****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
As a mom with her own at-home business, I bought this book hoping to gain new insight and information. Instead I found this book seriously lacking in substantial information and poorly organized. Mary Davis may have been a success in her carpet business, but clearly she's not a writer. The chapters jump around from her deciding to start her business (a personal story with little lessons to be gained for a mom considering her own business) to childcare... with setting up the business, and the pros and cons of doing so much further down in the book, and stories from other entrepreneurial moms dead in the center. If you were a mom truly trying to decide if you wanted your own business, this is NOT a step-by-step guide, and it doesn't move in a logical order. Nor does it "sing," in my opinion, to the reason why most moms work-at-home: to be with their children as much as possible. In fact, the section on childcare would have made me turn my back on the whole idea, had I not already been a mom with my own business. Later in the book, it becomes more clear that Davis didn't completely turn over her children to a nanny, but the childcare section would leave you initially scratching your heads as to whether this is the right path for a mom who wants to be a part of her children's live. Information that Davis shares is very basic and based so much on personal experience that it really doesn't consider other options (i.e., that some businesses can be less stressful, less invasive into family life and just as lucrative as her carpet business). The stories from other moms hint at this, but are never expounded on. Lastly, the section of 101 tips (which another reviewer loved) are downright insulting to a rational, thinking person. An excellent example: "Wear your seat belt. Your children need you!" I did question the sources of the previous shinning reviews (all appeared to either be colleagues or people paid to review the book), and now I know that I should have listed to my gut. I'm writing this review to balance the strongly positive ones that are not warranted. I wish I had read such a review before I purchased this book.
