Book Club January Review: How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman

For the first book of 2025 I wanted to harness the motivation of the New Year and choose a non-fiction book that would get us focussed on our resolutions. CY and I are both entrepreneurial minded, with of our goals for the year centring around business and financial development. Therefore, I felt How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman would be an apt choice to help us make the most of the start to the new year.

The book provides a how-to guide on building and running a successful business and covers many areas: from obtaining funding, choosing a partner, and building a brand, to making hard decisions and deciding when to pivot. Kriegsman provides advice garnered from her own journey of building Bulletin, an e-commerce business which she co-founded in her mid-to-late 20's. She also collects answers to questions from other female entrepreneurs, providing an insight into how they started and built their businesses also.

The Good Stuff

I have to say, the title for this one struck me immediately. I saw it and was like hell-yeah I want to learn how to do that. I was specifically looking to read something that would leave me feeing motivated, teach me something useful, and help me set some more focussed goals to develop my business ideas. Overall, I’d say this book succeeded in at least the first and second of these areas, and helped me to identify the areas on which I need to focus my goals.

I particularly liked that this book covered a range of areas of business, whilst still providing quite a bit of detail that can be useful for new business owners. I feel a lot of business books I’ve read either focus on one particular area, or skirt over a broad range of topics, without giving any specifics or useful how to information. This one struck a good balance between the two areas, which is not easy to accomplish.

I also liked that it was female focused. All of the business owners interviewed were female, as are Kriegsman and her co-founder, with their business having a particular focus on female creators. I found this very relatable and refreshing to hear from a female in what has historically been a male-dominated space. I also felt this female narrative didn’t dominate the book or overshadow its essence as a business book. Rather than taking over, it complemented the book and put it into the female perspective. It was particularly refreshing that she kept her tone light and feminine, and didn’t feel the need to adopt a masculine persona to be taken seriously.

I also liked that the book was encouraging, whilst not sugar-coating how difficult it is to build a successful business. I’ve read quite a few business books that either hammer home how difficult business is until you almost feel it will be impossible to succeed, or provide platitudes of encouragement without actually helping at all. Again, Kriegsman struck a good balance between the two. My key takeaway in this respect is to start treating and talking about your businesses as though you are serious about them. I feel that Kriegsman really shone a spotlight onto how imposter syndrome operates in the business space, and how important it is to take yourself and your business seriously.

The Not So Good Stuff

Although I liked the detail in which Kriegsman delved into most areas, in some chapter I felt it was a little overdone and repetitive. I particularly struggled to get through the chapter on branding. Whilst I appreciate the importance of branding in business, I feel that Kriegsman made the chapter unnecessarily long by repeating a lot of previous content and giving too many examples. This made the information given less potent for me as I was struggling to separate what was important from the anecdotes and repetitive messaging.

I also found she talked a lot about Bulletin, which I knew nothing about and hadn’t heard of prior to reading this book. This may be a bit harsh, because I understand that Bulletin was the business which Kriegsman had built and the source of her knowledge and information. But I’ll be honest, by the end of the book I was pretty fed up of hearing about Bulletin. I think it was a good idea for Kriegsman to include content from other entrepreneurs and maybe some more examples could have been given by them instead of focussing so much on her own business. Or maybe I’m just being picky there.

There was one important thing that I did find to be lacking considering that this was a business book, and that was credibility of the author and the sources. Again, this could just be my own ignorance in not having heard of Bulletin, but I wasn’t sure I trusted Kriegsman enough to take her advice on business. I think perhaps it was the informal tone of the book, and the way in which Kriegsman talked about her approach to some of the issues that left the impression that she wasn’t yet a successful businesswoman. Instead, I had the feeling that she was just someone who happened to build a business and was still in the process of building it. I felt the same about the other entrepreneurs that were interviewed, which on one hand was nice as it left me with the feeling of “if they can do it, so can I”. But on the other hand, I feel the book failed to nail home that these are successful women who should be trusted and relied on for advice. That’s not to say that they aren’t, or that Kriegsman herself isn’t. But I think the lack of information given about the businesses just didn’t give them enough credit. Again, this could have been solved by talking a bit less about Bulletin, and a bit more about the other businesses that were featured. Although, at the risk of contradicting myself (oops), I did quite like the informal and friendly tone in which the book was written. It made it easy to read, relatable and presented the information in a way which was easy to digest for anyone.

One small thing I found a bit strange was this line, “Or the fact that all these venture-backed women – myself included – are ourselves white, able-bodied, and conventionally beautiful.” Ok, so it probably sounds a bit stranger since I have taken it out of context. I do get what the author was trying to do here, and the point she was making is a valid one. But I’m not sure that this reads the way she intended it to. I just found it an odd line, and wasn’t really convinced that the reference to being conventionally beautiful should have been included alongside a reference to the imbalance between the venture funding given to women, minority ethnicities and disabled people.

Rating

CY - It was inspiring at times, but as a business book it didn’t stand out to me. So I’ll give it a 3/5.

Kay - I did enjoy reading this book, it was motivational and I made quite a few notes of useful information. It was refreshing to hear a female take, that wasn’t adopting a masculine voice. 4 /5.

If you are a new business owner or someone looking to start your own business I'd recommend this book as it could have some useful content for you.

Are you interested in business books? Have you read this book? If so let us know in the comments, and we’d particularly like to hear how it compares to other similar books that you’ve read.

As always, we are keen to hear your feedback and recommendations. Did you like the informal tone and female narrative, or like CY did you not find it outstanding as a business book?