Hello again! I hope you all had a fabulous weekend soaking up fall and doing autumn things! My review this week is a long time in the making: I think I’ve been reading Mind Your Business since I started college…and I graduated last December. And that’s not to say it’s bad, as evidenced by my four star review! More on that later.

Griffo’s workbook is an awesome start-to-finish, crawl walk run of a book for small business owners in creative fields. She takes you from the brainstorming stage, through understanding work life balance, all the way to resources and tools to help you grow and stay profitable. I loved her mix of personal accounts and advice combined with solid resources and plans to help you get from point A to point B. The workbook style makes it easy to stop and reflect.

Like I was saying, I’ve legitimately been reading this book for years, and I think I might be reading it for several more years. I can now officially say that I have successfully read the book cover to cover, but this is definitely an awesome resource I’m going to keep coming back to. From the time I picked it up to the time I finally finished it, I had no fewer than three completely different business ideas. Every time I had a new one I wanted to flesh out I would grab my eraser and work my way back to page one to start from the top. Mind Your Business functions like the step before a business plan, which works well when you consider many small business owners might start with something just like this instead of skipping right to a thirty page plan.

I picked up Mind Your Business for the third and probably-not-final time recently because I was considering a graphic design business, and I think now that I’ve made it to the end, I might just go out and buy another copy to fill in. I’ve got far too many eraser marks in mine now to start again, but there’s just some really sound and valuable advice in this book that I think provides a great starting point and an excellent resource when you struggle.

My only complaint is that it sometimes feels preachy. I think there’s a self-help element to this book that I didn’t necessarily dislike but that occasionally became more boring and repetitive, and less constructive and helpful. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with providing that sort of “are you cut out to run a business?” sort of advice, though. I went to business school, I’ve been pretty sure for a couple years now that this is the kind of thing I eventually want to do. But if you work in a creative career, and you’re thinking about striking it out on your own? It’s actually really important to be asking yourself some of these questions. A workbook is certainly cheaper than a failed business. In that respect, I think the flow of this book is awesome.

I do highly recommend Mind Your Business. Like I said, I think I’ll be picking up another copy…and if you’d like one too, you can order it here. I hope you all have a fantastic week!