As our country adjusts to a billionaire in the White House and gears up for the wealthiest cabinet in American history, I asked myself, who do I know who would tell me about billionaire bosses? Enter Arick Wierson, who has a unique résumé; he has worked for five different billionaires over the course of his career.
Arick Wierson, the son of two public school teachers in a leafy suburb of Minneapolis, is an unlikely protagonist for a career that reads more like a script for a Hollywood thriller, with storylines weaving through finance, film, fashion and politics in exotic locales such as Rio de Janeiro, Riyadh, Managua and Luanda.
I talked to Arick about what he has learned from billionaires throughout the years.
How did you end up working for so many billionaires?
I should point out that ‘working for billionaires’ is not what I do, it just so happens that my career has crossed paths with a number of highly successful businessmen and a royal family or two.
Who is the most memorable?
They are all memorable, but certainly the most inspiring of the group is Mike Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York City. I was with him for about eight years, first working on his campaign in 2001 and subsequently during his first two terms as mayor. I learned a lot from my time in his orbit, and I often find myself remembering his little nuggets of wisdom and advice.
Can you share an example?
One of Mike’s favorite lines is, “Once you have made a sale, stop selling. You might lose the deal!” Guys like Bloomberg get pitched ideas several times a day, every day, and on the occasion that someone would successfully sell him something, or get his approval, many times they would keep on talking about the idea, in effect, keep on selling. Mike would say “Make your sale then get the F— out of Dodge.” The morale of the story is that when you keep selling, you run the risk of the buyer changing his mind.
Who are some of your other billion dollar bosses?
One name that many Americans, particularly New Yorkers, will be familiar with is Leon Charney. Unfortunately, he passed away last year, but he was a real estate mogul in New York and was consistently in the Forbes 400. He played a major role in the peace process between Israel and Egypt back in the late 1970s and was the subject of a documentary film I co-produced in 2009 that focused on him and former president Jimmy Carter. Leon was a wonderful man and a very good friend. I really miss him.
What did you learn from Leon?
Leon was from another era. He really made a name for himself in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He wasn’t into email or any of the modern forms of communication. He was a letter-writer. He wrote short, business-letters that were usually a half a page at most. But he let me in on a secret: bankers love letters. The fancier the letterhead and embossing, the better. Its one thing to forward an email to your banker showing that so and so will buy your product provided you get financing. It’s another if you show up at the bank with the client’s letter in hand, on official letterhead. In many parts of the world, letters still matter, bigly.
So, two New Yorkers. Any other names we might know?
I worked for a time on a deal with one globally famous family—a prominent branch of the House of Saud—that of the late Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud and his family. I am not really at liberty to talk about that deal with any specificity, but I can assure you that my experiences working with the Saudi Royal Family to this day have the most eye-opening of all of my interactions with the global elite.
What is it like working for the Saudi Royal Family?
With Saudis, like most Arab elites, it’s all about getting to know one another before any business is even discussed. I remember spending one Christmas Eve at the Waldorf sitting in a massive suite—one larger than my three-bedroom apartment in Dumbo at the time—smoking cigars with a Prince, as we watched videos of his herd of camels on his laptop. He knew it was Christmas, and our deal had nothing to do with camels, but that wasn’t the point. He was getting to know me.
Can you talk about the other two billionaires with whom you worked?
One name, which I can disclose, is Valdomiro Minoru Dondo, or “Minoru” as he is known, is the so-called “King of Angola.” He’s a Brazilian entrepreneur and investor who played a crucial role supporting the MPLA government during Angola’s 30-year civil war. Today, he owns hundreds of companies in the country, from hospitals, bus companies, and banks to supermarkets, TV stations, and even the organization that runs the Miss Angola beauty pageant, which is part of the Miss Universe organization.
What was your biggest take-away from working for a billionaire in a country like Angola?
It’s hard to pick one—the business environment in Africa is so different than anything I had seen before. I had lived and worked in Nicaragua, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, but Angola was upside down—it took me a year to even get my bearings. Nothing was what it seemed, and it was the most challenging experience of my career—but also, in the end, the most rewarding. What I learned was toughness. With Minoru, there was no such thing as getting a straight answer. I learned to operate in an environment of extreme ambiguity and shifting sands below your feet. At the end of the day, I learned how to execute quickly.
Any other bold-faced names you care to share?
The final name I am not at liberty to discuss because I am currently working on a project for him. I will just add that he is pretty well-known in media circles.
What types of roles did you play, working around so much wealth?
