THE INNER MOUNTAIN

Wang’s book interweaves personal stories and professional insights as she details the spiritual landscape of an entrepreneurial career.

The author—who founded multiple successful online businesses, including the Chinese product marketplace DHgate—likens her career to climbing a series of “inner mountain[s]” and suggests multiple ways that readers can take a similarly interior, reflective approach to their work. Over the course of the book, she describes how she transitioned from focusing on others’ priorities, especially while working at Tsinghua University and then as a Microsoft employee in the 1990s, learning to “talk to [her] heart” to find what “make[s] [her] eyes shine.” As she invested more in goals that she found to be intrinsically motivating, she found that she was able to give back more to people in her life. Wang also includes compelling photographs, interspersed throughout the text, that capture important moments in her career journey. Her narrative also emphasizes what she sees as distinctive strengths that women have brought to the digital business world; she specifically offers a vision for women as collaborators, rather than lone wolves. These passages about mentorship and community present a contrast to such texts as Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (2013). Though the book sometimes overemphasizes the power of the individual, as many self-help books do, Wang is highly cognizant of the obstacles that women face as entrepreneurs. She also makes a strong argument for focusing on the things that one can control: “If all you ask is why someone did something to you, you won’t learn anything. If you ask what you can take from this experience, you’ll learn and grow.” Each chapter ends with reframing questions for reflection, Overall, the book will lend itself well to reading and discussing with a group.

An insightful self-help business book for women.