Hard Ships Audiobook By David Giersdorf cover art

Hard Ships

Navigating Your Company, Career, and Life Through the Fog of Disruption

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Hard Ships

By: David Giersdorf
Narrated by: Nathan Zak
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About this listen

Disruption is upon you.

This is the way out.

A thick fog of disruption has rolled into your life. Maybe your entire industry just went into freefall. Or your business is struggling mightily. Perhaps your career path has been upended.

Whatever your situation, the world as you know it has changed. You may feel despair, fear, even anger. You have no idea what to do next. Is there a way through this?

YES.

That’s the answer executive and entrepreneur David Giersdorf presents in Hard Ships, which details his four decades of experience navigating brutal disruptions in the cruise ship industry and achieving innovation and growth. David knows disruption - and how to find a way through it. In addition to navigating his fair share of personal disruptions, he’s helped major companies, small businesses, and individuals withstand catastrophe, including the Gulf Wars, Y2K, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, the H1N1 pandemic, and notable industry disasters. Then when COVID-19 swept the earth, and the $45 billion annual revenue cruise industry lost $65 billion in market value, David’s experience and advice guided companies toward recovery.

Drawing on counsel David has given countless clients, companies, and career professionals, Hard Ships helps people facing disruption, particularly those struggling in the aftermath of COVID-19. What works to stabilize the cruise industry works anywhere for anyone, from publicly traded companies to self-employed freelancers. Cruising is the most operationally complex and difficult industry on earth, with self-contained smartcities that operate 24/7 on the world’s oceans and rivers. What happens anywhere can impact the entire industry. A ripple anywhere can become a tsunami everywhere. Hard Ships repurposes David Giersdorf’s hard-learned strategies for any situation, from pandemics and market panics to everyday personal change.

©2021 David A. Giersdorf (P)2021 David A. Giersdorf
Economic History Personal Finance Transportation Natural Disaster
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Exceptional. Highly Recommended.

Hard Ships is really two books in one. At the core, it's a Ray Dalio-style distillation of truths, insights, and best practices that will help anybody navigate through the fog of disruption -- be it personal, family, running small business or a Fortune 500 multinational. It's rare to find someone who 1) Has spent his life and career on the front lines building and achieving in the face of adversity, meeting one challenge after another by squaring off, accepting what's true, thinking fresh and both drawing upon and replenishing one's core values and principles; 2) Is introspective and quietly thoughtful enough to reflect and record what he's learned; and 3) Takes the time and makes the effort to share insights with others.

Hard Ships is also a fascinating, insider narrative of the modern cruise industry. David leaves no dimension untouched -- everything from marketing, emergency operations, economics, revenue management and pricing, the emergence of the small-ship "expedition" segment, the colossal disruption of COVID-19 and well-informed predictions of what lies ahead. If you've every wondered what goes on behind the scenes in the cruise industry, this book is for you. Bonus material: advice on how to extract oneself from quicksand, and train for an ironman triathlon.

This is a book rich in takeaways. You'll be thinking about it, and referring to it, long after the first read.

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