Founders - #137 P.T. Barnum

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

What I learned from reading Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. ----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---[1:23] He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life. Less well known is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real-estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. [1:54] In all endeavors he was a promoter and self-promotor without peer, a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.  [3:16] Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams. [3:54] He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing.  [5:36] Barnum’s was 16 when his father died, leaving his family with debts: Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery “to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us this side of the grave.”  [6:22] He knew even then that he would only be happy working for himself. [7:56] Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise. [8:16] He is running a lottery and learns something he will use later in his career: He began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.  [11:06] The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come.  It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.  [13:48] Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him. [14:15] His lottery business is outlawed by the state legislature. He is broke: He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to make money.  [17:03] I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.  [18:42] Up and Down, Down and Up: He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”  [20:03]  Broke again at 31: Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want.” [22:00] The clever way he is able to get the money to buy the American Museum: He decided to seek out the retired merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family (the current owners of the museum). This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do. [23:52] The customers he wanted and how he positioned his product: Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class. They had more money and were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities, and with their higher rates of literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper advertising.  [28:05] How Barnum planned and publicized his show. The details and machinations are amazing. [35:47]  He doesn’t rest on his laurels. After becoming successful in America he decides to expand to Europe: The challenge was the new place itself, a place that had no notion of who P.T. Barnum was. Whether or not he would succeed in the land of his forebears would be a test for Barnum of his own worth, of how far he had come and how far he might yet go. [38:05]  Barnum told him that a person must “make thirty hours out of twenty-four or he would never get ahead.” [40:40] His drinking became a problem, so he quit: Making a resolution not to drink and then keeping it took both discipline and self-awareness and constituted another serious effort to turn his marriage and himself around. [42:54] We are all promoters. Estee Lauder was a promoter of beauty, Larry Ellison was a promoter of the efficiency gains of software and of winning, Henry Ford was a promoter of service, Claude Shannon was a promoter of following your own curiosity. Promoting is just sharing what you love.  [43:55]  Barnum promoted wholesome, good, family fun and entertainment. He built a wonderful life for himself just off that very simple idea, that I am going to promote various forms of entertainment so people can enjoy their time. I think that is a very simple idea and if you take it to extremes like Barnum did you can build a life around that. [44:29] Barnum is never focused on the obvious. He is always focused on 2nd order effects.  [47:49] Barnum’s house: Iranistan  [48:23] Barnum goes bankrupt at 50!: When his projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes in areas where he was less familiar, the results were uneven. I think this is a reminder of what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett told us: Stay within your circle of competence.  [50:26] Down and depressed: He added that he was “once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder.” He wrote that his “own constitution through the excitements of the last few months, has most seriously failed.” He was understandably if uncharacteristically, “in the depths.”  [52:02]  I did it before. I’ll do it again: “I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family.” He was, and had every right to be, proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and the self-confidence that went with it were not likely to evaporate even in this moment of distress. [54:34] To give you an idea of how world famous Barnum was in his day: His autobiography sold over a million copies. That’s insane!  [56:55]  Mark Twain began an after dinner habit of reading from Barnum’s autobiography. The book made an impression on Twain, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as a public lecturer and writer. [59:27] Barnum competes with Bailey and his impressed: Barnum was impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him, using his own methods. “Foes worthy of my steel,” he called them. The aging showman realized he had finally met his match, and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to compete with them. ——“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast. ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

The actual arc of Barnum's life is much more interesting and much more consequential than his present-day reputation suggests. He may have begun his career as a promoter of sketchy acts in a business that was often considered less than respectable, but he changed both himself and the business over the decades, earning the respect of Americans of every station. Because he had so determinedly placed himself in the public eye, people knew all about his early missteps as well as his early successes, his struggles and his triumphs. He did not hesitate to show his flaws, but he would also reveal in time that he was that rare thing,

a man who was steered by his ideals, becoming a better person as he navigated a long lifetime. Over many years, Barnum became a steady, civic-minded, fun-loving man who cultivated a close relationship with his audience and embodied many of the best aspects of the American character. He eventually won over the public with his unflagging energy, his wit, and his buoyant good humor, his patriotic zeal for the Union side in the Civil War, and his commitment to charitable causes, good government, and his faith.

He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that only came in the last quarter of his life. His principal occupation before that was running the American Museum. Less well known today is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. In all of these endeavors, he was a promoter and self-promoter without peer, a relentless advertiser, and an unfailingly imaginative concocter of events or exhibits to draw the interest of potential patrons. By the end of his life, he was admired and respected not only in the United States, but also across much of the globe. He had become as close to a global celebrity

as a person could be at that time. After Ulysses S. Grant's second term as president, the great general made a two-year tour around the world, promoting the United States. Upon his return, Barnum said to him, General, I think you are the best known American living. To which Grant replied, By no means. You beat me sky high. For wherever I went, the constant inquiry was, do you know Barnum? Barnum, who was born 10 years into the century and died nine years before its end, embodied the period's great narrative of breaking social boundaries. Americans often saw him as an exemplar of what it meant to be one of them. Europeans saw him as a representative of the American character. He was born into a family

that had to hustle in its small Connecticut village to stay solvent. Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting the new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams. And he did it all by appealing to popular tastes and interests. He understood what ordinary Americans wanted. Barnum embodied some of America's worst impulses, but also many of its best. He came to represent much of what was most admirable about his young country, and he did so with a sense of humor and a joy in living

that is rare in today's public figures. He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs his is a life well worth knowing and celebrating that was an excerpt from the book that i'm going to talk to you about today which is pt barnum an american life and it was written by robert wilson okay so let's jump into his early life uh from a very young age um he because he realizes that he has an interest in the earning of money. And it says, what did interest him from an early age was money and its accumulation. The boy decided that for extra money, he could start making sweets and selling them to soldiers on the day when the militia trained. So let me just pause there.

He's about 12 years old at this point. And remember, his life, he was born in 1810 and he dies in 1891. So his life takes place, a large part of his life when he's a young man, takes place post-American revolution, but pre-Civil War. And so that's what they mean about the militia there. Within a few years, he could afford to buy a sheep, a cow, and other property. And the reason I'm telling you this is because this is how he's reflecting back. This author quotes heavily from Barnum's own autobiography. And this is what, in his autobiography, this is what he says about this time in his life and about the earning of his own money, the impact it made on his mind.

