What accounts for success?

• Author: Wilson, Kemmons

OFTEN AM ASKED, "What makes for success?" Most people regard success as the attainment of wealth, but I think that the most successful people are those who take pride in their work, family, and country. It is great to attain wealth, but money is just one -- and hardly the best -- way to keep score.

Parents try to share with their children the knowledge gained through experience, which usually includes many successes and failures. As an entrepreneur, I have tried to pass on to my offspring the importance of business and economics and how each relates to the world in which we live. I am a very fortunate man in that my three sons are partners in my work and appear to have learned their lessons well. My only problem now is that I have to listen to their advice.

That was not the case in 1951, when I took my wife and our five kids on a vacation to Washington, D.C. Those were the good old days, when a motel room cost about $8 a night, but the proprietors inevitably charged $2 extra for each child, so the price ballooned to $18 for my family. If we could get a room with two beds, our two daughters slept in one, and Dorothy, my wife, and I slept in the other. Our three boys slept on the floor in sleeping bags.

Sometimes, there was a dollar deposit for the key and another dollar added for the use of a television set. This made my Scotch blood boil and, after a few nights, I told my wife how unfair I thought all the extra charges were. They did not encourage couples to travel, especially with their children.

I was active in the construction business at the time, so I mentioned to her that erecting a motel, or even a hotel, was no more difficult than building a home. I was seized by an idea -- to put up a chain of affordable hotels, stretching from coast to coast. Families could travel cross-country and stay at one of my hotels every night. Most travel in 1951 was by automobile, but without the benefit of the interstate system we are so familiar with now, so this kind of service would be unique.

Dorothy asked me how many hotels I thought it would take, and I threw out the number 400. She laughed and said it couldn't be done. My mother, who raised me alone after my father died, had instilled in me the belief that I could do anything if I worked hard enough and wanted it badly enough. At that moment, I wanted it desperately just so my wife wouldn't laugh at me.

I learned a lot of things on that vacation. I measured the bedrooms and bathrooms in every...