Every American story holds unexpected turns, and few embody that more than Stephen Ross. From his roots as a “Detroiter, born and bred,” to becoming one of America’s largest real estate developers and owner of the Miami Dolphins, his path was anything but straight. He was a kid who rebelled, disliked school, and faced early struggles, showing little sign of the visionary entrepreneur he would become. This is the remarkable tale of how a young man, once deemed “least likely to succeed,” navigated a journey filled with impulsive decisions and wake-up calls, ultimately building an empire.
It was a young Stephen Ross, dragged unwillingly to Miami, who learned early lessons in defiance and self-reliance. From a brief stint in military school to a pivotal moment where he realized it was “sink or swim” in college, his early life was a crucible. Later, working as a successful tax attorney, an impulsive spark – an awareness of life’s brevity after a tragic event – led him to quit his job and chase an unknown future in New York City, proving that sometimes, the biggest leaps lead to the grandest American success stories. Join us as we explore the surprising beginnings of Stephen Ross, a true force in real estate and American business.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: Hmm, 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 Alex Cortex.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: 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.
00:00:41
Speaker 3: I hated it down there, actually, and I kind of rebelled against my parents and I got into little trouble. I mean, I mean, I suppose to studying. I’d, you know, go out playing the game like a little bit, and, you know, I mean, I had a, you know, everything but study, even though my parents really try to be strict. You know, my father lectured all the time, as opposed, because he was working, and then he lectured me. I guess it didn’t do any good, you know, but it ultimately, I guess, it’s some good. I mean, I don’t know. I wanted to get out of there. I went to my parents, said, “Well, if you’re going to leave, you don’t want to go to school here, you have to go to military school.” So it spent about four days of military school and said, “I’ll go back to school,” you know. And I mean, I’ll talk 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, 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 flugged out two-thirds of the freshman class. They tell you, “Look on your left and look on your right. The person saying next you won’t be here year.” And so, you know, kind of it’s a wake-up call. But I also knew if I wanted something we didn’t, I wasn’t going to get anything for my parents. I mean, I wasn’t left anything, and they had nothing to give me, you know. So I knew what it was, you know, it was either sink or swim. And then when I got to college, that’s when I really kind of started to be able to do well at the University of Florida, and 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 was probably the best year of school I ever had. That I really found something enjoyed. I’d always get good marks if I liked it. You know, if I didn’t like the subject, I didn’t do it 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 me. As they say, success breeds success. I mean, the teachers told my parents they were wasting the 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—I 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 are brought up—I mean, even with 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.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: After getting his master’s degree at NYU, Stephen went back to his hometown to work at an accounting firm as a tax attorney.
00:03:39
Speaker 3: I was doing very well practicing law, and, you know, a certain life is really kind of funny. It’s kind of impulsive. I’m in my office one day. It was, in fact, I remembered—I could still picture it. It was June’s—I think it was June seventh or June ninth, in nineteen sixty-eight, the night before Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And I’d watch it 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 multiple young guy. And the 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 didn’t even ever think 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 what’s going on. So he then brought in the senior partner, and 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 my mind, and 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, and we really don’t know. It takes something; it takes a spark for something to happen. I’ve told my mother’s, “You don’t know anybody in New York.” I said, “Hey, you know, I went there. I loved it, and you know the stories. ‘If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.'” Blah, blah, blah, and off I went, you know. And when I went to New York, then the firm called and made several appointments for me to help me, you know: Lazard, Freyer, 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, start-up 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 thirty-seven and thirty-four and thirty-one, 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.” You know, you got to… 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 my friend of mine, who was working at Bear Stearns, got me an interview, and I was working on creative deals. But I had the guy. I was the wrong guy I was working for, and so I had put together this deal when I was a laired, 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 a 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 and Bear Stearns, but would Bear Stearns be interested?” Met with this partner. 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.” Made an appointment. Doesn’t show up. The guy calls me. “I go and to… I got caught up in this other deal. I was out there. I’ll be either there.” Main an appointment. Doesn’t show up. Called me again. I told the guy. He said, “You know, range of time, and I’ll call.” So twice that happened. He never called. So a guy calls me. I said, “Hey, I would take a 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.” And, “A,” 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 nineteen and the opening. And that day, the part of all of a sudden walks into my office for the first time. “Hey, whatever happened to that company?” “Blah?” “You know, ‘Environmental Systems,’ it’s called,” I said. “He’s waiting for your phone call, you know.” And he didn’t take that, obviously. And then, after that, when I’d be in meetings, he’d—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 had worked on, and then someone asked him, “Well, who’s going to work—you know, work on it for us?” When the senior guy said, “Well, Steve is, he put it together, and he knows it.” Guy’s wide hundred comps, and Steve, and I said, “So I got no confidence.” View next morning, I got a phone call. “You know, I was fired. Did I quit, or was I fired? 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,” and 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 a really a six-month period of time. So with that kind of résumé, who’s going to hire me? And that’s what 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. I never had an investor. So for about the next thirty 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 nice story, that’s true, and I really believe that, you know, when you’re doing something and you’re successful, you should believe in yourself. Who else can you trust more than yourself?
00:10:29
Speaker 1: 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 All American Story.
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