And he says, it made me feel that it was quite a man of substance. And having this passion for commerce, for trying to make money, winds up being beneficial because, like a lot of people that we said in the podcast, his early life is filled with tragedy. So at 16 years old, his father dies. And this leaves him as the oldest child, the person that has to work to support his family. So it says Barnum's father died of a lingering illness, leaving his family with debts. Now the eldest of five children with the youngest only seven, Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery to quote, to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world and that but little hope

existed for us on this side of the grave. So Barnum was born and raised in a small town in Connecticut. He needs he realizes, hey, there's no opportunity for me in this small town. Let me go to New York where it's becoming a large city. There'll be opportunities for me to run my business because he realizes even from an early age that he's not fit to work for other people. So he winds up moving to Brooklyn and he starts his own business. And what's remarkable about this section is one, he had an insight into who he was at such a young age, but two, he's 17 years old when he starts his first business in New York. So it says, Barnum soon decided to start a business of his own. My disposition is and ever was, he wrote, of a speculative character. Yeah, that's an understatement. And he knew even then

that he would only be happy working for himself. he managed to pull together some money to buy a porterhouse for sale and it says despite uh so he winds up uh borrowing some money starts this you know small little restaurant essentially and but he doesn't we also see right here in this next sentence an insight into who he was probably for his whole life. And this is something that, you know, in some cases can be a very positive attribute of his, but also later on leads to him essentially being bankrupt. I think he was almost 50 years old at the time. And it's his idea that he can never focus on just one thing. So it says, despite his resolution to run his own business, in only a few months, Barnum had the opportunity to sell the place at a profit. So he took it. So after he sells the business in New York, he goes back to Connecticut.

He's got some uncles. He's got a grandfather. They all have stores of their own. He decides, hey, I'm going to do this as well. So first he works with them for a little bit. He decides, hey, I'm going to open my own store. So at 21 years old, he opens a store. And this is what he learns from that. It says he opened a store in the summer of 1831, selling dry goods, groceries, and hardware. Everything, this is how he described the store later on in his autobiography. He sold everything from Bibles to brandy. This business did not go as well as the porterhouse though. And this is what he says, like most persons who engage in a business, which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise. So he starts a lottery business. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because,

one, he makes a ton of money at a very young age. But two, he's starting to realize this is going to set the seeds in his mind for his future entertainment empire, because he's starting to realize people are hungry for more entertainment at this point in american history he's living in the northeast it's heavily religious um there was a lot of things you weren't allowed to do uh the theater for example was thought of as a place for like low lives and and and people wanting to do drugs uh prostitutes would hang out there that that kind of thing. So in his small town in Connecticut, what they would do for entertainment mostly was after dinner,

somebody in the family would read from the Bible aloud. And so he's running this lottery business, and he's realizing, oh, what people are saying they like and what they actually like are not matching up. And so this is an example of that, and then this is going to lead him to realizing hey there's there's an there's a huge opportunity here to entertain people outside of things that you know the church just thinks is moral so it says his lottery work did not just teach him about the efficacy of advertising that's

something he he uh something that characterized his entire career. He would advertise heavily because this is the beginning of what we consider like the mass media, and it's a way for him to accumulate customers extremely rapidly. So it says that he gets all the customers for his lottery business through advertising newspaper, but also for his museum and his shows and everything else.

So it's something he uses his entire life. So anyways, it also began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers. This is something that was true then, it's still true today, and will be true in the future. So I think it's very important for us to realize this. A realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable. Buying a lottery ticket was, after all, a form of gambling, something that the powerful churches looked down upon. Yet lotteries were popular, not only among many churchgoers, but also, as Barnum reported, with a number of clergymen and deacons.

So they'd get up, they'd preach, hey, don't gamble, don't gamble, but in their private lights, they're gambling, right? With whom he counted among his private customers. So his private customers, he also gives examples in the book where a husband goes and says, here, I'm going to buy a ticket from you, Barnum. Don't tell my wife. A few hours later, the wife shows up. Hey, I'm going to buy a ticket from you, Barnum. Don't tell my husband.

And so he's realizing, okay, what people say they like and what they actually like, what their actions reveal are very different. Where can I take this? So he says it also suggests a change in the social order of the day in which ordinary New Englanders were yearning for something more from their lives than was being offered from the Sunday pulpit. So Barnum's lottery business is massively successful and generates a ton of money so he can also invest in other enterprises. Some of them are not profitable enough to stand on their own. One of the things he invests in is his own newspaper. So I'm going to tell you this story,

but this is really the birth. He's in his early 20s at this point in his life. This is the day he becomes a showman. And so, like I said before, in the Pulitzer podcast, newspapers in this time in history, some of them made a ton of money, like unbelievable amount of money. William Randolph Hearst, who I'll read his biography and cover in the next few weeks here, uh, his net worth, which came from a network of newspapers to be the equivalent of about $30 billion today. So you had a few that made a ton of money and then hundreds of newspapers that made

no money. So Barnum's was in the latter. But what happens in this point in the story is he starts a newspaper. He gets sued for libel and then he goes to jail. But that's so that that's also that's interesting. But the most interesting part of that is we see this innate ability of showmanship because the day first of all, he's running his newspapers while he's in jail. But he organizes a parade for the day upon his release. So I'm just going to read the section to you. A lot of Parnam's life is just unbelievable.

So it says he was convicted by a jury and sentenced that he could either pay court costs or serve 60 days in jail. I choose to go to prison. So he's doing it almost as like a protest saying, you know, we should have freedom of speech. I'm going to go to jail even though I don't have to. So while he's in jail, he's running his newspapers. And he makes this like, hey, I'm a defender of free speech kind of thing, right? So he says his ability to marshal not just his own paper, but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come. It was the first clear example of for his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises,

and himself. So he's writing to all these, not only is he publishing his own newspaper, but he's writing to other newspapers to tell his story. So they covered in theirs, right?

