Told. The first question is, why did you decide to write this now . Is it restless joe syndrome . Was there something more he wanted to say . What motivated you to do this now . Let me say thanks for this interview first of all. Now, it was written to appeal to entrepreneurs so let them know how hard it can be and how rewarding it can be. It offers encouragement to say if i want to start my own business, i should do it, the other thing i wanted to do before i got too old and didnt remember everything because looking at this change from when they dictated the new york stock exchange, think it rid of fixed dimensions and going through of the technology was an inflection and our Financial Service industry and i wanted to tell the story from the inside so people could see a human aspect to it. The harder you work, the luckier you get, is not tongueincheek or he really believe that . I really, really believe it because it happened to me so many times. I think sam cold was the first one that really kind of put that phrase together but as i was talking to the people at simon schuster, heres a problem we work so hard and of course, it is in the book time and again, the harder you work, the luckier you get, it just came out and it sounded like a good title. But there was an amazing amount of hard work you went through and i dont think somebody whos written a lot about the financial industry who worked on wall street close to 20 years myself, the story you tell about building ameritrade and how hard it was was truly ive written books about the history and i never got the impression in writing those histories that, of course i didnt live through it, that it was ever as tough as you experienced in building ameritrade. How did you do it . One of the things up made it tough was lack of capital. We started with almost nothing and back in the 70s, we had to send out a Financial Statement every six months and one of our customers called me and said i thought i told you you left three zeros off your net worth. I said no, those other real figures you are seeing there. We can only grow by the capital that we left in the business from our profits. We also had to be careful about running a business so that we are within the regulations of calculating our net capital and stay within those regulations. It was a constant struggle of balancing out income, first of all, making sure we had an income and balancing it in three areas. How much i could put in advertising, how much i need to make sure the increase in a business is not going to exceed our net capital and how much can i put into hiring new employees and find new equipment for them to use x i was a difficult balance for many years. And i was going to say, thats what really allowed us to grow as well as we did but even after being in business almost 20 years, when i saw the opportunity for the internet and for advertising, i said we dont have enough cash or money, we are not going to make it, we will have to go public. So i was at the time when i regrettably said if we are going to stay in this industry and be one of the winners, we will have to have more capital. It provoked us to go public. Obviously that is a momentous decision in any companies lifespan. You spoke about the momentousness of the big day went fixed commissions went away and what it meant for your business. In my own writing and research and experience on wall street, one of the most important moments in history of wall street was when firms started going public and they went from being private partnerships to public companies. It made access to capital a lot easier but how do you feel, it sounds like you had some regrets about going public but you had to do it for the capital access, was something lost when you went public in your mind . How important do you think this idea of companies on wall street going public is to the way it changed the culture of wall street . For us, for me, it was a difficult decision because i had always wanted to leave a business for my family to operate after i could retire and i was gone and i knew if we went public, it was going to be difficult to maintain the atmosphere in a Family Business. At the same time, i also knew we need to get access to that capital in order for us to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us. That turned out to be right. I kind of figured we need 1 million for technology and 100 million for advertising. Both of those figures turned out to be low. We went public just the right time because the right amount of capital to get us into that, for lack of a better term, the Upper Echelon of the people there were going to be able to stay in business. At one time, we had over 400 competitors. Most of the people were weaned out before the late 1990s. Very similar story to the Automobile Industry or any industry really, i was aware of that. I knew if we wanted to stay small, long going to be able to survive. Not have anything to leave to my children. At the time we went public, all the blessings in the capital and i was able to compete, i knew we were not going to have the same intimate atmosphere weve had in the past. People really felt close, as i described in the book about looking at ameritrade and it was really kind of a very fun environment, even though it was very stressful and people had to work hard. Everybody seemed to enjoy it. When you go public, you kind of become a different company, you become for lack of a term, more professionals. You first that personal touch when you are in a private company. I had a different attitude toward the Investment Bankers. I dont think they should have ever gone public. I think they had better control and management of what they were doing as Investment Bankers when they stay private so i seek dealing with the public and retail buying and selling and buying an investment banker is two different businesses and need to be thought of separately. I always thought the Investment Bankers should have been kept it private. On the public side, it was when you are dealing with customers, i think it was okay. We really did qualify going public, it was us personally, as a family, that lost. I agree