Lessons of a Lipstick Queen: Finding and Developing the Great Idea That Can Change Your Life

With this breezy business how-to, Australian cosmetics entrepreneur King seeks to empower other women to start their own companies. King launched her business at the age of 18 after a fruitless quest for the “perfect matte lipstick” incited her to create her own brand. Within a year, she was the sole owner of a million-dollar company, Poppy Industries. King intersperses vague exhortations to daydream and fantasize with snippets from her success story to illustrate her business basics: “Keep it real,” she says and “Watch out for bad omens.” She also includes exercises so rudimentary they're almost patronizing. For example, she exhorts the reader to “go online and punch in google.com, then start entering different key words that describe your idea.” More nuanced content does arrive later, when she breaks down the elements of successful marketing and cold calling, but even this advice is undercut when King reveals that her company eventually failed. One of her last lessons to her readers is how to bounce back from depression, in keeping with the general direction of this book, which offers less pointed business advice than simplistic self-help. (May)