So it says these communications with the world beyond his cell also allowed him to stir up local newspaper coverage and to engineer what can only be called a local holiday to celebrate his release and this is really truly remarkable so i'm going to just give you the summary of what takes place after he get the right when he's released there's a ton of people to show up and it says and we also get insight into you know how extreme and the

lengths he was willing to go on projects that he was interested in. Others might have thought to sponsor an ode or an oration, engage a chorus or a band, plan a banquet or a parade, envision three cheers rather than three cheers twice, and might have forgotten the canon salute altogether, but not Barnum. So they're saying, you know, maybe you do one of these things. He's doing all of them simultaneously. Seemingly small, but, and this is what we're learning about, you know, what he applies to his future work. Seemingly small, but consequential details like returning to the courtroom where he was convicted or overlaying it all with patriotic zeal would never elude him. This day had all the earmarks of a Barnum production. So he gets out, he's still running his newspaper, he's still making a ton of money,

running his lottery business. And then all of a sudden they outlaw, the state outlaws, they ban lotteries. So it the state legislator banned lotteries and without any source of income barnum had to change course he could not keep he could not afford to keep publishing his paper he now had no resources he blamed himself for his situation writing that the old proverb easy come easy go was still was very true in my case still this is a really important aspect of his personality he was an unyielding optimist so i said still he had he was confident in his ability to earn money and so this up and down down and up nature um is is prevalent throughout

barnum's life um he'll have massive success followed by years of no success. Eventually, it'll even it out a little bit as he gets older. But in his early ages, he couldn't hold on to a good opportunity for very long. So he has these periods of time where he's got an abundance of money and then several years pass where he has none of that. And so that's where we're in right now, where he's looking for an opportunity. And I'll list all the different jobs later that he did. It's just it's remarkable how many different things he was trying to make money at. But this is I want to fast forward to the part of his life after a few years of struggle where he gets his first job as a showman, as a promoter.

So it's important to understand at this point in time in history. This is what the author says. Barnum's era was a heyday for human exhibitions and he was happy to play his part so what does that mean it's not a lot of entertainment uh so let's say any kind of oddity so you could have giants and dwarfs uh people that weigh 600 pounds people uh born with no arms all kinds of anything that deviates at all from the norm promoters and showmen at the time would advertise heavily. They would, you know, dress them up in costumes

and say, hey, for a quarter, for a nickel, for a shilling, whatever it is, you can come and be temporarily entertained. So this is the industry that Barnum is going to start working in.

And this winds up being the, I would say the one act, one, he makes a lot of money on, but two, he for this is something that he looks back as an older man and he's regretful. He's embarrassed. And so he's going to promote what he bills as George Washington's nanny. They called a nursemaid and saying, hey, she's a they say she's 161 years old and she helped raise the first president. Right. And really what this is really gross and distasteful for is that he essentially leased a slave and and set up shows all across the country with this lie. Right. And so it says the business finally came. I fell into the occupation and far beyond any any of my predecessors on this continent i have succeeded so you're talking about this is

the beginning the beginnings of my my uh career as a showman it's something i did better than anybody else in the world later on okay but he says barnum's admission that the event that would set his life on its course was the least deserving of all my efforts in the show line. By this, he meant in part that the elements for its success were already in place and required little creative showmanship on his part. But it also became the episode of his life for which he was the least proud, one that spurred him to begin to be the better sort of showman that he would eventually become. So he had to learn how to be a good person. At the very beginning, the author talks about, you know, what's remarkable is that he was one of the few people that actually realized, hey, I have a lot of areas of my personality that are defective, things that I'm doing for money that are really gross. I need to

change this. This is what they're referencing. Not only does he make, he makes like $10,000, which is a monumental amount of money at the time um you could buy like for example he bought a store like the land for his store from his uncle for like fifty dollars at the time to give you kind of a context into what ten thousand dollars meant but only that when when this this person dies her name is joyce when joyce dies he sells tickets to her autopsy. And so we see, you know, a very deficient moral character that he works on and improves later in life. And this is one thing, again, that he looks back on with great shame in his life.

And so eventually Joyce dies and then we see this up and down, down and up. And now he's going to go through years, years of struggle after this. He made a lot of money again and now back in the doldrums. So it says he struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after the death of Joyce on the road with various acts ranging from dancers to small to to a small circus. During this period, he would sometimes be away from home for a year or more. And each time he returned, he would say that his life on the road was over. I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of a traveling showman. He was determined to settle into something more permanent in New York. And none of these activities brought him much money. So I'm going to fast

forward to the point where he discovers his primary occupation for most of his life was owning the Barnum Museum, the American Museum in New York City, right? It wasn't until he's 60 years old that he starts getting involved in the circus, which he's most famous for, right? But at this point, from the time he's about 25 to 31 years old, this is a list of jobs that Barnum tried. He was a dance troupe promoter. He was a traveling showman, which I already told you about. He tried to manufacture cologne. He tried to manufacture something called bear's grease. He sold Bibles. He was a clerk for a horse show. He was a copywriter, and he was a freelance fiction writer. So he's doing everything he possibly can. And he's going to give us his own description about this period of his life, which was not very successful, not very happy.

After a few months of barely getting by with these activities, months in which the family's health had, and he's got married, now he's married with kids, had turned from excellent to poor, Barnum later wrote, I began to realize seriously that I was at the very bottom of fortune's ladder and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want. He heard that Scudder's American Museum was looking for a buyer. This collection of curiosities was located on Broadway in New York City. I just want to pause there just for a buyer. This collection of curiosities was located on Broadway in New York City. I just want to pause there just for a second. What he's saying there is, listen, you know, I can't mess around anymore. I'm trying my hand at a million things. I'm not

succeeding anything. I have a wife and I think two children at this point to take care of. I've got to go for it. It's either now or never. And this is where he stumbles into what I would consider his life's his main life's work. He's going to always do more than one thing. But this is the one constant that he had in his life. So it says the museum was now for sale for fifteen thousand dollars. But even this was far more money than Barnum had at his disposal. Since my recent this is what he's saying about his financial situation at the time.

Since my recent enterprises had not indeed been productive and my funds were decidedly low in one of the most famous passages from his autobiography barnum told a friend that he was hoping to buy the american museum when the incredulous friend asked asked what with barnum replied like how are you going to afford it essentially barnum replied brass for silver and gold i have none so what he's saying courage i gotta do this with gumption i can't i gotta be clever here and this is the note i left myself on this section he's very very clever barnum is always clever it's always more than what meets the eye with this guy um it's a memorable line and it's mostly true he decided to seek out a complete stranger so this is what he does it's

really smart he finds out who owns the actual building, right? Who is, who is this museum that's for sale? Who is this leasing for? Uh, who are they leasing, uh, the property from? And so he goes to this stranger, this guy named Francis. Uh, so he goes out, he, he seeks out a complete stranger who owned the building in which the museum was housed with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him, meaning the museum, for him on credit. Remember, he's got no money. Arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family. So they're selling the business not because they're prospering. They're selling the business because it's not doing well.

