THE INDEPENDENT WOMAN: How to Start and Succeed in Your Own Business

This once-over-lightly introduction to entrepreneurship for women is based on material developed for a series of road-show seminars on small business, sponsored by Merle Norman Cosmetics--a West Coast concern that just happens to supply a national network of independently owned ""studios"" purveying makeup goods and services. Mercifully, the authors do not make a hard-sell pitch for their boss company (though its name does pop up in case studies with some frequency). But neither do they furnish much more than you-can-do-it encouragement. In the sketchy section on opportunity, for example, they offer only generalities, noting at one point that would-be proprietors can track consumer trends by reading The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. Likewise, they recommend engaging competent and simpatico professionals (accountants, attorneys, bankers, insurance agents, et al.) without really explaining how to find, let alone qualify, such paragons; and sections on planning and finance include suggestions that verge on the ingenuous, if not insulting--e.g., ""It's good practice to keep your personal funds separate from cash generated by your business."" Briefly covered: proposal preparation, site selection, promotion, personnel policy. And, to affirm their allegiance to the sisterhood, the authors offer trendy tips on building a personal support system and coping with family responsibilities while nurturing a new venture--plus short takes on ""women who made it,"" principally in retailing and service fields. What's missing, though, is a rigorous, real-world examination of dozens of crucial topics; so a far better bet for women seriously interested in getting down to business is McVicar and Craig's Minding My Own Business (p. 553).