Founders - #211 Aristotle Onassis: An Extravagant Life

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested.The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seeming inconsistencies.Onassis had long since begun to formulate a personal business philosophy. The key to success was boldness, boldness, and more boldness.He was constantly visiting and inspecting ships, talking to ship owners and other importers and quietly absorbing everything, making a very conscious attempt to learn as much as he could before going into ship-owning seriously.He was quite observant about what, to others, were trifles but, to him, were important details. He often quoted Napoleon: “The pursuit of detail is the religion of success.”Onassis was a man of the pier, but with the cocksureness of a king.She simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis, a paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.Onassis was a born orator. He could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound.Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pore over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York, looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each day.And I, of course, will do exactly as I please.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“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 ----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 city of Smyrna was in flames. The Holocaust, one of the biggest in the world's history, was larger than the Great Fire of London in 1666 or the blaze that wrecked San Francisco in 1906. 200,000 refugees jammed the city. Many had not eaten in days. There was an outbreak of typhoid. The harbor was packed with ships from many nations.

Aggressive escapees of the flames swam to a nearby ship and attempted to climb aboard. They were beaten and shot. A mile out to sea, the cries of the dying could be heard, intermixed with the frequent roar and clash of exploding ammunition stores, which sounded like an intense infantry battle. The Turks put up concentration camps on the outskirts of the city. Aristotle Onassis worked his way through the flaming streets. Some were impossible to traverse, not only because of the wreckage, but also because of the stench from the mass of corpses along the avenues. Many were killed in the fire. The Turks executed many more in the days immediately preceding the Holocaust. Hundreds of Greek men were taken from their homes and made to

sit in the streets as the Turkish soldiers went systematically from man to man, slitting their throats. This form of death saved ammunition. It was also particularly excruciating. The wives and daughters of the dead men were then raped and beaten. Those who refused to submit were immediately slaughtered. Aristotle attempted to get from the south of the city to his father's office in the north. It took him hours to just go a few blocks as he darted into doorways to hide from the Turkish patrols. All around him, the fire raged. There was constant shooting followed by screams. Aristotle hid in the bushes of a church.

Nearby, a Greek priest was stripped of his garments and then blinded with a red hot sword. The man was dragged to the large doors of the church and soldiers crucified him by nailing horseshoes to his hands and feet. He died shortly afterwards. Aristotle realized that it was the same church where his mother and father were married.

That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Onassis, An Extravagant Life. And it was written by Frank Brady. And that was a description of a historical event that Aristotle Onassis lived through. He was around 16 or 17 years old at the time. It's known as the Burning of Smyrna, also known as the Catastrophe of Smyrna. It occurs towards the end of the Greco-Turkish War. That is the major turning point in Onassis' life where he goes from a privileged son of a very successful businessman to an almost penniless refugee in exile.

He has to actually flee to South America. We'll get to that in a little bit. I want to go jump right into the book. I want to talk about his early life. It starts off with his very, very close relationship. He was actually raised by his grandmother. Unfortunately, part of this was also because his mom dies at a very early age. And so the book says, although he loved his mother and was close to her as a

child, Aristotle was actually raised by his grandmother, a not so unusual occurrence where a Greek grandparent lives in the same house as her grandchildren. He grew closer to his grandmother when his mother found it impossible due to a sudden illness to spend virtually any time with the child. The diagnosis was a malfunctioning kidney, and it was thought that only a delicate operation could save her. Within a few days after she entered the hospital, she was dead of uremic poisoning. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Uremic poisoning at the age of 25. So it doesn't say the year that his mom died, but I think given how long they were married before, he was probably five or six

years old. So old enough to remember. This is a description of his early life, the life he lived before this tragedy, the burning of Smyrna. So it says he was brought up in wealth, surrounded by doting women. Aristotle, as the first and only son, could have been considered the prototype of the overindulged scion of a rich family. He practically lived on and in the water. He became a strong and excellent swimmer and oarsman. He matured quickly. He excelled in sports. He became a school champion at rowing and under the tutelage of his father took an interest in business.

So this is actually his father does something that's really, really smart here. And this is something that I see over and over again in these books. If you have a business, you should get your kids involved really early. It's not uncommon for me to read in these biographies, somebody having a family business and the kid's eight years old, seven years old, 12 years old, doing whatever they can. Just it's a form of education is really the way, it's not like they're trying to use their kids as employees. They're trying to teach them. And that's exactly what

Aristotle's father does. They have great names in the book. Aristotle's name is Aristotle Socrates Onassis. So his dad was named Socrates. And that's what they're going to reference here right now. As soon as Socrates felt his son was old enough to be trusted and could find his way through the city, he was enlisted as the company messenger boy, delivering tobacco samples and price quotations to potential buyers. talks of sitting in his favorite cafe on Front Street in Smyrna in 1913, sipping Turkish coffee, and of telling Aristotle Onassis about it many decades later when they were both billionaires. As a kid, I went by cafes several times a day in 1913, replied Onassis. So it says,

Socrates attempted to instruct the boy in the nuances of his business, and by the time Aristotle was 12, he was working in the office at least a few hours a day learning the intricacies of the tobacco export trade. So starting at an early age, all the way up to 16, he's working in the family business. He's being educated. His dad hired the best tutors. This is actually something I learned recently from Dan Carlin's fantastic Hardcore History podcast is Alexander the Great never went to school, but he had his father, Philip, was hired tutors and his tutor was Aristotle. That just blew my mind. But the idea that you're obviously going to have a superior education if instead of having one teacher, one person teaching 30 or 40 people at a time, they're teaching you one-on-one. So it says when he occasionally had problems with a particular

field of study, his father hired a tutor. In his father's determination to assure that him an excellent education, Aristotle had the opportunity of working with some of the best teachers in the city. And so now we're going to fast forward right before this outbreak of war happens. And it says of more immediate concern to the family was the increasing talk of war. And so a few pages later, they see the wars happening. They see the invasions begun and his father makes a tragic, tragic mistake. I know I left myself is don't do this. History is full of examples of people sticking around when they should have fled.

You want to see how things turn out? That's fine. Go to a safer location and view that from afar. So his dad is, you know, he's I can understand to a safer location and view that from afar. So his dad is, you know, he's, I can understand his position, even though it is a mistake. You know, I'm one of the richest people in the city. You know, I have a bunch of Turkish friends. Yeah, I'm Greek, but you know, I'll be fine. I'll be safe. We saw this in Andy Grove's book, his memoir, Swimming Across, where they're like, oh, no, no, I'm a good, I'm one of the good Jewish people.

Like I have friends that are Russian or German or whatever the case was. And in many, in one case in that book, Andy Grove talks about one guy stuck around the city and his family, him, his wife, and his kids were taken out of their house and murdered in the street. Socrates Onassis had time to, had little time to solidify his position or make adequate preparations for the Turkish onslaught. Although he knew it was dangerous to remain in Smyrna, he was convinced that his standing in the community and his many Turkish friends would help him. And Aristotle's father could not have been more wrong. They have a gigantic family. So they're surrounded by grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and a lot of these people are going to be murdered, arrested and murdered.

