Academic Career

Homeless. Addicted. Alone. Ron Worley hit rock bottom, but climbed his way back and into money, a successful business, and fulfillment. Now, he is helping others do the same. Negative circumstances can overshadow a life of purpose. Making the brave hard choices can seem impossible. Yet, you don’t have to accept mediocrity. Your growth is your choice. If trauma and failure have set you adrift, it’s time to step up with Ditches to Riches.

In Catch of the Decade, two of Australia's most successful online superstars reveal how they've built, launched, merged, and sold some of the most disruptive businesses in Australia today: Catch, Scoopon, Menulog, and Luxury Escapes. This book contains little-known secrets and strategies that will help you shorten your learning curve, avoid mistakes, and bring your business dream alive.

Success Reinvention will take you behind the scenes of one of the foremost thought leaders of our time. As an innovative entrepreneur, a brilliant medical doctor, and visionary leader, Dr. Castro's recipe for success will allow you to break through even the most difficult obstacles and setbacks in life. When you listen to this audiobook and take action, you will find that your dreams manifest into reality, and your success is always in your control to invent and reinvent at every stage of your life.

What's Your Plan? provides a step-by-step guide to proactively planning a successful business model, implementing practical tools to take your business to the next level, and avoiding pitfalls along the way. You will learn from real clients and receive no-nonsense, hands-on advice to help you develop a profitable, successful, and resilient business to support your life and your dreams.

Casey Mackinlay’s recollection on beating life’s unforeseen challenges and her journey to success, Girls Don’t Lay Bricks is an inspiring yet humble and practical distillation of all the successful tactics, concepts, and reflections that took one hungry teenage mother from a young bricklayer to CEO. If you aspire to more than where you are at, to pave your own path to success, or simply need a dose of inspiration for business, then this is a must-listen.

The remarkable story of a T-shirt company that sparked a global movement to aid people living in poverty. All his life, Derek Evans felt a spiritual pull to be a part of something greater than himself, but it wasn’t until he and a friend embarked on a transformational trip to LA’s infamous skid row that he found his true calling. They returned home with a plan to build a mission-minded business that would change the world - one T-shirt at a time.

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.

Let’s face it: Every entrepreneur isn’t the next Mark Zuckerberg, and every new business isn’t Uber. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be. Venture Forward is a collection of real-world stories from innovative founders of successful businesses gathered in one place. It shows new entrepreneurs that they’re not alone in their endeavors, and they’re not destined to fail (at least, not forever).

Are men poised to dominate the burgeoning cannabis industry business by default? Not if Dr. Leslie Apgar and Gina Dubbé have anything to say about it. These two best friends and businesswomen challenged norms and expectations by opening their own medical cannabis dispensary. And it was anything but easy.

With five successful companies to his name and over $1.2 billion in combined retail sales, serial entrepreneur Jim Markham has made an indelible mark on the hair care industry. Across six decades, he has built a legacy of innovation that has forever changed how people care for their hair. But the path to success wasn't foregone, obvious, or easy. In his early years, nobody would have wagered on his success. Armed only with sheer determination and an unflappable confidence that he was meant for something bigger, Jim fought to make it from the bottom to the top - more than once.

Popular financial advisors and consultants recommend reading or listening to the nonfiction books of successful people to gain insight into their life perspectives and attitudes that were the key foundations of their success. Never Fry Bacon in the Nude allows listeners to see into the mind of successful businessman and entrepreneur Gene Bicknell. This book is a must-listen for entrepreneurs and anyone in business!

Shoes of Prey launched in 2009. It allowed people to design their dream shoes online, get them expertly manufactured, and have them shipped to anywhere in the world within two weeks. The startup broke even at two months, hit multi-million dollar revenues in under two years, raised tens of millions in funding from top-tier investors and shipped to more than 100 countries. All the metrics pointed to huge scalability. To a huge business. To a huge success. But it didn’t succeed. In 2018 the business failed. And this is that story.

Underdog Thinking is real-life business adventure story that follows the journey of an Indian immigrant to the U.S. who was told he “didn’t know a damn thing about American business”. In his new audiobook, Underdog Thinking, Vir inspires listeners to face any challenge that comes their way - with practical business lessons for every step of the journey gleaned from his experience as both an immigrant building a business and as CEO of Equator Appliances for more than 25 years.

It is possible to start your own company and increase your purchasing power so that you can become a billionaire. In this audiobook, you will learn about the most influential billionaires in the world. We will tell you their stories, their background, what they studied, and most important of all, how they became billionaires.

Enter into the life of an entrepreneur - starting up an unthinkably dull business, agonizing as your nightmares and dreams clash inside of your spinning head, dealing with the occasional rogue tortoise...all while watching your savings burst merrily into flames. David MacDean’s The 0.0082% Business is an inspirational real-life account of his experiences, filled with beautiful small victories and laugh-out-loud mistakes.

Arianna Huffington is one of the world's most prominent business leaders in media. As cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, she built the first internet newspaper, which eclipsed the traffic of the New York Times and won the Pulitzer Prize. This concise but richly detailed biography provides an overview of Huffington's life and career, chronicling her journey from Athens to London, New York, Washington and California, across seven decades.

In The Poster Boy, Chad Scott tells the story of a Midwestern kid from Missouri who worked up the nerve to move to Chicago and chase his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. He didn’t have a pile of cash or a bunch of connections - just a great idea and the willpower to see it through to the bitter end. This book is half-memoir and half-guide. Chapters alternate between Chad’s story and practical business lessons designed to take you all the way from a bare concept to a lucrative business.

The road to success is rarely linear and never easy. But with courage, hard work, perseverance, and dedication to duty, Jim Ovia, founder and chairman of Zenith Bank, proves we can achieve the unthinkable. Jim has been called the Godfather of Banking by Forbes Africa. And this should be no surprise. In a time of tension between military and civilian regimes, periods of incredible economic instability, and a decaying infrastructure, Jim founded Zenith Bank in Nigeria.

There are not many successful entrepreneurs who will enthusiastically break off in the middle of a multi-million pound deal to have a huge snowball fight in the car park with their finance director. But then, Mark Mills is not just any successful entrepreneur. Whether organizing one of his infamous summer Christmas parties, flying to New York to find a new business idea, or staying up all night to celebrate a successful deal, Mark Mills has always believed in the absolute importance of having fun in business. And not just for him, but for his employees, customers, and suppliers, too.

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.