I have a funny thing about the word “entrepreneur”. Both of my parents are self emplolyed. Most of my family members are entrepreneurs. I started making money, on my own, as the age of 12. For most of my life I’ve had more than one working endeavors going at once. Some endeavors involve a consistent paycheck, while others may be project based or fit into one of my many side projects. Yet, for some reason I waver on adopting the term entrepreneur for myself.

Are all bloggers entrepreneurs? Or do you not become an entrepreneur, as a blog owner, until your blog starts making money? But what if your real job is sitting in a cubicle? These are the types of questions I ask myself frequently. I am not sure if you are breaking some rule of entrepreneurism if you also have the title employee.

When I was contacted about reviewing Fairy-Tale Success: A Guide to Entrepreneurial Magic I had the above debate with myself. Should I read this book, I’m not sure if I’m a “real” entrepreneur. BUT I decided why not, and tbh I was thinking perhaps this book would help be decide if I’m in fact an entrepreneur.

The primary audience of Fairy-Tale Success are young women in the early stage of business planning. As you can guess by the title, the book pulls insights and lessons from a fairy-tale, Cinderella specifically. For the purposes of this book Cinderella is the CEO, and there are several Fairy-Godmothers (Advisory Board Members) who provide insights throughout the book.

Each chapter provides

• tactical advice, walking you through the process of planning and promoting a success for company
• words of wisdom as quotes from various female leaders
• CEO profiles from business leaders from all walks of life
• key principals that you can apply to your business

I enjoyed the structure of the book, and I felt like there is a great deal of information in an easy to digest format. I found myself highlight, making notes and marking to research more throughout the whole book. I read books in a variety of formats (paper, Kindle, and audio), for this one I’d definitely recommend getting a physical copy. There are questions for you to answer and numerous areas where you’ll want to make notes. If you’re anti-paperbook, a eBook format would be second choice.

Some of my favorites from the book:

• “Passion leads to motivation, which leads to dedication and success.” There are several  great reminders like this, that would make good motivational signs in your work space.
• There are great questions to ask yourself for creating (or updating) you brand signature, business plan, press kit and marketing material. If you’re a blogger, but don’t quite consider yourself an entrepreneur, these questions alone can really help you fine tune your niche and identifiy your goals.
• In addition to self-assessment tools, there’s also a great deal of information about finding advisors and partnerships to help take your business to the next level. I like the idea of eliciting feedback from my network as varying levels of involvement.
• In addition to high-level strategy and vision creating, there are very specific business resources for: creating budgets, getting funding, networking, finding mentors, using social media, hosting a launch event, and dealing with obstacles.
• By far my favorite part of the entire book were the numerous CEO profiles. Several women tell the story of their business, along with their advice for young entrepreneurs. A few of the business owners I was familiar with (like Brit Morin from Brit+Co. and Chelsea Krost from #MillentialTalk). There are also numerous websites, app builders, authors and other business owners that were new to me. I have all of their URLs noted and will likely share a few of them in future blog posts.
• This advice from Therese McPherson (www.theresemcpherson.com): “Collaborate sooner. Burn no bridges. Believe in others – they will grow too; they will do good things. Leave every place you go better than when you arrived.” Speaking of, want to partner on something? Email me.

If you classify yourself as a young entrepreneur, or have dreams of jumping into that camp this book is worth getting. For me personally, I know I need to work on the section of teh book about knowing what your worth and setting pricing. I am most certainly not the only blogger that struggles with setting rates for sponsored content and advertising.

“Don’t be intimated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx and world’s youngest femal billionaire

“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” – Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

(I was provided a copy of Fairy-Tale Success for the purpose of this review)