This inspiring account of building a real estate empire offers useful, if streamlined, investment advice.
A self-made millionaire aims to help others become rich in this debut guide.
Migliaccio’s book speaks to frustrated working stiffs who are longing for more freedom and greater wealth. Drawing heavily on his own compelling story of success as a real estate investor and entrepreneur, he hopes “to show that there are many more options to the daily grind and working in a job you dislike.” Higher education isn’t the only path to a solid career, he argues; embracing a can-do spirit, knowing when to seize an opportunity, and being persistent are just as important. The author himself was a mediocre student who struggled in special ed classes. College wasn’t on the table after high school, but after getting to know a friend’s immigrant father who’d built a thriving small business, Migliaccio realized he could take charge of his own future. A small delivery business and a side gig restoring old Volkswagen Beetles eventually blossomed into multiple real estate investments in Albuquerque, New Mexico, giving the author the freedom and financial stability he longed for. Much of his sensible advice (for example, save aggressively, take risks without being reckless, and don’t neglect due diligence) is naturally geared to novice real estate investors. But he embraces an “up by your bootstraps” mindset that occasionally glosses over more complicated realities some readers might face, such as the challenges of investing in a high-priced housing market or saving substantial amounts of money while working for minimum wage. He simply urges those who feel they don’t have enough to save to “do whatever it takes. Be extreme.” Yet Migliaccio’s positive attitude and personal tale of triumph are still stirring. “The magic formula is to just get started,” he writes, and his enthusiasm will doubtless motivate more than a few hesitant would-be business owners to try to turn ideas into reality, especially those who find more conventional career paths lackluster. “Great ideas and hard work can give you whatever you want in life,” he writes. “Look beyond what” everyone else “is doing and find a path that leads to your greatness.”
This inspiring account of building a real estate empire offers useful, if streamlined, investment advice.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4808-9205-7
Page Count: 262
Publisher: ArchwayPublishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An earnest self-help work, but one that may not appeal to all audiences.
Attorney, mediator, and coach Schick walks readers through her conflict resolution approach.
The author created the Third Ear Conflict Resolution Program, which essentially encourages people to listen to their “h-EAR-ts” when they approach conflicts. The method urges the readers to first make seven choices, including “Forgive yourself for having conflicts,” and “Assume that you know nothing about anything,” in order to create a “clear space” to take “Five Actions”: “Define the conflict,” “Identify the interests,” “Play with the possibilities,” “Create the future,” and “Plan, Act, Revise, and Repeat the action steps until you eliminate or transform the conflict.” The chapters are structured in a way that describes a specific conflict, applies the Third Ear Conflict Resolution Program to the solution, and then summarizes how the latter can be applied more broadly to the reader’s life. Schick powerfully describes her own experience of violent assault, and in doing so, effectively shows how the program may be applied to trauma. Her account of her approach to recovery illuminates the ways in which she continues to use her program to heal herself and others. The layout of the book makes the content more actionable; every chapter in Part 1 starts with a situation and ends with “Practices” that ask readers self-reflective questions, which allows readers to readily put new lessons into action. Additional examples and workbook content in Part 2 also clearly encourage readers to embrace the author’s practices. However, readers may take exception to a section that seems to highlight the benefits of discounting medical professionals’ advice when faced with a catastrophic health issue.
An earnest self-help work, but one that may not appeal to all audiences.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-45-662557-3
Page Count: 132
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A brisk and thought-provoking anatomy of shopping in the 21st century.
A study of the fraught world of retail in the age of Amazon.
The latest from Wharton School professor Kahn (Marketing/Univ. of Pennsylvania; Global Power Brand, 2013, etc.) notes the sweeping chaos and disruption among American retailers. Dozens of such name-brand national businesses have either shut down outlets or shut down completely in recent years. She opens her account of this upheaval by identifying what she sees as seven key forces at work, including massive advertising data-collection; vertical integration in order to control all aspects of a brand; an excessive number of brick-and-mortar stores; a younger, less brand-loyal customer base; retail customers moving to cities, away from sprawling suburbs and shopping centers; and a general shift toward online shopping across multiple platforms. But the main focus here, which the author calls “the gorilla in the room,” is the online retailer Amazon.com, with its “fierce understanding of what customers want.” Amazon fills these wants with a seemingly unbeatable combination of basics, she says, including low prices, fast service, responsive returns, and all-inclusive convenience. The company’s model is a familiar one, she points out—it was used, for instance, by Walmart in the 1990s—but the amount of resources that Amazon has put behind it has caused other retailers, big and small, to scramble to adapt. Kahn studies strategies by successful businesses, such as cosmetics retailer Sephora and eyeglasses store Warby Parker, and she offers readers “the Kahn Retailing Success Matrix,” which looks at variances between different aspects of the retail process. Kahn lays this all out with a brevity and clarity that’s extremely effective. She also makes ample use of simple charts, designed to show the different quadrants of her Success Matrix—“Product Benefits,” overall “Customer Experience,” and the specific abilities to “Increase Pleasure” and “Eliminate Pain Points”—as they flow into and sharpen one another. At times, the tenor of the book seems willfully reductionist, as it likely takes more than faithful adherence to a successful matrix to give a small mom-and-pop bookstore, say, a chance against a corporate juggernaut. That said, modern retailers will find the book’s breakdowns of the essentials of retail helpful for widening their perspective and keeping the bigger picture in view. Particularly insightful are her examinations of “Generation Z,” the “digitally native millennials” whose relationship to traditional advertising and retail is very different from those of customers of the past. The author also treats the changing nature of brick-and-mortar buying-and-selling with pleasing nuance. Indeed, she makes a case for the necessity of a brick-and-mortar renaissance, and the urgency of creating “highly compelling in-store customer experiences” to make that happen. It’s also a canny move for Kahn to get into the nitty-gritty of how a handful of companies have maintained their success, as it provides a welcome counterweight to the book’s tendency toward extensive theorizing.
A brisk and thought-provoking anatomy of shopping in the 21st century.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61363-086-0
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Wharton Digital Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
