American Business

As a kid, Tom Hart lacked confidence, and never felt like he belonged, until he started working in a convenience store and met his manager, John. John gave him purpose, and when Tom went to work, he felt the confidence he lacked in other parts of his life. Along the way, Tom met many more influential people in his life and approached new challenges in business. Through the power of grit, he conquered his fears and went from a stock clerk at a local corner store to chief operating officer of a multimillion-dollar company, to eventually starting his own business.

How would you like to have some easy, step-by-step directions for checking how eco-friendly your organization is, where you would like it to be, and how to get there? If you want to make a bigger difference helping people live a greener life, this is definitely the book for you. This book is different from other books on this topic. It is a combination of how-to-do and what-to-do…how to do a analysis of the current state of your organization, how to improve, and what no-cost, low-cost, and innovative projects will help your organization improve its triple bottom line.

Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall.

The general market for luxury goods has become stagnant. Given the new economic reality of the early 21st century—not to mention the all-important new demographics of the new century—it's bad business to continue to rely on luxury's traditional customer base to support sales or on tired marketing strategies and tactics. Burnett and Hoffman show listeners how to follow in the footsteps laid down by brands such as Gucci, HSBC, Sony Electronics, and Aston Martin, amongst others, to become successful in a segment corporations can't afford to overlook if growth is the objective.

It’s the dirty little secret of our American civil justice system: Getting real justice in everyday lawsuits costs too much. Legal fees and hidden costs dwarf financial stakes, forcing a choice between frustrating settlement or a long slog through litigation’s due process—either path feeling like legalized extortion. This huge and growing gap in our civil justice system occupies a no-man’s land of prevailing injustice between small claims and high-stakes disputes, defying all efforts to control it for decades. Until now.

World War II had a profound impact on American brands. In addition to brands directly aligning their products with the war effort, some brands used the war as a clever way to engender positive perceptions by distributing products to American forces. Other brands actually had their roots in the war.

Why was the Spanish Peso more valuable than the US dollar? How did a public relations fiasco derail Cuban statehood? Would we remember Herbert Hoover as the Jeff Bezos of his time had he been elected eight years earlier? If these don’t sound like questions you heard in history class, you’re right. They’re not. These are the questions you ask when you look at presidential history through the eyes of an advertising executive.

A faded sign with the words "Vegetables for Sale" is one of Michael Barber's most prized possessions. Michael and his grandmother created the homemade sign after she became weary of his continuous begging for candy money. At five years of age, Michael's grandmother placed him alongside the Heart of Dixie Highway to operate a vegetable stand.

Many factors - personal, professional, and psychological - combine to affect how we think, feel, and act while on the job, which ultimately affects our productivity and success. In 9 to 5: Your Mind at Work, we look at some of these factors, including the physical office space, how to foster creativity and communication, the psychology of effective leadership, the benefits and importance of diversity, and achieving work-life balance.