No one enjoysthe fruits of success more than Malcolm Forbes. As testament to that, consider his toys: a private stable of 60 to 80 motorcycles; a 151-foot luxury yacht, Highlander (the fifth successive Highlander in Forbes’ long romance with dining and dealing at sea, the current craft sports twin Harleys, a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, Cigarette and Donzi tenders, electronically controlled window shades, gold-plated fixtures, a wine cellar to house part of the Forbes collection of vintage pressed grape, and a small segment of the Forbes art collection including a Raoul Dufy, Thomas Gainsborough, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec). It would be easy to stop right here. However, Malcolm Forbes’ interests extend far beyond the average perhaps-a-billionaire’s purview (No one knows for sure how much Malcolm S. Forbes is worth. As he says, “No one sees the books.”)

However, plenty of folks have seen his Boeing 727, named Capitalist Tool after the Forbes magazine slogan that has helped bring renewed world respect to the free enterprise system. And many have acquired a piece of his quarter of a million acres in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo mountains. His vast holdings include Trinchera, his family ranch in Colorado; a castle in Morocco; the Chateau de Balleroy in France; an island in Fiji; his 40-acre estate in Far Hills, New Jersey; the Forbes corporate office complex on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In addition, of course, there are THE BALLOONS!

As a collector, Forbes is equally indomitable. From the fabulous Faberge eggs (Forbes’ collection boasts twelve, two up on the Kremlin’s ten); toy soldiers (18,000 in the U.S. with the spillover of 128,000 on display in his Moroccan castle); antiques; paintings which include, among others, Renoirs and Van Goghs; an Americana collection which includes autographs from every signer of The Declaration of Independence and the expense account from Paul Revere’s midnight ride; and the world’s first balloon museum at Forbes’ French chateau.

Surveying the entire spectrum of Malcolm Forbes’ possessions, acquisitions, pleasures and pursuits, one must also look at his long love affair (just like every other red-blooded boy) with cars. He normally drives an Aston Martin Lagonda, while garaging his Lamborghini Countach with classics like the Cadillac V-16, Twin Six Packard, and a number of Maserati Quattroportes which he has owned over the years.

If the list of Malcolm S. Forbes’ possessions is exhaustive, the collector himself is a head-spinning whirlwind of ideas and enthusiasms. His own editorials in the magazine his father founded over seventy years ago, hopscotch the political and business checkerboard with stops at any current world or local topic that suits the Forbes fancy. He has built the family publishing business, which he now owns lock, stock and all the toys in the basement, into a major force that rivals and often beats his two giant business magazine competitors.

During the past twenty years, Forbes has met with more than success. As he once put it, “You can’t be successful if you don’t love what you’re doing. Whatever really turns you on, do it. Psychic income is what real income is used for anyway.” And what does mega wealthy, turned-on Malcolm Forbes love to do? Sell!

The Forbes sales and marketing mechanism, although not obvious to the casual observer, is as well-oiled a piece of machinery as any of the sleek Italian roadsters garaged on his posh estate.

“Anybody in business, if he is going to succeed, is a salesman. Even when he doesn’t have a title that relates to sales, or is not conscious of it – everything is selling. Somebody seeking a future in acting has got to sell himself to the producer or the director. There’s nothing in life that doesn’t involve selling. Including myself as a salesman, it’s what makes any business.

“Now, to direct a business like ours – we are selling editorial content to the readers. To do that we have to sell the most capable writers on working for Forbes. We have first to be able to sell the people we need to make that business run successfully. Then the advertising, which is the lifeblood of our business, can only be sold when we have the product, which is the editorial. We can sell advertising by being able to point out and stress the value of our product to key decision makers in the marketplace. Everything relates to the bedrock. In our case, first, staff building and second, selling the product based on the fact that it is better and stands up under scrutiny.”

Although Forbes’ competition is stiff, the readership numbers an astounding three quarters of a million subscribers, among whom 250,000 are millionaires. It’s a most attractive package to pitch to Madison Avenue.

“In selling, it helps enormously to get in to the decision maker on the buying end. To get in, it helps if they’re curious about you. Establishing a name, a persona, is important. People were astonished when Cap Weinburger, the former Secretary of Defense, became our publisher. See, people think a publisher is somebody who comes up through the advertising ranks. But here’s a man with complete entree. The end buyer of our advertisers’ wares are the people who know Cap Weinburger.”

Malcolm Forbes keeps his name in front of the public with his Friendship Balloon Tours and Goodwill Motorcycle Gang, his flamboyant lifestyle and constant entertaining aboard the Highlander.

“In my father’s day, business journalism was pretty embryonic. And, in those days the press was not as pervasive and powerful as it is today. Business tycoons would only talk to someone they had associated with on their own turf. He would have to be known to them, become a familiar face.”

