Executives: An American Original

• Share

His vest open, his bow tie flaring and his Havana cigar lit, Insurance Executive W. Clement Stone scrunches down in his high-backed chair at his company's nondescript headquarters on Chicago's North Side. "Wealth is power," he proclaims. "Wealth is good. With money you can do good—your whole horizon changes."

Most executives would consider such remarks preachy, overly materialistic or just plain corny, but Stone is no typical executive. An American original, he views himself as a salesman for self-motivation, an exemplar of the American dream. He laces his conversation with homilies, and he espouses a philosophy of hard work, clean living, and positive thinking that might be too much for even his friend, Norman Vincent Peale. Yet nobody can argue about the success of Clem Stone. At 66, he is one of the least-known of America's superrich.

All in the Mind. Stone is the founder, president and chairman of Combined Insurance Co. of America, which has assets of $142 million, and he estimates his personal wealth at more than $400 million. A high school dropout, he says that he owes everything to a "Positive Mental Attitude"—which he usually abbreviates as P.M.A. At Combined Insurance, P.M.A. is the company way. The chairman's sayings are reverently quoted in company literature and at conferences. Some favorites: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve," and "With every disadvantage there's an equivalent advantage." P.M.A. slogans decorate the elevators. Stone's books on self-motivation and copies of his magazine, Success Unlimited, are distributed free to the 1,200 employees and 23,000 stockholders. At weekly staff meetings, he asks like a cheerleader, "How do you feel?" His subordinates reply together: "I feel fine, I feel healthy, I feel terrific!"

Brought up in poverty by his widowed mother, Chicago-born Stone started selling newspapers at the age of six; by 13 he owned a newsstand and had read almost every Horatio Alger book. He switched to selling insurance at 16, and four years later started his own agency with $100 in capital. Remaining in debt to force himself to work hard, he recruited a group of 1,000 agents across the country by the time he was 30. In 1939 he founded a company that later became Combined.

The Little Giant. For all the P.M A. theatricals, Combined Insurance is efficiently run and rapidly growing. In 1967, it earned $19 million on $130-million-worth of premiums, largely by tapping a part of the market that most other insurers have overlooked. Stone developed the low-cost Little Giant health and accident policies that are sold without a medical examination or credit check, mostly to shopkeepers and employees of firms without disability income plans. For a $3 annual premium, the policy pays disability benefits of $15 a week for 15 weeks; most customers buy two or more policies. Sales are also brisk for Combined's Little Giant life policy, which has a $1,200 face value and an average annual premium of $30.