Silicon Valley is filled with garage-to-riches stories and hot young entrepreneurs with big ideas. Yet even in this place where the exceptional is common, Randy Komisar is a breed apart. Currently a "Virtual CEO" who provides "leadership on demand" for several renowned companies, Komisar was recently described by the "Washington Post" as a "combined professional mentor, minister without portfolio, in-your-face investor, trouble-shooter and door opener." But even more interesting than what he does is how - and why - he does it. Komisar has found a way to turn an ambitious and challenging work life into his life's work."The Monk and the Riddle" is unlike any other business book you've read. Transcending the typical "leadership book" model of lists and frameworks on how to succeed in business, "The Monk and the Riddle" is instead a lively and humorous narrative about the education of a unique Valley insider. It unfolds over the course of an ongoing dialogue between Komisar and would-be entrepreneurs, "Lenny and Allison," and is at once a portal into the inner workings of Silicon Valley - from how startups get launched to how venture capitalists do their deals to how plans get prepared and pitched - and a deeply personal account of how one mover and shaker found fulfillment, not in work's rewards but in work itself.As the narrative follows Komisar through meetings with venture capitalists and eager entrepreneurs, and as his conversations with Lenny evolve toward a resolution, "The Monk and the Riddle" imparts invaluable lessons about the differences between leadership and management and passion and drive, and about the meaning of professional and personal success. "When all is said and done," writes Komisar, "the journey is the reward."

    . . but her success didn’t arrive overnight. Her glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle came from years of hard work, humility, and hustle. In Blowing My Way to the Top, Jen shatters the illusion of effortless, instant success that permeates social media to reveal the sweat, dedication, and drive it really takes to make it.Jen chronicles her remarkable journey—from growing up in an isolated, conservative religious community where girls were encouraged to marry young, to striking out on her own and breaking every rule and convention to build an empire valued at $80 million.Though Jen rebelled against the restrictions meant to limit her potential as a young woman, she has since formed her own core principles, which serve as the foundation of her daily life. In Blowing My Way to the Top, she offers insight into the values that have allowed her to thrive in the modern, digital landscape, from looking out for others to embracing humility and financial responsibility. As a trailblazer in a male-dominated industry, Jen also speaks frankly about the difficulties and challenges women face in business. She offers crucial advice, from the importance of running your business like a feminist—hiring, nurturing, and promoting female talent; finding mentors; and building camaraderie amid the competition—to learning to navigate the work and life issues that impact women most.Jen makes it clear to those who aspire to follow in her footsteps that while inhabiting the world of celebrity culture has its perks, it can also be dangerously distracting and misleading. Part personal narrative, part practical how-to, Blowing My Way to the Top is a fierce, funny, and inspiring book about how Jen built a one-of-a-kind business against all odds—and how readers can take what she’s learned the hard way to live their own dreams.

    Danza’s” showbiz credentials, and they immediately put him on the hot seat.   Featuring indelible portraits of students and teachers alike, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had reveals just how hard it is to keep today’s technologically savvy – and often alienated -- students engaged, how impressively committed most teachers are, and the outsized role counseling plays in a teacher’s day, given the psychological burdens many students carry.  The book also makes vivid how a modern high school works, showing Tony in a myriad of roles – from lecturing on To Kill a Mockingbird to “coaching” the football team to organizing a talent show to leading far-flung field trips to hosting teacher gripe sessions.  A surprisingly poignant account, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but is mostly filled with hard-won wisdom and feel-good tears.

    Spanning a range of topics across business and public policy, from innovation and customer obsession to climate change and outer space, this book provides a rare glimpse into how Bezos thinks about the world and where the future might take us.Written in a direct, down-to-earth style, Invent and Wander offers readers a master class in business values, strategy, and execution:● The importance of a Day 1 mindset● Why “it’s all about the long term”● What it really means to be customer obsessed● How to start new businesses and create significant organic growth in an already successful company● Why culture is an imperative● How a willingness to fail is closely connected to innovation● What the Covid-19 pandemic has taught usEach insight offers new ways of thinking through today’s challenges—and more importantly, tomorrow’s—and the never-ending urgency of striving ahead, never resting on one’s laurels. Everyone from CEOs to entrepreneurs just setting up shop to the millions who use Amazon’s products and services in their homes or businesses will come to understand the principles that have driven the success of one of the most important innovators of our time.

    Included is an instructive chapter co-authored by Rich Russakoff, revealing winning tactics to get banks to finance your business. Lastly, there are case studies demonstrating the validity of Harnish's practical approaches.If you are looking for an expanded and updated version of this 2002 best-seller, look for Verne Harnish’s latest title Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0).  In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business. These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture. This book is written so everyone - from frontline employees to senior executives - can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. There’s no reason to do it alone, yet many top leaders feel like they are the ones dragging the rest of the organization up the S-curve of growth. This book can help you turn what feels like an anchor into wind at your back — creating a company where the team is engaged; the customers are doing your marketing; and everyone is making money.  To accomplish this, Scaling Up focuses on the four major decision areas every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. The book includes a series of new one-page tools including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits Checklist™, which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully — many to $1 billion and beyond. Running a business is ultimately about freedom. Scaling Up shows business leaders how to get their organizations moving in sync to create something significant and enjoy the ride.

