Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 2. JOHN C. BOGLE

Created the world's first stock index mutual fund

In 2004, chosen by Time magazine for inclusion in the Time 100 list of the world's most important and influential people

Named by Fortune magazine as one of the investment industry's four Giants of the 20th Century, 1999

It's not often you hear someone blame themselves for something that went wrong at work. John C. Bogle does not hesitate to explain why he was once fired:

I guess I was just too opportunistic, too callow, too self-confident, and maybe even arrogant. All of which, every one of those characteristics which I have come to detest, I have tried to remove from my character to the maximum extent possible.

A shrinking violet he is not.

If you were a Broadway producer casting for the god of investing, the auditions would stop when you heard the voice of Jack Bogle. His time-tested bass booms with authority based on historical research and experience. Of course he's not a god, but there is no question he is an investing legend, having started the Vanguard Group of index-based funds in the 1970s.

"I'm a very demanding, very opinionated, very strong-minded, and very experienced manager. And I'm very interested in history. I walk around thinking on issues before I make decisions, and there are very few cases where someone asks me, 'Did you think of this?' when I haven't thought of it."

The fact is that Jack Bogle changed the way Americans invest when he started the Vanguard Group and introduced the world's first ...