[Book Review] The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship by Bill Murphy Jr.

Rating: 4.5/5

Genre: Non-Fiction, Business

Book Review:

      As the name suggested, this book is about how to become an entrepreneur. But, more importantly, it is about how to become one intelligently. It starts off with why a lot of entrepreneurs fail. Then it presents 10 rules that will help you to become a successful entrepreneur. If you are planning on becoming an entrepreneur, you should really read this book. If you are not, you might as well read this book because it is quite intesting. It’s fun to read and along the way, who knows, you might change your mind and want to become an entrepreneur.

The author, Bill Murphy Jr., interviewed three Harvard Business School graduates --Christopher Michel, Mark Cenedella, and Marla Malcolm Beck--who had then successfully founded start-up companies. He then drew  10 rules to become a successful entrepreneur. It is what you should keep in mind if you’d like to become an entrepreneur.
The writing style is quite interesting. Murphy wrote the stories of those three HBS graduates in odd chapter, and explained the 10 rules in even chapters. This writing style makes the content a lot more juicy. Each chapter also has a quote from famous people, which I found quite interesting. Overall, I learned a lot from this book while enjoying the interesting stories of Michel, Cenedella, and Beck.  I really like this book and I wouldn’t hesistate to recommend this book.
The audiobook version of this book is narrated by Fred Berman and L. J. Ganser. I like his narration. His voice is strong and tonal. It keeps me engaged throughout all the listening. At the end of the audiobook, there is a special roundtable discussion featuring Bill Murphy Jr., hristopher Michel, Mark Cenedella, and Marla Malcolm Beck. It’s interesting to know that these people really exist, and to hear things from their own words.

Take Aways

• Entrepreneur is not an innate ability. It can be learned.
• Don’t complain. If someone is trying to take over your company, it’s probably because you are not doing a good job managing your company. 
• It doesn’t matter whether you want to be an entrepreneur  or not. You need to have passion. You need be able to focus on what you want to do, and persist until you succeed. You need to sell, and, at the minimum, sell your ideas. And, you need to do it for your entire life.
• Selling is very important. You might not want to be a saleperson. But you are constantly selling your ideas to people. So, learn to sell.

Table of Contents 

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 (16.18)
• Chapter 2 Entrepreneurship Can Be Learned (1.01.59) 
• Chapter 3 (1.21.17)
• Chapter 4 Make the Commitment (2.26.20)
• Chapter 5 (2.48.36)
• Chapter 6 Find a Problem, Then Solve It (3.32.32)
• Chapter 7 (3.49.32)
• Chapter 8 Think Big, Think New, Think Again (4.31.34)
• Chapter 9 (4.56.30)
• Chapter 10 You Can't Do It Alone (5.43.42)
• Chapter 11 (0.12)
• Chapter 12 You Must Do It Alone (37.47)
• Chapter 13 (1.00.43)
• Chapter 14 Manage Risk (1.37.09)
• Chapter 15 (1.58.35)
• Chapter 16 Learn to Lead (2.37.45)
• Chapter 17 (2.55.51)
• Chapter 18 Learn to Sell (3.37.26)
• Chapter 19 (3.56.58)
• Chapter 20 Persist, Persevere, Prevail (4.28.00)
• Chapter 21 (4.46.19)
• Chapter 22 Play the Game for Life (5.15.20)
• A special round table discussion: Audio book only (5.27.46)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book or Audiobooks?

Personally, I prefer audiobooks. It's fun, and I can listen when I'm doing something else. It also makes other activities (e.g., jogging) a lot more fun. For more detail about audiobooks, please read [this post].

There is one more reason that may encourage you to go for the audiobook version. You can get it now for FREE. Audible offers you a free trial for 14 days. Even if you get the book and cancel the subscription right away (so that you don't have to pay), you can keep the book. And, don't worry if you lost the audiobook file. Just log into audible.com. You can keep downloading the over and over again.

About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make  notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for.

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.