The year and publication are just a bit fuzzy to me, but what happened is clear.
I was a PR flack. I think it was 1999 and our visitor was a big-time reporter from New York City working for the Wall Street Journal or medium of similar global stature. He was visiting for the day to do a profile on Dr. James H. Goodnight, president, CEO and co-founder of the largest privately-held software company on the planet, SAS.
Jim and John Sall, founded SAS in Raleigh, N.C. in 1976, growing from four people to a company with more than 10,000 employees working in swank offices around the world. SAS owned castles. Had company planes. The company was privately held by Jim and John and they were annually on the Forbes Richest people on Earth list. Life was good.
So, my job on this day was to give this hot-shot reporter the ultimate great impression of SAS. A tour of headquarters and then go to Jim’s office for his interview. We had an eye-popping, campus–a beautifully manicured 600-acre natural area, original modern sculptures sprinkled walkways connecting about 30 modern office buildings, gyms, a doctor-staffed health care center and a ton more. All company owned. Jim and John’s respective homes were down a private road that was connected to campus.
SAS even had two on-site Montessori preschools for kids of employees. Daily, we would see teachers leading their little students for walks, keeping them in line and together using the “touch the rope” technique. The teacher held a rope that then went to the first kid, to the next, and so on until the last student and everyone in between keep in constant touch with the rope.
We would joke that since our turnover was so low, we would all still work at SAS when we were really, really old: “Someday, that will be US touching the damn rope because we have to make sure we get to our meetings together!”
SAS could have easily become a Cradle-to-Grave company. Just needed a few on-site nursing homes, an on-site mortuary, and already had a ton of land for the on-site cemetery.
Anyway, this reporter and I were about to leave my office and get in my car for the tour. It was always a pleasure to show people around and I called Jim just to confirm our interview later that afternoon.
“What are you doing with him now?” he asked.
“Gonna give him the tour and then bring him over”
“Bring him over now and we can all get in my car and I’ll show him around.”
We hurried and I made it a point to tell our guest that he was the first reporter I knew to be given a personal tour by Jim and I thought that we were in for something special.
Yes, that would be the case.
Within minutes the reporter and I met Jim in the lobby–a spacious bright atrium, fresh cut flowers,original paintings and sculptures– and he walked us out to his car. The company was successful and paid employees well and the reporter observed that the parking lot was full nice rides by Mercedes, Lexus and BMW. I wondered which one of these fancy specimens was Jim’s.
We passed all of those as Jim walked us over to his car.
It was an old, fern-green Buick Roadmaster station wagon. The paint was fading a bit and some of the hideous fake wood grain paneling–you paid extra for that stuff– was curling and peeling. And, I’m sure the springs and shocks on the car were worn as the car seemed lowered and had a slight list to the driver side.
It looked a lot like this one…
This was probably the homeliest car in the parking lot and it belonged to my CEO.
I absolutely loved it.
Here was this guy who could afford any supercar or exotic on wheels and several of them. He chose to drive this thing.
Jim and the reporter were in the front seat and I was in the back. We rode around in the green beast and he gave a rich, personal tour of the company that he and John built from thin-air.
We crept along as Jim talked and pointed out some things. Sometimes we even stopped in the middle of the road and people had to drive around us. Damn, if he didn’t drive like he owned the place, right? And, thank God no one honked or flipped him the finger.
I remember thinking that all that was missing was this song by War, “Low Rider.”
“All my friends know the low rider
The low rider is a little higher
Low rider drives a little slower
Low rider is a real goer”
This old wagon, driven by this Southern gentleman CEO…and I almost busted out a few times as Jim cruised his low rider sled like a pimp in Los Angeles….but it wasn’t over yet.
Turning down a road marked, “private” he said that he had to stop by his house for minute and he pulled into a large driveway of his sprawling Jeffersonian-style brick abode.
“Wait here, this will just take a second,” he said and left the engine running and walked around a corner of the house.
The reporter and I made some small-talk and then heard a thud on the hood and Jim climbed back into the car. There were three giant black bags of garbage on the hood of the Sled.
“We live down this private road with no city trash pickup and I don’t want to pay anyone to come get my garbage,” he said. “So, I just take it to a dumpster myself.”
These words were spoken by the founder and CEO of one of the world’s largest tech companies. God, I was now making muffled snorting noises in the backseat and I was hurting. The kind of pain when you think something is funny but you damn well better not laugh out loud and the harder you try not to do it, the funnier everything is and my eyes were getting moist with humor tears as this scene was just getting more and more absurd.
Jim’s green pimpwagon with these three, 50-gallon black bags full of garbage on the hood slowly making its way through campus–god forbid if they slid off. Employees not even giving it a second look as if this is all quite “normal.”
Eventually, we got to one of the SAS dumpsters behind a building and Jim got out the Sled and threw the garbage bags into the large metal containers.
Then, he just climbed back into the old green wagon.
In the last hour, I learned something.
One of the richest people on the Planet–driving this old wagon with bags of trash on the hood and chucking them into a dumpster himself to save a few bucks a month on garbage pickup.
Truly, great stuff.
Since then, I read a best-selling book, “The Millionaire Next Door” and how often people with serious money continue the frugality they practiced when they were coming up.
They do odd things for rich people. Like continuing to say in cheap hotels that they could probably buy with a single check, or flying coach class when they could go first class…or driving a beat up Roadmaster wagon with bags of trash on the hood.
I haven’t seen Jim in a long time but it’s a story I have told to my kids.
Sometimes the best impressions are made when we’re not trying.
Not caring about what other people think…being comfortable with who you are.
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A Father Looks Past Sixty 