A thoughtful, if sometimes unevenly executed, account of an entrepreneur’s life and business philosophy.
Nassif, the founder of the Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning-product company, shares experiences from her life and business career.
The author was born in 1956 and grew up in a large family in Iowa. Her grandmother, Cecelia, sold goods door to door during the Great Depression, and her aunt, Sister Mary John, was a cloistered nun who lived by the Latin phrase “Ora et Labora” (“prayer and work”). Her mother, Thelma Meyer, worked hard to provide a good home for her family and succeeded in raising nine kids, all of whom graduated from college. Nassif started her own company in the late 1990s and named it after her mother as a tribute to her grit and her love for gardening (Mrs. Meyer’s products rely on plant-based cleaning solutions). Along the way, the author experienced financial ups and downs, failing twice to develop her idea into a successful firm. Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, however, became a beloved brand whose identity was rooted in her own authentic experiences; the author describes the company’s marketing approach in detail, emphasizing the hand-crafted quality of their products, relative to the harsh chemical-based products sold by larger brands. In 2008, S.C. Johnson bought the company, which continued to grow. Nassif takes readers through the journey of her working life, up to the formation of her business venture. She worked as a babysitter and as a waitress during her teen years; she then earned a nursing degree from the University of Iowa and worked in intensive care units. Later, she worked in communications for Target. Nassif also writes of challenges she faced at home: Her daughter Calla was born with kidney cancer, and the family persevered through the crisis.
Alongside her personal story, Nassif offers advice that will be broadly applicable to readers in their home lives and in the workplace. She encourages people to trust their intuition, especially in situations where their safety might be at risk, and to practice difficult conversations in advance, both inside and outside the business world. Nassif also effectively tells of how she dealt with anxiety about public speaking, noting the importance of practicing deep breathing and other calming techniques. She asserts that energy and enthusiasm are central to the success of any entrepreneur, but also that people must always take time to assess their strengths and weaknesses as leaders. At the same time, she discourages entrepreneurs from worrying too much about other people’s opinions. The strengths of Nassif’s book are most evident in the most personal sections, and customers of the Mrs. Meyer’s brand will find her backstory to be particularly compelling. The closer this book gets to the self-help genre, though, the more it feels disjointed, and many of the author’s tips will be familiar to regular readers of business books; her specific advice in this realm offers little that differentiates the book from many similar titles. A leaner, more focused work might have concentrated throughout on the lessons that she imparts in the final chapters.
A thoughtful, if sometimes unevenly executed, account of an entrepreneur’s life and business philosophy.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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