Get in on the Ground Floor
This entrepreneur, who demands so much and whose highest-paid employee will earn a mere $53 million over four years, is Jerry Colangelo, head of a growing Arizona sports empire that includes the Phoenix Suns and the Diamondbacks.
     If you think Colangelo has little in common with garden-variety entrepreneurs like you and me, take another look at his life and philosophy.
     He grew up in the Hungry Hill area of Chicago Heights, a blue-collar area populated by Italian immigrants. Colangelo’s grandfather built the family home out of two boxcars and scrap lumber.
     Fortunately, Jerry excelled in both basketball and baseball. Sports were his ticket to college, but by the time he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1962, injuries and other factors made turning pro unthinkable.
     He went back to Chicago Heights to operate a failing tuxedo business and play semi-pro basketball before he went to work for Dick Klein, founder of the Chicago Bulls. A few years passed, and Colangelo moved to Phoenix with a new NBA franchise, the Suns.
     Just 28 years old, he was the youngest general manager in the NBA. Almost 20 years later, Colangelo and other investors bought the team for more than $44 million. Today, it’s worth more than four times that amount.

Give and You Shall Receive
Colangelo believes the main reason he’s had success in Arizona is his commitment to community service. “As we [Colangelo and his players and other employees] become more involved in the community, the fans reciprocate,” he says.
     Colangelo’s autobiography, How You Play the Game, came out last week. It will likely be a big seller, but he won’t get a cent. “The royalties will all go to programs for youth, the homeless and the elderly in our state.”
     For up-and-coming entrepreneurs — and everyone else with a conscience — Colangelo recommends:
     Community service. His community activities are dizzying. He has founded, led, taught in or otherwise supported organizations for the homeless, children, the arts, downtown revitalization and much more.
     The man who once said, “How can we award a franchise to Phoenix? There’s nothing there,” has since served as president of the Phoenix-area Big Brothers organization and is chairman of the board for the Christian Businessmen’s Club. Colangelo has been named Entrepreneur of the Year or Executive of the Year by numerous organizations, including the NBA.
     Piggybacking opportunities. Genuine service, along with the visibility it brings, profits the community, the volunteer and the organization he or she represents, Colangelo says.
     Unlike one of his best-known former employees, basketball star Charles Barkley, Colangelo believes sports figures should be role models. Suns players have raised millions of dollars for charity, and the new Diamondback Charities raised $1 million in its first year.
     When life gives you lemons, make lemonade (then build a $90 million arena to sell it in). Colangelo looks for ways to benefit others in the normal course of doing business.
     The brand-new home of the Diamondbacks, Bank One Ballpark (known locally as “BOB”), was Colangelo’s brain child and has provided opportunities for numerous small and minority businesses in the area. Sports are valuable in their own right, but professional teams “provide fuel for a city’s economic engines,” he says.

An editor since the age of 6, when she returned a love letter with corrections marked in red, Mary Campbell writes and edits for The University of Arizona College of Business and Public Administration and for dozens of entrepreneurs, publishers, and authors. She is editor of the midsized-business journal The FINOVA Quarterly.