Success in Small Business Is a Laughing Matter

by J. Phillips L. Johnston

Book Overview

"The best book ever written about small business" is the superlative written by Esquire in a feature article profiling this best selling how-to book, written by the CEO of ten successful businesses.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1418446661
• ISBN13: 9781418446666
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Authorhouse
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Leading With Humor

Book Review: Success In Small Business Is a Laughing Matter The unique characteristic throughout Phil Johnston's Success In Small Business Is A Laughing Matter is that the seriousness of the content is written with a humorous, easy-to-read style illustrated with bizarre "doodles". His book on establishing and successfully managing any small business transcends the usual dry, business as usual, consultant-oriented, how-to manuals. Phil blends common sense strategies with actual examples from his own lucrative career to illustrate effective decision-making. Another distinguishing aspect of Phil's writing is his emphasis on the principles of character-driven leadership revealing the difference between managing things and leading (motivating) people to find both purpose and meaning in their work. In this regard, Phil's book has useful value for those of us in careers other than business and commerce. As a retired naval officer and school principal, I found many passages which affirmed many of the leadership behaviors which will also guarantee successful results in both military and education organizations. Regardless of working environment, Phil is adamant that a true leader must have the character and the courage to persevere despite sometime impossible odds or bureaucratic inertia. All readers will come away with the knowledge that success in any worthwhile endeavor is based on a positive set of values, an optimistic attitude, a sincere belief in the intrinsic worth of human beings, tenacity with open-mindedness, and understanding the tenets of authentic leadership. The most important of these is leading by personal example in a continuous, consistent manner so as to establish trust, integrity, and credibility among both colleagues and clients regardless of changing situational variables. This constancy of solid character based on strong faith, experience, and a positive set of core values sums up the essence of successful leadership with a sense of humor. Phil reminds us to always take your work and professionalism seriously, but not yourself, remembering that leadership is character in action in service to others. Lane S. Anderson, Ed.D. National Distinguished Principal, Captain -USNR(R), President, Real World Consulting

Nuggets of wisdom and advice

This book is written by an expert in starting, growing and selling small businesses. Phil Johnston gives helpful advice wrapped in a number of personal anecodotes and practical experiences, with a lot of humor tossed in to make his points. This book is written for the small business owner, particularly one who needs some direction and encouragement starting out or already in business but having difficulty making headway. If you read page 48 and 49, you will certainly see why the author has the credentials to write this book...and why you can't take your current success or failure too seriously but simply press on.

A Pastor's Guide for Understanding Business Leaders

This review is written by Horace A. Hamm, Pastor, Chaplain (Capt.) USNR (Ret.) "Phil Johnston's book, SUCCESS IN SMALL BUSINESS IS A LAUGHING MATTER, provides a valuable resource for every pastor, counselor, and religious leader to better understand the mind and challenges facing business leaders today. His great wealth of knowledge, experience, and uncommon skill with words provide the reader with ways and means of inspiring, leading, and serving today's business community in America. I believe that my fellow servant leaders will find this book to be invaluable as they glean new information about the world in which their business leaders operate every single day. I highly recommend this book"!

Head Start for our Youth Today

Candid, pragmatic advice rarely shared as openly and completely. Oh, to be the young grandchild of Mr. Johnston reaping the benefit of first hand mentoring augmenting this treasure book of business wisdom affording a head start I dare say few have in life.

A Witty Spoof of a Small Business Advice Book

I cannot imagine anyone ever writing a better spoof of a small business management book than this one! Does reading about business have to be boring? No, of course not. But most "authorities" on small business think that what they write has to read like what a professor might use to put students to sleep. Most small business books are aimed at those who haven't yet started one. Success in Small Business Is a Laughing Matter is an exception: It appears to be aimed at wannabe small business owners, but the humor will only be evident to small business veterans. I found that approach to be refreshing: Small business owners don't have anyone to talk to about their frustrations, challenges, and difficulties. Small-business veteran, J. Phillips L. Johnston, speaks eloquently with his humor to those battered, bruised, but wiser, veterans. How is the spoof organized? You begin with questions like why anyone should want to own and operate a small business and move on to exploring how you should go about doing so, especially by buying a poorly managed concern that you can improve. But the chapter titles soon indicate that humor is the purpose (as you go from "Considerations Before Owning a Small Business" to "With 'Gold Stars and Attaboys'" to "Going with the Over the Hill Gang" to "Steady as She Drifts"). The pages are overflowing with cartoons that capture the spoof character, beginning with an executive ladder that appears to be about to break from termite damage (an allusion to building a career working for someone else) and finishing with a picture of a celebration after leaving your employer as seen from the inside of beer cans. These illustrations are further turned into a spoof by using poor quality graphics and printing methods to make them appear to have been done by a child of ten working with an obsolete copier. Once inside of a chapter, the words quickly launch into spoofing examples and points: A discussion of how to use a small business to reduce taxes is built around a hypothetical cat ranch in Mexico that produces cat pelts (among other things). Another section looks at how high-pressure salespeople try to sell you franchises by describing a sales pitch not unlike what a boiler-room penny stock operator might employ. I particularly admired the way that the humor springs up on you in surprising ways. Many authors of spoofs feel constrained to follow one format for where they deviate from being serious into being funny . . . presumably feeling like you won't get the joke otherwise. Mr. Johnston is not so constrained. Sometimes there's no serious point . . . except through reacting to the humor. At other times, he goes part way in a serious vein . . . and then goes totally wacky. In other situations, he drops his wackiness into specific elements and quickly switches back to serious. I ultimately came to admire the genius of the book after seeing that Mr. Johnston cleverly employed poor typography (the pages lo