The Entrepreneur’s View: Mike Keiser
Mike Keiser’s Bandon Dunes Golf Resort
By the Editors
This article appears in the Summer 2024 issue of the Coolidge Review. Request a free copy of a future print issue.
Coolidge Foundation trustee Mike Keiser has achieved entrepreneurial success many times over.
In 1971, only four years removed from Amherst College (Calvin Coolidge’s alma mater), Keiser cofounded Recycled Paper Greetings. It grew to become America’s fourth-largest greeting card company.
Later, inspired by the great golf courses of Scotland and Ireland, Keiser ignored the advice of experts and built a true links-style course in Oregon, Bandon Dunes. The course has redefined golf in America and become a destination for golfers everywhere. Since then, he has developed other award-winning courses around the world.
Keiser sat down with 2019 Coolidge Scholar Mitchell Robson (a recent University of Chicago graduate) to discuss starting out, success and failure, President Coolidge, and more.
Why did you decide to start a business?
I was about to begin Harvard Business School, but I didn’t want to go back to school. So I started a greeting card company with my partner, Phil Friedmann, and my wife, Lindy.
My father was appalled. He was a Wharton School graduate. He thought starting a greeting card company was a foolish idea—especially since I knew nothing about greeting cards.
But to me, starting a greeting card company sounded like fun. And you know what? It was fun. We were all amazed how well it worked.
Why is conservation important to you?
My father was an Eagle Scout. He taught his four sons that whenever you are at a campsite, one of the important things to know is to leave it in better shape than when you arrived. And I think that’s a great parable for all things in life. Whatever you’re involved in, make it better.
What advice would you give to Coolidge Foundation students?
Keep your ideas fresh. What most people think is foolish often turns out to be great. Contrarian thinking can have real power.
What has been your greatest success?
One is starting Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in the middle of nowhere. That took an entrepreneurial spirit.
But I’m even prouder of the fact that for every dollar Lindy and I spend on ourselves, we give to charity five times that amount.
What has been your greatest failure?
I decided not to become a partner of Dick Youngscap when he built Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska. Dick’s concept was similar to that of Bandon Dunes. But he was about four years ahead of me, and he was building a private golf club, whereas I planned a public resort. All our friends and family thought we were pursuing bad ideas. I respectfully declined partnership because I didn’t want to compound the risk I was running with Bandon Dunes.
I learned again that one of the measures of entrepreneurship is whether you stick with an idea you believe in even if no one else does.
What policy issue matters most to you?
Taxation. If you want growth, you don’t tax at sky-high rates. Whatever you tax, you get less of it. So if you want growth and prosperity, reduce taxes.
Calvin Coolidge understood this. That’s why he fought to reduce the top income tax rate to 25 percent from a World War I high of 77 percent.
This ties in with being charitably minded. The more money I keep, the more I can give away to places that are probably better administered than the federal government.
What do you admire most about Calvin Coolidge?
That he was skeptical of government doing good. He didn’t reject the idea entirely. He just said, When in doubt, I’d rather have the private sector handle something than the government. Individuals and civil society do better than government in terms of societal change and progress.
These aren’t concepts many students learn in college. When I was in school, I had a political science professor who would mark me down if I was overly free market. He repeatedly told the class, “If I do my job in this classroom, you’ll all go to work for the government.”
I suspect the emphasis on big government has only grown stronger in higher education.