Running to Leadership: What Finishing 100+ Marathons On All 7 Continents Teaches Us About Success

Running to Leadership: What Finishing 100+ Marathons on All Seven Continents Teaches Us About Success describes how to retain employees without monetary rewards while building successful business leaders. Preparing for and completing a marathon is the perfect backdrop for examining the problems and challenges faced by today’s business leaders. They must incorporate change, manage risk, and motivate people to go up hill at a time when they want to quit. All of this must be achieved in a stressful, challenging business environment. However, you quickly learn that hills build character.

The manager must weigh the advantages of a short term sprint with finishing in the long run. You must become a marathoner, who successfully uses their knowledge to mentally and physically push out of their comfort zones towards new limits. Successful endurance athletes and business managers exhibit the same characteristics to thrive. They manage change by taking calculated risks and gradually expanding their comfort zones.

Some of the book's sections include

- When in Doubt…Run!!!
- The Four I's in TEAM
- Thinking Outside the Sox
- When in Doubt…Stop
- Twenty Miles is Half of 26.2 Miles
- Relaxing and Uphill Battles
- Killer Rocks
- Crossing the Road
- Facing FEARS During the Great Wall Marathon
- Leading From Behind
- A Little Change Adds Up
- Crabs & Geese
- Cheetahs on the Safricom Lewa Marathon Course
- Skimping on Support and Talent
- Leading Without a Map
- Dead Bodies & Spider Love
- Watch Your Step – Leaf, Rock, Ankle

Media comments about Anthony Reed.

"Reed embodies the type of enthusiasm for life and the zest for a good run that might push Lance Armstrong into cycling another 100 miles for the fear of looking lazy." - Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

"Anthony Reed hasn't stopped running since. He ran while earning his MBA, master's of accounting, and CPA certification. And he kept going while working as an Information Technology Director at Texas Instruments, heading up his own consulting business, and teaching college accounting courses." - Runner's World magazine
"Running has transformed Anthony Reed's life. He simply set goals and set about accomplishing them." - Dallas Morning News

"Reed fits the profile—some would say stereotype—of a distance runner. He's an over achiever at work and play. He has earned four degrees, is a CPA, and a certified Project Management Professional." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

About the Author

Mr. Anthony Reed, CPA, PMP is an international business executive with over 30 years of experience. This includes 25 years in project management and executive positions for Fortune 500 companies. This includes Texas Instruments, Motel 6, Frito-Lay, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Ernst & Young. He's also an international athlete. His leadership style fuses marathon, business, and accounting (MBA) strategies and tactics. He's a frequent speaker at national and international project management, accounting, IT, and software quality assurance conferences.

His two graduate degrees are in management (MBA) and accounting (MS). His two undergraduate degrees are in management and mathematics. He's also a certified Supply Chain Manager, Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

He served on the Board of Directors for the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the Dallas White Rock Marathon, software firms, and various local and international not-for-profit organizations.

He's completed over one hundred 26.2-mile marathons. He was one of fewer than 225 people in the world to finish marathons on all seven continents. This included the frigid Antarctica, Kenya’s dangerous Lewa SafriCom, and China’s Great Wall Marathons. Subsequently, his journeys were chronicled in his book, Running Shoes Are Cheaper Than Insulin: Marathon Adventures On All Seven Continents.