Socrates was placed under arrest and imprisoned. Within a short time, Aristotle received a report that his uncle Alexander had also been arrested, sentenced to death and was hung in a public square. His uncles Basil and John were placed in a concentration camp. Socrates' sister, so Aristotle's aunt Marie, had sought refuge with hundreds of others in a church and together with her child and husband was burned to death when the Turks set it on fire. No one survived. Only Aristotle was permitted to remain in the house after its occupation by the Turkish officers. So what was interesting was because they had one of the nicest houses in this area and you had a clear

view of the city, the actually takes decides hey i want that house and so uh it's occupied and aristotle talks them into letting him stay there he winds up serving them he winds up like smuggling alcohol we'll get to that in a minute but he says that only aristotle was permitted to remain in the house after his occupation by the turkish officers this for their own convenience and benefit he spoke impeccable turkish knew his way around the city and was familiar with the workings of the villa and had many contacts that could prove useful. I begged the general for permission to sleep there on assets related. I knew how the plumbing and heating work and I offered to run errands too. Aristotle was just short of 17 years old. So we see traits from

a young teenage Aristotle that he keeps for the rest of his life. He's very, very resourceful and he has a fundamental understanding of human nature. And so throughout his whole life, he tries to, he understands how to manipulate people. He's constantly bribing them, buying them gifts, like convincing them to be on their side. We'll go into a lot more detail, but he's doing this in a very early, from a very young age, I should say. And he knows, hey, these generals, they love getting drunk i know where i can get alcohol at so i'm going to constantly serve them alcohol um and hopes you know that they spare my life through friends he managed to get a few bottles for the turks

and for the u.s vice consul this guy named parker hoping that aristotle would continue to supply them with alcohol the turks rewarded him with a it's like this pass like this basically if he gets he gets stopped by the Turkish military as he goes throughout the city, saying, hey, he's on official business for us, don't mess with him. Complete with his photograph and fingerprints, which enabled him to move freely across the city. In addition, Parker gave Aristotle an entry pass. This is extremely important to remember because this is how he's going to wind up escaping. In addition, Parker gave Aristotle an entry pass to the U.S. Marine Zone. It was a haven of safety should he ever need it. He visited his father in prison and discovered to his horror that each night Greeks by the scores were being given kangaroo military trials. All were found guilty and executed on the spot. And so Aristotle needs money because

the money is the only thing that's going to keep his father alive. If he didn't get a sizable amount of cash quickly, Socrates' chances for survival were very slim. The prison guards were willing to keep Socrates' name off each day's execution roster for a price. Without money, any day could be Socrates' last. And then this is really a reminder of how tenuous these situations could be. One day you could, okay, I have a pass. You know, I'm serving the general. I'm running errands.

It doesn't matter. Like you could just come across the wrong person. In this case, the warden, the Turkish warden that's holding all these Greeks captive is seeing this young kid running in and out. And he's like, okay, well now, like I don't like this. Maybe I'll just kill you. And this is where he winds up having to flee and escape. He says on the day on the last day that he visited the prison, the warden detained and questioned him about the amount of money he'd given his father and about the family's

relationship to the Greek government. Remember the one that they're at war with. He had threatened with torture and he was threatened with torture and solitary confinement if he refused to cooperate. Just then the phone rang. Called to an emergency meeting, the warden left the young boy in his office under guard. Aristotle escaped when the guard was paying attention to something else, and since he had walked freely through prison gates for weeks, he was not stopped as he left the grounds. Once outside, he ran the three-mile distance to the U.S. Marine Zone like a leopard, as he recalled it, and was hidden there by Vice Consul Parker, the guy that gave him the pass to begin leopard, as he recalled it, and was hidden there by Vice Consul Parker,

the guy that gave him the pass to begin with, until he could be placed on an American destroyer heading for Greece. So Aristotle was able to flee some of his remaining family. They're all separated, but they eventually, a bunch of them get to Athens as well. His father's still in prison. He's about to bribe for his father's release here in a minute. But even though the family escaped, they're no longer wealthy. So it says the major portion of Socrates' fortune was eventually lost. And then the devastating, to add even a more devastating event to this already tragic event that he's having to occur through is his grandmother's actually murdered. And she's murdered not by the Turks, but by Greeks. So it says one member of the family was missing, his grandmother.

The pitiful story was revealed to Aristotle. The old lady made her way from an evacuation camp to the Athens port, only to be attacked, ironically, by a group of Greek thieves. She was badly beaten and in shock. She died the day after the assault. Aristotle was heartbroken over her death. So I think the family had about $100,000 left out of their gigantic fortune. So it's a small part of what they used to have. Aristotle was going to use $25,000 of that to bribe for his father's release. So he goes to

the head, the seat of the Turkish government. He travels to Constantinople at the time using his father's banking and tobacco contracts as intermediaries, government officials, and those in charge of the penal system were approached to see what could be done. It cost about twenty five thousand dollars in bribes to the right people. Aristotle was astonished to be met by his father's displeasure and criticism. And this is where I think his father's just delusional at the very beginning. He's like, oh, no, I'll be fine. You know, I have a bunch of friends. OK, well, oops, I got arrested. Oh, my God, my name might

be put on the daily, you know, the daily list of people they're going to kill. And so he's pissed off at his son here. And he's like he was he was certain that his release had been imminent. Yeah, OK, well, I'm not going to risk that, buddy. And that the twenty five thousand dollars spent by Onassis, which was a good portion of the family's fortune, was an irresponsible and wasteful act. So he's starting to be estranged from his father, who he was close to before this. They wind up there in Greece, but they have all these people coming in. There's already an economic depression happening at the time. And he's just realizing, like, there is no economic opportunity.

I must leave. And so just think about in a matter of months how different his life was. You know, I'm a privileged son of a rich businessman. I live in this beautiful villa by the sea. And now he's about to flee to Argentina. So it says Aristotle did not know, did not quite know what to do with his life. There was an economic depression within the country with massive unemployment, no jobs, very little money to borrow to start a business, and no opportunities for a relatively inexperienced youth such as Aristotle Onassis. A number of the younger, impoverished Greeks who had come from Turkey began emigrating to other countries.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, half a world away, was rich and cosmopolitan, and its growth offered many opportunities. Although the possibilities were unknown and he spoke no spanish aristotle believed it might be a place to start his career at this point what does he have to to lose not much right he was also embittered still humiliated from his father's criticism and determined to make a success of himself he borrowed enough money from his family for a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires. Socrates gave him $100 in cash. So he gets on this ocean liner. He doesn't have money for a good ticket, obviously. So he's down below. There's no fresh air. There's people defecating right where they sit. And what he's about to do here, and again, this is something very resourceful from a very early age. I always think of Paul Graham in his great essays is like the best description of what entrepreneurship is or what an entrepreneur is is somebody that's relentlessly resourceful. He's able to distill just in the open air, it reminds me of one of my favorite sentences in the book Titan, which is the biography, like the main, the best, most well-known biography of John D. Rockefeller.

And it was a description of John D. Rockefeller, and it says he was not one to persist in a flawed situation. Definitely one to persist, but not in a flawed situation. If he was in a bad situation, he would persist but not in a flawed situation if he was in a bad situation he was do everything to fix that right and so we see this that just thought popped my mind when i got to this paragraph after several days of tolerating the worst of these conditions one meal a day no fresh air no pop no proper sanitary facilities onassis gave the ship's purser five dollars to allow him to sleep on deck in a storage bin. So maybe not very comfortable, but a hell of a lot better than being underneath, right? So he's going to land in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is known as the Paris of South America. At least it

was back then. I've actually visited, I've been in a few different places in Argentina. It's a very beautiful country, obviously troubled history, if you know anything about it. But it does. Like it is very beautiful. It's very European. It's actually very surprising when you go to Buenos Aires. But there's a description that says the vivacity of the city seemed to promise the opportunity he was seeking. Onassis was already obsessed with the idea of amassing a fortune.

So this is all about how he starts over in Buenos Aires. Remember, this guy builds one of the – by the time he dies, he's one of the richest people in the world. And really, there's nothing about his life story at 17, 18 years old that would lead one to believe that that would be even possible, right? So it says Onassis had begun to haunt the waterfront area trying to find work, waking up early each morning, going persistently from one dock to another as the ships pulled in, joining the crowds of boys and men waiting hopefully to be allowed to do the strenuous work of unloading the heavy cargoes. He did make some money working at temporary jobs. He would be a dishwasher. He laid bricks and he would row people across the river.

