‘Carol’s Daughter’ Grows Up: Beauty Brand Founder Lisa Price Shares Her Success Story on Black Enterprise Business Report

Beauty brand Carol’s Daughter started out small, very small. In fact, founder Lisa Price began her business by making mixtures in her own kitchen sink.  This week on an all-new Black Enterprise Business Report, host Caroline V. Clarke goes one-on-one with this Powerplayer to learn how, with business savvy, street smarts, and a bit of luck, she built a multimillion dollar brand.

“You may not enter Alvin & Friends as one of the pals of the owner, but by the time you leave, you’re likely to feel that you’ve become one,” raves the New York Times about the feel good atmosphere at the New Rochelle, New York eatery. Yet, even a restaurant’s rave reviews won’t guarantee success in a sluggish economy—just ask our Entrepreneur of the Week, Alvin Clayton.  Together with his business partner and wife, Gwen, these Black business owners are bucking the odds and making their start-up stand out.

Have a great idea but no way to get it off the ground? This week in Wealth for Life, BLACK ENTERPRISE SVP/Editor-in-Chief Derek T. Dingle offers budding entrepreneurs the tips they need to find start-up funds. Plus, Executive Style host Sonia Alleyne show female executives the secrets to picking the perfect handbag.

Black Enterprise Business Report airs every Sunday at 10:30 a.m. on TV ONE and in syndicated cities across the country.  Visit www.blackenterprise.com/bebr for local station and times.

The two teamed up in college to launch several internet companies, including a price comparison site to help students at Harvard save money on text books. They started Tagged in 2004 (around the same time that Facebook and MySpace were getting started) and received $7 million from the Mayfield Fund, a prominent venture capital firm in 2005.  However, instead of gearing their website towards connecting with friends and family, Tagged focuses on meeting new people for dating, social gaming, and sharing common interests.

Today, the social discovery website projects that revenues will reach past $40 million in 2011 as a result of their three distinct revenue channels: virtual currency micro-payments, premium subscriptions, and advertising. Schleier-Smith and Tseng will be mentors for participants of the NewMe Accelerator, a program that brought eight tech startups to Silicon Valley where they will learn about ways to improve their companies and raise angel investments and venture capital this summer. The two co-founders spoke to the group yesterday about their challenges, and how they built Tagged.

Black Enterprise caught up with Schleier-Smith at his office and got his advice about things new start-ups should consider on everything from raising capital to moving to Silicon Valley.

• On Innovation:

You need to get people excited about the idea. You need to give people a compelling notion of what you’re building, why it’s important, why people should care, and why they’re going to use it. “The big difference between a tech start up and a car wash is that you’re doing something that no one has ever done before and in that sense it requires more emphasis on innovation,” says Schleier-Smith. “In some sense you’re proposing to create something that doesn’t exist and you have to justify why it needs to exist.”

• On Raising Capital:

“Raising capital is hard,” says Schleier-Smith. There are a lot of things that you have to do in order to be successful but one of the things that investors are looking for is momentum. Investors want to see that you’ve got business, customers, and revenues. “When you can show that the idea is moving, that it’s in some sense proven and it just needs to be built out, then money tends to follow pretty quickly, along with talented people who want to work at your company,” adds Schleier-Smith.

• On Building the Team:

Pulling together the right group of people is imperative to finding success in the tech community. “If raising money is challenging, which it is, building a successful company and getting everything right is even more challenging. Investors are keen to seeing groups of smart motivated people who are going to do what it takes to make it through the company building process,” says Schleier-Smith. “You need to find people you get along with really well. Greg and I know how to collaborate really well. Some teams are marriages of convenience. If people aren’t fully aligned. That is going to be a prescription for problems sooner or later.”

Go to next page to continue reading and watch video of Schleier-Smith’s mentorship tips…

//

• On Pivoting:

“That was a tricky time in 2006 and 2007. We recognized that FaceBook was enormously innovative. They had fantastic resources, fantastic traction, and a great product. While we could see ourselves doing all of those things, they were ahead of us, and they were really good at what they were doing,” says Schleier-Smith. “There was a chance we could overtake them if they messed up, but our business plan was not based on other people making mistakes. We were trying to figure out what this business should be. That is something a lot of startups go through. It’s very rarely a linear path. It does happen, where you have the perfect idea and you just do it, but that is a small percentage of the time. It is more often that you have a general opportunity, but a whole lot of the details need to be figured out as you go along. Be really well studied on your business plan. Think diligently and honestly about what it is you’re trying to do. Ask yourself all of the questions someone could ask and all of the ways someone could challenge it. Think about competitors, risks, and all the ways it could go different than you think it would.”

