Stripping for Freedom

STRIPPING FOR FREEDOM – REVIEWS BY READERS AND CRITICS

By Dave Sumner-Smith

I’ve discovered a rare treat. A business book that’s valuable and very funny too.

When is the last time you read a business book that made you laugh out loud? Every month there seems to be scores of new books about different aspects of business. But many of them seem to cover the same old ground. Very few focus on the special issues relating to running a business from home. And very, very few have ever made me laugh.

‘Stripping for Freedom’ is an exception to the rule. Written by the Canadian ‘writer, broadcaster and celebrity’ Leonora Soculitherz (no, I hadn’t heard of her either), the book revolves around the basic principle that your business should be based on offering whatever you have got that is wanted by people with money. Even if that means you end up as a lap dancer (though doing that at home is unlikely to generate much revenue, I suspect!).

Written in a fun, bold style that you will either love or hate, it is peppered with ‘Leonorisms’ (“Leave your old company style behind you. You are now your own brand, so dress to impress”) and other advice. When talking about ‘Dealing with Regulations’, for example, she advises that you should “be generally aware of the regulations around your own enterprise, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to comply with it all. Comply only when you have to. Get this wrong and you’ll find you’re legal but bust, because you had no time or money left to start and run your business.”

Dave Sumner-Smith is the editor/programme director of the Home Business Network and Telegraph Business Club

By Gail Purvies

Well worth absorbing

Ably assisted by Tony Robinson (who despite this, emerges as the fall guy) and judiciously edited by Clare Francis, author Leonora Soculitherz, takes her own ultra fashionably, chatty, confidential route through “Stripping for Freedom” or “taking control of your own destiny by going it alone” as an entrepreneur.
For lazy readers with an urge to get at the key issues, nothing is easier than page flicking for Leonorisms or ‘truths” helpfully printed in easily seen bold lettering. The first one is core to the whole book. ‘Think of a lap dancer: what have you got to offer that people with money to spend, want?’

Closely followed by “in a recession, don’t just fish in the private sector pool for your customers because the public sector fish are fatter and easier to catch (especially between January to the end of March when they have got to get rid of all that’s remaining of their budgets and allowances).

For a Scottish biased website, it’s a pleasure to see good work being recognised. Leonora points out ‘The Highlands and Islands of Scotland recognise the importance of providing consistently high levels of free training and support to start up and existing micro enterprise owners to ensure they have the same chance of success as in any other career.’

On essential effective networking the highlight is ‘choose productive networks from which you can learn, gain a profile and be given and give referrals.’

But this idle approach will lose the humour, and some interesting and reflective stories, well worth absorbing. Take the chapter on Scarborough. Why Scarborough? Well it’s hats off to Scarborough, which with a population of 50,000 first won “The Most Enterprising Place in Yorkshire,’ then ‘The Most Enterprising place in Britain,’ to be ultimately crowned in Prague as, ‘The Most Enterprising Town in Europe.’ That Scarborough chapter has lots to teach any budding business stripper.

There’s plenty of depressing information to counteract the laughs. “Government state that ‘£billions are being committed to SME support’ but in reality fewer that 5% of UK enterprises (including the 4.5m small and home office owners and the 400,000+ start ups each year) actually see any of it. All they see are vast amounts of money being spent on big Corporates, civil service salaries, consultants, infrastructures, processes and marketing to tell us how good the infrastructure and processes are.”

The best Leonorism is of course the last, and concerns the daily topping up of the three pots. But you’ve got 183 pages to strip through first, by which time you should have worked out the three pot issue.

Gail Purvies is a writer and edits Compute Scotland in which this review appeared. Gail was also a friend from school days of the late Miles Kington, the brilliant humorous writer in whose memory ‘Stripping for Freedom’ is dedicated.

By Julie Stanford

Laughing Out Loud

I’m really enjoying reading Stripping for Freedom’ (indeed my snort of laughter woke up a few sleeping travellers on a Brighton to Victoria train when I read the part about looking good being simply a matter of how well you tuck in your bits!)

Julie Stanford is a designer, radio presenter and President of Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce. Julie owns and publishes Essential Business the top UK reference guide for small business owners.

By Dr. R. Murray  

An Essential Read

Being retired, I read this book just for its humour. It certainly succeeded in that respect as the jokes and situations were to my liking. However, the important messages came across and I have spent the weeks since I read Leonora’s thesis, telling my friends that the country is simply doing the wrong things.

Why do we spend tens of thousands of pounds to create one job in the big, high tech, industries when a few hundred would give the small entrepreneur the time to become established? Why don’t we support small business and encourage the ideas that come from people of all ages?

Fantastic advice in the book and it does mean freedom to liberate people to accomplish a successful business that is their dream.

We need Leonora in a position of power to save us from the professional, blinkered politicians, particularly those who are in power from their titles rather than from the ballot box.

Dr Robert Murray was formerly Enterprise Coordinator at Nottingham Trent University

By G. H. Derbyshire

Light style, serious message
 
Books about entrepreneurship come in different styles, but usually all end up as lists. This one is different. Persevere: amidst the anecdotes and the quirky humour there is lots of serious guidance for new entrepreneurs. And some questions which ought to make one or two people in Whitehall shuffle on their seats in embarrassment. Why does nearly all the government money go to the usual suspects?

George Derbyshire is Chief Executive of the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies

By Anthony Haynes

Entertaining and informative

The framework of this book is a narrative told by a Canadian author (and style guru) exploring entrepreneurship (and the lack of support for micro-enterprises) in the UK. The structure makes the book both entertaining (I particularly liked the portrait of Jools, the businesswoman who ruins everyone’s train journey by yelling into her mobile throughout the journey) and informative: there’s good, down to earth, advice for people running, or intending to run, their own (genuinely) small businesses. And there are some good jokes too.

Anthony Haynes is a Literary Agent, Publisher, Co-Owner of Higher&Professional

By Nathan Hardwick

Fancy a Leonorism…?
 

What a thoroughly enjoyable read…! By turns satirical, thought-provoking and darkly comic. Many a laugh-out-loud moment… Leonora takes us on a whistle stop tour de force of our own entrepreneurial culture and holds up a (wildly fashionable) mirror… but don’t be surprised if you don’t like all that you see!

Nat Hardwick is a Musician, IT Consultant and Small Business Owner

Watch Out Fat Cats and Politicians

I just hope that many of the people that have read this very funny but disturbing book will post their reviews because we need hundreds of thousands to read it and then act. Clearly the UK is being run by an incompetent, status driven clique which fashionista turned investigative journalist, Ms Soculitherz, has exposed in this book.

She seems obsessed by legs/tights/leggings and Scarborough but apart from that every time I laughed out loud it made me stop and realise that the fat cats, politicians and senior civil servants are ruining our lives. Going it alone in our own enterprises and then getting rid of the square mile lot may be the only way forward. Thanks Leonora.

Clare Francis is a Small Business Owner and recent winner of the SFEDI Advisory Board Special Achievement Award and
Terry Owens, is an Entrepreneur and Founder of Inbiz which has supported 25,000 unemployed people into self employment/starting and running their own business.