cover image Take a Chance to Be First: The Secrets of Entrepreneurial Success

Take a Chance to Be First: The Secrets of Entrepreneurial Success

Warren Avis. MacMillan Publishing Company, $16.95 (222pp) ISBN 978-0-02-504410-4

Ex-combat pilot Warren Avis risked all his savings and stretched-out credit to fill a postwar need he saw for auto-rental service at major airports. As is well-known, he came up a winner (while Hertz fumed). With enthusiasm, good humor and a breezy writing style, Avis tells how he did it and went on to other success as well in condominiums and computers. He urges capitalist ""adventurers'' to take a chance on opportunities built into the current service and information age. Money, power and status are an entrepreneur's motivation, notes Avis, but filling a public need is a corollary satisfaction. He lists daring, concentration, dedication, and above all a product or service consumers are waiting for, as prerequisites for success. He also reviews the win-or-lose importance of orderly cash management, efficient production and distribution, good personnel and customer relations, andto be kept always in sightcontrolled expansion when the profit curve begins. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; first serial to Success; Fortune Book Club alternate.(June 3)