When I wrote Elegant Entrepreneur, my intention was to help women in America turn their ideas into successful companies, even if they didn’t have an MBA. I wrote the book I always looked for when I founded MissNowMrs. A book that gave me the steps to building a business, told me how it might feel during those steps, and offered candid advice and stories from Women Entrepreneurs I could look up to. I was delighted to help more women startup and scale up in a more elegant fashion than I did.
What about women outside of the U.S.? While I didn’t originally think globally, after attending roundtable talks with women entrepreneurs from North Africa at the Goldman-Sachs 10k women event, I realized that there were so many women who needed my book, and that I had no way to get it to them.
Problem: Many women in emerging economies don’t have access to Amazon or Kindles
Solution: Create an audiobook that can be hosted as an MP3 file and played instantaneously by any phone in the world.
Today am launching a Kickstarter campaign to increase awareness for the need to support international women entrepreneurs and to crowdfund the audiobook version of Elegant Entrepreneur. The audiobook format allows me to donate books to women entrepreneurs across the world without the costs and time delays of printing and shipping books. It also helps women who may be forbidden to read an entrepreneurial book access information to help them build their businesses. My goal is to make a ripple effect of women building businesses and improving their lives, their families, their communities, and their economies.
Why am I focusing on women entrepreneurs? Aside from being one myself and understanding how entrepreneurship has positively impacted my life, a recent IFC study cited by Forbes, found women in emerging markets invest 90 percent of their income back into their families and communities, compared with 35 percent for men. Women in business are the key to ending poverty and inhumanity on a global scale.
She Inspires Her Network, Connecting Founders, Invest2Innovate, and Jitahidi Group have agreed to provide free Elegant Entrepreneur audiobooks to aspiring female entrepreneurs within their networks.
Please consider donating to my Kickstarter campaign. $5 will send 5 audiobooks to aspiring entrepreneurs, and you will have taken part in creating a positive ripple effect. The more you give and the more you share the campaign with your friends, the more women will receive the audiobook, and the more businesses will be created by them… changing lives and communities for the better!
