Invested: Changing Forever the Way Americans Invest

Charles Schwab

Oct 2019 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Fred Sanders

About this audiobook

“To say Charles Schwab is an entrepreneur is actually an understatement. He really is a revolutionary.”—Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, author of Shoe Dog

The founder of The Charles Schwab Corporation recounts his ups and downs as he made stock investing, once the expensive and clubby reserve of the few, accessible to ordinary Americans.
 
In this deeply personal memoir, Schwab describes his passion to have Main Street participate in the growing economy as investors and owners, not only earners. Schwab opens up about his dyslexia and how he worked around and ultimately embraced it, and about the challenges he faced while starting his fledgling company in the 1970s. A year into his grand experiment in discounted stock trading, living in a small apartment in Sausalito with his wife, Helen, and new baby, he carried a six-figure debt and a pocketful of personal loans. As it turned out, customers flocked to Schwab, leaving his small team scrambling with scarce resources and no road map to manage the company’s growth.
 
He recounts the company’s game-changing sale to Bank of America—and how, in the end, the merger almost doomed his organization. We learn about the clever and timely leveraged buyout he crafted to regain independence; the crushing stock market collapse of 1987, just weeks after the company had gone public; the dot-com meltdown of 2000 and its reverberating aftermath of economic stagnation, layoffs, and the company’s eventual reinvention; and how the company’s focus on managing risk protected it and its clients during the financial crisis in 2008, propelling its growth.
 
A remarkable story of a company succeeding by challenging norms and conventions through decades of change, Invested also offers unique insights and lifelong principles for readers—the values that Schwab has lived and worked by that have made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. Today, his eponymous company is one of the leading financial services firms in the world.

Advance praise for Invested

“I’ve admired Chuck Schwab for a long time. When you read this book, you’ll understand why.”—Warren E. Buffett

“This is a fascinating story that teaches you about the never-ending evolution of an entrepreneurial company, but even more about personal learning from that experience. So read, learn how to learn from experience, and enjoy.”—George P. Shultz, former secretary of Labor, Treasury, and State

Ratings and reviews

AAA

About the author

Charles Schwab is the founder, chairman, and co-CEO of The Charles Schwab Corporation, one of the nation’s largest financial services firms. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, where he earned his BA in Economics and his MBA from the Graduate School of Business. Author of the bestselling Charles Schwab’s Guide to Financial Independence, he is also the cofounder and chairman of the Schwab Foundation for Learning, a nonprofit agency providing support and guidance for parents of children with learning differences, as well as chairman of All Kinds of Minds Institute, a nonprofit institute dedicated to the understanding of differences in learning. He is the father of five children and lives with his wife, Helen, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Fred Sanders has been seen on Broadway (The Buddy Holly Story), in national tours (Driving Miss Daisy and Big River), and on TV, including Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs, Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. A native New Yorker and Yale graduate, he now lives in LA.