They never settle for being just good enough.Detroit?! Michigan?! Industrial has-been. Urban wasteland. The Big Three on life support. Crime out of control. Unemployment through the roof. Neighborhoods abandoned. Politicians dishonest and corrupt. The city that lost 25 percent of its population from 2000 to 2010. That Detroit, Michigan?!
Yes, said my real estate advisor, that’s the one. It was late 2009, in the throes of the Great Recession, and my advisor was recommending I build my movie studio complex in the Detroit area, in Allen Park on the city’s edge. Before I could lodge my protests, he rattled off the benefits of the property: buildings and warehouses already there, including a jail and a courthouse perfect for filming, and a cafeteria and classrooms—a film school even. More than a hundred acres—it could be the biggest studio in the country.
But it’s Detroit! Did he think I was crazy?!
Well, apparently I am. Because the next day I was at the site, being shown around by city officials, and within two weeks we were on the property. My Hollywood production company, Global Renaissance Entertainment Group, moved its headquarters to Allen Park and established the Wylie Institute for the Study of Entrepreneurship and Wylie Studios. Six major films were soon slated to be made at the new facility within the coming three years. Arthur Wylie, the self-made business mogul from North Carolina, had put his money and reputation on the Detroit area. Detroit, the recession’s ground zero, where four-bedroom houses were listed for $5,000 and still weren’t selling, the place nobody wanted to move to and many wanted to abandon, if only they could.
A logical move? A smart decision? Maybe not at first blush. But my fearless and crazy instincts told me to go ahead, to strike the deal. In fact, a few of my business colleagues who admired the decision called me “fearless.” Many more shook their heads and called me “crazy.” But that decision (like this book) was based on the fact that sometimes the best decisions you’ll ever make are fearless or crazy—or both.
Those hookers and pimps and garbage and guns I imagined everywhere on the streets of Detroit? Not so much. The city is recovering and reinventing itself. Major redevelopment projects are springing up. The downtown is revitalized and renewed. The auto industry is back with a vengeance. Detroit even promoted itself creatively during the 2011 Super Bowl and has continued since then with Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” commercials.
It seemed like a good time to hang up my shingle in the Motor City.
And for this fearless and crazy entrepreneur, the story gets even better. The state of Michigan welcomed filmmakers with open arms and a fistful of dollars. It had some of the most generous film industry tax incentives in the country, with a refundable tax credit of up to 42 percent for production expenses. That means if I made a $10 million movie in Michigan, I would get back as much as $4.2 million after completing the film. Now that’s an incentive. I got so excited that I told my team, “We’re not going to Michigan just to make movies; we’re going to make history!”
Arthur Wylie fearless and crazy? You bet—all the way to the bank.
I’m not unique, of course, and that’s the message of this book. The first question I ask any mega-successful person I meet is, “What’s the craziest or most fearless thing you ever did to make money?”
Do they think my question rude, intrusive? Not at all. In fact, they can’t wait to tell me. And as you might expect, their answers vary widely. Yet the things these entrepreneurs have in common are striking. What I notice about these people is this:
They never settle for being just good enough.
They take advantage of opportunities they are passionate about.
They always start with small goals and build to something big.
They take chances even when the rule book tells them to play it safe.
They listen to their gut, not to what others say is proper and prudent.
Some of the most successful people I know—most of them, in fact—are prouder of the fearless and crazy things they’ve done than they are of all their logical, orderly, rational decisions.
Setting up shop in the Detroit area wasn’t my first fearless and crazy decision. Far from it. In fact, I got my start by making such decisions. I began what eventually became my $475 million financial services company, Arthur Wylie Wealth Management—an enterprise that managed assets and transactions throughout the United States—in my college dorm room in the 1990s. And I did it with a stack of fresh credit cards. As I’m sure you’ll recall, credit card companies were marketing themselves everywhere and anywhere in those days, including on college campuses. You could pick up simple card applications at just about any restaurant, shop, or gas station. It was the old-school American way—not a good plan for building a satisfying, wealthy life. In fact, a warning: Kids, don’t try this at home, or in your own career.
Anyway, I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant one day when I noticed my first credit card promotional flyer; it was for a MasterCard. I filled it out, placed it on the table between my wonton soup and kung pao chicken, and started doing the math. If I got a few hundred or a few thousand dollars in credit on every card I applied for, I could have access to tens of thousands of dollars in no time. By the time I bit into my almond cookie, I was hooked.
I soon noticed that every Chinese restaurant or locally owned food shop had a similar flyer offering a free application for a credit card. It seemed like each place had a different offer, and needless to say, I spent a lot of that summer eating Chinese food and filling out credit card applications.
