Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Rewriting the Rules of Business Success

Women on Top is an inspiring compalation of women-owned companies. These companies are different. Yet they are successful. The book lets us know that it is o.k. to run a business like a woman and shows examples of how its done. Heffernan also points out some of the traps that women fall into because they have bought the belief that they can't be good businesspeople. Women don't go after finance in a meaningful way. Part of the reason is that we still don't get the loans and investment we need and deserve. (According to Heffernan's research, the government still hasn't met their 5% goal to use women-owned businesses.) The other reason is our own self-defeating talk. In spite of it all, women can run businesses that are financially successful, have good employee relations and delight their customers. If you are a woman business owner, work for one or love one, read this book.

This excellent and important book has a great deal to offer for women and men across a wide range of industries and sizes of company. By focusing on the unique attributes and strategies which have made women-owned entrepreneurial businesses so successful, the author offers us all valuable information on how to make businesses of all sorts more successful. I especially liked the format of the book, organized by themes, drawing on in-depth case studies of highly successful women business owners across a wide range of business sectors, everything from oil exploration to gun manufacturing, and everything in between. In doing so she also quietly, but firmly, shatters any preconcpetions that women only run "girly" businesses. The author is an extremely talented writer, and the interwoven case studies bring the book to life in a compelling way. By the end I felt like I knew the women entrepreneurs in the book better than I know some of my friends!