Six Lessons From A Billionaire Who Once Sold His Blood To Buy Food

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The billionaire who revitalized Brooklyn's waterfront went from working on a farm to building a real estate empire worth billions. Here are the lessons he learned on his building from nothing journey. ong before real estate billionaire David Walentas transformed a swath of rundown Brooklyn shoreline into the thriving Dumbo ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass") neighborhood, he was a kid growing up in Rochester, New York during the Depression, learning lessons the hard way. His father, a Russian-Lithuanian first-generation American who worked at the post office, suffered a stroke when Walentas was five that left him paralyzed. To support him and his brother (then ages 3 and 4), his mother worked constantly, and when that still wasn't enough, she sent the boys off to live and work on nearby farms. "We were kind of like orphans or indentured slaves," he says. "We got up at five o'clock, milked cows, shoveled shit, took the school bus, came home and did it again." That early experience was hard - sleeping in the cold during the winter and the heat during the summers was never easy for Walentas - but fueled his ambition. "I think the biggest lesson I learned was that I wanted to be more successful," he says. The problem was Walentas did not have a roadmap. "When you're poor like that... you don't talk to anybody that knows anything," he tells Forbes. "Back in the Depression, people didn't go to college. I never really had a mentor." So he had to forge his own path. As a high school senior, sitting in a principal's office, he noticed a poster for a Navy ROTC scholarship. He signed up on his own, circling two preferred schools: Harvard, because he'd heard of it, and the University of Virginia because "it was February... and I figured it was probably warm down there." Weeks later, he got a letter in the mail saying he had been accepted into UVA's ROTC program. "That was transformative," he says. "It changed my life." From there, Walentas took a long and winding path to the billionaire's list -- including cleaning septic tanks for the military, selling his blood to pay for a meal and, eventually, getting an MBA and being drawn in by the allure of 1960s New York City. Today, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $2 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in America, thanks to his real estate company Two Trees Management. He owns more than two dozen residential and commercial properties across Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and Manhattan. In recent conversations with Forbes, Walentas shared some of the secrets to his success. Read Forbes' 2014 profile of Walentas here #1. Do The Jobs Everyone Hates With his farm work experience, Walentas never looked down on any job, and instead looked for ways to take advantage of work others avoided. One summer, he took a job at a U.S. airbase in Greenland, cleaning septic tanks for the military, "something my farm days prepared me well for," he says. "I'd jump in the tank and clean the shit off the walls... 10 hours a day, seven days a week." It is a pattern that he says defines him: lean into discomfort, move toward opportunity. He took that into an early, post-military job at Singer Corporation, where he agreed to work as an engineer in Australia and Japan, and later in real estate, with a huge bet on a downtrodden stretch of Brooklyn that banks wouldn't lend against. He had to scrape together investors to front him the cash to fund his vision, and wage a tough zoning battle to get the necessary government approvals. He now wears a pair of cufflinks emblazoned with his personal motto: "No Guts, No Glory." #2. Seeking Out Exposure Can Change Your Trajectory At UVA, Walentas found something he'd never had before: exposure. Through his involvement in a fraternity and meeting classmates from more privileged backgrounds, his worldview expanded, and fast. "The people I met changed my whole perspective of life," he says. "The kids there were all upper middle class, prep school kids, athletes and student government. It was just so transformative for me." That environment didn't just broaden his thinking, it changed his trajectory: it was there he met Jeff Byers, his initial partner at Two Trees who played a pivotal part in the company's growth and who also introduced Walentas, now a notable collector, to the art world. #3. If You Can't Control It, Don't Own It Walentas made his first investment when he returned to the U.S. on leave: a small farm house near Charlottesville which he bought for $30,000. While the deal worked on paper (income from renting the house helped cover the mortgage), poor management nearly sank it as the broker he put in charge failed to collect rent and would leave the property vacant for months. Today, that property would be worth probably $20 million," he tells Forbes, but he sold it off long ago. "The lesson was, if I couldn't manage it, I shouldn't own it". Going forward, control became central to his strategy. At Two Trees, the real estate firm he has built, Walentas insists that his company manages all the properties it owns. #4. Follow Your Instincts Walentas encourages people to find what they love and pursue it. "We all have different interests. Follow your instincts," he says -- especially early on: "When you're young, you've got the whole world in front of you... you fail, you start over." When he moved to New York in 1966 to work for consulting firm Peat Marwick, he would spend many nights wandering around its rough edges. He knew he needed to change careers. "I just wanted to be a real estate developer," he says. "I was attracted to the ability to build stuff, to collect rent, to own it." #5. Take Big Swings Walentas initially began buying up properties in Manhattan, but he was soon convinced that the shoddy industrial neighborhood of Dumbo could be the next big thing. The banks didn't seem to agree -- he couldn't get a loan -- and the city government didn't see his vision for a trendy neighborhood of offices, shops and apartments, either, refusing to rezone it. So he found his own way, convincing cosmetics billionaires Ronald and Leonard Lauder to back him with $6 million in private loans, and going to governor Mario Cuomo to negotiate a deal that would allow him buy up DUMBO but also protect manufacturing tenants for up to 10 years. "You have to keep reminding yourself when it gets tough out there not to quit," he says. #6. Choose The Right Life Partner Marrying his wife was the "best deal" Walentas ever made. "We don't teach our kids how important it is to pick the right partner," he says. He credits much of his own trajectory to his wife, Jane, whom he met when she rented an apartment from him in 1969. An art student, Jane introduced him to the Lauders, who were early funders of Walentas' career while she worked for them as an art director. She also served as art director of Clinique, a cosmetics company. The couple's son, Jed, now oversees the day-to-day management of Two Trees.