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About Mr. Milken: Mike Milken’s career has mirrored his three main professional passions: medical research, education and finance. In each, he has been uniquely successful in creating value whether measured in saved lives (Fortune magazine called him "The Man Who Changed Medicine"), inspired students or job creation. Between 1969 and 1989, he financed more than 3,200 companies that created millions of jobs. His philanthropy began in the 1970s and paralleled his business career. In 1982, he co-founded the Milken Family Foundation. He now heads FasterCures, a Washington-based think tank that works to remove barriers to progress against all life-threatening diseases. He is also chairman of the Milken Institute, which conducts economic research; and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. He and his wife, Lori, have three children and two grandchildren and will celebrate their 40th anniversary in 2008.
Please Read Mike Milken's Full Biography Here
Ash Huzenlaub (21 Years of age in 1997): Unless you are acquainted with a person on a regular basis, it is next to impossible to learn the background that motivates that individual. Up to this point, students have only had news reports and brief clippings to inform us about your background. I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me. I know there is much more to you than what has been printed in the press. You have accomplished numerous milestones in your life. I would like to learn what motivated you to accomplish what you have and also learn what advice you have for individuals like me - those that wish to have an impact on the world through business.
Mr. Milken: I think we all have turning points in our life. The major turning point in my life was August 11, 1965, the Watts Riots in Los Angeles . I had gone up to Berkeley as an undergraduate student. I was majoring in mathematics. I chose Berkeley because I felt I could see the whole world from the Berkeley campus. It had a large student body. People came from all over the world there. There was a great deal of discussion and dissent on many issues. I had been in debate since I was very young. I felt it to be a great environment, not only phenomenal teachers, a lot of Nobel Prize winners, but a very intellectually stimulating environment. There was a lot of changes after I went to Berkeley . I started there in January of '64. The free speech movement was in my second semester, fall of 1964. Those changes were minor compared to what occurred in 1965 with the Watts Riots. I had been going into inner cities for a long period of time. I had participated in speech tournaments, I had tutored, I had gone to athletic events, I had visits with my father's clients when I was young and Los Angeles was on fire. It was a blaze in the city that I grew up in.
My view was most of the things that occurred in this country started in California . California was the place where dreams were made. It was the place that I could look at the sky and think about space travel that I thought about when I was young for many years. You could look at the ocean and believe that your ability could take you as far as you could go and that was to me what America stood for. It stood for the chance to fail. You had a chance based on your ability to try to do something, not on how much money your family had or what your religion was or where you were born or who your parents were. If you had ability, you had a chance to succeed and education and knowledge were that path. But, if there was so much pent up anger and hatred in Los Angeles , what we saw here would occur throughout the country.
 So, I switched from a math major to a business major. I dedicated a large part of my life to what I consider to be access to capital and the fact that people did not really understand credit. There are three major creditors in the world. There's countries or governments, there's companies, and there's people. People perceive countries to be the best credit. I studied and found it to be the worst credit. People thought companies or corporations were the worst credit when I concluded they were the best. So, to me the first challenge to our system was the challenge put forth by the Watts Riots and access to capital and what I would call the democratization of capital. When I started in business, the banks controlled most of the access to capital. Today, they have a small percentage of the business and are not a major factor. Mutual funds were about $40 billion; today they are about $6 trillion. They are larger than the banks. I felt that you should finance a company based on it's future, not it's past and (such was the case) industries like the cable industry, or cellular industry, or health care industry, or other industries I was very involved with. Beginning in the late 1970's, early 1980's my brother and I had a second turning point in my life when my father was diagnosed with cancer in 1976. My kids had some health problems. I feel that family comes first and I made the decision to move back to California to be with my father and my children. I made that decision in 1976, shortly after my father was diagnosed. I moved back here in '78. My father passed away in April of '79. My brother and I became involved with medical causes aggressively and eventually formed our family foundation. I think he was about 33 and I was about 35 when we did that and concluded we needed some structure here in order to give out grants. We needed to focus really on two areas, education to begin with and community..
By the mid 1980's, I felt then that the next major challenge to our society was going to be education. In a knowledge based society, if you didn't know enough to ask a question, you would be a very upset individual. We have a two-tiered job market where those that have knowledge are in short supply and continue to get more and more premium compensation or participation. Those that lack knowledge are paid a minimum type wage and actually have had no increase in wage adjusted for inflation over the past 20 years. So, the net result of this has been that I directed my efforts increasingly to education as my brother, Lowell did. I spent more time in classrooms and my goal was to build an education training company or to encourage others to do it. I had a few sidetracks. Health, I had to gear up to deal with cancer issues. But today, most or all of my business activities are directed towards education and implementing that vision and encouraging others to do it. I feel today that the financial revolution that I started and participated with in the late 1960's has been successful and that capital is available to people today based on their ability. Young companies have grown to be larger than old companies and I don't see that there is a real need for myself or any additional person really to provide capital. It is available today. I do think that in the building of educational companies that there is (a need). So, that's kind of my focus. I spend my time really between family and accelerating what I believe is activity in the biotech pharmaceutical industry, particularly as it relates to cancer and education.
