Grit and Growth: Candid Stories and Lessons for Building a Small Business with Purpose

Grit and Growth is an inspiring and practical guide that combines entrepreneurial wisdom with deeply human storytelling. Drawing on Anne Haines’s 30-year journey of founding and leading DreamSpring, the book offers compelling lessons on purpose, resilience, and community. It’s an encouraging, insightful companion for anyone seeking to build or grow a business with intention and heart.

– Joyce Klein, Director, Business Ownership Initiative, The Aspen Institute

Grit and Growth operates on multiple levels. It is a history of a three-decade entrepreneurial journey launching and stewarding a remarkable CDFI supporting the aspirations of thousands of small businesspeople. It offers practical wisdom, but is also a love letter to future entrepreneurs, and a celebration of the human spirit and the will to strive, to risk, and to dream.
– Thomas A. Gougeon, President, Gates Family Foundation

Grit and Growth is destined to quickly become the go-to bible for present and or future entrepreneurs. The hard-won lessons and stories included have been collected over three decades by the amazingly talented and experienced authors and offer priceless advice and counsel to anyone in the business world.

– Ann Rhoades, President, Peopleink, Exec Founder, Jet Blue Airlines

Entrepreneurs are dreamers. They are also enigmas. Despite their importance to the national economy and local communities, they are poorly understood. Grit and Growth is a masterful account of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Read, learn, be equipped, and be inspired.

– Dr. Brett Theodos, Director, Center for Local Finance and Growth, Urban Institute

More than half of new small businesses in America don’t make it for more than three years. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurship books are about the literally lucky few who succeed wildly, not the majority who have to deploy all their grit and more to grow. In this book, Anne, Amber, and Laura share the stories and lessons of entrepreneurs like you, not the lucky few. Even better, they have had to live those lessons themselves building one of the toughest businesses out there―a lender to entrepreneurs like themselves.

– Timothy N. Ogden, Executive Partner, Sona Partners

In Grit and Growth: Candid Stories and Lessons for Building a Small Business with Purpose, renowned experts in entrepreneurship Anne Haines, Laura Marrich, and Amber Kani deliver an inspiring and practical guide drawing from DreamSpring’s 30-year evolution from a tiny startup to a national leader in small business finance. Pairing hard-won expertise with heartfelt encouragement, the book demonstrates the realities of starting and growing a business―exploring everything from doubt and disappointment to passion, purpose, and resolve.

Haines, Marrich, and Kani have included authentic testimonials, reflective exercises, and practical frameworks that lay out the skills and resources every entrepreneur needs. You’ll learn how to define your core values, crystallize your vision, amplify your strengths, and cultivate communities of support.

Each chapter features insights from actual small business owners who have turned their struggles and challenges into stepping stones for self-discovery, growth, and success. Alongside these real-world lessons, the book offers tools to help you develop a robust understanding of your unique capabilities and how to use them to meet obstacles head-on.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, the owner of a growing small business, or the leader of a nonprofit organization, Grit and Growth is an essential guide for navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship―with grit, growth, and purpose.