Light One Candle: A Guidebook for the Bootstrapping

'Light One Candle' is a guide to assist startup entrepreneurs beginning with few resources. But 'Light One Candle' is, also, the story of one family's vision to create jobs for the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised in our communities and to restore dignity and hope into their lives through entrepreneurship. 'Light One Candle' is the story of Candleworks, a business which has now received awards because of its dedication to entrepreneurial excellence, human rights and welfare-to-work initiatives among others. The author states in chapter six : Candleworks is about making candles, creating jobs and building community. I found 'Light One Candle' to be about these, but also about personal and social responsibility as we conduct business. 'Light One Candle' is about beginning with little and resourcefulness, about obstacles and perseverence, about family and hope, and about unending faith in ourselves to rise through difficulty. 'Light One Candle' is also about self-respect and respect for the dignity of others who are disadvantaged and disenfranchised. I found the book to be informative because of the entrepreneurial Foundation Principles offered and to be lifted by the values embedded in the Candleworks philosophy. But most of all, I was moved and inspired by one family's sacrifices and their never-ending pursuit of a vision to survive and while restoring dignity to others through the Candleworks model. Highly recommended !!

Private Enterprise in the Public Interest -A call to vision and action (A Keynote Address and Op-Ed Essay)In the new millennium, hunger, poverty, despair and violence are unacceptable and unnecessary. These four social viruses are the actual "four horsemen" of the apocalypse that threaten humanity. History demonstrates that great societies are more often destroyed by the rot of these viruses from within rather than attack from without. For decades, billions of dollars have been directed to external military defense, while the internal social viruses grow and are not dealt with effectively. Now that we're past the mass capital drain of the Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race, our society can redirect capital into entrepreneurial ventures that further human progress. War and political conflict are the result of humanity's historically embedded fear of the scarcity of resources in our collective memory. Political fear and racism persist as an emotional, irrati! onal response. Intelligent analyis of our present global resources and technology indicate that scarcity is no longer a physical reality. There is plenty for all, if we organize the entrepreneurial will to harvest the actual global abundance. Epidemic youth violence, crime, drug abuse, poverty and homelessness are all symptoms of the social virus. Whether businesses calculate the social costs of violence, crime, drug abuse and homelessness into the profit and loss statements of their companies, these costs exist and directly effect the bottom line. Such hidden overhead weakens their business and community. These costs are assumed inefficiently through cumbersome, bureaucratic government structures that then charge back this "social overhead" in the form of high local, state and federal taxes. The majority of social overhead is presently passively paid by the business sector. That system doesn't work. It costs about fifty thousand dollars a year to lock up our soc! ial casualties in prison. The average prison sentence is 7 ! years. $350,000 for each prisoner! A lot of education, productive enterprise and preventative community development could be funded with this misused cash. The Social Enterprise Association (S.E.A.) has been formed to organize business and community leaders to envision and activate social transformation as we initiate our next century of human history. The purpose of the Social Enterprise Association is to redirect the intolerable

This book has humor, pathos and drama. It's a business book that reads like a real life adventure story.This is not "business as usual". This book presents a working plan for business to operate with social responsibility.Light One Candle, a Handbook for Bootstrapping entrepreneurs is must reading for anyone ready to launch a creative enterprise in any field of endeavor. This book provides 12 practical steps for the bootstrapping entrepreneur.