Story of Claire Hoy
By Way of Deception : The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer
Once a week during July and August, I am featuring one of the interviews from my book, Tales of People Who Get It, and post it on the blog so that you may learn from some of the interviewees, as well as introduce the interviewees to a new audience. This week, I feature Claire Hoy, who reminds us that bad things can happen to anyone.
Claire Hoy was a public figure, and after a big high in his career had to declare bankruptcy. A satirical magazine had a field day with Claire Hoy's experience.
Related:
Living an Authentic Life – Gabriel Draven, Summer Series Interviews
Leading Women toward Self-Sufficiency, Anthea Rossouw – Summer Interview Series
Pay Your Taxes – George Fraser, Summer Series Interviews
Building Relationships – Andrea Nierenberg, Summer Series Interviews
Samy Chong – Employees, Your Most Valuable Asset, Summer Series Interviews
Nanci Govinder – Downsizing Risks, Summer Series Interviews
In 2007, I published my book, Tales of People Who Get It, which is based on interviews with successful people. The Invisible Mentor blog was born of my book. Let’s take a step back in time to the fall of 2007, I had been thinking about ways to market Tales of People Who Get It and hoping for a burst of inspiration.
While I was taking a walk in High Park in Toronto, it popped into my consciousness that Tales of People Who Get It was my Board of Invisible Mentors. What happened, without being aware of it, is that when I faced a problem, I would remember parts of interviews that I had conducted, and would know how to solve that problem. After conducting research, The Invisible Mentor blog was born, and five years later the concept of the invisible mentor has changed.
~Challenge~
Claire Hoy: One of the biggest challenges that I faced was when I had to declare bankruptcy. I never had any money problems until I had some money. In 1990, I co-authored By Way of Deception: A Devastating Insider's Portrait of the Mossad
, a New York Times bestseller, with Victor Ostrovsky. The book was a huge bestseller and the only Canadian nonfiction book to be number one on the New York Times Bestseller’s List.
With this new money, we invested in several apartment buildings. Our timing was bad! Bad timing coupled with a lawyer we worked with who turned out to be a bit dicey, had a gambling problem, and ended up getting disbarred, forced us to declare bankruptcy.
Being a very public figure and in the media, the bankruptcy was in Frank magazine. This satirical magazine ran a two-page spread with all the details of the bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy was a big financial challenge because my children were still in school, I didn’t have a full-time job and there is a stigma attached.
~Resolution~
Claire Hoy: You can go to the tallest building and jump off, or you can carry on and say there it is and get back on your feet and resolve to make your way through. It took me five to six years to recover. I decided to work harder since I didn’t have a full-time job, and I wrote lots of columns and more books.
We also reassessed things to determine where we were spending money and downscale based on that. In a situation like this, there are two things that you must do – spend less and bring in more money.
~Lessons Learned~
Claire Hoy:
- When things appear bleak, you can throw up your hands and jump off a tall building or deal with the situation. But, going bankrupt isn’t that bleak. It’s an inconvenience and it doesn’t make you feel good and your creditors aren’t pleased either.
- Most people have some skills to offer and just because you made bad investments or had some bad luck, you still have the same skills that got you ahead before. It’s like playing golf, which I do a lot of. Just because you had a bad shot in golf doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the day or the end of your life. You just say that hopefully the next shot will be better.
- I learned that when it comes to financial wizardry I am not very good at it, so now I get the professionals to do it. I focused on my strengths.
~How to Integrate Your Personal and Professional Life~
Claire Hoy: That’s a problem. One thing I regret to some extent is that when I was in my first marriage, we had two children and I was just starting out in the business and working my way up, I spent a lot more time at work than I should have. It was only after my first wife died that I realized I had to be at home more because the mother is gone and the children need a father. They were ten and eight years old at the time. That taught me a lesson and it made it very clear to me the importance of being around your family. This is far more important than anything that I might do at work. From that time on I understood the importance of going to your child’s ball game or a graduation ceremony.
