The Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher's extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation (now owned by Berkshire Hathaway) with tens of thousands of independent Kitchen Consultants who present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people. The Pampered Chef is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a "one-woman show," chronicles the company's gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including: * Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneurs * How to create a business concept and set your priorities * Knowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn't overwhelm your operations or supplies * How to counter the naysayers and deal with adversity Today, as at the company's founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef's mission. The Pampered Chef brings Christopher's recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere.