A poignant and potent self-help business book.
A serial entrepreneur shares her personal successes and failures in an introspective debut.
Fitzsimmons isn’t negative about startups. After all, she managed to launch six firms herself, five of which are still in business, including her current virtual-reality venture, Custom Reality Services. But two main themes of her book are that being an entrepreneur “is a struggle against reality” and that “failure is synonymous with iteration”—concepts that will test the mettle of even the most optimistic dreamer. That said, Fitzsimmons’ “field guide” is steeped in personal insights, many of which show how she forged success out of failure, and she supplements these with stories of other entrepreneurs who overcame adversity. Unlike typical how-to business books, this manual concentrates almost exclusively on developing the self, as evidenced by such chapter titles as “Self-Awareness,” “Sighting Your Summit,” “Self-Belief,” and “Focus.” Indeed, there’s a very personal slant to the book, overall; Fitzsimmons offers numerous accounts of her family, her health problems, and business setbacks. But there’s also a clear sense of growth and progress as the author upliftingly notes how all of her experiences helped to strengthen her along the way. Fitzsimmons’ self-analysis is engaging, but so too is her authoritative counsel as well as her well-designed self-help exercises. The author also shares useful tools, such as “The Relationship Matrix” and “The Decision Matrix,” to help readers navigate entrepreneurial waters. Her perspective should be invaluable to novice entrepreneurs who may not fully understand the challenges that lie ahead of them. A chapter on seeking funding is compelling, if not surprising; Fitzsimmons makes it clear that she’s not a fan of venture capital for most startups. A unique aspect of the book is the author’s emphasis on confronting self-imposed conditions, such as “entrenchment”: “when our startup is draining our life force, it is easy to entrench and think that persevering is our only option.”
A poignant and potent self-help business book.Pub Date: April 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0285-4
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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