About the Book

THE PROJECT

Texas Got It Right! provides an entertaining, educational, and inspiring road map to help get the rest of our great country on the same path to success that Texas continues to chart. The Wylys’ new full-color, richly illustrated book offers a dynamic and incisive guide to what makes Texas tick.

THE STORY

We would like to thank Bob Dolan, dean of the Business School at the University of Michigan, whose thought provoking question, “How can Michigan become more like Texas?” was the inspiration for this book.

It’s the same issue that Dallas Fed Chief Richard Fisher, one of our Texas Game-Changers, and John Engler, the former governor of Michigan, addressed during the July 2012 “Jobs for America” panel at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles.  Engler opened the panel by stating that Michigan (his home state) and California (his host state) – indeed, the whole country – need to become more like Texas.

Fisher went even further, “re-writing” George Strait’s famous song, “All My Exes Live in Texas”: “It’s not just ex-wives, but ex-businesses, ex-employers, ex-taxpayers and ex-voters of Michigan and California (and New York and other areas of the country) who are pulling up stakes and coming to live a new life and thrive in Texas.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

SAM WYLY

Sam Wyly was raised in small-town Louisiana.  In 1957, he got his MBA from the University of Michigan and began his career as a salesman for IBM and then a manager for Honeywell.  At 28, he created his first company, University Computing Company, which became the first of six enterprises that Wyly grew to over $1 billion valuations.

Over the next fifty years, he became one of America’s top multiple entrepreneurs, building companies in industries ranging from oil and gold mining to arts and crafts, from software to budget steakhouses and clean electricity. 

Wyly resides in Dallas and in Aspen, Colorado, with his wife, Cheryl, and has six children, twelve grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.  His memoir, 1,000 Dollars & an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire, was published in 2008, and his illustrated business biography, Beyond Tallulah, by Dennis Hamilton, came out in 2011.

ANDREW WYLY

Andrew Wyly is an entrepreneur, investor, and film producer.  Born and raised in Los Angeles, with some schooling in Switzerland, he has been a Texan by choice since 2004. After earning a bachelor’s degree in history from Denison University, Andrew worked as a sales agent for Green Mountain Energy and managed a portfolio for a hedge fund.  He has continued his interest in political economics through participation with several think tanks.  In 2007, he created the Andrew Wyly Film Company.  Blood Shot, his first feature film, was completed last year.