Brave, Authentic, Loud, Lovable, and Spunky! The keys to sustained business growth and success. America's small and midsized businesses face unique challenges as they struggle to reach the kind of long-term business goals achieved by larger companies. Balls! shows that successful firms follow certain rules and display six essential traits-they are brave, authentic, loud, lovable, and spunky. Add an exclamation mark for "Do It Right Now Before Someone Else Does!" and that spells Balls!-something all growing businesses need in order to truly succeed. Written by a young executive at one of America's fastest growing small businesses, Balls! looks at business success from a decidedly exuberant and creative perspective, bringing fresh ideas and tactics that any business leader, in any industry, will find immediately useful. Alexi Venneri (Seattle, WA) is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Who's Calling, one of the fastest growing companies in America. She joined the firm as employee number 13 and has witnessed it grow to over 300 employees. She is also the former director for the Seattle Mariners who managed all ballpark marketing and fan relations for the team. Her professional career also includes sales management, event planning, training, and marketing for companies in both the U.S. and Canada.

'One of the best books written on entrepreneurship in recent years' FINANCIAL TIMES In business, everyone can see the first bounce of the ball. It is the second bounce that is uncertain. Ronald Cohen, one of the world's leading private-equity investors, argues that the entrepreneur's aim is to take advantage of that uncertainty: for it is only in situations of uncertainty that significant gains can be made. Putting it another way, successful entrepreneurs know how to turn risk into opportunity. The book is essential reading for entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs and all those who want to apply entrepreneurial approaches in all walks of life. It provides relevant background on the development of entrepreneurship and of the venture-capital and private-equity industry through the prism of Cohen's experience at Apax. It provides guidance about how to take advantage of business opportunity: the right people and the right money and the roles played by personality and luck and underlines the importance of ethics.

"For Chris Edwards, the decision to transition from female to male was black and white. The question was, did he have the balls to do it? Did he have the balls to come out at a company board meeting made up of white, middle-aged executives? To endure 28 painful and extensive surgeries? Show up at his 10-year high school reunion? Date a member of the Nashville Bikini Team? The answer is yes--yes, he did"--Publisher's website.

An insightful portrait of junk-bond powerhouse Drexel Burnham Lambert and infamous financier Michael Milken, “one of the most brilliant minds ever to have been dedicated to Wall Street's money games.” (The New York Times). Milken is purported to have offered to pay award-winning journalist Connie Bruck to stop work on this book, the fascinating story of how a singularly brilliant and intensely private investment banker essentially masterminded the creation of the junk bond market, generating billions of dollars in profits for his clients and himself before ultimately being brought down by charges of insider trading, stock manipulation, and fraud under the RICO Act. Bruck’s in-depth narration of the phenomenal career of the man nicknamed “the Junk Bond King” spans Milken’s early dealings in high-yield bonds as well as numerous corporate raids and hostile takeovers guided by tactics that were undoubtedly revolutionary, if sometimes unethical—and occasionally outright illegal. Standing alongside other blockbuster tales of business malfeasance such as Liar’s Poker and Too Big to Fail, The Predators’ Ball is a shocking, bemusing, and enlightening portrait of an era when it seemed anything was possible on Wall Street—as long as Michael Milken was in your Rolodex.