Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Every month more than 200,000 women launch new ventures — that’s more than 2.5 million women a year. The audience for Birthing the Elephant is growing and evergreen. It ranges from experienced female corporate executives facing job insecurity, layoffs or outsourcing to baby boomers who are entering the small business arena for the first time, either by choice or necessity, to mothers seeking more control over their work and family lives.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Part portable success coach, part step-by-step guide through a small-business launch, Birthing the Elephant is the ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’ for aspiring women entrepreneurs. It offers them a practical road map to the rocky emotional terrain they’ll face during the critical first 22 months of their start-up, showing them smart moves to make and pitfalls to avoid. Packed with frontline advice from cosmetics company founder Bobbi Brown, maternity-wear pioneer Liz Lange, and more than 25 other entrepreneurs and experts, Birthing the Elephant also offers checklists, action steps, and a helpful resource guide.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I am an entrepreneur, marketing consultant, and expert on start-up strategies for women. In addition to Birthing the Elephant, I am the author of How to Succeed on Your Own and 3 other how-to guides. I served as spokesperson for Avon’s Corporation to Cottage program and have been featured as a guest expert on women-owned businesses on ABC TV’s Good Morning America, CNBC, and WCBS, among others. My co-author, Bruce Freeman is nationally known as The Small Business Professor and has run a successful public relations firm for more than 15 years.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Most women’s start-up guides focus on 3Ms: money, marketing, and management. But there’s a 3rd M that’s at the heart of small-business survival: motivation. That’s where Birthing the Elephant breaks new ground. Only Birthing the Elephant charts the emotional challenges a new women business owner faces after quitting her day job and giving up a paycheck mentality to reshaping her identity and acting like an entrepreneur.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: The biggest obstacle women entrepreneurs face isn’t economic, it’s emotional. It’s winning the small-business mind game. It’s substituting brains for bucks. The advice in Birthing the Elephant can mean the difference between success and failure. It arms women mentally so they can:

• Make the shift from employee to entrepreneur
• Anticipate problems and push past barriers to success
• Renegotiate their relationship to money
• Avoid 10 costly pitfalls

Understanding the predictable patterns and problems that arise during a start-up and how to handle them can help women beat the odds, take control of their financial futures, and deliver on their dreams.