Brilliant, practical, obsessed with the day-to-day details of running a company-all are characteristics of the greatest business leaders of our time. This book reveals remarkable insights into these men and women, teaching timeless lessons about business, money, and even human nature. This book also features thorough background information on each leader, telling the stories of their struggles to succeed, their triumphs, and how their various experiences-both good and bad-formed their business philosophies. From the consummate salesmen...like William Wrigley, Jr., who started a soap business in the late 1800s with only $32 to his name and by 1922 was selling ten billion sticks of gum per year. To hustling hard workers...like Edwin Land, president of Polaroid-which may have been the first start-up company in history to get $750,000 out of Wall Street on a promise of inventing things for which there was no market. To self-made successes...like John D. Rockefeller, who never raised his voice or made cutting remarks, but left no doubts about his power and became one of the richest men in the country. And of course the bosses...like Harvey Firestone, whose early days as a traveling salesman gained him valuable lessons that would serve him well as he created the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company-which, thanks to Firestone, would weather the Great Depression without even having to consider reducing its dividend. In the Words of Great Business Leaders delivers enlightening, surprising, and motivating information for business readers of all industries. In the Words of Great Business Leaders presents the accumulated experience of twenty business legends, in their own words. Each leader provides inspiring and motivating wisdom that runs the gamut from investing to setting priorities to making the most of opportunity.