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I'm here with John Huntsman senior one of the world's greatest philanthropists
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and Business Leaders welcome thank you Adam talk to us about the story behind your book Barefoot to billionaire how
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did you go from literally having nothing to running the world's largest Chemical
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Corporation well through a lot of luck and through uh through uh uh the ability to surround myself with many people who
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had talents and abilities uh different and in many cases far better than my own and uh being a risk
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taker and uh putting everything on the line time and time again because I believed in myself believed in my team
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believed in the products that we were producing and Manufacturing and uh because it's a lot
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of fun and uh and and I knew that uh if we were successful we could uh we could make other people success uccessful and
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happy and and uh bring about some of the sorrows and heartaches that uh correct some of those in some people's lives
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that would had in our own lives so there were a lot of deep meanings behind it but most importantly was a opportunity
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to keep driving and driving and never giving up and what were the biggest lessons that you learned along the way
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are there assumptions that you held about leadership or business that you thought were true and turned out to be
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false uh to some extent I found found that academically uh it really didn't matter
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whether ID received a certain grade in a class it didn't matter too much about uh
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what schools want to attend I know that I shouldn't say that at Warden what matters I think is uh is one's uh Drive
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one's uh intelligence with respect to a quantitative areas I think you have to
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understand math and and and and um and and and a quantitative type mindset to out-negotiate your opponents because I
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never have used computers or calculators I've always been able to figure out in
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my head far before my opposition has in negotiating for Acquisitions where we need to be and what the numbers are and
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and how we could get uh get the best side of the bargain without having to resort to accountants or assistants or
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financial experts so I've been blessed with with that good uh luck if if you
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will but most importantly I think never giving up uh believing in yourself and believing in your product and uh there
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are very very few true entrepreneurs most people give it a shot for a year or two and then go to work for somebody
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else and say I'm an entrepreneur who didn't make it they're really not
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entrepreneurs true entrepreneurs have to really uh uh uh forego almost everything
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they have to put it all on the line line they have to go through tremendous downswings and still come back fighting
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and Swinging they have to know what it means to come out of The Valleys of death and still be successful and keep
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uh keep a positive attitude and always make your team around you feel like you're succeeding even though you know
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way down deep it's a long shot you have to be the fighter and the leader and the
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one who uh who who who instills energy and hope in others do you have any favorite practices for instill
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instilling energy and Hope and and sort of especially when when things are down and people are struggling helping people
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regain their confidence well I've always believed the glass was half full is half
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full and uh and perhaps was born Sunnyside Up and therefore I look at the good and the positive and everything
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we're doing and there always is some aspect of good goodness and some positive element to a successful
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acquisition or a successful business and so you build on the successes this successes may only be 20 or 25 or 30% of
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the total mix but you build on those successes so that you don't concentrate
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and focus on the negative and I think that's helped immensely to have that basic thought process going through the
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organization or or the group of people you're working with one of your early
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successes was the clamshell container that many of us have eaten Big Macs out of from McDonald's uh was was that a
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milestone in your career and and how did it shape what came next well it really wasn't we first invented the plastic
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plates bowls and dishes and and takeout food containers and egg cartons and meat
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trays I'd go through grocery store aisles and look at everything made of paper and glass and say some days these
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could be made out of plastic and of course we ended ma manufacturing products out of plastic 30 years ago and
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are now into very sophisticated composite plastics for Airlines and Automobiles and bicycles and and paint
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and rubber and cosmetics and soap and detergents and electronics and medical supplies and
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pharmaceuticals but in the early days uh the Big Mac container was quite successful in the sense that McDonald's
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overwhelmed me with orders and it caused us to build several new plants here and
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in Europe and uh it was obviously the first breakthrough from paper which cost twice as much it leaked it used more
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energy its biodegradable abilities were were the same as plastic when you put anything under dirt they don't
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biodegrade anyway no matter what it's made out of and it it it allowed the products to stay fresher longer so they
