Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Cute Little Store

As I continue my research/business planning, I'm interested in many points of view and experiences. A book I recently read "Cute Little Store" by Adeena Mignogna, is subtitled "Between the entrepreneurial dream and business reality". Mignogna shares a very forthright story on her experiences in starting a new business, coming from a background of an engineer!

Mignogna talks in-depth about how to survive your first two years, both from a business and personal standpoint. She shares the good and the bad on every topic from Customers, to Security, to Marketing, to negotiating a lease. What I really liked was that she talked about the same type of things that we consider as part of disaster recovery in IT - how do we set it up correctly, how do we protect it from disaster, and how do we fix it if disaster does occur?

What I did not realize until close to finishing the book is that she ended up closing her store (a paint your own pottery and beading store in Ashburn, VA) in 2008 due to the challenges of the economy and the desire to do something new. She has written a follow-up book titled "Cute Little Store 2 - Whatever happened to that Cute Little Store?" Sounds like a must read! She still has a website - http://www.cutelittlestore.net

I spent a good part of yesterday thinking about my employee plan - what duties do I want them to perform? What kinds of things do I need to add to my employee manual? What kind of person do I want to hire and where do I find them?

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