cover image Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career and Revel in Your Individuality

Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career and Revel in Your Individuality

Christine Comaford-Lynch, . . McGraw-Hill, $24.95 (268pp) ISBN 978-0-07-148975-1

High school dropout turned self-made multimillionaire and five-time CEO, Comaford-Lynch presents an upbeat, irreverent business book for entrepreneurs, free spirits and eponymous renegades. Focusing on passionate young people who have grit and vision but limited experience and/or resources, the author presents practical, step-by-step advice for starting a company, making it in a cutthroat environment and reaching life goals in record time, while recounting her entertaining, often hilarious life story. “To some extent, all first-time CEOs are making it up as they go along,” she says. Sure enough, she's found herself brazening her way through plenty of bizarre and touching situations: hiring employees before she actually has a firm; posing as a man to score a programming job in the macho world of '80s Microsoft; dating Bill Gates to learn confidence; making (and losing) millions of dollars through guts, sales know-how and force of personality. Emphasizing visualization and self-confidence, she tackles the spiritual issues of prosperity as well as the down-and-dirty details of payroll and writing a killer business plan. Entrepreneurs and leaders at all levels of their careers will find this inspiring, rags-to-riches story as pleasurable to read as it is thought provoking. (Sept.)