Story with a Purpose: Starting, Sustaining, and Surviving as a successful business owner without selling your soul

A must read for anyone thinking about starting a small business or currently in the prelaunch or launching phase or an owner who is struggling with fear, doubt, or unsatisfactory results. A practical, experience-based, "how to start, sustain, and survive" book in the tough world of small business written in an "I've been there done that" style based on successes and failures of the author, not a bunch of theoretical bromides. Learn the keys to increasing your chances of success by first evaluating your risk exposure based on our human nature to be delusional or unreasonably optimistic in our expectations of wealth and success. Chapter 1: "Don't be a Sucker" and your "Entrepreneurial Right Stuff" are based on a profile of success-identified characteristics. Both areas represent baselines for potential success or failure. Proprietary questionnaires and optional evaluations for both aspects are provided free of charge. The book then takes you on a fast track of essential management and business tools and proverbs garnered from years of experience, not from books, but from the trenches. For example, planning, research, marketing, sales, budgeting, funding, misplaced pride, needed advisors and professionals, hiring, product fatigue, relaunch signs, and soul preservation. This is followed by the autobiographical journey of the author's business successes and failures with proverbial lessons learned and not learned, spanning decades, sectors, and both domestic and international arenas.