Building your dream business is all well and good, but just growing your business isn’t enough. You need to be making money out of it, argues CPA and entrepreneur Susanne Mariga in this cogent, encouraging guide.
The book is an extension of the Profit First brand developed by Mike Michalowicz (who contributed the foreword), speaking directly to the needs of Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs). Mariga is a Profit First Professional, who trains others in this small business growth system based on the envelope approach: where money for different expenses (tax, OPEX, etc.) is stashed in different envelopes, similar to Dave Ramsay’s “pay yourself first” model.
Mariga started her own business while on maternity leave with her daughter. She wanted to get out of the corporate grind and to show her daughter a better way; she’d done the books for her father’s accounting firm when she was 14 and felt ready to forge her own path. When she started out, she was working insane hours with little profit to show for it; she was trying to be the impossible “cheapest and best option.” Her life was changed by the Profit First system, which helps entrepreneurs figure out how to build a framework for success.
Many MBEs, she notes, are looking to change a legacy of poverty—to be the first in their family to achieve high levels of financial success. Mariga mixes inspiring stories of MBEs achieving success into plenty of concrete small-business-keeping advice, from basic banking practices to tax strategies.
In addition to the helpful how-tos, Mariga shines brightest when encouraging and inspiring her readers; she talks at length about how readers can groom their mindset for success, nurture pride in themselves, understand their own value, and stand up for themselves in a world that’s not set up to support them.
“[A]nyone,” she counsels, “can change the legacy they have inherited and become the first-generation financial success story in their family.”
Highly recommended for fans of Michelle Singletary, Patrice Washington, Tiffany Aliche, David Bach, and Suze Orman
