Career Memoirs

Adam Braun began working summers at hedge funds when he was just 16 years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. But while traveling as a college student, he met a young boy begging on the streets of India. When Braun asked the boy what he wanted most in the world, he simply answered, "A pencil." This small request became the inspiration for Pencils of Promise, the organization Braun would leave a prestigious job at Bain & Company to start with just $25 at the age of 24.

A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley - from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way. Drawing on over 200 in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes listeners from the dawn of the personal computer and the Internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented.

In April of 2000, Gary Erickson turned down a $120 million offer to buy his thriving company. Today, instead of taking it easy for the rest of his life and enjoying a luxurious retirement, he's working harder than ever. Why would any sane person pass up the financial opportunity of a lifetime?

How to Come Alive Again is a funny, honest, broken audiobook written by an author who could be described as the same. It is a combination of self-help audiobook, memoir and polemical lifestyle guide. It lays out the basics for mending your life, accepting yourself, changing what doesn’t work, killing the worst of it and learning to live through depression. It’s an audiobook about what to do when you’re an anxious, depressed, spaghetti-brained mess in a society that still prefers us to act normal and never talk about our mental health.

In The Anatomy of a Calling, Lissa Rankin, MD, makes a simple yet revolutionary claim: We are all, every single one of us, heroes. We are all on what Joseph Campbell calls "a hero's journey"; we are all on a mission to step into our true nature and fulfill the assignment our souls were sent to Earth to fulfill. Navigating the hero's journey, Dr. Rankin argues, is one of the cornerstones of living a meaningful, authentic, healthy life.

John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. It was the early 2000s, a boom time for painkillers, and he developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.

Unorthodox success principles from a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Eli Broad's embrace of "unreasonable thinking" has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world's greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, "reasonable" people come up with all the reasons something new and different can't be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way.

In this uplifting and eye-opening memoir, Kaia uses her business savvy to create a month-long Joy Plan to get back on her feet fast. Using scientific research on hormones, neurotransmitters, and mindfulness, along with the daily dedication to creating a more joyful existence, Kaia teaches listeners how to go beyond temporary happiness and succeed in creating joy that lasts.

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years - as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues - Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

In Cowgirl Power, advertising CEO and cowgirl Gay Gaddis shares insights and examples for women to lead like fearless, risk-taking cowgirls: enhance and exude confidence, developing personal power on all fronts. As the owner of one of the largest female-owned independent agencies in the U.S. and former chairman of C200, one of the country’s top women’s business organizations, Gay Gaddis knows a thing or two about empowerment. Gay’s secrets of success have roots in the spirited strength of real cowgirls who were fearless risk-takers in everything they did.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James MacGregor Burns devoted his legendary career to the study of leadership in all its aspects - from politics to business. Leadership, Burns' pioneering study, introduces the highly influential theory of "transformational leadership", stating that the best leaders are those who inspire others to come together toward the achievement of higher aims.

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes listeners inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison.

Arthur M. Blank believes that for good companies, purpose and profit can - and should - go hand in hand. And he should know. Together with cofounder Bernie Marcus, Blank built The Home Depot from an idea and a dream to a $50 billion-dollar company, the leading home improvement retailer in the world. And even while opening a new store every 42 hours, they never lost sight of their commitment to care for their people and communities.

With its unprecedented convocation of 18 of the world’s greatest spiritual thinkers, writers, and scientists, including Maya Angelou, Deepak Chopra, Paulo Coelho, and Eckhart Tolle, this spiritual guide - which ties into a film of the same name - reveals how you can overcome limitations and fulfill your highest potential.

Lee Iacocca believes that leaders are made in times of crisis - such as today. In Where Have All the Leaders Gone? he offers his no-nonsense, straight-up assessments of the American politicians most likely to run for president in 2008. He also shares his lessons learned, and issues a call to action to summon Americans back to their roots in hard work, common sense, integrity, generosity, and optimism. Where have all the leaders gone? Lee Iacocca has the answer.

Daniel Barbarisi quits his job as the New York Yankees beat writer for The Wall Street Journal and begins a quest: to join the top 1 percent of Daily Fantasy Sports ("DFS") players, the so-called "sharks", and figure out whether DFS is on the level - while maybe cashing in along the way. DFS is fantasy sports on steroids. It's the domain of bitter rivals FanDuel and DraftKings, online juggernauts who turned a legal loophole into a billion-dollar industry by allowing sports fans to bet piles of cash constructing fantasy teams.

So You Want to Start a Brewery? is the first-person account of Tony Magee's gut-wrenching challenges and heart-warming successes in founding Lagunitas Brewing Company. In just 20 years, the company has grown from a seat-of-the-pants, one-man operation to be the fifth largest--and the fastest growing--craft brewer in the United States.

At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged.

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.

In Fool Me Once, renowned expert Kelly Richmond Pope shows fraud in action, uncovering what makes perps tick, victims so gullible, and whistleblowers so morally righteous, while also encouraging us to look at our own behaviors and motivations in the hopes of protecting ourselves and our companies.

By the time you finish this book, you'll have a better understanding of—and perhaps more compassion for—perpetrators; a renewed connection to victims; and an appreciation for those who blow the whistle.