Now 84 and worth an estimated $14 billion according to Forbes magazine, Charles Schwab – who earned a BA and MBA from Stanford University in spite of being seriously dyslexic – pioneered the discount sales of equity securities with his eponymous brokerage firm that today manages some $7.7 trillion worth of assets. The California native has long been a golf fanatic and still carries a single-digit handicap. In addition, Schwab has supported the game on a number of levels, primarily through First Tee, as well as sponsorship of tournaments on the PGA Tour (the Charles Schwab Challenge, which is the latest iteration of the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas) and PGA Tour Champions (the Charles Schwab Cup Championship is that circuit’s season-ending event). These are his thoughts from a February 2022 conversation with our John Steinbreder:
Growing up in Sacramento, my parents belonged to the Yolo Fliers Club, near the airport. It had a nine-hole course attached to a landing strip, and I remember playing there with my dad and mother a few times when I was 9 or 10 years old.
I didn’t get serious about the game until I was in high school. By that time, we had moved to Santa Barbara, and it was there I became good friends with Al Geiberger. We played together on the golf team and practiced a lot, too. Even then, he had a great golf swing. I also caddied, at the Montecito Country Club in Santa Barbara. I worked hard on my game and got down to a 2 handicap without ever taking a lesson. I was captain of the high school team my senior year, and it was my golf that got me into Stanford. Our team played the Stanford freshman team, and I played pretty well. The Stanford coach noticed me and asked if I had considered Stanford. He asked me to, and sure enough, I got in.
Stanford was a completely different experience for me academically, and I quickly fell behind in my studies. My dad said I was there for one reason, and that was school. So my so-called golf career came to a quick end. I did not realize until much later in my life that a lot of my problems with academics stemmed from dyslexia.
But my passion for the game never left.
My father was a lawyer. A small-town lawyer. He was also the one who introduced me to the concept of stocks and bonds and to reading stock quotes in the daily paper. I was a very economics-oriented kid, very entrepreneurial, and I did everything I could to earn money during the summer months and in the evenings after school. I sold ice cream. I mowed lawns and caddied. I worked on the state fairgrounds and was a roustabout in an oil field. I also worked as a switchman on a railroad.
I grew up in a small town of Woodland, California, outside the state capital of Sacramento. My dad was the district attorney for Yolo County, and my mother a normal housewife. I have a sister who is four years younger. We moved to Santa Barbara when I was 12 and were a family of very modest means. My parents taught us about the value of a good education and living by a good code of conduct. They were very principled people.
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