• On Finding Advisors:

Johann and Greg spent a lot of time working with their advisors. One advisor, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a former executive at Paypal, was key to helping them decide to pivot their business plan towards social discovery. “He was one of the people who challenged us, asked us the hard questions and forced us to really get a plan together,” says Schleier-Smith. “You want to find someone who has relevant experience. Someone who has been there and done it before, someone who you get along with well on a personal level, and you feel you can relate to.”

• On Being an Outsider in Silicon Valley:

“Meet lots of people. Be open with them. Silicon Valley is a very open and sharing culture where people like to talk about what they are doing. Certainly there are some things that are your core secret sauce that you may not want to be sharing broadly, but there are a lot of things you may be doing in your business that are fine to discuss with people. The more you can be open about you are doing, it sparks interesting discussion. I tend to be very open and people open up to you and you can discover where common passions lie. That is where you are going to forge connections that are meaningful ones.”

• On Why Moving to the Valley Worked for his Startup:

“So many of the people who are passionate about starting  tech companies have ended up here. If you want to meet and connect with those people you want to be here. Some of the challenges is there are a lot of great stuff going on so there’s a lot of competition, for hiring in particular. Finding the best product people, engineers, designers can be really challenging. There are a whole lot of talented software engineers and developers, however, there are even more entrepreneurs with business ideas, Venture Capitalists, small and big companies like Google and Facebook sucking people up. It remains very competitive to get talent.”

Cavaughn Noel

Cavaughn Noel is the founder of the Black Entrepreneurs in Technology Alliance Meetup group. The goal of the organization is to cultivate resources for the Black business community. Recently, he partnered with the National Alliance of Market Developers to hold a panel discussion about the urbanization of social media marketing. Noel recommends that small businesses try out Disqus, a third party tool that allows you to comment via Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. in real time so that you don’t have to log into each respective domain. It also integrates media services such as Flickr and YouTube so you can watch videos or view photos in the comments. The great thing about it is that when you post something people can tweet about it from their accounts. For more advice reach out to Cavaughn on Twitter @Cavaughn.

Social Q&A sites allow individuals to establish themselves as experts in a given field, explains Eric Hamilton, founder of The Web Academy, a 501c3 organization that has taught 3,000 entrepreneurs how to build their own websites and mobile applications. If I’m an attorney, I can [build a social Q&A] site to answer questions on law. After I establish myself as an expert people will come to me [for help on] real cases, he says. Like Wikipedia, Quora is one of those sites that let’s you answer people’s questions and establish yourself as an expert on a given topic. It also lets you follow topics or questions that you are interested in learning the answers to. For more advice reach out to Eric on Twitter @EHam06.

Laura Mignott

General Sentiment monitors social media from the beginning of time and it aggregates news and information from about 50 years ago until now, says Laura Mignott, a mobile marketer and co-founder of DigitalFlashNYC, an organization that creates boutique network events in order to pull digital savvy trendsetters from behind their computers so that they can meet face to face over cocktails. General Sentiment is like Klout on steroids by 1,000%. The site doesn’t just report the facts, but it reports the opinions expressed regarding brands, products, politicians, celebrities, and companies. Then it places value on the brand based on online buzz so that you can get a big-picture, real-time (or over time) snapshot of public opinion of brands or people important to your business. For more advice reach out to Laura on Twitter @LMigno

Mike Street

Mike Street, the Senior Digital Strategist for Syndicate Media Group, hasmanaged the social media output for brands like Oscar de La Renta, Time magazine, and Lexus. One of his favorite tools is Tap11, a Twitter manager that recently launched. It gives you a weekly report of your twitter activity and sends it to you in an email, says Street. You can grab snapshots from that to learn what tweets had the farthest reach or what were the impressions of that tweet. For more advice reach out to Mike on Twitter @StreetForce1

(Source: Thinkstock)

There are a host of media experts, consultants, and mavens of media that are carving out a lane for themselves in the digital space. These are people who manage Facebook and Twitter accounts for some of our country’s largest brands, individuals who are launching their own social media start-ups, and those who are making it their responsibility to teach the masses how to leverage digital in their own backyard. When BlackEnterprise.com asked some of these individuals what were their favorite digital tools they couldn’t choose just one. “There are way too many to pick from,” responded one interviewee. So, we’ve narrowed down the list down to a couple of tools that were highly recommended and the most useful for a business audience. Enjoy!

