The Hindu Business Line : <I>Stories of success, failure, courage </I>

A barbeque restaurant in a town with only 1,800 people, but serving nearly 6,000 people a week. That's the success David Anderson tasted with his first Famous Dave's Barbeque Shack. "People were driving hundreds of miles just to come and get some of my famous barbequed ribs. The amazing thing is that we never advertised - it was all word of mouth!" he writes in one of the essays included in `Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur's Soul,' from Westland.

The book, edited by Jack Canfield and his team, compiles `short stories from entrepreneurs, both large and small, who share their experiences of success, failure and courage, with helpful advice mixed in.' The first `Chicken Soup for the Soul' book was published in 1993, reminisces one of the editors, Dahlynn McKowen. "The series continues to make publishing history, having released its 101st title in 2005."

Credit for much of the series' success goes to those who were willing to share their stories. Such as, Sue Ellen Cooper, who writes in this book about the Red Hat Society, "a self-proclaimed `disorganisation' with over 40,000 chapters in the US and 31 countries worldwide." Austin Ligon writes about a secret project called `Project X' in Circuit City - to enter the used-car market! "Eliminating the hassles that come with buying a car and giving customers a fair deal makes the car buying experience much less painful," he observes, about a CarMax, a Fortune 500 company that sold over 2.5 lakh used cars in the US last year. "Selling used cars is like any other retail business, and our innovative idea has fundamentally changed the automobile retail business."

Going to a B-school may help, but `other experiences can make you equally successful,' assures Jim McCann, founder of 1-800-FLOWERS, `one of the world's leading gift retailers'. Another of his `semi-commandments' is to forget margins. "Are you giving customers the goods and services that they want, when they want them? Satisfy those requirements, and the margins will take care of themselves."

John Assaraf, who has built four multimillion-dollar companies such as Bamboo.com and OneCoach, distils his inputs into three points: "Finding what you love to do, becoming excellent at it, then telling the whole world about it."

Inspiring insights.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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Stories of success, failure, courage