Fired Up!: From Corporate Kiss Off Entrepreneurial Kick Off Take Charge Your Destiny Our Do

"You can hardly breathe....You are sitting in a meeting...and so they talk, and every word they say seems to diminish the supply of fresh air, and fresh ideas....Your brain begins to go numb...the corporate institution encourages this insane situation." I was looking for a book on public relations and stumbled across Michael Gill and Sheila Patterson's introduction to becoming an entrepreneur in Fired Up! Before I left the parking lot, I had already done the one thing every reader never admits to-I read the last two chapters first and took "The Ultimate Test." Sigh...I passed the test. I was ready to leave my executive position of 15 years and go out on my own. I had had enough of being told to do those things that I felt inside were headed in an unexciting, unrewarding, and basically wrong direction.Having discussed this with my beau, we decided the time was now. We would do this together. Following the guidelines on writing a business plan, we painstakingly conducted the required market research and found that our idea was indeed unique. Next step-we rented office space, away from both our homes, and moved in there together. We interviewed several corporate attorneys and chose one, and did the same for an accountant and a banker. Next, we tested our idea and it worked. Like a cookbook, we pursued each suggestion as if we were on the path to the holy grail. Not one failed us. Having developed our unique selling proposition, we gleefully learned that we had become the front-runners. That's not to say that we didn't suffer through some of the "Detours to Disaster" described, such as saying out loud "We can do that" when we really didn't want to and should not have...and such a project took us off-course for a while, but we returned to our road plan, a bit more weary and a bit more hardened to the life of an entrepreneur. As Gill and Patterson stress, there is nothing like working for yourself. Read this book and glean the lessons of successes and failures, and accept the fact that you will be telling your own stories of both. Follow each step included in this guide and you will have no reason to fail. I've purchased several copies of this book and gave them to my friends, with express direction to read during their corporate meetings.Before you decide that working for yourself is the next step, please read the appendix ("Eleven Steps You Can Take Right Now Before You Leave Your Job")-it will save you the heartache of emotional and financial destitude if this lifestyle is not for you. And you will have made your own decision to move from fearful employee to fired up entrepreneur!As for the joy of sex-well, better saved for another book review!