Cavaughn Noel

Eric Hamilton

• Cavaughn Noel is the founder of the Black Entrepreneurs in Technology Alliance Meetup group. The goal of the organization is to cultivate resources for the Black business community. Recently, he partnered with the National Alliance of Market Developers to hold a panel discussion about the urbanization of social media marketing. Noel recommends that small businesses try out Disqus, a third party tool that allows you to comment via Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. in real time so that you don’t have to log into each respective domain. It also integrates media services such as Flickr and YouTube so you can watch videos or view photos in the comments. “The great thing about it is that when you post something people can tweet about it from their accounts.” For more advice reach out to Cavaughn on Twitter @Cavaughn.

• “Social Q&A sites allow individuals to establish themselves as experts in a given field,” explains Eric Hamilton, founder of The Web Academy, a 501c3 organization that has taught 3,000 entrepreneurs how to build their own websites and mobile applications. “If I’m an attorney, I can [build a social Q&A] site to answer questions on law. After I establish myself as an expert people will come to me [for help on] real cases,” he says. Like Wikipedia, Quora is one of those sites that let’s you answer people’s questions and establish yourself as an expert on a given topic. It also lets you follow topics or questions that you are interested in learning the answers to. For more advice reach out to Eric on Twitter @EHam06.

Laura Mignott

• “General Sentiment monitors social media from the beginning of time and it aggregates news and information from about 50 years ago until now,” says Laura Mignott, a mobile marketer and co-founder of DigitalFlashNYC, an organization that creates boutique network events in order to pull digital savvy trendsetters from behind their computers so that they can meet face to face over cocktails. “General Sentiment is like Klout on steroids by 1,000%.” The site doesn’t just report the facts, but it reports the opinions expressed regarding brands, products, politicians, celebrities, and companies. Then it places value on the brand based on online buzz so that you can get a big-picture, real-time (or over time) snapshot of public opinion of brands or people important to your business. For more advice reach out to Laura on Twitter @LMigno

• Mike Street, the Senior Digital Strategist for Syndicate Media Group, has managed the social media output for brands like Oscar de La Renta, Time magazine, and Lexus. One of his favorite tools is Tap11, a Twitter manager that recently launched. “It gives you a weekly report of your twitter activity and sends it to you in an email,” says Street. “You can grab snapshots from that to learn what tweets had the farthest reach or what were the impressions of that tweet.” For more advice reach out to Mike on Twitter @StreetForce1

For those entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners who are serious about building sustainable businesses, Dante Lee’s Black Business Secrets: 500 Tips, Strategies and Resources for the African American Entrepreneur provides the reality check all aspiring business owners need before launching their ventures. And, as the book title indicates, Lee takes special pains to deal with the myths and realities specific to how Black people tend to approach entrepreneurship, serving up equal portions of encouragement and inconvenient truth. My mantra to entrepreneurs has always been: Learn before you launch. If you are serious about entrepreneurship (not just playing at it) you must read this book.

Dante Lee

Lee, the 30-year-old president and CEO of Diversity City Media, a Columbus-Ohio based marketing and public relations firm known for its BlackPR.com and BlackNews.com online businesses, is an award winning entrepreneur who was selected to Ebony magazine’s 2010 young entrepreneurs list and named a finalist for 2006 Black Enterprise Small Business Awards. Tapping his own experience, as well as the examples set by successful Black entrepreneurs ranging from Madam C.J. Walker to Russell Simmons, Lee explores what it means to be a Black entrepreneur and to have an entrepreneurial mindset, as well as focusing on entrepreneurial best practices, with specific chapters devoted to finance, marketing and advertising, public relations and “cyberpreneurship.” This is supplemented with an impressive compendium of “business-building” resources, including top websites, blogs, conferences and professional development resources, specifically tailored for Black entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners.

