MothersWork: How a Young Mother Started a Business on a Shoestring and Built It into a Multi... Book

First, I will tell you that I am a business owner myself, so I read this book from the viewpoint of someone who has already been in business for over 10 years. My "product" is a service, so some discussions about inventory control and raw good price haggling were a bit boring for me and I glossed over them. Also, I never plan on going public - it's just not in my plans - so I skimmed through the parts about how to live through an IPO. Finally, some perspectives on what it means to be a small business are a little skewed here: the tagline reads "how a young mother started a business on a shoestring and built it into a multi-million dollar company." They had tens of thousands of dollars to invest in the company and plenty of money in their savings account, leftovers from the selling off of her husband's prior business - they could afford to go a year without drawing a salary. In my humble opinion, this does not a shoestring make.

However, those pesky things aside, this is a book worth reading if you're a business owner. There were plenty of times I read a passage and thought, "Ah! That happened to me, too!" Sometimes it was nice to remind myself that I'm not alone in my struggles, and it was good to remind myself of some of the mantras I started with.

Some of the gems in the book include, "a business start-up is not always full speed ahead in a forward direction," and, "let's face it: you really want to make a lot of money. No one is going to hand it to you." As a parent of three kids, I enjoyed the passage that read, "Share your hopes and dreams with your children so they will know why you are working so hard, and can share in your achievements." The part of me that tires sometimes of being a business owner connected with the author when she wrote, "the initial days [...] had turned into the endless days of drudgery" and, "doing the thousand little unglamorous things that would make our business a little better every day." The part of me that sometimes doubts our own success appreciated the reinforcement of her persistence, "Nobody gets it right just coming out of the gate. The important thing is to keep moving ahead." In the end, what I really took away from this book is something the author wrote on page 18, "Think big. Focus. Never give up. You can go as far as you think you can go."

So okay - I've read more substantial business books. Books by more famous authors. Books that contain nuggets of wisdom that become part of everyday jargon. I've read the books you're "supposed" to read and the books recommended to me by my trusted advisors. And - I liked this book. I don't know if I would like Rebecca Matthias as a friend (they don't seem to have any fun) - but I would shake her hand if I met her at a cocktail party or networking function, and I would tell her that her book inspired me to keep on truckin' along.