Wayne von Borstel is the author of “The Manual,” which examines the most crucial skills necessary to succeed in business and life. In this interview with Wayne, he discusses what it means to be a manual-skilled individual, the importance of learning new skills, and his thoughts on succeeding without college. In 2011 Wayne’s book “The Manual” was published by Yale University Press and quickly became required reading for students at Ivy League universities.
- Career
Wayne von Borstel has worked in the financial services industry since 1980. He began his career as an institutional broker working with some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated clients. Wayne has spent time on both sides of the buy-sell transaction, as an advisor helping clients achieve their financial goals and making markets, and as a trader developing strategies to capture risk premia. He also worked as a trader in the high-yield bond market, with over $5 billion in volume. Wayne began to write “The Manual” after corporate America lost the “battle of ideas” to the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and other high-brow publications.
- Awards
Borstel has been awarded over 20 awards for his writing, including two first prizes in the James Dyson Honors Writing Competition (one for fiction and one for nonfiction). The University of Pennsylvania gave him an award for his article “Exiting and Managing a High-Yield Bond Portfolio.” The Society of Foreign Investment Professionals awarded him their prize for “Outstanding Achievement in Corporate Finance” He also won the “Regional Chapter Award for Fundraising” from UNICEF.
He has shown his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the National Arts Club in New York. Wayne von Borstel has created work for the theater and is a member of SAG-AFTRA. Wayne von Borstel had sent the Manual as a PDF to friends, family, and colleagues. He then self-published it on Amazon as an e-book. A book agent found him through his Amazon reviews and asked if he would be interested in meeting with the top publishers in the country.