But the best thing about Lee’s book is the straight-no-chaser advice he offers throughout the book, often on topics that aspiring Black entrepreneurs prefer to gloss over, ignore or view through rose-colored glasses. For example, in a section titled “Stop Making Stupid Remarks,” Lee identifies the things no one ever needs to hear from a Black entrepreneur, including, “Banks don’t give loans to Black businesses” and “I don’t do business with White people.” Another great example of this is the section “Four Things An Entrepreneur Should Never Say,” including, “I’m the hottest thing out” and “I own my own business in network marketing.”

All aspiring entrepreneurs, regardless of ethnicity, can benefit from reading Lee’s book, despite its title and intended audience. However, Lee’s mission is clearly to help African Americans to excel as entrepreneurs, not merely to promote good feelings about Black entrepreneurship. Black Business Secrets provides everything an entrepreneur needs to help Lee to achieve that objective.

—Alfred A. Edmond Jr.

I once heard a man say, “You are one idea away from accomplishing anything you want.” This is true. Entrepreneurs are visionaries. They see the big picture. They are leaders and innovators.

Sometimes, though, their visions are too broad and grandiose. They want a billion-dollar company like Google; a million-dollar business is not enough. Confidence in your ability and your product or service is essential, but the business vision must be realistic. You need to define that vision by your core services or products, your unique value proposition, the year-to-year revenue growth, and ultimately, how big you want the company to become. Your business vision is the articulation of the future of your company.

VISUALIZING YOUR BUSINESS

Let’s start by defining a small business. The Small Business Administration has established two widely used criteria:

• For most manufacturing and mining industries, the company can have a maximum of 500 employees
• For most non-manufacturing industries, average annual receipts should not exceed $7 million

Go to www.sba.gov for more info  about these standards.

Remember that you’re starting a small business, in line with these standards. Don’t let your vision run away with you. There will be plenty of opportunity for growth. While self-confidence is essential, you must be careful not to give the appearance of overconfidence.

If you’re successful, you will attract mentors by being approachable and responsive. Some mentors will be clients; others will be angel investors or retired executives who may see something in you they want to nurture.

(Continued on Page 2)
As a result of my experience working with thousands of small business owners to start and grow their businesses and talking to many successful entrepreneurs and small business experts, I have evolved seven essential principles of small business success. These elements are highlighted in detail throughout this book.

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET

Why does one small business owner flourish while another one fails? Because successful entrepreneurs develop the right mindset. How you perceive your business and your life defines your reality.

• Business owners with an entrepreneurial mindset seek  to stand out in the crowd.
• Successful small business owners keep a positive attitude.
• Entrepreneurs are willing to fail in order to eventually  win. They understand that not every idea is a good one.
• Real entrepreneurs learn from failure and move on to the next big idea.

Each day we make hundreds of choices—from what to have for breakfast to what we’re going to accomplish that day. The choices we make cause the results we experience. Your answers to the questions you ask yourself will determine the outcome of the day. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need not only to get the right answers; you need to make sure you’re asking the right questions.

You must not be afraid of failure. There will be occasions when you are doing your best, but feel frustrated by a lack of progress in your business. Every entrepreneur goes through these difficult periods. I certainly have been there. Times like these are when you need to focus on the positive and maintain your optimism.

The key is to avoid negative thinking. To change the outcome of each day, you must change the questions you ask yourself. Try rephrasing your questions in a positive fashion. Rather than ask, what can I do to avoid being late? ask, how can I make sure I am on time? Make sure your questions are not keeping you from reaching your goals. More than 50 percent of business problems are well-disguised personal problems.

Losing the fear of failure and making mistakes (provided, of course, that you learn from them) comes in part from a willingness to delegate. Beware of what I call “the cult of personality” business. Any company that kowtows to the owner’s ego will ultimately fail.

I made this mistake in my first business. Everyone who called the office had to speak to me. My staff was scared to make a decision until they checked with me. My excessive control was keeping my business from growing.

(Continued on Page 3)

Melinda Emerson

You must hire smart people and empower them to make decisions, even if they are not the decisions you would make. Remember: It’s not always about you. It is about your family, your employees and your customers.

Be a family first entrepreneur. This means that you always have options not obligations, and your family is always your number one client. Don’t let your business become your mistress. Try to compensate your family for the fact that in the beginning of your business, you’ll have to work very long hours.

