No one climbs
alone.
Former Forbes publisher Jeff Cunningham spent two decades asking CEOs, Nobelists and Olympians one question: "What made you so successful?"
Their answer turned out to be who.
Buffett built a fortune. Phelps built a world record. Mandela built a country. Different lives. Devastating setbacks. Astonishing outcomes. The same three forces every time.
You have one job: choose who lifts you.
Find your First. Build your Circle. Read your Room.
Pre-order Lift Button
Coming October 20, 2026
“Insightful and entertaining, Lift debunks the myth that our ‘self-made heroes’ climbed alone.”
—William R. Kerr, Harvard Business School
If you want to improve your life, start with your circle.
"I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned me." — Senator John McCain
Across business, sports, politics, and war, the same three forces were at work.
Warren Buffett, investor and philanthropist
Dr. Reatha Clark King, chemist and Fortune 500 director
Malcolm Forbes, media tycoon
Donald Trump, U.S. president
Michael Phelps, most decorated Olympian in history
Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Nobel Peace Prize laureates
John McCain, senator and presidential nominee
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs
David Petraeus, four-star general and CIA director
Nikki Haley, governor and UN ambassador
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian dissident
Lou Lenart and Allen Cunningham, freedom fighters
Before you look inward, look around.
Three relationships will determine whether you take off.
We may have been studying success backward.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Cunningham is the former publisher of Forbes, where he led the magazine through the rise of the Forbes 400. He went on to run Zip2, Elon Musk’s first company, and served as chairman or board director of more than ten public companies. As a professor of leadership at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird and Cronkite Schools, he hosted the award-winning interview series Iconic Voices, featuring candid interviews with Warren Buffett, Michael Phelps, General David Petraeus, and other global leaders. His book, Lift, distills those encounters into lessons on achievement, resilience, and the relationships that shape extraordinary lives.
Ask Jeff a question about Lift:
Grit is overrated. Lift is underrated.
“Every reader will finish this book remembering the first person who saw who they could be, and wondering whose life they might yet help lift.”
— Barbara Barrett, 25th Secretary of the Air Force