The sisters are doing it for themselves.

For Calgary entrepreneurs Catherine and Tag Goulet, starting a career book business on the Internet is truly a fab family job.

The Goulet sisters are making a splash with jobseekers in cyberspace with Fabjob.com, a Web site which offers e-guidebooks jam-packed with advice on how to get started in careers such as acting or motivational speaking, or becoming a television anchor, cartoonist or a celebrity personal assistant.

The company has just been nominated in the e-business category at the Alberta Business Awards of Distinction. The award winners will be announced next month. Fabjob.com has also been recognized this month by Writer’s Digest, ranking No. 4 in the magazine’s listing of The 50 Best Places to Get Published Online.

Not bad for a Web site that just launched in August, and is now getting more than 10,000 clicks a week.

The two sisters say their close relationship has been a key factor in building their startup company’s success while enriching their life-long relationship.

“I have wanted to work with Catherine for years,” says Tag, 41, a part-time instructor in management communications at the University of Calgary. “I also think she’s just really smart and a really cool person.”

Adds 39-year-old Catherine, who is currently on maternity leave from her part-time job in the legal department at Nexen (formerly Canadian Occidental Petroleum): “I’ve always felt really close to her. I think us getting involved in the business has even brought us closer, because we’re communicating daily. I’ve always had that close bond feeling with my sister, and now it’s even closer.”

They have worked together before — Tag was president of the University of Calgary students’ union at age 18, with Catherine by her side as the finance commissioner. While Tag went on to earn her masters in communication studies, her younger sister completed her paralegal certification through Red Deer College and is now working on her law degree through the University of Wolverhampton in England.

Like all business partners, the sisters still have their share of disagreements. “We can be totally honest about everything,” says Catherine. “There is no game playing. If something comes up that’s an issue that needs to be addressed, we both put it on the table and deal with it right away.”

Both credit their parents for instilling in their five children a strong work ethic. Before retirement, their father was a Calgary lawyer, while their mother grew a home-based bookkeeping business into her own company.

No sibling rivalries?

“Tons,” giggles Tag. “Lots. We were super competitive. There were five of us within six years of age, so it was the normal competition for mom’s and dad’s attention. But I think we all shone in different ways . . . our mom always told us, we can do anything we want in the world.”

And taking on the world is now a full-time fabjob.

All of the company’s 10 employees work from their homes, with Catherine telecommuting from her acreage near Bragg Creek while managing a brood of four children, including a three-month-old baby. Their brother John, based in Vancouver as an employee with Canadian Pacific, helps out in the customer service department.

“I love being able to be here in Calgary and reach the world without having to actually go there in person,” says Tag.

Catherine describes her CEO sister as the creative backbone of the company, who came up with the idea of publishing fun career guides online.

As president of Fabjob, Catherine focuses on reviewing contracts, negotiating deals with literary agents and the freelancers who write the books, and dealing with bookkeeping and legal issues.

With the help of a private partner and a bank loan, the sisters launched the Web site and are now running the business on the revenues flowing in from the sale of the electronic guides.

The guides, which range from 98 to 278 pages, are an entertaining primer for a variety of “fun” careers — unlike other e-job sites which provide traditional tips on more mundane occupations.

“This is basically for the careers that people dream of about having,” says Tag, but have no idea how to break into. “Our guides are for the type of jobs that are usually not advertised.”

More than 90 per cent of the PDF color guides, which can be read online or printed out at home, are sold to U.S. customers.

Some clips:

* Celebrity personal assistant: “As a celebrity personal assistant, you’ll be expected to interact and move comfortably in the realm of wealth and fame, which likely you are not familiar with.”

* Food Critic: “How do you hook an editor with your story idea? Just like you hook a fish using its preferred bait, hook an editor using bait he or she can use.”

* A TV reporter: “Many job seekers just show up at stations, expecting to pop in on the news director. News directors don’t like to be popped in on.”

The Fabjob team plans to continue growing its online customer base and ferreting out more fabulous careers to tempt online job seekers in North America and beyond.

The sisters admit they can’t imagine another job that could be this much fun. “We’re finding that we’re learning a lot about our own personal issues and working through that as we work through the business,” says Catherine.

“We both,” adds Tag, “have so much to learn from each other.”