Book review: What you need to know about starting a business

Two quotes struck me when I started reading this book. The author George Francis Okello in Chapter 1 states, “…money is abstract but cash is definite.” In other words, Okello notes, a company may look sound in the financial statements it provides but if the cash flow is not good enough to take care of the business, the owners have a problem on their hands.

The second quote that stuck out was one in the preface that said, “Almost 100 per cent of non-academic business books are motivational. There is rarely informative and factual presentation to the reader. There is a proliferation of motivational rather than objective, factual, and informative ideas. It is this gap that the book comes to bridge.” Okello meets this objective quite well by going through each step any aspiring business owner should consider when starting out. 

The author starts by giving a good background of the business sector in the country, the common types of business, the kind of ownership and what each comes with. He also shares important statistics to provide evidence. Thereafter he details the processes a person should think about as they start, in seven chapters. These include determining the sources of capital to start off, deciding what business would earn profits, registering, marketing and running it. 

To help the reader understand the concepts, Okello uses an example – Eba Family Poultry Farm Ltd. When talking about creating a business plan, he shows how Eba Poultry Farm did theirs. When talking about how to do manage one’s finances and prepare financial statements, he shows how Eba Poultry Farm does this. This makes it easier for the reader to relate to the content and makes sections like this which tend to be intimidating, very much less so. 

A certified public accountant with 10 years’ experience in the profession, and in business training, one can say Okello writes this book with the experience of seeing business owners struggle with managing their finances. It is also possibly why he devotes space to discussing finances in detail. Chapters four and seven are filled with illustrations including tables, graphs and figures to help illustrate what the finances should look like. Although this might feel overwhelming to someone who has not studied or dealt with accounts, Okello shows the significance of learning how to manage the money because it determines whether they will succeed or not. 

Other notable areas he looks at include registering a business and dealing with taxes. There are a few downsides in the book however. In encouraging people to start their own businesses, the author seems to discourage people from being employed. Some of the quotes of his view on employment include: “We have seen that if someone wants to make money, they should go into business.” “There is no honest and fair employment that can come near business in minting money”. “Nowadays, there is what has come to be called modern slavery where skilled people are lured into slavery in the name of employment”.  Business creation should be encouraged at all levels, and while it is true that some employers exploit their workforce, demonising employment is not helpful. After all, many people have credited the capital they started their companies with as having come from where they were employed before they left. 

Others feel that the services they offer can only be best done while still in employment with an organisation that provides the leeway, resources, networks and capability to do so. Besides, even the businesses people create have to employ people, and, many women and men do both (own a business while being employed somewhere to make the most of both worlds). 

The grammar, punctuation, and loose sentence construction, make the reading in some parts a bit jagged. Tighter editing would have helped smoothen out these parts. The direction and advice is really helpful but it seems to focus on only one way to do business, which is somewhat limiting. 

The processes he talks about also seem to focus on fairly high capital and resource businesses. It would have been good to provide alternatives for much smaller businesses, or indeed how to grow from a small/informal one to a bigger/formal one. In the end however, the book greatly helps demystify the process of starting a business. Its strength is in the detail, the facts and the advice offered. Anyone looking to start one would certainly pick important lessons from it.

Title
Starting Your Own Business: A Road to Financial Independence
Author
George Francis Okello
Pages: 214  
Price: Shs30,000
Where:  Aristoc Booklex, Teacher’s House, Malaika Bookshop (Jinja), Amen Bookshop (Soroti), Kutesa Bookshop (Mbale).