I decided to try something else, so for the next 18 months I worked for a company that was building the Burj Dubai (now the Burj Khalifa) skyscraper and the Dubai Mall. I was based in Chicago but travelled to Dubai a few times. Many people were there for financial reasons. In the development projects, I would see the construction workers, mostly from Asia, sleeping on the ground on their breaks. I was amazed at how little they were paid - under $10 a day - and at how hard they worked. We take so much for granted in this country.

I planned to attend the University of Kansas at Lawrence to study journalism, so I joined the Army Reserves to help pay for it. Then I found out I got a scholarship. My time with the Reserves was a great experience, especially for a boy from southeastern Kansas who hadn’t seen much diversity. It taught me discipline, which people have said is evident in the way I structure my day. I also learned that it’s important to accomplish a mission - and to accomplish a team goal while meeting individual members’needs.

My father was a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning contractor. When I was 7 or 8, I started accompanying him to jobs at schools, offices and homes when school was out for the summer. By age 10,1 was working with him. I was the perfect size to crawl under houses to install duct work. I’d run into raccoons, mice and other animals. I learned a lot about life from my father and from listening to the radio commentator Paul Harvey. At 13,1wanted to work in the local pizza parlour. I lied and told the owner I was 15 going on 16 so he’d hire me. In a small town, it’s hard to keep a lie like that going when your boss reads the paper and sees you in a photo of the baseball team for 13-year-olds.

In college, I started a business with my roommate, making fliers for companies and posting them on campus. We’d get up at 5 a.m. and cover the bulletin boards in dorms and other buildings. I was making good money, but owning a company means you can spend a lot of time collecting money owed to you. 1didn’t want to do that when I graduated. I took a job with a client who owned theme parks and then moved to Six Flags, where I worked from 1992 to 2006; I was president of three locations, in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Americans often think their nation is the centre of the business world, but that is changing. No one in Dubai referred to Wall Street or many of the other things we view as important. The Middle East and other areas have an energy and a gravity that many Americans aren’t aware of. When I was offered my current position, I liked the idea o f going from a publicly held company concerned with quarterly earnings to a private one with longer-term plans. This is a family-owned business, and the members understand that the Space Needle is a cultural icon and a landmark that will be here for years. We’re making plans for the 50th anniversary of the Space Needle, built for the 1962 World’s Fair. My job is also to help this attraction stay current and prepare for the future.