Academic Career

With over $500 million a year in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. But beginning in the 1980s, the Bassett company suffered from an influx of cheap Chinese furniture as the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately was forced to send its production offshore to Asia. Only one man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who is now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million.

In this entrepreneur's memoir, Alli Webb invites you into her world as a businesswoman, a mother, and a partner, untangling her complicated journey with the wit and humor of a talented storyteller and the authentic wisdom of a woman who's been through it all—all the success and all the chaos. When Drybar and its world-famous blowouts took off seemingly overnight, she found herself surrounded by celebrity clients like Zooey Deschanel, Jennifer Garner, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Julia Roberts.

The rock star of public speaking. Vusi Thembekwayo has been called many things. Join him in his inspiring journey from the township to the top echelons of South African business, to becoming one of youngest directors of a listed company and CEO of a boutique investment firm. As a Dragons' Den judge and a sought-after public speaker across the globe, Vusi doesn't just talk business - he lives it. Now you can learn the secret of his success and how to shape your own destiny.

Updated and expanded for its 20th anniversary, Camp is former Disney CEO Michael Eisner's coming-of-age story about his time in camp and how the indispensable lessons he learned there continue to influence him in business and in life. Over the years, as a camper and a counselor, Michael Eisner absorbed the life lessons that come from sitting in the stern of a canoe or gathering around a campfire at night. In this deeply personal memoir, he recounts his experiences at one remarkable summer camp and examines how they helped turn him into the man he is today.

As the father of a 4 year old daughter, college counselor and an educator, it is wonderful and beautiful to see children excited about learning and discovering new things. Simultaneously, it is saddening and disappointing to see high-school students become weary, restless and disengaged in the learning process as they age and mature. The question we must ask ourselves is WHY and WHAT caused these bright young minds to become disillusioned with the joy of learning and discovery? Knowing how the flawed educational system works, schools are run, and teachers approach instruction when ...

Frank Lorenzo is the epitome of the American dream. A first-generation American and entrepreneur, Lorenzo started an airline advisory business in his mid-twenties and ultimately rose to control the largest fleet of airplanes in the free world. Flying for Peanuts explains how the son of Spanish immigrants put himself through Columbia College by driving a Coca-Cola truck and then grew the fledgling advisory into ownership of Texas International Airlines. From there, Lorenzo became CEO of Continental Airlines, a large loss-making west coast airline at the time.

For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world’s fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations.

At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford’s MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startup—a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand—out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men’s pants. Against all odds, business was booming.

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a successful company or career.

In Shark Tales, Barbara shares her hilarious stories about growing up, getting into trouble, failing miserably, and then starting over again. In each chapter, she comes back to one of her mom's unconventional lessons, and how it applies in the real world of business. Whatever your calling, the homespun lessons that work for Barbara will help you use what you've got to create success in your life.

Paul Van Doren is the founder of Vans - the shoe company beloved by skateboarders, creatives, and fans everywhere for its laid-back, colorful SoCal vibe, and famous for its people-oriented company culture. How did Van Doren establish a family shoe business that evolved into a globally recognized brand with annual revenue of more than four billion dollars? A blue-collar kid with no higher education and zero retail experience, Van Doren leveraged a knack for numbers, a genius for efficiency, and the know-how to make a great canvas tennis shoe into an all-American success story.

In this rich, intelligent, and witty memoir, the President and CEO of Essence Ventures—a woman with a defiant intuition who rejects cultural expectations and outside influence—tells how she charted her own destiny, offering inspiration and advice to help everyone on their own journey to becoming everything they were born to be.

This book is to help people avoid challenges, heartache, and pitfalls in life and business. You no longer have to learn these lessons The Hard Way like Brad did. This a collection of stories and the lessons Brad Lea has learned to help him build an incredible life and ultimately it is his bible on how to do sales, business, and life.

Ben Mezrich's 2009 best seller, The Accidental Billionaires, is the definitive account of Facebook's founding and the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers, and foils to Mark Zuckerberg. Bitcoin Billionaires is the story of the brothers’ redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook.

Career Magic is full of priceless advice and insightful experience. Lee Cockerell chronicles how he dropped out of college, rose through the ranks at Hilton and Marriott, and eventually became the executive vice president of operations for the Walt Disney World Resort. Lee candidly shares the specific things he did to experience such dramatic success in the corporate world, but he also shares the mistakes he made along the way and the million-dollar lessons he learned that ultimately led him to the top spot at the number one vacation destination in the world.

The story of The Hundreds and the precepts that made it an iconic streetwear brand. The creative force behind the brand, Bobby Kim, a.k.a. Bobby Hundreds, has emerged as a prominent face and voice in streetwear. In telling the story of his formative years, he reminds us that The Hundreds was started by outsiders; and this is truly the story of streetwear culture.

While building the Virgin Group over the course of forty years, Richard Branson has never shied away from tackling seemingly outlandish challenges that others (including his own colleagues on many occasions) considered sheer lunacy. He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost. Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different, swashbuckling style of leadership.

This is the original interview between Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill. Hill used this interview as the basis of his world famous book Think & Grow Rich.

An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of listeners - including those in government, business, education, and the arts - Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, President Abraham Lincoln, legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)