• Title: Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur
• Author:Ryan Blair
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; Reprint edition (August 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591844037
• ISBN-13: 978-1591844037

This book showed up out of the blue – I got an email from the publisher letting me know a copy was coming gratis in a few days. I read a lot of business books (you can find capsule reviews of many of them right in this blog) so I started reading it when it arrived.

I’m conflicted on the value of the book – on the one hand, I thought it was useful for an entrepreneur with a lot of suggestions gained through hard experience (you can read a selected set of 10 suggestions on the Forbes website). Most striking for me are his lessons on following through on your deals (keeping your word meaningful, the importance of integrity), and the ending bit on “lawyering up” (in my experience, the importance of having a strong lay understanding of business law and working well with lawyers is undervalued in most companies). And I thought the chapter on Mr. Blair’s life was fascinating and set the stage for the rest of the book. On the other hand, I thought the section on charitable contribution and giving back was long winded, the examples felt self-serving.

In general the writing style was clear and occasionally even exciting; unfortunately, there are times where messages were repeated too often. Ryan Blair finds the personal growth industry fascinating – luckily, this book doesn’t generally come across as a pure self-help, motivational book, which makes it a breeze to read and the content easy to take away.

This is Ryan’s first book – I’m glad I got the serendipitous opportunity to read and review it, and I’m looking forward to his next one.

Note: The review copy was provided to me free of charge; you can find the website for the book at http://www.nothingtolose.com/.