Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, announced this week that the company will spin off the Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba into a separate corporation. It's an investment now worth nearly $40 billion.

Without it, Yahoo will now be a much smaller company that by some calculations is worth less than $0.

And that might be the best thing for the future of the company, which was once a leading player in Silicon Valley — and Mayer’s plan to turn it around.

This week on Money Talking, Nicholas Carlson, author of Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! discusses Mayer's plan, what challenges she faces and how being one of few female CEOs makes it more complicated.