For Better or For Work
A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families
By: Meg Cadoux Hirshberg
Published: March 5, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 260 pages
ISBN-10: 0983934002
ISBN-13: 978-0983934004
Publisher: An Inc. Original
"When people start companies, they research the competition, market data, SBA loans, and the cost of office space. But they generally give little thought to how a business will affect their personal lives", writes spouse of the founder and current President and CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt, and Inc.com columnist Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, in her deeply personal and transformational book For Better or For Work: A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families. The author describes how her life, and that of her husband and family, were affected deeply when her husband Gary was drawn ever more heavily into business matters, and away from the family.
Meg Cadoux Hirshberg understands first hand about the constant business pressure that a start-up business venture has on both the entrepreneur and the family. Whether the business is conducted in the home, with its attendant loss of privacy, or in an office where the spouse is away from home, there is real stress on the entrepreneur's family relationships. Meg Cadoux Hirshberg delves into the murky waters of borrowing money from relatives, generational succession of the company management, and the possibility of marital breakdown. To address these, and other rarely discussed but very real entrepreneurial stress points, the author draws on her own personal experiences of living the start-up business life.
Meg Cadoux Hirshberg (photo left) presents an inside view of being part of an entrepreneurial family. The author shares her personal experiences, and fresh insights into the challenges that arise in a start-up company. She writes openly and frankly about the strains that the business demands placed on her marriage and on the family. The author provides an overview of the problems of company finances, and the stress created through the constant issues of cash flow, financing, and daily business operations. Writing from both the head and from the heart, Meg Cadoux Hirshberg shares an honest, and rare glimpse into the home life of an entrepreneurial family.
For me, the power of the book is how Meg Cadoux Hirshberg combines a powerful and moving personal story with real world tested advice for entrepreneurs and their spouses. The book is an intriguing blend of home and business life, and the stress placed on one by the other. The author's format reflects that constant pull in all directions that her life, as spouse and partner in Stonyfield Yogurt, made evident in her business life. The author demonstrates how she and her family triumphed in the end, and how life and business can mix; if blended in the proper proportions.
Meg Cadoux Hirshberg offers some very important, and rarely presented advice to entrepreneurs, spouses, and family members. For too long, these ideas and strategies for coping, have been taboo and off limits for discussion. Meg Cadoux Hirshberg pulls back the curtains, and writes frankly about what entrepreneurship is really like for families; from the inside. Each chapter addresses a crucial aspect of the start-up business life. Within each of these important sections, the author shares her hard learned lessons, with the goal of helping other families avoid the challenges and stress faced by her own family. The many photographs in the book provide an even more personal and human aspect to this fine book.
I highly recommend the insightful and inspirational book For Better or For Work: A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families by Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, to any families who are either involved in an entrepreneurial venture, or who are considering starting their own business. This book will help everyone involved, and it's indeed an entire family commitment, to overcome the challenges and obstacles that face marriages and families int he world of start-up businesses.
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