The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!)

32 The

Ten

Roads

to

Riches

of

Nucor

(covered later this chapter) was.

None

were what I con-

sidered a role model

CEO.

Back at

MPC

I had to pay for my own hotel rooms and was

starving.

The

cheaper the hotel the more alone you feel.

One

night,

alone in my $18 flop-house hotel room, I sat thinking. Alone, alone!

No

TV:

No

phone.

No

air conditioning. Son of Asperger's before

Asperger's was known. Dots started connecting. My father had writ-

ten a book and it had been good for him in the 1950s. I had the

price-sales ratio thing. Even my childhood political foray made

sense-you

get

out

what you

put

in. I could manage and lead at least

a few folks. Maybe

I could learn to write. Maybe about

price-

sales

ratios. Maybe I could build a firm that just did money management.

So after

MPC,

I started building my firm. (That's the founder-CEO

route in Chapter 1,

not

this one.) But for any

CEO

there are two

major issues:

How

to get the job and how to lead.

HOW

TO

LEAD

Hey, I just told you how to

lead-from

the front. Show up, care,

focus on people, be

there-early

and late. Focus on every

rung

of

the ladder separately and together. Spend time with managers.

Spend time with line soldiers. GIve your

time-s-from

the

from.

Don't

ask

them

to do anything you wouldn't do. Make

them

know

you care. Go with sales folks to see their

customers-your

custom-

ers.

Go

with your folks to see your

vendors-their

vendors.

If

you

travel and they fly coach, you must also. Stay in the same hotel and