Success Leaves Clues — Follow the Clues!

I didn’t have to figure out how to be a successful entrepreneur by myself. I am fortunate to have learned about business from a great many of my friends, the majority of whom are self-made millionaires and entrepreneurs in an amazing variety of businesses.

Scott Jaffe is in the financial-services business. Marcus Adolfson is in Internet retail. Alan Sutherland is in environmental services. Linda Parelli is in the horse-training business. Russ Hatle and Pete Rosberg are in real-estate development. Bill Clark and a host of others are in the martial-arts business. David Frost is a PGA Tour player and vineyard owner. Robert Lynch is in the carpet business. All of them started with little or nothing and grew their enterprises into multi-million-dollar businesses.

Ever since I was a bagboy at the Wellington Country Club back in the 1980s, I made a habit of asking successful people how they made their money.

What did they do to become successful in the hairdressing business, the jewelry business, or the printing business?

I was still doing it fifteen years later, after I made my first million. My new friends in California were a…