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could produce more of them before lunch and move move many more Products off the
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shelf so it was really uh in in that era in 1973 74 it was a great breakthrough in Fresh Foods and in keeping products
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fresher longer and and uh and today it has its upsides and its downsides environmentally and uh we uh were great
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leaders in the areas of recycling and reusing products and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to uh build some of
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the greatest and largest recycling facilities but today for the last 25 30 years we've not been in those products
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but they it was a great start it was I always told Dow Chemical when I was working for Dow before I started my own
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business 45 years ago that they should get into some of these products but they were too large and bureaucratic and and
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to them Innovation and creativity just didn't exist today there are Partners in
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different products around the world and and uh so life has changed so in those early days you also spent some time in
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the Richard Nixon Administration right what did you learn from that experience well I learned uh from the Richard Nixon
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Administration a great deal of uh information and knowledge about what I didn't want to do sometimes we have role
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leaders who teach us by example what to do I found in my life that most of my leaders have taught me great examples of
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how I should do the opposite or some uh uh aspect of what they are teaching uh that uh I didn't want to
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pursue I would pick it up from their uh characteristics the president was a man of very fair uh uh uh mind a very
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intelligent man very gracious to the ch children uh I was his executive assistant staff secretary and assistant
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to the president and I found uh President Nixon to uh do some great things for America this strategic arms
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limitation talks open relationships with the the Soviets for the first time in history and Reagan later was able to
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capitalize on that the uh war on cancer on December 23rd 1971 my mother just died of cancer that meant a great deal
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to me the uh the opening of relationships with the People's Republic of China unfortunately there was another
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side to Richard Nixon the cynical side the dubious side the more uh the uh uh oh I want to say
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uh uh it's hard to pick a word that it doesn't uh hurt somebody's image but I
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think it was it was a uh a trick a non a non positive side it was more of a negative side I I never worked with them
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when I saw that side around me it seemed like there was always a very professional approach and but from Bob
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halderman who was a chief of staff he was the one who implemented a lot of Rich Richard Nixon's negative uh
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suggestions and and halderman was a terrible role model and from him I learned what not to do and I told him
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that when I left left the White House I said you've given me the greatest lesson
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in how not to build a business on how not to manage people how not to treat people and I want to thank you for this
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experience that was our last days after we got out of prison and years later at paton's funeral I put my arms around him
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and gave him a hug and told him that uh all was forgotten and he said the same thing and he died a few years later wow
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well this this is an example of something else I wanted to ask about which is you're known by I think
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everyone who's interacted with you for having impeccable integrity honesty and
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I think that that leads you to be willing to speak about some things that others perhaps are not how do you think
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about that um you know do do you ever hesitate in a situation like that to speak your mind no you know I think each
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one of us is born with a moral compass and and uh some of us uh have that at Birth and others are taught that through
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uh through schooling or through parentage proper parentage and in my case it it uh I felt very fortunate that
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I've known right from wrong and I knew when halderman would tell me to do something and I wouldn't do it that I
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could get fired but I I knew it was wrong people know when they're doing something that's not right their moral
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compass tells each of us whether it's right or wrong we don't need to uh uh
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you know spend a lot of time in classes and courses and studies about the difference between something that's uh
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ethically or or or criminally or or or or morally wrong and in my own mind I just felt I would never do that in my
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life it wasn't worth it you know I wanted Sons and Daughters a lovely wife and a family and to be respected and
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when I was here at Wharton I always found Wharton to be an enormous example of uh of of strong moral values and and
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and honorable and honesty and integrity and I I learned so much at at Warden and
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at pen uh from from my you know I was raised with nothing in the in a rural farm community in Idaho and I found the
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school to be a great school for ethics well you've you've certainly given us a
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shining example of that as one of 19 people on Earth who have ever given away over a billion dollars well thank you
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and we're obviously all grateful for that uh it's interesting that this happened at a particular stage in your
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career when you had previously not really done much philanthropy and all of a sudden just giving and giving and
