1,000 Dollars & An Idea

The Big Idea"My work is to create companies and build them," writes Sam Wyly in this candid and engrossing account of the process, relationships, struggles, and strategies in technology, energy, retail, and investments over the last forty-five years that have made him one of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world.Part autobiography and part inspirational business guide, "1,000 Dollars and an Idea" is full of refreshing insights and homespun life lessons about what it takes to create, grow, and build successful companies that can challenge the world's best.Beat TallulahBusiness is a lot like football. And although football's certainly no prerequisite for success, had Sam not played in high school, his outlook on entrepreneurship would be very different.Football taught him about setting goals, coping with fear, using leverage, maximizing assets, and understanding weaknesses. It also taught him about losing - you can't learn how to win.Big BlueIn Sam's mind, early on in his ca
reer, becoming an IBM sales rep someday was as close to achieving the American dream as anyone could get. He sat down for an interview with two IBM branch managers and it went well enough that he received an offer to join the company upon graduation. But a dilemma was posed to him when Lousiana Tech offered him a new scholarship for an MBA. He knew that getting a master's meant not going to work for IBM.Some people say that life is not about what you know but who you know. He figured that because you never know who knows whom, it always pays to ask. Who you know can get you an audience. What you know and what you make of that audience is strictly up to you.Reach for a Star, Not a Handful of MudOnce his career had gotten off and running, Sam began to feel really good about the way things were going. By 1962 Sam had a two-story house on a tree-lined street in a good school district and two cars. What else did he need? He certainly didn't need to start a new business just to ha
ve more income. He was fine the way he was. Except that he wasn't. He was getting restless again.His restlessness was forcing him to face up to this single truth: He was not at heart a big-company man. He didn't want to be under anyone else's authority. He wanted to call the shots for himself.An entrepreneur always knows when to move on. And that time had come for Sam.The Birth of a CompanyStarting a business from scratch exemplifies the saying "real boats rock" - the entire procedure will most probably be a bumpy one. But you can't let this get you downIf you can't be creative, disciplined, persistent, and rationally optimistic in the face of repeated failure, you need to consider a different line of work. Stop, step back, take a deep breath, and think about where you are and what you are trying to achieve and to try to see the problem from all sides. When you take the time to let the well fill up like that, you sometimes discover a solution that's actually better than your
original idea.Multinational EntrepreneurCreating an environment to attract and hold able people was the easy part. The hard part was learning how to be a good manager.To get the best out of people who have the front-line responsibility for making the business work day to day, you need to be confident in their abilities. Moreover, you need to show them that you are confident, knowing what's going on but not meddling in their jobs or micro-managing them. You give them a chance to create wealth for themselves and for other investors while making the company a good place to work for everyone. The best work comes from highly motivated, richly rewarded, happy-to-come-in-every-morning people.Sterling SoftwareSurrounding yourself with people you already know and trust can give you a massive head start. They know how you work and you know how they work. In some cases you can even finish each other's sentences. So you hit the ground running if you can work with people you've worked w
ith previously.Enabling people to do good work and giving them the freedom to make their own decisions is the best way to run a company. Pick the right people, get in agreement on company goals, pay them well, give them a shot at doing very well, then get out of the way.Maverick InvestorSam has gone through four phases in his investment life.First, there are a whole bunch of information services and stock newsletters, so he signed up for loads of them and read everything he could. Next, he became what he calls an active investor-owner in several companies. Thirdly, there was a sort of mutual fund that Wall Street came up with called "closed-end investment funds," which focused on a particular country's stocks. Last was "the work." Sam got himself deeply involved with the actual action in an investor's life.The Good EarthWe are killing the earth with friendly fire. It has only been a few generations since we humans moved beyond the basic struggle for survival, but the cost of
winning that fight has been huge. Sam created BeGreenNow.com to enable anyone, anywhere in the world to become "carbon-neutral," by buying renewable energy credits from them. BeGreenNow.com helps consumers anywhere to calculate their carbon footprint and buy carbon offsets so that any individual or any business can reduce their impact on global warming in a convenient, flexible, and innovative way.So here's Sam's question to everyone running a business, aimed at entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs alike: What does it take to be a great company in this day and age?

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