Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross: "I Was Fired Twice and Decided I Was Unemployable"

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Learn more at AARP.org slash skills. This week on Leguizamo Does America, John Leguizamo visits Miami to find out how this city became a Mecca for Cubans leaving their homeland. Since the Cuban revolution, Cubans have been flocking to Miami any way they could. Boats, planes and rafts. Little Havana is filled with crazy amounts of Latinx everything. But the best part is the people.

Leguizamo Does America, all new episode Sunday, April 23rd at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. And we continue with our American stories and with the story of an American classic. Stephen Ross is the largest real estate developer in America, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, and he shared his life story with our own Alex Cortez. Stephen Ross is a Detroiter born and bred until his parents dragged him against his will midway through his freshman year of high school to Miami Beach, Florida. I hated it down there, actually, and I kind of rebelled against my parents and I got into a little trouble. I mean, I suppose studying, you know, playing the game a little bit, you know, I mean, I had, you know, everything but study, even though my parents really tried to be strict. You know, my father lectured all the time as opposed because he was working and then he'd lecture me. I guess it didn't do any good, you know, but ultimately, I guess it's not good.

I mean, I don't know. I wanted to get out of there. I went to my parents say, well, if you're going to leave, you don't want to go to school here.

You have to go to military school. So I spent about four days of military school and said, I'll go back to school, you know, and I mean, I talked to most of my friends. I mean, probably my background was probably different than most because I'd never excelled early in life and I was, you know, I got into college because they had to accept me because I had a standardized test that I scored well enough that the school had to take you and they flunked out two thirds of the freshman class. They tell you, look on your left and look on your right, the person sitting next to you won't be here next year. And so, you know, it's a wake up call. But I also knew if I wanted something, I wasn't going to get anything from my parents.

I mean, I wasn't left anything and they had nothing to give me, you know, so I knew where I was, you know, is either sink or swim. And then when I got to college, that's when I really kind of started to being able to do well at the University of Florida. Then so I could transfer to Michigan and then law school. And then I got my master's in tax law, which I excelled in.

And it's probably the best year of school I ever had that I really found something I enjoyed. I'd always get good marks if I liked it. You know, I didn't like the subject. I didn't do very well. The confidence. I mean, you know, you have to first find your confidence that you can succeed and do something well and excel to continue on. I mean, as they say, success breeds success. I mean, my teachers told my parents they were wasting time sending me to college, which is really kind of funny, right, when I look back at it now. So, I mean, I look at myself, I was a late starter in life because I probably was probably the least likely to succeed in my high school class.

You know, so you tell me how much teachers know. And so the environment in which you're brought up, I mean, you want your parents as much as my parents emphasized that and I could see things. It was really later that I really saw things a lot more clearly, you know. After getting his master's degree at NYU, Stephen went back to his hometown to work at an accounting firm as a tax attorney. I was doing very well practicing law. You know, certain life is really kind of funny.

It's kind of impulsive. I'm in my office one day. In fact, I remembered, I can still picture it.

It was June, I think it was June 7th or June 9th in 1968, the night before Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And I'd watch that night. And that next day, you're wondering in life, hey, you never know when it's over and thinking about that, you know.

And he was a relatively young guy. And a partner walks in my office and asks me if I want to go to a seminar in New York. I said, you know what?

And I hadn't even ever thought about it. I said, I want to go. I think I want to go to New York for good. As a matter of fact, I'm quitting.

I'm moving to New York. Never entered my mind. It never went from my mind to, you know, I'm going to think about leaving. And I hadn't even thought about leaving. And it just came up. I mean, life is so impulsive.

Sometimes we don't even know ourselves, you know, what's really going on. So he then brought in a senior partner and they, you know, Steve's quit. He's leaving.

He was going to New York, you know. And the guy said, what? I mean, Steve, you're doing great here. You're going to be a partner here and blah, blah, blah. But I got bored and I could see how I was tailing off in my mind. I was just ready for something. And that sparked it without me even thinking about it, you know. So a lot of things, you know, in life we think we're in control of, we're not necessarily in control of, but we really don't know.

