Thrill Seekers

In the 1980s, convinced that he’d achieved many of his business goals, CEO Steve Fossett, 54, of the Chicago-based options firm Lakota Trading, began to climb mountains. Since then, he’s swum the English Channel, mushed sled dogs in Alaska’s Iditarod, participated in the Ironman Triathalon and set eight world records in sailing, including the fastest Pacific Ocean crossing, both with crew and solo. His latest passion, hot-air ballooning, has resulted in the five longest flights in ballooning history, although last year, when it came to setting an around-the-world record, another team beat Fossett and partner Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Group. It was the attempt, rather than the result, that inspired him: “I wanted to go on a grand adventure, to do what a lot of people dream about but actually never get around to,” he says.

Well, it seems that other competitive business types share such dreams – and the determination to spin the dreams into real adventures.

Rocky Aoki, 61, founder and retired chairman of Benihana restaurants headquartered in Miami, started his career in 1960 when he came to this country as a member of the Japanese wrestling team. Four years later, he launched his first eatery in Manhattan, parlaying it into a chain of 60-plus restaurants with an estimated sales of $95 million in 1998. While his business was growing, Aoki won a 1,300-mile road rally challenge from Milan to Moscow in his vintage Rolls-Royce and participated in high-speed powerboat races. The latter resulted in “three accidents and 20 broken bones, which kept me in the hospital for about a year-and-a-half off and on,” he recalls. So what did he do? “I was in wheelchair, so I took up hot-air ballooning.” Although he gave up racing, he went on to make a record balloon flight from Japan to California in the early ’80s and continues ballooning today.

Sometimes thrill-seekers get more than they bargain for. A former Marine Corps pilot and avid skier, Nick Williams, 52-year-old CEO and president of Premisys, a Fremont, CA, telecommunications company, was lost for two days and nights when an unexpected blizzard hit Squaw Valley last year. “It had been warm and snowing lightly,” he observes, “so I only wore a light jacket.” Caught without compass, food or matches, he wandered around in circles for hours and almost fell off a 500-foot drop.

“It was a complete white-out. But from my military training I remembered to let the snow melt in my mouth before I swallowed it. And I knew I could survive up to a week as long as I had water.” He experienced severe frostbite and lost six toes. “But I was extremely lucky, considering what could have happened.” Other CEOs have not been as fortunate: In 1994 Disney executive Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash during a backcountry skiing trip in Nevada, and Robert Goldstein, advertising chief at Proctor and Gamble, drowned during a 1988 whitewater raft excursion in Canada.

From “Alpha” To “Type-T”
What drives corporate leaders to hunt wild game in Alaska and Africa, go scuba diving in the Bahamas and kayaking in Fiji, or like entrepreneur Dick Bass of Dallas and Utah, scale seven summits in seven continents, including Mount Everest? George Collins, 58, former chairman of the board of T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore-based investment management firm that handles nearly $150 billion in accounts, sees in-your-face adventure as “a challenge, a way to tackle the learning curve and master new skills. It’s something tougher than the ordinary and gets your adrenalin going.” Along with skiing and long-distance swimming, he’s been sailing competitively for ten years. Since “the teams weren’t looking for 50-something amateurs, but rather 20- to 30-year-olds,” in 1997 he financed the Whitbread 60 round-the-world yacht race so he could participate. Along with founding what he describes as the Super Bowl of offshore racing, he recently won an Annapolis-to-Newport competition in his 60-foot sailboat. “You set a goal and fix it in your mind,” says the doggedly determined executive.

Some feel the execs are “Alpha males,” who like their four-legged counterparts, command respect and deference from the rest of the pack through brute strength, force and cunning. But the craving for hair-raising escapades is hardly limited to men. Many of the most extreme thrill seekers are women. For instance, Marta Empinotti of Deland, FL, the so-called “Queen of BASE jumping,” gets her jollies by leaping from towers, mountains and tall buildings, with a single parachute.

Dr. Marvin Zuckerman, professor of psychology of the University of Delaware, posits such activities are part of what he defines as sensation seeking – a broad trait based on genetic and biological causes. “The search for adventure is just one aspect,” he explains. A 1998 article in the Denver Post cited two independent studies which claimed that people with a certain kind of extra-long DNA sequence on chromosome 11 scored much higher on psychological measures of novelty-seeking than those without. In addition to heroin addicts, the longer gene was also found in mentally healthy people who look for thrills via adventure sports.

Dr. Frank Farley, past president of the American Psychological Association and a teacher and psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, has coined a term for thrill-seekers: Type-T. “Most people are familiar with a Type-A personality, so it’s a readily identifiable way to categorize this kind of behavior.” He views risk-taking as a continuum of human activity. “At one end you have the big-T, who thrives on the excitement, and at the other is the small-t, those who are averse to taking any chances. The majority of people fall in the middle.”

Both Zuckerman and Farley recognize that risk-taking has its darker side. “It’s more than just skydiving or mountain climbing,” adds Zuckerman. “Sensation seekers express themselves in many areas.” Other dimensions include seeking new experiences, disinhibition and susceptibility to boredom, which can lead to activities ranging from constantly searching for new stimulation in travel and the arts to crime and overindulgence in alcohol, drugs and multiple sex partners.

