#211 Aristotle Onassis: An Extravagant Life

What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. ---- 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. ---- 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. ---- 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. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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• 0:00David Senra?

  The city of Samirna 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. Two hundred thousand 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 war and clash of exploding ammunition stores, which sounded like an intense infantry battle.

• 0:44David Senra?

  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.

• 1:29David Senra?

  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.

• 2:14David Senra?

  Aristotle realized that it was the same church where his mother and father were married.

• 2:21David Senra?

  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 Samharna, also known as the Catastrophe of Samharna. It occurs towards the end of the Greco-Turkish War. And that is the major turning point in Onassis's life, where he goes from a privileged son of a very successful businessman to a almost penniless refugee in exile. And he has to actually flee to South America. So we'll get to that in a little bit. I want to go jump right into the book, want to talk about his early life. Starts off with his very, very close relationship. He was actually raised by his grandmother.

• 3:02David Senra?

  And unfortunately, it's because-- 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 uramic poisoning-- I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly-- uramic poisoning-- at the age of 25."

• 3:45David Senra?

  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 Samharna. 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.

• 4:28David Senra?

  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. 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, so his father is an importer and exporter of tobacco, Turkish tobacco, delivering tobacco samples

• 5:13David Senra?

  and price quotations to potential buyers. J. Paul Getty, in his autobiography, As I See It, talks of sitting in his favorite café 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.

• 5:58David Senra?

  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

• 6:43David Senra?

  family was the increasing talk of war." And so a few pages later, they see that the war's happening, they see the invasion's begun, and his father makes a tragic, tragic mistake that 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 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

• 7:28David Senra?

  talks about one guy stuck around the city and his family, his, him, his wife and his kids were taken out of their house and murdered in the street. Socrates Onassis had time, had little time to solidify his position or make adequate preparations for the Turkish onslaught. Although he knew it was dangerous to remain in Samurna, 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,

• 8:10David Senra?

  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 general actually takes, decides, hey, I want that house. And so it's occupied and Aristotle talks them into letting him stay there. He winds up serving them. He winds up smuggling alcohol. We'll get to that in a minute.

• 8:55David Senra?

  But he says that only Aristotle was permitted to remain in the house after its 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, convincing them to be on their side. We'll go into a lot more detail, but he's doing this from a very early, from a very

• 9:40David Senra?

  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 in hopes that they spare my life. Through friends, he managed to get a few bottles for the Turks and for the US 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 stopped by the Turkish military as he goes throughout the city, saying, hey, he's on official business for us, don't mess with them. 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 US Marine Zone.

• 10:25David Senra?

  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

• 11:09David Senra?

  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

• 11:54David Senra?

  for weeks, he was not stopped as he left the grounds. Once outside, he ran the three-mile distance to the US 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 with, "until he could be placed on an American destroyer heading for Greece." So Aristotle's able to flee. Some of his remaining family, they're all separated, but they eventually, a bunch of them get to Athens as well. They, 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

• 12:39David Senra?

  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.

• 13:05David Senra?

  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's 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 goes, 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 $25,000 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 like 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. Okay, well, oops, I got arrested.

• 13:46David Senra?

  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 certain that his release had been imminent. Yeah, okay, well, I'm not going to risk that, buddy. And that the $25,000 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 it, in a matter of months, how different his life was.

• 14:30David Senra?

  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 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. And at this point, what does he have to lose? Not much, right?

• 15:15David Senra?

  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.

• 15:28David Senra?

  So he gets on this ocean liner. 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, it's like the best description of what entrepreneurship is, or what an entrepreneur is, is somebody that's relentlessly resourceful. He's able to distill it down to just two words. And Aristotle is definitely one that had that trait. But what he's about to do here, where he pays off a guy on the boat to be able to sleep just in the open air. It reminds me, one of my favorite sentences in the book Titan, which is the biography,

• 16:11David Senra?

  like 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 do everything to fix that. And so we see this, that just popped in 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 proper sanitary facilities, Onassis gave the ship's purser $5 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. So he's going to land in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is known as the Paris of South America.

• 16:56David Senra?

  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, it is very beautiful. It's very European. It's actually very surprising when you go to Buenos Aires. But this is a description of that. It 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?

• 17:36David Senra?

  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 I think about everything I'm about to read to you, because we're going to spend a lot of time here, there's a lot of highlights in this section, is 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.

• 18:20David Senra?

  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 here. So he applied 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 opportunity to work overtime, anything that'll pay him more money.

• 19:05David Senra?

