Page 33 - Midas Touch

persistence, I would come out on top with a great golf course that
enhanced the economy of the surrounding area without negatively
impacting the environment. My passion was already there. I really
believed in the project. And thanks to the public encouragement of Sir

Sean Connery, many people began to understand why the development
would be in the best interests of Scotland’s citizens.

During this time, I had many other interests to take care of, but never did
it become a “back-burner” development. That’s a key to good luck.
Nothing should be relegated to the back burner if you want to excel on a
big level. Everything is important.

Even though people may think I have great people doing all the work for
me (and I do have great people), I stay very involved. I know every detail

of this project. I took trips to Scotland repeatedly, not for pleasure, but to
be on the job sites and to meet with our contractors, community officials,
and the Scottish National Heritage. It was hardly leisure time. When it
comes to this project, there’s no overnight success story here. But every
minute has been worth the effort.

Mistakes Are Made; Things Change

For those of you who are looking to be entrepreneurs or to grow your
entrepreneurial business into something bigger and better that makes a
greater impact, this is an important consideration. Every minute counts.

Here’s my rule of thumb, no pun intended: If you can count the amount of
time you put into a project on your fingers, then you haven’t spent enough

time on it. You will have to work on a project until you think you can’t do
it any longer. You will have to take a lot of criticism and negativism and
hear “no” repeatedly. It will get worse before it gets better.

But if you remember the meaning of the thumb in Midas Touch —it stands
for emotional maturity and strength of character—you’ll reach your goal.
It’s a well-known fact that I experienced a financial turnaround of

enormous proportions in the early 1990s. I never went bankrupt although a
lot of people thought I did, but I owed billions of dollars. It was not a great
situation to find myself in. It would be easy to see this as bad luck, but I
didn’t see it that way.