Author: Sam Wyly

ISBN-10: 1557048037

ISBN-13: 978-1557048035

Sam Wyly was a pioneer in many ways.  From humble beginnings in Paradise Island, Louisiana, which Sam described as the poorest town in America, he and his brother learned many of life’s lessons together.  Sam tells of how he learned much of what was important in getting on in life from the experience of his family losing it all and having to move from a painted house in town to their unpainted, tin roofed country house where he spent the rest of his youth.  Although slight of build Sam learned to be a good football player, ultimately on a state championship high school team.  But a chance meeting in his teenage years of an IBM salesman who had a dapper suit and a shiny new company car changed Sam’s life and gave him a new direction.  He was off to Louisiana Tech to get a degree in accounting and put off his first year working for IBM to take an MBA scholarship at the University of Michigan.

IBM was a great training ground for young Sam Wyly to learn the skills that would lead him to becoming a serial corporate entrepreneur.  (It was in these early years that coincidentally he also met a young Ross Perot – who would share some parallels in life with Sam Wyly.)

Sam Wyly started or invested in many companies that were well known in recent American business history:  University Computing Company, Gulf Insurance, Bonanza Steakhouse, Sterling Software, Maverick Capital and Green Mountain Energy, just to name some of them.  He was also involved in famous lawsuits; one of which eventually led to the break up of American Telephone and Telegraph’s (AT&T’s) monopoly and another breaking up the management of Computer Associates.

Through it all, Sam Wyly remained a down home country boy.  He still seems like the fellow from Paradise Island who studied hard and worked hard.  And as I mentioned in another recent review I have done about the life of another self-made rich man, Ray Hickey, Sam Wyly interestingly pointed out that he got to where he got in life in many ways by following the road that was ahead of him rather than by setting long-term career goals.  Again, this flies in the face of almost everything I have read on the subject before but I found it interesting that two men who have accomplished so much in their lives seemed to just let life unfold in front of them.

Sam Wyly’s biography was well worth the read.  And in some way I am glad I finished it where I did – on a visit to his home state of Louisiana in the city of Lafayette.  (I was there to watch my Arkansas State Red Wolves football team play Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajuns.)  If you like reading biographies of successful men, I think you will not only like this book but you will learn to like and respect its author, Sam Wyly.