I held different types of roles. For Bloomberg, I worked for him in an official capacity, as a Deputy Commissioner and President of NYC Media—the City-owned broadcast and digital media company. With Bloomberg, I was responsible for promoting the City in the aftermath of 9/11 and pushing the administration’s agenda to the news media. With Leon Charney, it was a shared passion for telling the untold story of how Jimmy Carter brought peace to Egypt and Israel. For others, the role has been in more of an advisory or executive capacity, identifying business opportunities, helping make deals happen and managing assets.
What I learned from being around so much wealth is that even billionaires feel they never have enough. It’s almost like a game, and wealth is the way you keep score. Never think, “What’s another hundred thousand to this guy who is already worth six billion?” It’s about a point on the board.
How close knit is the world of billionaire moguls?
Although many American billionaires tend to frequent some of the same locales, you would be surprised as to how many times I have been asked by one billionaire to find out the direct line to another. Then, there is this song and dance they go through to ensure that each other is who they say they are. They are hard-wired to weed out scams and cons. On the other hand, many billionaires in the developing world generally seek anonymity because if their wealth was public, it could be a security threat to their families.
With Donald Trump in the White House and with several billionaires poised to assume key roles in his administration, a lot of people are curious to know what it’s like working with people of such extreme wealth.
First of all, they all put their pants on one leg at a time! In all the cases except one—that being the Saudis—their wealth was self-made. I suspect you might get very different answers if you were to speak to someone who worked with billionaires who inherited their fortune. As a general rule, they are fairly down to earth and don’t live in the fantastical world often portrayed in film and television. They certainly live well and have their airplanes and houses across the globe, but they eat hamburgers and spaghetti just like we do.
Aren’t they generally surrounded by lots of “yes-men”?
While they expect their personal support staff to go to great ends to comply with their individual needs, the billionaires I have worked with expect critical thinking and analysis from the executives they have on payroll. Most billionaires that I’ve met, especially the self-made types, hate “yes-men.” But when you challenge them, you better have your facts straight. That’s also how you earn their respect—or lose it.
Are there common traits you can identify among these individuals, particularly the self-made billionaires?
The self-made ones are all obviously extremely bright and have an amazing work ethic, but two things that separate them from, say, your average run-of-the-mill multi-millionaire, are vision and timing. To really accumulate vast wealth you have to either corner a market or identify a trend way before everybody else. And to do that you need see ahead of the curve and know when to bet your chips. For example, Mike Bloomberg saw that technology would be the future platform of Wall Street and built the Bloomberg Terminals that bear his name to deliver information to traders electronically while everyone else was still using paper and phones. Valdomiro Minoru Dondo became Angola’s primary source for food and machinery during the country’s civil war, which enabled him to accumulate great wealth despite operating in an extremely hostile environment.
What advice or tips can you share with the federal civil servants who will now have to report to billionaire bosses?
One piece of advice that I can share is to not assume, just because an individual is extremely wealthy, that he or she throws money around. I remember going out to dinner with a billionaire and being asked to pick up the check!
Does being so wealthy limit a billionaire’s ability to connect with the challenges of normal people who have, for example, a mortgage or student loans to pay off? Particularly now that some of these individuals will be running large federal agencies?
It really comes down to the individual, the circumstances they were born into, and how they made their money. Almost all the billionaires I have been involved with have gate-keepers. These people have usually been with the individual a number of years and have earned their boss’s complete trust. To get near their boss, you usually have to go through them, but to get into business with him, at some point you usually have to know how to forge your own unique relationship. It will be interesting to see how this model translates into the public sector because many of these cabinet picks will have to rely on top deputies, many of them career civil servants, who they have never met before.
One other thing to point out: when you have a lot of wealth, you may not always appreciate immediate financial needs in quite the same way as an average Joe. So when you are selling into a billionaire and need something to move quickly, you really need to have a special carrot to create that sense of urgency.
How did it work for Bloomberg when he made the move to City Hall and do you think it will be similar for Trump and his cabinet picks?
Bloomberg basically brought his entire coterie of assistants, aides, and deputies with him from the company and the campaign. I think Trump is taking a similar approach, surrounding himself with people he trusts. That’s why you see his son-in-law, for example, as his senior-adviser. I expect many of these cabinet picks will bring in their own senior staff and other long-term trusted aides to form a circle of gate-keepers.
What wisdom have you picked up from working around so much wealth?
Working for a billionaire is not the same as being a billionaire. Never confuse the two.
Richard Hecker is the CEO of Traction + Scale, an investment holding company that builds companies transform their industries. He is also the co-founder of SeedingX.org. You can follow him on twitter @RichieBlueEyes.
