Ray Kroc

He felt so betrayed.

Ray didn't have that kind of money, though.

He'd refinanced his home.

He agreed to pay off the balance over five years while his salary stayed frozen.

He was handing over his profits to buy back what should have been his in the first place.

For me, Ray wrote, this was the first phase of grinding it out, building my personal monument to capitalism.

I paid tribute in the feudal sense for many years before I was able to rise.

For the next 17 years, Ray Kroc sold multi-mixers.

He had a tiny office in Chicago, but he was seldom there.

He traveled the country nonstop, hitting every restaurant and dairy convention.

His sample case weighed 50 pounds, so he put wheels on the bottom so he could pull it like a wagon.

He worked conventions until two in the morning, then woke up early the next morning to call the next client.

He had a secret technique for falling asleep that helped him.

I would think of my mind as being a blackboard full of messages, most of them urgent, and I practiced imagining a hand with an eraser wiping that blackboard clean.

If a thought began to appear, zap, I'd wipe it out before it could form.

He rarely averaged more than six hours of sleep.

Often, he only got by on four, but he slept as hard as he worked.

World War II interrupted everything.

Copper was restricted.

You couldn't build motors without copper.