Read 🧡 (Kindle) Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons on Thinking Big, Giving Back, and Doing It Yourself

Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons on Thinking Big, Giving Back, and Doing It Yourself

Link to Downlload ⇒ Downlload Now!

Link to Read ⇒ Reaad Now!

 

Review : A candid, rollicking business memoir from the cofounder of the Home Depot, filled with life stories, sage business advice, and timeless lessons for a life well lived. With a foreword by Pitbull “Do it yourself” has been the theme of Bernie Marcus’s entire life. By the time he was fifteen, he had held more than a dozen jobs, joined a gang, and worked as a hypnotist in the Catskills. The son of a cabinetmaker and garment worker who survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Bernie overcame a hardscrabble upbringing to author one of the most entrepreneurial stories in American history. Success was far from assured. As Bernie wryly remarks, “The start of Home Depot sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: Two Jews and an Italian decide to build a new kind of hardware store…” Instead, they built the world’s largest home improvement retailer and transformed the industry. It was a wild ride. After being fired at the age of 49, Marcus teamed up with Arthur Blank and Ken Langone in 1978 to build a better hardware store. That first day was so disastrous that the next morning, Bernie’s wife wouldn’t let him shave because she didn’t want a razor in his hands. The company went public in 1981, and today it employs 500,000 associates at 2,300 stores. The same energy that made Home Depot successful helped Bernie give away more than $2 billion. There is no single, winning formula for success, but Bernie shares his secrets to show that the skills needed to build a Fortune 500 company are the same ones that can help cure cancer, treat veterans with PTSD, and transform autism treatment. Kick Up Some Dust will inspire you to dream, build, and give, and, maybe, change the world. Read more

 

Review : In this book written with valuable assistance by Catherine Lewis, Bernie Marcus really does (in his words) "kick up lots of dust" while examining his life and career thus far. As I worked my way through his lively narrative, I was reminded of three others: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Alfred Sloan, Jr.'s My Years with General Motors, and Andrew Grove's Swimming Across. Three of these authors are among the greatest business leaders in modern times. Like Franklin, they encountered and prevailed against all manner of personal as well as professional challenges. They worked harder and smarter than their competition. Meanwhile, they learned lessons that countless others have found to be both timely and timeless. Briefly, Bernie Marcus (born in 1929) is an American businessman. He and Arthur Blank co-founded Home Depot (in 1979).  Marcus was the company's first CEO, and chairman, until retiring in 2002. Of greatest interest to me is what he and Blank, learned -- especially from their prior association with Handy Dan Improvement Centers.  These lessons -- don'ts as well as dos -- contributed to the extraordinary success of Home Depot.  I was also grateful to learn about Marcus' involvement with the Israeli Democracy Institute, Job Creators Network, the Georgia Aquarium, The Salvation Army, Autism Speaks, The Giving Pledge, The Shepherd Center and its SHARE Military Initiative, the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center, and countless other philanthropic initiatives in need of Marcus' involvement and initiative generosity. In a workplace environment and an entire industry well as throughout a community and even a society, Marcus has always viewed himself as a purpose-driven leader, one who exemplifies what Robert Greenleaf once characterized in an essay that first appeared in 1970): "The servant-leader is servant first...It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.” Marcus makes no such claim for himself...and does not have to. The authenticity of his values and the results of his efforts speak for themselves. There are times when I think that the world is divided into two groups of people: those who divide the world into two groups and those who do not. Here's a variation on that view: the world is divided into two groups: problem finders and problem solvers. Marcus divides his time and energy between both. He is results-driven but carefully selects where to commit time, energy, and other resources. Throughout history, all of the great leaders led by example. (I can't think of one who did not. Can you?) Almost everything I know about Bernie Marcus is what I learned while reading this book. Based on that, I would welcome the chance to work with him as well as for him. I would enjoy the pleasure of his company. I would be grateful just to meet him and chat a bit. None of that will happen, of course. But that pretty well sums up what I think of him and of this book.