with you on balance about the idea that Investment Bankers stayed private. However, getting into so many other businesses so morgan stan lee had a big broker so they went with so many different businesses, maybe it was inevitable. The Capital Requirements were not that much different than a retail broker deal. Did you feel the underwriters who took you public did a good job with that . I was amazed, we had done business for 20 years. He going to have a small offering until we got to boston. Then they didnt understand they were not enthusiastic. They did it because they made some money, there wasnt any special enthusiasm for our stock and after we had been public a little while and demonstrated to the market will kind of growth we could have from the guys said why didnt you tell us . I said i tried to. You just didnt listen, he wouldnt buy into it. So it was amazing, for 20 years, we have been growing at a phenomenal rate and nobody in the securities industry thought we were anything other than a startup business. That was all a surprise and shock to me. Is not because you are in oklahoma or not new york or San Francisco . I think we were in one of of money centers. Im sorry. Thats quite all right. We are close, we are neighbors but i know, i met nebraska. If we were located in one of the money centers, i think it probably would have been looked at the same way because the securities industry didnt want to think we were competitors and didnt want to think we were doing as well as we work so i think subconsciously, they ignored us. Omaha also had Warren Buffett source not like they werent aware of what was going on in omaha. No, that is true but Warren Buffett is so much more different than us, we were both in the securities industry but completely different. I dont know if Warren Buffett would wear off on us. Have you met Warren Buffett . Ups from we lived in the same neighborhood and weve done few business meetings. Maybe i will see him once a year or so at a fundraiser or something of that sort. But hes in a completely different world than i am. That is correct. Your childhood is so interesting growing up, you say in the book how you are in a different outlook, you and your family, your parents, you have different interests, was it hard for you growing up to be somebody who seemed to be not interested in the housebuilding businesses that your father wasnt or the typical things kids did growing up and were interested in . It was not hard. I had an ideal growing up time. In nebraska in the 40s and 50s and 60s, it was a wonderful place for young people to grow my best friends, we still get together and we look back and say we really had it in the most wonderful way. We didnt realize it, we didnt know it. With respect to my father, my father was in business with his father and when my grandfather died, my father bought the assets from the estate and my father would have liked me to have been in business with him in fact, he encouraged me to go to Engineering School but i have no intention of going into that business. I tried, as a young person but you have to have talent with your hands and i dont have that talent with my hands. I couldnt conceive of mechanics necessary to be a carpenter. You have to understand how you should cut, where you should mail things and i just didnt have that. The second part was that i couldnt wait to get out of Nebraska City even though it wasnt wonderful place to go up and i was ready to call for new adventures so although my father would have enjoyed me coming into business with him, he knew i was never going to do that in fact, even consult me when he fired me and said joe, youre just not going to make it as a good carpenter, youre good at working with your hands. Even though you would normally think that would be a stressful time from he was comfortable asking me to leave the company and i was comfortable saying im happy youre asking me to leave. I dont want to disappoint you and im pleased you are not so disappointed. Some of the other aspects about playing sports, i never did feel any shortcoming in my cell for about playing sports. I tried to play sports but i w was, i just couldnt. The bulk would hit me in the face every time i tried to catch up. As i indicated in the book, i felt like a grownup, i was a little boy and i had a paper route, i would take my few dollars into the bank and got to a teller and my passbook savings account and a few dollars and the teller would take that information and right into the passport and that made me feel grownup. I was a feeling i got that nothing else would replace so working to make a few dollars to put in your bank account was probably the most important thing in my life as a young man. Cap parents always encouraged me to look work and safe, they never encouraged me to play sports. My parents were raised in the depression so a lot of times you have a different attitude on what you should do with your work and your dollars. You talked about how growing up, you had great freedom but also responsibility. That feels like such an american concept to me in and admire about american concept. Thanks, i always did feel responsible to my family, my mother especially. I didnt want to disappoint her and do things she considered something that would make her feel embarrassed. We always did understand from my mother that we had a certain place in the community and we needed to work to maintain that place so although i had no idea of what was happening to me at the time as i look back now, i can see that i always knew i should be responsible i always knew i had the freedom to go anywhere and do anything. Can you tell viewers the story of the family both, generations back, it seemed to me a seminal moment, right . For that generation, it was. As a great lesson for me to learn when my mother told me that story when i was a young man or a boy, my grandfather was a successful farmer in nebraska, a small farming town and being a successful person in the community you are the rose that you planted, were straighter and the hogs were fatter. The other thing is that the small town the first to the family they gave the most you to the family that