One Red Lipstick

Written by: Spenser Chapple

Review by: Glain Roberts-McCabe

The Premise: Spenser Chapple’s life flipped upside down when, at 17, her father had a debilitating brain-cell stroke. As she readjusted her life, she watched her mother – Fay Chapple – shift gears from a big corporate job to the life of an entrepreneur. With a vision of spreading a message of inspiration and hope to others, Fay has created the One Red Lipstick project to provide a platform to share inspiring stories of female entrepreneurship. Each woman has contributed a chapter to the book and shares a key lesson learned along the way. The stories are often raw and unflinching around disappointments and failures but ultimately inspiring and energizing as persistence, passion and perseverance pays off.

The Bottom-line: Three of my friends and mentors – Jody Steinhauer, Anne Day and Michele Bailey – share their stories in this book. Along with the other contributors, the energy is real and the emotions are honest. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, there is something incredibly comforting about reading stories of how people just like you have overcome adversity.

These women are all impressive in their sheer relatedness. These are not individuals who were given $1,000,000 from their Dads to start a business (cough, cough Donald Trump). They took risk…while having families and mortgages to pay. Some did it while they were single. They survived health crises, betrayal, disappointment…and yet kept going.

I loved the real life energy and the different voices heard through this book. Ultimately, in my work, I talk to many leaders that are strangled by fear. Instead of pursuing opportunity, they pursue a paycheque. One Red Lipstick provides some great examples of how ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’ can lead to untold and unexpected rewards.

Roundtable Rating: great read for anyone looking to get inspired with real-life, close to home stories.