Books published by publisher Portfolio

“If I tell you the truth, if I tell it with a story, and if I tell that story with pictures, I can keep you glued to your seat. Let me show you how.”For the vast majority of us, giving a presentation is an extremely difficult and nerve-wracking process, whether we’re in a one-on-one meeting, a conference room with a dozen strangers, or a lecture hall in front of thousands.But according to Dan Roam, the visual communications expert and acclaimed author of The Back of the Napkin, it doesn’t have to be so hard. We struggle when we forget the basic steps we learned in kindergarten: show and tell.In this short but powerful book, Roam introduces a new set of tools for making extraordinary presentations in any setting. He also draws on ideas he’s been honing for more than two decades, as an award-winning presenter who has brought his whiteboard everywhere from Fortune 500 companies to tiny startups to the White House.Even if you’re already a good speaker, you’ll learn more about understanding your audience, organizing your content, building a clear storyline, creating effective visuals, and channeling your fear into fun. And you’ll master three fundamental rules:• When we tell the truth, we connect with our audience, we become passionate, and we find self-confidence.• When we tell a story, we make complex concepts clear, we make ideas unforgettable, and we include everyone.• When we use pictures, people see exactly what we mean, we captivate our audience’s mind, and we banish boredom.From nailing the opening to leaving a lasting impression, you’ll soon be able to give the performance of a lifetime . . . time after time.

A Federal Reserve insider pulls back the curtain on the secretive institution that controls America’s economy After correctly predicting the housing crash of 2008 and quitting her high-ranking Wall Street job, Danielle DiMartino Booth was surprised to find herself recruited as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional centers of our complicated and widely misunderstood Federal Reserve System. She was shocked to discover just how much tunnel vision, arrogance, liberal dogma, and abuse of power drove the core policies of the Fed. DiMartino Booth found a cabal of unelected academics who made decisions without the slightest understanding of the real world, just a slavish devo­tion to their theoretical models. Over the next nine years, she and her boss, Richard Fisher, tried to speak up about the dangers of Fed policies such as quanti­tative easing and deeply depressed interest rates. But as she puts it, “In a world rendered unsafe by banks that were too big to fail, we came to understand that the Fed was simply too big to fight.” Now DiMartino Booth explains what really happened to our economy after the fateful date of December 8, 2008, when the Federal Open Market Committee approved a grand and unprecedented ex­periment: lowering interest rates to zero and flooding America with easy money. As she feared, millions of individuals, small businesses, and major corporations made rational choices that didn’t line up with the Fed’s “wealth effect” models. The result: eight years and counting of a sluggish “recovery” that barely feels like a recovery at all. While easy money has kept Wall Street and the wealthy afloat and thriving, Main Street isn’t doing so well. Nearly half of men eighteen to thirty-four live with their parents, the highest level since the end of the Great Depression. Incomes are barely increasing for anyone not in the top ten percent of earners. And for those approaching or already in retirement, extremely low interest rates have caused their savings to stagnate. Millions have been left vulnerable and afraid. Perhaps worst of all, when the next financial crisis arrives, the Fed will have no tools left for managing the panic that ensues. And then what? DiMartino Booth pulls no punches in this exposé of the officials who run the Fed and the toxic culture they created. She blends her firsthand experiences with what she’s learned from dozens of high-powered market players, reams of financial data, and Fed docu­ments such as transcripts of FOMC meetings. Whether you’ve been suspicious of the Fed for decades or barely know anything about it, as DiMartino Booth writes, “Every American must understand this extraordinarily powerful institution and how it affects his or her everyday life, and fight back.”

