Brother, Do You Have the Time?
107
$10 million . . . jet plane . . . a family lifestyle of $100,000 a month minimum living expense. . . . Our timber and apartment housing business is on a 50%/50% basis. We have only three employees . . . our annual sales of timber and timberland alone average $8 million. . . . Don’t even have a secretary but I love what I do. . . . Yes, I’m different . . . I enjoy also being the manager of one of our timber ranches, 5,000 acres . . . mow a lot on my Kubota tractor while listening to XM radio. . . . plant 3.5 million trees a year. I personally hand plant 10,000 trees for knowledge and exercise. Jim understands what factors account for tree growth and correspondingly his net worth. The trees talk to Jim. They often tell him: “Jim, we don’t care how much you spent for your watch . . . has nothing to do with our rate of growth. . . . But, in general, Jim, pricey watches may be detrimental to enhancing your wealth.” Jim needs a watch in order to know what time it is. He does not need one to imitate or impress his wealthy neighbors (if he had any). Jim’s neighbors and his six dogs—“mostly strays I picked up on my timberland”— don’t care much about status. Do you think that the strays that Jim rescued would prefer that their savior wore a $40,000 watch and drove a Range Rover? They care that Jim took them in, housed them, cared for them, fed them, even loved them. Could it be that dogs have more common sense than a lot of us? Jim does borrow money, but never for personal consumption: Have debt . . . but always have $20 million worth more of trees than debt not counting land value . . . lock in rates for three to five years minimum. Jim’s bankers are not impressed by people who “wear their wealth.” Rather, they admire and are very much impressed with Jim’s balance sheets and income statements. These are meaningful badges of success.