Executive Adventure=Enhanced Productivity
Nevertheless, taking chances is essential to productivity in both sales and management. “Most forms of human creative activity involve risk,” continues Farley. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be physical: Bill Gates is motivated and inspired by his mental life, as was Einstein.” Although you may not find them snowboarding or cave-diving, another extreme pastime made even more hazardous because of lack of accessibility to the surface, successful innovators “feel the need go beyond the status quo, to let go of the handrails of life – traditions, customs, the usual way of behaving – to accomplish an inner vision.”

CEOs also feel their adventures boost company morale and, in some cases, stimulate sales. “The employees voluntarily put information about the [Whitbread] race on a Web site,” recalls Collins. “The entire city of Baltimore got caught up in the excitement, and towards the end we got 14,000 hits a day. The project raised T. Rowe Price’s visibility in the industry and the community.”

Initially Lakota’s Fossett found his escapades a “good story to tell when you go to a cocktail party.” But it developed into something more: “I found that I could motivate colleagues and inspire them to be successful in doing what they want.”

As soon as he was able to get around, Nick Williams started sharing his experiences via speeches to the sales force and others. He’s also an advocate of adventure trips for employees. “When you set aside titles and work as a team, you figure out pretty quickly who has what strength and empower them accordingly. You can then tackle the problem at hand. If you can handle what life throws at you in nature, you can apply what you’ve learned to the work place.” Premisys’ annual revenues jumped from $78 million when Williams joined the company in 1997 to $102 million in fiscal year ’98, an increase of almost 25 percent.

Yet weekend warriors who go to excess can also make stockholders and employees nervous. Larry Ellison, 54, founder of the software database giant Oracle, is well-known for his flamboyant lifestyle, multiple wives and risky escapades on the high seas, particularly a recent brush with dangerously high winds and waves during an Australian yacht race that claimed the lives of six sailors. Drew Brosseau of S.G. Cowan Securities in Boston estimated Oracle stock would lose 20 percent of its value should Ellison die unexpectedly, according to an article in USA Today.

Still, Ellison is “famous for not being in his office,” remarks Mike Wilson, author of The Difference Betweeen God and Larry Ellison (Morrow, 1997). “He’s more interested in motivation and challenge than actual management and setting strategy.” What he does do, however, “is surround himself with competent people, some of whom are rather dull and scientific. He chooses well, and he’s made a lot of millionaires.” According to Wilson’s book he’s also created many enemies, some of whom used to work for him. Yet, “Employees who have interacted with him are mobilized and energized to a task,” Wilson goes on. “It’s as if they’ve been to the mountaintop and spoken to the guru.” And therein lies the challenge – and the charm.

Outside the Box
Not every CEO comes up with intergalactic space flights slated for 2007, as did Virgin’s Richard Branson (for a mere $50,000, you too can reserve a seat). But many find that the resources galvanized from various adventures spill into other arenas. According to Aoki, everything is a test – “to win a balloon race, to convince bankers” or customers that your undertaking will bring success. “Although you need to work hard, it’s sometimes better to work smart.”

The latter includes having a plan. “Unless I do everything I can to reduce risks, I won’t survive,” admits Fossett. “So you look at all the factors involved in the undertaking and make decisions accordingly.” The more you know about your product and consumers the more likely you will be to find that chink in the armor, loophole or window of opportunity that shows you’ve got exactly what they need. “Following the same old methods rarely works,” adds Williams. “Today’s world is complex; competition and challenges are constantly changing. It’s like being in the wild…what resources do you need in order to survive?”

Williams also recommends perseverance. “I spent an entire two hours trying to start a fire by sparking my ski tips against a granite rock.” Although he had no luck and the tips eventually fell off, Williams began walking just to stay warm, even though at times the snow was up to his waist. “There were moments when I was unsure whether I was going to make it. But I kept thinking about everything I had – my wife, my kids, my friends and my company. I put all my efforts into staying alive.”

The same can be true of sales: “I’ve been in a situation where a competitor had already landed a contract. But I still felt that we could make a creative and easy transition from the client’s old equipment to a new network. So it was a matter of getting to the right level of personnel, and we got the contract – 90 days after it had been awarded to the competitor.”

Although it may seem heresy in this day and age, when people seem to change titles and jobs every five minutes, commitment is another requirement, continues Williams. “There are always issues and obstacles; stay with it and use your inner voice and attributes to hang in there. I was determined to find a way out off of the mountain.” Eventually he was rescued by a helicopter team that was amazed at his excellent physical condition. “And I’m just as dedicated to showing my customers that we can provide effective solutions and products,”he says.

Perhaps the most important aspect, all agree, is a good attitude. “You can be a control freak or a team player,” comments Collins. “Nothing reveals true characteristics or personal agendas” like being thrown in the wild. Unless you’ve got a positive outlook or are willing to work with the group “you’re putting the entire crew in danger. None of us is as smart as all of us.”

Thrill of the Chase
Boredom is the deadliest sin for thrill-seekers, who often turn to something new when endless meetings and other minutiae of running a company become routine. “They thrive on unpredictability and in situations where it’s hard to anticipate an outcome,” comments psychologist Farley. “They’re looking at the future instead of the past, anticipating the next adventure.” If not undertaking a new business quest, thrill-seekers may be tackling a different sport or artistic avocation.

Even small-ts can cull advantage from the opposite end of the scale. Programs such as PEAK learning (see box on page 51) can help bolster the ability to tackle adversity, while more and more companies are offering a menu of adventure trips as sales incentives or skill-building activities.

Everyone has a personal mountain to climb. By tackling what seems most intimidating, anyone can mine inner strengths that lead to ever greater peaks of success.