In my fifty-four years in business I have studied leadership and have been anxious to learn why people are successful. I believe strongly that everyone who wants to be successful will be.
So why are some more successful than others? I have concluded that the difference is setting high goals, having perseverance, and working with unyielding determination.
High Goals
I want to begin by telling you about the man for whom your school is named: J. Willard Marriott, my father. Born in Ogden, Utah, 17 September 1900, he was the second oldest son in a family of eight. He grew up on a little farm where his pioneer grandfather, John Marriott, had settled in 1855.
Dad grew up herding sheep and when he was nineteen was called to serve a mission in the eastern states. When he came back from his mission, he found that his father had borrowed a lot of money from the bank to finance his sheep herd. The value of the sheep had declined by 80 percent, and my grandfather was broke. My father knew that the family would be working for the bank forever and realized his only way out was an education.
He knew he couldn’t compete in the marketplace without a college education and the money to pay for it. He had neither! He’d come home from his mission with $4 in his pocket. He had no high school credits as he had to leave school every year to help on the farm or herd his father’s sheep.
At that time Aaron Tracy was an English professor at Weber Academy in Ogden. He liked my dad and had watched him work hard as a young boy. He ignored my father’s lack of high school education and allowed him to make up his book work as he went along. Each day my father would arise at 4 a.m. to study and then would ride his horse five miles to attend school at Weber. He had a lot of jobs, and when the day was over he worked in the bookstore until it closed. He was elected student body president and was one of three returned missionaries Weber hired to teach theology. After two years he graduated from Weber and transferred to the University of Utah, where he met my mother.
He worked summers selling woolen goods to loggers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and finally graduated from the U. When my mom graduated in 1927, they were married and drove to Washington, D.C., in a Model T Ford. It took them eleven days on dirt roads to make the trip. When they got to Washington they opened a nine-stool A&W Root Beer stand. They sold a lot of ice-cold root beer in the hot summer of 1927, but when the weather changed, people stopped drinking root beer, so my parents added hot dogs, chili, and hot tamales to the menu and called their little place the Hot Shoppe.
In 1930 they opened the first drive-in restaurant east of the Mississippi River and continued expanding their restaurants until they opened their first Marriott hotel in 1957 in Washington.
My father’s story is one of very hard work. All of his life he set goals and never gave up until he met them.
Perseverance
In 1924 my grandfather bought three thousand Merino sheep and sent my dad to eastern Nevada—250 miles southwest of Salt Lake City—to drive the sheep back home.
He began his journey in October and arrived back in Ogden in May. During the winter nights he slept in a sheep camp, which was an enclosed horse-drawn wagon he shared with two Basque sheepherders. Each night he continued his studies. He loved to read Emerson. From this great poet he learned the importance of growing strong and developing self-reliance. He came to understand that the tougher the obstacles, the stronger he would become and the greater the opportunity he would have to succeed.
That long winter he learned it was important to respect the obstacle and know that it might beat you the first time or the second or the third. He determined that nothing was going to prevent him from returning home, graduating from the university, and crossing the Wasatch Mountains to the bright, busy, and exciting world he had discovered while serving his mission on the East Coast.
His sheep drive turned out to be an almost impossible venture. The sheep were attacked by wild animals. They would wander off, drink from bad water, and die. When the herd was about to starve, my dad got on his horse and rode for five lonely days and nights searching for greener pastures. He became lost on many occasions and almost froze to death. But he persevered, found an area fit for grazing, and saved his sheep.
The next summer as he was selling woolen goods to the loggers in the Sierras, he noticed that some trees grew tall and strong while others were small and scrubby. He later found a poem that expressed his feelings:
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
This poem guided him through life as he strived to turn his little root beer stand into what the Marriott corporation is today.
Unyielding Determination
As you have studied and learned how to compete in business, I promise you that your determination will make all the difference. Your success in business can be truly spectacular if you are willing to sacrifice and never give up. You worked hard to gain your degrees and you sacrificed much. You have learned something of determination and learned how to deal with discouragement.
You have learned a lot in the Marriott School, but you have more than book learning to help you succeed. You have the gift of the Holy Ghost—the spiritual fuel that will help you as you make your way.
In a recent general conference talk, Elder L. Tom Perry discussed spiritual fuel. He said: “The Lord has given us a beautiful plan about how we can return to Him, but the completion of our mortal journey requires spiritual fuel. . . . We must acquire knowledge of God’s eternal plan and our role in it, and then by living righteously, surrendering our will to the will of the Lord, we will receive promised blessings.”
Then he quoted Elder William R. Bradford, who said: “In righteousness there is great simplicity. In every case that confronts us in life there is either a right way or a wrong way to proceed. If we choose the right way, we are sustained in our actions by the principles of righteousness, in which there is power from the heavens. If we choose the wrong way and act on that choice, there is no such heavenly promise or power, and we are alone and destined to fail.”
My dad’s success was greatly inspired by the faith and perseverance of his grandmother Elizabeth Stewart. Elizabeth Stewart joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England in 1848. She was a seventeen-year-old orphan who was working as a housekeeper in Northampton. When she was nineteen she boarded a ship and sailed to America. When she reached the Gulf of Mexico, the ship hit a terrible hurricane, lost its rigging, and almost sank.
Elizabeth finally arrived in New Orleans and went up the river on a paddleboat to St. Louis. There she worked in a store to earn enough to join a wagon train bound for Utah Territory. One day as she was working in the store, she was carrying a kerosene lamp that exploded. She suffered second- and third-degree burns on most of her body. Yet three months later, still suffering from burns, she joined a wagon train and walked across the plains to Salt Lake City.
Elizabeth wrote in her journal that when she arrived it was a desolate-looking place. She had no money and went door-to-door begging for work. Finally a family hired her to care for their children and cook. Six months later she met my great-grandfather John Marriott. They were married and spent the first year living in a wagon bed. Then they built a sod house. She had nine children. John Marriott’s first wife had passed away, leaving eight children; my great-grandmother raised seventeen children. She was president of the Primary and the Relief Society at the same time, but when she was seventy-five she had to give up her Primary calling because she could not keep up with the little kids anymore.
Her final journal entry read: “Though I was very poor, I was not discouraged when I arrived in Utah because I knew I had come to Zion to raise a family. I told my children never to find fault with the teachings of the church for they are all true.”
You are all destined to greatness. You have an excellent education and a strong work ethic and the blessings of the gospel. I encourage you future leaders to work with your team to persevere with you. Your success will depend on how well your people share your determination.
May you go forth with great strength and determination to succeed. Once you’ve met your goals, set some new ones and make them even higher. Keep on working, learning, and growing, and never give up. May the Lord bless you in your efforts. May you continue to have the Holy Ghost beside you, to guide you and bless your lives continually.
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Speech given by J. Willard Marriott Jr.
Photographed by Jed Wells
About The Speaker
J. Willard Marriott Jr. is chairman and CEO of Marriott International Inc. This text is adapted from a speech he gave at the Marriott School convocation on 23 April 2010.
