Career Memoirs

The streets of Cairo make strange music: the echoing calls to prayer, the raging insults hurled between drivers, the steady crescendo of horns honking, the shouts of street vendors, the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she founded Diwan, a fiercely independent bookstore. They were three young women with no business degrees, no formal training, and nothing to lose.

This is not a straightforward memoir. Instead, it is a book that distills the processes and tactics Anthony 'Staz' Stazicker gathered throughout his career in the Special Forces—gunfights, door-kicking operations, and against-the-odds escape—and how these hard lessons informed his later successes with multi-million pound start-up clothing company ThruDark.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of How to Be an Overnight Success by Maria Hatzistefanis. 'You are not born an entrepreneur. It's a skill that you learn along the way.' When the skincare company Rodial launched its cult 'snake' serum, the press quickly called the business an 'overnight success'. However, Rodial's founder, Maria Hatzistefanis, had been toiling for 18 years, building the company from scratch in her bedroom. Now, the beauty boss sets out to demonstrate in this very accessible book that its success stemmed from sheer hard work, tireless efforts and a lot of patience.

Supermaker is a guide to business and career development by Jaime Schmidt: acclaimed entrepreneur, founder of Schmidt's Naturals, and icon of the Maker Movement. In Supermaker, she shares how you too can start or grow your own business with advice on branding, product development, social media marketing, scaling, PR, and customer engagement, all based on her own hard-won mastery.

Por medio de anécdotas, frases y con el carisma que lo caracteriza, Arturo Elias Ayub, considerado por muchos el Mejor negociador de América Latina, nos cuenta su vida como empresario. Nos dice que emprender viene de la conjunción de varias premisas y que sea cual sea nuestra actividad todos podemos ser emprendedores, siempre y cuando haya una cualidad obligatoria: sentir pasión por lo que se hace.

From its creation as a mail-order record company to the literal launch of Virgin Galactic, today Virgin is one of the premier 'way-of-life' brands in the world, trusted and enjoyed by many millions of people. In Business Stripped Bare, Sir Richard Branson shares the inside track on his life in business and reveals the incredible truth about his most risky, brilliant, and audacious deals.

When Bill Bratton became a Boston street cop after his return from serving in Vietnam, he was dismayed by the corrupt old guard, and it is fair to say the old guard was dismayed by him, too. But his success fighting crime could not be denied. Propelled by extraordinary results, Bratton had a dazzling rise, and ultimately a dazzling career, becoming the most famous police commissioner of modern times. The Profession is the story of that career in full.

The Dealmaker is a frank and honest account of how a severely dyslexic child who struggled at school went on to graduate from Oxford and become a serial entrepreneur. It describes Guy Hand's career in private equity, first at Nomura and then as head of his own company, Terra Firma. It looks in detail at the huge deals that Terra Firma has done over the years, involving everything from cinema chains and pubs to waste management, aircraft leasing and green energy.

After a bizarre encounter with his lost cousin, Jonathan Landry is compelled to travel across the planet to retrieve letters and mementos that carry the extraordinary secrets that Julian discovered throughout his life. On a remarkable journey that includes visits to the sensual tango halls of Buenos Aires, the haunting catacombs of Paris, the gleaming towers of Shanghai and the mystical deserts of Sedona, The Secret Letters of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari reveals astounding insights on reclaiming your personal power, being true to yourself, and fearlessly living your dreams.

On any given morning, you might wake up and shower with water, make your coffee with water, flush your toilet with water—and think nothing of it.But around the world, more than three-quarters of a billion people can’t do any of that—because they have no clean water source near their homes. And 1.7 billion don’t have access to a toilet. This crisis affects a third of the people on the planet. It keeps kids out of school and women out of work. It traps people in extreme poverty. It spreads disease. It’s also solvable.

What essential leadership lessons do we learn by distilling the actions and ideas of great military commanders such as George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Colin Powell? That is the fundamental question underlying The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell. The book illustrates that great leaders become great through conscious effort - a commitment not only to develop vital skills but also to surmount personal shortcomings.

Digital transformation is more important than ever now that we’re in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds are becoming ever more blurred. But fully 70 percent of digital transformations fail. In this book, Saldanha lays out a five-stage process for moving from digitally automating processes here and there to making digital technology the very backbone of your company. For each of these five stages, Saldanha describes two associated disciplines vital to the success of that stage.

We've all read about the experts: the artists, the scientists, the engineers - that special group of people known as Imagineers for The Walt Disney Company. But who are they? How did they join the team? What is it like to spend a day in their shoes?

Veteran character actor Nick Searcy takes you through his wide-ranging career, from both sides of the camera as an actor and director, to guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh, managing a professional wrestler, costarring in the hit show Justified—and somehow continuing to work in Hollywood even after he went to Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

Robert Rubin, former secretary of the Treasury and co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, shares thoughts on decision-making developed over more than six decades in markets, business, government, and politics, and offers listeners an astute and original guide for navigating uncertain times.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Descending carefully, he and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly Khumbu Icefall; when the mountain was finally behind him, Erik knew he was going to live. His expedition leader slapped him on the back and said something that would affect the course of Erik’s life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.” No Barriers is Erik’s response to that challenge.

Why were no bankers put in prison after the financial crisis of 2008? Why do CEOs seem to commit wrongdoing with impunity? The problem goes beyond banks deemed "too big to fail" to almost every large corporation in America - to pharmaceutical companies and auto manufacturers and beyond. The Chickenshit Club - an inside reference to prosecutors too scared of failure and too daunted by legal impediments to do their jobs - explains why.

An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water. In the tradition of such best-selling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life - and a gritty tale that proves it’s never too late to make a change.

It's described as the greatest achievement the modern game has seen, and Ivan Cleary is the man behind it - the astonishing, historic benchmark of multiple back-to-back premiership wins by the Penrith Panthers in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In his own words, Cleary tells all about what he's learned and how he leads, informed by his decades as a player and coach—a playmaker, team builder, mentor and leader who understands that not everything counts, but everything matters.

Lutz is revealing the leaders - good, bad, and ugly - who made the strongest impression on him throughout his career. Icons and Idiots is a collection of shocking and often hilarious true stories and the lessons Lutz drew from them. From enduring the sadism of a Marine Corps drill instructor, to working with a washed-up alcoholic, to taking over the reins from a convicted felon, he reflects on the complexities of all-too-human leaders.