Amway co-founder's Simply Useless advice

Admin   |   19 November, 2014   |   935   |   3980

SIMPLY RICH: A MEMOIR

Life and Lessons from the Cofounder of Amway

Rich DeVos

Howard Books (Simon & Schuster)

284 + XIII pages; $16



Who can doubt that Rich DeVos has everything it takes to write a great book. He has an extraordinary story to tell: how did a rank outsider - Mr DeVos was born to second-generation Dutch immigrants in rural Michigan during the Depression - make it to the top of the plutocratic world of American business? What did it take for this guy - who, at the age of 10, joined the ranks of "ill-housed, ill-clothed, ill-fed" Americans because his father lost his job - to build a company that is counted among the top three multi-level marketing companies in the world, with operations in more than 30 countries and sales of $11.8 billion? Indeed how did a man from a two-bit mid-Western state become a globally celebrated speaker?



Unfortunately, Simply Rich is far from being great, or even particularly good. The book by Amway's co-founder is so tedious and disorganised that the sundry good bits are lost in a verbal maze. The publisher should be ticked off for not holding a celebrity author to higher standards. As it is, Simply Rich is destined to find a place among the cornucopia of self-help books, aimlessly thumbed through and, as quickly, shoved back on the shelf.