{"id":484,"date":"2009-05-13T17:21:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T22:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/?p=484"},"modified":"2009-05-13T17:21:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T22:21:32","slug":"true-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/13\/true-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"True Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was conducting the research for what became The Richest Man in Town,<\/em> I ran into a huge problem: How was I to write a book about the secrets of creating wealth, when in interview after interview, my subjects denied that they had set out to create any wealth at all? Almost invariably, the RMITs gave me some version of the line, \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money.\u201d Randal J. (RJ) Kirk<\/strong>, a biotech billionaire<\/a> and the richest man in Belspring, Virginia, told me, \u201cIt\u2019s a Zen thing\u2014if you seek money alone as your ultimate goal, you are almost assured of not receiving any.\u201d My initial reaction to statements like that was skepticism: Well, yeah, that\u2019s easy for you to say as you sit comfortably upon your billion-dollar wallet.<\/em> I thought this was simply a white lie, one of those things wealthy people say so as not to sound arrogant or greedy. And when I questioned them further, many of my subjects admitted that in youth what they wanted to be when they grew up was\u2014rich. I can tell you, it\u2019s very much about the money.<\/p>\n

But after a hundred of those interviews, I can also tell you that for RMITs, money is just a yardstick, an indicator of something deeper. This insight crystallized in my interview with RJ Kirk. He told me, \u201cIf you find something you really love and that society finds valuable, then the money comes rather easily.\u201d I realized that this isn\u2019t just lip-service. Although they do want to achieve wealth\u2014and they all enjoy the considerable rewards of their labor\u2014what the RMITs are really after is success, which in business is measured in dollars. They want to create something lasting and self-sustaining. It really is a Zen thing: If you want to get rich, stop trying to get rich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was conducting the research for what became The Richest Man in Town,<\/em> I ran into a huge problem: How was I to write a book about the secrets of creating wealth, when in interview after interview, my subjects denied that they had set out to create any wealth at all? Almost invariably, the RMITs gave me some version of the line, \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money.\u201d Randal J. (RJ) Kirk<\/strong>, a biotech billionaire and the richest man in Belspring, Virginia, told me, \u201cIt\u2019s a Zen thing\u2014if you seek money alone as your ultimate goal, you are almost assured of not receiving any.\u201d My initial reaction to statements like that was skepticism: Well, yeah, that\u2019s easy for you to say as you sit comfortably upon your billion-dollar wallet.<\/em> I thought this was simply a white lie, one of those things wealthy people say so as not to sound arrogant or greedy. And when I questioned them further, many of my subjects admitted that in youth what they wanted to be when they grew up was\u2014rich. I can tell you, it\u2019s very much about the money.<\/p>\n

But after a hundred of those interviews, I can also tell you that for RMITs, money is just a yardstick, an indicator of something deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[160,157],"tags":[165,166,167,164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":491,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}