Naples billionaire Hoffmann makes Forbes list of greatest self-made Americans

Naples billionaire entrepreneur David Hoffmann has joined the ranks of music mogul Jay Z, fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and country legend Dolly Parton.

The chairman of The Hoffmann Family of Cos. joined this august group this week when he was named by Forbes magazine to its list The Greatest Self-Made Americans.

He was No. 45 on the 250-person list, five spots ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger and 22 spots after Magic Johnson.

Hoffmann, 73, is the founder of The Hoffmann Family of Cos., a family-run business with offices in Naples, Chicago and St. Louis, that owns more than 125 companies with 400 locations in 30 countries and employs 17,000 people.

He got his start, though, in rural Washington, Missouri living in a town west of St. Louis.

Hoffmann’s father drove a milk truck, and sometimes the younger Hoffmann joined him for deliveries, getting up at 3:30 a.m. Money was tight in the household in those days and Hoffmann recalled in a 2022 interview with the Business Observer that he didn’t have running hot water until he was a sophomore in high school.

He went off to college and eventually married his high school sweetheart, Jerri.

In 1973, not long after graduating, he found a job with a company named Clark Equipment in Gwinner, North Dakota. Then, in late 1974, he left North Dakota for a job in Chicago.

He eventually found himself in the executive recruiting business and in 1989 founded DHR International, known as DHR Global today. It has more than 50 offices around the world today.

Jerri Hoffmann, in an interview with the Business Observer last year, called DHR the “mother ship” and that it was the catalyst to all that was to follow.

There was some concern when it came time to start the company, though, but they believed it was worth taking the risk. And if it failed, they’d go back home.

“It was like a village and we were happy there,” she said last year. “And I think we both looked at each other and said, ‘Okay, if this doesn't work, we can always go back to Washington. It'll be fun there, too.’”

Today, their son Geoff runs the private equity side of the company in Chicago. Their other son, Greg, runs the commercial real estate business in St. Louis. They are officially co-CEOs the Hoffmann Family of Cos.

Their daughter, Alison, is not in the business.

Jerri and David, who are based in Naples, have 13 grandkids.

The list, Forbes says, was put together by digging through its archives for “classic tales of entrepreneurial capitalism.”

“Then we asked our current crop of beat reporters for their ideas,” the magazine says in the introduction.

“We canvassed AI, running hundreds of queries through both ChatGPT and Gemini. While we put a heavy emphasis on rags-to-riches billionaires, we also included pioneering scientists, Supreme Court justices and others whose ‘wealth’ is measured in influence and impact, not just dollar signs.”