The Risk Takers

16 Women and Men Share Their Entrepreneurial Strategies for Success

By: Renee Martin, Don Martin

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

The Risk Takers is about ordinary people, all with good ideas, who faced daunting challenges, but took a leap of faith and started their own business. The book tells the stories of the personal and professional journeys of 16 fascinating men and women who built hugely successful, multimillion dollar companies. They started with very little, opted to strike out on their own, and struggled with disappointment and failure. Yet, they overcame adversity and through persistence and resiliency determined their own destiny.

You'll meet the founders of companies familiar to most Americans: Geek Squad, Curves, Liz Lange Maternity, Kinkos, Paul Mitchell, Spanx, Amy's Kitchen, along with nine others.

Don and Renee Martin, successful entrepreneurs in their own right, personally interviewed these men and women whose inspiring stories demonstrate its never been easy to start your own business and navigate it through all the inevitable storms to ultimate successin any economy, in any era. But can be done.

The personal stories in this volume remind us of what is possible when you combine an inspired business idea with faith and tenacity. It's the right book at the right time. It's time to resurrect the American Dream.

©2010 Renee Martin and Don Martin (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

A listen for Self Starters

These succinct short bios tap the experience of entrepreneurs. Sometimes I'm making personal links with their real life peaks and valleys. Other times I am trying to relate their different ways to tackle opportunities with my game plans. The authors relay the stories to evoke response from the reader. i can't just passively slip through the narration. Risk Takers is a launch pad for people with drive. Narrator does a great job conveying the diversity of ideas. I recommend this book for anyone who is a self starter.

Awesome Book with real life experiences

As someone who is looking to start a business, I found this book informational, inspiratual and entertaining. The real life experiences that each success story told gave lessons learned and painted a realistic picture on what it takes to make your venture successful. This isn't a conventional business plan book, but a real life account of people who did everything possible to make their business a success no matter what barriers they faced.

Fairly Good

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Would have liked more of a wrap up in the last chapter that summarized all of the things the different risk takers had in common.The stories were interesting, but there seemed to missing some of the application to the reader.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The backgrounds of the people who faced adversity and still experienced success.

Any additional comments?

Some of the main points of the book:Think outside of the box.Dont worry about disappointmentGet noticed without expensive advertising