It takes something, it takes a spark for something to happen. I've told my mother, you don't know anybody in New York. I said, hey, you know, I went there, I loved it. And, you know, the story is if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, blah, blah, blah. And off I went, you know. When I went to New York then, the firm called and made several appointments for me to help me.

You know, Lazard, Freer, Goldman Sachs and what have you. And I went and I interviewed. And then I saw a paper, this little article about Laird, which was a new firm startup, young guys. It was backed by the Duponts. It was very waspy.

There was no Jews in the whole firm. They were doing a lot of really creative things. And, you know, the head of the firm was like 37 and 34 and 31.

And everybody said, you know, how can you consider it? You got a job at Lazard. That's the best deal house there is. And I took the job at Laird. You know, I'm sitting around the table when I went there. And they said to me, why did you come here? I said, well, I really narrowed it down between Lazard and Laird. And everybody told me to go to Lazard. So I figured I had to come to Laird. And I was there for about a year and a half.

They didn't have any money. And there was I was doing things a little different. And they didn't quite understand what I was doing. And they suggested maybe I wouldn't be good there.

And then two weeks after I left, nothing to do with my having left. They had a coup and the firm kind of fell apart. And a friend of mine got me a job who was working at Bear Stearns, got me an interview and I was working on creative deals. But I had the guy, the wrong guy I was working for. So I had put together this deal when I was at Laird, putting together a company that they were taking public. It was my idea to put several things that he was doing into one company and take it public. I'd been at Bear Stearns about two or three weeks.

And that's when they had the coup. And the guy called me and said, hey, I'd love to have Bear Stearns do this deal. I have other firms. There are smaller firms in Bear Stearns.

But would Bear Stearns be interested? I met with his partner. The guy says, great.

They were located in California. The partner said, I'll be in California next week. You know, I'll meet you and go through the stuff. I made an appointment.

Doesn't show up. The guy calls me. I go and tell him, I got caught up in this other deal. I was out there. I'll be there. Make me an appointment.

Doesn't show up. Called me again. I told the guy. He said, you know, arrange a time and I'll call.

So twice that happened. He never called. So a guy calls me. I said, hey, I would take it public.

You got these other firms. I wouldn't wait. I haven't been here long enough. You know, I've been here now, what, two months.

And I can't tell you what to do. You know, but if it were me, I'd go get the deal done, not wait for this guy to come out. He goes public. It's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on the right column. So it's the lead article and blah, blah, blah.

And it went from six to 19 in the opening. And that day, the partner all of a sudden walks into my office for the first time. Hey, whatever happened to that company, blah, blah, you know.

Environmental Systems, it's called. I said, he's waiting for your phone call. And he didn't take that, obviously. And then then after that, he would not be in meetings.

I mean, he's always putting me down and, you know, and all that. And I was doing a deal and when he approved the deal that I had brought in and worked on. And then someone asked him, well, who's going to work on it for us? When the senior guy said, well, Steve is.

He put it together and he knows it. I said, why 100 cops and Steve? And I said, I got no copies of you. Next morning, I got a phone call. You know, I was fired. Did I quit or was I fired? The story is better to say that I got fired.

Right. But I knew that that night I knew I couldn't work here anymore before I had the meeting to get this deal approved. I mean, I said, if it gets approved, I'm thinking I was ready to quit.

I knew even I got approved. I had to get out of there with this guy. I mean, here I'd left two jobs in really a six month period of time. So with that kind of resume, who was going to hire me? And that's when I started my company and I had no money and I wanted to stay in New York. My mother lent me ten thousand dollars to live on. And then the bootstrapped the company and never had an investor. So for about the next 30 years, every penny I ever earned, I put back in the company.

And just grew the company. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's worth a lot of money. But, you know, I mean, it's a it's a it's a nice story. That's true. And I really believe, you know, when you're doing something and you're successful, you should believe in yourself.

Who else can you trust more than yourself? And a great job by Robbie producing the piece and a special thanks to Alex for finding this story. And it's a beauty. The story of Steve Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins. Here on our American story. I'm loving this cheap Caribbean vacation.

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