As a fairly well-off business owner, I had to learn through years of experience how to take advantage of corporations for liability protection and tax savings. Read this book to speed up the process for you. I only wish it had been written a decade ago! Thank you Garrett for such a well-written and understandable book.

The author lays his experience in an easy to understand format.

When I first picked up the book I read 1/3 of it in one night, absorbing mainly the information about how to protect my business and sometimes more importantly, my personal assets from unscrupulous lawsuits and "legal" mistakes.

The 2/3 of the book or so, talk about taking your company to the public (the stock market), and in my opinion the author knows or specializes in this type of practice since he spent many pages talking about the intrinsically complicated ways of making this transition.

The last portion was merely reproduction of information already available from many state government web sites about the requirements, and even though it is nice to have this information handy in one book, I particularly did not appreciate the author including all these many pages of public information in this book.

Overall, the book is a must read for anyone serious about long term business. I give it a 4/5 in my scale.-

When Robert Kiyosaki was a youngster, he loved to read about the early explorers like Columbus and Magellan. His Rich Dad encouraged him to also study those who financed the explorers, to learn about how they managed their risk and reward to expand and protect their wealth. "Don't climb the corporate ladder, why not own the corporate ladder?" was other advice that Rich Dad gave. To do this, Mr. Kiyosaki advises you to "find a good attorney and use him or her as your advisor on this important subject."

Own Your Own Corporation does an excellent job of explaining the various advantages and disadvantages of C and S Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, and Limited Partnerships from the legal perspective of how to save money on taxes and protect yourself from successful attacks on your personal assets. I particularly liked the way that the usual legal gobbledegook was avoided, and the ideas expressed in clear, simple language.

As a lawyer, I felt that the work was highly accurate and well presented for a layperson. I was especially impressed with the very long appendix that outlined the legal circumstances in each state. On the other hand, the book makes it clear that you should get some legal and accounting help to make sure that you do things properly.

My complaint about the book comes from the lack of describing the other methods that can be used to protect an individual and a family from liability. Setting up the right business structure is just part of what needs to be done. Other assets need to be protected using other techniques such as trusts, and insurance can also play a helpful role in protecting you from mistakes.

In picking a legal advisor, I will also mention that many perfectly capable practitioners will not be familiar with this particular area of legal practice. So choose well, or you will not necessarily end up with the business structure you need. A good use of this book is to arm you with questions and background knowledge to help you test how current and experienced your potential legal advisor is. In fact, you may need more than one legal advisor to help you set up the optimum structures for your personal assets and your business activities.

Taking time to eliminate risks and taxes in advance is well worth your focus and investment!