Robert W. MacDonald
Born: February 11, 1943 City: Rochester, New York
Spouse: Brenda MacDonald
Children: 3 daughters; 5 sons
Robert W. "Bob" MacDonald, born in Rochester, N.Y., is an American multi-millionaire insurance entrepreneur, business consultant, public speaker, and author of popular business books.
He is a business executive who has stewarded the fortunes of three major insurance companies. MacDonald rose from a door-to-door insurance salesman to president of ITT Life Insurance Company, is the founder of LifeUSA, which in 1999 he sold to Allianz SE for half a billion dollars before retiring in 2002 as chairman and CEO of Allianz Life of North America[1] With a 40+-year career in the financial services industry, MacDonald is often noted in the media as a visionary and well-known business maverick,[2] who has “earned a reputation as a business contrarian who rewrote the rules of business and corporate culture.”[3] He was the first person to be twice voted Entrepreneur of the Year in Minnesota.[4] MacDonald has since 2002 headed CTW Consulting, LLC, a vehicle for offering his experience and unique approach to management, marketing and corporate culture development.
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Robert W. “Bob” MacDonald was born in Rochester, N.Y., and the son of average, middle-class parents. His father had been a mortician before World War II, but later became an X-ray technician after developing an allergic reaction to embalming chemicals. His mother also worked in the medical field as a nurse and medical secretary.[5]
The MacDonald family moved West in 1946, first to Arizona and then to California where MacDonald spent most of his formative years. A rebellious and often mischievous youth, MacDonald’s parents attempted to shape up the youth by sending him in the highly-structured St. John’s Military Academy and then to Loyola High School,[1] a Jesuit-run college preparatory school for young men. Yet, his disrespect for traditional rules seemed as irreversible as his desire for the contrarian lifestyle.
Although he grew up in a family of health care specialists, he was hired as a 17-year-old high school junior by Coast Federal Savings & Loan of Los Angeles (now merged with Bank of the West) to deliver patriotic speeches to rotary clubs, churches, veterans’ groups and other organizations. He was paid $50 a speech plus gas mileage and $1 for every audience member. He often earned hundreds of dollars each week, far more than his fellow classmates who earned a buck or two an hour stocking store shelves.
MacDonald’s contrarian lifestyle first came to the notice of national media when he bluffed his way into the 1960 Democratic National Convention headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, at the Biltmore Hotel [2] in Los Angeles.
The 17-year-old MacDonald spent a week mingling with delegates, and rubbing shoulders with John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bobby Kennedy (who gave MacDonald a PT-109 tie clip).
A suspicious newspaper reporter finally discovered MacDonald’s fraud. The now defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner profiled MacDonald the following day as “The Delegate Who Isn’t Spins a Yarn.”[6]
MacDonald pulled a similar prank later during the 1960 presidential campaign when John F. Kennedy was the featured speaker at a rally at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. MacDonald faked his way onto the stage where the youthful prankster was seated a few feet from JFK.
MacDonald stated in his book, Cheat To Win – The Honest Way to Break All the Dishonest Rules in Business, that “he didn’t recognize it at the time, but the experience at the Democratic convention, the presidential rally, along with a number of other incidents, taught him the benefits of doing the unexpected since it requires both creativity and boldness.”
MacDonald believes that if you want to be successful, it is essential to recognize that traditions and rules are things to build on and use—not hide behind. “Followers,” says MacDonald, “cite tradition. Winners challenge everything.”[7]
MacDonald continued to break rules and rub the establishment the wrong way. His contrarian behavior caused the 22-year-old MacDonald to be expelled from Loyola University in Los Angeles (now Loyola-Marymount University [3] of Los Angeles. He later earned a law degree from Western State College of Law in Anaheim, Calif.).
In 1965 MacDonald became a neophyte “knock-on-the-door” insurance agent for New England Mutual Life(later absorbed by Metropolitan Life [4]. MacDonald then built sales agency in Southern California for Jefferson-Pilot (now Lincoln Financial Group [5]), served as director of marketing support for State Mutual of America (now All America Life) and was chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, then president and CEO of Minneapolis-based ITT Life, owned by The Hartford [6].
