Full-Time Woman, Part-Time Career: Launching a Flexible Business That Fits Your Life, Feeds Your Family, and Fuels Your Brain

As an independent woman who has considered on more than one occasion the seemingly pie-in-the-sky idea of starting my own business, I tore through Karen Steede Terry’s Full Time Woman, Part Time Career with as much élan as I tear through anything chocolate. I hoped to uncover a treasure-trove of secrets that could set me on the path to a great new career beginning. I was not disappointed, but after reading, I am acutely aware of the energy and persistence necessary to start up a small business. So, although the book has not quite persuaded me fleet-footed toward self-employed stardom, it is most certainly a resource that any goal-oriented, dedicated woman can turn to for solid advice.

If any woman is capable of addressing the nuts and bolts of starting up and running a small-business whilst balancing family obligations, it is Terry. Her credentials boast her success in software instruction, as well as consultations to Fortune 500 companies and state agencies. But the real draw Terry offers is that any woman can be prosperous both professionally and personally if she is committed. Proof lies in the book’s interspersed profiles of several women who have achieved their career goals through self-employment. These mini-biographies provide the reader both like-minded role models and practical business counsel. Jenny Harrison, a part time software and programming languages instructor, contributes valuable advice regarding individual endeavors into launching a business: “Don’t work part time if you think it’s going to be easy or that you’re going to get rich. It’s the flexibility you are gaining that’s important.”

It is this flexibility that Terry emphasizes throughout her book. The advantages a part time home business yields range from an increase in professional development opportunities, to writing off taxes for an office located in the home, to customized vacation time. The drawbacks of self-employment are to be seriously considered but fortunately, they are few, and Terry gives the reader a great deal of support with ideas for part time businesses – professional coaching, freelance writing, and public speaking among them – tips on how best to market oneself and maintain a professional image, and myriad resources to set the enthusiastic career woman on her way. To that end, the investment of time and energy put into starting one’s own business is far outshined by the rewards of doing so. As Ms. Terry herself professes, “No guts, no glory!” No glory indeed.

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