SOLID GROUND

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.