An irreplaceable loss leads to an increase in giving

Phil Richards is the affluent CEO of one of the Twin Cities biggest financial planning and life insurance agencies and a national luminary in his trade.

It's been a great run for a New York City kid, born in 1940 to a single mom who worked as a bartender at a joint on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"Poverty really does suck," recalled Richards, a cordial, dapper dresser who attended Temple University on a wrestling scholarship.

Richards, only a few years out of college in 1966, was the No. 1 national sales producer for Hartford Life and bagged a nice bonus on top of his $9,000 salary.

But he left the company to take a job at Minnesota Mutual (now Securian Life) in St. Paul after he witnessed a runner-up in the sales competition being berated by a Hartford vice president. Richards, an optimist, had become a student of psycho-cybernetics, focusing on positive reinforcement and playing to peoples' strengths.

He left Minnesota Mutual, where he was in sales management and development, to buy what now is North Star Resource Group for $1,000 in 1969 Richards built his business from five agents in a basement office to a firm with 170 financial advisers and $4 billion in assets under management and $17 billion in life insurance in force.

"I've made a lot of money in business and real estate investing," Richards said. "Wealth affects people differently. And I raised my children to be wary of people who worship money. When you leave this earth the only thing you take away are the things you give away. That's what is your legacy."

Scott Richards was a natural leader who built a great business around relationships and trust. He was in line to buy North Star and succeed his father as CEO.

Over the weekend, I watched a tape of Scott delivering a candid, heartfelt address to life insurance industry sales leaders about his blessings, coping with a disease that had redoubled his passion for life and service, the importance of the industry and how grateful he was to have purchased sufficient insurance before his illness so that his wife and two kids would not have to worry about their financial security.

Scott Richards was a very bright, personable man with a master's degree in finance. A driven competitor, he made the traveling varsity football team at the University of Minnesota as a walk-on.

Like his dad, Scott got tremendous satisfaction out of developing talent, mentoring people and trying to help people who weren't destined for lives in sales find success elsewhere.

"Live purposely and with a high sense of urgency," Scott Richards told the Minnesota General Agents and Management Association. "Put service before self. And have a passion for life insurance. We cannot truly face life until we face the fact that one day it will be taken from us."

"I lost Scott, but I have Ed and the others," Richards said. "Scott had an unbelievable faith in Jesus Christ. He said, 'Either way, I win. I'll be cured and continue to see my kids and wife, or I die and I'm with Jesus Christ. Don't feel sorry for me. Life is not about length, but breadth and depth."

Phil Richards was overwhelmed when Scott's friends and admirers contributed more than $110,000 at the time of his death to the North Star Charitable Foundation, since renamed for Scott.

Grateful for a son like Scott and for his wealth and good fortune, Phil Richards is sharing more and more of his riches with medical charities.

"God is not done with me yet and I'm still a work in progress," Richards chuckled the other day. "I'm giving away everything while I'm alive ... I don't think life is about wealth as much as it is about the journey and the good feelings."

Scott would agree.