Showing results for "it" in Business

Few entrepreneurs can claim to have radically changed the way we live, and Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food-service automation, franchising, shared national training, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. But even more interesting than Ray Kroc the business man is Ray Kroc the man. Not your typical self-made tycoon, Kroc was 52 years old when he opened his first franchise.

The success of Starbucks is one of the most remarkable business stories in decades. Since 1987, the coffee merchant has grown from a single retail store on Seattle's waterfront to a company with more than 1,000 stores nationwide and a new one opening somewhere every business day. According to Fortune magazine, Starbucks "has changed everything...from our tastes to our language to the face of Main Street."

In Believe It, Jamie Kern Lima, founder of IT Cosmetics, shares the wild but true story of how a once-struggling waitress turned her against-the-grain idea into an international best-selling sensation, eventually selling the company for more than a billion dollars and becoming the first female CEO of a brand in L’Oréal’s 100-plus-year history.

The protagonist of Just Do It is Phil Knight, a reclusive billionaire who started a two-man operation importing Japanese running shoes and built it into a $4 billion company. Irreverent, unpredictable, and leery of the sports establishment, Knight created the most muscular jock culture in business, a place where employees routinely took two hours at lunch to work out and then strategized late into the night in their holy war against competitors Reebok and Adidas.

In 1962, Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley created a software company when the concept of software barely existed. Freelance Programmers employed women to work on complex projects such as Concorde's black box recorder from the comfort of their own homes. Shirley empowered a generation of women in technology, giving them unheard of freedom to choose their own hours and manage their own workloads. The business thrived, and Shirley gradually transferred ownership to her staff, creating 70 millionaires in the process.

Getting It is about finding what one loves most and then prioritizing all the things that matter. It's about managing fear, doubt, and indecision in a way that overrides the impulses to pass up what matters most in favor of what one desires in the moment. Getting It is what often happens too late in life, if it happens at all. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but failure is not. And after six decades of people-watching, author Pat O'Connor began to notice similar traits among those who seem to have it together. He also noticed common traits among those who do not.

At 30, Duncan Bannatyne had no money and was enjoying life on the beaches of Jersey. He saw a story about someone who had made himself a millionaire, and decided to do the same. Five years later, he had done it, and now he is worth £168 million. In this remarkable book, he explains how anyone could take the same route as he did, if they really want to.

Tech entrepreneur Steve Larsen explores the threads he’s woven together to create an extraordinary life: family bonds lost and found, a pioneering career in Silicon Valley, a lifelong search for meaning, a passion for speed and adventure and a remarkable resilience through health battles that would have stopped most people cold. From wrestling bears to co-founding companies that helped birth modern e-commerce, from racing motorcycles across continents to surviving three open-heart surgeries, Larsen reveals how to embrace life’s full spectrum of experiences.

In this compelling memoir, Douglas Terreson, one of Wall Street's most influential energy analysts, takes listeners on a journey through the high-stakes world of global oil markets and financial powerhouses. From his humble beginnings on offshore oil rigs to making billion-dollar calls that reshaped the energy industry, Terreson's story is one of perseverance, insight, and the courage to challenge the status quo.

Banking on It is the firsthand account of one woman's quest to rebuild Britain's broken banking system. After a lengthy career at the top of some of Britain's leading banks, Anne Boden had become disillusioned with the status quo - the financial crash had broken trust in the whole sector, but there seemed to be little appetite to make the most of emerging technologies to revolutionise customer experience. Increasingly frustrated with the inertia within the industry, she decided to shake things up herself by doing something totally radical - setting up her own bank.

Join self-made billionaire David Green, founder of America's craft store giant Hobby Lobby, as he shares the key to building a powerful legacy: Generosity. In Giving It All Away...and Getting It All Back Again, Green unpacks time-tested principles that will help you reap the benefits of generosity for multiple generations to come. In 1970, David Green began making picture frames in his garage. With hard work, he and his wife, Barbara, turned that humble beginning into the world's largest privately owned arts-and-crafts retailer.

In 2015, Arlan Hamilton was on food stamps and sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, with nothing but an old laptop and a dream of breaking into the venture capital business. She couldn't understand why people starting companies all looked the same (white and male) and she wanted the chance to invest in the ideas and people who didn't conform to this image of how a founder is supposed to look. Hamilton had no contacts or network in Silicon Valley, no background in finance - not even a college degree. What she did have was fierce determination and the will to succeed.

This is the inside story of one of the most extraordinary brands in the corporate world, the rare company that is driven by environmental activism instead of cutthroat capitalism. Founded in 1973, Patagonia has grown into a wildly popular producer of jackets, hats, and fleece vests, with a cultlike following among hardcore alpinists and Wall Street traders alike, posting sales of more than $1 billion a year.

In 1966, John Kim Faye was born out of wedlock to a 40-year-old Korean mother and a 62-year-old Irish father. Faye grew up in the state of Delaware, where laws forbidding interracial marriage were still on the books until 1967. As the lead singer and primary songwriter of the Caulfields, Faye was one of the only mixed-race Asian American frontman to sign a major record contract in the alternative rock heyday of the 1990s. In an era that preceded K-Pop—and even the rise of the internet—Faye’s personal journey did not lead to superstardom.

By the time Sara Davies left university, she was running a business with a half-million-pound turnover from her student bedroom. When she became the youngest of BBC 1's iconic Dragons, that turnover was £25 million. Today, she is one of Britain's biggest business names. Now, in a memoir as full of warmth, wit and wisdom as she is, Sara shares what it took to get there - from manning factories overnight with her mam and dad to hitting the trade shows of Las Vegas alone, armed with little more than ambition and a passion for crafts. What does she look for in a business investment?

In this clever, relatable and iconoclastic success story, Moya-Jones busts every myth and misconception about women in business and argues that women should embrace the attributes that set them apart from men. Blanket conventions and perceived barriers attached to the female entrepreneur can be transformed into assets and profit - all you have to do is take the leap.

FIDO: Forget It, Drive On! is more than a memoir—it's a powerful guide to resilience and leadership. Drawing from deeply personal stories and hard-earned professional lessons, Jose reveals how the wisdom passed down from his father shaped his approach to life, business, and the high-stakes world of healthcare.

How to Succeed on Wall St. and Why You Should Absolutely Not Do It is a self-help manual written for those who are chasing the American Dream while also running away from the American Nightmare. S.A. Thomas, a life-long New Yorker with the attitude and brogue to match, has given the world his ‘Moron’s Memoir’ in an attempt to both entertain and educate.

Bob and Gail Knight arrived in Tallahassee in the 1970s from different places and with different goals. Individually, they were ready for success. But they didn’t find greatness until they met each other and became "married to it". Their heartfelt, professional, and hilariously irreverent story is a must-listen for anyone interested in business, marriage, entrepreneurship, and balancing a healthy family life, both in business and at home.

When Josh Littlejohn started a small sandwich shop in his home city of Edinburgh, he would never have thought that, within ten years' time, it would be frequented by Hollywood megastars, that he would have opened a string of successful cafés across the UK, and that he would be honoured with an MBE by the Queen. Not to mention raising over £25 million to combat homelessness around the world. Paying It Forward is part memoir, part manifesto for social entrepreneurship, and part manual for putting purpose ahead of profit.