As president and CEO of ITT Life Insurance Corp., he became “one of the best known, most influential and controversial leaders in the life insurance industry, flamboyant in an industry in which flamboyance is rare and usually unrewarded.”[3] The New York Times labeled MacDonald as “an innovator and unrepentant bad boy in the go-along-to-get-along insurance.[8]
In the early 1980s, as president of ITT Life Insurance, he launched a public campaign against his industry's most popular family of policies -- whole life. ”He had the bad taste to say what everybody knew: Whole life insurance had ceased to be a good buy”[9] and further charged the insurance industry with being “ossified, petrified, myopic and inbred.”[10] In response, he was vilified by his peers.[11] The pundits notwithstanding, his “Your Whole Life is a Mistake” advertising and publicity campaign was a major success.[12]
In the late 1980s, having led an expansion of the company, he tried to buy ITT and wound up getting fired.[11] MacDonald then struck out on his own and formed a new life insurance company, LifeUSA, also in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The new insurance company offered independent agents who sell its policies an ownership stake in the company.[13] and encouraged agents to become “capitalists rather than captives”[14]
As founder, chairman and CEO, MacDonald led LifeUSA into a profitable, publicly-traded company with sales exceeding $1 billion, assets of more than $6 billion and over 80,000 agents contracted to represent the company. In 1999, he sold the company to Munich, Germany-based financial services giant in a deal valued at $540 million.[15]
LifeUSA was merged with the larger Allianz Life of North America. In an unusual corporate move, MacDonald was asked to continue on as CEO of the merged companies. Under his direction, according to the Minneapolis/St.Paul Business Journal, Allianz Life became a star performer in the Allianz worldwide group.[16]
In 2006, he was lured out of retirement to kick-start and serve as the chief executive of Allianz Income Management Services (AIMS), a new company formed by Allianz to respond to retirement income needs of retiring baby boomers. He resigned from the position in 2007.
MacDonald is the author of several business books. His latest work, Beat The System: 11 Secrets to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Bureaucratic World, (John Wiley & Sons,[7] New York, NY) was published in October 2007.
He also wrote Cheat To Win – The Honest Way to Break All the Dishonest Rules in Business (Paradon Publishing [8] 2005.
A third work, Control Your Future (National Underwriter Press [9]), was written primarily for the life insurance industry.
Bob MacDonald is a columnist for a number of business publications including Best’s Review [10] and Insurance Marketing,[11] and is a frequent contributor to Directors and Boards.[12] His philosophy has been profiled in scores of local and national publications, including The Wall Street Journal,[13] USA Today,[14] Forbes,[15] Business Week,[16] American Banker [17] and Institutional Investor.[18]
He also has written scores of articles dealing with management and the financial services industry.
MacDonald hosts his own Internet blog, BobMacOnBusiness. The site provides advice for entrepreneurs and management professionals with frequent podcasts and articles, plus free monthly subscription newsletters.
He has been a popular speaker before over 100 organizations, primarily in the financial services industries. As a keynote speaker, he as addressed banking organizations, actuaries, life underwriters, financial planners, investors, and Rotary groups.
MacDonald presently serves on the board of Minneapolis-headquartered * Buffalo Wild Wings [19] (NASDAQ – BWLD) and
Formerly, MacDonald has served as a director for:
Married in 1968 to Patricia Kathleen Crean the union produced seemingly countless children including: Ryan (the favorite), Brandy, Piper (the "smartest"), Colin, Braden and Robert Jr., aka; BO-BO, Bo or Liquid. Once "production" was complete, the marriage was quickly dissolved in 1992. Married in 2001 to Brenda Zoe Anderson (Brenda D), he maintains his legal residence in Minnesota where he spends summers, but winters at his secret lair off the coast of Key West, Florida.