    Told in her hilarious, bold voice that’s inspired over nine million fans, and using stories from her own life to illustrate her message, Lilly proves that there are no shortcuts to success. WARNING: This book does not include hopeful thoughts, lucky charms, and cute quotes. That’s because success, happiness, and everything else you want in life needs to be fought for—not wished for. In Lilly’s world, there are no escalators, only stairs. Get ready to climb.

    The reader is guided through the process of "getting" this new vision, and then through the specifics of applying it. It's simple, believable, and mechanical; not mystical or theoretical.

    It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel-evant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don't need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings's own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

    He never guessed his old-computer parts and Beanie Baby exchange would revolutionize the world of commerce. Now, Adam Cohen, the only journalist ever to get full access to the company, tells the remarkable story of eBay's rise. He describes how eBay built the most passionate community ever to form in cyberspace and forged a business that triumphed over larger, better-funded rivals. And he explores the ever-widening array of enlistees in the eBay revolution, from a stay-at-home mom who had to rent a warehouse for her thriving business selling bubble-wrap on eBay to the young MBA who started eBay Motors (which within months of its launch was on track to sell $1 billion in cars a year), to collectors nervously bidding thousands of dollars on antique clothing-irons. Adam Cohen's fascinating look inside eBay is essential reading for anyone trying to figure out what's next. If you want to truly understand the Internet economy, The Perfect Store is indispensable.

    Advertisers are then taken further than Facebook itself, as Marshall and co-authors provide priceless audience insight, exploring what was happening before visitors click on ads and what needs to happen after--10 seconds later, 10 minutes later and in the following days, and weeks. Updates specific to this edition include: The introduction of ad space in Newsfeeds, Facebook Live, Branded Content and how to profit from it The launch of Facebook's Marketplace where businesses can sell direct to their community The integration of Instagram ads as part of the Facebook platform Tapping into Audience Network to maximize campaigns and increase conversions on all website traffic High-profile case studies from the Golden State Warriors, Jack Daniels, Rosetta Stone, and examples from President Obama's social media campaign for re-election

    You'll discover, maintain and grow any idea you have into your entrepreneur's dream.* This is Jack Ma's guide when it comes to starting your own company and becoming the next Successful Entrepreneur!Why Only A Few People Succeed?5 years ago I set out on a journey to understand what makes any Good idea, Great & what makes the Best of them, Legendary.Every lessons and notes in these pages has personally helped me in my solo-entrepreneurial journey. I’ve applied dozens of these philosophies & hacks into growing my own business. The lessons here have aided in my journey towards building a 6-figure publishing company without any notable mentors by my side and helped me faced my toughest adversity (Acid Test). They will help you when you need them most. Now, most of us are psychologically intrigued by stories of unbelievable success, but we fail to discover and pay attention on what sets these strangers apart. We fail to recognize the journey it takes to arrive at the peak. There are literally a thousand and one ways to achieve success, but only a dozen or so reasons for complete and utter failure.So what makes Jack Ma so different from the rest of the world’s 1%?Wait no more: Let’s read and find out now!

    Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than "elevating the world's consciousness."Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools.Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.

    Sixteen year old Tina S. leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join her new friend, April, a wild and charismatic teenage runaway, living in the station's deepest tunnels amidst the homeless and drug addicted. Soon she's caught up in in a romantic relationship with April and finds herself following in her footsteps: bingeing on crack cocaine, stealing, rolling drunks, and panhandling to support their habits and to survive on the New York City streets. In her own words Tina describes her harrowing descent into crack addiction, being raped in the tunnels, several arrests and jail terms served with hardened criminals on Rikers Island, and her devastation over April's sudden, brutal death. Finally faced with the reality that she might not make it through one more day, Tina takes her first tentative steps towards a normal life.With the help of a homeless advocate and his wife, a gay uncle dying of AIDS, and Jamie Pastor Bolnick, the writer who was to become her coauthor on this book, Tina turns her life around and begins the long struggle back to the world of the living.

    Nev has become the Dr. Drew of online relationships. His clout in this area springs from his own experience with a deceptive online romance, about which he made a critically acclaimed 2010 documentary (also called Catfish). In that film Nev coined the term "catfish" to refer to someone who creates a false online persona to reel someone into a romantic relationship. The meme spread rapidly. Now Nev brings his expertise to the page, sharing insider secrets about:-what motivates catfish -why people fall for catfish -how you can avoid being deceived-rules for dating -- both online and off -how to connect authentically with others over the internet -how to turn an online relationship into a real-life relationship ...and much, much more.Peppered throughout with Nev's personal stories, this book delves deeply into the complexities of online identity. Nev shows us how our digital lives are affecting our real lives, and provides essential advice about how we should all be living and loving in the era of social media.

    They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.