So Barnum goes and appeals to this guy's interest. He's like, do you want this massive building that you own just to sit empty? No, you do not. So I can run this business. I can get customers. I can make it a profitable endeavor. And if I'm profitable, then you have a tenant. So it says this against all the odds Barnum was able to do.

And that's another thing to note about Barnum. He was an extremely good talker. That phrase is in the book over and over again. He's an extremely good writer. He's very persuasive. And so much so that part of the way he's able to, let's say, two or three decades in the future from where we are in the story now, when he goes bankrupt, he gets out of bankruptcy in large part because he does this public lecture series. People will pay to hear him speak because they find him so fascinating and he puts on such a good show. So but I want to I want to talk about why

like why was he able to build a successful museum where this previous owner, this previous family was not. And it goes back to the insights that he derived when he was running his lottery business. He's like, well, there's a growing middle class in America, and they clearly have this desire, this hunger for different forms of entertainment. So this section is about the customers that he wanted and how he positioned his product, which again, very, very clever on his part. Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class and the aspiring members of the surrounding neighborhoods. So this is another thing to know about Barnum.

Later in life, he wants to be thought of very similar to almost like Walt Disney, like somebody that made wholesome family-friendly entertainment. So it says they were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities. And with their higher rates of literacy, literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper advertising. So that's how he's going to make them aware of his endeavors. As Barnum began to add to the museum's collection, he continued the institution's long tradition of emphasizing exhibits that would both entertain and make his customers think. He wanted to also educate them, right? So many newcomers to and tourists in New York then as now were drawn to the city by its promise,

not just of excitement, but also of a connection to a wider world than the one on view back home. Barnum had an ambitious plan for satisfying this hunger to learn. He aimed to acquire at least one example of every single thing in existence, living or dead. So that's marketing speak. I mean, that's obviously impossible, but that's what he went around telling people, right? In the 1820s, a Scudder Museum advertisement had claimed 150,000 items in its collection. By the 1860s, so 40 years later, Barnum would advertise that the museum contained a million wonders. And this is all kinds of just the most bizarre things,

from plants to animals to fake mermaids, which I'll go into later, just any possible weird thing that may get somebody to stop in their tracks and think, hey, what is that? That's essentially what he's building here. It was almost impossible, oh, I guess I'm running over my own point here it's all it was almost impossible to describe the breadth of what the museum held even before barnum acquired it and

became energetically adding to its exhibit so he would travel all over the world and just look for the most outrageous things buy them and bring them back after uh he had been at it for a few years the task became so hopeless as to be laughable. Okay, so one of his most famous exhibits that he was known for is this thing called the Fiji Mermaid. I'm going to give you a description of what it actually is. And then I want to talk to you about how Barnum planned and publicized his show. The details and his machinations are amazing. There's a lot to learn from this guy.

So it says, this is this weird i i i i underlined this section when i was reading it even before we get into like how he markets it because i'm like what let me just read it to you and then i'll tell you what i thought so it says um this actual thing that he's proposing to be a mermaid it's a very old thing it's been passed around the world right and other people even 100 years before something like, had put it on display and sold tickets to it, right? So Barnum's going to wind up doing the same thing. He just does it on a different level than everybody else. So it says,

it had been skillfully assembled from parts of an orangutan, a baboon, and a salmon. So somebody put the bottom half of what a mermaid, like you have like the fin or like the fish part of a salmon, like you have like the fin or like the i guess the fish part of a salmon right as as the mermaid's tail and then the the top half is the combination of orangutan and baboon her eyes were fake her nails were made of horn or quill uh her breasts had been

stuffed so that they hid the seam between the ape and the fish where they sewed them together um and then you there was like a post-mortem done on it so it's like you uh the person performing this had been able to feel where the bones of the arms had been sawed to make the proportions closer to that of human rather than orangutan so they're saying that's what a mermaid is it's half human half fish right in this case it's orangutan baboon salmon so i read that i'm like there's a human being at some point had access to all these different who has access to orangutan and baboon parts and then i guess the fish is easier to run into and then takes the time to saw them together to put it together like this is just really strange behavior by our species here so that's what the actual thing is this is

what barnum uh it he has another friend that runs a museum says hey i came across this do you want it barnum's yes and this is what he does and puts and how he he actually markets it so this is what barnum uh it he has another friend that runs a museum says hey i came across this do you want it barnum's yes and this is what he does and puts and how he he actually markets it so this is the interesting part he hatched a complicated plan for engaging the public's curiosity about what he's calling the fiji mermaid okay barnum's scheme to start the ball rolling was to have friends in other cities forward letters to new york newspapers that Barnum himself had secretly written. So there's no friends. He does this over and over again in his life. Everything he does is like this.

Okay, what I'm about to describe to you. He just does. He takes things so much further than anybody else. So he writes a bunch of letters. He mails them to friends that live all over the country and they mail them. So it's postmarked. And it comes. So the New York newspaper is like,

Oh look, this guy in Charleston. Oh look, there's a guy in Georgia. And they're, they're, they're talking about this traveling oddity that's making its way to New York.

He's, he's sowing the ground here, right? The letters were constructed and then he hides it into. So he has this thing, Hey, there's a mermaid, this real mermaid that's coming to New York city.

You might want to check it out, but they don't just write letters on that. That's too obvious. He hides his intentions with like a collection of other news in there, right? So it says, the letters were constructed as a miscellany of local news in which was included an item about the recent visit of Dr. J. Griffin, who represented, which they didn't know, the fictional, doesn't even exist, the lyceum uh the lyceum natural history museum in london the naturalist was reportedly on his way to new york and then to

london with a mermaid taken from the fiji islands and preserved in china where the doctor had bought it at a high figure for his london employer Barnum's hoaxes were always certain to mention the great expense involved in the procurement of any exhibit. So that's something he also does for his whole life. Detail meant to distinguish his offerings from the run-of-the-mill crap. That's not the word they use, but that's what they mean.

He also tucked in the winning and irreverent detail that the aptly named Dr. Griffin was recently from Pernambuco, an exotic and mildly romantic name to the American ear, even if the possessor of that ear didn't know that this is actually a real place in Brazil. So he always makes things he wants you to know, hey, it's exotic and it's expensive, right? His careful attention to such seemingly small matters, similar to that he had shown in planning the celebration of his release from jail years before, undoubtedly distinguished him from others in his line of work. A different newspaper fell for this and published each of these letters. So not the same newspaper. So he's going to get free newspaper coverage from multiple newspapers. They're all falling for the same trap, right? In which the non-Mermaid news was plausible enough.

