Red Hot Book Review - Jack's Notebook

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Jack's Notebook

Written by Editor
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Jack’s Notebook: Entrepreneurial Spark for the Non-Business Person Reviewed By Stuart Nachbar There are many approaches to “how-to” business books: academic, financial, technical and inspirational. Jack’s Notebook by Gregg Fraley is the latter. It is a work about creative problem solving that provides an effectively structured approach that will serve the non-business person who has considered starting a business from a long-lingering hobby or passion. Jack's Notebook I’ve noticed at least two ways to write such books. The first is to provide anecdotes from entrepreneurs who have achieved success after following the author’s advice. The second is to explain their creative process through a fictional story that uses all of the principles involved. Fraley took the second approach, and for most of the story it works very well. Fraley’s approach to Creative Problem Solving—he abbreviates this as CPS, and thankfully the rest of the book is not weighed down in abbreviations—has six steps. These steps might sound obvious, but they work well in personal one-on-one coaching and group exercises, which are Fraley’s professional expertise. The steps are to: Identify the Challenge, Explore Facts and Feelings, Problem Solving and Reframing, Idea Generation, Solution Development and Action Planning. I actually found this to be a useful framework in working on a new novel. Fraley puts the six steps to work through the story of Jack Huber, a man down on his luck holding two customer service jobs. He’s single and very much alone. By happenstance he meets Manny Gibran, a professional problem solver. We do not know if Gibran is a business consultant or engineer, though we learn that he’s called upon to solve technical problems. Manny serves as Jack’s friend and guide through Jack’s personal problem-solving adventure, helping him think through his dream to become a professional photographer and to be with Molly, who becomes the first true love in his life. The best parts of this book come when Manny helps Jack work in a notebook to think through the type of photographer he wants to become and how he can get there; this gets Jack down from very broad ideas to realistic ones. It’s also useful that Fraley uses writing in a notebook to show how broad ideas become whittled down. That process also helped me outline characters and plots for my own work, so this was much appreciated. There is one weakness in the story worth mention: towards the end he strays too far from his principles for the sake of fiction. He shows Molly as prisoner of a wealthy, but overly paranoid father and puts Jack into a hero role to rescue her, her sister and mother, who has lived under a new identity. While I know there’s a lot of Action Planning to a rescue, the storytelling seriously detracted from the rest of the book. It also took the focus away from Manny, who’s really the “teaching” character in this book. Overall, I would recommend Jack’s Notebook as a first guide to someone interested in starting a business, but has little business experience. It is an easy read that is not weighed down with technical jargon and financial terms that might scare such a reader away. It is a friendly voice, but a voice that forces readers to think before they jump into expensive mis-directions and mistakes. I know I’ll write a better novel because of this book. Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 May 2008 )