  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 5 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 quite a good amount of money. I think he's paying like seven bucks a week or something to 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 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

• 19:49David Senra?

  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 $1,000. This achievement of, or excuse me, the achievement of this first financial success in such a short time, based on his own industry imprudence, 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 educate. I mean, let's be frank. Like, if you could, under your tutelage and your business, your kid's gonna learn a hell

• 20:31David Senra?

  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, eight, 10, 12 years old, all the way up till the tragedy he endured, 16, 17 years old, that's gonna lay the foundation because he's gonna keep this day job for a long time. But then he's gonna start, he's realizing, hey, let me read this sentence here, I'll get to my point. Turkish tobaccos were unknown in Argentina at that time. Well, okay, people smoke tobacco all over the world, right? Onassis realized that. Well, we have some, we had access, because of my, 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.

• 21:13David Senra?

  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's about to start is what's going to make, he's gonna be a millionaire six years later, by the time he's 23 years old. How valuable was the education that his father taught him? Literally worth millions of dollars. And then if you think about the, he becomes a billionaire.

• 21:57David Senra?

  That's the foundation for this future billionaire empire that Aristotle is going to do. And the way he does it's actually really smart. So anyways, I'm getting way ahead of myself. Let me go to where he gets this idea and basically finding, he has to find an end. 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 Onassis. 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, if you've ever read an old book, you know what I mean? Like you gotta open the door. You need a draft in there or something because like the pages, you know, they get real hard

• 22:40David Senra?

  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 it's interesting now, reading back on my highlights, because this is something he does later in life. Like 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.

• 23:25David Senra?

  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? And this guy's an older, successful business person.

• 24:08David Senra?

  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'd 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 only in gaining an order, but even seeing anyone who could or would make a decision.

• 24:51David Senra?

  So the president, his name's, his last name's Gayana, I think, Gayana? Gayana 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. And 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

• 25:33David Senra?

  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, the reason it's so beneficial to study like, the advertising agency founders and the copywriters from old, you know, David Ogilvy, 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 them saying, hey, I'm a, I just graduated, hire me. No, that's not, that's, 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 used 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.

• 26:18David Senra?

  Like, here's what the value-- basically providing value and ideas before asking in return. And a lot of times, you want-- 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, 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,

• 27:03David Senra?

  the most-- the person that has the ability to say, hey, take this meeting with this young kid. What is the difference when-- if you just go and you wind up getting a meeting with the buyer, right, yourself, through the normal channels? That's one way to do it, okay? Aristotle tried that way, it did 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 up, 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.

• 27:47David Senra?

  Okay, well, even if you didn't like what he was selling, you're probably still gonna buy-- you probably do an order because, oh, 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 is-- it just stuck with me. You know, if you're ever in a situation like that, don't-- like, focus on one person. Don't spread yourself thin. Like, 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. $2 million over the next two years, he imported.

• 28:30David Senra?

  His personal profit was over $100,000. So, think about that, if he would have just stayed at his job. In two years, he made, let's see, $40, that's what, 20? He made 48 years of income. Because if you're making $40 a week, that's 2,500 weeks. He made 2,500 weeks of income, just by importing this in two years. So, it says, 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, "Okay, I could do this myself." He winds up, his cousin's over there, too.

• 29:15David Senra?

  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.

• 29:59David Senra?

  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, "Okay, I need to figure out, what is the best use of my time?" So, he's going to focus on his most promising business. 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 and ships, he's like, "I gotta 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, 1,000 times as much money in shipping as I can in tobacco. So it does not make sense for me to spend any of my time doing this. Another smart, again, he's got very good intuition. So no, no, that's myself on this page, something I just told you, focused on his most promising business.

• 30:44David Senra?

  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 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

• 31:26David Senra?

  uses ships, as he'd been doing, but by owning the ships and enjoying the highly profitable cargo rates. Alberto Dondaro, a brilliant and rich Argentine ship owner, became a friend of Onassis and had an influence on him. So it's like, well, before you get into shipping, like, why don't you, and we've seen this over and over again, I did the biography of Daniel Ludwig, The Invisible Billionaire. It's founder's number 68, if you haven't 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 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.

• 32:10David Senra?

  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 could 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 $10,000." So Onassis found that the repair costs would be within reason, and then, with the advice of D'Addaro, determined that comparable ships were selling for at least 10 times the amount it would cost him to put this one in order. Within a matter of days, so he buys a ship, within a matter of days, the ship was afloat, and a week later, Onassis 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."