And in the third letter, the writer suggested that the New York editors really ought to go out and see this specimen for themselves. Before that would happen, a meeting was arranged with local reporters in Philadelphia, where they were introduced to the Mermaid and to Dr. Griffin, who was in reality none other other than levi lehman which is barnum's employee barnum reports uh with evident satisfaction that the plan worked admirably and the columns in philadelphia papers served to further entice the new york press uh so after this happens it says new york newspapermen were clamoring to see the mermaid in the meantime barnum commissioned highly idealized engravings of beautiful, full-breasted, unclothed mermaids with flowing blonde hair,

clearly meant to imply that this is what the Fiji mermaid had once looked like. He added write-ups proving, in quotation marks, the authenticity of these formerly fictional characters. Barnum offered three... You're going to see more of his machinations here, right? Barnum offered three different New York papers exclusive access to one of the images and a report which he modestly acknowledged was well written. All three papers ran the exclusive on the same Sunday morning. So the show hasn't started yet, but he's not done promoting. So it says, at this point, Barnum released for sale on the same Sunday morning. So the show hasn't started yet, but he's not done promoting. So it says at this point, Barnum released for sale on the streets at a penny apiece,

10,000 copies of a pamphlet that contained all of the images and stories he had prepared. Then he rented the concert hall on Broadway and placed advertisements in the paper saying Dr. Griffin and the mermaid would be on exhibit positively for one week only. So he's got a fundamental understanding of salesmanship and human nature. He does this over and over again, says, okay, I'm going to have this exhibit. It's only gonna be here for one week and then it's going to go to London. And then when the week's up, he says, oh, the ship is delayed. It's going to be here for another three days. Jump on it. Oh, okay. It's going to be here for another two days. It leaves like two months later. So he understands that when you tell people, hey, you have a finite amount of time to do this.

They're more likely to act now, which is exactly what he wants. It says when the week was up, Barnum was ready to advertise that he had acquired the mermaid. He owned the mermaid the whole time. He had acquired the mermaid for a precious sum. Of course, there's that that same M.. there, mentioning how much money it cost him, for his museum where it would be displayed at no charge beyond the usual admittance fee of a quarter. So think about how much publicity that he rounded up for the mermaid. And then after the fact, he said, oh, don't worry, the week's up.

But guess what? I own it now. Just come to my museum. It's only a quarter, and you get to see 150, 200, 500,000 things you've never seen in your life. And so he's the author quotes, this author quotes heavily from Barnum's old own autobiography. And this is Barnum in his autobiography writing later on, like looking back at this point of his life. He says he wrote that this that his purpose of in displaying the mermaid had been mainly to advertise the regular business of the museum so that's what he's saying this is the whole point of me doing all this right this is my plan the whole time he considered it effective indirect advertising remember that he talks about indirect advertising all the time not in those words but in his actions uh he says he is compelled to point

out that as the exhibit also he also um he puts in the museum and then he sends it off for traveling shows and what what happens is people see it you you know, maybe 500 miles from New York City. When they go back to New York City, they're going to know, hey, American Museum, Barnum Museum, I should go there. So it says he's compelled to point out that as the exhibit subsequently traveled the country, the fame of the museum wafted from one end of the land to the other. And he knew that every dollar that he sowed on advertising would return in tens and perhaps hundreds of dollars in a future harvest. And one thing to know about Barnum is he never rests on his laurels. He's always constantly challenging himself. And I'm going to fast forward in the story. He does an extremely successful turnaround in the museum. So he goes from being broke turnaround in the museum so he goes from you know

being broke and dead to within two years making money and paying off his debts um and he decides hey i'm gonna take i'm gonna start i want to be world like i want to be known all over the world not just in america so he's going to travel to england so uh he starts crying because of this too so this is all those tears the mixture of joy and regret suggests that he was honestly sorry to be leaving his wife children and members of of his broader family and the comfortable home and work that he had built for himself in just two years. He had now paid off all his debts from the museum and created a handsome surplus in the treasury. That's Barnum's words. He now felt confident in his success and believed that his business had long ceased.

This is a really interesting way to think about it. You know, he didn't know when he bought the museum it was going to be successful, so he calls it an experiment. But now, once your business is on solid footing, it's obviously different, right? So he says he now felt confident in his success and believed that his business had long ceased to be an experiment and was now in perfect running order.

He had realized his ambitions in an amazingly short amount of time. Obviously, he went through years of struggle before he did that. So he's saying short amount of time in the sense that went through years of struggle before he did that, so I'm saying short amount of time in the sense that he turned it around in only two years. The challenge was a new place itself, a place that he had no notion of who P.T. Barnum was. Whether or not he would succeed in the land of his forebears would be a test for Barnum of his own worth and how far he had come or how far he might yet go. So what he's doing at this time, he's running the museum.

But he also runs across a lot of people. Send them, you know, say, hey, they know he's attracted to oddities. Because that's what his museum is about. So there is this, I don't remember the name of the disease. But essentially it's, you just stop growing at a certain age. Almost like, I'm almost going to use an example like Benjamin Button. But that's not a good example because it goes from being old to like a baby. But essentially somebody stops growing. There's this perfectly proportioned little human called Tom Thumb.

And he's maybe six, eight years old, something like that, when Barnum starts putting him on display. But he looks like a little fully formed human. And so anyways, Tom would dress up in costumes. He would do imitations. He'd put on like a show. And it became really popular. So P.T. Barnum has the idea. He's like, hey, I'm going to take this show to Europe. And so that's what's happening at this time in the story. And so he's met with massive success in Europe. Tom Thumb winds up performing for the royal families in, I think, England and France. It's remarkable. He winds up performing for Abraham Lincoln back in America.

It's remarkable all the people's lives that Barnum intersected with, which I'll tell you a little bit more about later. But I want to hit on this story right here because it gives you an insight into his personality, just how full of energy that Barnum had. And so there's a writer in England called Albert Smith, and he spent a day sightseeing and shopping with Barnum. Okay, so Barnum's out there looking for stuff for his museum.

And it starts at 5 a.m. when Barnum starts knocking on Smith's door at 5 a.m. He's like, all right, let's get going. Smith's like, who's this crazy character? So it says, Smith wrote, this is now Smith reflecting on this crazy day that he spent with Barnum. Smith wrote that he saw more in that day than in any other day of his life.

