Full of sturdy, old-school leadership wisdom, a pleasant view from the top of a century of business.
A captain of industry chronicles an extraordinary life in the beauty business.
Lauder (b. 1933) tells both his own story and that of his mother, Estée Lauder (1908-2004), founder of the eponymous cosmetics company. Born Josephine Esther Mentzer, she got experience in the business world as a child, helping out in her father’s hardware store and a department store called Plafker & Rosenthal. At the time, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein owned the cosmetics industry, but as Estée pioneered the ideas of individual consultations and free gifts (her husband, Joe, mixed the creams in the kitchen), her star began to climb. Leonard began working in the plant at age 13; to put himself to sleep, he would “mentally check off all the specialty stores we sold to.” In 1958, he “officially” joined the company, which “barely had a dozen employees, including my parents and me.” He set his course early on: "My dream was to make Estée Lauder the General Motors of the beauty business, with multiple brands, multiple product lines, and multinational distribution.” He also dreamed, literally, of tinted lip gloss, which didn't exist at the time, and put it into production immediately. A watershed moment occurred during college, when his film club became so successful he started a second club to compete against it. This experience emboldened him to create Clinique, Origins, and Prescriptives and later to acquire Aveda, MAC, and others. “Competing against myself,” writes Lauder, “is an idea that never grows old.” Against the changing backdrop of 20th-century retail, the author describes his battles with the “ruthless” Charles Revson of Revlon and the later "Lancôme Wars." The final chapters detail Lauder’s successes as an art collector and philanthropist. The author is such a consistently genial guide that he even makes the rigors of the Navy—he joined after being rejected from Harvard Business School—seem charming.
Full of sturdy, old-school leadership wisdom, a pleasant view from the top of a century of business.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-299094-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2021
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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