{"id":6559,"date":"2011-09-17T07:07:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T14:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/?p=6559"},"modified":"2011-09-17T07:07:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-17T14:07:08","slug":"nothing-to-lose-everything-to-gain-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2011\/09\/17\/nothing-to-lose-everything-to-gain-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain (book review)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content_div-6559\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Title: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Nothing-Lose-Everything-Gain-Multimillionaire\/dp\/1591844037%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJ575TFCTD2TUN5TQ%26tag%3Dalnathnuse-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1591844037\">Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Author:<\/strong><a id=\"contributorNameTriggerB004N9WKUC\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ryan-Blair\/e\/B004N9WKUC\/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1\">Ryan Blair<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Hardcover:<\/strong> 240 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Portfolio Hardcover; Reprint edition (August 4, 2011)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Language:<\/strong> English<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN-10:<\/strong> 1591844037<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-1591844037<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This book showed up out of the blue &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m conflicted on the value of the book &#8211; 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/martinzwilling\/2011\/08\/11\/startups-learn-from-10-million-dollar-mistakes\/\" target=\"_blank\">selected set of 10 suggestions on the Forbes website<\/a>). 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 &#8220;lawyering up&#8221; (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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<div class=\"simplePullQuote right\"><p>This book is not a self-help guide to a better life; this book is the road map I used to overcome adversity I&#8217;ve encountered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>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 &#8211; luckily, this book doesn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>This is Ryan&#8217;s first book &#8211; I&#8217;m glad I got the serendipitous opportunity to read and review it, and I&#8217;m looking forward to his next one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note: The review copy was provided to me free of charge; you can find the website for the book at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nothingtolose.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.nothingtolose.com\/<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"translate_block\" style=\"display: none;\">\n<hr class=\"translate_hr\" \/>\n<a class=\"translate_translate\" id=\"translate_button_post-6559\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\" href=\"javascript:show_translate_popup('en', 'post', 6559);\"><span>Translate<\/span><\/a><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/google-ajax-translation\/transparent.gif?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" id=\"translate_loading_post-6559\" class=\"translate_loading colorbox-6559\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8211; I got an email from the publisher letting me know a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[959,961,958,960],"class_list":["post-6559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book-review","tag-entrepreneur","tag-publishing","tag-ryan-blair"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-1HN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}