Why do women start businesses? What motivates anyone to dive into entrepreneurship with her heart and soul? How do you know whether business ownership is right for you?

The answers to these questions are as varied as the 10.6 million privately held businesses in the United States that are at least 50 percent woman-owned. These businesses generate $2.5 trillion in sales and employ 19.1 million people, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington, D.C., founded as the National Foundation for Women Business Owners. And each owner has her own story.

What will your story be? If you’re thinking of starting your own business, you’re in for a journey of self-exploration. The good news is that many, many people before you have tested the waters, and you can learn from their experience.

You’ll find some of their stories outlined in this book, along with statistical information, expert advice and checklists to use as guidelines as you explore a possible new career. Read more…

Buy It Now At NAWBO.org

1) Consider your audience. Who will read this book? What will those readers want to see on its pages? With me, this part was easy. The book was one of a series of three being published by the National Association of Women Business Owners and OPEN/American Express. The audience was women, or even men, who were thinking about starting their own businesses but weren’t sure how to make the leap. The association put out a request for proposal, or RFP, and I bid on the job. My bid won out of about 40 nationwide.

2) Create a plan of attack. Determine your end goal, such as finishing the book in one year. Then put together a series of deadlines that will get you there.
My deadline was four months. The association wanted the book printed in time for its upcoming conferences, and we had to figure in time for editing, proofreading, printing, binding and shipping. My deal was different from that of other authors because I had a publisher who was paying me to write full time for those four months. Many other authors create their books in their “spare time” and then try to find a publisher, often by going through an agent first.
My plan was to spend the first two weeks researching the topic and setting up interviews. I’d spend each of the following eight weeks writing one chapter. The final two weeks would be for tweaking the manuscript, self-editing and filling in any holes.

3) Write an outline. Without this roadmap, you can wander way off course. You don’t have to carve this in stone. It can change at any time. But an outline helps you stay focused – which was critical for me in such a short timeframe.
The assignment was to write a book about making the transition from working for someone else to creating your own business. I knew something about this transition because I had done it myself a couple times. But there were people out there much wiser than I was about how to do it right. My goal was to find them, pick their brains, and publish their stories in my book, along with some solid how-to advice from experts who help people make this transition every day.
I started with a loose list of topics that followed the steps a budding entrepreneur goes through, including evaluating whether entrepreneurship is the right path for you, developing your idea, writing a business plan, deciding when to leave your job. Then I consulted a couple experts just to make sure I was on the right track. When I felt good about the outline, I filled in the details about what each chapter would contain.

4) Conduct your research. Few people write books completely off the top of their heads – and those who do have been researching their topic for years and just happen to know it by heart. Most of us need that extra boost of confidence that comes from feeling really knowledgeable about our subject matter.
I researched all the resources available to women business owners. Most of my work was conducted on the Internet, but I also consulted reports, trade journals, magazines, other books, anything I could get my hands on. I was looking for the latest trends and for people who might have some knowledge to contribute about the subject.

5) Speak with the experts. Yes, you might be the expert yourself. But books are a lot more interesting when they contain multiple voices. Think about how bored you are when you sit in an audience and someone on stage drones on and on for hours at a time. You don’t want to sound like that person.
I set up a series of interviews, several a day, with people all over the United States. I would feature their stories and their advice in the book. We conducted the interviews by phone, with me typing and recording at the same time. Afterward, I had to transcribe each recording for accuracy. I used an excellent product, an Olympus 330 digital voice recorder that let me download a WAV file into my computer. When I played back the recording, I could slow it down, so I could understand the fast-talking New Yorkers I interviewed, or speed it up when I was listening to a Texas drawl.
Each interview took an average of an hour. Transcribing the files took at least that amount of time, sometimes longer. In between the interviews, I moved on to the next step.

6) Start writing – anything. This was possibly the toughest part. When you’re writing a book, all kinds of things run through your mind. What if the beginning isn’t interesting enough? What if I write too much? What if I write too little? What if I miss something and leave out important information?
Ignore all those voices. They’ll go away eventually. Just write.
I’m a nut about logic – and actually got one of the highest A’s in my logic class in college – so it went against everything inside me to do this, but I did something really odd. I wrote some of my chapters out of order.
My interviews for Chapters 2 and 3 weren’t finished yet, and I had such great stuff for Chapter 4. So I started there. Then I backtracked and wrote Chapter 1, then Chapters 6 and 7, and back to Chapters 2 and 3 before tackling Chapter 8. Yes, it drove me crazy. But in the end, the chapters formed a book.

7) Read back over your work. Actually, it helps to do this frequently along the way. When you’re having an especially trying day, maybe feeling unproductive, it can give you a real boost to go back and see what you’ve created already. You always wind up saying, “Wow, I wrote that?” – and hopefully in a good way. It gives you the confidence to move forward.
Even when you’re finished writing the whole book, go back and read what you’ve done. You’re bound to find a word you misspelled, a fact you forgot to double-check, or sentence you can smooth out. You’ll also find a reason to be real proud of yourself.
By the time I got to Week 12, I was pretty tired of looking at my manuscript. I can only imagine how people feel when they’ve worked on the same book for five years. I just wanted to get it off my computer and move on to the next project.
Instead, I asked some friends to read it. The publisher brought in a team of experts and a professional copy editor to go through it. And then I read back through all of their comments, seeing the book for the first time through the eyes of my audience. What a thrill! And their input was helpful. They helped me realize I needed to rework one chapter.
In the end, I had something I’d always dreamed about: my name on the front cover of a book.
You can do it, too!