Burn the Boats

Executive fellow at Harvard Business School, Guest Shark on Shark Tank, and famed angel investor Matt Higgins reveals the counterintuitive formula for a life of perpetual growth that has been practiced for thousands of years by military leaders and serial entrepreneurs alike—forget the Plan B and burn the boats. From Sun Tzu to Julius Caesar, the ancient Israelites to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, there's a bold and highly effective tactic seen throughout history—when leaders want to motivate their troops for success, they destroy all opportunities for retreat, and go all-in on the mission. They burn their boats; it's win or perish, and the clarity of sheer desperation propels them to victory. Serial entrepreneur, brilliant investor, and television personality Matt Higgins makes the case that burning the boats isn't just advantageous in times of war or crisis, but a strategy we can all use to achieve our greatest dreams. Conquerors don't have a Plan B, knowing intuitively what science bears out: the mere contemplation of a Plan B weakens our resolve and diminishes our chances for breakout success. In Burn the Boats, Higgins draws from experiences in his own rags-to-riches life to show you how it's done. The lessons he's learned along the way, and witnessed in the leaders around him, are now for the first time distilled down to a template for success that's available to everyone bold enough to use it. Each chapter includes clear, actionable advice that readers can immediately start applying to their own lives, along with inspiration drawn from dozens of real-life success stories, adding up to a blueprint for a future filled with victories.

Matt Higgins is a guest shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, an executive fellow teaching at Harvard Business School, and, through RSE Ventures, the private investment firm he cofounded, an investor in some of America’s most beloved brands. A high school dropout at age sixteen, Higgins ultimately received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law and became the youngest press secretary to the mayor's in New York City history. He then helped lead the effort to rebuild the World Trade Center site before becoming an executive for the New York Jets and later vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins. Passionate about human rights, Higgins works on behalf of the Global Solidarity Fund in furtherance of Pope Francis’s mission to support refugees and migrants around the world.