Self-Made Boss: Advice, Hacks, and Lessons from Small Business Owners

Prologue

A Letter to Our Readers

Jackie: For four years, I traveled across the United States, a country with more food trucks and beauty salons, coffee bars, and record shops than anyone could possibly visit in one life span—let alone four years. That didn’t stop me from trying, though.

At the time, getting to know our country’s small businesses was a big part of my job. I ran the small business lending and banking business at Square. I believed deeply not just in crunching numbers and optimizing machine learning credit algorithms, but in actually talking to small business owners to truly understand their goals and challenges, sample their goods, and listen to their stories. I was part business advisor, part solutions creator, part psychiatrist. ...