Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, shares the epic inside story of how a working-class kid from the Nebraska prairie took on Wall Street’s clubby brokerage business, busted it open, and walked away a billionaire.

Joe Ricketts always had the gift of seeing what others missed. The son of a house builder, he started life as a part-time janitor, but by the age of thirty-three he saw the chance to challenge the big brokerage firms by offering Americans an inexpensive way to take control of their own stock trading. Nowadays, we take for granted that Main Street is playing right there on Wall Street, but Ricketts made that happen. His company, begun with $12,500 borrowed from friends and family, took off like a rocket thanks to an early embrace of digital technology and irreverent marketing. But Ameritrade also faced a series of near-disasters: the SEC almost shut him down; his partners tried to force him out because of his relentless risk-taking; penny brokers swindled the company; the crash of 1989 nearly cost him everything; and he was almost shut down again when a customer committed massive fraud. By the time of the dot-com bust, he had proven that his strategy based on frontier values could survive just about anything.

The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get offers a view inside Joe Ricketts’ mind, giving readers a visceral understanding of how entrepreneurs think and act differently from the rest of us—how they see the horizon where we just see a spreadsheet. As unvarnished as the prairie he comes from, Ricketts also talks honestly about his shortcomings as a manager, the career sacrifices his wife made for his business, the complexity of being a father, and the pain of splitting with his mentor and of his brother’s death from AIDS. Overcoming these and other challenges, he built a company now worth $30 billion.

A must-read for anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting their own business, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get is the ultimate only-in-America story.

Product description

Anthony Hendrickson
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of the most authentic memoirs from a true entrepreneur.
7 November 2019 – Published on Books-for-everyone.com
Verified Purchase
What a great book. The authenticity of Joe telling his own story is tremendous. He shares his thoughts but offers a historical perspective that is unbiased, as he readily shares how others may have interpreted the same facts and events differently from his own perspective. Yet he is very transparent in offering how and why he saw the events and made the decisions he made.

The book provides some valuable insight into the mind and psyche of a true entrepreneur. He shares his assessment of situations and allows you to understand his thinking. Best of all, Joe never tries to tell the reader that he was always right or that his way was the best. He readily admits his miscues, but emphasises what he learned from the experiences. The authenticity of Joe as a person, comes through in every page. Priceless!
One person found this helpful

Lee B. Berger
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Buy this.
6 November 2019 – Published on Books-for-everyone.com
If a Billionaire, who needs no money and who has helped thousands of people to get wealthy, writes a book… …it is probably a good idea to make a purchase.

(same reason to vote for our Prez!)