36 review for Mind Your Own Business: Survive and Thrive in Good Times and Bad

1. 

   4 out of 5

   Clare O'Beara – Aug 05, 2014

   This is a book similar to the shorter 'Crowning the Customer' by this grocery retailer. Now a popular Irish Senator, the author whose family sold the supermarket firm recently, has participated in a TV series where he went around Ireland helping small struggling retailers to modernise, improve and encourage trade. This book presents some of the lessons learned during Quinn's life and recently learned in the series filming, to help other people during Ireland's ongoing recession. Lessons include This is a book similar to the shorter 'Crowning the Customer' by this grocery retailer. Now a popular Irish Senator, the author whose family sold the supermarket firm recently, has participated in a TV series where he went around Ireland helping small struggling retailers to modernise, improve and encourage trade. This book presents some of the lessons learned during Quinn's life and recently learned in the series filming, to help other people during Ireland's ongoing recession. Lessons include having a checklist so that even a new member of staff can see the display is up to standard; making customers feel welcome and well served; taking customer views on board. Keeping up to date is vital and Quinn mentions some failures from his attempts to try something new. Such as live fish in a tank so shoppers could pick the one they want the staff to kill and fillet for them. We could all have told him that Ireland is not Japan. Or bulk bins of dry goods for shoppers to scoop into a bag and weigh; I remember the dry soup mix bins and thinking that it didn't look hygienic - as it turned out almost all shoppers agreed. The in-store bakery however was highly popular, and the own-brand sausages. Quinn makes a point of being the first supermarket to use loyalty cards giving points for shopping, and thus rewards from a catalogue; he neglects to mention the Green Shield Stamps my mother collected from supermarket H Williams which were exactly the same except that we didn't have computers and swipe cards yet. The personal touch is always to the fore as we meet people from random customers to retail giants to individual shop owners around Ireland, coping with the recession. Some shop owners just did not realise that customers could not find the shop. Others had too much inventory and cluttered, dated windows, so young adults never thought of buying clothes in that shop. Quinn's ideas were not always acted upon as the shop owner wanted to take a different route, but he brought fresh experienced eyes to the situation and often took the shop owner to see a similar thriving shop in another city. The writing of the book appears almost stream of consciousness, with no fine aspirations whatever beyond communicating eagerness to improve businesses and lives. While the author did this job well, I was surprised that little or no editing appeared to have been done. So many sentences start with It, and It appears so many times in the body of sentences, that they are tedious and give a novicey feel to the whole. Almost every sentence starts a new paragraph. I did find the concentration on shop retail, especially food, heavy as so many firms these days deal with computer products or services; trade may be over the net, both local and global. A short time spent looking further would have produced wonderful comparisons, such as the possibility of independently publishing books, which now exist. Again, I would have thought that the publisher would have appointed a researcher to assist with this matter and improve a book which was almost bound to be a good seller. Maybe now he has this book out of the way, Senator Quinn could cast his net further - we all appreciate help.

2. 

   5 out of 5

   Sandra Fitzgerald –

3. 

   5 out of 5

   Pyang –

4. 

   4 out of 5

   Gail –

5. 

   4 out of 5

   Siddhartha Kumar –

6. 

   4 out of 5

   Nicholas D'Agostino III –

7. 

   4 out of 5

   Sheikh Tajamul –

8. 

   5 out of 5

   Aydin Louie –

9. 

   5 out of 5

   Muhammad Zahran –

10. 

    4 out of 5

    Carmen –

11. 

    4 out of 5

    Igpereira –

12. 

    5 out of 5

    Joe –

13. 

    5 out of 5

    George Weiner –

14. 

    5 out of 5

    Arafat Islam –

15. 

    5 out of 5

    Blerta Berisha –

16. 

    4 out of 5

    Quinn –

17. 

    4 out of 5

    Jari.torres –

18. 

    5 out of 5

    Anna Jhaveri –

19. 

    4 out of 5

    Karen Jones –

20. 

    4 out of 5

    Zura –

21. 

    4 out of 5

    Andrew –

22. 

    5 out of 5

    Charleno –

23. 

    5 out of 5

    Hilkka Mlunga –

24. 

    5 out of 5

    Alicia Quaglio –

25. 

    4 out of 5

    Ismat Tuffaha –

26. 

    5 out of 5

    Jonathan Bergh –

27. 

    5 out of 5

    Vikram –

28. 

    4 out of 5

    Daniel Pereira de Melo –

29. 

    4 out of 5

    Alexandria –

30. 

    4 out of 5

    Laura –

31. 

    4 out of 5

    Megan Pantiskas –

32. 

    5 out of 5

    Mister –

33. 

    5 out of 5

    Amit –

34. 

    5 out of 5

    E –

35. 

    5 out of 5

    Ronnie Hokanson –

36. 

    5 out of 5

    Alena –