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For The Love Of MONEY John Silvera, an ambitious teen, and Frank Morsani, a successful businessman, trade thoughts on hard work, education and what it takes to get rich

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 16, 2007

One of the Tribune's new teen columnists, John Silvera, told us his goal is to make lots of money. One of our new adult community columnists happens to be Frank Morsani, an affluent businessman and major philanthropist. We invited the 18-year-old graduate of Chamberlain High School to sit down with the millionaire and discuss wealth and success.

John: I like to make money legally. It's my hobby. I used to play soccer, and once I gave that up I got another interest, which is to be successful. I want to take care of my parents and all my family. It's my dream.

Frank: That's certainly commendable.

John: I personally think the secret to being rich is being lazy. Let me elaborate. By me not wanting to work is going to push me into actually developing a system that's going to allow me not to work.

Frank: Do you have something you want to do to be successful?

John: Right now I like real estate. I'm trying to become a real estate consultant. I'm working on setting up a series of corporations, and I can start developing my business.

Frank: What is your background for doing that? Was your education or family background in that business?

John: I read a lot. Since I don't have a job because my family supports me, I just stay home and have a stack of books. I get books from the library, and I just read them.

Frank: So what are you doing other than reading? Are you looking for a job in the construction industry?

John: I've worked construction, but it's not what I'm interested in. So I'm working on the real estate part trying to get good relationships with lawyers and looking for an accountant and talking to people that are interested in the same thing - I try to learn from them.

Frank: How do you perceive moving up that track?

John: I'd like to do it by myself rather than have a job because what I'm really interested in is the real estate consultant thing. I don't want to be a real estate broker or a mortgage broker. My plan is to find people interested in purchasing homes and who don't have enough credit and want a lease option and get that for them.

Frank: Do you think that's possible, without being in the industry, that it just automatically happens that way?

John: Yeah. What do you mean not being in the industry? Working for a big company?

Frank: I think the majority of us don't always do immediately what we'd like to do ultimately. It's a progression through life.

John: I give myself five years to set up the business and start developing it and acquiring real estate and doing sales.

Frank: If you talk about purchasing real estate, you either have to have a certain amount of cash or a certain amount of credit. Then you have to have a lot of staying power. You've got to know the industry, understand it, work in it, then you can create the piece of the industry that you want....

Going back to the thesis of our meeting: You want to make money. How do you propose to, without having a job and without going to work for someone and serving an apprenticeship? I didn't buy my first company until I was 40 years old - how are you going to prepare yourself?

John: My whole theory, and this is what I base everything on, is I want to buy and sell whatever asset is out there. Then I can acquire enough money to buy things myself. I want to own buildings and apartment complexes. The first thing to start doing is selling property and charging a commission. With that money, I can build up and get something else.

Frank: Consultants are people who have had experience in the various industries; they're products of a long time in their industry. Then they can be consultants. That's what I see. In the automobile industry those of us who are periodically asked our advice have 20 or 30 years experience. We know how to give advice on how to work through a problem or expand their business. I think most consultants are people who have experienced all the heartaches and difficulties of how you put something together.

Forced To Move

Frank: My father never got out of the 6th grade. Momma's still alive; she's 97. They ran off and got married and all us kids were born before Mom was 21. My father became a welder. They lived in Arkansas at that time and they ran off and got married and went to Detroit and went to work in the car business. When the Depression came along, Daddy lost his house and everything so we all moved back to Arkansas in 1932.

My Daddy was the most successful man I've ever been privileged to know. The people he worked for thought he was the best worker there ever was. He worked hard to provide for his family. His family loved him till the night he died of a heart attack.

When I was a boy, he was gone from the first of April to the first of November working on pipelines and then he'd be home for the other months. We got electric lights when I was 10 years old. We never had indoor plumbing or telephones until I went off and joined the Navy.

I guess I've used my father as my personal goal. If I can be half as successful as he was, I'm going to be a very happy man.

I worked my way through college as an automobile mechanic. I went to work for Ford Motor Company and became a tech writer, making owners and service manuals. Later on worked for Ford and that's how I got to Florida, they transferred me to Jacksonville.

Then a dealer hired me and I managed in Florida, California, New Jersey. Then I bought my first company here in 1970. But I wasn't ready to buy a company until then.

I took an accounting course because I was calling on dealers and didn't know how to read a financial statement. I took accounting by correspondence from the University of Florida. I used to work the practice sets by hand in my hotel room when I was traveling from Monday-Friday. Then I enrolled in economics. You can never stop learning.

Later I started buying and growing companies. I didn't do it when I was 25 because there're so many pieces to a company that one has to learn.

John: My father studied industrial engineering and he was the general manager of a clothing company in Colombia. They had nine stores and 10 years passed and he left the company when they had 22 stores. So he doubled, by himself, the company.

He's a good man. After that, with all the violence, we moved here. He got a job as an electrician. He started learning English.

My dad is very successful. I think he's the most successful person I've ever met. Even though he doesn't have a lot of money and he has to get up and go to work every day. I think just by raising and taking care of his family and moving from Columbia to here, he's a very successful man.

We've lived here eight years. He's still working for the company but hopefully we can do something more for him. I really don't want him to keep working like he's working.

I don't want to work for anyone. I like my own rules. I tried a couple things before and failed. I tried a lawn mowing business. There's a lot of competition.

I tried something to do with alternative fuel as far as natural gas and propane. I failed at that too. I run into things I can't help. So I move into this. If I fail this one, I'll probably move onto something else. Nine out of 10 businesses fail, so I'm going to build 10 to get one. ...

I don't have a lot of faith in the educational system here. I think for the most part it's obsolete. I studied for 12 years, and I'm not ever using calculus or advanced literature. It doesn't teach you how to be a success in life.

Frank: I think school teaches you to think. The reason we have 12 years is we think people will have some maturity when they're 18 years old, but the real job of education is to create thought processes. None of us knew when we graduated from high school, planned on being where we are today.

How Frank Hires

Frank: I like people who like to work. When I'm interviewing people for work, I ask them what their mother and father do, what they do. I like people who have a history of working. When we find people who don't have a history of working, we generally don't hire them. We see a lot of people who don't want to give the labor that it takes to get up every morning, report to work, do a good day's work. Promotions are by osmosis. People who take great pride in what they're doing, you move those people along.

John: I've been working since I was 10. Last Saturday and Sunday I was doing a roof for my dad; a couple months back I built my mom another bathroom. I know how to work, and I've worked a lot; I just don't like to. It's hard to get up at 7 or 6 a.m. and hard to carry stuff around, and I just don't want to do it. I don't want my dad to do it, and I don't want my kids to have to do it, either.

Frank: I think you've got to make a fundamental shift in your desire and that is get involved in a construction company or a development company. I don't think you can sell a home today in the state of Florida without having a license. There's a broker's license, there's a retail license and I think before you can sell a property you have to have a license. I would think that there's nothing wrong with working for somebody because you learn so much from working for other people.

You learn from your mistakes and from their mistakes. We learn by our failures, not our successes. I think most of us have to start out working for someone else. I understand what you're attempting to put together and I'm not naïve, but I think that's a real long shot. I think you can bring it to fruition by getting involved in business, and then you can look at it from the inside rather than from the outside.

John: It's always a great opportunity to work for somebody and learn from them, but I think it's a better opportunity to work with them.

Frank: Money is a byproduct of what we do in life. Everybody wants a paycheck on Friday so you better make a profit. It's up to us as stewards of resources to create a profit so we will be able to make everybody's paycheck. Being a good steward of financial resources is an important responsibility. Sometimes you have to make painful decisions. Money is a two-edged sword at times. It has corrupted people because of the greed factor. Becoming greedy is a very dangerous position to be in. Be careful about the word greed. You can become corrupt intellectually. ...

I hope that we've addressed some issues that John hadn't thought about; that as he goes through his life that some of the issues brought out today will be meaningful to him.

John: It was a great opportunity to meet someone like Frank. Even though I might not agree with everything, I will take it into consideration. What he said about greed and the corporate world. You always have to give back. That really touched me.

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