Emira Mears - The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business

Table of Contents

SO: YOU WANT TO BE THE BOSS of you, right? Were guessing thats why you picked up this book. Youve got an idea or a hobby that you absolutely love (or a skill you want to liberate from cubicle tyranny), and youre pretty darn sure that with the right plan in place you could launch your own creative, independent venture; pay the bills; and maybe even make more than youre making now. Whether your dream is to open the tastiest vegan bistro in town, to make and sell your one-of-a-kind hand-screened tea cozies online, or to start an allfemale graphic design consultancy, your head is probably swimming with questions. Of course youre an expert at baking vegan lasagna/ sewing a tea cozy/designing a brochure, but what about all the details of business ownership? Do you need a business license? How will you do your taxes? Do you need a website? What about employees? And whats all this going to cost? These kinds of questions have probably cluttered up your head as youve pondered how to take the idea of doing what you love for a living from daydream to reality. We know all the questions youve got because weve been through it all, eight years and counting. As we took the path from Hey, why dont we do this on our own? to writing our first paycheck, we quickly learned that there was more to becoming your own boss than just figuring out what color your business cards should be.

At the time we set out on our entrepreneurial adventure, we scoured the bookstores for resources that would help answer our most basic questions about the details of business ownership and support us in figuring out what the big picture was really going to look like. Sure, there were plenty of books out there, but none of them spoke to us, or to the size and type of business we were looking to establish. Most seemed to assume that every businessperson was pushing for big growth, plenty of staff, and massive profits, and while we wouldnt have said no to a windfall, we knew that we wanted to start out small (just the two of us), work with people we loved, and grow at a sustainable rate over time while still being paid what we were worth. To be honest, it has always seemed to us that starting small and growing slowly was a much more reasonableand achievableapproach than the high-stakes, adrenaline-filled business games that make financial headlines. Some people love living on the edge, but were not among their number. We wanted to beat the odds and see our business survive a good long timeand we didnt want to have to work twenty-four hours a day to get there. We figured there had to be another path to entrepreneurship than the one we were seeing modeled in books and the media.

After thumbing through many dull business tomes (and frilly pastel books for girl entrepreneurs), we were able to put our finger on what it was about the other business books that didnt work for us: They wanted to tell us what success looked like. As fiercely independent and strong-willed gals, we were having none of it. So thats what makes this book different: We dont assume we know what success looks like for you, though we are going to help you figure out your own vision. Because the true beauty of being an entrepreneur is that you get to answer that question for yourself. (Then you get to work your butt off to make sure you achieve your dream.)

Weve been inspired over the years by the many, many businesswomen weve met who are doing business in nontraditional ways, starting with setting their own standards for success. For some, success means earning a living wage while funneling a portion of their revenues to charities; for others, it means having a work schedule flexible enough that they can walk their kids to and from school every day; still others define success by being able to create a fantastic work environment for their staff. Youll have your own definition, and it may look quite different from these examples. Were here to tell you that you dont need to follow the herd to have a thriving business that sustains you for years to come. Just because your dreams dont include being described as a tycoon doesnt mean you cant experience life as a wildly successful entrepreneur!

This book is the savvy and oh-so-practical resource we wish wed had in our early days. By the time youre finished reading it, if weve done our job, youll have a clear sense of whats involved in running a business your way. Well guide you through the process of defining what success looks like for you so that you can create a business that reflects your values, thats ethically sound, that serves your community, and that pays you (and your staff, if you choose to have any) what youre worth. And well help you work through the details of starting, running, and maintaining your soon-to-be-successful venture.

Weve structured the book to follow all the stages your business will go through, from those initial brainstorming sessions to the first few years of running your own show. Well start by helping you define what it is youre going to sell, whos going to buy it, and what its all going to cost you. Well help you decide what youre going to call yourself, and what kind of digs your new venture will require. Next, well move on to helping you figure out how youre going to let the world know that you and your new business exist (a.k.a. marketing). Marketing is just as important in the early days of your business as it is two years later when you decide youd like to get a bit of a pay raise and so need to round up some more work. As any business owner can tell you, marketing is a story that never really ends, so the whole section is one youll want to come back to over time (and that may hold some useful gems for those of you already a few years into being the boss of you). The last section in the book explores ways to grow and maintain your business over time. While much of that information is useful to consider in the early yearsa girls got to dream big, after alla lot of it will become more relevant as time goes on. So if youre picking this book up after being your own boss for a few years, theres also wisdom here to help you navigate the challenges of your business as time passes.

But dont just take our word for it. In addition to sharing our own experiences, weve included examples and advice from some of the smartest businesswomen we could find, all of whom are running businesses like the one you want to create: the kind that jibes with the owners values and personal goals. Weve used their stories and fabulous wisdom throughout the book to illustrate the challenges and opportunities that being your own boss will bring.

One of the things that bothers us most about the way business is discussed out there in the world is how little time or space is given to profiling smaller, sustainable, and creative businesses. While wed really like to think that has nothing to do with how many of them are started by women, chances are that plays into it. It is our hope that the collected wisdom of the women we spoke to and the stories we tell in this book will help you realize that you arent alone on this awesome journey to becoming your own boss. And, with any luck, this book will be one of the tools that help you on the way to becoming one of those examples that other women can learn from.