A relatively new small business phenomenon is taking place in America: More couples, especially those in the boomer generation, are starting businesses together. Sometimes they do it because they’ve lost or left their jobs. Sometimes they want to pursue encore careers. But one thing is clear: For a couple, starting a business together presents the special challenge of combining their personal and business lives. Let’s Make Money, Honey: The Couple’s Guide to Starting a Service Business is about a baby boomer couple who start a small service business as a second career. As much as it is a good story, Let’s Make Money, Honey is also a how-to guide that covers planning, financing, outfitting, and launching a service business, as well as operations, marketing, sales, customer service, and managing growth. Included are useful tools to help couples assess their business interests and compatibility. Inspiring and instructional, Let’s Make Money, Honey will help couples consider whether to start a service business together - or provide those ready to move forward with a blueprint for success. Packed with detailed how-to advice based on real-world experience, Let’s Make Money, Honey is a must-read for self-starter couples of all ages and especially those exploring encore careers. Advance Praise The authors…provide a detailed overview of what any couple should consider before and when starting a service business of their own. From writing a business plan, considering funding options or franchising, business structure and operations, to managing growth, narrowing your client base and creating an exit strategy. It’s all told through their highly interesting story of exactly what it took to start-up and grow, then sell their own business. This mix of information and specific personal detail involved in getting a business off the ground as a couple makes Let’s Make Money, Honey a compelling and useful read. And the authors are frank about the fact that not everyone will have it so easy, not all couples will be able to work together. At the end of the book, the authors provide a business compatibility test, skills inventory checklist and service business start-up checklist to help readers decide if they are as ready to follow a similar path. - Melissa Phipps, Retirement Planning Expert, About.com Let’s Make Money, Honey is the rare combination of life lessons, business cooperation with your spouse, and a business tutorial. Today, as Baby Boomers look to continue to make a contribution, Baby Boomer couples are trying to find ways to spend time together, and still be relevant in the business world. Some couples are embarking on starting a business together. This can be a daunting task without a roadmap. Fortunately, a guide has been put together by Barry Silverstein and his wife, Sharon Wood. Barry and Sharon take lessons learned in customer service and help other Baby Boomers to find success in joint business prosperity. In some ways, Barry and Sharon are the coaches on the field for other Baby Boomer couples playing the game of business, harmony, and spousal time together. What makes Let’s Make Money, Honey unique is that it is a step by step guide for Baby Boomer couples to find happiness, and income in a business life, while supporting their life goals. As a thought leader for the Baby Boomer Generation, I am pleased to endorse and recommend the book. - Rick Bava, Author, In Search of the Baby Boomer Generation
