Phil Town

Phil Town is the author of “Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!” (Crown Publishing Group, 2006) the #1 New York Times best-seller and Amazon.com’s top-selling business book of 2006. He heads the list of motivational speakers, addressing 500,000 people per year across the nation at the mega-seminar “Get Motivated.”

Town usually is found sharing the stage with the likes of President Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell and Zig Ziglar, speaking to groups numbering 20,000. In addition to live audiences, Town informs listeners how to take charge of their lives and maximize their success through his best-selling book, his website (www.ruleoneinvestor.com), appearances on MSNBC’s “Your Business” and via his blog (http://philtown.typepad.com).

“The secrets to being successful in investing–and not losing money–are incredibly different than what everybody believes. Everything we’ve been told about investing is wrong.”

A former Green Beret, Town returned home from Vietnam to experience first-hand the disdain of many Americans for its soldiers. So he “dropped out” and eventually landed a job as a white-water guide in the Grand Canyon. He worked the next 10 years from April to October on the river and spent the winters drawing unemployment.

“I was disconnected from the United States…I lived in a teepee…

I had a chip on my shoulder for 10 years.”

On one trip in the most dangerous rapid in the Grand Canyon, he saved the life of a wealthy investor who then took him under his wing and taught him the ropes. Town was making only $4,000 a year when he started investing, but five years later he was a millionaire. His remarkable rags-to-riches experience is a gold mine of inspirational stories that move his audiences to take action to not only improve their companies but improve their lives.

Since he began investing, Town has become a millionaire many times over, funding businesses from bioengineering and software, to travel and real estate. He has worked with some of the great names of our time–including Dr. Jonas Salk, who taught him the three phases of every worthwhile new venture, and Steve Jobs, who revealed to him the most important quality of a CEO.

“The key to great investing is buying a wonderful business. The key to building a wonderful business is knowing what makes it a great investment.”

As a young Special Forces officer, Town learned to motivate and lead in the toughest of schools, as the idea of a “new venture” takes on another level of intensity when it starts with a dark-of-night parachute jump out of a C-123 into a triple-canopy jungle. On stage, he draws on his experiences as a soldier, guide, adventurer, investor and CEO with humor, energy and purpose that consistently elicit from his audiences comments such as: “The best speaker I have ever heard in my life,” and “In one hour, Town has changed my life; I can’t thank him enough.”

AT A GLANCE: Phil Town (barely) attended Washington State University, the University of Washington and Bellevue Community College before joining the Army, where he became a Green Beret and served in Latin America and Vietnam. A father of two, he resides in Jackson Hole, Wyo.