#84 Aristotle Onassis

What I learned from reading Onassis: The Definitive Biography by Willi Frischauer. ---- 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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01David Senra?

  He thinks in terms of acceleration of progress and has achieved it. Only his quiet authority suggests that this is the same man who has for years figured in the headlines of English, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, German, and American newspapers. Predictable labels attached to unpredictable stories describing him as the mystery millionaire, the merchant adventurer, the golden Greek. About his multimillion dollar deals, real or imagined, financial writers never cease speculating. However fascinating the true facts of his life, inventive minds keep developing new permutations to titillate the imagination with artificial ingredients.

• 0:43David Senra?

  Onassis is not an officer of any corporation, domestic or foreign, but an owner, holding stocks of corporations which give him control. Control over interests worth an estimated $500 million. This is the insurance value of his fleet, but the figure is liable to change from month to month. And Onassis himself can sometimes only estimate the exact total. It is not easy. The total is made up of some 85 companies in 10 or more countries, which apart from owning assorted real estate and considerable subsidiary properties and enterprises, operate all the tankers under the Onassis flag

• 1:23David Senra?

  and employ the huge labor force which serves Onassis' interests on land and sea and in the air. At any one time, several projects in the pipeline demand the chief's personal attention. The new supertankers under construction, new air travel techniques under exploration, new financial ideas require constant study of economic trends, political developments, legal contingencies, and business practices which vary from country to country. Sailors are said to have a girl in every port. Ship owners and airline operators have a problem on every seaboard.

• 2:02David Senra?

  Okay, so that's from the beginning of the book that I read this week, the one that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is just named Onassis. It's by Willie Frishar, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, and it says it's "the definitive biography, the fascinating life of this awesome figure, whose wealth and power have made him a legend, including the dramatic story of his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy." And this book, before I jump into the rest of the book, it's actually recommended and sent to me, the link was sent to me by a listener, and I actually ordered the original version. So I have, holding in my hand, is the first version, printed in 1968, and it smells like it's from 1968, too.

• 2:44David Senra?

  What I find fascinating, if you follow Founder's Podcast on Twitter, I talked about it this week, but in the upper right-hand corner, it has the original price, and it says the original price was 95 cents. So I decided to start with that section of the book, because I think it gives you a good overview of the chaos, maybe the controlled chaos in which he operated. And I think the way his businesses were structured, this perpetual chaos, has something to do with the chaos of war that he experienced as a very young person. So I'm going to spend a lot of time talking about that today, because I found it very fascinating, and we're going to see traits as a young Onassis navigates the perils of

• 3:24David Senra?

  war, traits that I feel like the way he thought and the way he navigated that situation is very entrepreneurial in nature. But first, I just want to start with some personality, and then his MO, his modus operandi. And it says, "Unlike other tycoons, he dislikes an entourage. He says it's undignified for people to be kept hanging around, waiting for command. And invariably, he travels alone and without luggage. He has suits, shirts, shoes, waiting for him wherever he goes." So it just talks about his chaot- it's going to give you an idea of his chaotic travel. He's got, like they said, 85, 85-plus different companies, and almost, I think on every single continent, actually.

• 4:05David Senra?

  So it just talks about, he pulls up on his yacht in New York, and then it says, "London assumes that Onassis..." Nastas is about to take off from Paris for New York. No news on this end, New York says, his New York office, but he turns up in London instead. He was kind of just like a specter, just traveling the globe constantly. No one knew where he was going. And I think he did that intentionally. While a car waits to take him to the airport, a telephone conversation changes his plans. So he moves extremely... I think one of the things right off the rip that you're gonna learn from Nastas is the value of speed. This guy was really, really fast. Blackouts on his movements are accidental rather than deliberate, but if he's pressed too hard about definitive dates and places, he is liable to plead, "Please do not pin me down."

• 4:46David Senra?

  So the only thing I could say, and I talk about that a lot in this book, and I think something I learned from him is the value in always focusing on the most valuable thing you could be doing at that time. So he didn't have a strict schedule. He just said, "What's the most important problem I need to solve?" And he'd dedicate that. And then he'd move on. Okay, what's the next problem? And inevitably, different problems would pop up constantly because he has such a wide and chaotic organization. I'm gonna use that word a lot, I think, today. And so he's not like, "Oh, I know I'm gonna be next Tuesday." It's like, well, it depends on what's the most important way I could spend my time. And I think that is something that we can all apply as well. He says, "He knows every inch of the way."

• 5:28David Senra?

