The Lady with Balls: A Single Mother's Triumphant Battle in a Man's World

Alice Combs was determined to support her two young daughters and herself, so she took the advice of a savvy mentor who told her, "Ask prospective customers what they need and can't get and then get it for them." As a result, Alice broke into the previously all-male arena of selling the kind of wire that supermarkets and other businesses use to bind cardboard boxes into recyclable bales. Knowing nothing about the recycling process or the industry's baler-wire needs, she taught herself all the details of the trade, figured out how to be an efficient employer, and learned to fend off predatory competitors on her way to turning her small start-up, Vulcan Wire, into a thriving company that sells over $10 million in wire per year.