Books
Sweet as Pie, Tough as Nails
Sitting in a hospital room after her father suffered a major heart attack, Paula Marshall watched her dad desperately try to decide who would run the family business. Even though Paula had worked for the company for a decade, she expected her brothers to take over for her father. Then something unexpected happened. Faced with the impossible choice of selling his business or passing it down to his only daughter, who had become pregnant at 17, her father took the bigger gamble. Since that day, Marshall has taken The Bama Companies to new heights.
Finding the Soul of Big Business
Too often businesses, large and small, have structure themselves to be goal oriented. Milestones, statistics and the bottom line are pursued like quarry pelts to be displayed on the belts of CEOs. Business leaders cannot be faulted for such approaches because, for the most part, we all are products of a post-twentieth century Western (American) culture that sees society in terms of winners and losers. Worth is too often ascribed to birth order, gender, race, region, class and any other characteristics that can be assigned a category.
Sometimes being a CEO Looks Pretty Tough
Glimpse inside the mind of a big business CEO. Is it really all about approving multi-million dollar deals in stuffy board rooms and flying around in private jets? Is it all about politics and working the rooms? Do CEOs really value people, or is team building just a momentary feel good exercise? This CEO seeks to help people recognize that each one of us must create openings within ourselves so that we might better understand each other.
The Executive Entrepreneur
Jim Stovall began his career in a broom closet lined with boat cushions. He went on to become the successful CEO of his Emmy Award winning company Narrative Television Network. Paula Marshall began working on the floor of her father’s pie plant when she had nowhere else to turn to pay the bills and support her newborn daughter. She rose to the top of the organization, and though no one supposed she would be the successor, she took on the CEO role in 1985 and grew her family’s company, The Bama Companies, to a $200 million organization. To what do they attribute to their success?