"When I work, I work very hard. I am persistent about what I want to do and I go after it."

There are many paths to success and if you asked ten successful people how they got that way, you’d end up with ten different answers. But if you ask someone who’s extraordinarily successful the same question, those answers would carry a lot more weight. The person we have in mind is Dr. Khosro Khaloghli, Chairman and President of Pacific Rim Holding Corporation. Luckily, he’s known as “Dr. K” or “KK” and that’s what we’ll call him.

 It can be a bit of a chore finding KK. He has houses and projects all over the world. But we found him at a charming 100 acre ranch on the California coast. He’s been building a house there for the last 14 years and, if you saw it, you’d know why it took so long. His nearest neighbor is San Simeon, also known as the Hearst Castle, a 165-room private home which took opulence to a whole new level.

KK’s house isn’t on that scale, but it rivals its audacity. Rather than a showplace, however, it has been built as a sanctuary. It’s a house he designed from the bottom up and built with doting care to detail and artisanship that shows throughout. The story is, when the muralist complained about the noise of construction elsewhere in the house, construction was halted until the muralist finished.

KK sounds like a proud father when he says, “I have built several houses this good — but this is probably one of the best I have ever created.”

He lives on the property with his wife and his horses.

The horses are the fulfillment of a dream he once had, “As a young man I wanted to come to America to become a cowboy. I lived in Iran but my father was an immigrant from Azerbaijan—Russia and my mother was an immigrant from Turkey—Istanbul. I always enjoyed watching cowboy movies. I worked in the oil fields and had many American friends that also worked there and they all told me that, ‘you have to come to America.’ They talked about, ‘the younger women, older whiskey, faster horses and lots of money.’ But that wasn’t the reason I came, I came because there was opportunity. At the end of the day, if there is no opportunity, nobody can make it.

“I was lucky in that I was a good wrestler and I knew I could get a scholarship to go to school. So I began paying my dues. I always believed, if you pay your dues, it will come back to you. When everybody else was playing, enjoying their nice homes and playing with their toys or visiting with their girlfriends or visiting friends to talk and gossip, I was wrestling, I was practicing, training, getting bruises, and losing and winning.

“At that time I was an athlete more than anything else and you learn in sport that you can’t lose. Of course, you do lose some of the fights—but there is always the chance that you can come back and win again. Play again and win again and that became my philosophy in the business world.”

KK has earned his undergraduate degree in Urban Planning, his Masters in Business Administration and holds a PhD in Urban Economics.  “I have been in real estate one way or another since I graduated from school.

KK has parlayed that background into a considerable fortune, one that he himself can’t accurately value. It gives him a lot of freedom. He doesn’t have to, but he still enjoys working. And he’s happy to tell anyone who asks how he did it.

“I have no idea how much I’m worth. I never look into that. That becomes a way to inferiority feelings and such. You are not inferior or superior to anybody because of wealth. I’m one of those people who measure my success only by what I am as a person and that has nothing to do with wealth. I could work on this ranch and be just as happy. I could have a little room in the barn and be just as happy.

KK is a philosopher at heart, “I will start by telling you there’s no shortcut, I never have been able to take a shortcut, never in any field, sport, or relationship, from the business world to travel. The old saying is that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So if you deviate from that line you are making it longer, because you eventually have to come back to that line.

 “So sometimes when I talk to young people in high school or university or even older, I tell them that: You are looking for the shortcut and there is no shortcut.

“If your goal is to be, let’s say, financially successful, then first you have to find out what direction you want to take.  Even a shoe repairman could be successful if he opens twenty or thirty shoe repair stores and franchises that. Who says the shoe repairman is not successful? Or, if someone is looking into garbage collection, well, they are some of the most successful companies in the world. So one has to look at what he wants to do, and then he has to pay the dues—which is a long time working in the field.”

KK is a believer in first building relationships—creating friendships by helping others.

“I worked as a lifeguard when I first came here and was teaching swimming on the side. If some of the kids couldn’t pay—because it was a public pool— I would teach them, too, it didn’t matter to me. As a result they would bring me little flowers.”

That theme of giving a little first—for benefits later—comes up often in KK’s life lessons.

As does the athlete as businessman, “You look at me and I’m seventy, but I don’t act like it. It’s not the way I look, it’s the energy level. It’s actually your mind and your speed of decision-making that makes the difference between young and old.

“Young is supposed to be faster than old, but guys I deal with who’re twenty or thirty, they all know that I’m faster. They all know that I’m strong and no different from them.

“And that’s the best thing I can hear. They go, ‘KK, what’s happening, baby!’ and treat me as one of them. My friends are mostly young, I have nothing to do with the old frustrated guy that has nothing to do but complain. I do have some older friends that are very up-to-date, very active, so I don’t see them as old. My energy level is my greatest happiness because I haven’t slowed down physically or mentally. My desires are all the same as when I was twenty.

“Athletic ability was always one of my biggest assets and I have used it very well, even up to today. I know that when I go to some meeting with a bunch of other professionals that are very knowledgeable and well-established—but maybe the night before they had a couple extra glasses of wine and they had less sleep because of the late night. At the very least, their energy level is not as high as mine.

“I go to bed at nine and I sleep ten hours. For me, there is nothing to do after nine except waste time, so I don’t waste it, I sleep. Then, when I get up after ten hours, sometimes nine hours, but no less than that, I have a very, very good breakfast with a lot of carbohydrates and protein and vitamins and minerals and fresh herb juices and fresh vegetable juices. Then when I walk to my office or I walk to some meeting, I’m ready. There’s no ifs or buts. I have fed my muscles, I have fed my brain. I have rested my brain and my body—there’s no excuse for them not to perform.