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giving what caused the shift for you well I think it was because as a young boy I always would share what I had with
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my Rel atives who were who were uh without most everything they they were just uh most of them lived in a very small
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town neither Idaho or Utah and struggled to get by they they would be on the poverty level today although believe it
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or not they were all strong Republicans uh but uh I would share what little I had as a boy not much they
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would share what little they had with me which wasn't much maybe it was a pair of
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shoes I remember one time they let me wear their their pocket watch to class $1 pocket watch which was a big deal for
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me they let me drive their old pickup trucks which taught me how to drive maybe we're 12 or 15 years old but we
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would share what little we had and As I Grew Older and and developed uh wealth of of a small amount I would share it
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back with them and I would begin to share it with others all throughout my life it's just been a matter of paying
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wealth so you could give it back I've never thought about giving wealth away
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is uh anything other than the normal and usual thing that individuals do never occurred to me that anybody would ever
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say is that different or why do you do that or or uh other people don't do that
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I just thought everybody did that that was the way we were raised well you you've gone to some unusual lengths
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though uh taking out personal loans to fulfill charitable commitments uh voting against your own political party if
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there's another candidate who would fight cancer um what is it that pushes you to give to
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that level well I just think that uh uh people who who have the means and don't
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share it with others are not particularly people that I enjoy being around I I think uh the love of our
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brothers and sisters people of all Races and backgrounds and ethnic groups uh a wonderful Jewish Family sent me to pen
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I'm a Mormon boy from the rural Idaho they didn't ask my religion and I've given over 5,000
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scholarships I always think of them because they didn't ask me anything other than you know are you honest and
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have you done your best and that's all I ask and so they set a tone and a temperament uh that uh kind of allowed
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me to see a sight of life that meant more to me than anything in the world and so with others I kind of copied
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them uh you've you've been awfully original for someone who claims to copy
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I I will say it's interesting that uh when you went to to talk about signing
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the giving pledge uh you had an objection to Warren Buffett that that few would have expected uh and you said
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no I I don't think this pledge is right tell us about that well Warren's always
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been a great friend he's a he's a wonderful American as so as Bill Gates
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and they give tremendous amounts as you know for malaria over in Africa other diseases are just tremendous but when
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Warren put together as group of originally 45 billionaires so that they could give 50% of their fortunes away it
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I thought to myself well that's the most unusual thing I've ever heard some of
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these people are worth 10 billion do or 20 billion if they lived on half of it suppose they were worth 10 and they
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lived on $5 billion that's really a struggle to get to life on $5 billion and and I'd been
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giving you know a good portion of whatever we had made for years maybe 25 or 30 years by the time the giving
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pledge was established about 3 or four years ago and at our first meeting we had they all told up and stood up and
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some of the folks said well you know I gave $500,000 the other day and somebody else would say well let me tell you my
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story about giving a million dollars away and I thought these these folks are worth billions what are they talking
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about giving 1% or two% so I stood up in the back when just toward the end of the
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meeting I said you know we ought to be ashamed of ourselves to be talking about giving 50% % away we should be giving
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80% away 90% I mean how much does it take us to put food on our table and the necessities of life and live a
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comfortable life and have everything we really need and other people and other organizations and sick people and people
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need the money and we don't why don't we make it 80% Warren said John sit down
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and be quiet let's get let's get them up to 5% then 10% and then 50% and uh you
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know not all of us started out uh like you did where you know you didn't where
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you where you've always given and I have all my life when I was making $300 a
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month as a young naval officer I was giving $50 a month to a family down the street who needed it more than I did in
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addition to my 10% tithing to my church but but it was just it was just part and
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partial of who you are and what your values are well it's it's been a tremendous example for us all to learn
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from and uh thoroughly enjoyed reading barefoot to billionaire full of of stories of not only great honesty and
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integrity but also some great pranks thank you thank you very much it's a great honor to be back at pen the honor
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is ours thank you [Music]