Paula Deen's Small-Business Tips

Cooking Up Success: Paula Deen's Top 5 Small-Business Tips

Oprah.com | January 14, 2010

Food Network superstar and best-selling author Paula Deen cooked up a multimillion-dollar empire from her own kitchen. Get her top tips for starting and expanding a small business.

1. Be passionate.

2 .Make the best product you can at a reasonable price. "I had $200 when I started my little business," she says.

3. Experiment. "Use your friends and family as guinea pigs," she says. "Explore your talents."

4. Know the business. "I turned to the state and I took advantage of the people they had in the Small Business Administration to help just feed me information and take me on to my next spot."

5. Take small steps. "If you make small steps and you fail at some point, the fall's not nearly as long," she says. "Mine has been in the process now of over 20 years."

Paula's special surprise for a young fan

Get Paula's recipe for Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies

Printed from Oprah.com on Wednesday, May 22, 2013