Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits
    Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits
    Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits
    Ebook147 pages2 hours

    Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits

    By Ken Goldstein

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “From Carmen Sandiego to Disney Online to Shop.com to his first book This Is Rage, Ken Goldstein knows about reinvention. Now he has written a parable with insight, charm, and authority.” As difficult as it is to have your first big success, most people find it exponentially harder to repeat success. So many of us, after "bringing the crowd to its feet," worry that we're going to get booed off the stage with our next venture. Is there a way to avoid this, to have multiple hits and "endless encores?"

    Technology executive and bestselling author Ken Goldstein shows the way to repeating success by concentrating on three essentials – people, products, and profits, in that order. In this affecting and instructive business parable, he tells the story of a man who has accomplished much but now fears exposure as a fraud and the woman who, as a CEO with multiple successes to her credit, shows him the secret to consistent achievement.

    Are you ready to play endless encores? If so, this is your story.
    – Michael Eisner, CEO, The Tornante Company and Author of Working Together

    “My creative energies are renewed by Ken Goldstein’s Endless Encores. My highest and most sincere praise for Mr. Goldstein is that it becomes difficult to sit down while reading his engaging book. The dialogue has the organic effect of making me want to jump up and get into action—and into the business of inspiring new possibilities. The brilliance of the ideas in Endless Encores is that they strike us, simultaneously, as gloriously revolutionary, and—in the Socratic way—as something we knew in our guts all along. In my work as a conductor, my challenge is to lead artists and audiences into a new and transformative experience with every fresh listening—even when the music is familiar. Mr. Goldstein offers profound lessons and an inspiring roadmap to achieving transcendent and unexpected results. This is essential reading for anyone who is serious about leadership and creating real change.”
    – Rachael Worby, Artistic Director / Music Director, MUSE/IQUE

    "Ken Goldstein has penned an insightful new book that demonstrates the power of people, products, and profits. It’s an important tool for managers in all organizations who wish to lead their organization to new heights. Most intriguing, it is written as a fictional dialogue between a successful CEO and a manager besieged with troubles. Their Socratic interaction pulls you in and keeps you reading. It’s an invaluable dialogue that you must have."
    – Gene Del Vecchio, USC Marshall School of Business"

    “Ken Goldstein has written an inspiring, empowering book that encourages each of us to aspire to the extraordinary—to be exceptional listeners and amazing thinkers—and understand that in the process of reinvention, we can all find our own Endless Encores. In Endless Encores, Ken generously shares his own notebook for repeated success, vividly demonstrating the power of people, products, and profits while underscoring the importance of resilience and continuous reinvention.”
    – Barb Adams, Talk Host, Amerika Now, Genesis Communications Network

    “Bravo! Ken Goldstein is a true maestro at building, supporting, and directing highly talented creative and technical teams. Brilliant in its simplicity, Endless Encores explores the central, overriding importance of people in today’s complex, Internet driven global economy. The conversational narrative is an easily accessible device for him to share the secret of his success. A must read for all creative executives.”
    – Christopher Keefe, Chief Marketing Officer, Omidyar Network
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFiction Studio Books
    Release dateSep 22, 2015
    ISBN9781936558681
    Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits

    Related to Endless Encores

    Related ebooks

    Small Business & Entrepreneurs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      MOVERS & SHAKERS

      Sep 30, 2021

      MOVERS & SHAKERS
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Best Business Advice

      Feb 27, 2019

      The Best Business Advice
      10 min read

    • Article

      Essential Reads For Savvy Grooms

      May 20, 2022

      $ 12.00 | price and availability on amazon.com Marriage cunselling and anxiety in relationship: Practical guide for making marriage work, how to eliminate insecurity and jealousy, reduce conflicts, and reconnect with your partner. Two books in one. “

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Founder

      Apr 13, 2023

      Letter From The Founder
      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Review

      Jul 4, 2022

      Book Review
      1 min read

    • Article

      How to Lead in 2018

      Jan 8, 2018

      When I was in my early twenties, a close relative of mine was murdered on the street by someone he didn’t know. It was a random act of violence that threw me into a spiral of sadness, fear, and negativity. I saw danger around every corner. The future

      5 min read

    • Article

      Out the Other Side

      Dec 7, 2021

      Out the Other Side
      14 min read

    • Article

      World Traveler Wellness

      Oct 24, 2023

      World Traveler Wellness
      1 min read

    • Article

      Interview with: Mimi Nicklin

      Jul 4, 2022

      Interview with: Mimi Nicklin
      4 min read

    • Article

      Sarah Liu

      Dec 5, 2021

      Sarah Liu
      1 min read

    • Article

      Bob Iger

      Oct 4, 2019

      There are many business-leadership books; what does The Ride of a Lifetime offer that’s new? Because I’m in the business of storytelling, and I had some good stories to tell, I thought I could write a book of stories that could convey advice to young

      2 min read

    • Article

      Diving Into Entrepreneurship?

