Member-only story
Service is The Antidote
…I had been involved in dot-com stuff and when the stock market crashed, within 6 weeks, I lost 80 million dollars and was bankrupt and 3 million dollars in debt. My Ferraris, Porsches, my penthouse… gone.
…So there I was, with no money and 3 million dollars in debt, and not long before, I had actually given a large amount of stock in this company to charity.
My lawyer called me up and said, “Jim, I have extraordinary news for you. You know we were supposed to file these papers that gave all the stock away to charity, but the attorney, the junior attorney, had not done it yet, so actually you don’t have to give anything away.” This stock was in the company that went public for $1.2 billion where I was the CEO.
This put me in an incredible quandary and I asked my friends and the woman I was dating at the time, “what should I do now”? You can guess what they all said. A few advisors said I would be a “complete fool” to give my remaining assets away. Not a single person said otherwise…
…It was no more about me. It was about being of service to others because you see, this is how we are designed as a species; to love, to care, and when you do that your physiology works at its best…
…I spend a lot of time with different groups of people and often with the wealthy you talk to them and they’re deeply…