  So he's talking about, right now, we find him in his home on the islands of Greece, or one of his homes. He says, "This canal," he explains, "everything Greek launches him on an historical, geographical, ethnographical lecture, interspersed with items of topography and mythology." And he talks about this canal was originally built for Alexander the Great. I put that part in there because he's constantly learning, and so this serves him later in life because he studies a lot of history, studies a lot of political history, military history, and then he keeps an eye on what's going on. Obviously, his business was built in shipping, which is hugely affected, as we've seen with the other entrepreneurs that we've covered, that operate in shipping.

• 6:13David Senra?

  So I guess I should back up before I get there. If you remember the podcast I did on the invisible billionaire, Daniel K. Ludwig? In that book, he's also mentioned in this book, interesting enough, so that's another example of this whole idea of books are the original links, but in that book, it talks a lot about his competition with Aristotle Onassis, and then this other Greek, which is actually Onassis's brother-in-law, and good luck if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, it's Stravos, I don't even know how to pronounce, I can barely pronounce words in English, there's no way I'm gonna, and there's no way I'm gonna be able to pronounce names in Greek, but in any event, in the Ludwood book, The Invisible Billionaire, talks about Onassis,

• 6:55David Senra?

  talks about Stravos, and then in this book, it also goes into both a little bit of Daniel Kay, and a little bit, a lot of his rivalry, his bitter rivalry with his brother-in-law, which I'll cover more in a minute, it's a very bizarre, because they're both, they hate each other, but they're married to sisters, so it's bizarre. Anyways, the whole point about him knowing history winds up, I couldn't understand, because the book kept referencing Churchill, it talks about how he was obsessed with Churchill, he had all the books written about Churchill, he winds up being really good friends, and this is like an anonymously, anonymously, I don't know how to pronounce that word either, in this book is his relationship, his very close relationship in the last few years that Churchill

• 7:40David Senra?

  was alive, which I'll also talk about. Actually, I'll just read this part to you real quick, because we're in, the book starts out talking about how he is in present day, and he's around 60 years old when this book is written, and Churchill's like 80, I think 80, maybe 79, something like that, so it says, "He's playing host to Sir Winston Churchill," that's why I was, after several pages, like, why do they keep talking about Churchill? Turns out they wound up becoming really good friends, who is enjoying his nautical holiday, he's on Onassis's private yacht, it's one of the largest yachts in the world, called the Christina, which is named after Onassis's daughter, and it says, "A love of the sea, a deep sense of history, admiration reciprocated by paternal affection unites these two men of vastly

• 8:24David Senra?

  different backgrounds, adding a curious footnote to the glorious story of Churchill's life." So I just think, in general, that it's beneficial not only to your life to learn and study from history, but in conversation, you just become much more interesting to talk to, and because Onassis and Churchill both had a deep love of history, and it was a primary hobby of theirs, studying it. They were able to build a bond later in life. Interesting enough, the author here, Willie, goes into details of what Churchill's schedule was later in life, because he spent a lot of time on Onassis. And I'm just going to take a quick tangent here, but he'd have breakfast at 9:00 a.m.

• 9:08David Senra?

  and he'd finish breakfast with a glass of whiskey, which I thought was hilarious. And then he'd read, he wouldn't leave bed. So he'd have breakfast in bed, and then he'd read 200 pages. That's the first thing he did every day. He'd read 200 pages, mostly of history, politics, you know, stuff that he was interested in. And then he'd go out and get his day started. So I thought that was very fascinating. All right, so I want to spend a lot of time in Onassis's early life. We've talked about this before, a lot of these entrepreneurs have to overcome some form of adversity early on in life. I don't know if any have had to overcome more adversity than Onassis. And so that's why I want to spend some time talking to you about this. First, we're going to talk about his dad. They have great names, by the way.

• 9:53David Senra?

  I mean, his name's Aristotle. How great is that? His dad was Socrates. So we're going to talk about that here first. He says, "Socrates Onassis was by now an established merchant dealing mainly in tobacco, but also in grain and hides, and offering his customers from the surrounding countryside storage and banking facilities of sorts." So they're in, they live in this place called Samyrna, which, based on this other research I did, was, I guess is now modern-day Turkey? And they're going to get caught in the, I think it's the Greco-Turkish War. So this is a little background of how their life was right before this war, which is going to come in and devastate his family. So a lot of people are going to die, and he's got to flee the country. So Socrates, at the age of 26, met Penelope.

• 10:36David Senra?

