Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! [Hardcover]

Kim Lavine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2007

"Mommy Millionaire is an inspiring gift and roadmap to success for anyone who's ever had a dream."

--Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of HOW DID I GET HERE 
 
Real-world advice, secrets and lessons on how to make a million dollars from a mom who turned her kitchen table idea into a successful business while keeping her family and kids Job #1. 

 

MOMMY MILLIONAIRE will give you the tools you need to create your fortune, including:
 
* How to develop and patent an idea while saving thousands

* How to make a cold call

* How to get on QVC

* How to work a trade show

* How to develop an "elevator pitch"

* How to break down the doors of big retailers

* Everything you need to know about manufacturing and distribution

* How to raise capital from Angel Investors  

 

Crammed with detailed information designed to simplify the fundamentals of starting and running your own business, Mommy Millionaire is full of proven strategies for success, revealing rare insights and exclusive insider secrets nobody else will tell you about what it really takes to make a million dollars from your own home.
 
Visit www.mommymillionaire.com or www.greendaisy.com to learn more about Kim and the Green Daisy family of products.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. People only learn to think like a millionaire by becoming one," says Lavine, who tucks her impressive entrepreneurial saga inside this top-notch how-to guide on launching a business. Founder and president of Green Daisy Inc., she tells how she converted a comfy pillow she invented into a successful company, sharing poignant insights about her challenges and growth. Lavine dispels many myths by discussing her failures, such as getting stung by sleazy partners, a cash flow crisis from hell and blending her roles as mom and company president ("Don't apologize for having kids!"). Lavine seamlessly weaves her journey of discovery with checklists, links, resources and how-tos drawn from her experience. While her advice to avoid doing business with "people who wear bad shoes" may seem offbeat, several pages later she provides a smart, clear description of how to create a cash flow analysis and use it as the basis for all key decisions. Lavine's human and authoritative story makes this one of the most engaging and useful resources available for readers hoping to convert their passion into a healthy company—any man who perceives her lessons as gender-specific will lose out on a rare gem. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Mommy Millionaire is loaded with resources for a fledgling business person--woman or man--armed with a good idea and boundless energy."

--USA Today

 

“Top-notch how-to guide on launching a business... Lavine's human and authoritative story makes this one of the most engaging and useful resources available for readers hoping to convert their passion into a healthy company... A rare gem.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 

Strategy and Business Magazine chose Mommy Millionaire as one of the best business books of 2007: “Kim Lavine’s memoir-cum-business-primer breaks new ground in the crowded field of startup sagas. By seamlessly blending the epiphanies that she gained through launching a business with practical lessons, Lavine has packaged a core set of new-venture tenets into something fresh and relevant.”

  “Mommy Millionaire is an inspiring gift and roadmap to success for anyone who's ever had a dream.”

—Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of How Did I Get Here

“Lavine has good tips for anyone interested in launching a home-based business.”
–Library Journal

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312354576
• ISBN-13: 978-0312354572
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kim Lavine is the Founder & President of Green Daisy, Inc. and best-selling author of MOMMY MILLIONARE, How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea Into a Million Dollars and How You Can Too!

A guest on the Today Show, CNN, Rachel Ray, CNBC, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, Kim has also been featured in USA Today, Women's World and Country Living Magazine, and as a panelist on Country Living's national conference on woman entrepreneurship.

Kim is on a mission to encourage women to follow their dreams while fulfilling their need to be a great mom, inspiring them with hope, honesty and faith.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A riveting story, but actually DISCOURAGED me, July 15, 2007

By 

M. Dodson "Mama24Gr8Kiddos" (Apex, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! (Hardcover)

I always thought the idea of owning a business would be great. I've dabbled on Ebay, with the whole intent being to stay at home and raise my kids while making money on the side. When I saw the title of this book it inspired me....maybe if I read it I could find some inspiration to start a business myself?
While the book itself is a good read (I didn't want to put it down!) I found the author's tenacity a bit scary. The product itself has limited potential....like a previous poster said, it's a fad product. Once everyone owns one, your income potential has pretty much dried up. The author fought really hard to make her business succeed by begging and borrowing, often at great personal risk. She often sacrificed time spent with family in her quest to make her business succeed. This to me represents the biggest conflict in her quest....the title "Mommy Millionaires" implies that this is something a Mommy can do "in her spare time" or when she isn't caring for her children. When in fact after reading this book I am more apt to believe the author traded in her time with her children FOR the business.....she even speaks about missing her children's birthday parties because she was too busy trying to promote her business.
I give this book 2 stars because it is a good read....but it misses its mark as an inspiration for other "mompreneurs". There are plenty of families out there who can successfully manage family and business. Moms shouldn't have to choose!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely disgusted, July 19, 2008