And really the way to think about everything about to read to you, because we're going to spend a lot of time here. There's a lot of highlights in the session. He's working all the time. He's pursuing every opportunity and he's watching his costs. And it's funny because watching his costs, I mean, what's the subtitle of the book? An Extravagant Life. The guy had like gold plated everything. He's like the Greek version of Trump or something. But that happens later in his life. Aristotle applied for a job the very next day, was hired immediately and given an intensive. Oh, so he winds up realizing that, hey, there's this massive technological transformation that's happening in Buenos Aires at the time and it's taking place at the telephone company. So he hears from other Greek immigrants, hey, go apply for a job the very next day. He was hired immediately and given an intensive three-week course in the inner workings of the telephone company. All the telephones in Buenos Aires were being converted to an automatic dialing system, and there was a need for workers of all kinds. And so he is always going to pick up and try to do things that other people won't do. He'll work anytime he has the opportunity to work overtime, anything that will pay him more money.

Do you want to work overnight because no one else wants to. Yeah, sure. If it's more money, I will do it. He has no choice at this point. Once he became adept at the work, he was on demand to work overtime past five o'clock at the rate of one and a half times his normal pay. He was making over $40 a week. Remember, he came to the city. By the time he lands, I think he has like 60 bucks left. Okay, so that's a quite a good amount of money. I think he's paying like seven bucks a week or something to, to, for how, for housing. So he's able to save a lot of money. He was quite frugal with his money and saved as much as he could. Whenever he saw the possibility that for advancement to another level in the company

that could earn him more money, he applied for it. He immediately accepted the chance to work for the telephone operator for on special night calls every night from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He kept the job for over six months by working overtime and by spending very little money. He managed to accumulate a savings of close to a thousand dollars. or excuse me, the achievement of this first financial success in such a short time based on his own industry and prudence encouraged Onassis to expand his horizons. Determined to build a business, he began to look into the commercial possibilities of importing oriental tobaccos from South or into South America. So that's what I was referencing earlier. Like if you have a business, try to get your kids involved in any capacity just for education. I mean, let's be frank. Like if you could, under your tutelage and your business, your kid's going to learn a hell of a lot more doing that real life skills than they are in

school. Right. And so Aristotle, the fact that he was able to work in his father's tobacco business, you know, 8, 10, 12 years old, all the way up to the tragedy he endured, 16, 17 years old. That's going to lay the foundation because he's going to keep this day job for a long time. But then he's going to start. He's realizing, hey, let me read this to you. I'll get to my point. Turkish tobaccos were unknown in Argentina at that time. Well, OK, people smoke tobacco all over the world. Right. Oh, NASA's realized that. Well, we have some, we had access because of my family's business history. Like we had access to some of the best, highest quality Turkish tobaccos. And if you can, people will always pay for quality. So why don't I try to

import them from, like from using the context of my family, using the experience and the education I have into this new land that I'm in, that's halfway across the world. No one else is doing this. And so exposing the fact that Socrates exposed Aristotle to that so young, he could have kept him in, you know, could have kept him just playing sports and going to school. He's like, no, learn the business. This idea and this business that Aristotle is about to start is what's going to make, he's going to be a millionaire six years later, by the time he's 23 years old. How valuable was the education that his, that his father taught him? Literally worth millions of dollars. And then if you think about the, he becomes a billionaire, like you, that's the foundation for this future billionaire empire that, that Aristotle's going

to, going to do. And the way he does it's actually really smart um so anyways let me i'm getting way ahead of myself let me go to where he gets this idea and like basically finding he has to find an end like how am i going to start doing this and this is one of i think this is the main idea that i remember from learning from aristotle so all the way back on founders number 84 i read a biography of him and he was still alive when that biography was written. I think the book was from like the 1960s. And if you've ever, and it smelled like it, if you've ever read an old book, you know what I mean? Like you got to open the door, you need a draft in there or something because like the pages, you know, they get real hard with the passage of time. And like, it's just,

it's not a pleasant smell, but this idea, what he's about to do, where he's like, okay, I know I can, I have a contact back home. I can import high quality tobacco. I need a buyer. I need a company in Argentina, right. That I can sell this tobacco to. So what he does is, and he's, it's interesting now reading back on my highlights, because this is something he does later in life. He doesn't spread himself thin. He starts off just trying to sell it to going to all the tobacco buyers in Argentina. No one gives him the time of day. Right.

And so what he'll do later in life and what he's about to do right here is he just picks one person. I have one target, one lead. I'm going to pursue that person and I'm not going to give up. So the idea is just focus on one completely instead of spreading yourself thin. So he says, while still working at the telephone company at night, Aristotle visited tobacco companies by day, attempting to interest the chief buyers into giving him an order. Week after week after week went by and he was unable to see someone in any authority in any company who could make a decision whether to buy or not. Eventually, he chose the one cigarette manufacturer that he believed might give him a chance.

And what he did, and this is the thing I remember most from that book that I read, is he pursued him day by day. He just showed up. I think he followed him for like two weeks. And eventually, the guy's like, dude, I see you every day. Like, what do you want? Right? Like, you're, and this guy's an, dude, I see you every day. Like, what do you want? Right. Like you're.

And this guy's an older, successful business person. You know, you don't want to be annoying. That's what I'm saying. But like, I'm sure that person is like this guy. Like, I at least admire your persistence. So it says eventually he chose the one cigarette manufacturer that he believed might give him a chance. Although the buyer had already refused to see him. Right.

He stood outside the building each morning until he learned to recognize the company president. So he's going to the very, very top. He's like, I've already tried to sell to this company. The buyers are ignoring me. Let me go straight to the top. And so eventually the guy, they have a conversation on the street and it says, Aristotle explained that he had samples of some exciting new tobaccos and he had been unsuccessful, not in gaining an order but even seeing anyone who could or would make a decision. So the president – his last name is Guyana, I think. Guyana was impressed with Aristotle's sincerity and arranged a formal meeting for the next day with the head of the purchasing department. So I'm always amazed when I see like these young, smart college students, right? Usually, I mean, you don't have to be a

college student, but this is the thing that pops in my mind when people are looking for jobs, right? They're just fresh out of college, not sure what to do. And so, you know, the standard approach, let me just send my resume out to, you know, hundreds of people. It's like almost like you're just like spamming your resume everywhere. Like, I don't understand why I'm not hired. The smartest, the smarter move. And I'm amazed that, you know, young kids figure this out is they target, you know, one or two companies they really want to work for. They do an extensive amount of research for them. And then they went up cold emailing the founder of the company.

And it's not just say, again, we've learned this when you study the reason it's so beneficial to study like the advertising agency founders and the copywriters from old, you know, David Ogilvie, Claude Hopkins, Albert Lasker, is because they understood that you have to appeal to interest. Everybody's busy, everybody's selfish, right? And so if you just email and say, hey, I just graduated, hire me. No, that's not, that's based on like your own selfish desire. You have to serve those people. And so what I'll see is like they'll study the company and then they'll send an email with, hey, I downloaded your app or I use your service or whatever. And here's the things I think I would do differently or here's some suggestions for improvement or whatever the case is. Like here's what the value basically providing value and ideas before asking your return.