• 32:52David Senra?

  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 $1 million. 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

• 33:33David Senra?

  son, now a millionaire and traveling first class, arriving at the same dock from which he had departed as a humiliated, embittered young man six years before." And 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 raised its 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 and over again.

• 34:17David Senra?

  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, I'll petition and get this, to get this law changed." "If he could convince Greek authorities to discontinue the levy on Argentina's 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. 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 it's his whole point is like, we're making, like you, the law should be changed. Basically, he knew that you have to appeal to the other person's interest, right?

• 35:01David Senra?

  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 a lot of 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."

• 35:46David Senra?

  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 in an 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.

• 36:25David Senra?

  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."

• 36:53David Senra?

  So this post they put him in, he's got to do all kinds of stuff. He's got to, it 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. Just all this, 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 shipowners 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 ship owning seriously."

• 37:35David Senra?

  And then we also see at this point, he's like one of these 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.

• 38:20David Senra?

  Onassis continuously looked for opportunities to become a shipowner and operator. "And as his tobacco importing business continued to grow, he traveled 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 throughout history where there's either an economic depression, or they're overbuilt, but you can buy these gigantic ships for almost no money. It doesn't even make any sense. So this is how he gets started. "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.

• 39:03David Senra?

  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. Right? 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.

• 39:48David Senra?

  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 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 every day. That part reminded me of Warren Buffett, where he, at one point, I mean, he probably still does, but he'd read so much that 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.

• 40:32David Senra?

  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, I wouldn't, 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 disgusted by some of what this guy, there's a lot of selfishness in his life, I guess.

• 41:14David Senra?

  The important part is, like, the thing of reading these books is, sometimes I hear interviews with other entrepreneurs, like modern day entrepreneurs on other podcasts, and it's just like, This is not, it's not like, this is not all like roses and happy times, you know? A lot of these people are just straight up ruthless. And I feel like the interviews, they mischaracterize what, you know, the real world was like, especially the world of business. Like, one of the things I learned from Ed Thorp, who was like my personal blueprint in life, that's Founder's Number 93, he said in the book, like, he's 80 something years old writing that book, he's like, listen, if there's an opportunity for a human to make money or to grab some kind of advantage, like, there is inevitably corruption in that situation, no matter what it is.

• 41:55David Senra?

  And in case of gambling, he talks about Wall Street, if you remember in that book, he was looking at Madoff's returns, like, this guy's clearly like lying and scamming. And that was like a decade before, decade or two decades before Madoff wound 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 only giving us the good parts. The books give us the good parts and the bad parts. And, you know, this is, Onassis is a very hard and, I'm not, bitter's not the right word. Like, think about what he went through.

• 42:36David Senra?

  You know, his grandmother dies, his aunts, his uncles are murdered by other humans, right? They're hung, they're burned to death in a church. He sees a priest getting 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, Onassis's very pronounced degree of selfishness might be perfectly logical. And I'm not saying 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, you know, defense mechanism.

• 43:17David Senra?

  I can't imagine, 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 Onassis. That's basically it, and that's where it stops. There's actually a quote 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, applies to a lot of these people. But it says, "You want to know what I think about Charlie Kane?

• 44:02David Senra?

  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 Kane. 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 when I'm reading this book. Like, he believes, the note I left myself on this is avoiding taxes was his religion. But really, like, he believed in the religion of Aristotle Onassis.

• 44:44David Senra?

  "At first, all of Onassis's ships were registered under either Greek or Argentinian flags. But he soon learned that there was 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 have to 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, "Onassis felt no payings are conscious in sailing his ships under 'flag of convenience.' He described it this way: 'As a Greek, I belong to the West. As a shipowner, I belong to capitalism.'" Just some random things here. A random thing I should tell you that he was relentless. He would just call.

• 45:26David Senra?

  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, it'd just keep ringing over and over again." She said, 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 was a business, a girl, whatever the case is, a woman or other. Onassis has some of that. If you don't answer his letters or his calls, he's showing up in person. He traveled to Sweden and unannounced burst into Hedon's office. "I had just received, I had received mail from him, from London, from Paris, from Athens, from Buenos Aires," said Hedon, 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.

• 46:08David Senra?

