William S. “Bill” Green is the straight-talking, edgy, no-holds-barred serial entrepreneur and author of ALL IN: Real Life Business Lessons for Aspiring Entrepreneurs. Having built multiple businesses from beginning to blockbuster during his 40-year career, Green is best known for “bootstrapping a startup” before anyone knew what the word “startup” meant. He propelled his first company, Wilmar Industries, from a flea market table to an industry-leading $630-million corporation with more than 2,300 employees. With decades of successes (and a few failures) to his credit, Green is ready to reveal his gritty secrets and practical tools for success.
Green has carved a reputation for going hard or going home in everything he does. He wrote ALL IN to show aspiring entrepreneurs how to fully commit to whatever they do—not just in business, but also in life. Born with a passion for maxing out his potential, Green was selling cookies door-to-door before he could read. As a paperboy, he cornered the market by working for every newspaper in town. Even after making his fortune, Bill didn’t take up golf like the other masters of the universe—he kept pushing himself with marathons and triathlons. Never content with the status quo, Bill Green just keeps coming when the rest of the pack has run out of gas.
ALL IN: Real Life Business Lessons from Aspiring Entrepreneurs will inspire readers to maximize their potential and give them the practical tools to succeed. With refreshingly candid and often humorous wisdom, Green answers the question he often hears from students and mentees: “How can a regular person make it as an entrepreneur?” ALL IN is Green’s street-smart philosophy, detailing with entertaining and insightful prose how to conceive, build, and grow a business from neophyte startup to market‑dominating success. Whether the reader hopes to start their own dog-walking service or a revolutionary mobile app, the commonsense wisdom of ALL IN applies to virtually any industry.
And that’s what makes Bill Green unique—the universality of his message. One of the few CEOs willing to share what it really takes to go from a startup founder to the CEO of a publicly traded company, Green lays all his cards on the table with humor, humility, and passion. Sure to become a perennial in the business genre, ALL IN is a must-read for those who have a great idea for a business but don’t know where to begin. Much like how he started with one table at the flea market and built it into a multi-million-dollar enterprise, Green will take readers from idea to inception to success and entertain them along the way.
Professional Bio
In his 25 years as Wilmar’s CEO, Green’s expertise in spotting shifts and trends before they happened left his competitors far behind. As the market evolved, Bill spearheaded innovations to Wilmar’s technology, built a cutting-edge national customer service network and offered groundbreaking online purchasing options to Wilmar’s customers. As the company expanded year-by-year, Green kept his hands-on approach and served as the company’s Chief Merchant until the day he left the firm.
In 1996, Wilmar went public (NASDAQ: WLMR) and Green was named Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year, sponsored by Ernst and Young, NASDAQ, and USA Today. Fortune Magazine rated Wilmar as one of the best IPOs of 1996. In 1999, Forbes Magazine named Wilmar to their list of 200 Best Small Companies in America. Meanwhile, Wilmar acquired 15 competitors while rebranding its corporate name to Interline Brands. In 2001, Green stepped down as CEO, remaining as non-executive Chairman until 2004. Enjoying the long-term payoff of Green’s leadership, today Interline is owned by The Home Depot, with revenue topping $1.8 billion.
After Wilmar-Interline, Green founded the boutique co-investment private equity WSG Partners, LLC (now known as Crestar Partners.) In the first five years, WSG Partners made nine equity investments across a broad range of industries. While the industries changed, Green’s “secret sauce” remained the same: investing in companies that pair essential products and services with cutting edge technology as well as unparalleled “over the top” customer service.
Next Green created Crestar Capital, a multi-state tax lien business that acquired over 45,000 liens in excess of $300 million in lien value and in excess of $2 billion in asset value. Four years later, Green spun that success into Crestar Homes, which acquires, renovates, sells, and leases previously owned homes. Capitalizing on Crestar’s underwriting and finance experience, Green established LendingOne two years later to provide asset based short-term loans to non-owner occupied real estate investment projects.
A longstanding member of the Young Presidents Organization, Green served not only on 12 privately held corporate boards, but on numerous non-profit boards. Today, Green serves on the Foundation Board of Trustees of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Making good on his philosophy of giving back, Green is the Financier and Chairman of the Green Family Charitable Foundation, with a focus on children’s needs-based charities. Green has also mentored young entrepreneurs and has volunteered as a guest professor in the business school at Rutgers University.
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