" I confess that I have a little bit of a girl-crush on Ivanka Trump. I am a firm fan of the American version of The Apprentice and over the course of the few series I have watched, I have always been impressed by Ivanka's acute business acumen and obvious talent coupled with her ability to look so effortlessly glamorous, charismatic and compelling all the time -- effectively she is everything I aspire to be in business. On the other hand she is undeniably privileged and lucky enough to be born into an extremely wealthy, well-placed family, so of course she's going to have had a massive leg up somewhere... Ivanka spends much of the book effectively apologising for being born wealthy and stressing how hard she has worked in order to obtain what she has achieved and why she is qualified to give advice, and often this felt unnecessary. If anything it kept drawing my attention to the fact that she works for her father, has been exposed to all his ridiculously influential and wealthy contacts from a young age and has a famous name to band about to get what she wants. As I said before, I have great admiration for Ivanka. If I wasn't interested it what she had to say, I wouldn't have bothered reading this book.
More often than not though Ivanka knuckles down to offering some serious and extremely useful business advice for young women looking to forge their early career path in a desirable direction, such as myself. The chapters that dealt specifically with the business environment, such as interviewing tips, the art of negotiation and keeping your options open when scouting about for your first job definitely rang true with me as a fairly recent graduate currently making her way through the precarious male-dominated world of finance! I also feel like I've definitely taken on some of her advice in terms of the way I present myself at work and how to be assertive without being aggressive in order to get the most out of my job. Since I've read this book I've noticed a real change in my attitude to change at my job as well. Generally a lot of really great stuff has come out of me reading this book.
Other parts however really rubbed me up the wrong way, most notably her advice to go to the office for a couple of hours on a Sunday. Whilst I see the benefits of doing a little bit of prep work for the week ahead at the weekend, I'm sure it must be very easy for Ivanka to do this given that she lives within the very building that she works in and doesn't have to do a one and a half hour commute into the city like myself!! I also disagreed with her views on non-conservative dress within the workplace. Whilst I agree that you should dress professionally at work and make an effort with your appearance, I also believe that there is room for a bit of creativity. My superiors truly do not care that I dye my hair a bit of a too-bright red and wear the odd weird necklace; if anything, coupled with the fact I'm good at my job, it helps me stick out from the crowd and I'm always the one that people remember within my immediate team.
There were a couple of nice family anecdotes in here as well that I could really relate to. Ivanka seems to have a similar relationship with her father as I do with mine, and given that Donald Trump is one of my father's business heroes, the parallels left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside (it was in fact my dad who bought this book for me, and he even asked Ivanka to sign it!).
Overall I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't perfect and did whiff a bit of privilege, but Ivanka makes some good points and her words have definitely had an effect on the business side of my life. She's still one of my business heroes and I love her. "
— Sally, 1/15/2014