"A hilarious and moving story of unconventional entrepreneurialism, passion, and guts." --Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group; Founder of Shake Shack; Author of Setting the TableOriginal recipes by J. Kenji López-Alt of The Food Lab and Stella Parks of BraveTartJames Beard Award-winning founder of Serious Eats Ed Levine finally tells the mouthwatering and heartstopping story of building--and almost losing--one of the most acclaimed and beloved food sites in the world.In 2005, Ed Levine was a freelance food writer with an unlikely dream: to control his own fate and create a different kind of food publication. He wanted to unearth the world's best bagels, the best burgers, the best hot dogs--the best of everything edible. To build something for people like him who took everything edible seriously, from the tasting menu at Per Se and omakase feasts at Nobu down to mass-market candy, fast food burgers, and instant ramen.Against all sane advice, he created a blog for $100 and called it...Serious Eats. The site quickly became a home for obsessives who didn't take themselves too seriously. Intrepid staffers feasted on every dumpling in Chinatown and sampled every item on In-N-Out's secret menu. Talented recipe developers like The Food Lab's J. Kenji López-Alt and Stella Parks, aka BraveTart, attracted cult followings. Even as Serious Eats became better-known--even beloved and respected--every day felt like it could be its last. Ed secured handshake deals from investors and would-be acquirers over lunch only to have them renege after dessert. He put his marriage, career, and relationships with friends and family at risk through his stubborn refusal to let his dream die. He prayed that the ride would never end. But if it did, that he would make it out alive.This is the moving story of making a glorious, weird, and wonderful dream come true. It's the story of one food obsessive who followed a passion to terrifying, thrilling, and mouthwatering places--and all the serious eats along the way.Praise for Serious Eater"Read[s] more like a carefully crafted novel than a real person's life." --from the foreword by J. Kenji López-Alt"Wild, wacky, and entertaining...The book makes you hungry for Ed to succeed...and for lunch." --Christina Tosi, founder of Milk Bar"Serious Eater is seriously good!...you'll be so glad [Ed] invited you to a seat at his table." --Ree Drummond, author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks"After decades of spreading the good food gospel we get a glimpse of the missionary behind the mission." --Dan Barber, chef, Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communication. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world. But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on. In this rousing history that reads like a novel, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter’s early exponential growth, following the four hackers—Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident. It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine. Drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails, Bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and Silicon Valley culture.

“How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?” In the four years since Joe Nocera asked those ques­tions in a controversial New York Times column, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has come under fire. Fans have begun to realize that the athletes involved in the two biggest college sports, men’s bas­ketball and football, are little more than indentured servants. Millions of teenagers accept scholarships to chase their dreams of fame and fortune—at the price of absolute submission to the whims of an organiza­tion that puts their interests dead last. For about 5 percent of top-division players, college ends with a golden ticket to the NFL or the NBA. But what about the overwhelming majority who never turn pro? They don’t earn a dime from the estimated $13 billion generated annually by college sports—an ocean of cash that enriches schools, conferences, coaches, TV networks, and apparel companies . . . everyone except those who give their blood and sweat to entertain the fans. Indentured tells the dramatic story of a loose-knit group of rebels who decided to fight the hypocrisy of the NCAA, which blathers endlessly about the purity of its “student-athletes” while exploiting many of them: The ones who get injured and drop out be­cause their scholarships have been revoked. The ones who will neither graduate nor go pro. The ones who live in terror of accidentally violating some obscure rule in the four-hundred-page NCAA rulebook. Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss take us into the inner circle of the NCAA’s fiercest enemies. You’ll meet, among others . . . ·Sonny Vaccaro, the charismatic sports marketer who convinced Nike to sign Michael Jordan. Dis­gusted by how the NCAA treated athletes, Vaccaro used his intimate knowledge of its secrets to blow the whistle in a major legal case.·Ed O’Bannon, the former UCLA basketball star who realized, years after leaving college, that the NCAA was profiting from a video game using his image. His lawsuit led to an unprecedented antitrust ruling.·Ramogi Huma, the founder of the National Col­lege Players Association, who dared to think that college players should have the same collective bargaining rights as other Americans.·Andy Schwarz, the controversial economist who looked behind the façade of the NCAA and saw it for what it is: a cartel that violates our core values of free enterprise. Indentured reveals how these and other renegades, working sometimes in concert and sometimes alone, are fighting for justice in the bare-knuckles world of college sports.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Quitter and Start comes the definitive guide to getting your dream job.When you don't like your job, Sunday isn't really a weekend day. It's just pre-Monday. But what if you could call a Do Over and actually look forward to Monday?Starting on the first day you got paid to scoop ice cream or restock shelves, you’ve had the chance to develop the four elements all great careers have in common: relationships, skills, character, and hustle. You already have each of those, to one degree or another. Now it’s time to amplify them and apply them in a new way, so you can call a Do Over on your career, at any age. You’ll need a Do Over because you’ll eventually face at least one of these major transitions: • You’ll hit a Career Ceiling and get stuck, requiring sharp skills to free yourself. • You’ll experience a Career Bump and unexpectedly lose your job, requiring strong relationships to survive. • You’ll make a Career Jump to a new role, requiring solid character to push through uncertainty and chaos. • You’ll get a surprise Career Opportunity, requiring dedicated hustle to take advantage of it. Jon Acuff’s unique approach will give you the resources to reinvent your work, get unstuck, and get the job you’ve always wanted!

