From Corporate to Entrepreneur
Book Review: Black and White Strike Gold
Sandi Webster and Peggy McHale share 51 tips for entrepreneurs looking to move from corporate life to entrepreneurial.
Sandi Webster and Peggy McHale had a bad year.
Their office at American Express was destroyed when the twin towers fell on 9/11. Then, the spiraling economy led to their layoff. Through pure determination, they were able to turn their misfortune into gold.
After founding the consulting firm Consultants 2 Go, Sandi and Peggy wrote the book Black and White Strike Gold. This book is full of "gold nuggets" for entrepreneurs.
The book begins with the interesting life stories of the authors. Sandi Webster is an immigrant from Jamaica and worked hard to earn her place in corporate America. Peggy McHale is a working-mom, learning to balance soccer duties with the high-pressure atmosphere of working at a Fortune 500 company. What did they have in common? The desire to own their own business. If you are a woman or an immigrant, this book will be of special interest to you.
From their inspirational stories come instructional lessons for the entrepreneur. Fifty-one gold nuggets to be exact! Pick and chose the nuggets that interest you or read the whole book. Either way, it is a quick and likeable read.
Learn about everything from finding a business partner, to hiring practices, and pricing structure. Some tips are humorous. They once hired a sales person who said their psychic told them it was a good move. Needless to say, this employee didn't work out. Other nuggets are very instructional like specifics on determining a pricing structure for a service business.
My favorite nugget is one that we practice at Gaebler.com. Nugget #21: Hire Slow, Fire Fast. When starting our business we would have avoided a lot of pain if we had read this book. Sandi and Peggy share the story of one of their hiring errors and the lessons they learned from this. A valuable lesson for any entrepreneur!
Today, Consultants 2 Go is a successful firm. They provide marketing consultants to the Fortune 500 companies. For example, a key Director of Marketing is about to go on Family Leave, they will provide someone to fill in for that person while they are out. Today, they have sales over a million dollars.
Luckily, they took notes on their journey and saved them for you in their new book Black and White Strike Gold.
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