  That's, or excuse me, he didn't meet her. That's when, that's when Onassis's mom, named Penelope, died. So at the age of 26, Penelope died as a result of a kidney operation. Aristotle was only six. So this is before the war. He loses his mom. This is all, the first tragic event in his life, one of many. Aristotle Onassis says that he was brought up by his grandmother. Remember his grandmother, because she's going to befall tragedy as well. Aristotle was a quiet, sad little boy who solely missed his mother.

• 11:16David Senra?

  Okay, so his father was a merchant, entrepreneur, another word for that, and he wanted to teach him business, a young Aristotle business, but interesting enough, Aristotle wasn't interested yet. Aristotle's only inclination at this time ran towards sports. He sailed, rowed, swam, and played water polo. And so Socrates is talking to his son. He says, "What are you gonna be, a fisherman or a boatman?" Because remember, they're Greek, so their occupation, their expected occupation, I should say, has something to do with the sea. "Neither was an occupation worthy of Aristotle," he said, which turns out, he changes his mind, obviously. He was 14 when he was in line for a place

• 11:59David Senra?

  in the Greek national water polo team to compete in the Olympic Games, so he's focused on sports at this time. "It was a great honor, but his father put his foot down. The expedition would interfere with the boy's studies," he said, "and he would not allow him to go." So another disappointment. "It was a huge disappointment, but his father's stern regime paid dividends. In spite of his preoccupation with sport, Aristotle's..." They call him Aristotle, I'm gonna call him Aristotle, "made good progress at school. His quick grasp and his extraordinary memory made up for time spent in other pursuits. He learned to speak English and soon knew enough French and Italian." I think he winds up, so he knows English, French, Italian, Greek, and I think one other language as well. Okay, so he's a teenager at this time. He hasn't had a mom for almost 10 years,

• 12:42David Senra?

  and this is the start of the Greco-Turkish War, and this is gonna come right to his front door, literally. So it says, "Turkish progress was so rapid," meaning they're invading where he lives, "that any plans Onassis' brothers," meaning his dad and his dad's family, "made for the future were quickly overtaken by events. Socrates gathered his family around him in his house by the sea." Aristotle Onassis was still four months away from his 17th birthday, and he went to sleep knowing that this was the last day of his youth. So what they're talking about there is you can see the Turkish ships in the harbor right by their house, and they're going to invade the very next day. Aristotle was awoke to the thunder of guns. Aristotle and his father had their first inkling of disaster when looking out from behind the curtains,

• 13:27David Senra?

  they could see the city being swallowed up in thick, dark smoke. But what registered most in Aristotle's mind was his father's somber face and the despair in his eyes. Though Socrates, remember, a lot of times, like, you're not going to reach your full potential unless you're, in many cases, you're forced to. And this is, uh, this is an early example of that in Aristotle's life. Because at sixteen years old, he's like, "Okay, there's no more time to be a boy. I now have to grow up and I have to take care of my family." Not only does he have to take care of his family, uh, that's a secondary, he has to make sure he survives first, so a ton of people that they know are gonna get killed right now. Um, through Socrates' honestness did not speak, Aristotle could sense his deep anxiety. Family and property were in danger. Here, you could say that again. "The business he had built up over the years was liable to be wiped out.

• 14:11David Senra?

  His father appeared to weaken, and Aristotle seemed to gain strength and maturity. He'd reached a stage when he was full..." Now, this is interesting. So, um, his father wanted him, remember, he wanted him to be in business, but he also wanted him to be an educated person, so he wanted to go, send him to school at Oxford in England. And so he had to reach a stage when he was fully qualified to enter Oxford. This was his father's dearest wish. However bitter the thought, he realized that this dream had vanished. "Never mind, Father," he said, "if we survive, I shall find a job and keep, and help keep the family going." He did not know it then, but this was exactly what would happen. Um, so now the war breaks, uh, breaks out, um, and, you know, people are being killed right in front of him. He said, "Aristotle saw men being dragged from their homes and taken away.

• 14:55David Senra?

  Many were put up against a wall and shot in cold blood." Remember, he's sixteen years old. So while I'm telling you this story, think about what you were doing when you were sixteen, and imagine having to go through this. "Others were hanged from trees." He's in, literally, in a war zone. "And in lampposts. Grown men were begging for their lives, women were screaming for help, children watching, too numb to cry." Uh, so it talks about this river, river by their house. "Floating in the water could be seen clusters of severed heads of young Greek girls tied together by their hair like a bunch of coconuts." Fate was even more gruesome. Now, this is, this is, I had a hard time reading this part. So, uh, some of them stay in the city they're in, some of them, uh, try to run.

