There's a Business in Every Woman: A 7-Step Guide to Discovering, Starting, and Building the Business of Your Dreams

This book is great for anyone who is in business or wants to start a business. Ann Holmes knows her subject. She has successfully started, run and sold multiple businesses. Although directed toward women, anyone going into business can benefit. Ann writes with the wisdom of a mother who knows how to coach her children from birth to graduation, one step at a time. She assumes the reader is starting at the beginning and must acquire the business language, know-how, and understanding needed to operate a successful company. True to her subtitle, the book provides a concise 7-step guide to discovering, starting and building the business of your dreams. It comes complete with a checklist for each step, real life examples, and plenty of resources. Ann openly shares her own experiences of having to make tough decisions to get her business through difficult times. Beside the checklists there are "Success" stories and "Regrets" stories to help you recognize the value of each step and what the consequences could be if you do not organize a business in a systematic way. In the second part of her book, putting the seven steps into practice, Ann continues to provide real-life examples so the reader will comes away with a total concept that the business owner's role is to be the captain who charts the course for the business and uses the wisdom of the 7-step guide to navigate the business to a successful outcome including selling the business if that is your goal. The only thing left for the reader is to have the brilliant business idea, follow the 7-step guide, and make the decisions that let your business flourish. Armchair Interviews says: With so many women starting businesses, anything that helps them be successful is important to read.

I enjoyed this book. I think any woman who collects a W-2 and wants to become self-employed would do themselves a favor to read this book as they plan to make the transition. As I turned the pages to this book I felt as though I was reading a re-write of Ginny Wilmerding's book that came out last year entitled Smart Women and Small Business (ISBN: 0471778680). See my review for that book. This book is broken into 10 chapters as follows: 1. How Do You Know if There's a Business in You? 2. Choose and Focus on Your Core Competencies 3. Build Your Company's Infrastructure 4. Keep Good Financials 5. Market Your Products 6. Diversify 7. Plan and Manage Growth 8. Understand Valuation and Organize an Exit Plan 9. Put Your Company into Play 10. Done Deals: Sold Companies and IPOs It claims to include a 7-step guide to discovering, starting, and building the business of your dreams. I found the "guide" to include some wonderful information, but I did not find it to flow logically from one step to the next. At page 30 of the book in Figure 2 the 7-steps are diagrammed. I'm not going to point out all the diagram's flaws, but I will say I think it would have been much better if it had been written as the following "7 steps." See 1. Learn the ropes of your business BEFORE you start it (have a skill set) 2. Prepare a business plan 3. Start the business 4. Market the business & keep good financial records 5. Grow & Diversify 6. Systematize the business 7. Sell the business (exit & move on) The author says at page 5 of the book that she wrote it for women entrepreneurs to help them navigate the steps to business success. As long as you keep in mind the above 7 steps I have written here you can read the book and the author will accomplish what she set out to do by writing the book. There is lots of great content in this book. My favorite part was Chapters 9 & 10 that describes the process of preparing to sell your company and cash out. I would have liked the book better if the topic of venture capital had been left out. It did not seem appropriate for the target audience of this book. I particularly liked the reference made to SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) at page 35. I'm a SCORE volunteer, and the fact that I am is probably why I am reviewing this book. It's worth a read. 4 stars!