Audiobooks narrated by Pete Larkin

From the bestselling author of The Everything Store, an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time. With the publication of The Everything Store in 2013, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone revealed how the unlikely Seattle start-up Amazon became an unexpected king of ecommerce. Since then, its founder has led Amazon to explosive growth in both size and wealth. In less than ten years, Amazon has quintupled the size of its workforce and increased its valuation to well over a trillion dollars. Whereas Amazon used to sell only books, there is now little they don't sell, becoming the world's largest online retailer and pushing into other markets at warp speed. Between Amazon's forty subsidiaries - like Whole Foods Market, Amazon Studios in Hollywood, websites like Goodreads and IMDb, and Amazon Web Services cloud software unit, plus Bezos's purchase of the Washington Post - it's almost impossible to go a day without encountering their goods. Amazon provides us opportunities to shop, entertain, inform, communicate, store and, one day, maybe even travel to the moon. We live in a world run, supplied and controlled by Amazon. In Amazon Unbound, Stone offers the must-read follow-up to his bestseller The Everything Store, detailing the seismic changes that have taken place at Amazon over the past decade as it became one of the most powerful and feared companies in the global economy, led by one of the most powerful and feared leaders in business. He shows the acquisitions and innovations that have propelled Amazon's unprecedented growth, and the turn in public sentiment that criticises Amazon's monopolistic practices. As he charts the company's meteoric rise, Stone probes the evolution of Jeff Bezos - who started as a geeky entrepreneur but who transformed to become a fit, famed, disciplined billionaire, a man who runs Amazon with an iron fist but finds his personal life splashed over the tabloids. Definitive, timely and revelatory, Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn't imagine modern life without.

Brad Stone (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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The Affluent Entrepreneur: 20 Proven Principles for Achieving Prosperity

In todays unpredictable financial environment, the best way to ensure financial security is to operate your own business. You can neither count on nor control an employers success, but you can depend on your own creativity and solid work ethic for prosperity. Take charge of your financial future and in turn your overall well-being. The Affluent Entrepreneur helps aspiring entrepreneurs to identify their innermost marketable passion then turn that passion into a successful business, regardless of background or level of education and experience. Existing entrepreneurs who are struggling in this economy and need guidance on how to take their businesses to the next level will also benefit from this comprehensive guide. Follow The Affluent Entrepreneurs 20 proven principles to achieve success faster than you ever imagined. Topics include: Identifying your unique product or service Garnering your familys support Leveraging technology and the Internet Creating walk-away income Selling your successful business and starting over

Patrick Snow (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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It's the Customer, Stupid!: 34 Wake-up Calls to Help You Stay Client-Focused

Ninety percent of dissatisfied clients will take their business elsewhere and never tell you why. However, ninety-FIVE percent will become loyal customers again if their needs and problems are addressed and remedied. Speaker and salesperson Michael Aun shares these secrets and many more in It's the Customer, Stupid!, a guide to growing any business by gaining new customers, and - more importantly - keeping happy the ones you have. The book explains the common myths about sales and customer satisfaction, starting with the fact that most businesses think they're customer-centric, but they just aren't. The book explains how to do things that may be inconvenient for you, but your customers will love. And you'll love the effect on sales! Hard-hitting principles include: In many service industries, the quality of service is one of the few variables that can distinguish a business from its competition. A good sale is GOOD SERVICE. Part of every sale should be an extensive overview of the service you intend to render as part of the sale. Ninety six percent of dissatisfied member clients do not complain of poor service. They figure, 'What's the use? Nobody's listening!' Treat the people who do complain like gold, because they speak for all your dissatisfied customers. Return calls the same day in which a complaint comes

Jeffrey Gitomer, Michael A Aun (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, an

Social Nation describes how businesses can engage customers, employees, suppliers, and shareholders in a mutually beneficial alliance by creating a well-designed and managed portfolio of social media initiatives. This portfolio can deliver dramatic results, spurring innovation, improving product design, raising employee productivity, lifting retention rates for all stakeholders, and boosting sales and profitability. Aside from rewards, there are risks to be considered. This book gives readers practical guidance, for example warning against the temptation to engage in social media as a quick-fix marketing or public-relations gimmick. Distilling the cumulative experience of hundreds of professionals and customers, the book offers 100 concise, experience-based prescriptions to help readers consider how they can best use social media to realize their goals. Compelling case histories and anecdotes illuminate and entertain. Topics include: Create solid platforms: build a seamless, integrated community platform. The unconnected piecemeal approach can create a communications problem. Get registration right: convince community members to register and provide the personal information you need--without annoying them. Take the measure of Twitter: members of Twitter are not the captive old-media audiences of television and radio; they have to be wooed. Humanize your business. Moderate, dont censor: an online community reflects on its sponsors public image. Monitor the content it shares without censoring freedom and unpredictability.

Barry Libert, Barry Libert (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Distress Investing: Principles and Technique

Distress Investing is a comprehensive guide to distress investing around the world. Increasingly, corporate rehabilitation is more interesting than corporate liquidation to governments and capital markets. And increasingly a mezzanine industry of mutual funds, hedge funds, and private investors has stepped up to fill the role of the traditional corporate lender. This book covers distress investing from theoretical underpinnings to practical applications. It features cases studies of some of the biggest distress investing situations including Kmart and Pacific Gas & Electric. From the recent changes to U.S. bankruptcy code to creditor rights to cash bailouts, readers will learn how to analyze distressed situations including pricing issues, arbitrage opportunities, political and tax disadvantages to deal expenses and reorganization funding plans. Written by the leading practitioner of distress investing and co-authored by teaching academics, this book is certain to become the bible on the topic for professional investors and students.