And a lot of times you times they wind up getting hired because they went straight to the top. And so what happens here, right? He's like, hey, I've tried to go through the normal channels in your company. No one's willing to talk to me. I have a unique product. I think your company will benefit by having higher quality tobacco. I have the resources to import this tobacco for you. I'm willing to do this at unbelievably low prices because I have no customers, which is what Aristotle does. And so I'll make lower margins, but I need basically like you benefit because I'm charging you less and I benefit because you're my first customer. Right. And so what happens is the president, the guy running the guy running the company, the most the most the person that has the ability to say, hey, take this meeting with this young kid. What is the difference when you just go and you wind up getting a meeting with the buyer, right? Yourself, the normal channels. That's one way to do it. Okay. Aristotle tried that way. It didn't succeed. Now, what does this guy say? This guy says, okay,

I'm impressed with your sincerity. I'll arrange a formal meeting the next day with the head, the person that's in charge of my purchasing department. That's it's coming. It's not coming from below. It's coming from the top. I'm not I'm not just a guy coming. Hey, you know, I have something that might benefit your company. No. The president of the company said, hey, meet with this dude. What do you think is going to be the result? A buy a purchase order. Oh, this guy must be special. The president's telling me to meet with him. Okay. Well, even if you didn't like what he was selling, you're probably still going to buy. You probably do an order because the president

told me to meet with him. The result was a sale. $10,000 worth of Turkish leaf was purchased. So he's making $40 a week, busting his ass, working overtime, working at night, and he just got a $10,000 order. So that idea just stuck with me. If you're ever in a situation like that, focus on one person. Don't spread yourself thin. Really think about what you're doing during the next two years. Still working at the telephone company and cautiously maintaining his expensive lodgings, Onassis continued to import tobacco into Buenos Aires. Two million dollars over the next two years he imported. His personal profit was over a hundred thousand dollars.

So think about that if he would have just stayed at his job. In two years, he made, let's see, forty dollars. That's what, twenty. He he made 48 years of income because if you're making 40 a week that's 2500 weeks he made 2500 weeks of income just by importing this in two years so it says they um then he took that money and again this is something he's going to do over and over again he's like all right well i'm importing tobacco. Why don't I try to make cigarettes as well? He's importing tobacco for cigarette makers. So he says, he's like, OK, I could do this myself. He winds up his cousins over there, too. He says they

opened a small shop to manufacture their own luxury brand of cigarettes. So he understood about the importance of differentiation. He wrapped his cigarettes in attractive gold foil before packaging. The cigarettes were very expensive. They were extremely mild and they were tipped with rose leaves. He sold them mostly to women, some of who were taking up smoking for the very first time. So by this point, he has quit the telephone company. He's importing tobacco, right? And then he's making a good amount of money being an actual cigarette manufacturer himself. He's got like 30 people doing the actual work and making the cigarettes. But the problem is a flood of new companies come into this market. You know, you can hand roll cigarettes. It's not that difficult. There's a low barrier to entry. And so he's realizing, well, the profit I was able to get out of this is very short lived. Now the competition is driving down prices.

So he does another thing that we see over and over again. He's like, OK, I need to figure out what is the best use of my time. So he's going to focus on his most promising business. And right now he's going to ditch the cigarette manufacturing just to focus on tobacco importing. Right. Eventually, he's going to make so much money in ships. He's like, I got to close my tobacco, even when it was profitable. He'll close down a business because he realizes like I can make 10 times, 100 times, a thousand times as much money in shipping as I can in tobacco. So it doesn't make it does not make sense for me to spend any of my time doing this. Another smart, again, just he's got very good intuition. So no, no,

that's myself on this page. Something I just told you, focus on his most promising business. He does this throughout his career, his efforts in cigarette manufacturing, although they had expanded greatly from the beginning, were no longer profitable. There were hundreds of small, small manufacturers throughout the city, each attempting to garner the other's customers. And the competition and price cutting were fierce. Eventually, he decided, I'm going to concentrate entirely on importing tobacco and other products. So he's an importer and an exporter, right? And he is a customer of these giant shipping concerns. He's like, why are these guys that own these shipping concerns, these shipping businesses so wealthy? He's like, well, why don't I do what they do? So he winds up befriending one of them and learning a lot. And then he does another smart thing I'll get to in a minute. He was interested in getting into shipping, not just as an importer or one who merely uses ships as he'd been doing, but by owning the ships and enjoying the highly profitable cargo rates. Alberto Dondero, a brilliant and rich Argentine ship owner, became a friend of Onassis and had an

influence on him. So he's like, well, before you get into shipping, like, why don't you, and we've seen this over and over again i did uh the the biography of uh daniel ludwig the invisible billionaire it's founders number 68 if you haven't um listened to that already he was actually a competitor of onassis very very different than onassis like almost basically the complete opposite but a lot the reason i bring this up is because a lot of uh these before they get into and own these giant shipping companies and actually make money in cargo, they flip ships at the very beginning. That's how they learn about them. And so that is what Onassis is going to do here.

His friend Alberto knows about this small tanker that sank. And a lot of these can be, like, you can take them back out of the ocean, have them repaired because they sell at, like, salvage rates, and then you could find a buyer. And so it says a small empty tanker had a half sunk and was available for sale for ten thousand dollars so nasa's found that the repair costs would be within reason and then with the advice of dadaro determined that comparable ships were selling for at least 10 times the amount it would cost them to put this one in order within a matter of days so he buys a ship when within a matter of

days the ship was afloat and a week later onasis sold it and she's like wow i made a lot of money really really quickly i'm making good money in tobacco but this is really fast so it says with each success it became to him an ecstasy of a very real sort so he's hyped up the year was 1929 six years since he had come to argentina to make his way in the world he had just celebrated his 23rd birthday. His estimated net worth was a million dollars. So he decides to go home to visit his family, but that is not the actual real reason. He has to go because there's a chance that a new law passed in Greece would actually put him out of business.

So this is a lot can change in six years. Coming home so his business isn't taxed to oblivion. So it says, It's not difficult to imagine the family's reaction to the confident, prodigal son, now a millionaire and traveling first class, arriving at the same dock from which he had departed as a humiliated and embittered young man six years before. This is why he's coming home.

Greece had initiated a decree that sharply increased the import tax parted as a humiliated and embittered young man six years before. This is why he's coming home. Greece had initiated a decree that sharply increased the import tax on any goods from countries with which it did not have a signed treaty. Argentina was one of those countries. In retaliation against a Greek tax, Argentina raised its import tax, which is exactly what, so that's going to affect Onassis's business right it raises import tax to such an exorbitant extent that onassis might have been driven out of the business if the situation had continued so this is also talks about the boldness and that's another thing another term that onassis uses over over again he's like you have to be bold the boldness of a 23 year old onassis like well i'll just go home and try to get the petition to get this law changed.

If he could convince Greek authorities to discontinue the levy on Argentina ships, Argentina would undoubtedly reciprocate. It was then that he decided that a trip to Greece would be necessary. So he gets a meeting with this guy that's in the Greek government. The guy's basically like, I'm not going to listen to this young punk. He's basically just doing his nails and like kind of ignoring him. And Onassis gets angry and storms out. But he says something that's smart at the end of the meeting because his whole point is like we're making like the law should be changed. Basically, he knew that you have to appeal to the other person's interest.

Right. And so his point is that we're selling Greek like the Greek citizens are making a ton of money because I'm getting the tobacco from Greece and importing it into Argentina. And so he yells at the guy. He goes, you're more interested in your nails than in Greek commerce. And so he storms out. And it's because a few days later, he's going to get a call to come back. And this is how he gets paid. He gets paid to study the shipping industry. So they wind up doing some research on him. They realize he has a lot of contacts in Argentina. He's got contacts in Greece. So they decide to hire him to make him the official government liaison, right? Onassis would be the perfect liaison for Greece with the Argentine government in an attempt to negotiate a trade agreement. So Greece passed this law. It's not

that they wanted, they basically, it's like playing hardball as a way to incentivize other countries to have a trade agreement, right? So if you really think about it, Onassis is presenting himself as a solution to the problem that they have, okay? So it says he would be the perfect liaison for Greece with the Argentine government and attempt to negotiate a trade agreement. Although he had been back in Athens just two weeks, Aristotle Onassis was soon sailing to Argentina with diplomatic status. So he winds up connecting the people that wind up hammering out this deal.

