
I have a problem and maybe you can help me with it.
I know who the richest person in the world is and it’s not Bill Gates.Ā But that’s not the problem. The problem is that I know, totally byĀ coincidence, the richest man’s daughter.
She lives in aĀ ghetto. She has a roommate because she can’t afford to live on her own.Ā She’s struggling with a business that she occasionally asks for my advice on.
One time she told me what her dad did for a living. She said I may haveĀ heard of him because he’s a “gambler”. I had heard of him in thatĀ context actually and knew many people who knew him from Las Vegas.
But he’s not a gambler. He did something in the 1980s that caused himĀ to generate so much money it makes Bill Gates look like…I can’t thinkĀ of the appropriate cliche here.
Basically, Bill Gates has aĀ lot less money than this guy. Everyone on the Forbes 400 of the richestĀ people in the world has much less money than he does.
YouĀ might think that’s impossible. Bill Gates started one of the biggestĀ companies in the world. Warren Buffett owns fruit of the loom underwearĀ AND Geico. Who could be richer?
But it would take me fiveĀ seconds for me to explain how this guy did it and you would say, “oh,Ā that was genius! No wonder he has more money than anyone.”
WhyĀ would he hide? I don’t know. The Forbes 400 tracks rich people whoseĀ wealth holdings are public knowledge. For instance, we know that BillĀ Gates has about a billion shares of Microsoft so that’s 40 billionĀ dollars plus he sold some shares and we know how much. It’s all publicĀ information.
But if you do some ingenious tricky thingĀ involving 30 different countries in the early 1980s and then that wealthĀ compounds in various ways then nobody will know who you are.
There might be more people like him. I don’t know. I was told this guy was the richest guy in the world.
“Richer than the Sultan of Brunei?” I asked. And the people who toldĀ me, laughed. “Yeah,” they said. “The Sultan of Brunei can’t wash thisĀ guy’s shoes.”
I told them about his daughter and what a weirdĀ coincidence this was. They didn’t even know he had a daughter. “He neverĀ mentioned her,” one of them said to me. But it was definitely true. AllĀ the names and places and descriptions matched up.
She has noĀ idea how much money her father has. She just thinks he gets by when he’sĀ on a winning streak and she’s afraid to ever ask him for money. SheĀ talks about him all the time.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” one ofĀ the guys who told me about him said, and then the three or four guys inĀ the conversation looked at each and one of them said to me, “he’s aĀ strange guy.”
The other day I was talking to her. She said, “IĀ don’t know how I can raise money for this business and I think myĀ partner is trying to screw me out of my share even though she does noĀ work.”
In other words, the typical problems that people justĀ starting out in business have. That’s when she told me she lived in theĀ worst neighborhood in NYC and that she might even get evicted and haveĀ to move toĀ a different city if she can’t get this business going.
Let’s say you work REALLY REALLY hard even though you already had a lotĀ of money and then suddenly you have an extra $10 million.
ThenĀ you die with that extra $10 million in the bank. That sort of means youĀ just wasted all that time making that extra $10 million. You could’veĀ been laughing with your family.
I don’t want to judge.Ā Everyone is a little bit strange. Every family relationship has itsĀ issues. My relationships in my family certainly do and I know manyĀ people who are quick to judge me before they think.
Why don’t I tell the daughter about the father?
Because who am I to get in the middle? Clearly there are issues hereĀ that go way back and I’m nobody and nobody has asked me to get involvedĀ in that way.
And there’s no guarantee that me telling the daughter would solve her problems. Or his.
My only point is: when you read the newspaper, about who is the “X” andĀ who is the “Y”, then chances are they are wrong. The news is written byĀ people trying to sell ads by having flashy stories. It’s not their jobĀ to be right but to be flashy.
And sometimes there is a manĀ involved and a woman involved and every now and then there is a deepĀ sadness in between. A deep chasm of despair. Money will never patch thatĀ sadness up.
What would you do?