Never Give Up!: Life Lessons of a Successful Entrepreneur

This book provides a chronological autobiographical description of my 20 year entrepreneurial journey including the good, the bad, the ugly and the funny steps along the way. In an effort to prepare, interest and entice readers. I confess that I am very proud of Computer Entry Systems Corporation's (CES) performance as it grew from a few Founders, with an idea, to a thousand highly motivated Associates, on four continents, over a 20 year period. We competed, head to head, with the best of the best, including IBM, NCR and Burroughs, companies thousands of times our size and won almost 60% of the competitive encounters. After 4 years of start up losses we achieved sixteen years of consecutively increasing profitability, returning over 30X their initial investment, to Founding investors. While I, personally made 98% of the mistakes an entrepreneur could make, I persisted, I learned, I survived and finally, CES thrived. I hope that you enjoy this book, as much as I enjoyed the journey.

• WHAT'S INSIDE?
• CASH IS KING
• ENTREPRENEURSHIP: WHAT IS IT?
• CORPORATE SURVIVAL KIT
• PERSONAL SURVIVAL KIT
• MANAGEMENT PARTICIPATION OF ASSOCIATES
• A BOARD FOR ALL SEASONS
• RUNNING A PUBLIC COMPANY
• GROWTH THROUGH MERGER(S)
• THE BEST OF WHAT I LEARNED!
• HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
• WOULD I TRY IT AGAIN?

Brian T. Cunningham co-founded Electronic Sales Associates (ESA) in 1965 and served as chairman and CEO of Computer Entry Systems Corporation (CES) from 1969 to 1989. Cunningham began his career as a physicist at NASA in Maryland. He and his wife, Terri, have nine children and twenty-three grandchildren.