As someone with 3 small businesses I really liked this book - it makes some long winded metaphors and compares the aspects of advice from The Art Of War and applies those analogies to the art of small business. It gives some solid straight forward advice of which I would personally give people if they were to ask me how to start a small business - the analogies add an extra layer to think about when approaching “your enemies” your competition in a market and when to “reflect within” evaluate your goals and put small increments in place on how to reach those goals - no matter what they are.
I mean there’s nothing to argue with there is there? Its the fundamentals of behaviour change - create a vision , educate yourself on how to implement those steps and actually takes steps to achieve a goal. Know when to cut your losses or audit your use of time in conjunction with how much you are spending on certain activities. It’s very practical actually especially, if you’re new to starting a business. - Its a realistic take on things and possibly the reason it’s scoring low on review sites is because everyone wants a quick fix in regards to how you can make a business with absolutely no effort, I’m afraid that doesn’t really happen - 6 months of hard work to become “full time” in any new venture is my experience and not to mention the hours of admin and marketing as a sole trader is required but if you’re doing something without passion it will never take off anyway, so keep that in mind- if you are doing something without a team of people who all share the same vision (your army) then it will clash and likely not succeed. So I do recommend you read this book and take what you need from it because after 10 years of small business ownership I too have come to these conclusions whether you want to hear it or not. I would have liked a little more humour perhaps from this book to have made it a five star read - but a solid 4 stars from me.

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I read The Art of War by Sun Tzu a number of years ago, I even used a couple of references when I was studying for my PGCE. I thought that a book brought up to date and applied to business, it would be great. Well, that was not the case for me.

I had the audiobook version of this and absolutely hated it. I couldn't relate to the narrator and found him very difficult to listen to and stay focused. So much so, I was only able to make it part way through the book before I gave up, I just couldn't listen any longer.

The narrator for me was not engaging, dare I say, boring (sorry) and didn't grip me with what he was saying. I would go back and read The Art of War by Sun Tzu again and just make up my own opinion on how to apply it to the modern world.

I didn’t join this book, but I think it is kind of a flop personally, because I feel like it’s just quoting a Book and then trying to twist a misinterpret the original context. I understand he is trying to compare war and being an entrepreneur but the reasoning was not solid behind it.