From his father, B.C Forbes, Malcolm learned how to hobnob and he does the same thing now albeit on a grander scale. His well-known lunches at the Forbes townhouse have served for years as the perfect setting to land a lucrative account. The townhouse, where business leaders’ own initialed tankards, displayed along the paneled walls, await parched power lips, may have been the setting for the very first power lunch.

Aboard Highlander, the same theory applies. Twenty-two year old Paul Acken, Forbes Inc.’s seafaring chef, coordinates meals for 120 guests four times per week with gala trips up the Hudson as special events to mark a particularly important sales coup-in-the-making.

“The impression I hope to convey is that the man who has a lot to do with running Forbes is alive and aware and informed and I would hope that my customers – that is business leaders – would be willing or curious to break bread with or talk to him. Entree in this case means being able to have these people level with your writers and editors.

“They can’t stonewall us. We’re writing about them all the time. They can be polite but unforthcoming so we have to see them in a setting that is nonadversarial – not across the desk. We have got to establish rapport. And it goes both ways. The scenario of power is constantly changing. And, in our appraisal of how they are doing with that power, it does a lot to determine whether they continue to be people with power.

So it’s not a one-way street where the customer is doing you a favor. It’s much more difficult to make the sale if you’re constantly depending on favors. It’s not enough to have the best product at the best price. You have to be able to get that word out and lay it out. You have to have entree.”

Besides entree, Forbes offers its audience substance and leadership. For advertisers there are the substantial numbers. And what does it offer Malcolm S. Forbes?

Usually in his office at six a.m. – and by his own admission, it’s his favorite place to be. “It’s fun to be at your desk when you’re the boss,” he states.

In his early years, Forbes had ambitions to serve the public. In politics he was a bridesmaid who never caught the bridal bouquet. His terms in the New Jersey State Senate resulted in an unsuccessful bid for governor of that state. Now he has concluded it’s more satisfying to be at the controls of his magazine where he can tell other people what they ought to be doing.

Forbes expresses understandable pride in his magazine’s slogan, “Capitalist Tool,” which pokes good-natured fun at the leftists and, at the same time has helped to reverse a slur on the name of free enterprise.

“That’s all capitalism is – free enterprise – although at one time it was an epithet flung at those dubbed robber barons like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Now communist governments are eagerly adopting some form of free enterprise to bolster their collapsing economies. Britain and France are divesting business into private hands because they run it better.”

Since selling is an ongoing mix of art, science and high style at Forbes Inc., Chairman Malcolm has much to say on the subject.

On The Selling Angle:

“In selling, your product has got to have differences that are perceived and real. You’ve got to fill a niche. You’ve got to point out the difference as a plus. It’s infinitely more difficult to compete with something that isn’t better or isn’t far less expensive. So you’ve got to have an angle, a twist, a point that differentiates you and then you’ve got to make the most of it.”

On The Competition:

“There are circumstances where you don’t mention your competition, particularly in consumer products. But when it’s a limited field and you go in to sell, say, a copier and you have to differentiate why yours is better than the one they have, you have to mention the competition. You’ve got to establish how you’re better. And then you’ve got to close the sale by asking for the order. That’s an old chestnut that should never be forgotten. A lot of salespeople feel the customer will get the message by osmosis.”

On The Soft Sell:

“On the Highlander we entertain anywhere from 30 to 50 CEOs and their wives. We talk with different ones about business and the future and we discuss their advertising program. Once when I had heard that the competition was getting more of the client’s advertising, I mentioned how foolish I thought it was not to share a message that good with our audience. This particular CEO agreed and said he’d take care of it and he did.

“Over the course of the day aboard the Highlander, we ask for the order or ask why we didn’t get a customer’s business. It may take 1 percent of the 14 hours we are together, but we don’t forget it.

“It’s not a sales call in the classic sense but we do orchestrate an entire event and the people who come to these events know why they are here. The event is the medium’s message bearer. Nobody makes a direct pitch, but the whole thing is a pitch. It’s a group sell but the real selling is done one-on-one when the salesman with the account calls on the agency media buyers, the account executives and the higher men in the hierarchy call on the directors.”

On The Team Effort:

“At our end of the hierarchy, we have relationships with the chief executives that we can call when it involves business. We give major sales luncheons, dinners and receptions. Sometimes we give them in a ballroom with a film, remarks by me and forecasts of the economy by my son. Everybody invited is either in the advertising agency, the executive ranks of the company, the VP in charge of sales, the CEO, agency media people and account executives. It’s a spectrum where the whole pitch is for business.

“We have about 80 people involved in selling advertising – that includes promotion department, all the people supplying the tools, publishers office and the like. It’s a team effort from top to bottom.”

The Forbes marketing machine, well-oiled and heeled, involves far more than the deceptively simple landscape Malcolm S. Forbes paints. Taking into consideration the world renowned host’s many international ballooning and motorcycling pursuits and including extended trips like the 1987 Amazon River expedition aboard the Highlander, one is tempted to suggest that Malcolm Forbes has built, not an economic empire, but a state within a corporation, where he is president, chief of Protocol, and roving ambassador, all rolled into the guise of jovial host.

