About the Authors

Leonard C. Green, the founder and chairman of the Green Group, an accounting, consulting and tax firm, has had a long and distinguished career as an entrepreneur, academic, business consultant and investor in start-up companies. As an entrepreneur, he started a commercial real estate management corporation, and a thoroughbred horse breeding and racing operation, in addition to creating The Green Group. He has been teaching entrepreneurship at Babson College, the consensus number one school for entrepreneur-ship, for nearly two decades and is consistently ranked among the most popular professors on campus. Len has consulted with more than 1,000 business clients over his career. He has been on the advisory board of over a dozen family-owned business, and currently serves on the board of three non-profits and one NYSE-listed company. And as an investor, he has helped with the creation of SoBe, the soft drink company that was acquired by PepsiCo for nearly half a billion dollars, and was one of the four founders of (and investors in) Blue Buffalo Pet Food which went public last summer.Paul B. Brown is a long-time contributor to the New York Times, where he now writes the Off-the-Shelf book review column for the Sunday business section, Paul is a former writer and editor of Business Week, Financial World, Forbes, and Inc. He is the author or co-author of more than a four dozen books, including the international best sellers Customers for Life (with Carl Sewell) and Your Marketing Sucks (with Mark Stevens.)