It’s Personal, and It’s Business…

In the otherwise forgettable movie You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan’s character delivers a great comeback to Tom Hank’s character when he cites the Godfather credo that “it’s not personal, it’s business.” She replies:

What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It was personal to a lot of people. And what’s so wrong with being personal anyway?

I believe that all great entrepreneurial books must address this unique dynamic, that of the tension between personal and impersonal. Because so many startup founders must learn both content and process at a dizzying pace, the most useful books blend insights into the practical needs of startup ventures while simultaneously revealing how different individuals learn how to learn this material. Business, in other words, IS personal at this level, no matter how hard you want to believe the credo of the Godfather. Eventually, and the sooner the better, startups must operate on explicit and fair principles—but this ideal state is invariably postponed by the people who make the business. And so the most instructive books are those which show how the entrepreneur learned what they know.

Indeed, one of my favorite entrepreneurial tales ever told treads this very line with poise. Jerry Kaplan’s Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure might be the best and most engaging tale of one entrepreneur’s painful education. Yet I’m delighted to note that not one, but two new books can be added to the canon of great startup stories.

Today I’d like to tout Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea Into a Million Dollars and How You Can Too! by Kim Lavine. I have to start by revealing a personal bias about entrepreneurial books that take on issues of gender. I hate most of them, and not because the topic isn’t important to me—in fact quite the opposite. My critique is that most efforts to identify key differences between male and female entrepreneurs are simplistic or wrong or tainted by entitlement. They just don’t approach the topic proportionately, and I just can’t stomach them. (One rare exception: Clearing the Hurdles, which I touted on this site previously.) I’ve always preferred smart stories written by women who, by dint of honesty, insight, and experience, shed more insight into the topic simply by sharing what they experienced and learned. (For example: the fantastic memoir Naked in the Boardroom by Robin Wolaner)

Enter Mommy Millionaire, a memoir-cum-fieldbook by a mother who launched a successful company that sells comfort tchotchkes. (No disrespect intended by the way.) Her book rocks, and I highly recommend it as a terrific resource for anyone in the early stages of a startup. She is a terrific writer, and her book is rich with smart insights and useful how-to material. Better, she has an excellent story to tell. Several years ago she decided to make Christmas presents for her son’s teachers, and invented a corn-filled pillow that could be easily heated and used to comfort one’s neck. She gave it a bit of fun design, a cute name (Wuvits), and fed what she discovered to be a real demand for the product. All startups are sagas, and I won’t recap her long tale (again, do get the book), but will note that her candor and humility are noteworthy. She learns over and over from mistakes and foibles, which is not to say that she’s naïve or inept—it’s just that she has the fortitude to face up to her mistakes and above all, like a shrewd entrepreneur, to learn from them.

Tapping into the theme of this post, here’s a nice quote from her eminently practical book:

In my experience, the height to which you climb the ladder of success in the world is completely dependent on your ability to become divorced from and impervious to emotional knee-jerk reactions. If you can’t separate business decisions from personal emotions, you’re never going to become a millionaire.

Read her book to share her voyage along that path, and pick up some pointers on the way. You can learn more from her website as well.

Later this week I’ll rave about another terrific business tale—not a startup story, but one that also delves into the business-human issue, and which shares powerful insights about the human challenges of good business.