This is the story of people who thought that there was a 'better way' in the United Kingdom today. Rather than being on the scrapheap of unemployment, they set out to make money, to become entrepreneurs, to sell their talents, to market their products, to invent and to innovate, to find loopholes in the law and in the red tape of bureaucracy.

This isn't a book about the Conrans and the Halperns, who somehow managed to scale the summits of entrepreneurial success, it's about the other entrepreneurs who tried: Tom Pierce, the 'King of Ladies' Tights' from Belfast; Emily Malak, the Egyptian immigrant who started off cleaning lavatories in Liverpool and eventually became a millionaire by buying and selling property; Barney Eastwood, Barry McGuigan's ex-manager; Tommy Toumasos, who was running a takeaway food business in Birmingham when he was just seventeen; the Funeral Directors who 'diversified'; the Sheffield cutlery manufacturers who were wise to foreign imports and went for quality; Mr and Mrs Seerani, who gambled everything to publish children's books warning about child molesters.

'Making It' tells of initiative, courage and determination - but also about the odds stacked against making anything today.

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REVIEWS

Making It remains the most effective antidote to that easy optimism which believes that Thatcherite dreams of an enterprise culture are going to be the salvation of Britain.’
New Society, 1987

‘Constructively provocative of thought in the reader.’
The Psychologist, 1988

‘..A vivid gallery of no-hopers and too-much-hopers, of dudes, dupes and dealers, with a leavening of decent, honest citizens.’
Yorkshire Post, 1987

‘The book is a gem.’
Boardroom Magazine, 1987