“If you are not living on the edge, then you are taking up too much room”

Proclaims the back cover of this book. It goes on to say:

“Think of the richest square mile in Britain and your thoughts turn to The City of London or Chelsea. In fact, a small village in Cheshire is home to more millionaires per square mile than anywhere else in Britain. It is a place where one-in-twenty houses sells for more than 1 million, 20% of the residents enjoy a seven-figure income”

The place is Alderley Edge and the author has picked out 13 entrepreneurs that live there and profiled them. These 13 entrepreneurs each demonstrate a different characteristic, they are:

• The Alchemist who buys failing companies and turns them around.
• The Soapstar an Australian soap star turned cocktail waiter turned restaurateur.
• The Rover a footballer turned social entrepreneur.
• The Hustler an elderly entrepreneur who just keeps building and selling businesses.
• The Undertaker who sells funeral insurance.
• The Prince a determined property developer.
• The Hippies who went from living in commune to running a £30M business.
• The Maverick who has made a fortune by getting on with people.
• The Magic Bean who runs an ethical PR agency.
• The Carer who has turned a passion for caring into a successful nursing agency.
• The Bubbleboy who runs a successful champagne bar.
• The Thinker who makes his living selling insights.

Each story is fascinating and provides further insight into the types of person that succeeds as an entrepreneur. Malcolm McClean is an entrepreneur, speaker, consultant and writer, in fact he’s the final entrepreneur profiled in this book, the thinker.

It’s a somewhat unique book on entrepreneurship which at times it feels like a collection of short stories about successful entrepreneurs. Much as I enjoyed it, unless you’re a bookworm who enjoys reading about entrepreneurs and their experiences (like me) there’s no compelling reason to buy the book.

Included at the end is the short version of Human Factor’s entrepreneurial profiling test which is interesting but having recently reviewed Scott Shane’s The Illusions Of Entrepreneurship I’d question it’s relevance to the average entrepreneur.

You can buy it from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

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