Business Books: 'Nothing to lose, everything to gain ...'
Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur
By Ryan Blair
Portfolio/Penguin $25.95
At the outset, some readers may be skeptical about taking advice from someone with a back story as seedy as Ryan Blair's.
"For those of you having a hard time getting over the fact that I haven't had a squeaky-clean life, I say take any middle-class kid whose family is in shambles -- torn apart by drug addiction and abuse -- throw him into a gang-infested neighborhood when all he wants is a male role model, and he will find males to follow, but they won't be role models. That's why I've made bad decisions, but that's also how I got my nothing-to-lose-mindset," Blair writes.
That cornered-animal survival instinct that Blair developed while a juvenile gang member and detention center inmate played a major role in giving him the fortitude and guile to found and sell a successful business by the time he was 21. It also made him a multimillionaire speaker and author by age 30.
Blair, CEO of ViSalus Sciences, weaves reams of sound advice on mentoring, networking entrepreneurship into this reflection on his climb from the bottom of the socio-economic ladder to the top. This is an absorbing and inspirational 21st-century Horatio Alger story.
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