“Now if somebody goes to bed at one-thirty or two and gets up at six-thirty with some alcohol in his brain and grease in his body from the food he has been eating and he probably couldn’t sleep well, either. He’s tired; he gets up and lights a cigarette, the first thing he does and he has a cup of coffee and comes to that meeting—who is he to challenge me. I’m not saying he isn’t as smart as me or smarter, I’m not saying he’s not more experienced. He’s just not prepared. So to achieve success you first look at how physically and mentally prepared you are. You must have mental as well as physical preparation. So you compromise the night life, which is not a compromise in my opinion because I don’t like those things so much—it’s not important to me.

“That’s why when people ask me have you seen such and such on TV? No. I haven’t watched it; I don’t know what you’re talking about. Or, do you know such and such actor? No I don’t know him. While he may be a very important man, there is no guilt that I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me either.

So when they ask me, have you seen such and such a show? No, I haven’t, but I can tell them I was riding my horses that weekend or I worked on my ranch or built a stall for my horses. That’s not important to them but that other life isn’t important to me, either.

“I create the rules and live with the rules. That’s how we establish our way of life. I know that physically, genetically I am very strong. For me, physical conditioning and strength has been my priority.

“Because I know, then, if I lose everything, I can go back to the same contractor that’s working for me now and he would give me a job, I can pour the concrete, I can drive the truck. I can do anything. I can make ten, twelve, fourteen dollars an hour. And if I need more money, I would work two jobs. But physically you have to be capable of that. So that is my asset.

“Tomorrow, I can go to Los Angeles and get a job in a service station at night for seven bucks an hour. Nobody wants to work late at night. After taxes that week, I’ll have a hundred dollars. I don’t have a hundred dollars worth of expenses… Carl’s Jr., chicken sandwich, $3.50!

“If I have five thousand dollars I can double it in short time. Ten years, five years later, I’m a millionaire again. So it’s not the money that you should watch to make or to lose, it is you that you have to watch not to lose. So, the reason that I don’t go for the nightlife and the shows is, I am afraid of losing that asset.

Diligence is paramount in KK’s life, “I work long hours in my business. I work carefully I’m a very good time manager which is much more important than money management. People have no idea of time management—they just go around in a circle. I don’t waste my time. When I have extra time, I come to my ranch, which isn’t a money making place but it feeds my soul. I regenerate, rejuvenate. So rather than going around in a circle trying to push a button that wouldn’t move anything, I just come here.

“When I work, I work very hard. I am persistent about what I want to do and I go after it. You cannot stop me from going through you until I am dead. But I never was greedy in my life.

On the contrary, KK has a generous soul and has found a certain peace in his existence that he shares with his life partner, “A good partner is God’s gift, a bad partner is a hell. My wife is my partner—but in life, not in business. She has too much responsibility outside of business— just taking care of me. She has too much to do to make sure KK will not lose. And if I did lose, I would be hurt because I’d be afraid she’d be sad. I personally wouldn’t be hurt because I know I can come back. But I do everything I can not to hurt her. She is such a humble, wonderful woman that I have chosen. Marriage is the biggest partnership in the world. People go after different things in a partner. They go after what they think is ‘best” but maybe that ‘best’ isn’t right for them. What is the best? The beauty? The fame? The money? No, none of them.

“I would rather have someone for a partner with a soul, an eye of the tiger, integrity and loyalty and honesty and good health. You cannot make someone who doesn’t have those qualities a good partner. My wealth is in my good wife and my good family life. She takes care of me and I’m just a kid to her. She takes care of that kid. She was well educated, she was in very big business, the president of one of the biggest companies in Japan but when we married, she said, ‘I’m going to take care of you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thank you.’ I wouldn’t have asked her to quit. That was her life.

Having that support has allowed KK to concentrate on his business. “I have so much more time to laugh with my wife, to enjoy the tranquility and peace in life than anyone else I know because I take that time. 

“Any man in the world, even the poorest man, could find peace in his own environment if he chose to. Unfortunately, people don’t look at that issue. They are always looking for more complicated societal and community groups to live with. And, that takes away from them their time. Time is much more valuable than you think. The truth is, success in life is in the lifestyle you have, not really how much money you have. You don’t always need money, you just have to want to do things. I have lived a very, very full life. If I could bargain with God, I would ask him to give me another thirty years—but with the same energy.

KK is at peace because he knows that if it came down to it, he could do it all over again, he knows the secrets now,  “I don’t have much confidence in those people who sell books on how to live. I want to challenge them, what is your expertise? I say take both of us to different countries, give us five hundred dollars apiece, give us two years and neither of us speak the language.

My first move is to become part of that community. Give me my clothes and a broom. By the end of the day I would have a hundred more dollars. How? Easy. Go in any neighborhood; go to the front of a store and start sweeping. Those sidewalks nobody sweeps. The people inside the store think they’re too good for that. You know how long it would take you to sweep fifty store fronts? Less than two hours. And you might get a dollar a store. Then you go to the windows.

“Nobody should have ego about that. Nobody is above, nobody is below anybody else. What does it take away from me to do it? But, I don’t do it for the money.  I am investing in a relationship. Five, six weeks later, I’m working for one of those guys. Six months later I’m managing the place. A year later I’m his partner. In the end, it’s you that has the value not your money. But, first you have to give a little.