cover image What Losing Taught Me about Winning

What Losing Taught Me about Winning

Fran Tarkenton. Simon & Schuster, $23 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-684-83413-9

One of the star quarterbacks in pro football history, Tarkenton led the Minnesota Vikings to three Super Bowls--all of which they lost. He understands losing. Once his gridiron career was over, he quickly established himself as a popular motivational speaker before corporate groups. Without saying flat out that he has become disillusioned with big business, Tarkenton emphasizes that a company must serve customers' needs before its own, citing IBM and Apple Computer as examples of firms that got into trouble because they forgot that fact. He also grouses about ""rabid downsizing, runaway executive greed and merger mania"" as responsible for making big business go sour. Quite the reverse is true, he finds, of small businesses, which are booming as never before, with more than 750,000 such companies starting up each year. In this informative book, he analyzes the qualities needed by the would-be entrepreneur: ways to improve your ability to see business opportunities; the need to be realistic; and--his special area of expertise--the need to learn to bounce back from a defeat. (Sept.)