Once the cards started rolling in, I had access to more than $100,000 in untapped credit. I charged some office supplies, installed a few phone lines, printed up some business cards, and—boom—Arthur Wylie Wealth Management was born right there in the dorms of the University of North Carolina–Charlotte (UNCC).
It worked; the company quickly blossomed. I was able to juggle my credit payments and finesse my debt—until I finally didn’t need all that plastic anymore.
But in the wealth management business, you’re only as successful as your clients, and in fact, you can have success only if you have clients. The treadmill was relentless. If I stood still, I was losing ground. I had always preached “residual” income when I gave financial advice—income that would keep on flowing after the creative work, the hard stuff, was done. Now I wanted some for myself. I became intrigued by intellectual property—books, scripts, songs, movies—creations that could provide ongoing income in the form of royalties or residuals. I could be the person who created the product, or I could be the producer who packaged it and took it to market. And with business profits shrinking and the recession beginning, I started looking at these options. The American way—in other words, maintaining significant debt and assuming you’ll be fine as long as you invest and have a 401(k)—seemed to be failing the American people, including me.
And so Arthur Wylie, successful wealth management consultant and sought-after public speaker, got fearless and crazy once more and jumped into something new: movies. (For a closer look at all that I do, visit www.arthurwylie.com.)
One of my chief film inspirations was producer/director/writer James Cameron. His movies have been some of the biggest box-office hits in history. He’s the most fearless risk taker in Hollywood. He’s a powerful creative force and a technological genius. (You’ll read more about him in Chapter 7.) If I wanted to aspire to true greatness in the film business, Cameron was the ideal role model.
Two other filmmakers who also have inspired me are Steven Spielberg, perhaps the greatest cinematic storyteller ever, and Tyler Perry, an ambitious entrepreneur who parlayed his popular stage plays into a film franchise. Perry’s movies are often similar, but he knows his audience and what it wants.
Like Perry with his plays, Cameron and Spielberg frequently have taken an asset-backed property, such as a book or play, with a significant audience already “attached,” and created hugely successful films. Cameron’s Titanic and Spielberg’s The Color Purple are good examples.
I had just the client to get me started on a trajectory similar to that of Cameron, Spielberg, and Perry: New York Times best-selling author Omar Tyree.
Tyree’s novels have been read by more than 8 million people. He’s at 18 books and counting, and in 2001, his For the Love of Money won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction. In 2006, he won the Phillis Wheatley Literary Award for Body of Work in Urban Fiction. He’s a journalist, performance poet, songwriter, screenwriter, entrepreneur, creative genius, and an accomplished public speaker. His books are urban and contemporary but optimistic and uplifting as well. The key was that I knew I could adapt his stories to please a variety of new audiences, across racial and gender lines, who were not his usual fan base but who would still love the topics. His themes are universal: love, friendships, life goal, and lifes challenges.
And he was curious about me and my movie ideas.
Long story short, I have acquired film rights to Tyree’s books and am currently adapting Leslie, his supernatural thriller set in New Orleans, and his best seller, Flyy Girl. Omar Tyree and I became business partners. He creates content, and I leverage that content, find investors and capital, and look for ways to market his work internationally. I then form production deals with some of the hottest producers and writers in Hollywood to balance and expand our creative portfolio. So far, I’ve struck deals with those responsible for The Lord of the Rings, 300, Superman Returns, and Final Destination.
And we planned on producing some of our new projects at Wylie Studios in Allen Park, Michigan, outside Detroit. My fearless and crazy moments seemed to be coming together.
But enough about me (for now). This book is about fearless and crazy decisions, be they in business or life. We’ll look at some famous ones; we’ll look at some simple ones. We’ll discover how those decisions came about and why they worked (or sometimes didn’t). We’ll learn how success and failure often turn on those outrageous, outlandish, from-the-gut choices. The people in this book, everyone from independent entrepreneurs and corporate billionaires to a controversial president and a beloved pope, pulled off tremendous feats in their chosen fields, reaping phenomenal, unprecedented rewards despite—or because of—the very real risks.
Most important, we’ll get your creative juices flowing, get you thinking about when you’ve been fearless and crazy and when you’ve held back and waited. We’ll give you insights and tips to help you prepare yourself for the unexpected, the surprising, and the unique. We’ll get you ready to make that split-second call, to take that leap of faith, or to follow that gut instinct—just like all the men and women in this book did.
So strap yourself in. It’s going to get crazy.