A Figure of Speech

Troy Dunn—a self-made millionaire in a succession of businesses—has no idea why he’s been such a lucky fella.

Cofounder of the Fort Myers-based investigation and research company, International Locator Inc., Dunn helped turn it into a thriving, worldwide business. For years he hosted his own nationally syndicated radio show for entrepreneurs, The Dunn Deal Show. A corporate speaker on leadership and business success, he also has several books to his credit. His latest, Young Bucks: How to Raise a Future Millionaire, is being released this month by Thomas Nelson Publishing, the Nashville-based company that puts out faith-based tomes, including Bibles.

Yet ask the handsome, charismatic 40-year-old what makes him a success, and he’ll give you an aw-shucks expression and claim bafflement.

He’s not a smart man, he’ll tell you. He’s impatient. He has "the vocabulary of a sixth grader." He claims his memory is terrible, short- and long-term, and that he’s written (with a ghostwriter) more books than he’s ever read.

"I just try to spend my life finding people with all those skill sets, because I don’t have them," Dunn offers.

It’s a little hard to swallow the "Who, me?" deportment from a guy who’s been interviewed by Barbara Walters and appeared on news and talk shows from 60 Minutes to Live with Regis and Kelly.

Dunn’s stock in trade is his silver tongue. Spend five minutes listening to his tales about creating and producing the No. 1 TV show in its time slot in his Kansas hometown when he was only 20 years old, for example—despite his having no previous television experience—and it’s easy to buy right into the story. Only much later, when his charismatic spell has had time to wear off, do you realize that many of his stories are unverifiable.

At 22, he bought a failing scooter-rental business on Fort Myers Beach and, within a few months, turned it into such a profitable venture that Entrepreneur magazine featured Dunn as one of 1989’s national "40 under 40" young business owners.

As cofounder of International Locator Inc., he not only helped turn the business into a multimillion-dollar international concern, but he took the company’s service—reuniting birth parents with children given up for adoption—onto the daytime TV circuit, becoming a regular staple for such hosts as Sally Jessy Raphael and Jerry Springer.

Dunn’s new book, filled with entrepreneurial ideas for children, is charming—as is Dunn himself. His communication skills may in fact be the secret to how he became a successful, wealthy entrepreneur with the freedom to pursue his avocations: "dabbling in dreams," he says.
 
The rags-to-riches story Dunn tells sounds like a fairy tale. Raised in a Mormon family of six, with a father he describes as "a rainbow chaser," Dunn spent his childhood moving to a different town every year. He married his high school sweetheart, Jennifer, and 20 years later his eyes still light up when he talks about her and their seven children.

A master raconteur, he uses smooth catchphrases as he moves seamlessly from tale to tale: "The key word in ‘rationalize’ is ‘lies.’" "No success in life compensates for failure in the home." "My greatest strength is that I embrace my weaknesses."

He speaks in sound-bite-ready hyperbole: "I am a man of great faith," he says. "I believe happily ever after is within everybody’s reach—without exception." "I believe that we are the masters of our own destinies."

When he decided to try his lifelong dream of stand-up comedy, he says, he merely took his public-speaking routine about business strategies and "extracted all the points and left the jokes in there." With no other preparation, Dunn claims, he booked a theater in Los Angeles, had a friend do some PR and packed the house for his impromptu, 75-minute, one-man show.

And then there’s the reality TV series. Dunn says that his original attempt at creating Troy the Locator was for a "major network," but his lawyer negotiated him out of the binding six-year contract after the network violated the verbal morality clause on which Dunn had insisted. Dunn and the show’s production company, Asylum Entertainment, then took the show to A&E.

Jonathan Koch, the show’s executive producer and Asylum partner, explains that the show hasn’t yet been optioned by any network. Although A&E is taking a look at the pilot that Dunn shot with Asylum this summer, Koch says, there’s no firm deal in place and no concrete air date for the show (though the Asylum Web site lists "The Locator (A&E)" among its credits). "It could happen very, very shortly," says Koch.

Dunn speaks often of the influence his father has had over the course of his life. His tales of Roy Dunn recall excerpts from a novel: the noble dreamer who might fall short of his endlessly optimistic goals, but who carefully instills in his children valuable, quixotic life lessons.

Dunn seems to have absorbed all the mythos of his vaunted father, and added his own patina of success. He has taken the skills at which he truly does excel—there is no denying Dunn’s magnetic appeal, his charisma, his ability to home in on you with eyes the indeterminate aqua color of the Gulf of Mexico as though you are the only thing on his radar—and created a larger-than-life persona that pulls people into his orbit.

Former business partner Steven Weisz met him when Dunn’s first partner and cofounder of International Locator Inc., Virgil Klunder, retired from the business. Dunn decided to seek out a new partner, he says, because at heart, "I’m a team player. I think it’s the football player in me. I believe that teams are how you win games."

At the time, Weisz was a New York real estate developer with no interest in getting involved in an unfamiliar business with a partner he didn’t know, and he turned Dunn down. But the tenacious Dunn pressed his suit: He offered to fly to New York and present his case in person, Weisz relates, and swore to fly right back to Florida if he couldn’t convince Weisz within 10 minutes.
"In 10 minutes, he had me hooked," Weisz confesses. "He’d be a very good salesman if he didn’t go into the reunion business. He seems to understand where people are coming from—he tries to put himself into their shoes."

That’s the essential, captivating thing about Dunn. For all his bombast and hyperbole, it’s hard not to believe that he truly does understand people, that he is fascinated by them, that on some level he genuinely believes in a benevolent universe where all things are possible.
"He’s very optimistic," Weisz says. "With Troy, his feeling is, ‘This person is totally going to do right by me—until they prove otherwise.’"

So it’s easy to overlook the apocryphal nature of many of Dunn’s tales. It’s easy to get lost in his enthusiasm and the engaging presentation of his triumphs and his tragedies. In the world Troy Dunn presents, hard work always pays off, faith can move mountains and happy endings are always possible.

"He always does everything 100 percent. He’s got vision—he knows where he wants to go and what he needs to accomplish," says Weisz. "Troy believes in the best in people. And it’s actually worked for him."