I regret the fact that I am not very good at business, but I enjoy reading about people who are great at business.
So who are some great businessmen whose biographies or life stories are worth reading?
I consider Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jay Gould (railroad tycoon) to be two really impressive businessmen. They both built fortunes out of nothing, and both seemed expert and knowing when to buy and when to sell.
People like Bill Gates for example, meh. He created one company and who knows how much of Microsoft’s success was just luck due to timing. A businessman who can succeed in various different fields, who knows when to invest and when to sell, who doesn’t have family seed capital, etc. is more impressive to me. Someone who can succeed in both boom and bust times, and who does well in various kinds of fields (real estate, manufacturing, communications, transportation, etc) is more interesting.
I think most of it comes from his money making abilities, but he seems down to earth - has a relatively simple business philosophy - and if the OP is looking for someone who has been successful (granted as an investor) in different areas - Bufffet is hard to ignore.
Not necessarily the best pick for the Title the OP used, but I think it meets the rest of his post.
Hid from the Nazis during WWII, fled to the US from Hungary in 1956, went to City College then UC Berkeley, was with Intel since it’s infancy and later became Chairman and CEO.
R.G. LeTourneau, I read three books about him many moons ago. He was an earth moving contractor for a while. He invented much of the earth moving equiptment used today, such as the turnapull. He was known as “the dean of earthmoving”. He gave much of his earnings to christian charities, and he started a college.
At our MBA school, one American was singled out as one of the two best managers in the 20th century (the other’s Matsushita.) Of course, I’m talking about a professional, a CEO, but he should count as a businessman. His book is entitled simply, “Management” by Harold Geneen.
One interesting story is that of Fred Smith, a former airline pilot, who founded Fedex.
Not sure if he qualifies as a “business person,” but it can be argued W. Edwards Deming had a more positive impact on manufacturing than any other person.
The recently passed-away Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore computers and later head of Atari Corporation, had a pretty interesting life. Born in Poland, survived German camps in WW2, came to the US and learned how to repair typewriters, then started Commodore as a typewriter service company. He was a ruthless businessman and I’ve happily devoured a couple of books about his days at Commodore.
I find your dismissiveness of Bill Gates odd - he was one of the founders of an industry (software) where one didn’t exist prior to his time.
Regardless, you might be interested in reading about Henry Kaiser, a mid-century industrialist who had success in:
Shipyards
Steel
Aluminum
Health Care (Kaiser Permanente)
Real Estate
and to a lesser extent, automobiles. He was the man responsible for the Liberty Ships used in WW2, and had his hand in many large scale projects, such as the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams.
What about Jimmy Buffet? Who else has turned one song into a real business empire?
Old joke: What’s the difference between Warran and Jimmy Buffet? One has built an enormous business empire and is fantastically rich, and the other one doesn’t sing “Margaritaville”
Cornelius Vanderbilt. His competition in Atlantic steamshipping against Edward Collins, who was receiving millions in Federal subsidies, alone is a fascinating tale, to say nothing of his railroad empire.
He ran away from home at the age of 14 around 1890 and throughout his life made and lost millions of dollars trading stocks and commodities. At one point in his life he was worth $100 million dollars (in 1930 dollars!), which he then proceeded to lose. He struggled with depression and mental illness and ended up taking his own life in 1940. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a loose biography of Livermore.
