Work Hard, Play Hard

“A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away,” said Phyllis McGinley, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Bill Gates seems to agree and turns to his favorite hobby of bridge, which he frequently plays with Warren Buffett. Martha Stewart has a serious scrapbook fetish, and Jim Clark, the mastermind behind Netscape, sails the seas on Hyperion, his 197-foot mast sailboat. At a time when most scramble to salvage their enterprises challenged by the economic climate, let us introduce you to five achievers who are as interested in their boardrooms as they are in leisurely pursuits.

Jess Jackson

For Jess Jackson, the wine entrepreneur behind the Kendall-Jackson empire, the line between work and pleasure is blurry at best. What some would consider hobbies have become professions for this Renaissance man, who considers family his biggest priority. A lawyer, winemaker, farmer, and horse breeder, Jackson is ranked 536th on Forbes’ World Billionaires list in 2010. Amazingly enough, Jackson has done exceptionally well in all layers of his multi-faceted career that kept bringing him back to winemaking. “When I take on an endeavor, I aim to be successful at it and put in the work necessary to achieve that,” Jess reveals. “At the same time, fate is not entirely in our hands, so a little bit of luck is always helpful.”

It was with that same verve it took to make his wine empire a success that Jackson applied himself to thoroughbred breeding and racing. “In 1938, my uncle took me to see Seabiscuit at Bay Meadows,” Jackson recalls with nostalgia. “It was the Depression, and the world needed a hero. Seabiscuit wasn’t perfectly conformed but he had real heart. That’s when it took hold in me.” Pending definition of success, Jackson, who today is the majority stakeholder in thoroughbred Curlin, has become as triumphant in breeding horses as he is in winemaking. Curlin has earned more than $10.5 million in total, making the thoroughbred the highest North American money earner, thanks to wins at the 2007 Preakness Stakes, the 2007 Breeders’ Cup Classic, and the 2008 Dubai World Cup. For all of Jackson’s efforts, HorseRaceInsider.com presented him with the Sportsman of the Year 2008 Insider Award. Still, perhaps Jackson’s biggest passion has been the outdoors, which consequently labored his professional success. “As I moved through law and my various careers, I was always drawn back to the outdoors: hiking through the Sierras, going up to the Trinity Alps, driving through the vineyards of California,” Jackson admits. “In hindsight, I was—with no particular awareness of it—migrating back to my family’s farming roots.”

Bobby Genovese

It makes sense that Bobby Genovese, the founder and owner of BG Capital Group known as the North American version of Richard Branson, would aspire as a child to be an all-around winner. Both his father and grandfather rose to the rank of champions in golf and football back in his homeland of Canada. “I grew up on a farm where I rode horses. So when I got invited to a polo match in Palm Beach, I thought to myself, I can play this game,” Bobby professes, never shamed by his humble beginnings. To simply play the game wasn’t enough for this self-professed adventure capitalist, who skies, flies planes, and is an avid rock climber. Today Genovese, owner of Vancouver International Polo Team, is also the proud winner of the Canadian Open.

Despite the vast business obligations that his growing fortune requires, polo is an imperative part of life for this entrepreneur, who founded his first company at the age of 25 with only a ninth-grade education. “You have to have a lot of passion for something that results in a $199 winner’s trophy after a $3 million-plus investment in horses, players, etc.” Taking risks is, after all, the very element that helped Genovese succeed in the first place. Part of BG Capital Group’s investment strategy includes a myriad of specialized—and at times unusual—opportunities. One of them, the Neptune Memorial Reef, an underwater memorial garden for cremated remains off the coast of Florida, is the largest man-made reef in the world. With a new office opening every six weeks, Genovese credits the discipline and group effort he exemplifies out on the polo field for his professional success. “Like in business, you can’t win in polo if you don’t put together the ultimate team,” he says. Despite the game’s surprisingly high mortality rate, Genovese has no intentions of slowing down. “I think only car racing is more dangerous. Polo is a gentleman’s game, and I plan to keep on winning.”

Stacy Josloff

For a soft-spoken, tiny woman, Stacy Josloff, owner of Inca clothing line, packs a mighty punch. She moves around her boutique inside of the Gansevoort South in Miami Beach with purpose, cleaning up small messes left behind by clumsy passersby. But what else can you expect from a Jersey girl who invented a fashion major at a university that did not have one. “I went to University of Michigan to study art, but fashion was the thing for me, so I convinced a few professors to help me, and I created a program that didn’t exist before,” she says.

