Business for Beginners: From Research and Business Plans to Money, Marketing and the Law

Most small business guides claim to be for entrepreneurs, but either talk over their heads or treat them like they have no business savvy. The solution? Business for Beginners.

Written by an entrepreneur, it targets the 13 big questions (and all the other questions that come with) that entrepreneurs need to consider to build a successful business, with the answers that will set them on the right track.

Frances McGuckin and SmallBizPro are dedicated to reaching the small business owner, speaking constantly across North America and working closely with the small business associations that entrepreneurs turn to for help.

This book contains clear advice along with case studies, examples, checklists and “success strategies.” The essential advice includes:

• Knowing where to start
• Understanding legal and tax requirements
• Understanding financial statements
• Organizing accounting and paperwork
• Developing a winning business plan
• Building entrepreneurial skills
• Marketing on a budget

About the Author

Frances McGuckin is an award-winning and bestselling author, small business expert, professional speaker, and columnist. Traveling across North America, she delivers passionate, powerful, and information-packed messages to associations whose membership comprises largely of small businesses, to small business development center conferences, and to corporate conferences where the corporation’s bottom line relies on the success of their small business dealers or distributors.

Business for Beginners, Frances’s first book, has sold over 130,000 copies in its three Canadian editions. It is used to teach entrepreneurship and as a resource in many business programs, high schools, colleges, and small business development centers. Rights have been sold to Indonesia, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia, a Russian edition was published in January 2004, and the book has been electronically published by Intuit Canada in four business and tax programs. It was also distributed for six years in business planning software products across North America. The sequel and companion book, Taking Your Business to the Next Level (Sourcebooks Inc.) will be published in five languages in 2005.

Recognized as a small business expert in both the United States and Canada, Frances is often interviewed by many small business publications, including the New York Times, Home Business Journal, Black Enterprise Magazine, Hispanic Trends, Self-Employment America, The Chicago Tribune, and Entrepreneur. She writes columns for various business publications and websites, including the International Association of Floor Care and Sewing Professionals, based in Iowa, and Business in Vancouver. In mid-2004, Visa Canada selected Frances to represent them nationally as their small business expert.

Frances has been recognized for her contributions to women in business and small businesses. Her recent accolades include the 2003 Volunteer of the Year Award from her chapter of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and the Surrey International Writers’ Conference 2003 Special Achievement Award. She was honored as one of Vancouver’s 2002 five most influential women in business, and as a 2004 YWCA Women of Distinction nominee. As an active participant in the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Women Entrepreneurs in 2003, Frances had some of her recommendations adopted federally in the final report.

Her home-based businesses, SmallBizPro.com Services and Eastleigh Publications, are in their twenty-second year. She has been actively teaching entrepreneurship for nineteen years, including teaching an accredited Equine Entrepreneurship course at Kwantlen University College. She founded a Toastmasters group and was a founding member and coordinator of the Langley, B.C., chapter of the Valley Women’s Network, which has since sponsored eight chapters.

A strong believer in giving back to her community and small business, Frances was a chamber of commerce director in Langley for five years, founding and chairing the Small Business Advancement Committee. Working with the chamber and local municipality government, she realized her dream of changing local, antiquated home-based zoning and operating bylaws in 2000, earning her community one of three national Most Friendly Home-Based Business Community awards.

As an active Rotary International member and treasurer for three years for the Vancouver chapter of CAPS, Frances believes wholeheartedly that we are here on this earth to give to each other—and to have fun doing it!