The Boss of You

Oh my, but there were a lot of puns to choose from to title this post… “BUST-ing with pride,” any­one? OK, but seri­ously, we’re very, very excited that The Boss of You has received a thumbs-up from BUST, one of our most favoritest mag­a­zines ever. (There are two cov­ers to the left because it’s a two-cover “Men We Love” issue — flip it one way for Flight of the Con­chords, flip the other way and it’s Eli­jah Wood.) Here’s what the very kind Katie Shafley had to say:

A book that tells me I can draw pic­tures instead of mak­ing a busi­ness plan? I’m sold. In The Boss of You, Emira Mears and Lau­ren Bacon, who own their own Web-site-design busi­ness in Van­cou­ver, BC, deliver cre­ative tips for the DIY busi­ness owner, whether it’s cre­at­ing illus­trated mod­els of your tar­get audi­ence, com­plete with back­grounds and per­son­al­i­ties, or trad­ing freshly baked cook­ies in return for help design­ing your logo.

The Boss of You isn’t just any “fol­low the Wal-Mart ethic to finan­cial glory” guide to cre­at­ing a money-grubbing ven­ture. The authors sug­gest that while money is part of any busi­ness, it shouldn’t be the end goal. Of course, they insist that you set a good salary for your­self, ben­e­fits included, so you don’t end up slav­ing for your business.

The book focuses on brand­ing, cre­ative mar­ket­ing, and the phys­i­cal steps it takes to get a small busi­ness run­ning. Mears and Bacon offer sage advice that you’ll actu­ally want to fol­low (“per­haps you get your best ideas in the bath; in that case, draw your­self a nice hot one and keep a notepad next to you”) and offer sev­eral exam­ples of suc­cess­ful women-owned busi­nesses. Plus, they don’t skimp on the details most of us dread, like cre­at­ing a bud­get or apply­ing for a busi­ness license, pre­sent­ing them in a read­able way (with infor­ma­tion for inde­pen­dent ladies north and south of the bor­der). Whether you’re sell­ing hand­made leg­gings or start­ing an online graphic-design con­sul­tancy, this is a handy guide that feels less like slog­ging through a tome of entre­pre­neur­ial jar­gon and more like chat­ting with a knowl­edge­able friend over after­noon tea.

— BUST, April/May 2008

Thank you, BUST! We love you!

[Side note: Nei­ther of us are yet accus­tomed to being referred to as “Mears and Bacon,” so although we know it breaks the rules, we can’t help won­der­ing whether it would be so bad if review­ers went the first-name route… The last-name thing just sounds so strange!]