The Broke Billionaire
Chuck Feeney on what really matters in life
Years ago, when Charles “Chuck” Feeney was flying hither and yon, checking in on his cash cows at Hong Kong Airport, Heathrow, and elsewhere…as he’d board the plane…to those sitting in First Class who knew his identity—but not his personality, seeing him shuffle past them to the rear of the aircraft must’ve struck them as odd in the extreme. He was one of the 10 or 20 richest people on the planet…flying coach. Instead of a pricey ostrich leather or Halliburton aluminum briefcase…he was lugging a plastic bag. Instead of a Patek Philippe on his wrist…he sported a decades-old $10 Casio digital watch.
But the vast majority of people didn’t know Feeney’s identity, let alone personality, because the Duty Free Shops co-founder was a secretive man…who preferred giving his money to others, not spending it on himself…and who never wanted people to know he was the benefactor. If somehow a recipient managed to pierce his shroud of anonymity, they were expressly forbidden from revealing it. Sometimes it got comical. According to a Cornell administrator: “I had to convince the board of trustees that [Feeney’s huge donation] was on the level, that there was nothing disreputable and this wasn’t Mafia money.”
The anonymity ended during the course of an extraneous legal dispute…which revealed that, in the 1980s, he’d clandestinely transferred his DFS stake into a blind charity. Even his long-time business partner didn’t know Feeney was no longer rich.
Feeney calls his approach “giving while living.” It’s had a profound impact on Bill & Melinda Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, Warren Buffett, MacKenzie Scott, and others.
However, before Feeney could give away 99.975%* of his wealth—$8 billion, he had to earn it. (* He retained $2 million, and lives in a rented Bay Area apartment.)
How’d he earn it? By adhering to the leadership principles he learned in his youth.
Principle 1. Human beings have a duty to help other human beings.
His mother was his main teacher. Surrounded as she was by so many struggling working-class neighbors in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she did what she could to help the less fortunate. After putting in long hours for modest wages as a nurse, she put in still more hours as a volunteer Red Cross nurse. She taught her only son that helping one’s neighbor wasn’t some extracurricular activity. She called it an “obligation.”
Yes: the man who made billions peddling duty-free goods—was driven by a deep sense of duty.
Principle 2. Look to find fish in a barrel; then shoot.
Everyone says Feeney’s always had a nose for Opportunity, a knack for envisioning Demand, then marshaling the factors of production on the Supply side in the most creative and advantageous way. For instance, when he went door-to-door as a kid offering to shovel snow, he partnered with his beefy friend, Moose. Feeney would make the sale, securing an above-market-rate because the customer took pity that he was small, and it’d take so much effort for him to clear the snow; yet once the deal closed, Moose would emerge and make short work of even the biggest snow-pile…as Feeney hustled off to pitch another customer, a few doors down.
He did something similar while at Cornell, when he was struggling to make do on the GI Bill’s modest stipend. When he saw a guy making and selling sandwiches to the students as they poured out of classes, Feeney said, “I can do that,” and he did. “So I became a sandwich-man.” His specialty was peanut butter sandwiches.
Principle 3. Educate yourself whenever and however possible.
It’s no surprise Feeney’s nun-teachers at St. Mary of the Assumption High School reinforced his mother’s views on the obligation we all owe to our neighbors, as the school was founded by the Sisters of Charity. But it was the academic rigor that impressed Ivy League Cornell, which accepted him after his tour in the Air Force during the Korean War. The world’s best hospitality school showed him the ropes. Diploma in hand and wanting to travel, with a few months of GI Bill money left over, plus $2,000 in casino winnings, upon learning that the universities in France were tuition-free, he taught himself a bit of French, flew over, unannounced, wore down a stuffy receptionist and marched into the office of the dean of Grenoble University and pitched the benefit of having an American enroll in the University’s master’s degree course in political science. The dean, impressed and humored, agreed. As the only American in the course, Feeney’s eyes opened wide to the opportunities in the international arena. (His love of France helped close the 1996 sale of DFS to Paris-based LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Europe’s most valuable company.)
The 92-year old has been a continuous learner all his life. The plastic bags he used to carry during his millions of miles of air travel didn’t for the most part hold snacks but instead books, magazines, newspapers and other reading material…so he could stay abreast of new trends and ways to serve his growing customer base.
Principle 4. Being first to market isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
DFS wasn’t first to market, not by a long-shot. Another Irishmen laid claim to that: Brendan O’Regan, who opened the world’s first duty-free shop at Shannon Airport, in 1947. DFS wasn’t founded until 1960.
However, Feeney knew the key wasn’t speed but strategic sustainability. It’s why Facebook, founded in 2004, was able to surpass MySpace’s hundreds of millions of users—in just 4 years. Wellington didn’t defeat Napoleon because he was the first to arrive at Waterloo, but because he was the first to seize the high ground.
Feeney went to school on O’Regan the same way Facebook would later go to school on MySpace. Even though the colossus NewsCorp acquired MySpace in 2006 and used its platform to quadruple growth in just two years, Zuckerberg zeroed in on and attacked the strategic flaws in his competitor’s business model, and converted the Big Old Media affiliation from a positive to a negative.
Principle 5. Nothing meaningful happens without hard work.
Feeney’s always had a prodigious work ethic: delivering papers, mowing lawns, doing odd jobs, performing due diligence on potential recipients of his largesse, etc. For him work has always been another form of service, different from but similar to his Air Force tour. Of course there are always challenges, but in the main he found it fun and fulfilling. Later in life, according to close associates, he tried living a life of luxury and loafing, but he immediately grew bored.
Principle 6. Waste not, want not.
Feeney was frugal, as the Irish are sometimes wont to be. (When my Irish in-laws gather, they compete to see who’s the thriftiest. However, thrifty isn’t synonymous with stingy. As my late, heroic, and famously frugal father-in-law, Capt. John Murray, said in Tiger in the Sea: “I don’t mind spending money…what I mind is wasting it.”) Feeney’s thrift was partly due to having grown up during the Great Depression, but also because role model Andrew Carnegie amassed a fortune one nickel at a time; then gave it away efficiently, making certain for instance that it went towards books for the illiterate poor, as opposed to ornate edifices that glorified or further enriched the powers-that-be.
Principle 7. Go big but always hedge your bets.
Feeney was willing to think big and take risks others wouldn’t dare, but he always set something aside as a safety net, just in case. This he learned mostly from his father, who sold insurance. The concept of not betting the farm factored into all of young Feeney’s endeavors.
Principle 8. Let the spirit move you.
Taught by his New Jersey teachers to lead with love and seeing it put into practice by his mother’s nursing and Dorothy Day’s efforts to help the poorest of Greater New York’s poor, it should come as no surprise that Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams’ one-word description of his hero Feeney is “spiritual.” This also helps to explain why in Ireland he was perceived as an honest broker by both Republicans and Loyalists…as well as why, for the first time, every university in Ireland, North and South, joined hands to confer a special island-wide honorary degree on him for his role in brokering peace and educating Ireland’s youth.
Though Feeney has never been big on quoting Scripture, his elementary school nuns certainly would have approved of his giving while living philosophy, as it accords with Mark, the oldest book in the New Testament: “It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” Feeney has said over and over again that he wants to die poor: “I want the last check I write to bounce.”
References and Further Reading & Viewing:
Exclusive: The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke
Secret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story
The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune
Inspiring is this man Feeney.