      Dec 27, 2020

      Diving Into Entrepreneurship?
      1 min read

    • Article

      Driven to SUCCEED

      Aug 15, 2019

      Driven to SUCCEED
      3 min read

    • Article

      Editor’s Note

      Feb 1, 2022

      Editor’s Note
      2 min read

    • Article

      Super Squad

      Sep 2, 2020

      Super Squad
      9 min read

    • Article

      12 Steps To Kindness

      Feb 22, 2023

      12 Steps To Kindness
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Investigation

      May 22, 2022

      A Investigation
      8 min read

    • Article

      Amanda Gorman

      Mar 4, 2023

      Amanda Gorman
      2 min read

    • Article

      Nice To See You… To See You Nice

      Apr 8, 2019

      In the editorial of the last edition I was warbling on about the potential ROI of just being nice – how, despite the widespread belief that diving in first and elbowing all and sundry out of the way as you clamber up the ladder of success is the only

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Endless Encores

    3/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This little 90 page book is a rather stilted and forced conversation between a successful female Silicon Valley CEO with a lifelong track record, and a hot videogame marketer, whose product, and therefore his self confidence, have stalled. The CEO doesn’t want his glib answers and he can’t see the forest for the trees. A match made in business advice heaven. It has aspirations to be a one-minute-manager, with page after page of sage advice on life in the corporate world (People. Products. Profit – in that order). There is no plot. There are no case studies or references, aside from name dropping. This one act play takes place at an airport bar where they both await a delayed flight. He somehow has never heard of this giant of a CEO. She unaccountably decides to mentor him on the spot with 40 years worth of business experience. I think Walt Disney directed. If only it were David Mamet.It is chock-full of management-speak catchphrases: -Think Different is not a slogan.- Leapfrog products invent and reinvent markets. -Eat your own dogfood. -Don’t confuse good enough with good. -Quality assurance is a process, not a department. And these all appear on one page. And there are several more like it.There is seemingly endless shelf space for books of this genre. It seems that everyone has to learn all these things from scratch after they’ve stumbled. I found nothing at all new in Ken Goldstein’s book. On the other hand, it is a useful collection of non controversial guidelines. It’s good medicine, but it’s old.David Wineberg

    Book preview

    Endless Encores - Ken Goldstein

    best.

    Preface

    ♫ ♫ ♫

    When I finished writing my first novel, This Is Rage, I thought I would take a break from fiction and pull together a Best Of collection of the many blog entries I had written about business over the years. I started my blog when I started my first book, and I wrote them in parallel to distract myself from digging in too hard on any one passage without breathing room to evolve. When I embarked on this book, I didn’t want to write just another book on business leadership. The world had plenty of those, among my favorites and often most quoted, Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove, Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins, and First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

    To solve the issue of the ordinary, I decided I would write a wraparound story that would tie the blog entries together as a whole and differentiate the collection from what I had already published to the cloud for free. As I played around with inventing the characters and voices of Daphne and Paul, I found my direction shifting from nonfiction back to fiction, which felt lively and natural, and fit nicely with the world view of my publisher, The Story Plant.

    Then two things happened. If you’ve ever gone on the writing journey yourself, you know at least two bends in the metal are to be expected. You just don’t know when or where to expect them.

    First, as I embraced the full ethos of what I was writing, the idea of a Best Of collection started to bother me. The whole premise of this book was how to go from one project to the next without getting bogged down, and here I was mining my own archive material for a follow-up. The argument was undermined by its own antithetical construct. So I wanted to bag it.

    Second, as I came to layer the realities and eccentricities of Daphne and Paul, they became real characters in a grounded story that I believed could stand on its own. Maybe because they were new and the posts were old, I gravitated to the new, where I always find hope. I sent some early sketches to my deeply admired editor, Lou Aronica, and said, What do you think? Can we do it without the expository? To which he replied, I think you answered your own question—there’s a new story of its own here, so tell it.

    And here we are.