  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, you know, thing that we see over and over again. Like, there is a, an extreme value, but it's an intangible, but, but, but very real valuable in being charismatic, being persuasive. I was just rereading over my notes from the George Lucas biography that he did all the way back on Founder's Number 35, and he talked about that. You know, George was famous, history was his famous subject, favorite subject. He loved reading biography when he was younger. He's in his early twenties and he meets Francis Ford Coppola. And he's like, "That is the most charismatic guy I've ever, ever come across." And he's like, listening to Charis, he said something like, "He could sell ice to Eskimos,"

• 46:52David Senra?

  or 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 use it for commerce, Onassis is going to use it for commerce, but he's one of these people. You know, later on 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, married, 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

• 47:36David Senra?

  instinct, it's like, "Okay, 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, we're gonna stop hauling coal, and I'm gonna 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, 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..." One-third of the world's energy. So this is where, this is the foundation. This decision is the foundation.

• 48:21David Senra?

  He's already rich, but this gets like out of hand rich, like billionaire rich. During 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 a dry cargo freighter, because you could just hook it up into pipelines, right? In addition to the great savings in wages with minimal, with minimal people to oversee the project, there was also safety in not being detained by the costly and constant longshoremen's strikes that were common in ports all over the world. At that time, Onassis's supertankers were the largest ships of any kind in history. So that's what I'm going to mean about boldness. When he has an idea, like he doesn't, ah, you know, I'm going to put my toe in. He's like, no, I'm going all in. And it's interesting, too, where, you know, he goes from being very frugal when he was

• 49:06David Senra?

  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. 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 shipowners and oil transporters at this time.

• 49:50David Senra?

  And so Ludwig was asked, he's like, why don't you have like 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

• 50:32David Senra?

  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 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 and heated, 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 in nightclubs. He would leave a nightclub and go inspect a ship. Like, there was no, like, you know, work-life balance. No, there's no, there's none of that. It's just like, I

• 51:16David Senra?

  have work, and then in the middle, and I'm going to travel the world. I'm going to go to nightclubs, which he was, he was going clubbing. He was like 65 years, or 60 years old. This is very bizarre, to me, at least. But that's just, like, there is no separation. It's like, this is, this is my life. And then 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, his 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

• 52:00David Senra?

  about the 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, Onassis, is one of them. You know, the Nazis wind up holding, he's got a bunch of like European ships that they don't let, so he loses like a big chunk of his, of his fleet at this point in history. And yet, because the, the demand for, 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 called it an ocean of money, because the, the rates go up, because the demand is so high.

• 52:45David Senra?

  Even though his fleet had been markedly depleted because of his inability to use some of his supertankers, 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, 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, by the time, excuse me, by the time the war was over, his fortune was estimated to be $30 million. He is 39 years old.

• 53:29David Senra?

  So, a real important thing to point out to you is Onassis is not the first one to do what he did. There are a ton of very, like, he, 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 are doing this, I can't possibly do it too. It's like, no, like, 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 them. So, Onassis is almost 40 years old, and this is where he's gonna marry into, this is an

• 54:09David Senra?

  introduction into this guy named, oh my goodness, these Greeks have the best names, Starvos Livinos. And this guy is actually gonna marry two of his daughters off. Two, 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, Nicoros, wind up 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, if you're, like,

• 54:51David Senra?

  there's a lot of people like this, I have friends that are, uh, South American and they want their, they only want their, like, their, 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 his, 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 was, he's uncontrollable. Like, he was never faithful, like, he, 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.

• 55:33David Senra?

  So you marry a Greek, Onassis needed no convincing because he was already begun spending time with Tina, who was 17. This is, 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, 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 daughter, I don't know. She, she was 17 and he was also spending time with Eugenia, which is a 19-year-old, the two daughters of Stravos Livinos, who is the owner of the largest private fleet in the world. At that time, Livinos was so wealthy that he could even, has, check this out, this is a wild sentence, right? At that time, Livinos was so wealthy that he could have easily acquired all of Onassis'

• 56:18David Senra?

  holdings for cash without markedly tampering with his own assets. Not only did Livinos 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 Zemiri quote, "If you know your business from A to Z, there's no problem you can't solve." How Sam started out peddling 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 Livinos is one of these guys. His whole life was the sea and shipping.

• 57:03David Senra?

  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, Livinos was paranorily imposed, opposed, excuse me, 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 Invisitable 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?

• 57:47David Senra?

  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, he takes that idea of, "Oil's 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 that 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, so he's got three decades of building. In some cases, anytime there's disruption in shipping channels throughout the world, in oil production throughout the world.

• 58:32David Senra?

  In one year, he makes like $100 million because when the Suez Canal is blocked. But he also is, you know, he's corrupt, for sure. Like, if... He doesn't care about laws. He'll try to avoid taxes, does all this other stuff. So he winds up being arrested for corruption. This has to do with like buying. The US after World War II 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 winds up 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.

