For Better or For Work: A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families - Hardcover

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0983934002 ISBN 13: 9780983934004

Publisher: An Inc. Original, 2012

Synopsis

Discover how to build a successful business and follow your passions without sacrificing healthy family relationships to the financial and emotional rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship.

How does someone who is obsessed live peacefully with others who are not? That question summarizes the quandary faced by company founders and their families. To answer it, author Meg Cadoux Hirshberg examines the impact for better and for worse of entrepreneurial businesses on families and relationships, and vice versa.

Practically, this is a vital guide to navigating the emotional and logistical terrain of business-building while simultaneously enjoying a fulfilling family life. From the trials of co-habiting with a home-based business to the queasy necessity of borrowing money from family and friends to the complexities of intergenerational succession, no topic is taboo.

Psychologically, this book is a reminder that no entrepreneurial family trudges the hard trail of company-building alone. If you have embarked on such an enterprise, you and your spouse will find comfort and guidance in the experiences of others like you. Meg draws on the struggles and triumphs she and husband Gary Hirshberg experienced as he built Stonyfield Yogurt, and also shares powerful stories and insights from other families, gathered through hundreds of interviews.

For Better or For Work will remind you that the long hours and late nights spent on the business or with the family are worth the effort and will give you tools for making both endeavors successful.

About this title

About the Author

Meg Hirshberg is a freelance writer, the author of the ''Balancing Acts'' column for Inc. magazine, a highly regarded speaker, and the wife of Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Yogurt. Although it took nine painful years to become profitable, Stonyfield is now the largest organic yogurt company in the world. Meg has written two yogurt cookbooks and her writing has appeared in Yankee, New Hampshire magazine, and the Boston Globe magazine, among other publications.

Review

''[One of the] 12 Most Anticipated Business Books of 2012.'' -CNBC.com

''[One of the five] most influential, inspirational business books to be published this year...Meg Cadoux Hirshberg's goal is to instill hope in weary entrepreneurs and to help them better manage the difficult balancing act of successfully running both a business and a family.'' -Entrepreneur magazine

''This honest text...should help to navigate the dangerous pitfalls of allowing a business to come and squat in the midst of a family.'' -Financial Times

''An immensely beneficial, contemporary analysis of what makes modern-day working families really work.'' -Kirkus Reviews

''An indispensable tool. '' -Publishers Weekly

''Hirshberg's candid advice is not just refreshing but could prove essential to the success of a new startup...her hard-won lessons for relationship survival are worth more than a read-you might actually want to print them out.'' -Forbes Woman

''Hirshberg is writing about the elephant in the entrepreneurial room. Read For Better or For Work and you'll clear out a lot of that unspoken clutter between you, your business, and your family.'' -Small Business Trends

''Meg Cadoux Hirshberg has given us one of the best descriptions of the entrepreneurial experience that I have ever read. It is quite simply a marvelous book--beautifully written, unflinchingly honest, profoundly true.'' -Bo Burlingham, author, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

''Meg brings to life the craziness of entrepreneurship, and offers excellent advice for surviving the madness.'' -Ben Cohen, Cofounder, Ben & Jerry s Ice Cream

''I loved this book! I wish I'd had it when I was trying to start a business and raise my kids. It is wise and wonderful.'' -Eileen Fisher, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Eileen Fisher

''My wife, Nancy, and I highly recommend that all entrepreneurial families read For Better or For Work. Knowing the reality upfront, you can prepare for it with eyes wide open.'' --Ron Shaich, Founder and Executive Chairman, Panera Bread

About this edition

• Publisher: An Inc. Original
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0983934002
• ISBN 13: 9780983934004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260