“I’ve had a lot of different jobs,” Rowan recently told iCapital CEO Lawrence Calcano during a podcast. “I was a valet parker at the Diplomat Hotel—now, the Shell Bay Golf Club. I would drive cars between New York and Florida for snowbirds, transporting their cars for the winter.”
Rowan grew up bouncing back and forth between Florida and New York, attending high school in the sunshine state’s coastal town of Hollywood. Alongside driving cars up and down the eastern coast, he also spent his early working years manning a party goods store and “the best kosher caterer” in South Florida.
By the time he graduated high school in 1980, the federal minimum wage stood at just $3.10 per hour—a standard often applied to service-sector jobs. It’s a far cry from the $11.1 billion fortune he’s built for himself since, but Rowan says he’s carried those early-career experiences with him throughout his four-decade financial come-up.
“Every one of those jobs, you have to take something away from,” the Apollo CEO said.
Fortune reached out to Apollo for comment.