Key to thinking like an entrepreneur is remaining focused. Here are some tips to motivate yourself:

• Develop a daily routine. Get up at the same time every day, take a shower, and exercise before you start work.
• Convert one room in the house into an office. Be aware that using a room with a bed makes naps inviting.
• Schedule breakfast meetings and early morning conference calls to get yourself going early.
• When you feel your energy getting low, take a walk around the block or get on a treadmill for thirty minutes.
• Avoid procrastination; perform follow-up activities right away. Send thank-you cards and e-mail follow-ups quickly.
• Ask a friend or fellow business owner to call or e-mail you to remind you about things you said you really needed to get done.
• Isolation is the enemy of entrepreneurship. You must not let the silence or boredom get to you. You may need to figure out how to change your work environment to get your work done. At the same time, you need to make sure you remain disciplined.
• Find a secondary workplace outside your home, e.g., a coffee shop, a bookstore, or the public library.
• Schedule your time. Plan when you will make sales calls, write checks, return calls, write blog posts, read e-mail, and open mail.
• Make an action list at the end of every day to drive work activities for the next day.
• Do not make or accept personal calls until after 6 p.m., unless they’re urgent. Explain to your friends and family about your work hours and make sure people respect them. “I need to call you back,” works just fine to clear the line.
• Do not run errands until after 6 p.m. Politely inform those who ask that you are working.
• Invest in a two-line telephone with speakerphone and a headset so that you can multitask.(Continued on Page 4)

Get a Kitchen Cabinet. Your Kitchen Cabinet is an unofficial board of directors for your business. It’s a sounding board for your business ideas and challenges. The group should include a variety of people invested in your success, such as an existing entrepreneur, a mentor, lawyer, accountant, someone with a significant network and a generous spirit and (if possible) a client.  People who are already entrepreneurs or other business people are in a position to give you insight into what you need to do. As well, it is helpful to include a potential client in your back channel conversations. Clients can provide valuable insights into budget cycles, current pain-points, and other issues. Most importantly, they can introduce you to other potential customers.

PACE  YOURSELF
Sometimes, when you look back over your day, you’ll find yourself focusing on what you didn’t get done. That’s not helpful. There is rarely enough time in a day to get everything done. The best thing to do is to prioritize and pace yourself.  Even a marathon runner has to rest and refresh to keep going.

The early days in business are the toughest. I believe Dr. Sanjay Gupta when he says we need to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. But in the early days, while you are working your job and your business, a full night’s sleep will be a luxury. Owning a business is great, but in the beginning it might own you. You have to fight the tendency of the business to take over your life.

In a way, owning a business is like being in a marriage. In business and in marriage, you can get lax about the fundamentals, whether it’s remembering to send flowers to your spouse or using monthly financial statements in your business.

Your business and your family will compete for your time and attention. Wherever you are, be present there. Do not be the parent on the ball field looking at your BlackBerry. The ups and down of balancing your life and your work will sometimes have you turning yourself into a pretzel. But when you get that first sale, when you make enough profit to pay yourself, sharing that moment with your family will be priceless.

Be a lifelong learner. Successful business owners constantly seek to sharpen their own knife. They keep learning and growing. They hire coaches, take seminars, enroll in executive education programs, and approach life with the mindset that they learn something new every day. Even the interns can teach you something.

As you become a successful business owner, you can engage other people in your big dreams. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you believe in yourself, others will believe in you.

Goals and follow-up. Successful business owners are good talkers, but they’re even better with follow-up. They strive for completion, not perfection. They embrace change by breaking out of their comfort zone, challenging themselves and others.

Visionary leaders inspire those around them because they’ve thought long and hard about where they want their business to go and how to get there. If you want to be like them, set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely goals (SMART goals).
Once you’ve worked to make all these things part of your daily routine, you’ll be thinking like a successful business owner.

Reprinted From Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months by Melinda F. Emerson, Copyright © 2010 by Melinda F. Emerson. Used by permission of Adams Media, an F+W Media, Inc. Co. All rights reserved.

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as “SmallBizLady,” is a veteran entrepreneur, small business coach, and social media strategist who hosts #Smallbizchat weekly on Twitter for emerging entrepreneurs. She publishes a blog at www.succeedasyourownboss.com and you can follow her on Twitter @SmallBizLady. For more information about this book, log on to www.becomeyourownbossbook.com.