Like many Jersey girls before her, Josloff looked towards New York with longing for possibilities only the Big Apple can offer. Soon she was living her own version of Sex and the City, her days filled with the arts, fashion, and the high life. Under the tutelage of her then-husband Donny Deutsch, an ad man extraordinaire and TV personality, Josloff’s fervor for the arts grew. Her career, which included stints at Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, and Max Mara, not so much. “I became exposed to things at a young age many can only wish for,” reminisces Josloff. The home she shared with Deutsch was filled with Basquiats, Warhols, and Ruschas. But as her appreciation for the arts increased, a compromise to keep a happy home stagnated her career. “I’m not one to be a housewife, or spend time at the gym, or be a lady who lunches,” she explains. Predictably, her marriage was coming to an end when Josloff’s professional ambitions took off again. She got together with a friend, and Inca, a resort collection, was born.

Today, Josloff enjoys the balance her successful fashion line and a healthy new marriage and two daughters provide. She moved to Miami from New York to open Inca boutique and gained a new perspective on life in the process. “Your armor here falls off, you breathe better. It’s OK to slow down a little and to actually have a hobby,” Josloff says ironically as she readies to open a yet-to-be-named concept store inside of the W South Beach. “It will be in itself a piece of art, with hair, jewelry and clothing salons,” she adds. Never too far from her favorite pastime, Josloff, currently indulging her appetite for photography, is eyeing a pièce de résistance to display in her new store. “I’m thinking Herb Ritts’ Rachel Holding Sphere,” she concludes and checks her watch for time, which she seems to have little of.

Henry Buhl

Some leisurely pursuits seem whimsically predestined. For others, the matter is very pragmatic. “Not many people collected hands,” states Henry Buhl, a former investment banker turned photographer turned president of New York’s SoHo Partnership, who bares an eerie resemblance to Anthony Hopkins. What started as an investment purchase of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hands With Thimble sparked what evolved into one of the most comprehensive, if not the largest, privately held art collections on the subject of human hands. Buhl’s collection contains well over 1,100 photographs and 110 sculptures, and since its debut in New York’s Guggenheim Museum, it has been on display in major museums around the world including those in Spain, Germany, Russia, and South Korea.

Buhl started SoHo Partnership, a non-profit organization aiming to employ the homeless, when a local homeless man asked him for $20. He offered him a job sweeping in front of his building instead and rallied boutique owners on the block to pay the man to clean their storefronts as well. Soon Tribeca and NoHo/Bowery followed with the same community initiative. It is in that “big picture” approach where Buhl’s passions for philanthropy and the arts meet. Still the rewards of his professional and leisurely endeavors are intimately personal. “I used to think that art collecting was a terribly nouveau riche thing to do. It is so self-aggrandizing and in a way it buys an entry into a certain society,” he admits. “But in the end, it is just so rewarding.”

Kasey Langston

Kasey Langston knows all about the dangers of racing. “Everyone always asks if I’m not scared,” says the all-American racing machine. “I’m more nervous driving on I-95.” It’s hard to picture the former top model speeding down the track in her red Ferrari. She is poised and elegant, wearing her preppy uniform of slacks and crisp white shirt while sitting in her waterfront home on Venetian Island in Miami. On the blackboard hanging in her pristine, white kitchen, the busy life of her three kids is accounted for to the minute. “I’m always in the car, driving everyone,” Kasey says with a grin.

It was probably that smile that landed Kasey on the covers of magazines like Elle, Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar and in the pages of endless catalogs back when she was known by her maiden name of Kasey Cain. “I love my job,” Kasey admits. “I was never one to whine about it. I was glad to work and make the money I did.” Kasey was, along with other top girls from Elite Model Management, part of the wave that defined the industry as we know it today. It wasn’t hard for her to give up college and a retail gig back in California for a first class ticket around the world. When it came to settling down, Kasey chose Miami, the catalog shooting capital of fashiondom, where she continued to build an impressive financial egg nest, all thanks to her enviable genes.

Ray Langston, Kasey’s husband and a car aficionado, turned her onto car racing. “What I love about it is that racing requires absolute concentration,” Kasey explains. “In that moment, nothing really matters.” She has had a few tension filled moments behind the wheel. “Last time a computer glitch shut down the engine, and I went into a tailspin at full speed. I won’t lie, it was scary.” Yet nothing can detract her from the sense of liberty that racing her little red Ferrari 360 Grand AM GT on Palm Beach International Raceway brings her. Partly because Kasey is wining major brownie points with her family and her agents alike. She still finds time for the camera but what unveils out onto the pages is a lot different than the images she produced back in the days of sharing apartments with other models and traveling on a Eurorail Pass. “The confidence I learned behind the wheel on the track has made me a better model, however strange that may seem,” Kasey confides. “I’m just more aware of everything around me.” Her career and passion for speed hasn’t precluded her from playing the role she cherishes the most. “I’m a mom before everything else. I even bake cookies. Only I do it super fast.”