You've seen it all before. A malicious online rumor costs a company millions. A political sideshow derails the national news cycle and destroys a candidate. Some product or celebrity zooms from total obscurity to viral sensation. What you don't know is that someone is responsible for all this. Usually, someone like me. I'm a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, my job is to control blogs-as much as any one person can. In today's culture... 1) Blogs like Gawker, Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post drive the media agenda. 2) Bloggers are slaves to money, technology, and deadlines. 3) Manipulators wield these levers to shape everything you read, see and watch-online and off. Why am I giving away these secrets? Because I'm tired of a world where blogs take indirect bribes, marketers help write the news, reckless journalists spread lies, and no one is accountable for any of it. I'm pulling back the curtain because I don't want anyone else to get blindsided. I'm going to explain exactly how the media really works. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Quitter and Start comes the definitive guide to getting your dream job.When you don't like your job, Sunday isn't really a weekend day. It's just pre-Monday. But what if you could call a Do Over and actually look forward to Monday?Starting on the first day you got paid to scoop ice cream or restock shelves, you’ve had the chance to develop the four elements all great careers have in common: relationships, skills, character, and hustle. You already have each of those, to one degree or another. Now it’s time to amplify them and apply them in a new way, so you can call a Do Over on your career, at any age. You’ll need a Do Over because you’ll eventually face at least one of these major transitions: • You’ll hit a Career Ceiling and get stuck, requiring sharp skills to free yourself. • You’ll experience a Career Bump and unexpectedly lose your job, requiring strong relationships to survive. • You’ll make a Career Jump to a new role, requiring solid character to push through uncertainty and chaos. • You’ll get a surprise Career Opportunity, requiring dedicated hustle to take advantage of it. Jon Acuff’s unique approach will give you the resources to reinvent your work, get unstuck, and get the job you’ve always wanted!

Internationally recognized sales strategist Jill Konrath shows how to overcome customer hesitation to get more appointments, speed up decisions, and win sales. Drawing on her years of selling experience, as well as the stories of other successful sellers, she offers four SNAP rules: • Keep It Simple: Make things easy and clear for your customers. • Be iNvaluable: Stand out by being the person your customers can't live without. • Always Align: Make sure you're in synch with your customers' objectives, issues, and needs. • Raise Priorities: Keep the most important decisions at the forefront of their mind.

Like many entrepreneurs, Ryan Blair had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset. His middle-class childhood ended abruptly when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a rough neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing. With his mentor's guidance, Blair started his first company, 24/7 Tech, at age twenty-one. He has since created and sold several companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. This is an inspirational guide full of powerful stories and lessons and a road map for entrepreneurial success.

It’s business school, the Branson way.Whether you’re interested in starting your own business, improving your leadership skills, or simply looking for inspiration from one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, Richard Branson has the answers. Like a Virgin brings together some of his best advice, distilling the experiences and insights that have made him one of the world’s most recognized and respected business leaders. In his trademark thoughtful and encouraging voice, Branson shares his knowledge like a close friend. He’ll teach you how to be more innovative, how to lead by listening, how to enjoy your work, and much more. In hindsight, Branson is thankful he never went to business school. Had he conformed to the conventional dos and don’ts of starting a business, would there have been a Virgin Records? A Virgin Atlantic? So many of Branson’s achievements are due to his unyielding deter­mination to break the rules and rewrite them himself. Here’s how he does it.

Named by Inc. magazine as one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2018Every startup wants to change the world. But the ones that truly make an impact know something the others don't: how to make government and regulation work for them.As startups use technology to shape the way we live, work, and learn, they're taking on challenges in sectors like healthcare, infrastructure, and education, where failure is far more consequential than a humorous chat with Siri or the wrong package on your doorstep. These startups inevitably have to face governments responsible for protecting citizens through regulation. Love it or hate it, we're entering the next era of the digital revolution: the Regulatory Era.The big winners in this era--in terms of both impact and financial return--will need skills they won't teach you in business school or most startup incubators: how to scale a business in an industry deeply intertwined with government.Here, for the first time, is the playbook on how to win the regulatory era. "Regulatory hacking" doesn't mean "cutting through red tape"; it's really about finding a creative, strategic approach to navigating complex markets.Evan Burfield is the cofounder of 1776, a Washington, DC-based venture capital firm and incubator specializing in regulated industries. Burfield has coached startups on how to understand, adapt to, and influence government regulation. Now, in Regulatory Hacking, he draws on that expertise and real startup success stories to show you how to do the same. For instance, you'll learn how... * AirBnB rallied a grassroots movement to vote No on San Francisco's Prop F, which would have restricted its business in the city. * HopSkipDrive overcame safety concerns about its kids' ridesharing service by working with state government to build trust into its platform. * 23andMe survived the FDA's order to stop selling its genetic testing kits by building trusted relationships with scientists who could influence the federal regulatory community.Through fascinating case studies and interviews with startup founders, Burfield shows you how to build a compelling narrative for your startup, use it to build a grassroots movement to impact regulation, and develop influence to overcome entrenched relationships between incumbents and governments. These are just some of the tools in the book that you'll need to win the next frontier of innovation.