A lively, readable, and enlightened set of principles for success without savagery.
A lifelong entrepreneur distills his experiences in this manual on achieving success.
In his nonfiction debut, Lewis looks back on his 40 years in real estate and homebuilding to fashion a motivational-style guide for both his fellow entrepreneurs and general readers. He tells his readers that they basically have four alternatives: They can be unsuccessful and unhappy, successful yet unhappy, happy but unsuccessful, or the gold standard, happy and successful. “Because happiness and success are unrelated,” he writes, “they should be understood and pursued separately. Then you can achieve both!” He first lays the foundation of his book by giving an engaging autobiographical account, from dramatically narrated tumor scares to his navigation of the Great Recession of late 2007 to 2008—on which, surprisingly, he looks back with pride: “Those were some of the best business decisions I have ever made. And even as a veteran homebuilder, I learned a new lesson, and I haven’t borrowed a nickel since.” He then broadens his manual, delivering more universal precepts, the “five fundamental requirements for long-term success in your life and your career.” The discussion that follows includes such generalities as personal character, hard work (which leads to self-worth), humility, and, most interestingly, instructions on crafting a life for yourself that makes you morally and personally deserving of your success. Lewis models these precepts on his understanding of Christianity. “Jesus’ life and ministry radiated love, kindness, grace, humility, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, loyalty, strength, and goodness,” he writes. “There was no self-righteousness, no superiority, no hypocrisy, no mean-spiritedness, and no dogma.” In many of the motivational books he cites throughout, such sentiments might come across as empty sanctimony, but the narrative tone here is a wonderfully convincing combination of charisma and Christian philanthropy. If more entrepreneurs followed this kind of personal and professional philosophy, the world would be a better place.
A lively, readable, and enlightened set of principles for success without savagery.Pub Date: March 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9600953-0-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: T.W. Lewis Company
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A timely, vividly realized reminder to slow down and harness the restorative wonders of serenity.
An exploration of the importance of clarity through calmness in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Austin-based speaker and strategist Holiday (Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, 2018, etc.) believes in downshifting one’s life and activities in order to fully grasp the wonder of stillness. He bolsters this theory with a wide array of perspectives—some based on ancient wisdom (one of the author’s specialties), others more modern—all with the intent to direct readers toward the essential importance of stillness and its “attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence.” Readers will be encouraged by Holiday’s insistence that his methods are within anyone’s grasp. He acknowledges that this rare and coveted calm is already inside each of us, but it’s been worn down by the hustle of busy lives and distractions. Recognizing that this goal requires immense personal discipline, the author draws on the representational histories of John F. Kennedy, Buddha, Tiger Woods, Fred Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other creative thinkers and scholarly, scientific texts. These examples demonstrate how others have evolved past the noise of modern life and into the solitude of productive thought and cleansing tranquility. Holiday splits his accessible, empowering, and sporadically meandering narrative into a three-part “timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the human body.” He juxtaposes Stoic philosopher Seneca’s internal reflection and wisdom against Donald Trump’s egocentric existence, with much of his time spent “in his bathrobe, ranting about the news.” Holiday stresses that while contemporary life is filled with a dizzying variety of “competing priorities and beliefs,” the frenzy can be quelled and serenity maintained through a deliberative calming of the mind and body. The author shows how “stillness is what aims the arrow,” fostering focus, internal harmony, and the kind of holistic self-examination necessary for optimal contentment and mind-body centeredness. Throughout the narrative, he promotes that concept mindfully and convincingly.
A timely, vividly realized reminder to slow down and harness the restorative wonders of serenity.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53858-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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