for yourself. Are you ready? “Be Your Best Boss” will help you decide.
As you might expect, Seagraves is mostly encouraging in his book. There’s a lot of surface positivity here, but entrepre-neurial readers with a mindset of doing it will absolutely find the help they need to do it right. I was happy to note plenty of quizzes to guide future business owners into the kind of endeavor that best fits their personality and work-style, and the Pros and Cons pages here are invaluable.
While younger entrepreneurs might appreciate this book, it really seems to be more for older readers who’ve been in the workforce awhile.
Corporate life may have soured for Boomers and early Gen-Xers, but “Be Your Best Boss” won’t leave them empty handed.
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s reviews of business books are read in more than 260 publications in the U.S. and Canada.