EXIT STRATEGY

By Kali Pearson | Partial excerpt – please pick up a hard copy for the full edition.

Danielle LaPorte credits her time in the corporate world as integral to her growth, but after 10 years-first at the Body Shop in Toronto, then directing a think-tank in Washington, DC - she'd had enough. In 2002, LaPorte met Carrie McCarthy, an interior designer in Vancouver ready for a little more meaning in her life than she was getting helping wealthy clients decide on the right throw cushions. The two felt an immediate affinity. "We had a dream of financial and creative freedom," says LaPorte. "We didn't know what we were going to do, but we knew we wanted to work together."

After considering real estate development, a spa and a restaurant, they settled on what LaPorte and McCarthy saw as the golden egg: the Style Statement, an hour-long consultation that provides a blueprint of sorts for a woman's personal, emotional and life styles-all designed to help her live "authentically." From the get-go, they also planned on a spinoff book. LaPorte worked on the book proposal while breastfeeding, and McCarthy worked double-time, strategizing with LaPorte while continuing to take on interior design clients. In late 2004, they set up shop in a one-bedroom Kitsilano apartment vacated by a friend (paying the $800 rent with plastic more than once) and gave the service away for free to 150 women. The space was cute but far from ideal. "We basically froze," says LaPorte. "We would come in the morning and turn on space heaters so our clients didn't freeze, too." In January 2006, the Globe and Mail ran an article about Style Statements, and business exploded. "It was nuts," says LaPorte. "One morning, our voice mail box was full. Our e-mail account was rejecting messages because it was full, too." Women were flocking to the studio, and the duo rushed around between Style Statements, making tea, putting out cookies and even bringing in chairs from home because they were running out of places to sit. "I didn't know how to accept credit card payments, so we set up a PayPal account and had clients pay that way," says LaPorte. "I didn't actually know how to get the money out-but that's one thing I picked up pretty fast!"

LaPorte and McCarthy fit the growing trend of self-employed women, but according to the CIBC study, their choice of business is something of an anomaly: Only one in five businesses started by women provides products or services targeted to women.

While LaPorte and McCarthy were happy (if exhausted) to meet the initial crush of demand (at one point working seven days a week, well into the night), LaPorte makes it clear that they have no interest in being workaholics forever. "This is all about writing the next book on the beach," she says. "Our goal is to work four days a week. I look at people who are attached to their BlackBerry and think, Too bad for you!"

Today, LaPorte and McCarthy have moved to an airy space near Granville Island, hung with gorgeous artwork and staffed with two employees. "Not only do we have heat, but we have a janitor!" says LaPorte. Style Statements (which now run $500 a pop-up from their first-year fee of $150) are booked solid three to four weeks in advance, and their book, which earned them a six-figure advance from Little, Brown and Co., is slated for an April 2008 release. The duo is in talks with major U.S. networks to produce a television show based on their philosophy.

That said, they're managing their growth to keep the business in line with their original vision. "Everything we do has to support our freedom-creative freedom, financial freedom and freedom of lifestyle," says LaPorte. "There are lots of lucrative things we say no to, because we want to be good wives and good parents and as sincerely creative as we can be. Yes, we're building an empire, but it isn't about the money."