An Enterprising Life

This book is the autobiography of Jay Van Andel (1924–2004), co-founder and former chairman of the American company Amway; its original English title is An Enterprising Life. The author was born into a Dutch immigrant family, and the narrative begins with a shared car ride between him and his friend Rich DeVos in their youth. It recounts how the two started out running a flight school, a motel and an import business, suffered bankruptcy and hardship, gained experience and lessons in the Nutrilite direct-selling business, and finally founded Amway in a basement at home in 1959, starting with a multipurpose concentrated cleaner and taking the company global. The book records both the sweet and bitter of the entrepreneurial road—the cash-flow straits of the early years, the blow of a warehouse fire, the long defense against regulators and media who labeled the business a pyramid scheme, and the battle to protect the Canadian market—and the decades of mutual trust and forbearance between the two founders, and the friendship between their two families across generations. In the latter part, the author turns to the responsibilities of wealth: building up his hometown of Grand Rapids, funding education and medical research, and promoting business that advances alongside environmental protection; separate chapters address family, children's education and faith, closing with three "anchors of life"—faith, family and friends. This is not an operations-manual style entrepreneurship guide but a first-person record of an entrepreneur looking back on his life. Readers can see the concrete choices, costs and commitments behind a multinational company that grew from a basement to billions of dollars in sales, and can read plain lessons about integrity, partnership, business ethics and long-termism. The Chinese edition was translated by Amway (China) Daily Necessities Co., Ltd., published by Haitian Publishing House in April 2022 as part of the "Amway Corporate Culture Series"; it runs about 180,000 characters and 196 pages.