Executive who endure: three business leaders share their secrets on how to thrive in uncertain times.

• Author: Hengesbaugh, Mark Gerard
• Position: Cover Story

IS there a formula for enduring business success? In other words what factors, plus time, will add up to exceptional and abiding achievement in the free enterprise arena?

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If such a recipe exists, we talked to three ultra-successful Utah businesspeople who would be most likely to know. Each has mastered the art of business accomplishment, and each trod a very different career path to success. Kenneth M. Woolley, Sr., is a virtuoso entrepreneur with many irons in the fire. J.R. Green built her success over three decades in a single industry. And James LeVoy Sorenson, Sr. is one of the most gifted inventors and business innovators of our time. We asked them to tell their stories and reflect on how enduring business success comes about.

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James LeVoy Sorenson, Sr.

If he had merely invented scores of ingenious medical products that are now ubiquitous in hospitals, such as disposable paper surgical masks, blood-recycling systems and computerized heart monitors, James LeVoy Sorenson would be a remarkable man. If he was responsible only for devising cost-effective ways to build and produce those innovative healthcare products for the benefit of millions of patients, that would be an accomplished career.

But there is more. Sorenson is also a man who built a multimillion-dollar real estate empire by squirreling away lunch money to purchase "goat pasture" above 13th East in Salt Lake City--at $25 an acre. Today, Sorenson is a billionaire and one of the 100 richest men in the world, according to Forbes magazine's 2003 ranking. Sorenson's accomplishments are extraordinary, but so too were the obstacles he overcame to secure them.

Sorenson's career trajectory does not fit the stereotype of the hyperkinetic genius with Einstein hair. "My story is the story of a man who takes many small risks that are clearly calculated," he explains. At 82 years of age, Sorenson speaks with a cherubic smile on a pleasant, Paul Harvey face, but his eyes pierce the listener with intense concentration.

The unlikely launch pad for Sorenson's out-of-this-world career was a tarpaper shack near the railroad tracks in Yuba City, California. He was born the oldest son of a hard-working ditchdigger. Slow of speech and dyslexic, Sorenson's formal education got off to a rocky start when his first-grade teacher told his mother her son was mentally retarded and would probably never be able to read. Luckily, "My mother was my champion," says Sorenson. "She always encouraged me. I was the dumbest kid in class, but I could still do fractions. Reading books was out, so I learned to read faces, and I became a problem-solver." Sorenson's grades slowly improved through high school and, dreaming big, he aimed to become a physician. But World War II and an LDS mission disrupted his path to medical school.

Despite his lack of a college degree, pharmaceutical giant Upjohn hired Sorenson to sell prescription drugs to Salt Lake physicians after the war. He had recently married Beverley Taylor, and the newlyweds scraped together the $50 down payment to buy a home in a brand new west-side subdivision named Rose Park.

Sorenson was alert to all opportunities. "I made my sales appointments with doctors early in the morning when they were at the hospital so I had my work done by 9 a.m. I didn't take the doctors out...