Author: Ben Carpenter
Publisher: Wiley – Business – 254 pages
Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram

This is the story of the author as he struggled for stability and progress through his early growing years. It is about his difficulty in establishing roots, as the family was forced to move every few years, with this father constantly being laid off from work. Such moves led to downward spirals of his family’s finances.

This book essentially is about the hard lessons he learned in his childhood, youth and adulthood,

And about how you can apply those lessons to improve your outcomes in many areas of your life

Readers will benefit from learning the challenges Ben Carpenter faced and the obstacles he overcame that made him mentally tough. This enabled him to achieve great success as he became the CEO of a large investment firm. He and his family now live in an affluent community in Greenwich, Connecticut. This town has often been ranked as one where people have among the highest net income and highest household net worth in the United States.

The Bigs is about what the author had to do to reach the big leagues. Schools in the United States (and in most other countries) do not teach students how to get to the top either in a corporation or your own business.

This book is essentially about human relationships and creating wealth. It provides you the roadmap and the how-to’s based on the experience of a remarkable man of accomplishment. This book not only fills the great void that schools do not, but does it well, with the blunt and straightforward writing of Ben Carpenter.

How to achieve the twin goals of developing great relationships and creating wealth? And the two are inseparable, in my opinion, based on my own experience. Ben Carpenter tells you exactly how to overcome the difficulties you will surely encounter, including developing a mindset to expect them, as well as the tools to conquer them.

He writes about what he calls “the secrets nobody tells students and young professionals about.” He discusses eight closely-related topics that are rarely if ever, touched upon in schools, including how to:

  • Choose a career
  • Find a great job
  • Do a great job
  • Be a leader
  • Start a business
  • Manage your money
  • Stay out of trouble
  • Live a happy life

Ben Carpenter began his career as a commercial lending officer at Bankers Trust Company. Two years later he joined Bankers Trust’s Primary Dealer section selling U.S. Treasury bonds. After a brief stop at Morgan Stanley, Ben joined Greenwich Capital, which, during his 22-year career there, became one of the most respected and profitable firms on Wall Street. At Greenwich Capital Ben was a salesman, trader, sales manager, Co-Chief Operating Officer, and Co-CEO.

Currently Ben is Vice Chairman of CRT Capital Group, a 300-person institutional broker-dealer firm located in Stamford, CT. He resides in Greenwich, CT with his wife Leigh and three daughters.

For more information on how to succeed in the tough, real world of competition, click on this: http://www.thebigswebsite.com/what-is-the-bigs/