This book explores what happens to HBS graduates when they join the real world of business. The book is based on 132 interviews of graduates from the Class of 1970. Various chapters of the 264-page paperback examine individuals by name as they climb corporate ladders, deal with international challenges, start companies, handle adversity, and switch careers. Not all are successful, but they all provide advice and wisdom.
Included in the profiles are the founder of Cardinal Health, who after ten years of challenges in the grocery wholesale business switched to health care and grew a $100 billion business. Another discusses how a NYC banker was hired to run the largest bank in the Czech Republic and dealt with a loan portfolio where the loan officer customarily got a 6% kick-back for making the loan. A resident of Rio built a successful financial empire despite a 3-year bank freeze that wiped out most wealthy Brazilians who couldn't unlock savings and repay debt. There's also a chapter on "Tweezerman," an entrepreneur who failed at everything he tried for ten years before finding a need for specialized tweezers.
Another became the youngest Fortune 500 CEO ever at age 42 when named to lead Black & Decker. There's a woman credited with building the "SnackWell" brand as head of Nabisco, initiating the early healthy food craze. One grad moved from the poverty of inner-city Detroit to join six major corporate boards. An entrepreneur sold his successes and became business school dean at the University of Southern California. Yet another became a billionaire by bringing efficiency to third world electric companies, and then saw much of the money vanish when forced to lower rates.
About the Author: Jeff Chokel went to Princeton University on a journalism scholarship and wrote articles for area newspapers as a "stringer" covering the Princeton community. During his senior year he wrote for The New York Times. When accepted at Harvard Business School in 1968, he repaid his scholarship which required him to work for a year in journalism. While earning his MBA, he also was editor of The HarBus News, HBS' weekly campus newspaper.
After graduation from HBS in 1970 he spent two years working in market research and then 12 years in Cleveland banking, primarily in commercial lending. In 1986 he left banking to focus on investing, both as a small time venture capitalist and as an independent investor in the public markets. He provided both funding and advice to more than 40 small private companies over 30 years, primarily in the Cleveland area. His major winner in private investing was Cleveland Vibrator, a manufacturer of industrial vibrating motors and related equipment. He and two others bought the company out of bankruptcy in 1990 and built it to consistent profitability. Jeff was CEO from 1992 to 2007, and remains chairman of this family-owned firm.
As an investor in the public markets, Jeff has had 10X or better investment returns in a half dozen companies since 1970. He continues as an active investor. Personal interests involve tennis, fitness training, and travel. For his book, "Lessons Learned After Harvard Business School," he interviewed 132 graduates of the 750-member HBS Class of 1970 on their career paths and what they learned along the way. He and his wife of 46 years have three children and three grandchildren and now live in Lyndhurst, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.
