Thinking about reading Little Black Book: A Toolkit for Working Women by Otegha Uwagba and would love to find out a bit more about the book before you buy a copy for yourself. If so, keep on reading.

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Thank you to 4th Estate who sent me a free copy of Little Black Book. 

Originally published in 2016, Little Black Book: A Toolkit for Working Women is written by Otegha Uwagba. Otegha Uwagba is the founder of Women Who, a platform created to connect and support creative working women worldwide. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Otegha would decide to write a book to support the creative working woman.

In the extended version, there are 12 chapters:

• Chapter 1: Getting It Done
• Chapter 2: Overcoming Creative Blocks
• Chapter 3: Building Your Brand
• Chapter 4: Public Speaking
• Chapter 5: Money Talks Part I: Knowing Your Worth
• Chapter 6: Money Talks Part II: Taking Care of Business
• Chapter 7: Back to School
• Chapter 8: The Art of Networking
• Chapter 9: Navigating the Workplace Part I: Working With Others
• Chapter 10: Navigating the Workplace Part II: Asserting Yourself
• Chapter 11: Looking After Number One
• Chapter 12: Q&A

As you can see from the chapter titles the book is trying to help you excel in the workplace by focusing on a number of different important areas.

Each chapter is around 8-10 pages long, which means you can quickly read a chapter in one go. And each chapter is full of practical advice that is simple to follow (although it may be hard to do).

I found myself agree with the majority of what Otegha had to say and I think she does a great job and talking about what it really is like in the workplace. This means having sectioning on managing up (because who knew you actually have to line your line manager), working for free (because we live in that sort of world nowadays) and contracts (because you need to protect yourself).

Being a working women can be difficult and if you want to have a successful career you are likely going to have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. I love that Otegha doesn’t shy away from topics that often women struggle with such as public speaking, self-promotion and negotiating.

FINAL THOUGHTS FROM CHARELLE

Overall, I enjoyed reading Little Black Book, although I didn’t feel that I learnt a lot of new things from it. The book is described as little and as a result, it is purposefully small in both size and length. It is 16.3cm high and 10.9cm wide, which means it can fit into any handbag, and even with the additional chapters the book was still less than 150 pages long. This makes it a super easy-read (I read the book in less than 2 hours).

The book is designed in a way that means you can easily dip in and out of the book. There are clear chapters with topics that are all relevant to working life. This makes it a good reference book to be able to quickly pick it up and look at a chapter specific to your needs at the moment. It is a book I wish I had read been given at the beginning of my career.

WHO WOULD I RECOMMEND ‘LITTLE BLACK BOOK’ TO

As the subtitle of the book suggests this book has been designed specifically for working women, and women working in the creative industries specifically. Otegha has tried to make the book suitable for women who are employed or self-employed. Due to the nature of creative industries, there are a large number of freelancers and so the book does talk about how to manage being a freelancer.

Otegha lives in London, UK and as a result, the book is written from a British perspective, however, Otegha does makes attempts to share the USA alternative or equivalent a number of times.

Overall, I would recommend the Little Black Book to British women working in the creative industries in the first ten years of their career. This isn’t to say it isn’t suitable for the more experienced career women, however, I think this knowledge would be really valuable for someone at the beginning of the career and would help them to make better choices and probably progress quicker (or at least get paid more).

If you like the sound of Little Black Book: A Toolkit for Working Women you can buy a copy for yourself by clicking here.