The Heart of Entrepreneurship

From the creator of Melissa & Doug toys, Melissa Bernstein offers entrepreneurs a guide to discovering and launching their unique vision.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart. Melissa Bernstein, cofounder of the wildly successful toy company Melissa & Doug and cofounder of the wellness company Lifelines, knows this firsthand. Connecting deeply with your soul and crafting a clear vision is central to launching a successful business. In The Heart of Entrepreneurship, Bernstein offers a guide for the creative and visionary process of bringing a business, product, or service to life.

Bernstein walks readers through the process she uses when launching a new product or venture—a process she has taught to hundreds of students at Duke University and through Sounds True''s Inner MBA® program. She likens this process to creating a new recipe: cultivating a mindset of curiosity, gathering ingredients, diving deep into your area of intrigue, allowing ideas to simmer, assessing and altering as needed, and serving your perfected recipe to consumers. Each chapter offers insights and practical exercises to help you apply these ideas to your own life and business.

Turning your passion into ideas that serve others requires courage and commitment, and offers a profound sense of fulfillment. Bernstein writes, “You’ll come to see that the solutions to both entrepreneurial challenges and life’s most important questions are waiting (and have always been waiting) within your very soul.”