Author(s): Ali Kriegsman

Business

The vulnerable, inspiring story of how two female entrepreneurs turned a scrappy newsletter into a venture-backed startup. This memoir-meets-business book is stocked with tips, tools and tales to help you build your own empire from scratch. Filled with heart and humor, How to Build a Goddamn Empire shares the real-world, hard-earned business wisdom of one female entrepreneur who transformed an idea into a massive, category-disrupting national brand. As a first-time and inexperienced founder, Ali Kriegsman felt like she couldn’t relate to the glossy, glamorous entrepreneurs crowding her Instagram feed. In reality, Kriegsman thought, building something from nothing is a constant, dirty fight with your imposter syndrome and the intense fear that if things don’t work out, you'll be a laughing stock. While in the thick of scaling her business and making a stressful pivot, Kriegsman decided to write about her experience. With chapters ranging from “The Business You Start Isn’t the Business You’ll Run” to “Grow Slow, More Dough,” Ali Kriegsman demystifies the world of entrepreneurship in real-time, from the trenches. She also features words of wisdom from some of her fellow female founders who have built successful companies of radically different stages and sizes. By using the questions she’s most frequently asked as her guideposts, Kriegsman offers candid insights into the nuts and bolts of building a brand from scratch—discussing early failures, picking the right co-founder, securing press, finding funding—to give women the tools that will help take their ideas to the next level.