IMPERFECT COURAGE
Entrepreneur delves into work-life balance
‘Y ou, yourself ,a re your own biggest obstacle. You, yourself, are your own biggest gift.” Jessica Honegger had to get out of her own way ,g et over selfdoubts and embrace her gifts of entrepreneurship and creativity when she created Noonday Collection seven years ago.
She turned the direct-sale model used by companies such as Tupperware and Avon into a business that empowers and connects American women entrepreneurs and global artisans in 30 communities. Women earn an income selling fair-trade jewelry
and accessories to friends and friends of friends in their living rooms. In turn, global artisans, who are mostly women, have an income source and a newfound independence.
Honegger, 41, writes about how she turned her desire to adopt a baby from Rwanda into a global business and the values she’s embraced along the way in her autobiography, “Imperfect Courage: Live a Life of Purpose by Leaving Comfort and Going Scared” ($25, WaterBrook), which comes out Tuesday.
“I wanted to wri te this book to the person I was when I was
starting out,” she says. She says she wishes she had heard that “you can be a good mom and a good CEO” more often.
Texas roots
No w living in Austin, Honegger grew up in San Antonio and went to a school where 80 per- cent of her classmates were Hispanic. Her family regularly went to Laredo and across the border to shop from local artisans.
Her mom gave her creativity, she says, by decorating the house and making wreaths for people. Her dad gave her a sense of generosity and the idea that abun
dance was meant to be shared. She traveled to Kenya in high school and saw real poverty, and then volunteered in Bolivia and Guatemala, where she met artisans in markets.
In college, she studied Latin American studies, but then she and her husband, Joe, became entrepreneurs, flipping houses among other self-employment opportunities.
They had two biological chil-