Perspective is an important thing, especially when its based on experience. And unless you live in a culture that can produce experience, it will be difficult to create a society that embraces any hope of wisdom. Recently, I think it was a combination of the Kentucky Derby and all its festivities, where invites to that event created challenges to our schedule and the 36th anniversary of my marriage to my wife. Many things get said, and stories are told, especially when people discover how long my wife and I have been married. There are just assumptions that nobody stays married that long these days for any reason. Our perspective on social values is very traditional, as well as our opinions on money, how it’s made, and what it says about people. One story about our early days is worth some perspective and sharing, which is the point here. I’ve told many stories about my past; it was unique. To put it mildly, I worked for the mob, not because I wanted to work for mobsters, but because it was an excellent job to get some experience in Sharonville, Ohio, along the Chester Road corridor, which back then was the entertainment zone for the entire city of Cincinnati. I was a very ambitious young man who wasn’t afraid of anything, which was very attractive to my employers. I came to know many influential people in Cincinnati politics very early in my life, and some of the wealthiest people were people I called friends. I was the private chauffeur for many local celebrities, especially team members of the Bengals at that time, so I had an early education about the value of people unique to my circumstances. I was making more money before I turned 18 than my parents had, and I was just getting started.
Naturally, once I left that job for something more traditional, income was a prime concern and I wanted to make as much as I possibly could at 18 years old as I was moving out on my own. And again, I would make more money at this time than my parents which was important to me. I was in a race to conquer the world the way that the world measured it. I would go as far as to say that I was ruthless and was intent on having millions of dollars of hard-earned money in my bank account within a few months of working as a car salesman at a local Tri-County front group for money laundering. That was common in those days and why I know so much about the current Ukraine operation that the government is involved in, and why I said that the mob moved into government. I was on the front line of that movement and watched it happen up close. My job was legitimate: sell new and used cars to people and make a commission off that effort. Even if the job itself only existed to wash money from organized crime efforts at that time, the ownership and upper managers were all in on the effort. And yes, at all these jobs, the police were involved, and judges, and I knew everyone. Or, instead, they knew me and were proud to tell people they did. As I have said before, I had a get-out-of-jail-free card in several communities that lasted as long as I made people a lot of money. But the moment I didn’t, it was a different story.
But I had moved out of the house and made more than most adults in the Cincinnati area. However, along the way, I met my wife. The timing was inconvenient. I wasn’t looking for a wife then; she had everything you would look for. She was a fashion model, her family was wealthy, and they were prominent Beckett Ridge Country Club members nearby. So our relationship got serious quickly, and soon, she visited me at my job for lunch dates. On one particular day, she came to my desk just as I was sending over one of the most significant commissions this dealership had ever seen; it was an older man I was selling a used truck to for over $5,000 over invoice and to show how strong I was at the sale, I had him going across the street to the bank to take out all the cash to pay for it with a pile of money. It was a big deal, and it set the men from the boys in the sales world in that particular culture, and I thought my wife would be impressed. But she wasn’t, she started crying. She already knew many successful people and wanted to get out of that life. She was being set up to be the trophy wife of some doctor in that Beckett Ridge Country Club who was older than her dad, and she wanted off that train at 17 years old. And I was that rebellious ticket. So, to make her happy, I redid the deal and gave the guy the truck for just a bit over margin, and he was pleased. I went from hero to zero in that dealership within an hour, and many life lessons were learned that set the course for many years. Just making money isn’t enough, especially with people like my wife. How you make it matters more, and this will be a theme for us over the next four decades.
It was hard; I went from living high on the hog and being the center of every social circle to the opposite life. To make my wife happy, I worked at a series of complex manufacturing jobs to earn money as honestly as possible, and I learned a lot of precious experiences from that perspective. My wife’s requirement to earn money honestly seriously crippled my lifestyle, and it has been challenging over the years. But that standard has allowed me to have a perspective that few ever get or survive in life—especially the Kentucky Derbi crowd, where the goal is to see and be seen in the crowd. But most of it is cosmetic and not what my wife values in people. And naturally, with those values, we have a concise list of people we associate with. Because most people are still at that phase I was in at 18, where money is the measure of your worth, so you do whatever you can to make it. To advance beyond that is a journey that few ever get to. But obviously, we have been married for 36 years for a reason, and if she hadn’t pushed me the way she did, I might never have learned some of those hard lessons about money and value sometimes, when someone gives you a 7 figure opportunity, its better not to take that job but to do something that fulfills other requirements in your life. But before you can do that, you must have standards to live up to. At an early age, we were both blessed to have had the chance to get that kind of life out of our systems. By age 19, I was married, and we were working hard to start a life of our own together, which continues to this day. But when I say that making money is easy, how you make it matters most; that is the context. I have never been impressed with people who make a lot of money. But money is a good measure of people’s value because it tells you a lot about the quality of the person making it. If they are cheats or cutthroats, money will reveal it, as opposed to some communist centralized government that is entirely built around who you know and how much they like you. My perspective comes from that critical experience at the dealership and the highlife that came with it. And the value of an great woman to chase after took me on a wild ride that brought experiences wealth itself could never provide alone.
Rich Hoffman
Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707