In 1927, a man from a farming town in Utah opened a nine-seat root beer stand in Washington, D.C. with $6,000 to his name.

By the time he died, that stand had become one of the largest hotel companies in the world,

with billions in annual sales, over 100,000 employees, and a name you see all over the world.

His name was Jay Willard Marriott.

But everybody called him Bill.

And here's what's strange about the Marriott story.

You'd assume the man who built the world's largest hotel company was a hotel guy, but he wasn't.

He didn't open his first hotel until he was in his

mid-50s, and he fought against it the whole way. Hotels terrified him. He'd watched every major

hotel chain in America go bankrupt during the Depression, and he wanted nothing to do with him.

So how did a man who was afraid of hotels end up building

the world's largest hotel company? Marriott was never really a hotel company. And how Bill

built it surprised me. Let's get into it. When Bill Marriott was 12 years old, his father pointed

at a field of sugar beads baking in the Utah sun. Son these beets sure need thinning. You're old enough to take care of that, aren't you? He hitched up a horse and drove off to town. Bill didn't pick up a hoe. Instead, he rounded up his seven brothers and sisters and made them an offer. How'd you all like a nice bottle of soda pop, a whole bottle all for

yourself? Well, all you got to do is a little thinning out in the beet field. He gave them each a

row and rode to the store with a wagon. He came back holding a bag of cold bottles like a trophy.

Finish your rows and it's all yours. They work faster and faster. All afternoon, his sister, Doris, remembered,

we'd hoe the beet rose, just dying for a drink of that cold soda pop. Bill sure had a lot of work

out of us. He was a born organizer, but it went deeper than just organizing. At 12 years old,

he cracked one of the hardest principles in business. If a job is too big for one person, don't work harder.

Find the right incentive and let other people help you carry it.

To understand how a kid thinks this way, you need to know where he came from.

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