Okay. Soon a reciprocal, reciprocal, I can't pronounce that word, advantageous trade agreement between Argentina and Greece was reached. As a result of his success, Onassis was appointed as Greek consul general in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, the harbor that he works out of, was accommodating over 1,000 Greek ships a year. The most important positive factor was that he thoroughly learned the machinations of the shipping industry as the post of the consul proved to be a business listening post of incalculable value. So this post they put him in.

He's got to do all kinds of stuff. He says he's got to organize the consulate staff to complete paperwork, which he had approved, while also settling disputes and strikes, negotiating the complicated legal problems connected with international trade. Basically, he's learning the ins and outs of international trade via shipping, right? And he's getting paid to do this. He was constantly visiting and inspecting ships, talking to ship owners and other importers and quietly absorbing everything.

This is his life's work, right? What's going to soon to be his life's work, rather. Making a very conscious attempt to learn as much as he could before going into the ship, going into ship owning seriously. And then we also see at this point, he's like one of these, you know, psychopathic guys like a Bill Gates, where they'll work for days at a time and then just crash. So it says he was known to be able to work for 48, even 72 hours at a time without any sleep at all, then collapsing into bed and sleeping for 12 or 14 hours. And then we see at this time he's doing, I always talk about that fantastic talk by Bill Gurley on YouTube, which is called Running Down a Dream, where he talks about what Danny Meyer did to start his restaurants,

what Bobby Knight did to study for the best coaches of history, what Bob Dylan did to study from great musicians, and he terms this professional research. So it's all the stuff that you do to learn, to teach yourself something when you're not working. So the term for that is professional research. Onassis is engaged in that as well. Onassis continues to look for opportunities to become a ship owner and operator.

And as his tobacco importing business continued to grow, he to london amsterdam antwerp and the other great ports of the world and to the shipyards of many countries looking for and learning about ships and so this is where he jumps into being a shipowner there's a lot of these examples in throughout history whether it's like a there's either an economic depression or are they overbuilt but you can you can buy these like gigantic ships for almost no money it doesn't even make any sense so this this is how he starts getting he gets started uh the canadian national steamship company had a small fleet of freighters that were docked in montreal for two years which they were putting up for sale they were facing bankruptcy so they had little choice but to take whatever they could

get for the ships the great depression adversely affected every industry. Shipping was especially suffering. There were many ships, but not many cargo. Onassis had long since begun to formulate a personal business philosophy. The key to success, he said, was boldness, boldness, and more boldness. Without hesitation, Onassis made an offer of $20,000 per ship, which was the ships were worth a lot more. There was no buyers. He figured that was how much they would get if they had to scrap them. Onassis had concluded that because the ships had been docked for two years, the steamship company had apparently been unable to sell them. He chose to gamble on the possibility that he was the only bidder. His offer was accepted. So let's get into a little bit

about how he worked and he kept up these work habits for most of his life. He was a workaholic obsessed with details. Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pour over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study, and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates, and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies, and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers every day. That part reminded me of Warren Buffett, where he, at one point, I mean, he probably still does, but he would, he'd read so much that he would, he'd be able to, he had a mental picture in his mind, a mental image in his mind of every single public company that was available in America. And so you see Onassis doing that, but he's doing it on a

global level and for ships. One thing about Onassis, and I'll go into more detail, because there's like one sentence in this book that I feel like summarizes who he was as a person. And he's got a lot of, like he's not a good guy or he's not all good. He's a very complicated person. And towards the end, like he does some disgusting things. He winds up getting indicted for corruption. He winds up beating his wives. I mean there's like a lot of gross stuff in this book.

And I'm not trying to excuse that behavior by any means. But I thought about that. I started getting like, you know, disgusted by some of what this guy, he does a lot of selfishness in his life, I guess. The important part is like, the thing reading these books is, sometimes I hear interviews with other entrepreneurs, like modern day entrepreneurs, other podcasts, it's just like, this is not it's not like, this is not all like roses and, and, and happy times. You know, a lot of these people are just straight up ruthless. And I feel like the interviews, they, they mischaracterize what, you know, the real world was like, especially the world of business. Like we, one of the, one of the things I learned from

Ed Thorpe, who was like my personal blueprint in life, that's founders number 93. He's, he, he said in the book, like he's 80 something years old writing that book. He's like, listen, if there's there's an opportunity for a human to to make money or to to grab some kind of advantage, like there is inevitably corruption in that situation, no matter what it is. And in case of gambling, he talks about Wall Street. He was if you remember in that book, he found he was looking at Madoff's returns like this guy's clearly like lying and scamming. And that was like a decade before a decade or two decades before Madoff wind up getting, you know, admitting to the Ponzi scheme. But I guess like the benefit of reading a biography is like you get an accurate representation of what human nature actually is, not what we want it to be. And I think where we have, you know, people in modern day giving interviews like they're they're they're only giving us the good parts. The books give us the good parts and the bad parts and you know this is in onassis is a very

hard and i'm not bitter is not the right word he like think about what he went through you know his grandmother dies his his aunts his uncles are murdered by other humans right they're hung they're burned to death in in um a church he sees a priest getting uh crucified blinded in the eyes with a sword like you're gonna have a very dark view of other humans and so maybe like his his his very onassis is very pronounced degree of selfishness might be perfectly logical and i'm not saying like like the stuff he does later on in life, like hitting your wife, like, come on, that's scumbag stuff, right? But this ruthlessness that he approaches business

and he's got a cutthroat nature, I do think is some kind of defense mechanism. I can't imagine being 16 years old and seeing most of your family murdered and burned to death. I don't think that's something you get over ever. I think that's something you carry with you through your whole life. And so one way to understand Aristotle is like, I'm only doing things for my benefit. And one of that was, you know, he considered himself Greek, but he didn't really believe in the idea of a country or religion, like his religion, his, he believed in Aristotle and Assas. That's basically it. And

that's where it stops. There's actually a, in The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. It's a quote from the movie Citizen Kane, which is obviously written about William Randolph Hearst. I'm going to read it to you because I think it applied to William Randolph Hearst. It applied to Larry Ellison. I think it applies to Onassis. It applies to a lot of these people. But it says, you want to know what I think about Charlie King? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away.

He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don't suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Charlie King. He never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life. And I think that that quote is a fantastic writing, fantastic quote that I think about all the time. But that quote popped into my mind several times while I'm reading this book. Like he believes, the note of myself on this is avoiding taxes was his religion. But really, like he believed in the religion of Aristotle Onassis.

At first, all of Onassis' ships were registered under either Greek or Argentinian flags, but he soon learned that there were great advantages to be had by registering them elsewhere, even though it might be considered as somewhat unethical. Onassis began a practice of registering them under so-called flag of convenience. This guarantees that he would pay little or no taxes for any profits he made from those ships, and it saved him money by lowering wages for the crews and by reducing safety standards. And so he says, As Onassis felt no pangs, our conscience in sailing his ships under flag of convenience. He described it this way.

As a Greek, I belong to the West. As a ship owner, I belong to capitalism. Just some random things here. A random thing I should tell you that uh he was you know relentless he would just call i remember hearing a story from elon musk's first wife and she's like you always knew it was elon when the phone rang because if you didn't answer just keep ringing over and over again she said uh she described him when she met him when he was in college she described him as like the terminator like he would set his eyes on something and it was like you will

be mine whether it's a business a girl whatever the case is a woman rather um onassis has some of that if you don't answer his letters or his calls he's showing up in person uh he traveled to sweden and unannounced burst into heathen's office i had just received i had received mail from him from london from paris from athens from buenos aires said he describing their meeting so when my secretary said mr onassis wants to speak to you i said put him through thinking he was on the phone. The next moment I looked up and Onassis was standing in front of my desk. In a matter of seconds, he was able to convince me to accept the deal I had refused so many times. He was a sorcerer.

