Duncan Harrison runs one company in Alaska and another in Hawaii -- and divides his existence in half, every single month, between the two. Here's what it's like when you invent exactly the life you want simply because you can.
It's Anchorage, Alaska, and the sky is usually dark when Duncan Harrison wakes up in his apartment above the warehouse of Alaskan Automotive Distributing Inc. Winter here lasts nine months, and the sun won't come calling until 10 a.m. or later. Harrison opens his blinds and peers out through a latticework of frost -- today it is 10 degrees below zero -- at the snow-draped parking lot, which is filling with pickups, SUVs, and other ruggedized vehicles. Harrison's own car is parked by the door. It's an Aspire, Ford's cheapest model. "When I drive, it's freezing and muddy and probably raining or snowing, so who cares?" says Alaskan Automotive's CEO. As long as the car works. Especially on this day, when Harrison has to get to the airport.
It is not a special day. Harrison travels to or from the Anchorage airport every two weeks. You could set your calendar by it, just as Harrison has set his. Because here's the thing about how Harrison has arranged his life: it's only during the second half of every month that he lives in Alaska and runs a business there. For the first half he lives and runs a different business in Hawaii.
As for the lower 48 (or "the mainland," as Harrison's Hawaiian cronies dismiss the rest of the country), Harrison rarely visits. "Why would I need to?" he asks. "Hawaii and Alaska are the two best places in the United States. And I live in both of them. I spend every day of my life in places most people just dream about going on vacation, in the most beautiful spots on earth.
"Breathtaking places," says Harrison, 41. "Awe-inspiring."
That tourism-board breathlessness is typical of Harrison, who describes an ice-glazed mountainscape as though he were talking about God. But engage him in conversation -- as everyone who hears about his bifurcated life inevitably wants to do -- and you're surprised how unexceptional he can sound, like a guy whose business tethers him to Scranton with the occasional foray into Allentown. That contrast embodies the nongeographic division in Harrison's life. By dismissing as a priority all rational notions of convenience, the CEO is able to pursue a fairly conventional entrepreneurial career -- he owns two successful auto-supply companies -- but against extraordinary natural backdrops. His world is the saturated blues, greens, and golds of Aiea or the almost existential whiteness of Anchorage. There is no gray in between.
How Harrison makes this arrangement work is one lesson in his story. But the first lesson is easier. It comes with recognizing how much Harrison's life is elevated simply by virtue of where he wakes up in the morning. By virtue, that is to say, of just how far he's willing to go to get exactly what he wants.
"Hawaii and Alaska are the two best places in the United States. And I live in both of them. I spend every day of my life in places most people just dream about going on vacation, in the most beautiful spots on earth."
Although Harrison's hot-and-cold-running arrangement is just two years old, he has always sought to flavor his life with the exotic. As a young man, he thought he could find that excitement through work. Fantasizing about a glamorous career, Harrison majored in theater at the University of Washington, until a bout of pragmatism propelled him into economics. (Unwilling to relinquish the dream entirely, he earned a second degree in broadcast journalism.) In 1985 the new graduate, hurting for money, followed a classified ad to Ford Motor Co.'s Seattle office, where he spent the next 10 years working his way up to sales manager.
As a salesman, Harrison was aggressive, financially successful, and kind of bored. But he had an idea about how to relieve the boredom. "It is the dream of every single male under age 40 to own a nightclub," Harrison says, explaining his decision to buy into then hot-as-they-come Pier 70, which hosted acts ranging from Nirvana to Snoop Doggy Dogg. Harrison spent his nights at the club, which "made my colleagues jealous and my employers unhappy," he says. "Ford thought I was spending all my time there at the sacrifice of my day job. It wasn't true, but most companies don't like it when you have another job on the side."
Harrison displeased Ford again, in 1995, when he refused to relocate to Detroit on the grounds that it was ... Detroit. Concerned that his corporate horizons were starting to contract, he hastily agreed when the company suggested he start a parts distributorship serving Ford customers in Alaska, where the automaker lacked a representative. "Alaska had been part of my territory," says Harrison. "I thought it was cold, barren, and had no women. It was everything a single guy wouldn't want if he had to go somewhere to start a business. But it was better than Detroit."
So in 1995, Harrison launched Alaskan Automotive in a dingy warehouse set in a dingy lot visible from the dingy apartment to which the weather often confined him for the eight hours a day he wasn't working. "I didn't know a soul up here," he says. "I had no friends. And there was snow. A lot of snow. A lot, a lot of snow."
But what his new home lacked in creature comfort, it made up for in drama. For Harrison -- whose chief demand of life is that it not be ordinary -- braving thigh-high drifts and shrieking winds in winter was like living in a Jack London novel. Finally, though, it was the sweeping, desolately lovely landscape that won his heart. "Living here is like looking at the stars at night. It's so big. It makes you feel humble and insignificant," he says.
Harrison fell in love with Alaska. He figured he would never leave. But in 1999 he got a call from an old friend at Ford who mentioned that a parts distributor in Hawaii was looking for a buyer.
Hawaii. A state as balmy and inviting as Alaska was icy and challenging. A lush, exotic land of extraordinary natural beauty. A place inhospitable to the mundane. Harrison got on the phone to the seller, and within seven months Aloha Automotive Distributing was his.
In Hawaii there is no frozen, mud-mottled Aspire. No apartment over the warehouse. No ruggedized life with its ruggedized footwear to match.
In Hawaii, Duncan Harrison drives a BMW Z3 convertible, because when it's 75 degrees with a warm breeze that tickles your ears like a suggestive whisper, then a BMW Z3 convertible is what you really ought to be driving. His Waikiki Beach condo is 27 stories in the air, affording him a panoramic view of Diamond Head when it's clear. (It's always clear.) Harrison starts his day with a brisk swim in the ocean; at twilight he often returns to the beach, where the coming of night doesn't necessitate the donning of shoes.
Outdoor swimming is out of the question in Alaska, of course. Ditto golfing. Ditto surfing, which he recently took up. But exercise is critical in a place where dinner is almost invariably steak -- sometimes moose meat -- and potatoes. (Harrison assumes he will put on a few pounds during his Anchorage sojourns and take them off again in Hawaii, where chicken and rice are the staples.)
