Business Boutique
A Woman's Guide for Making Money Doing What She Loves
Written specifically for women, this comprehensive guide is a road map to planning a small business.
There are scores of books that address how to start a small business. Business guru Christy Wright’s book is different because she speaks directly to the desires and needs of women entrepreneurs. Leveraging her mother’s wedding-cake business, Wright cleverly organizes Business Boutique around four tiers, analogous to a wedding cake. “The tiers are designed in order,” writes the author, “and each tier supports everything else above it.”
Starting with Tier 1, “Build Your Foundation,” Wright tackles an area not always adequately covered in business books: the business owner’s aspirations. She delves into the “why” behind starting a business, exploring the individual’s dreams, vision, and mission. The first tier appropriately ends with a section on setting strong goals.
Tier 2, “Make It Yours,” and Tier 3, “Up and Running,” concern more concrete matters, such as investing and earning money from a business, the resources necessary to run a business, and operational issues. Even in these tiers, however, Wright makes an emotional connection with her audience; for example, in describing “the love-hate relationship” many women have with money, she suggests that some who start a business think, “Earning a profit is greedy and selfish.”
Not so, she writes; rather, “you need a profit to pay taxes and expenses, to save and invest back into the business, and to pay yourself.” This common-sense advice should bolster the confidence of women who may be approaching their business with a more casual, less profit-oriented mindset.
Tier 4, “Put Yourself Out There,” is a worthwhile primer on marketing a business. Highlighting four areas (Who you are, Who your customer is, Where your customers are, How to talk to your customers), Wright serves up essential information about branding, target audiences, content marketing, customer cultivation, and the sales process.
Chapters within the four tiers are brief yet informative and very easy to read. At the end of each chapter are “action items;” here, the author asks relevant questions, encourages list-making, and includes tables and charts to be filled in. Once completed, these exercises form the basis of a customized business plan.
Any woman with an interest in starting a business will likely find Business Boutique to be an engaging and valuable handbook.
Reviewed by
Barry Silverstein
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
