Academic Career

What this book is not: It is not a leadership academic resource, filled with principles, methodologies, laws, or processes – it’s a conversation. It’s like we sat down and shared stories over an ice-cold beer or chilled tequila on a hot, sunny day. It is an unconventional leadership book, an autobiography of lessons learned. By listening to this book, you’ll be taken on a ride with me through my personal leadership story.

Starting and running a small business is hard! These 21 authors have done the hard work and overcome the risks. Their stories will help every listener to empathize with the challenges of being an entrepreneur and to join in and celebrate the victories. The stories provide lessons in grit, determination, and faith. Whether you have "made it" in your business, are still struggling, or have just started thinking about getting into business, these lessons will be useful in motivating you through difficult days or circumstances.

Raise the Bar, Change the Game is the beautifully written autobiography of an entrepreneur. Rarely do you have a biography where personal humanity is intricately interwoven with the business successes and failures that occur when someone takes a road never before traveled; in this case, through the newly-fallen Soviet Union.

You've used their products. You've heard about their skyrocketing wealth and "don't be evil" business motto. But how much do you really know about Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Inside Larry and Sergey's Brain skips past the general Google story and focuses on what really drives these men and where they will take Google in the future.

How the world's most powerful media mogul really thinks! Rupert Murdoch, the controversial chairman and CEO of News Corp., is the subject of endless gossip, speculation, and criticism. But what really drives his bold (and usually successful) gambles? Based on comments from News Corp. executives and competitors and interviews with Wall Street analysts, investors, and other media experts, this audio book explores some of the most fascinating questions about Murdoch.

The Good Fail is part business story, part guilty pleasure, exploring Richard Keith Latman's very public missteps and the painful lessons he learned as a result, presented to fellow entrepreneurs, in his own words, for the first time. Written in a lively, conversational style, the book answers questions many computer-industry veterans have been asking for more than a decade about what went wrong at Microworkz, the failed former free PC enterprise.

Catching Lightning in a Bottle traces the complete history of Merrill Lynch and the company's substantial impact on the world of finance, from the birth of the once-mighty company to its inauspicious end. Throughout its 94-year history, Merrill Lynch revolutionized finance by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, operating under a series of guidelines known as the Principles.

The original American entrepreneur! One of the great historical business leaders shares his observations on making money. A must-listen for anyone interested in business.

In this powerful volume, 17 high-achieving women from Phoenix share their personal journeys to earning six figures and beyond while redefining success on their own terms. These are stories of resilience, reinvention, and rising above doubt to create thriving careers and businesses. Six-Figure Chicks is more than a book—it’s a movement. Each chapter is a blend of truth-telling and practical advice, offering real strategies to help you build your own six-figure path with purpose, balance, and confidence.

In this powerful volume, 16 high-achieving women from Houston share their personal journeys to earning six figures and beyond—while redefining success on their own terms. These are stories of resilience, reinvention, and rising above doubt to create thriving careers and businesses. Six-Figure Chicks is more than a book—it’s a movement. Each chapter is a blend of truth-telling and practical advice, offering real strategies to help you build your own six-figure path with purpose, balance, and confidence.

If you’re only learning from your own experience, you’re wasting years of time doing all the wrong things. When we learn from the experiences of others, we can save those years and make the right decisions when they count. Who has the experience you should learn from? Anyone and everyone, including the author of this book. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, Experience Matters is full of (brutal) honesty and humor.

In the early years of Adams Golf, entrepreneur Barney Adams labored in obscurity. He collected six patents for his golf products, manufacturing fine equipment but enjoying no sales. Everything changed for him and his company in 1996, though, when he invented the Tight Lies fairway wood. Working as a custom fitter, his customers repeatedly asked for a club they could play from "long iron" distance, from 180 to 220 yards to the green. Adams knew the technical secret was to lower the club's center of gravity.

The Change Maker catapults listeners into a world few will ever experience. Entertaining, fast-paced, and episodic, this memoir of an unconventional agent of change provides a lesson in the values of strategic thinking and responsible leadership found so wanting today. With self-deprecating humor and irony, Al Checchi chronicles the meteoric rise whereby his creativity, strategic thinking, and negotiating skills helped transform three major American institutions....

Whether you are building a small business from the ground up or managing a multinational company, you can learn the seven key traits for leadership success from one of the greatest business innovators and creative thinkers of the 20th century: Walt Disney. Whether you know him as the first to produce cartoons in Technicolor, the mastermind behind the theme park Disneyland, or the founder of the largest entertainment conglomerate, Walt's story of creativity, perseverance in spite of obstacles, and achieving goals resonates and inspires as much today as it ever has.

The inspirational story of a former Microsoft executive’s quest to build libraries around the world and share the love of books What’s happened since John Wood left Microsoft to change the world? Just ask six million kids in the poorest regions of Asia and Africa. In 1999, at the age of 35, Wood quit a lucrative career to found the nonprofit Room to Read. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world", he strove to bring the lessons of the corporate world to the nonprofit sector - and succeeded spectacularly.

Beyond the Pale chronicles Ken Grossman's journey from hobbyist homebrewer to owner of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., one of the most successful craft breweries in the United States. From youthful adventures to pioneering craft brewer, Ken Grossman shares the trials and tribulations of building a brewery that produces more than 800,000 barrels of beer a year while maintaining its commitment to using the finest ingredients available.

In 1835, at the age of 13, a young boy walked nearly 300 miles to Paris; he worked odd jobs, and did whatever it took to survive. He eventually learned a craft: box making. Before long, the young boy had earned enough to open his own box-making store.

Unlock entrepreneurial success with The Hustler’s MBA: The Business Blueprint of Success by Sean T. Long, MBA. This dynamic guide offers practical strategies and actionable insights from real-world experiences and academic knowledge, designed for both emerging and seasoned entrepreneurs. Whether you’re building a new venture or scaling an existing one, this book equips you with the tools to thrive.

In The Startup Story: An Entrepreneur's Journey from Idea to Exit, renowned serial entrepreneur Martin Warner takes a fledgling company all the way from zero to hero, selling it for $50 million after a mere seventeen months. It's a memoir of whirlwind entrepreneurial success, a nonfiction narrative that puts the listener in the CEO's seat, giving the feel of what it's really like to steer a company around the toughest of tracks and come out with a massive payday.

Told through his journals, From the Arena recounts Michael Dwyer's marathon entrepreneurial journet with Pigsback.com, starting at the height of the dot-com boom in late 1999, going on to pursue international ambitions in Britain and North America, facing a myriad of unforeseen shocks along the way. The journals tell the entrepreneur's business and personal highs and lows, persisting on a wing and a prayer, reinventing time and again until that final chance—an encore—one last shot at success.