Upbeat, practical, and written with persuasive power, Mariga’s guide to achieving profit and success as a minority business owner expands upon and refines the approach laid out by Mike Michalowicz in Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine, the 2014 book that proved essential to the success of Mariga’s own minority-owned business (MBE). Mariga—a tax accountant, entrepreneur, and first-generation millionaire—reintroduces Michalowicz’s insights and precepts, such as his insistence that business owners prioritize their own profit and escape the trap of “entrepreneurial poverty” (poverty “of mind, money, time, and life”) that so often overwhelms business owners.The “Profit First” system centers on business owners paying themselves first rather than living on whatever scraps of revenue are left over. A central insight: Toss out the classic equation that states Revenue minus Expenses equals Profit in favor of Revenue minus Profit equals Expenses. Mariga supplements clear-eyed, pragmatic advice about how to achieve that goal (you need at least five bank accounts!) with accounts of her own success story, enlightening interviews with other owners of MBEs, and consideration of issues specific to minority business owners, such as how to approach it when you “enter crowded rooms in which no one else looks like you.” Her advice is that of an accountant and a first-rate coach: “If you are invited into that room, then you belong in the room. So, you act like you belong in the room and you own it.”
Mariga offers wisdom on staffing, on when to turn down business, on the urgency of paying down debt and not living above your means. Even passages on familiar topics like setting achievable goals pulse with fresh insight. She’s an inviting, memorable writer who will make readers laugh with an on-point aside about dining at the Golden Corral and then, just pages later, drop truths about mentoring, target allocation percentages, and the 1919 Elaine massacre.
Takeaway: A standout guide to profitably running a business, aimed at minority entrepreneurs.
Great for fans of: Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine, Carla A. Harris’s Strategize to Win.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