I think the other thing I try to do if you wanted to focus on is where the future is five to ten years out. Everyone says the future is so uncertain. I really don't believe that. I think you can look out and see things that are for sure... Latin America . Everyone was very disappointed and down on Latin America by the mid 1980's everyone wanted out. When everyone wanted in during the late 1970's, early 1980's, I did not feel that it was a good time but, I feel very strongly about Mexico and it's future. I went to visit the President of Mexico in 1987 and told him that I would be doing everything I could to get people to invest in Mexican businesses. I felt that the educational systems of Mexico and the United States were coming together, that Mexico was a very young country. We have a 2,000-mile border that you are very close to in Texas and that the future of the countries will intertwine. So, what was good for Mexico was good for the United States and what was bad for Mexico was bad for the United States . So, I have been very involved in Latin America encouraging people to invest and develop businesses in Latin America because if those jobs aren't available in Mexico particularly, then they will be here. So, my view that I would say to you is that the difference between where a society and issues stops and where business stops is a very blurred line. I have always felt that if you could find what the problems are in society and solve them that you will create a very valuable important franchise.
Huzenlaub: What would your advice be for someone who is my age, 21? Maybe they have goals to be a person who may buy companies, create companies, they want to be involved with philanthropy... the kind of situation where a charity for example needs something, they can call, and it will be provided.
Mr. Milken: Well, I think the first thing you can do is you can go into fund raising and see if you can gather people to put up the money. That way you don't have to do it yourself. Very few people I've ever met in my life who sought out to accumulate wealth ever did it. Most people have a passion for something that they believe in. They believe there is a need and in meeting that need and following that passion, wealth is a byproduct. Most investors have not been that successful. People that have accumulated wealth have thought of a business and have gone out and spent time passionately building that business. Whether that be amusement parks like Walt Disney did or whether it be Bill Gates who has gone out and built a software company with a great deal of passion which he still has today or whether it was Mary Wygod at Medco that I had the honor to work with to try to figure out a way to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical care. So my advice to you is, "what do you have a passion for?" What do you think are the problems in society and what do you think are the solutions to the problems in society. I think the other thing I would do is get some experience. So what you have a passion for, go and learn as much as you can. If it is investments, I would go to New York City and try to learn and work even if you took a job where the whole purpose is not compensation, but how much you can learn. Not everyone is an entrepreneur; not everyone can form their own business. Some people like a structured environment, some people like to come and be part of a team. Sometimes an entrepreneur is a lonely job you have to lead. You are alone, everyone disagrees with you. If you wanted to go and get into the investment business, I would go and get as much experience and see if you like it. If you like something, you really aren't working. What I did for many years, I never saw myself as working. I enjoyed what I was doing. I had a number of fundamental ideas and one of the fundamental ideas I had was that you finance the future, not the past. Another one I had is that finance is an art. Every company needs a different balance sheet and you've got to reshape that balance sheet everyday. Go against conventional thinking. A number of people won Nobel Prizes telling you the capital structure did not matter. I believe it matters a great deal. To be successful, you have to do something you like. If your hobby and your job are one, then you have a much better chance at being successful.
There are a number of things I would like you to see (Milken begins showing me reports). One of them is the CaP Cure progress report and time line which tells you what we try to do in three or four years to accelerate the cure. This is my plan shown on the bottom. Here (a document) is a speech I gave in 1993 that I gave at our educator awards. This was what I saw as the challenge for our generation, which was the challenge from within. Here is the net result of that speech (another document).
Here is a book ( The American Dream) that was published by a close friend of mine. It is the story of companies. It is the 148 companies that I or the others were involved with. This depicts in picture form my view as the American Dream. It starts with going into your own business. You can read about it. Whether it is an immigrant that founded a business or a woman who thought she could head a company or a person who used to work for IBM and left on his own and began a company that I helped finance or a guy that worked in bookstores and now runs the largest bookstore in America (Barnes & Noble). Playtex, Calvin Klein and Barry Schwartz. It goes from a dream to a pioneer. You might call them entrepreneurs but a pioneer is someone who is moving into a new industry and trying new things. It goes from there into building. Quite often, the entrepreneur cannot build. It takes a different skill to build a company. Then, it goes to the next level which is a very important level and that's rebuilding. Every company runs into problems and you have to rebuild them. Next, the book goes into changing society. Society changes and you must ask, "Can your company change with it"? Interdependent... one company can't stand alone. You are dependent on your suppliers and you are dependent on your customers. Next, partners. Where you view your suppliers, customers, and society as partners, you are a much better company. Lastly, community, where the stronger your community is. A man named James Colber called it social capital. The book is all about Interdependence Day. My birthday is July 4, and that is what this book is all about.
This ends the excerpt from the 1997 Milken interview. Since this interview, Milken and his family have continued their contributions to the development of economic policies, education, and cancer research. For more information, review the website of www.mikemilken.com.
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