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chapter 4

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Building High Self-Esteem

chapter preVIeW

LearNING OBJectIVeS

After studying Chapter Four, you will be able to

4-1 Define self-esteem and discuss its impact on your life.

4-2 Discuss how self-esteem is developed.

4-3 Identify the charac-teristics of people with low and high self-esteem.

4-4 Identify ways to raise your self-esteem.

4-5 Understand the condi-tions organizations can create that will help workers raise their self-esteem.

TIP OF THE ICEBERG  |  DARE TO DREAM

Vickie Stringer, founder and CEO of Triple Crown Publications, wasn’t from a broken home. She was raised in a middle-class Detroit neigh-borhood by her mother, a teacher, and her father, an electrical engi-neer. During her freshman year in college, she met a drug dealer, fell

in love, and dropped out of school. When Stringer got pregnant, her boyfriend abandoned her. After her son was born, she needed money. She was successful selling drugs until one of her customers turned out to be a police informant.

When she was released from a federal penitentiary after five years, she was a 29-year-old felon with no degree, resume, legal work experience, money, or prospects. She knew she wanted her life to have meaning; however, the path was uncertain. She was free, but she felt that there was nothing waiting for her.1 Fortunately, she had spent some of her free time in prison writing a novel. After the manuscript was rejected by 26 publishers, she decided to self-publish. Later her book, Let That Be the Reason, was published by UpStream Publica-tions and sold over 100,000 copies.

Motivated by the desire to become an entrepreneur, she founded a pub-lishing company. Today Triple Crown Publications is the first name in “hip-hop-lit,” a booming genre of raw, gritty urban fiction, sold everywhere from street corners to small African-American bookstores to Barnes & Noble. Let That Be the Reason, and her follow-up book, Imagine, were the entrepreneurial paths that transformed federal prisoner 63752-06, Vickie Stringer, to owner of a $1.8 million publishing company.2

Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship Center named Vickie Stringer 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year. The Entrepreneurship Center honors prominent en-trepreneurs it defines as “individuals who tackle tough problems, work from the bottom up, and craft businesses that creatively solve the challenges of life.” After receiving the Ball State University Award, Ms. Stringer was asked what advice she would give to future entrepreneurs: “Be patient, allow room for growth and build your company on a strong accounting system, and as always, dare to dream.”3