And over supper, barnum had told him that a person must make 30 hours out of 24 or he would never get ahead there was a bull in the china shop aspect to his sketch of barnum whose energy and self-confidence were portrayed as overwhelming to the point of rudeness at times. So I'm going to fast forward to the end of his time in Europe. It's mind-boggling how profitable some of Barnum's shows could be. Remember, he's just a promoter. So he promotes Tom Thumb. He promotes another Swedish singer.

And every time he makes tens of millions of dollars, in many cases making way more than the actual talent. So it says Tom Thumb would spend three years touring the British Isles, France and Belgium. Barnum would make more than, so it does the math for us. Barnum would make more than $10 million in today's dollars. And they do that very, very quickly. So one thing to know about Barnum at this time is, you know, he's completely focused on work's a he's kind of not he's not paying attention to his family he's traveling all the time he's drinking a lot and talks about you know every day at lunch he'd have two or three bottles of

wine or champagne and be so drunk that he wouldn't sometimes and he'd be so drunk that he'd he'd uh he says the desire to work would like flee him. Right. And so he winds up giving up drinking. And this is where we learn more of, you know, his negative traits. Definitely gigantic ego. He could be rude. He would be drunk all the time. But we also see that he has an ability to course correct, which is what the author was referencing at the beginning of the book. That, you know, this is a very imperfect person, but we see that he actually makes efforts to improve his life, to take in information, realize, hey, I'm screwing myself over here. Like if I keep this up, I'm not going to like with the path of where my life goes. So it says, uh, when he returned home and told his wife, her name is charity, what he had done, meaning he gave up drinking. Uh, I was surprised to see tears running down her cheeks. She

astonished him by saying that she had cried on many nights, worrying that his wine-bibbing and drinking was leading me to a drunkard's path. I reproached her for not telling me her fears, but she replied that she knew I was self-deluded and that any such hint from her would have been received in anger. So he says that this is what the author is saying, that he could reproach her and that she could profess to be afraid of his reaction adds more paint strokes to the unflattering self-portrait of the husband Parnum had become.

So, you know, he's getting high on his own supplies. Like people celebrate me everywhere I go. They clamor for me. I'm getting all this adulation, all this attention. I'm making tons of money. I'm getting drunk. I'm doing whatever I want to do. You know, and not realizing, hey, I'm a terrible husband.

And I'm going to wind up going down this terrible path. So it says, still making a resolution not to drink and then keeping it took both discipline and self-awareness and constituted another serious effort to turn his marriage and himself around. That was the end of my drinking, he wrote. The feeling of relief that came from from forswearing alcohol gave his life a new sense of purpose. I had been groping in darkness, he remembered. I was rescued and I knew it was my duty to try and save others. Like any evangelist and true to his industrious nature, that's an understatement, he was now full of the spirit and could not stop spreading it. So he goes around

and he does this for free at the beginning and then eventually gets paid to do so. And he just gives tons of lectures. And essentially he's just like a preacher or a pastor who's trying to convert you to their religion. He's doing the same thing. He's trying to get people to give up drinking, to be temperate. And again, like I said before, this actually becomes very lucrative for him. And it is a way that he's able to recover from bankruptcy. It takes a lot of years. I think it's like five years he winds up having to work to build back his wealth.

So now I need to tell you about the most successful time he ever had as a promoter. And he's going to promote this Swedish singer named Jenny Lind. And I want to tell you a little bit more about, well, let me just read this. It says the new venture would put to use all of his skills and imagination as a promoter. She's very successful in Europe and he's the one that convinces her to come to america and he makes they make a ton of money uh it would also give him a chance to move beyond the days of joyce heath that's the george washington nanny fake story uh the fiji mermaid um and even the most famous little man in the world that's tom thumb to establish to establish himself as something more than a mere promoter, a serious purveyor of highbrow culture.

It would also conveniently make him far, far, far richer than he had ever been. So I read that section. I was like, well, that's a little bit derogatory in the use of the word promoter there. But I really think that we're all promoters. I've been thinking a lot about like all the people we study on the podcast, like Estee Lauder, she was a promoter of beauty, right? Larry Ellison was a promoter of the efficiency gains of software and of winning. Henry Ford was a promoter of service. Claude Shannon's a promoter of following your own curiosity. So to me, promoting is just sharing what you love. And so I think that's the way I would look at it. Now, in P.T. Barnum's case, he had never he signs her to this extremely lucrative contract. And she's like, where have you heard me sing? And he's like, I haven't heard you sing. I'm just doing this. I'm taking this huge gamble because he was definitely a gambler, just based on your reputation. So in this specific example, he's not promoting something he loves other than the fact that he does want to be respected and he wants to make a lot of money. But in most of his life, he is promoting just wholesome, good family fun.

That's the way he would describe it. And entertainment. And again, he built a wonderful life for himself just off that very simple idea that I'm going to promote various forms of entertainment so people can enjoy their time. I just think that's a very simple idea. And if you take it to extremes Lind is that he just Barnum is never I'm going to read this section to you but what I want you to keep in mind is like everything Barnum does is just like this he is never focused on the obvious he's always focused on like the second order effect he's always what the interpretation of the customer what they think is happening is

so much more complex from Barnum's perspective. And it just it is really impressive how he's able to think through and get attention for for what he's working on. So he has this idea is like, OK, well, Jenny Lynn is super famous. She's in America now. I'm promoting her. How can I get even more attention to make sure that, you know, there's going to be thousands of tickets, thousands of more people than tickets available for every show? And he comes up with this idea of getting publicity by doing raffling off a ticket. Right. And so says one of Barnum's most successful publicity gambits had been the auction of the first ticket.

Right. So he says the very first ticket before's available. To buy to somebody else. I'm going to make you guys bid on that. And it's going to be so interesting. That the newspapers. Are going to report. Because the price. You know.

Ticket prices are going to be crazy. Because. For example. At the time. You know. You can see a show for 25 cents. 50 cents. Maybe a dollar.