And so that is another thing that we see over and over again. There is an extreme value, but it's an intangible, but very real valuable on being charismatic, being persuasive. I was just rereading over my notes from the George Lucas biography that he did all the way back on Founders No. 35, and he talked about that. George was famous. History was his favorite subject. He loved reading biography when he was younger. He's in his early 20s, and he meets Francis Ford Coppola. And he's like, that is the most charismatic guy I've ever come across. And he's like listening to – he said something like he could sell ice to Eskimos. I forgot exactly the term he used about Coppola.

But he's like, oh, okay. Now I completely understood like people like Caesar, the great people of the past and how they were able to influence those around them and essentially sell them on their ideas. You know, some people use that for politics. Some people used it for commerce. Onassis is going to use it for commerce, but he's one of these people, you know, later in life, he's very wealthy, but he's very like a short, like kind of like stubby guy. And people are like, how is this guy like, you know, having affairs with the most famous women in the world, like most of which are like a foot taller than him and, you know, much younger than him. And a lot of that obviously has to do with his wealth, but also like his charisma.

So I don't know. It doesn't say how. And I don't remember how, but he just has the instinct. It's like, OK, I'm like I have ships, but I'm just hauling cargo. If I could haul like oil, like there's a huge boom in oil that's coming. We're going to stop hauling coal and I'm going to switch everything to oil. So oil is coming. Let's get ahead of this massive transformation. Boldness, boldness, and more boldness is another on the page. It says he knew this. I'm not sure how he knew it though, but this is his thinking on this. Onassis' order for such a gigantic taker was placed because he believed in the future of the oil business.

Within 10 years, oil consumption would be on a rapid increase. And within two decades, oil would be supplying more than one third of the world's energy. So this is where, this is the foundation. This decision is the foundation. He's already rich, but this gets like out of hand rich, like billionaire rich all the time all this time onassis would be on the forefront of one of the as one of the leading transporters of oil throughout the world oil tankers could be serviced in a fraction of the time that was needed to load dry a dry cargo freighter because you could just hook it up into pipelines right in addition to the great savings and wages with a minimal uh with minimal people to oversee the project there was also safety and not being detained by the costly and constant longshoremen strikes that were common

in ports all over the world at that time onassis's super tankers were the largest ships of any kind in history so that's when i mean all boldness when he has an idea like he doesn't uh you know i'm gonna put my toe in he's like no i'm going all in and it's interesting too where um you know he goes from being very frugal when he was younger to now like his even his oil tankers are like very luxurious like they have like grand pianos and stuff and like gold-plated like faucets and all this ridiculous stuff um i remember one of my favorite things in that invisible billionaire book where you know daniel ludwig is the opposite of Onassis. He had more of like an engineering mindset. You know, Spartan, bear,

all my ships are literally just anything you need to transport oil and nothing else. And so he was asked one time, like, why don't you have, because they call them the fabulous Greeks. There's actually a book by that name I might read in the future. It's about Onassis and all,

there's a bunch of, you know, very successful Greek ship owners and oil transporters at this time. And so Ludwig was asked, he's like, why don't you have grand pianos like the Greeks? And he says, because you can't carry oil on a grand piano. So I thought it was funny. He just has a very, you know, I'm going to give you like I'm just going to be focused on the actual job at hand. I don't care about the luxury stuff. It's like the way Ludwig would think about this. So this will be more about how Onassis worked.

And a great quote from Napoleon about the pursuit of detail is the religion of success. So it says Onassis continually appeared at the shipyard to check and inspect the progress of his tankers often he would arrive at night after all the workers had gone home and he would have a watchman open the gate to allow him in he would then circle the ship again and again climb aboard it spend hours making mental notes of what he liked and disliked about the construction he was quite observant about to about what to others were trifles but to him were important details. The next day he would call the foreman, who would always be amazed that Onassis seemed to know more about the particulars of what remained to be finished than he did, and comment, complain, and make suggestions about the work.

Remember, so this guy's a wild dude. He's traveling all over the world. He's in nightclubs. He sleeps very little. I would guess, I mean, he drinks a lot. I would imagine he's doing drugs as well. But there was like no separation between, like he would be doing deals and nightclubs he would uh leave a nightclub and go inspect a ship like he there was no like you know work-life balance no there's no

there's none of that it's just like i have work and then in in middle and i'm gonna travel the world i'm gonna go to nightclubs which he was he was going clubbing he's like 65 years or 60 years old this is very bizarre to me at least but um that's just like there is no separation it's like this is this is my life and then i i take brief you know i'll go sailing but then he turns later on he has one of the best yachts in the world and it's essentially like his floating office this floating world which i'll get into more later. But this idea is like not unusual for him to pop up at night, go inspect a ship, maybe go to a club, go to dinner, do whatever he's doing. And then just there's just no separations like work is all encompassing to him. So it says he would complain and make suggestions about the work work. He often quoted Napoleon. The pursuit of detail is the religion of success so world war ii as we've seen over and over again like you have the entire world

almost the entire world focused on one event it creates these massive fortunes and if you just like right place right time right industry he ronastas is one of them you know um the nazis wind up holding he's got a bunch of like european that they don't let. So he loses like a big chunk of his fleet at this point in history. And yet, because the demand for ships is so high, even though he's now operating at like, maybe he lost, I don't know, 30%, 60% of his fleet, something like that. He makes a ton of money. They call it an ocean of money because the rates go up because the demand is so high even though his fleet had been markedly depleted because of his inability to use some of his super tankers he put his remaining ships to profitable use sailing for the allies and as a result collected unusually high wartime shipping rates he made what was once described as an ocean

of money from the war and this is what i meant about focus focus, because at this time, this is where he's like, all right, I'm closing my tobacco business. Despite the fact that he was realizing handsome profits from tobacco, in 1942, Onassis suddenly moved his entire operation to New York, closing down his tobacco operation

and concentrating all of his efforts on increasing his shipping interests. By the end of the war, excuse me, by the time the war was over, his fortune was estimated to be 30 million dollars he is 39 years old so a real important thing to point out to you so nastus

is not the first one to do what he did there are a ton of very like he made friends with this argentinian ship owner he just saw like and that i think that's very instructive it's like i don't have to you know sometimes you think oh other people doing this. I can't possibly do it, too. It's like, no, you probably can. At least, you know, there's demand for it, you know. So not only is there other people, there's Argentinians doing this, but there's other Greek. Like he winds up marrying into this family of a guy at the point at this time that is way more successful than him. And he winds up marrying into them and doing business with them and learning from him so onassis is almost 40 years old and this is where he's going to marry into this is an introduction into this guy named oh my goodness these greeks have the best names starvros livinos and this guy is actually going to marry two of his daughters off to one to onassis and one to another one of another like Greek shipping up and coming like Greek Greek shipping magnet and then they wind up having like this they do Onassis and this other guy Nicaros when I'm doing business and then they also hate each other it's just it's bizarre

okay so he says uh his his sisters are telling him like you need to marry a Greek girl um like you have to marry. They're very, like, adamant about this. Later on when he marries Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, like, you know, like there's a lot of people like this. I have friends that are South American, and they only want their family wants them to marry just like whether it's Colombians or Argentinians. I have Asian friends you only marry. You know, this is very common.

So he comes from a family that is we're Greek. just like whether it's Colombians or Argentinians. I have Asian friends. You only marry, you know, this is very common. So he comes from a family that is, we're Greek. You're only allowed to marry Greek people, okay? And so this is really a marriage of convenience. The reason I'm giving you this background is because it's not like Onassis, he's uncontrollable. Like he was never faithful. Like he says later, he's like, I will do exactly as I please.