• 15:37David Senra?

  His uncle, who's involved in politics, uh, tries around forty miles, uh, away. He gets caught in, um, and they, you know, think about if you've ever studied any kind of what happens in war, like, when they, when they say they're tried by the military court, this is not like what you may be used to. It's like, oh, okay, in four months from now, I'll have a trial and maybe I'll be sentenced six months after that. No, the trials happen really fast. They're fined guilty, of course, because it's invading army and they're hung right away. So that happens to his uncle. Boom. His brother's dead. His, uh, his dad's brother's dead. Now, it gets even worse. Uh, some people are sent off to concentration camps in the interior of the island. Fate was more even gruesome. And this is, I can't pronounce the name, but this is Socrates, so his aunt, so Socrates Onassis's sister

• 16:21David Senra?

  and her husband, right? Um, so that's, that would be Aristotle's aunt and his child, which would be his niece, had sought sanctuary in a church. They're in a little Greek town a little ways away. Five hundred Greek men, women and children would huddle together in prayer when the Turks set the church on fire. Every last man, woman and child, uh, perish in the frame, in the flames. So he's already lost, let's say, half a dozen family members, um, and the war just began. They're, they're dead immediately. Uh, Socrates Onassis says this, his dad was arrested and lodged in prison. Now, what do you think's gonna happen to him? Aristotle was filled with a nagging fear for his father's health and life. There was little he could do at the moment. He was now the only man in the family

• 17:03David Senra?

  and was racking his brains for a way to cope with his new responsibilities. Aristotle was left on his own. He did not know where he would spend the night because it came and it would kick him out of the house and they, they start putting, uh, the Turkish soldiers into the houses previously occupied, um, by not only Onassis's family, but everybody in the neighborhood. Um, so now this is where he, he figures, uh, he, he starts acting almost entrepreneurial, right? The Turks wanted alcohol. They were, uh, the central command, I don't know what their version of it, but let's say in an American army, it'd be like the general forbade the Turkish, um, soldiers to drink, right? So the Turkish soldiers wanted to get around that. They wanted alcohol. And Aristotle's like, well,

• 17:46David Senra?

  if I can figure out, and it was really hard to get at the time, if I can figure out how to get it, I can ingratiate myself with them and maybe, uh, like, I can show that I'm useful. One, they'll let me live and two, I may be able to rescue my father. Okay?

• 18:02David Senra?

  So what happens is he meets this Turkish soldier, he's like, "You want alcohol? I can get it, don't worry about it." So he goes around with the Turkish soldier, and he goes to all the other people he knew, because he was from a rather prominent family on the island they lived on. And all of them are like, "No, I don't have alcohol, I don't have alcohol." And he didn't understand, because they were staring at Aristotle, like, they weren't verbalizing it, but their body language and their eye contact was like, "What are you doing? Like, what are you doing?" And he realizes, "Oh, they're not gonna help me when I have this Turkish soldier here." So he goes back later on by himself, explains what he's trying to do to family, friends, and they finally give him some alcohol, even though it was extremely valuable to time. They'd make it themselves and they were hiding it.

• 18:47David Senra?

  So, then he goes and gives it to the Turkish soldiers. He starts getting like a pass, they give him like paperwork that in case he's stopped by a soldier, it means like, "Don't kill him, he's okay to be on the streets." He says, "The transaction was not only early evidence of Aristotle's native talent for dealing with intricate problems of supply and demand under adverse circumstances. What mattered most at this time was his acquisition of a second protector." So this is in addition to the paperwork he has from the Turkish army. He makes friends with this US vice consul. So it's an American, part of the allied forces in the embassy there, that basically starts looking after him. He says, "This was a position among Greeks in Samira in 1922.

• 19:32David Senra?

  Each of his guardian angels, both the American and the Turkish, gave him a, it's called a laissez-passer, bearing his name and photograph. The Turkish passion enabled him to move freely about the city. Even more important, the American permit allowed him to access the US Marine Zone." That's important, remember that, because that's how he's gonna wind up escaping. Obviously survives this, we know he survives this. Okay, so...

• 19:53David Senra?