Some of these tickets. Go for like 650 dollars. So the newspapers. Are going to cover it. Not only are they going to cover it. But it gives publicity. To Barnum are going to cover it. Not only are they going to cover it, but it gives publicity to Barnum's show, but it gives publicity to the person that does the bid. So you have people that wind up buying the ticket and not even going to the show because they just wanted

their name and their business in the newspaper. So it says, one of the most successful publicity gambits had been the auction of the first ticket. Ticket auctions were not his invention, but his goal was less the dollar amount he could squeeze out of the sale and more the publicity it could inspire. He persuaded his next door neighbor, a hatter, meaning he makes hats, named John Gannon, to go all out at the auction so that he could soak up some of the publicity it generated so he's again it's it's very hard to believe like you uh this old saying like believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see same thing people like barnum set up this auction it's he's he's convinced like the person that's going to win he already knows who's going to win because he said hey no matter what bid bid bid bid bid and so the people say oh oh, like, oh, my God, who's this guy? This guy bought this ticket and he winds up building,

making this guy's hat business even larger. So it says he persuaded his next door neighbor to go all out at the auction so he could, too, soak up some of the publicity it generated. The scheme worked out at least as well for hat sales as it did for ticket sales. Gannon received national attention for his winning bid, and owning a Gannon hat became a sign of sophistication. This made him as rich as he was well-known. So that's the very first time he does it.

So Jenny does, you know, let's say 100 shows before she parts ways with Barnum. And eventually people realize, oh, what worked for the hack guy worked for me. And so they start bidding up just to win. And then like I said before, they they'll buy, they'll, they'll win the auction, and then in many cases, not even go to the show. So his promotion of Jenny Lin makes a ton of money. I'm talking tens of millions of the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, which is bizarre, right? Because I told you he goes bankrupt. He goes bankrupt after the fact.

He winds up building, this is even before the Jenny Lin thing, but he winds up building this, this is one of the most ostentatious houses that have ever existed. It's called Aranastan. You can Google image search this thing. It looks like a house that P.D. Barnum would build is the point.

But my point is, is that he was very ostentatious. He would spend a lot of money and then he could not just focus on one business. So he winds up going broke, not because of not just of his like, you know, ostentatious spending, but because he just invested in a ton of things that never made any money. And so this is another example of this up and down, down and up lifestyle that he had. And I think it's a reminder of what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett told us, that you need to stay within your circle of competence.

If he stayed to promoting shows, to running a museum, he'd never have this problem. But it says, Barnum had been working at a dizzying number of ventures. When those projects relied on his instincts and experience as a showman, they tended to be successful. But when he was tempted by schemes and areas which he was

less familiar, the results were uneven. Eventually, as his attention turned in so many directions, and he bankrolled so many initiatives, his long run of good luck would come to an end. So some of these things, he dumps a lot of money in real estate development. Think of it almost like startup investing now. All these weirdos are coming to him with ideas for a business. He gives them money. The business fails. This thing called a fire annihilator because Barnum experienced like five devastating fires in his life. Houses burned down, businesses burned down etc etc um fire annihilator didn't work fire annihilator annihilator um the building that the the

the devices were being made in burned to the ground uh he got involved in the manufacturing of clocks just all kinds of just all kinds of bad businesses spent a ton of money on them guaranteed all these loans and then he goes bankrupt. Having made so much money from his museum, Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind, he had become increasingly eager to leverage his wealth in new speculations, but he became increasingly careless about how he did so.

Once involved, he was lax about keeping tabs on his investments. So he had ADD. He was like, give him a bunch of money, move on to the next thing. Does that for a little bit and then they all go out of business. He's like, oh my God bunch of money, move on to the next thing. Does that for a little bit, and then they all go out of business. He's like, oh my God, what happened?

And he says, he makes the claim that he was surprised that he went bankrupt. His financial situation was so complicated that he was forced to file bankruptcy. His bankruptcy came to be a complete shock. He said that his agent brought him the refreshing intelligence that i was a ruined man and as you could imagine being world famous and now broke he's gonna be really depressed he was uh you know forever an optimist so doesn't stay down long but anybody you know that goes to this can be expected to be down and depressed uh so says he added that he was once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder having a hard time adjusting to the loss of their elegant home and servants,

he wrote that his own constitution over the last few months had most seriously failed. He was, understandably, if uncharacteristically, in the depths, meaning depressed. Barnum's financial misfortune inspired the glee of those

who had long despised what he'd stood for, as well as those who would no longer felt the economic need to pretend to be friends. So during this time, he loses a bunch of money, realizes all these people that I thought were my friends are not my friends. They just, they, they pretended to be because I could do something for them. He says it also became a morality tale of a man brought down by his own vanity. Now, here's the weird thing, though. So he's So he realized he has a bunch of fake friends, but he also has a bunch of real friends.

And some of the people offering him loans and to raise money for him are very well known and famous in their own right. This name is going to surprise you. I've covered him. I've done two episodes about him in the podcast. Many people propose to lend him or give him money to get back on his feet

or organize public benefits for him. A letter signed by more than a thousand New Yorkers, among them Cornelius Vanderbilt, appeared in New York papers in early June, expressing support and proposing benefits on his behalf. And Barnum's response to this, I absolutely love. He says, with some exceptions, Barnum's declined these many outpourings of financial support, publicly stating, while favored with health, I feel competent to earn an honest livelihood for myself and family. He was and had every right to be proud of the things he had accomplished largely on his own, and that pride and self-confidence that went

with it were not likely to evaporate even in his moment of distress. So what is he saying? I did it before. I will do it again. I am not going to quit. So now we get to the point I mentioned earlier. He just starts giving these lectures. Not only on, he wrote several books about his life.

One of them is The Art of Money Making, I think, Money Getting. And he'll give a lecture on that. He'll give a lecture on, you know, not drinking. So it says, Barnum now reinvented himself again

as a public lecturer. He took the advice of American friends in London to give a talk called The Art of Money Getting. The basis for the talk would be a list of 10 rules for business success that Barnum had created, this is a few years in the past, for a prolific Philadelphia author named Edwin Friedley, who published the list in his 1853 book, A Practical Treatise on Business. He would deliver the speech nearly 100 times in the first five months of 1859. And Barnum would tell you

that he had to go through this experience, to go bankrupt after massive success as an older man. He's almost 50 years old. And this is what he learned from this humbling experience. He says, he acknowledged the business activity as a necessity of my nature and emphasized that on the cuffs of 50 years of age, he had no desire to retire. His natural inclination for business would never leave him. And given his genius for it, he would continue to accumulate dollars.