That is the one sentence summary of onassis right and so he's gonna marry into the family but and this is gonna be the mother of his children and everything else but it's just like onassis only has one religion and that's himself so you marry a greek onassis needed no convincing because he was already begun spending time with tina who was 17 this is oh he's 40 like i just i you read these books and you try to put yourself into these positions and i'm like i just don't know what this guy that tina's father was thinking i could never imagine hooking like trying to set up my daughter with a 40 year old right 17 year old daughters i don't know she was 17 and he was also spending time with eugenia which is a 19 year old the two daughters

of stravos, Livanos, who was the owner of the largest private fleet in the world. At that time, Livanos was so wealthy that he could have easily acquired all of Onassis' holdings for cash without markedly tampering with his own assets. Not only did Livanos control a vast shipping empire, but he had spent many years on the sea himself. So this is one of those guys that, back to that old Sam Zimuri quote, if you know your business from A to Z,

there's no problem you can't solve. How Sam started out peddling like, you know, rotten or almost rotten bananas. He knew by the time he owned his own banana company, he knew every single aspect to the banana business, right? Which was a huge advantage when he competed against people that just came up and never worked in a plantation, never sold bananas. They just happened to be executives in a banana company, right? He kicked their ass up and down the street in that book.

But Levinos is one of these guys, like his whole life was the and shipping. He had spent years on the sea himself, first as a deckhand, and finally as captain of one of his father's ships. He held a Master Mariner's certificate and nothing pleased him more than to talk for hours about ships and the sea. He liked Onassis except for one strong reservation. So this guy would love Daniel Ludwig, because what I'm about to tell you.

Livanos was paranoially opposed to any kind of personal publicity. And although he was besieged by reporters from all over the world eager to do a profile on him, he never consented to do an interview. If you remember the book The Invisible Billionaire, Daniel Ludwig hired a PR firm to keep his name out of the papers. The exact opposite of what most people hire PR firms for, right?

Onassis, conversely, was interested in personal publicity, and he welcomed most opportunities to gain stories about himself in the press. Livinos went to great lengths to avoid publicity. So this fundamental idea, though, like that's, he takes that idea of oil is going to be really important. I'm going to build up the largest fleet largest ships largest fleet i'm going to go after every single oil contract in the world i can that's basically what he does for the rest of his life right and he does that

for multiple decades he's going to die 68 years old he figures this out when he's about 38 you know so he's got three decades of building you in some cases, like there's – anytime there's like kind of disruption in shipping channels throughout the world and oil production throughout the world. In one year, he makes like $100 million because when the Suez Canal is blocked. But he also is – he's corrupt for sure. Like he – he doesn't care about laws. He'll try to avoid taxes. taxes does all this other stuff so he wants being arrested for corruption this has to do with like buying the the u.s after world war ii was was trying to unload like the liberty ships and all these other like they had accumulated this large fleet and now they're selling it there was laws at the time

that you know they had to be under american ownership he sets up all these shell companies and he basically like finds ways to violate the law and he wasn't getting arrested for corruption he's going to wind up like paying fines and not spending time in jail but he does go to jail so it says on uh he's he i think he's in like athens at the time and he gets this there's like this press release that you know there's there's arrest warrants uh he's being indicted for corruption and so him and his brother-in-law nicoros and other 18 18 other corporations are named in this indictment nicoros like i'm staying in london i'm not onassis makes the mistake he's like i'm gonna show up in person i remember i said earlier like

he has this uh this this habit of just showing up in person so listen to what happens i'm just going to bring this up but he shows up in america So it says Onassis wanted to confront the U.S. government head on. When Onassis received no response to his telegram, remember, if he writes you letters and he calls, you don't respond, he's showing up in person. He barged into the attorney general's office. I want to know what this indictment is all about, he demanded. Let's have a showdown here and now. The attorney general excused himself, left the office and returned with a U.S. marshal who placed Onassis into custody. He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested. pays a fine, they, you know, turnover ownership, like 51% ownership to American corporation, you know, the stuff that you would expect a really wealthy person that has access to the best attorneys, you know, and most likely, you know, bribing politicians to do, right?

The reason I bring this up is because this haunts him for the rest of his life. He winds up being really good friends with Winston Churchill, which was really surprising. One of the most surprising things I learned when I read the first biography of Onassis, when he marries Jacqueline Kennedy, same thing. They're like, you know, he's American politicians go and start having speeches on the floor of Congress. Here are family talk about you can't marry a foreigner that's been indicted, et cetera, et cetera. So that's something that, you know, follows him around for the rest of his life. I'm fast forwarding way into the book towards the end of his life now because most of it is just the expansion of that one idea right and i'm way more interested in like how people get their starts in the beginning

of the career then you know he's already super super wealthy and just kind of diversifying into all these other um uh you know business classes shipping gets into whaling there's all kinds of other stuff like that but this is an idea that i've seen pop up over and over again. He's going to take it to the extreme. But I do think when you look at when you when you ask people, you know, when you are able to survey survey entrepreneurs, like why do you do what you do? Like, why are you working for yourself? Why don't you go get a job? And it's usually people think it's about money. Most it's about control. It's about having control over how you spend your time. Basically, a company is like building your own little miniature country or miniature world that you get to design.

And a lot of them, like I thought about Stephen King recently, Steven Spielberg, there's a lot of echoes in those last two books I read, but about the idea that they didn't really like the world they were in, so they built their own world. And some of that, to some degrees, figuratively. In Onassis' case, it was literally. So he builds a world within a world. And it's this, he has this floating yacht called the Christina, which is named after his daughter. And it says, from the first time of the maiden voyage and for the remainder of his life, Onassis spent more time on the Christina than in any of his houses, apartments, or villas spread throughout the world. Being on the sea, in control of wherever he wanted to go, his privacy intact, it enabled him to be the captain of his own directives and to feel totally independent. For Onassis, the Christina was truly his home. Once, when all of out of all of his houses where he preferred to live,

he snapped. The Christina, of course. And so you have think about like a combination of a floating mansion and floating office skyscraper. He's running his entire business from there. He's on it all the time, moves from port to port. He's constantly like he cultivates. Remember, he's a very manipulative person. He's a very charismatic person. So he will cultivate relationships with people. And it's hard to tell how many of them are genuine. I have a feeling that his his friendship, his close friendship with Churchill towards the end of Churchill's life is actually genuine on Aristotle's part, because like Churchill was one of his heroes. He's greatly admired what he was able to do during World War II, right? But a lot of this to me, when I'm reading this, is like, he just collected people that were, that were, you know, could serve him or could help him in some way or form. But this idea of, I kind of went off a tangent there, I didn't mean to, but this idea of like, creating your world within your world, your own world within the world is very interesting to me. It's something that pops up in the books over and over again. Again, it doesn't have to be on a, i think like a 300 foot yacht or whatever this is but i do think it is a very

powerful idea and i think usually at the center of these worlds is some kind of company that you own or control or wealth that you're able to generate through investments or whatever it is that usually comes first right let's go a little bit about this churchill there were some occasions when the number of guests were strictly limited because he'd have you know princes royalty from all over the world the richest people the most famous people like onassis in his day was one of the most well-known especially when he married jacqueline kennedy like one of the most famous and not only is one of the most richest one of the richest people on the planet when he was alive he's also one of the most famous so every single person you could possibly imagine every politician from all

