While obviously no slouch for having toughed out a stint in the Vietnam War as a Marine and having graduated from Harvard Business School with honors, he felt he wanted something more than a dead-end managerial position. Mixon finally told his wife he just would like to have a company that was his own. He decided to take a risk and - feeling he could succeed - used all his personal savings of $10,000 and assembled a $7.8 million buyout of Invacare, a weakened subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that made wheelchairs. While growing Invacare's sales from $19 million to almost $2 billion, Mixon became a highly successful investor, a dedicated philanthropist and an advocate for health care. In "An American Journey," Mixon explains why who you are is really a collection of your life's experiences: If you are curious about things and like people, it will do a lot to develop yourself professionally. It did for Mixon. Along with his "can do" attitude, he pulled himself out of obscurity, got his MBA from Harvard Business School, survived service in the Vietnam War, was triumphant over cancer and a stroke, built an impressive investment history of over 100 deals, and has a record of giving back. Here is how he accomplished it all, and how you can be inspired to rise up from humble origins to be a successful entrepreneur.

Hide more