    The heart of this book emerged in a blog post I wrote several years ago called Dodging the Greatest Hits Graveyard. At one time I thought that might become the book’s title, the core idea of which came into my mind at a live performance by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. My wife and I are regulars whenever TSO tours, and if you have never seen one of their holiday shows, it is almost impossible to describe the mix of hammering guitar chords, electronic violins, big hair rock progressions, clamoring distortion, acoustic classical and jazz leitmotifs, lasers, fireworks, indoor snow, musicians flying on swivel cranes over the stage, and spoken word storytelling. TSO fans are avid, but at every show the band makes the point of introducing new material, however unfamiliar to the crowd it might be. The courage to debut the unknown in front of adoring, expectant followers struck me not only as emblematic of continuing success, but necessary and vital to win in the present while seeding the future. Hey, it worked for Beethoven and Mozart.

    I always wanted to expand that blog post into a bigger idea: the bravery to go against the grain and offer an audience something they might not otherwise have welcomed at the moment. This was not foreign terrain to me. I used to watch exceptionally creative people on my own teams struggle with follow-up success, some better than others. It was always an awful, painful occurrence, filled with doubt, questioning, and worry that their last work really might be their last work. I wondered how hard it must have been for the Eagles to go back into the studio after Hotel California and record The Long Run. I wondered how Tom Wolfe could find his way back to the typewriter after The Right Stuff, and then again after The Bonfire of the Vanities. I wondered how Steve Jobs could launch the most iconic consumer technology company of our lifetime, get fired shortly after the success of the Mac, then return years later and reinvent the music business, the mobile phone business, and the handheld computer business one after another in a single decade. I wondered if there might be a way to help others push themselves through the process of reinvention.

    I still wonder that.

    In the following pages I will tell you a story and ask that you take from it what works for you. At the end of each chapter, I suggest you jot down some big-picture questions that occur to you while you are reading, perhaps expanding on the summary points suggested. Note that I am suggesting you capture questions, not answers. We all answer tough questions in our own way, and that’s what makes us unique in how we approach the world, but perhaps the questions are something we share. When you get to the end of the book, there’s a short but important pop quiz (please don’t peek!). If some of my questions there align with the ones you are asking yourself, then we have landed on shared ground. Should you find yourself hungry for more material to inspire questions, we’ve also zipped up the relevant blog posts I originally thought about including in this book into a single, convenient eBook collection you can download free at TheStoryPlant.com.

    Until then allow me to share this story and let you think about it. If it helps you sort through some of your own questions, drop me a line and let me know. All of this comes from on-the-job experience, where I am confident a lot of the people who lived it with me have embraced the ideals as a path to continuity and resilience. I wish for you the same, and a lifetime of success defined as only you can define it, but never a one-hit wonder.

    Los Angeles, California

    Spring 2015

    We got time to think of the ones we love

    While the miles roll away

    But the only time that seems too short

    Is the time that we get to play

    — Jackson Browne, The Load Out

    ♫ ♫ ♫

    Chapter 1: One Night in an Airport Lounge

    ♫ ♫ ♫

    Success is nearly impossible to repeat. No one wins all the time. It’s often the case that a company’s hit product is followed up by a mediocre one. Don’t feel bad. We see this every day.

    Paul couldn’t get those words out of his head. As he sat at the corner of the bar in the San Francisco International Airport executive lounge popping pretzels into his mouth, his fate was all but sealed. He had enjoyed an amazing three years. He was on his game, on top of the world. Now it seemed there was only one place to go. He didn’t want to go there, but all at once he realized the odds were against him.

    With the announcement that his flight home to Los Angeles would be delayed another two hours after the last two-hour delay, Paul ordered another glass of the house red. He knew he had blown it booking a corridor flight out of SFO on a summer Friday with the normal fog and weekend exit rush, but that was the price for not wanting to sit in traffic on the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Another bad decision, he thought, however small. He wondered how many other bad decisions he had recently made without knowing it, and when he would find out. The wine should have been improving his mood, but it never quite worked the way he wanted it. Like sales figures, the impact of a glass of wine was impossible to predict. A lot depended on timing.

    What are you going to launch next?

    It had been an eye-opening few days for him. He had come to San Francisco at company expense to preview his team’s new product for the industry press. The public relations department had booked a non-stop lineup of interviews to demo the new work in advance of its planned release a few short weeks in the future. Product sales from his prior release were still skyrocketing and showed no signs of cresting. That groundbreaker, launched a full three years ago, had changed his career forever. He had been promoted to VP of Product Development following glowing accolades from peers and competitors. He had been celebrated widely as a rising star to be watched, and catapulted to a high-profile series of public speaking appearances in rooms filled with talented job seekers all wanting to join his team.

    Problem was, all those conference talks ended with the same question:

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1