—P. King
Via E-mail

It isn’t impossible to put out signed artists or your own music. You just can’t do it alone.

Make the most of your time and money by attending local and regional industry events. Billboard has a list at www.billboardevents.com. As you engage others, you’ll no doubt come across potential mentors and record company internships. The more knowledge and understanding of the industry you attain, the better position you’ll be in. Check out The Complete Guide To Starting A Record Company, 2nd Edition by Keith Holzman (Solutions Unlimited; $44.95).

As you do your research, work on crafting a detailed business plan, emphasizing your strategy for branding, publishing, and distribution. (Check out Tunecore.com or CDBaby.com for online distribution services.) Defining your target market and music genres first will help.

Set up the business’ structure (see “Small Business Success Guide,” November 2007), and obtain your business entity’s ENI (Employer ID Number) with the IRS (a must for tax purposes). Once you start publishing music (register it first with The U.S. Copyright Office, www.copyright.gov), sign up for Soundscan (http://en-us.nielsen.com), which tracks your music play on radio stations. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, or ASCAP (www.ascap.com) and Broadcast Music Inc., or BMI (www.bmi.com) can assist members (songwriters, artists, etc.) in collecting royalties and license fees.      —Tennille M. Robinson

Emerson provides an encouraging, but practical guide to getting your business off the ground.

A while back, I wrote a blog post, “Memo To Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Learn Before You Launch.” It was my effort to communicate to would-be business owners—many of them looking to escape hated jobs, desperate for an income solution after being laid off, or eager to make fast money as a mogul on the rise—that there are no easy short-cuts to successful, sustainable entrepreneurship. Too often, I and my colleagues at Black Enterprise have to tell the inconvenient truth: being your own boss takes lots of time. It takes diligent planning. It takes great, mutually supportive relationships and contacts. And most of all, it takes work, work and more work. (And did I mention work?)

Those unwilling to embrace this truth usually end up doing entrepreneurship the hardest and most costly way possible—by trial and error—and become unhappy and frustrated, if not bankrupt. Or, intimidated, they give up on their dreams of business ownership altogether, deciding that they are not really cut out for the risks and challenges of entrepreneurship. (And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.) The rest get their mind, body, relationships and resources committed to learning exactly what it will require to take their venture from potential opportunity to profitable enterprise. These are the ones who go on to launch, build and run successful, profitable businesses.

If you’re in the last group, or aspire to be, I strongly recommend you read Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months: A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works by Melinda F. Emerson. The founder and CEO of Quintessence Multimedia, a marketing video production company, Emerson does more than just steer you away from mythical short-cuts. She literally provides a month by month road map, with critical checkpoints along the way, for anyone who is truly committed to their entrepreneurial journey, bringing clarity to the fundamentals of starting a business in any industry.

Become Your Own Boss In 12 Months is not a substitute for other books aimed at helping entrepreneurs get new ventures off the ground. For example, while Emerson, a small-business consultant, devotes a chapter to business plan writing, there are other good books totally devoted to that topic. However, if you’re serious about entrepreneurship, Become Your Own Boss could well be the first book in a steady regimen of self-education and continuous learning common to all outstanding entrepreneurs. Become Your Own Boss In 12 Months is ideal as required reading before moving on to books on more specialized aspects (business planning, incorporation and financing, etc.) of launching a business.

What Emerson does best is to give aspiring business owners constant reality checks along the way, avoiding the rah-rah, inspirational tone of many books which champion entrepreneurship. Instead, Emerson blends enthusiasm for business ownership and an encouraging demeanor, while unflinchingly addressing the price entrepreneurs must anticipate, plan for, and be prepared to pay to achieve their objectives, including potential strain on marriages and other relationships, as well as the inevitable impact on their finances and their lifestyles as a whole. The fact that Emerson leads off by emphasizing that would be entrepreneurs must establish a life plan before creating a business plan—and that the two must line-up and be compatible, if not integrated, with each other—may be the best thing about the book.

If you’re even thinking about starting your own business some day—or even if you’re an established entrepreneur who started on the path to business ownership without a road map and need help deciding where to go next—do yourself a favor: Now read this. You’ll thank me later. Actually, you’ll be thanking Emerson.