• 59:15David Senra?

  So it says, 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 arrest warrants. He's being indicted for corruption. And so him and his brother-in-law, Nikos, and other 18 other corporations are named in this indictment. Nikos is like, I'm staying in London. I'm not. Onassis makes the mistake. He's like, I'm going to show up in person. I remember I said earlier, like he has 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 US 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.

• 1:00:00David Senra?

  "Let's have a showdown here and now." The Attorney General excused himself, left the office, and returned with a US marshal who placed Onassis into custody. He became one of the richest men in US history ever to be arrested. And so the reason I bring that up is because later in his life, this guy, I mean, he pleads out, you know, pays a fine, they, you know, turn over 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 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,

• 1:00:42David Senra?

  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're, you know, he's, the American politicians go and start.

• 1:00:54David Senra?

  Having speeches on the floor of Congress. Here are family talk about you can't marry a foreigner with that's been indicted, et cetera, et cetera. So that's something that falls 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. And I'm way more interested in how people get their starts in the beginning of the career than he's already super, super wealthy and just kind of diversifying into all these other business classes, shipping, gets into whaling, does 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 ask people, when you are able to survey entrepreneurs, like, why do you do what you do? Why are you working for yourself? Why don't you go get a job? And usually people think it's about money.

• 1:01:39David Senra?

  Mostly it's about control. It's about having control over how you spend your time. Basically, you can, 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 degree, is figuratively. In Onassis's case, it's 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 and

• 1:02:24David Senra?

  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 asked where out of all of his houses where he preferred to live, he snapped. The Christina, of course." And so you have, think about it 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

• 1:03:07David Senra?

  with people. And it's hard to tell how many of them are genuine. I have a feeling that his friendship, his close friendship with Churchill, towards the end of Churchill's life, is actually genuine on Aristotle's part. Because 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, 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

• 1:03:51David Senra?

  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 he one of the 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 countries all over the world, 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,

• 1:04:35David Senra?

  Churchill being one of them. There were some occasions when the number of guests were strictly limited. You know, you could fit tons of people on 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. 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.

• 1:05:19David Senra?

  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 Onassis? Admittedly, one of the world's richest men, but also a man who had been indicted and found guilty by the US 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 has a world, he built a world within a world. I know I'm repeating myself, but this, again,

• 1:06:04David Senra?

  I just think that pops up over and over again. "Onassis, with his own airline, his own fleet, his houses all over the world, was sovereign of his own personal kingdom. She was..." Oh, I need to pause here to 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. 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, his ethics are just whatever is beneficial to himself. "She was amused and fascinated at his seemingly unending supply of anecdotes, and was impressed that even on their cruise, 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

• 1:06:49David Senra?

  largest corporations arrived demandingly, and Onassis, sometimes even between dinner courses, dictated replies and returned calls that had multimillion-dollar implications. Whereas Jack Kennedy ruled a country, Onassis seemed to rule the world. The 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.

• 1:07:33David Senra?

  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.

• 1:08:17David Senra?

  But he was also capable of breaking wind uninhabitably in public with great beef and sonnets, and then laughing uproariously and with relish. So he was known to flatulate in public with great, this is in the 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 tales, 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.

• 1:09:01David Senra?

  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.

• 1:09:26David Senra?

  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 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. 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

• 1:10:08David Senra?

  the arrangement to all the, all the people with raised eyebrows." And this is where we get into his one sentence, the one sentence summary of his own, of, he essentially summarizes himself. And so I'll, 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 anyplace." 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, even after going through unbelievable tragedy,

• 1:10:50David Senra?

  he was known, you know, to, 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. But he's, never recovers from this. And in those, he ages overnight, and then he just slowly slips into death. And so this is a little bit about that. "When Onassis returned from the 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

• 1:11:34David Senra?

  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.

• 1:11:52David Senra?

  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, like, 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 dad. So by the time Christina is 25, she's lost her brother, her mother, and her dad, and

• 1:12:37David Senra?

  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 the study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seemingly inconsistencies. He was a man so gentle that he could happily play with a 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

• 1:13:22David Senra?

  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 $2. He rarely ever gave to charity, but he virtually supported over 50 relatives and employed

• 1:14:07David Senra?

  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.

• 1:14:49David Senra?

  And yet, he only truly wanted what he could not purchase: the mercy of the gods.

• 1:14:57David Senra?

  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 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.