THE AMERICAN DREAM: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
What is the American Dream? When asked to define the American Dream, RMITs cite freedom as the greatest by-product of their success—other than the money, of course. Freedom to live as they please, freedom to be a perpetual student, freedom to use philanthropy as a mechanism to change the world, or simply freedom to do just about anything their innate, unique abilities allow them to achieve. Cynics like the late comedian George Carlin have said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.” RMITs really don’t buy into that kind of cynicism (and by the way, George Carlin also died a very rich man). RMITs appreciate the humor, but they feel strongly that $100 million or more does, indeed, buy a lot of freedom and a lot of happiness.
Jorge (he prefers the pronunciation of George) Pérez is the richest man in Miami, Florida. The real estate mogul of Related Industries and the most successful Hispanic American in the United States, he has his mark on virtually every condominium building with blue-water views of the Atlantic Ocean. “The American Dream is the freedom to do the things you want to do with the people you want to do them with,” he says. “That’s success.” He should know. He fought hard to get here from Argentina and Colombia as the son of Cuban exiles.
Peter Nicholas, the co-founder of Boston Scientific, notes that those who are cynical about financial success usually do not have the drive or the ability to achieve the American Dream. He warns, “There’s a big difference between long-term sustainable success and fast bubble success.” The whiplash of the last Internet bubble is indelibly etched in his mind, as are the dizzying recent market gyrations. David Jones of Humana fame, Louisville, Kentucky’s top slugger and definitely a long-term success, says, “You’re living the American Dream if your children are independent. It’s also great if you have created jobs for your community. I figure I have created over a hundred thousand jobs with my businesses.”
Robert Jepson Jr., Savannah, Georgia’s savant of success, says the American Dream is “having the greatest number of personal options to do good in one’s life: to provide for others, to live a productive life, to be able to provide for one’s community, and to be recognized by your peers as successful in your personal endeavors.” He admits, though, that since he made his fortune in the buying and selling of companies, much of his definition of the American Dream is now in the accumulation of wealth. With major successes in the three businesses that he has built or turned around (more on that later), Jepson has spent his well-earned wealth at least partially on a great lifestyle and in his powerful philanthropic works. Perhaps his proudest achievement, though, is endowing the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at his alma mater, the University of Richmond.
When I asked the RMIT in Dayton, Ohio, Clayton Mathile (pronounced ma-TEEL), how he personally defined the American Dream, he said, without any hesitation, “Applause at home.” He says this means your wife loves you, your kids love you, and your best friends love you. Sometimes the simple truths are, indeed, the most powerful. Even though Mathile has billions in the bank thanks to his success with Iams, the premium pet foods company that he sold to Procter and Gamble in 1999 for $2.3 billion, he still reverts to what he considers true success—the love and respect of family and friends. He says, “I didn’t want to look back on my life and think that my biggest accomplishment was just making a big ol’ pile of money.” The former farm boy did have a hard time selling the company that had come to define him, however. He says his wife, Mary, used to joke that Iams was “like their sixth child who grew up, but wouldn’t leave home.” That sixth child did finally leave home in what was at that time the largest acquisition P&G had ever made.
Clay Mathile agrees with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others: To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” Perhaps this is why Mathile has built a 114-acre campus just outside Dayton called the Center for Entrepreneurial Education where he spends much of his time today in a post-pet-foods world. He wants to use his considerable resources and expertise giving local entrepreneurs the education and mentoring to one day enjoy a self-made success similar to his. These are the kinds of rewards that RMITs seem to enjoy most. These are their American Dreams.
How likely are you to become an RMIT? If, as we know, there are more than nine million millionaires in this land of three hundred million Americans, that means approximately one in every thirty-three thousand of us is a millionaire. You also now know of the fallacy that the rich in America are all a part of the Lucky Sperm Club. Fully 90 percent of all wealth in America today is first-generation wealth. There is not a Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, or Whitney written about in this collection of RMITs. The folks in this book are all self-made. Further, two-thirds of the current Forbes 400 list (the four hundred richest people in the country) are also self-made, proving once again that America is still the land of opportunity where anyone can make it, if you have the right stuff or choose to cultivate the right stuff.
There is one element that $100 million or more of net worth can’t buy—time. The very rich are no different from anyone else when it comes to this highly prized commodity. We all have the same twenty-four hours in each day. As is noted in the Broadway musical Rent, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. But it’s not how many minutes there are, it’s what we do with those minutes that matters, and in many ways this determines whether you will become the most successful person in your hometown. Biotech billionaire Randal J. “RJ” Kirk of Belspring, Virginia, a town that consists mostly of his six-thousand-acre farm with its own runway for landing his private jet, says, “The only relationship we have to the future is through this moment in time.” He adds, “This architecture of thinking emphasizes the importance of optimizing now. This moment in time is all we have, so we must make the most it.”
It is readily apparent to me that RMITs optimize their time better than most of us. This key ability is one of the principal reasons for their blazing success and hefty bank accounts. RMITs also appear to need much less sleep than the rest of us. Former air force pilot and real estate developer Leroy Landhuis of Colorado Springs says, “I have a physiological phenomenon that requires me to need almost no sleep. I don’t sleep more than twelve to fifteen hours a week max, but I function at the same level whether I sleep or not. Consequently I get a lot more opportunity to read.”
Almost embarrassed, Providence, Rhode Island’s Jonathan Nelson, the private equity prince whose firm Providence Equity Partners recently completed the largest leveraged buyout in history (in excess of $50 billion) and who owns movie studio MGM, explains his work ethic by quoting Shakespeare’s powerful refrain: “The test of a vocation is the love of its drudgery.” He says, “I don’t sleep much. I work way too much, but it’s because I truly enjoy it.” Peter Drucker, a management expert and philosopher hero to many RMITs, was famous for saying, “There are not 24 hours in a day—there are only two to three that matter. It’s what you do with those two to three hours that determines one’s success.” Savannah’s Bob Jepson agrees: “Time is the greatest gift we have and I don’t want to waste a minute of it. I want to get up every day and have it include some joy, some happiness, not only for me, but everybody around me.” San Antonio’s Red McCombs sums it up this way: “Time is a million times more valuable than money—you can always get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
What follows are American RMITs’ very personal stories and the Twelve Commandments to finding and enjoying success and wealth in America today. Unlike the thousands of diet books that come and go on the market—each promising a better way to lose weight and stay fit with its own unique gimmick—The Richest Man in Town has no get-rich-quick gimmicks, just the proven methods of the most successful self-made people of our time. As Bernard Marcus, the richest self-made man in Atlanta and the founder of Home Depot, told me, “It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to become an overnight success. It took me twenty-five years.” David Green, the Oklahoma City success story and founder of Hobby Lobby who says he doesn’t consider himself self-made—he prefers the term God-made—concurred with Marcus when he said, “I have worked thirty years to become an instant success.” Here’s wishing you great joy on your passage to becoming the richest man or woman in town. Remember, these RMITs prove that the joy is in the journey.