Topping our list as Business Reform’s Entrepreneur of the Year is Phillip Anschultz, entrepreneur and investor extraordinaire. The story goes that in his early days as a drilling business owner, one of his oil fields caught on fire. He called on Red Adair to put out the fire, but Adair was hesitant to do so because he wasn’t sure that Anschultz would be able to pay him. Thinking quickly, Anschultz then called up a Universal Studios and for $100,000 he sold them the exclusive rights to film the fire for the John Wayne movie Hellfighters.

If that’s not ingenuity, then was is? Now with his hands in literally dozens of ventures—which include ownership of professional hockey’s Los Angeles Kings, five European hockey clubs, four Major League Soccer teams, interests in basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers, roughly 20 percent of movie theaters nationwide, railroads, 300,000 acres of western ranch land, and a number of telecommunication firms (most notable Qwest Communications International), to name just a few—Anschultz is among the world’s top 20 richest men with a net worth approaching what Fortune estimates to be around $16 billion (although Forbes adjusts that down a bit).

Add that to a passion for Christ, and you’ve got a pretty special gentleman.

Entrepreneur | RSS 2.0 | Comment it , or trackback this post.