countries all over the world he would he would take them and expose them to unbelievable luxury on the Christina. So it's his home, it's his office, but it's also a way to buy influence with very powerful and rich people, Churchill being one of them. There were some occasions when the number of guests were strictly limited. You could fit tons of people in there. But when Churchill's on board, my focus is on Churchill. However, that was whenever Winston Churchill and his wife were aboard. So the first time Churchill met him, this is what Churchill wrote in his diary. I met a man yesterday called Onassis. He is a man of mark. And so this is where the author does a great job here in this one paragraph, just comparing

and contrasting Onassis with Churchill's. The people did not understand their relationship. And it says, to many, the closeness between Onassis and Winston was difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Churchill, understandably, or excuse me, undeniably, was one of the greatest public figures of the 20th century and one of its best educated and most brilliant. He was a statesman and a leader of the highest order. First minister to the King of England, a Nobel Prize winner not only for literature but for oratory as well, Churchill was one of the world's grand old men, revered not only by the British but throughout every western country. What did he have in common with Aristotle, Socrates, and Nassus? Admittedly one of the world's richest men, but also a man who had been indicted and found guilty by the U.S. Justice Department, a business tycoon who used somewhat unethical practices to amass his fortune,

and a man who had carved out a reputation as a consummate playboy. And so they talk a lot about the Christina. And really the way to think about this is not only with his shipping empire and everything else, but he built his own world. He built a world within a world. I know I'm repeating myself, but this, again again i just think that pops up over and over again uh onassis with his own airline his own fleet his house is all over the world was sovereign of his own personal kingdom she was oh i need to pause here tell you what's happening he's trying to seduce jackie kennedy before jfk was killed

she's on cruise with him there's a bunch of people people. It's not just her. It's like her whole entourage and stuff. And so this is a description. You know, he's again, really, he only he was able to constantly conduct and control his businesses throughout the world cables and telephone calls from heads of state and the presidents of world's largest corporations arrived demandingly and onassis sometimes even between dinner courses dictated replies and return calls that had multi-million dollar implications whereas jack kennedy ruled a country onassis seemed to rule the world. Their Christina was busier than the Oval Office. So after JFK was murdered, she continues to spend time with Onassis. This is before they're married. But really, this is a description of what it was like, what it was like being around Aristotle Onassis. This, you know, this cult of personality, this charisma that I've been trying to explain to you that's apparent in the book and that does have a, you know, an intoxicating effect on other people.

There was a certain charm about Onassis that she found fascinating. Onassis was a born orator and Jackie would sit and listen to him spin off tales and stories, often racy tales, by the hour. She was never bored with him. He could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound as he told about his privileged childhood in Turkey, his wailing days in Antarctica, his relationships with Maria Callas, Winston Churchill, Eva Peron, Greta Garbo, speaking variously in any one or a combination of seven languages. He talked with color, wit, imagination, and sensitivity, but he was also capable... This is...

But he was also capable... This next sentence caught me off... Threw me off guard completely. So it's like, oh, he talked with color, wit, imagination, and sensitivity, but he was also capable of breaking wind unadhibitably in public with great beef and sonnets

and then laughing uproariously and with relish so he's known to flatulate in public with great this is a description with great beef and sonnets i had to look up that word i didn't know what sonnets meant it's just a loud sound so he's spinning tails and then he's gonna fart in front of everybody and then laugh about it that's not a sentence i was expecting to read in the book. Even Jackie, as everyone else, could not help but drop her reserve and laugh with him. She simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis. A paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.

He was so different from JFK, who rarely even kissed her in public, let alone said or did anything that was spontaneous and uncalculated. Her friends also were all intellectuals, proper cultured men of the salon who rarely expressed their inner feelings. Onassis was a man of the peer, but with the cocksureness of a king. So they eventually get married. I think they're married for 10 years, the last 10 years of his life. I'm pretty sure it was like a fake marriage. It's definitely an open marriage. Their marriage contract is in the book. It says we only have to spend time together on Catholic holidays and summer vacations. If we're traveling together, there needs to be separate rooms. Jackie doesn't have to give him is not required to give him a child if they get divorced he's got to pay her

10 million dollars for every year that they were married it is the opposite of like a loving marriage i don't even know what to say about it i'm pretty and it was an open marriage um bizarre okay so it says jackie continued to appear at concerts and society functions, escorted by men she had been seeing before she married Onassis. He immediately explained the arrangement to all the people with raised eyebrows. And this is where we get into his one sentence summary of his own. He essentially summarizes himself. And so I'll point that out to you. And so he says, Jackie is a little bird that needs its freedom as well as its security.

And she gets them both from me. She can do exactly as she pleases, visit international fashion shows and travel and go out with friends to the theater or any place. This is the one-sentence summary of himself. And I, of course, will do exactly as I please. I never question her, and she never questions me. And so for the first 66 years of his life um even after

going through unbelievable tragedy um he was known you know to be the life of a party to be extremely charming that never that changes his son when his son is 24 years old his son dies in a plane crash and onassis is never the same it destroys him he's like a dead man walking because he passes away two years later um but he's never recovers from this and in those ages overnight and then he just slowly slips into death and so this is a little bit about that when onassis returned from hospital, everyone thought that his heart would burst. So inconsolable was he over the loss of his son. He cried ceaselessly, and in the early hours of the next morning, he went out into the street in a daze, wandering for hours. He could not and would not control his grief. And when he returned home and saw a crowd of newsmen in the front of the house, all he could mutter was,

he was a good boy, a good boy, and then he wept. Onassis seemed to lose all hope with the death of Alexander. Alexander was his hope, and he said to everyone that he could see no sense in living himself. He saw himself in Alexander and when his son died, so did he. And there is a certain level of almost like a curse on the family because if you look at it from his daughter's perspective, within three years,

she loses her brother. The next year, she loses her mom at the age of 45 from heart troubles who survived long enough to lose her son, right? And then two years later, she loses her mom at the age of 45 from heart troubles who survived long enough to lose her her son right and then two years later she loses her dad so by the time christina is 25

she's lost her brother her mother and her dad and she dies from a heart condition at 37 years old it's just devastating and now the author wraps up the life, the paradoxical life of Aristotle Onassis here. The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seemingly inconsistencies.

He was a man so gentle that he could happily play with the child for hours, while corporate executives cried for his attention, and yet he usually bullied and sometimes physically assaulted the people he loved. He would spend tens of thousands of dollars to please a friend, but often insulted a waiter with little or no tip. He had no allegiance to any government, and yet he successfully coped and dealt with every Greek regime during his lifetime.

He had a love-hate relationship with the press, granting long interviews one moment, slugging a photographer the next. He ate in restaurants, guaranteed to draw attention to himself, but he was never known to give anyone an autograph. He once bought a million ounces of gold. He owned his own Swiss bank. He had plans to build a million-ton tanker. He wanted to inaugurate

the first aerial freighter, which would fly tourists back and forth to Europe with their cars. He hoped to buy an entire country so that he could never be plagued with taxes, and yet he was also known to explode into a fury at being overcharged by two dollars. He rarely ever gave to charity, but he virtually supported over 50 relatives and employed over 10,000 fellow Greeks. He dined and talked with kings and heads of states, but he liked to spend most of his time with actors, gamblers, and old friends. He was born to manipulate and yet hated to give orders to underlings. He bought insurance for everything he owned and to cover every eventuality and yet he claimed that if he lost all of his money he

could easily and without trauma start all over again. He was a man who prided himself on getting everything he ever wanted in his life but he was often morose, misanthropic, and acrimonious. He continually followed one tenet of his own religion at all costs, to fulfill his own well-being. And yet he only truly wanted what he could not purchase, the mercy of the gods. And that is where I'll leave it. To get the full story, buy the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. The very best way to support the podcast, if you want to book using the link that's in the show notes you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time the very best way to support the podcast if you want to support a friend and the podcast at the same time

is to buy a gift subscription I'll leave a link to do that in the show notes as well that is 211 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon