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Knock, Knock Rich Are There

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By JAMES PRESSLEY

Bloomberg News Service

Published: January 18, 2009

Forget, for a moment, the blizzard of grim economic indicators and the suicides of billionaire Adolf Merckle and money manager Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet.

Go out instead and knock on some doors, as Ryan D'Agostino does in his new book, "Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America's Richest Neighborhoods" (Little, Brown, $26). It might restore your hope.

This is an infectious account of one journalist's quirky quest to unlock the secrets of American wealth by showing up, unannounced, at some 500 homes in affluent neighborhoods across the United States and asking, in essence, "How did you do it?"

He got some unexpected answers.

In a mansion in Lake Forest, Ill., he met Frank Heurich, a man in a faded purple Northwestern University sweatshirt who made and leased shrimp-peeling machines. In a house along Long Island Sound, he talked to Arthur Tauck, who ran Tauck World Discovery, a niche travel company. He found more wisdom from a rare-book seller in Beverly Hills, Calif., and a cabinetmaker in Paradise Valley, Ariz., among many others.

D'Agostino began Project Door Knock as a series of articles for Money magazine. He got a list of the 100 richest ZIP codes in the land, from Atherton, Calif., identified here as having the country's wealthiest ZIP code, to Westport, Conn. Then he caught red-eye flights and pounded the streets of landscaped neighborhoods until he got blisters and strange looks.

"I was invading, after all," he writes. "Politely invading, but still invading. I was knocking on the door and saying, in effect, Tell me who you are. This is your home, presumably bought with money you earned. Tell me how."

Most reporters would have called it quits after one afternoon. D'Agostino, who now works for Esquire magazine, persisted, visiting 19 towns in 11 states and tramping almost 60 miles, he writes. All told, about 50 people, or 10 percent, talked to him.

More than a few of these wealthy occupants had made their bundles from real estate, which makes the timing of this book less than ideal. You can't help but wonder if some of these folks are still rich.

Yet D'Agostino also found Andy Schachat, a driven ophthalmologist in a sprawling Tudor house in Shaker Heights, Ohio; the widow of a fashion designer, Philip Hulitar, in Palm Beach; and Bob Grosnoff, who as a stockbroker in the late 1960s and early 1970s hit on an unorthodox method for attracting high-net-worth clients.

While his colleagues focused on making a quick buck, Grosnoff put in long hours selling short-term municipal debt that paid low commissions but was good for his clients in the seesawing market of those days. His gamble was that the clients would reward him with more lucrative orders when the market revived, and they did.

D'Agostino found Grosnoff in a home with a view of Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Each of these wealthy individuals has some prosaic yet powerful lessons to impart. Open your eyes; you'll see the opportunities right in front of you. Luck doesn't exist; it comes to those who have worked hard to prepare for it. Obsession makes you work harder, so do something you love. Remember humility, the secret ingredient. Don't ever get complacent.

Take Ted Kaplan, whom D'Agostino talked to during a trip to Beverly Hills. A fruit-and-vegetable distributor, Kaplan tells D'Agostino that he moves $80 million of produce each year.

But you're only as good as your last load, he says.

What does humility get you? D'Agostino cites figures for each neighborhood. For Atherton, the wealthiest, he lists a median household income of $226,414; an average home value of $1,236,572; and an average net worth of $1,505,508.

D'Agostino can lean toward hyperbole, calling one dining table as long as a high school hallway. He also tends to flatter his subjects: One is quarterback handsome; others remind him of Donald Sutherland and Ali MacGraw.

These are mere quibbles. The book clips along in a nice breezy style laced with crisp descriptions: A house overlooking Austin, for example, affords a view of the meandering Lake Austin, the valley like a bowl full of trees, the pale, dry Texas sky painted like a wash above everything.

All of this adds up to an amusing and at times inspiring break from our days of market doom and gloom.

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