We’re business partners and best friends, based in Vancouver, BC, and our most recent enterprise is co-authoring a book titled The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business. The Boss of You is our attempt at filling an as-yet empty niche in the business-book world — independent-minded women running their own businesses.You might expect, as we did once, that the world would be full of books on this subject, because there are just so darned many women doing business with creativity, intelligence, and style… but the fact is, no one in the publishing world seems to have cottoned on to the fact that more and more women are heading out on their own to pursue their passions as entrepreneurs. At least, that’s what we’re hoping. We’d love nothing more than to be the first to champion what we think is the most fun you can have while making a living.
We started this website as a living guide to business, our way. You can expect to find our thoughts and ruminations on business, updates on our book-writing and -publishing adventures, profiles of women-run businesses, resources for women entrepreneurs, and more than likely ideas on a few other assorted topics.
The Authors
Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears met while working for a website design firm on what turned out to be the eve of the dot-com bust, in Vancouver. It wasn’t long before we decided we weren’t cut out to fulfill other people’s dreams, and over regular sushi lunches and after-work coffee dates, we hatched a plan to become our own bosses. Less than six months later, in February 2000, we founded Raised Eyebrow Web Studio Inc. — a successful, mission-driven business that primarily serves not-for-profit organizations, women-run small businesses and arts groups. At the time, neither of us had any experience running a business, but we had a hunch that wasn’t going to be a problem. Our combined experiences working in small, start-up, high-tech companies in the 1990s, where everyone did a little bit of everything, from company invoicing to coordinating large office moves — along with work and volunteer stints in the non-profit sector, where job descriptions were equally fluid — emboldened us enough to take the leap. And we sensed that we’d watched others make enough mistakes along the way to translate some of those lessons into successes.
As business partners, we set out with goals that would be considered modest and unremarkable within traditional business models: build a successful business that would pay us both competitive salaries and allow us the freedom to pursue our personal lives. In eight years, we have not only built a highly successful business which now employs three additional staff; we have also consistently turned a profit. And as an added bonus along the way, we went from partners in business to best friends, who were just crazy enough to also co-author a book.
After fielding countless inquiries from aspiring young businesswomen on a wide range of topics geared at answering the question “how do I start my own business?”, we decided it made sense to roll up our sleeves and write the business book we had longed for when we started Raised Eyebrow. So here we are today, writing The Boss of You. It’s our belief that there are plenty of other women out there with similar business goals to ours, and who would benefit from hearing about some of the lessons we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) over the years.
About Lauren Bacon
Lauren is a veteran web designer, who co-founded Raised Eyebrow Web Studio, Inc. with her business partner, co-author, and all-around right-hand woman, Emira Mears. The two have been in business together for eight years, and during that time have developed a reputation for designing elegant and highly user-friendly websites for nonprofit organizations and small businesses. Her 10+ years of web design experience, combined with her devotion to details, places Lauren’s work amongst some of the premier websites in the non-profit and arts communities.
Lauren and Emira are advocates of values-based business and of sustainable growth. From humble beginnings in a corner of Lauren’s bedroom, to a small office in Vancouver’s historic Gastown district, Raised Eyebrow has expanded gradually to include a staff of five and a small pool of contractors.
Lauren’s spare-time pursuits include writing and speaking about business, technology, and women’s issues; she co-edited Soapboxgirls.com, a monthly e-zine and blog, from July 2000 to April 2006, and she now co-authors a blog on women and business at www.laurenandemira.com. An accomplished soprano, Lauren holds a degree in classical voice from the University of British Columbia, and was a founding member of acclaimed choral ensemble musica intima.
About Emira Mears
Emira co-founded Raised Eyebrow Web Studio, Inc. at the tender age of 24, shortly after meeting her business partner and co-author Lauren Bacon. The two have been in business together since 2000 and continue to build on the strong foundation of their working relationship to take on new joint projects like co-authoring The Boss of You, co-editing a webzine and presenting at conferences. Their company has developed a strong reputation in the non-profit and small business communities for elegant and highly usable website design. Emira’s degree in Communications, background working with not-for-profit organizations and activist groups, and passion for women-run businesses, combine to make her a sought-after web strategist and project manager.
Emira and Lauren are advocates of values-based business and of sustainable growth. From humble beginnings in a corner of Lauren’s bedroom, to a small office in Vancouver’s historic Gastown district, Raised Eyebrow has expanded gradually to include a staff of five and a small pool of contractors.
Emira is a devoted fair-weather cyclist, enthusiastic gardener, vegetarian cookbook collector and amateur flamenco dancer with a keen eye for fashion. She and her partner dove head first into the insane Vancouver real-estate market in 2005, purchasing a ramshackle home they could practice their D.I.Y. renovations skills on. She documents their renovation successes and woes and general domestic musings at her personal blog: domicile.typepad.com.
What Happened to Soapboxgirls?
We started Soapboxgirls, our e-zine on women’s passions and politics, in August 2000. That was another age, internet-wise; Soapboxgirls was part of a Canadian feminist site network called Moxie.ca., which was at that time only one of many riot-grrl-inspired, third-wave feminist networks out there. (ChickClick was probably the most famous one, with dozens of members at its peak.) But a couple of years later, the network disbanded, mostly due to the decline in ad revenue — without that cash, it wasn’t viable to market ourselves as a group.
We published monthly (or near-monthly) issues of the e-zine until July 2002, when we awoke to the fact that our business was simply too time-consuming (read: successful) to continue to spend hours writing, editing & publishing an e-zine.
It had also dawned on us that we wanted to try our hand at another kind of writing: the offline kind. So it was with ambitions of finding more time to write that we closed down the e-zine and converted Soapboxgirls.com to a blog.
At that time, we had the seed of an idea, but we didn’t want to make it public because we knew it would likely take years to come to fruition. As it turns out, it took years for us to clear our plates enough to even get started. But now we’re on track, and we’re excited to begin the show-and-tell process. So in the interest of staying focused on The Boss of You, we’ve archived Soapboxgirls (the blog and the e-zine) permanently.
