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Watch time: 1 min | Here's how the wealth happened
Tony has told Theodore Johnson's story for years: the UPS employee who never earned more than $14,000 a year and retired with $70 million through the power of compounding.
But Theodore had what Tony calls real wealth long before the stocks made him rich.
He joined UPS in 1924 and spent 28 years there. The way Tony tells it, Theodore started out delivering packages, and whenever he was out sick, people on his route would call in asking where he was. That was Theodore's gift. He lit people up. Even forty years after retirement, he spoke about the people at UPS as though he'd never left them.
Here's the part we love. At one point, Theodore went to see a cardiologist named Donald Warren, who chaired the board of a small Florida college. Warren looked at Theodore's plaid shirt and khakis, assumed this old man couldn't cover the bill, and offered him a lower rate.
Theodore didn't argue. But when he went home, he mailed the doctor $200, with instructions to donate it to the college.
Then at 90 years old, he gave away $36 million. That college received $14.4 million of it.
Another $7.2 million went to the children of UPS employees, and $3.6 million to schools for the deaf, because he himself had trouble hearing for decades.
He also gave $3.6 million to The American Indian College Fund, the largest gift it every received. He explained why, saying "I don't know as I never met an Indian before. But I always felt the Indians got a raw deal."
For most of his life, he gave when nobody was watching. He gave because it was right, and became someone remarkable in the process.
You don't need millions to give like Theodore did; you just need to decide that someone else's life matters as much as your own.
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