I look back at my father where he and I didn’t have a very good relationship. I don’t ever remember him taking me anywhere or coming to watch me play hockey, baseball or any of the sports that I played. Early in my career because I was starting out as a journalist and wanted to be a columnist, at a newspaper, I lost sight of the really important things and lost balance. In the scheme of things the family is more important than work.
Years ago when I was covering Queen’s Park and Bill Davis was Premier of Ontario, he went out of his way to be home by 7:00 am to have breakfast with his children because otherwise he wouldn’t see them. I learned from that because despite the fact that he had a busy job he realized that there was more to life than being Premier of Ontario and having the kind of power that comes with it. This was a good life lesson for me.
~Formula for Success~
Claire Hoy: First, you have to decide what success is. I consider myself very successful in my life now. I am not wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, but I love my life. I have five healthy children who are happy and doing well. My partner is happy and doing well and I think that’s successful. I get to play golf four times a week, I work at home, write and do radio and television stuff and get to do the kinds of things that I love to do. And, the best thing is that I do not have to do it at someone else’s behest.
Most people look at success in economic or status terms, but I look at success in terms of doing what you like, and enjoying the lifestyle that comes about. So many people get so wrapped up in the traditional view of success, such as getting to the top so that all the other things that are not part of that get left out. No one on their death-bed ever said that they wished that they had spent more time at the office. People say I wished I had spent more time with the children, playing golf, going to the opera and whatever it is that they do.
~Major Regret~
Claire Hoy: It’s really funny because I have had some regrets and setbacks in life, but it’s always been my attitude not to dwell on them. My first wife died from cancer at 33 years old and we had two young children. I wish that hadn’t happened. There is nothing I could do about it. That was the way it was. I split up with my second wife. I was fired about six times from various jobs, and I had to declare bankruptcy. All these things are regretful, but I just do not dwell on them. I just do not have one single thing that is a major regret.
If I look back on my life and everything that has happened, I can’t really say that I would have done anything differently from what I have done. I don’t dwell on things that went badly, I tend to look forward and say that everyone has good and bad things happen to them.
I know people, and I am sure you do too, who dwell on all the bad things that happen to them and end up being so sour. I remember years ago when I was working for the Toronto Star, we had great difficulty ideologically and I ended up getting fired and that was a very good thing because I wasn’t happy there and I probably wouldn’t have left on my own accord. It’s the only job I have ever had where I hated going in, in the mornings. I was grumpy with the people around me because I hated the job so much. At the time I was regretting having that job, but when I was looking back, I realized that I was turning into one of those people who was moaning and groaning all the time. I didn’t like that because it was the only time in my life when I had fallen into that and it convinced me not to do it again.
Ever since then, I have turned down things that I could have made money on. People who are sitting in their offices at 10:00 pm trying to finish a report that is so important, should ask themselves if five years from now if they are going to have any recollection of what was so important about the report. Your children will always be important.
I constantly remind myself of these sorts of things and that’s how I keep a balance in my life.
Not keeping a balance leaves your children without a father or mother figure and it gives the impression that the family isn’t important, which leads to breakups in relationships.
~Favourite Quote~
Claire Hoy: I like “Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even know if you owe” by Mark Twain and “It ain’t over till it’s over” by Yogi Berra because I view them as great life lessons. In Mark Twain’s case he is saying that if you are going around and worrying and fretting how bad something is going to turn out, almost all the time it never turns out as badly as you perceived. In Berra’s case, if you don’t throw up your hands when things go wrong, but think it isn’t over and that you still have a chance, anything is possible. For me bankruptcy wasn’t the end of the world, it looked bad, but I got through it.
~Influential Book~
Claire Hoy: The New Testament has been my moral compass and when I have had serious problems I learned from it. It shaped the way that I try to conduct my life. Whenever I have heavy personal issues I reach for it. My moral values are based on The New Testament. It is the runaway winner for influencing my life. There are life lessons in the context of teaching you something. It is filled with people facing all kinds of adversities and how to deal with them.