When asked if sometimes he is angered when things don’t go his way, Forbes answers with a characteristic Scottish practicality that tells much about why he has come so far with such success.

“I get mad in the sense that, if we didn’t do it this year, it gets red tagged with how we missed out and why we missed out. And when we go after them next year, they become a real target zone. That doesn’t mean we always succeed. Some of them take a few years. But the rebuff is never lost. It just means they get twice as much attention. Those setbacks have to give you more energy.

“Of course we often lose business temporarily when we have been critical editorially of a company’s policy. People are human and they react by saying, `Cancel my advertising!’ Major companies aren’t usually that stupid, but it happens. We don’t try to do anything about that except, in due course, we point out that, since they’re trying to reach the people who are affected by what we write, it’s damn foolish not to be presenting what they have to say to the same people.

“When we suffer a setback, we analyze why we’ve been outsold or lost the business and then we try to identify the source – the person who said no. Then we go after that person to come for lunch in the townhouse, to sit down with our people. Or we invite them to a function on the Highlander where, on certain nights of the week, our advertising department entertains people while the boat cruises around Manhattan.

“We go after these people to get close enough to find out the real reasons we didn’t get – or lost – the business and to find out if it’s a reason we can correct. Nobody who doesn’t analyze the rebuffs can be a successful salesperson.

“The easiest thing to derail salespeople is success. Then they forget to sharpen the pencil. So rebuffs, in many ways, are almost as valuable as the order, if you are to keep honed up, tuned in, turned on.”

Forbes’ self-deprecating and oft-quoted remark that his success is the result of his “ability, spelled i-n-h-e-r-i-t-a-n-c-e,” belies a stable disposition, rock solid values, competitive drive and willingness to take carefully measured risks. In addition, every lunch, dinner, event or trip is carefully photographed and catalogued for later proof of its business value. In case the IRS questions who ate the hot peppers that were flown from Bombay aboard the Capitalist Tool, Forbes can answer, “One of my customers.”

“The crudest measurement of success is money. We all know that success is a much broader thing than that. For someone born with money, that incentive, the necessity of succeeding, the propulsion, the ambition, in many cases is blunted. When you’ve got what you need, you don’t have the same fires under you and in you. On the other hand, the woods are full of examples of rich men’s sons who have been successful. There are plenty of reasons why success in terms of monetary measurement isn’t what appeals to lots of people.

“Of course, we’re all subject to the temptations of laziness and indulgence. There are few people long happy doing nothing. Doing nothing is the hardest work of all. In my case, at 69, I’m probably busier than ever. I’m very glad that as you get older you need less sleep. You have more things to do because you sense that you’re going to run out of time. Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did.

“Disappointments should be utilized. If you’re a rejected suitor, well, there’s not much you can do about that. But if you’re an actor who didn’t get the part, then you may learn what you have to do – what is required to get the break you need. Disappointments have a usefulness – if you’ve never been unhappy how would you know what happy is?

“I was keenly disappointed when I ran for governor of New Jersey three or four decades ago and I was defeated. My father died in the meantime and I found I had to concentrate on the business. I lost my political ambitions and found it was much more fun to be telling people in public office what they should be doing, and being sought by them for support, than by spending all my time listening to advice and seeking support.”

Forbes seems to have little, if any, remorse. Of the disappointments he has suffered, most recently the breakup of his thirty-nine year marriage, he takes a characteristically pragmatic approach and says without rancor or regret,

“After thirty-nine years of entertaining, my wife finally said she’d had enough. She wanted to live out the rest of her days the way she chose. She never liked being in the public eye and she now spends much of her time on her ranch.”

As usual, Forbes transcended that disappointment and made lemonade by squiring a lady whose persona is even more celebrated than his own.

With Malcolm S. Forbes everything seems to work out so right. Never mind the endless work, the constant stroking of clients, the management of his empire, the high-tension activities that would wear out a lesser being, and the incredible diversification of his already vast portfolio. Never mind that, while globe trotting, cruising the Amazon, ballooning across America and everywhere else in the world or road rallying with The Goodwill Motorcycle Gang, he still finds time to run an incredibly successful publishing business. Never mind that the business, under his ownership, has grown far beyond what his father could have imagined into one of the most influential and interesting publications on the market today.

Yet there he is. It’s six a.m. and Malcolm’s taking notes for his next editorial, analyzing why a big fish slipped out of his net and watching what the competition is doing. He realizes that if you’re in the game, you’ve got to play to win. The only way to do that is the professional way. Cover all your bases and watch the pitching signals. Remember the basics and have some fun while you work.

Forbes’ fun is his work. Everytime he goes out to have fun, that, too, becomes another function of Forbes Inc. The real kicker is…he’s making as much money from the pleasures of his pursuits as he ever made pursuing them in the first place.