Tough Calls from the Corner Office ─ Top Business Leaders Reveal Their Career-Defining Moments

On Making Key Career Choices: "Without any question, the defining moment in my career was realizing I had the courage to pursue restaurants as a career. It was from that night on that I felt completely relaxed about everything." --Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group

On Taking the Entrepreneurial Leap: "I took a lot of chances and a lot of risk to get ESPN up and running. One day I looked at my bank book and I had $17.28 in my account, but I was determined to keep going. I didn't know where the rest of it was coming from, but I didn't let that stop me." --Bill Rasmussen, founder and CEO, ESPN

On Risking Success for More Success: "We had an offer from some people to put the show into syndication. My partner and I told my agent, `We'll stay on ABC during the day, but we want the right to put the show into syndication at night.' ABC said `Absolutely not.' What happened next is the critical juncture in my career." --Monty Hall, creator, host, and owner, Let's Make a Deal

On Changing a Corporate Culture: "When you change hiring and retention practices, you also have to be prepared for the other side of the coin, which is letting people go. That's the hardest thing I've ever had to do." --Reginald Brack, chairman and CEO, Time Inc.

On Knowing When It's Time To Step Aside: "On my fifty-fifth birthday, I said, I love what I do, I love the people I'm doing it with. But I want to set up a ten-year plan so that when I am sixty-five ... I [can] take myself off the hook and go do something else." --Barney Ebsworth, founder, chairman, and CEO, INTRAV, Royal Cruise Line, Clipper Cruise Line

Thirty-Nine of America's Most Successful Business Leaders Share the Most important Decisions of Their Careers---And the Life and Career Lessons They Hold for Us All.

When former CEO Harlan Steinbaum decided to buy back his retail drug chain with his partners, his life changed dramatically. The personal impact that this one business decision---this "tough call"---had on Steinbaum made him wonder if others had experienced similar kinds of defining moments in their own careers. To find out, he reached out to some of the most successful people in the country---leaders from companies such as Verizon, Chrysler, ESPN, Ogilvy & Mather, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, WellPoint, and Panera Bread Company---to pinpoint the career-defining decisions that were integral to their success. The result is Tough Calls from the Corner Office, a treasure trove of rich business wisdom, stories of tough decisions and hard-won victories, and lessons from a lifetime of achievement in the world of business.

Tough Calls from the Corner Office offers inspiring stories, lessons, principles, strategies, ideas, and solutions drawn from every stage in a successful career, from early key choices to the final leave-taking from the world of work. Given unprecedented access to such visionaries as Union Square Hospitality Group's Danny Meyer, ESPN's Bill Rasmussen, Build-A-Bear's Maxine Clark, and Let's Make a Deal's Monty Hall, Steinbaum shares their experiences, told in their own words, so that others may learn from them. In a time when many people are at professional crossroads, Tough Calls from the Corner Office offers inspiration and the confidence to believe that tough decisions can be the first step to extraordinary success.

Harlan Steinbaum has had a long and successful career in business as an innovator and leading executive in the retail drug industry. He was chairman and CEO of Medicare-Glaser, one of the largest retail pharmacy chains in the United States. He was also chairman of Express Scripts, Inc., a leading pharmacy benefit management company that has grown into a multibillion-dollar public corporation ranked number 135 on the Fortune 500.