gave the second most and things of that sort. The grandfathers family always had the front po. They always bought a new car every couple of years, my grandfathers mother mary and this was before regulations or anything of the sort, being a banker was like owning a hardware store. Your money and progress and Interest Rates on the that you thought would be something that would give you adequate reward relative the risk you are taking. But then he had access to capital my grandmother wanted to leave each of her children of fun. After the first world war, farming was a successful after that, the Michael Group and they had a demand so in the 1920s, times were good. My grandfather had a farm in which they had a mortgage and as soon as they had some equity in the firm, they bought another form for the next kid. As soon as i had equity again, borrowed again so they broke an inverse pyramid of debt. Everything continued, it would have been wonderful but it didnt. We went into the depression. One of the things my grandfather did was feed cattle in his dream was to leave a cattle operation to him and his son so his dream was to have on the side of the barr, a big sign that said clearance ehrhardt and son before they are old, he brought this. Now this bull had a disease. I cant remember, tuberculosis were crooked mouth disease but it was a very prized ball and one he brought it home, he had a party, like a fair in his farmyard and invited all the neighbors to seek this bull, has a number of tables taken and put out in the yard and everybody brought some food so the tables were full of food and people would play games that they could make up one of the games they told me was the men would bet on how many eggs they could lay on the back of the book before one started to fall off a big bowl. So my grandfather was in a heyday, this was the peak of his career because he was able to show off this bull and think about the benefits he could have using the bull to make us get bigger and better as far as the meat they would produce. When he got the decision from he had this disease, he lost all control. Then the state took control and it was before current science new how to handle so his firm had to. When the herd was destroyed, and have the money money to make the payment on the loan and it was pulling the fulcrum out of the pyramid and everyone lost their farm. This was also before the days of any kind of warfare but he lost the farm, he moved to Nebraska City to work in the packinghouse but he had a nervous breakdown so he never did work as after he lost the farm in my memories of him are sitting in a rocking chair looking out the window. His sons were old enough to work his daughters went to work the whole family went to work to support the whole family. Heres this man who had a very Strong Social position while he was a good farmer and had to move into a house in Nebraska City, they rented the least expensive thing they could find, didnt even have any floors, they had forced like a log cabin. It is very much of a comedown and it was hard times for the family. Like i said, he never did recover. It was something that had a big influence on my mother and she told me that story many times. Did you take a lesson from that story . Well, i did, i think, i always had to say to myself, be ready to fail. Be ready to lose all of your dreams and start over. In fact, ive got a website, entrepreneurs great job. Com and the entrepreneurs in that website that i interviewed says entrepreneurs are different, we fail and when we do, we get back on the horse. So as an entrepreneur, you got to understand that eight out of ten new businesses fail. Your risk is really quite high but if that happens and you are really an entrepreneur, you get back up and try again. Another important moment, if i get this right, this whole, the bus stop in your fathers business and what that taught you about innovation and technology. It is an important part of the story and i really started out there and pointed out how important it was because after we were successful with technology around the turnofthecentury and we were big, everybody thought i understood technology and of that understanding of technology is what allowed me to be successful so what i didnt understand and technology, i just didnt understand what could do like a buzz saw. The image was where my mind went right after i got the idea from these people dont know i dont know about technology so how do they take advantage of it . My mind went right back to that afternoon in the yard when my dad first used the buzz saw and he was so pleased about what they could do. How much more construction they could get done. Is this the idea of you dont know how a car engine pork. You just have to know what a car can do for your . Correct. Same thing. It seemed again from reading the book that technology was always a hurdle that you are trying to get over and you thought you had a solution and then it would be obsolete by the time you fomented it and a lot of money was spent and a lot of people cycle through trying to figure out the technology and it was as simple as the innovation of having people be able to dial a phone number to make their trade as opposed to, do it automatically and it seemed like every time you thought you had the edge of the technology, it let you down if you work behind the eight ball all over again. Is that right . That is correct but its amazing to think where we started. We started with a touchtone telephone, the latest technology in 1975 and a pencil and a piece of paper and when we got trade made, we recorded in the book, and we put on a ledger sheet which went into and out of it system so as i said in the book, its right out of charles dickens, everything was done by hand. It didnt take us long to learn that we could not continue to do everything by hand and expect the business to grow and of course, we all wanted the business to grow and saw the opportunity. So we had to have some sort of automation to help us out and as i described in the book, the First Company we use with the company by the name of Computer Research they gave us of machine, like a great big typewri