The way Good Books came together was just on a whim, on a day like any other day. Katie Mitchell was in her mother Katherine’s kitchen, eating breakfast. There was a lull in the conversation, but not that awkward type. This was the comfortable silence with someone you know and love. This was the type of silence you use to think––under the hum of an AC, the sound of birds singing, and the clang of a fork on a plate.

“What if we started a bookstore?” Katherine asked her daughter. And so they did.

Katie says that while Good Books officially started in 2019, it was always in the works by the way her mom raised her and her brother. “We just grew up with Black books. That's all we read when I was younger,” she says. “I thought white kids didn't have any books to read because there were only Black books in our house.”

Some people, as much as they love their mamas, would not last a week working with them. What makes Katie and Katherine so successful at running their business together is that they have so much in common. During the pandemic, they got a little outdoorsy and picked up hiking. But the thing that’s always brought them together is this deep and immeasurable love of literature, which actually runs deep in their bloodline. Katie recently found out that her late grandmother had a manuscript about the death penalty in Mississippi that she was shopping around to publishers.

If there’s any advice Katie would give to someone starting a business with their mom, it’s this: be best friends. “We’re always together anyway, so it's something else to do together, just like a different activity,” she says. “I love learning from her. She's the smartest person I know.”

And they have a clear delineation of duties. As the millennial daughter, Katie, naturally, handles the website and social media, and Katherine primarily sources the books. “I think we balance each other out pretty well,” Katie says.

Good Books has earned a lot of praise, especially in the aftermath of the uprising in June of 2020, but Katie says she doesn’t let it get to her head. “I don't think I'm particularly changing the world,” Katie says, with a laugh. “I’m not MLK or anyone like that. I'm just a girl with her books, and that's cool by me.”

Janet and Gary Smith’s meet-cute happened at Bachelor’s, a now-closed after-work spot in Las Colinas, a suburb of Dallas. They were both recent Ivy League graduates—Janet a Harvard alum, Gary a Yalie—in town for an IBM training program for new employees. Gary walked over to Janet and asked if she would like to see Dallas, and her answer was yes. To Janet, Gary seemed handsome and it was impressive that he knew the city. Who wouldn’t like a tour?

But when Gary pulled up in a Ford Fairmont the next day and handed Janet a map as she sat in the passenger seat, she realized that he wasn’t as familiar with the city as she thought. “I said, ‘What's this?,’ and he said, ‘We're going to go see Dallas.’ I knew then…we’re in trouble,” Janet says, jokingly.

Gary and Janet were both in relationships at the time, but, “It was the 80s,” Janet says, “a time of dating and fun.” No matter how much dating and fun was in their plans, they had too much in common and were meant for each other. 40 years later, the Smiths have built a strong marriage and a powerhouse of a family business in the Ivy Planning Group, a consultancy firm where Mr. and Mrs. Smith serve as senior partners and their 3 sons—Alex, Bradley, and Gary II—serve as Vice President of Inclusive Recruiting; Consultant & Product Manager—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); and Head of Business Development, respectively.

Kim Haynes, Darla McCuen, and Nita Briggs were known as the Pettis girls when they were growing up. Kim, the youngest, says they fussed with one another like any other group of sisters growing up in the same house, but they always had one another’s back.

Darla, the middle sister, tells a story about how a boy tried to come between her and Nita, the oldest, in high school. “We don’t do that in this house,” Darla says jokingly. So, while they were always close, the thing that built the strongest bond between them is their mother, Yvonne “Ms. Kookie” Williams and her legendary recipes. Ms. Kookie was a maestro behind any oven, known around the community for baking delicious sweet treats.

When their mother got divorced, she had to work long hours to support a house full of girls. Whenever their mother would leave, Nita would pick up the recipe book and bake in their mother’s absence. “I would bake a cake every day,” Nita says. And of course, she got in trouble for it, and the next day, she’d bake another cake anyway. “My sisters would be running down the street trying to borrow flour, sugar, and eggs,” she says.

This is basically how the Pettis girls fell in love with baking and would decades later become the Kookie Haven sisters and open their own battle-tested shop to honor their mom. The first Kookie Haven opened in 2002 and closed in 2005. “It paid its bills, but it didn't pay us, so eventually we shut down and decided we'll never do it again,” Darla says.

Several years later, the sisters began selling baked goods again, but this time, out of their houses, thanks to the Texas Cottage Food Law, which allows people to sell food from their home kitchens without permits, licenses, and inspections. This allowed the sisters to pursue their passion without having to rent a storefront, and enabled them to save money and eventually open their current brick-and-mortar location in 2017.

Things improved greatly for the sisters: they frequently made their way to “Best of” lists, and were making more money than ever. Then the pandemic hit, which led to a big loss in revenue and inflated prices for essential baking materials. But, even through the pandemic, they persisted. “We do everything that we know how to do and trust God with everything else,” Nita says.

The Kookie Haven sisters have successfully run a business that’s had more than a few bumps in the road. Their advice on being in business with siblings, especially when times get tough and you’re maybe running on 36 straight hours of work, is that you really have to like each other. “Bottom line. That’s an underlying fact,” Nita says. “At the end of the day, our mother taught us that you have to love each other.”