By 

patti "heartlandbooklvr" (mid-USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! (Paperback)

As a female small business owner, I was excited to find this book. Not long into the book, my excitement was gone but I finished it anyway. Lavine calls herself a business woman, but she recounts on more than one occasion how she used her cleavage and the practice of unbuttoning an extra button on her blouse to her advantage when dealing with men -- to get financing, etc. I certainly don't consider that very businesslike! Also, she claims to be going through all this nonsense -- most of which is a result of her own lack of business sense, yet she is giving advice!? -- for her two sons. Yet she is rarely with them, and when she is she (by her own account) parks them in front of the television with a video game, despite the fact that one son may have a form of autism, which is only worsened by playing video games. Lavine repeatedly praises herself -- using words like "great" -- and she seems to think she knows more than anyone else. Yet she really makes so many mistakes that it's hard to understand how anyone could ever want to emulate her. By the way, I did my own search on her product and some of her claims, and many cannot be substantiated. She's big on claims and short on any proof or documentation. I would not recommend this book; she does not share anything I hadn't read elsewhere in much better organized books.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A novel masquarading as a business book which left me with no warm and fuzzy feeling., October 26, 2007

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! (Hardcover)

This book was just OK. That's a 3-star on Amazon's scale. When I read a book that I plan to write a book review on I generally look at it as a teacher would when grading a paper. I consider the content of the book. I consider whether title informs me of what the book is going to be about. I ask if the material is presented in an orderly manner so the content can be easily digested. And I ask myself if the book was special in some way.

In my humble opinion this book had lots of content. That content arguably makes it a business book. However, the title of the book did not inform me of what the book was about. And I did not find the material to be presented in an orderly manner. And I did not find the book to be special in some way. Maybe if the author had made me feel for her I might have had a different opinion. But I didn't like her after reading this book. I had no warm and fuzzy feeling for her.

This book is a story about Kim Lavine who not too long ago was a housewife with two young sons and a husband who was recently unemployed. She had developed a "heating pad" product that she had been giving away as gifts prior to her husband losing his job. In order to generate income for the family she decided to go into business selling her "heating pad" product. In this book she explains her journey of making money by selling it. She had ups and she had downs. And it was an interesting story. But if I wanted to read a story, then I would have pulled a novel from my library's shelf. This book did not read like a business book; it read like a novel. And I was exhausted by the time I got to the end because I kept looking for the business book in it and never found it. Probably the fact that I was exhausted when I finished the book is a big reason this book only gets 3 stars from me. This book was not special in some way. It was a drain.

The cover of this book includes the following line: "The ultimate step-by-step guide to building a business while keeping your family your number 1 job." I assume the author did keep her family as her number 1 job. So I won't question that clause in the statement. However, the story in this book is not a step-by-step guide. It is merely a chronology of events that took place as the author built her business. She did it the wrong way. And ways that are wrong should generally not be used as guides. Part of the reason I was so tired when I finished this book is because I knew she was doing things all wrong. And some of her advice is really out in left field. Business plans are not easy to put together. And they are not as simple as just answering a series of questions. And businesses should not be thrown together under pressure and then reorganized later (if they can be). And you should not milk people for valuable information and then go do it yourself for free. You can get some free info this way, but ultimately you will get burned by scam artists the way the author did.

The cover of this book includes the following line: "How I turned my kitchen table idea into a million dollars and how you can, too?" Although the author's invention or product was made using corn, I wouldn't exactly call it a kitchen table idea. And the author's way of building her business was so convoluted that I hope nobody tries to build a business in a similar way after reading this book. If you want some books that will help you achieve what the author did, then I recommend you consider reading Invent Yourself Rich (ISBN: 1594160503) and Brownie Points (ISBN: 1932841261). I've read them both and have written book reviews for them on Amazon. 3 stars!