Your Business Companion

If you never took a business course, never mastered spreadsheets, and
never read Who Moved My Cheese?, then this book is for you. If your
hobby has grown into a small-scale enterprise, or your idea—installing
ergonomic office equipment or selling fabrics made in Singapore—has
become more popular than you expected, this book is also for you. In
other words, this book is for people who “fell” into business.
Are there really that many people who stumble into business this way?
Well, there’s a woman who started making wedding favors for friends
and soon got calls from strangers who’d seen her products and wanted
to buy them. And there’s someone who began helping an Alzheimer’s
patient and quickly found her services in demand and well paid. And
there’s a man, unable to find a quality yo-yo, who began creating them
himself and soon received orders from around the world.
And then there’s me.
I love audiobooks and have experience in sound recording—and I fell
into business myself when I somehow talked my way into producing
an audiobook for a large publisher. Caught up in the entrepreneurial
euphoria of landing a big contract, I forgot for a moment that I already
had a full-time job as an editor and a small legal practice on the side.
A few days after signing the contract, the magnitude of my task hit
me—I had to produce four audio disks consisting of about 60 separate
segments read by six different narrators along with about 70 musical
cues. My mood went from an incredibly unfounded confidence—the
type often exhibited by reality show contestants right before they are
kicked off the island—to teeth-clenching wide-awake-at-3-a.m. despair.
Surely, other small business owners had found themselves in the
same position as me. There must be plenty of advice on how to manage
small business anxiety. I looked through the resources I’d gathered and

skimmed a few of the business books I had purchased. No help. Nothing
spoke directly to the overwhelming angst of people who fell into business.
We “accidental businesspeople” need more than the stories and fables
found in popular business books like the E-Myth Revisited. What we
need—besides a daily neck massage and a renewable prescription for
Zoloft—is some reassurance that this confusing state of affairs is both
normal and temporary.
And that became my mission for this book. I wanted to provide
the type of practical guidance that I was not finding in other start-up
guides—the reassurance and guidance that I hoped would reduce my
own small-business anxiety.
Following some of my own advice, one of the first things I did was get
some help writing this book. Working with coauthor Lisa Guerin helped
me benefit from her experience counseling small business owners. She
made the book more concise, organized, and practical.
Looking back, I think we succeeded in our mission. That’s not to say
that you can read this book and stop worrying about your business.
But the material in this book should, at a minimum, help you separate
those things worth worrying about from those that aren’t. You may be
surprised at how much you don’t need to freak out about.