Ringside Stories

From the Kennedy White House to Real Estate Everest

By: Richard A. Corbett

Narrated by: Henry Strozier

Follow the life of a celebrated guru, from hardscrabble boy to self-made man

In Ringside Stories, real estate guru Dick Corbett reveals the secrets to his success in business and in life, tracking the rough-and-ready life of a man who won't accept failure as an outcome. Setbacks large and small are taken as lessons for the future, and one small success leads to another, larger one until the dream achieved is grander than any restless youth could have imagined. 

In Corbett's long and remarkably successful career, his commitment to economic development and growth management have been stunningly reflected in the more than one billion dollars of complex real estate ventures he's financed, developed, and constructed - including International Plaza, a 3 million square foot mixed-use retail, office, and hotel development at Tampa's International Airport. Corbett's work has generated thousands of permanent jobs, hundreds of new commercial sales entities, office space, adjunct hotels, and restaurants - all producing hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the regional economy.

Richard A. Corbett's story begins with an alcoholic mother, an absentee father, and a search for self that resulted in boxing titles, street smarts, wilderness survival skills, degrees from Notre Dame and Harvard, a spot on the Kennedy presidential campaign, and later a place at Robert Kennedy's side when he died. This book documents the events that built this remarkable life, with lessons learned and wisdom gained.

• Mine the insight of a recognized real estate investing guru
• Learn how delicate relationships contributed to Corbett's success
• See the Kennedy family from the inner circle's perspective
• Discover how sheer ambition built Tampa's International Plaza

Life is precious - everyone gets exactly one. Few can say they've truly lived, but Corbett's experiences mark him as a man who has been there, done that. Ringside Stories is the story of how wisdom found a truly self-made man. 

©2019 Richard A. Corbett (P)2019 Recorded Books

What an interesting life

I randomly stumbled upon this book while looking for history related to Tampa - on Audible, there isn't much available. I read the summary on this and it seemed interesting, so I took a chance on it, and it was surprisingly good and well written. I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but what I got as an autobiography of someone who has lived a really interesting life and managed to interact with a lot of interesting people. On top of that you get some light real estate talk, nothing in depth or boring, but just some overviews of various sales that built on each other and eventually lead to bigger and bigger projects. Additionally, outside of the stories about meeting people and sales, he's done other interesting things with the stories of his nature trips.

Overall I really enjoyed this, it was never boring or got bogged down with a subject, instead it moves at a good pace and stays interesting to the end. I wish I read something like this as a teenager, since I think it would have provided a ton of life lessons that took me many years to learn on my own.

The narrator does a very good job as well - I listened at 1.3x speed and it sounded completely natural.

Great tale

Lessons worth learning. His life & telling of it were great & I miss the characters already