Fernando Diz, Martin J. Whitman (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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The Fundamentals of Hedge Fund Management: How to Successfully Launch and Operate a Hedge Fund

This updated and revised second edition of The Fundamentals of Hedge Fund Management will address how the credit crisis, legislation, fraud, technology, investor demand, global markets and the economic landscape have affected the hedge fund industry. It will provide readers with a detailed indepth analysis of the industry, the people in it and an outlook for where the industry is headed. Strachman has constructed a timely and indespensible resource that will serve as a reference and research tool to launch and grow a successful hedge fund business as well as source for those looking to invest these types of investment products.

Daniel A. Strachman (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy

This book will address and answer the key questions...What's a zombie bank? When losses of a financial institution exceed its paid-in capital, it's insolvent. Thanks to systemic deregulation in the last 30 years and cheap credit availability, banks in the U.S. and Europe borrowed more and more on a thin layer of equity, funding the explosive growth of their housing markets through securitized mortgages and piled many of the mortgage-related securities on their balance sheets. Why do we keep them alive? For many of these banks, having become too big to fail is their blessing. The global financial system has become so interconnected that the failure of one giant bank like Citi would have repercussions far and wide. How does that hurt economic recovery? The banks have been making profits thanks to this interest rate subsidy at the expense of taxpayers, pensioners and other savers. Yet their hidden losses are so big that it will take them many more years to replenish their capital to the necessary level. So they need to keep hoarding all the cash they make to themselves, and cannot make new loans. That hurts market liquidity, which slows and flattens growth. What needs to be done? The U.S. and the EU need to face the harsh reality in the face and accept the bitter medicine rather than push the problems out to the next decade, which will be lost if they do so. Effectively, austerity measures.

Sheila Bair, Yalman Onaran (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Power Base Selling: Secrets of an Ivy League Street Fighter

Focuses on competitive selling: the range of skills that sales professionals need to reach their full potential. It offers practical, step-by-step advice that salespeople can take to prevent the competition from selling their products or services, revealing the components involved in gaining full control of a sales situation. Discusses a key step in this process--the politics of selling--showing how to establish the right relationships with people who are powerful enough to give the salesperson an edge. Will help those who are already good at selling become competitive salespeople capable of strengthening their position with the customer, while at the same time weakening the competition.

Jim Holden (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Leading Out Loud: Inspiring Change Through Authentic Communications

Much has changed in the business world since the original publication of Leading Out Loud, Terry Pearces classic on authentic leadership communication. Now more than ever, the development of a leaders message is as crucial to success as the delivery of that message. In this new and revised edition, Pearce explains that the events of recent years, including the September 11 tragedy and numerous corporate scandals, have caused a loss of confidence and increased the importance of authenticity in leadership and building loyalty to organizations. The revised edition still shows leaders in business, politics, and non-profit how to communicate their values and vision to inspire commitment, providing action steps and techniques and analyzing speeches by well-known leaders to give readers concrete methods for improving their communication. But Pearce also focuses more on everyday, spontaneous communication, and how to develop a message that works in any situation. He explores the internal work necessary to create an honest and compelling vision, and demonstrates how readers can find their authentic voices and articulate their messages with confidence.

Terry Pearce (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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The Unteachables

A hilarious new middle grade novel from beloved and bestselling author Gordon Korman about what happens when the worst class of kids in school is paired with the worst teacher—perfect for fans of Ms. Bixby’s Last Day. The Unteachables are a notorious class of misfits, delinquents, and academic train wrecks. Like Aldo, with anger management issues; Parker, who can’t read; Kiana, who doesn’t even belong in the class—or any class; and Elaine (rhymes with pain). The Unteachables have been removed from the student body and isolated in room 117. Their teacher is Mr. Zachary Kermit, the most burned-out teacher in all of Greenwich. He was once a rising star, but his career was shattered by a cheating scandal that still haunts him. After years of phoning it in, he is finally one year away from early retirement. But the superintendent has his own plans to torpedo that idea—and it involves assigning Mr. Kermit to the Unteachables. The Unteachables never thought they’d find a teacher who had a worse attitude than they did. And Mr. Kermit never thought he would actually care about teaching again. Over the course of a school year, though, room 117 will experience mayhem, destruction—and maybe even a shot at redemption.

Gordon Korman (Author), Chris Gebauer, Fred Berman, Jennifer Nittoso, Josh Hurley, Oliver Wyman, Pete Larkin, Sarah Beth Goer, Sean Welsh Brown, Tristan Morris (Narrator)

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Basketball: A Love Story

A sweeping and revelatory history of basketball, drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews with the greatest players, coaches, executives, and journalists in the history of the game. In an effort to tell the complete story of basketball in all its fascinating dimensions, acclaimed authors Jackie Macmullan, Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores have compiled nearly a thousand hours' worth of interviews with a staggering number of basketball greats. They've talked to hundreds of legendary players, such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson, and spoken with renowned coaches, including Phil Jackson and Coach K, as well as numerous executives, commissioners, and journalists. Most impressive was the extraordinary quality of the interviews. Again and again, players spoke candidly about secrets and told stories they'd never before discussed on the record. The book that grew out of those interviews is an extraordinary project and quite possibly the most ambitious basketball book ever written. At once a definitive oral history and something far more literary and intimate, this is the never-before-told story of how basketball came to be, and about what it means to those who've given their lives to the game. Read by James Fouhey, Jim Frangione, Sullivan Jones, Pete Larkin, January LaVoy, and Carol Monda

Dan Klores, Jackie Macmullan, Rafe Bartholomew (Author), Carol Monda, James Fouhey, January LaVoy, Jim Frangione, Pete Larkin, Sullivan Jones (Narrator)

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Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Fr

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Material**

Adam Fisher (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Pete Larkin