It led him to believe that his troubles had been God's way of teaching him to be a better person. And in the three decades left to him, he managed, in this regard, to do what he saw as God's will. The charitable way in which his true friends had treated him, offering him loans and even offering to buy up his debt and allowing him to discharge it at less than its face value, also made an impression on him his quip about him being nothing without charity seems to have been a lesson he now took to heart he would become more generous in his dealings with others and as his wealth accumulated again he would give more and more of it away so at this point in his life um he's giving lectures

he writes uh he's still got his museum he starts getting involved in the circus business which i'll tell you a little bit more about that but he also wrote and updated several times his autobiography and this is to give you an idea of how world famous barnum was at the time in the 1800s his autobiography sold over a million copies. That's insane. And he there was unexpected positive externalities from that book. One of them is he meets he winds up. I'm going to read the section to you first. He says John Fish, a wealthy cotton mill owner, attributed his success in business to having read Barnum's first autobiography. So Barnum goes around, writes his book, and then gives lectures, right? And people buy tickets and they meet Barnum. They had met in 1858 when Fish introduced himself after one of Barnum's lectures, and he professed his admiration for the showmen, which began their friendship. Barnum's wife dies. Barnum still has about 20 years left in his life. He winds up marrying this guy's daughter. This guy's 23-year-old daughter. Barnum is has about 20 years left in his life he winds up marrying this guy's daughter this guy's 23 year old daughter Barnum is like 60 at the time

so Fish and Barnum also become friends they wind up touring they wind up meeting up with General Custer I cannot get over the people the historical people that Barnum interacted with and they go buffalo hunting together with Custer right before he dies so anyways he's doing a bunch of different things

he's back on his feet and I like this section because it's just a reminder that I think it's human nature. We all need something to do. I think to feel fulfilled, we need a means to contribute. So it says, it's tempting to see this burst of energy as the beginning of Barnum's second career, the one he's more famous for today, as a circus man rather than a showman. But these activities were continuous with those he'd been pursuing for more than three decades and represented the end of one of the few efforts at which he had not fully succeeded, being retired. He tried to retire, just couldn't do it. Barnum had not stopped being a showman, public lecturer, or real estate investor for any part of his attempted retirement.

But the slower pace that had left him with more time on his hands was, he now realized, at the ripe old age of 60, not for him. He tried to slow down. He had no interest. He wasn't happy about it. It wasn't that he was incapable of leisure, for he never stopped enjoying the pleasures of city life or of warm friendships. Yet he always needs he always seemed to need a clear project to occupy him and he works as as we'll see up until the day he dies so i mentioned earlier the fact that his autobiography sold so many and influenced so many people i read this section i was like where do i I know this name from? And you'll get it here. So it says Samuel Clements began an after dinner habit of reading from Barnum's recently published Struggles and Triumphs. So that's the new name of his autobiography,

Struggles and Triumphs. The book made an impression on Clements, encouraging him in the years ahead as he promoted himself as a public lecturer and as the writer Mark Twain. So I realized, I was like, wait a minute, we haven't heard Clemens before. That's Mark Twain's real name. So he said, Barnum's autobiography meant so much to him that when Clemens felt death nearing in the autumn of 1909, this is like 20 years after Barnum dies, and took a, so he says it meant so much to him that when Clemens felt he was near death, he says he took a dying man's solace in rereading his favorite books. Barnum's autobiography was was among them. What I really loved about this book is, you know, everybody thinks of I think Barnum today, he's way better known as Barnum and Bailey, the circus, everything else, right? And as we see, that was not the majority of his life.

It started after he was 60. And really, Bailey, his younger partner by like 20 years, was the one running the business. And so the majority of this book is all about Barnum's early life, which is why I think I enjoyed reading the book so much and bailey in the circus is literally one chapter right before the end uh so i just want to tell you a little bit about how they came to meet and again i think barnum had a good idea here he's he just realizes like listen i don't have a monopoly on good ideas so there's this this uh there is this company called the great london, which is run by this guy named Bailey and a few of his partners. And they have they bought an elephant and an elephant and her calf become world famous. And so Barnum approaches him. He's like, I want to buy your elephant for my circus because he's running circus with these other guys that aren't really good at what they're doing.

OK, so it says he telegrammed Bailey and all these other people offering a hundred thousand dollars in cash. And this is how Barnum remembers this. They gleefully rejected my offer, pleasantly told me to look to my laurels and wisely held onto their treasure. Not only that, but they began an advertising campaign under the heading, what Barnum Thinks of the Baby Elephant, reproducing his telegram with its lavish offer. Barnum was also impressed by how well the three younger men had turned the tables on him using his own methods. These were foes worthy of my steel, he called them. The Great London Circus had dodged dodged Barnum Circus had dogged, excuse me, Barnum Circus in the previous season, often scheduling dates in the same towns to draw off his business. Something like a younger Barnum would have done.

And so he says the aging showman realized they finally met his match and he concluded it would be wiser to join them than to continue competing with them and so that business uh barnum and bailey circus ringling brothers the greatest show on earth whatever you happen to know about about it it lasted for a hundred years it just ended recently in 2017 and barnum largely let bailey run it i gotta see if there's a biography on him because he just seems to be a very formidable and clever person. And at this stage in Barnum's life, you know, Bailey could run the day to day. Barnum could still do the promotions, still leverage all of his celebrity, leverage his contacts in the media. But Bailey is really the one responsible for the massive business success that that Barnum and Bailey wind up being. And so I want to close on this. He's right before he dies.

He's giving an interview to a New York newspaper man who, you know, he told the reporter in the he says in the last great understatement of his life that he was always glad to meet a newspaper man. That's an understatement, as he says. So says two days after the interview the interview, he asked Nancy, that's his second wife, the one he was married to for the last 20 years of his life. Two days after this interview, he asked Nancy to stay with him every moment of the little time that is left. And at midnight on the following day, his heartbeat grew irregular. Those in the family not already present were wired that his hours left on earth were few. Soon his heart began to beat faster and faster and then slower and slower. And just after 6.30 p.m. on April 7th, he died. The newspapers that had been his lifeblood did not desert Barnum upon his death.

The New York Times weighed in with a 6,000-word obituary, and the Times of London called him an almost classical figure. Hundreds of newspapers across America shared the sad news with the millions of their readers who had visited the American Museum in their youth, or more recently, attended a Barnum and Bailey extravaganza in their city or town. Barnum rested at last, but the spectacle he had created would, decade after decade, continue to bear his name and delight the full story, you can buy the book using the link that's in your show notes on your podcast player or go to founderspodcast.com, and you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I'll talk to you again soon.