  During this whole time, he's trying to, he visits his dad, trying to get him out of there. And then his dad's being held and they don't know what's gonna happen. And then one time, he goes to visit his dad and his dad's like, "Listen, they're, they're, they take people away every morning and then we never see them again. What the hell's happening?" Well, you could probably guess what they're doing, they're killing them. And this, they realized this was actually true and verified because one guy they take away is like 45 years old at the time. They put him in front of a judge, judge like, "Okay, you're guilty, gonna hang him." They put the rope on his neck and they're like, "The guy you're looking for is 20 years old." "I don't look 20, like, you have this wrong." So the judge looks at the paperwork like, "Oh crap, this guy's right, we're looking for a 20-year-old, there's no way this guy's 20, uh, 20, so take him back to the cell."

• 20:37David Senra?

  He goes back to the cell and tells everybody, "Hey, if they take you away, they're going to kill you." Um, so, eventually, um, eventually, uh, Aristotle is able to, to, to, I guess bribe would be the right way. He was able to, he's able to visit the jail where his father and other people in his family and friends are, are, um, are being held. And he's able to go back and forth, so he's sneaking in money for them so they can pay off the guards. He's sneaking out communications. He winds up getting caught doing this though, right? So he has to, they're like, "Oh, this guy, like, now it doesn't matter that you have this pass, you're gonna be in jail." And so, he winds up going for a walk with, uh, a soldier's supposed to transport him from one part to another.

• 21:22David Senra?

  And he winds up, slow, the soldier wasn't paying attention, he falls back a little bit and runs full speed to the US military zone. And they, they're, like, they says he runs as fast as he can, non-stop for like 15 minutes, he gets there. Um, so now he's in the US Marine Zone and he meets the consul. This guy's name's Consul Parker is how they reference him in the book. But, so he goes to the office, he hides in, the consul hides Aristotle in the office. But the Turk army shows up, and they're like, "We know you have this guy." And the consul's like, "No, we don't. Well, the Turks aren't gonna have, they're not gonna start a war with Americans." So he says, "The Turks were unconvinced, but there was nothing they could do. They did not dare search the consul's office.

• 22:05David Senra?

  As soon as they were gone, Parker released Aristotle, produced an, he produced an American sailor's uniform." So this is how he's gonna get out, right? "Produced an American sailor's uniform for the youngest to put on, took him to the harbor, and put him aboard a US destroyer." So, he's able to escape the war zone with his life, because of this one guy, and he escapes aboard a US destroyer. Now, this is the interesting part. So, before he got caught smuggling all this stuff fro, fro, by the Turkish military, he winds up going to the family safe, taking out some money. I think it was like twenty to forty thousand dollars, and basically paying for his, his father's, like bribing to get his father released, right?

• 22:50David Senra?

  But, the family is mad, and Aristotle's humiliated, and this is when he starts seeking freedom, and then this is where he says, looking back on his life, that ambition is born. Because this is very much, the book I'm working from, is very much like an autobiography of Aristotle, because he's working, he's the one talking to Willy, and Willy, Willy Frishar, or whatever, however you pronounce his name, is getting a lot of this information from Aristotle. He's doing this because, you know, like many cases, when you're reaching, reaching advanced age, you wanna start telling your story, and making sure it's documented. But, what I couldn't, I just couldn't imagine, I'm gonna read this to you, but, they're mad, because they're like, "Oh, well, you gave them twenty-five thousand dollars, we needed that money, because we've lost everything, but your father and your uncle were gonna be acquitted anyways."

• 23:35David Senra?

  But it's just like, you didn't know that, though. It was just a really silliness, from this perspective. So it says, "At a family conference, he had asked Aristotle to give an accounting of the cash and securities he had salvaged and full details of his expenditures." This is after his dad was released. "The largest item in the transactions for which young Aristotle was responsible was the, I'm gonna just convert to dollars here, $25,000 he had paid for his father's release. Both his father and uncle, Uncle Homer, more great Greek names, right, thought an exorbitant and totally unnecessary outlay because they contended Socrates or Nastus had already been acquitted and would have been released in any case." But, again, why you, they were killing people left and right. I would, I'd buy some insurance, it's okay if I spend that money. "Aristotle was very upset.

• 24:18David Senra?

  Never before he felt so humiliated and never ever after. The injury to his pride produced a typical reaction, and later he said that the anger and frustration of this period of his life gave birth to the ambition and drive which later took him to the top. He was anxious to get away and took the traditional Greek way out. I shall keep no more than," this is a quote from Aristotle to his father, "I shall keep no more than $250 of what's left, and I'll emigrate." His angers were coupled with an urge toward adventure. Above all, he wanted to remain his own master." Remember, we talk about this, like, the motivation, why do so many people, why are, why are so many people interested in entrepreneurship also, like, so weird? Why, why are there misfits, to use Steve Jobs' term? Like, why? Why?

• 25:01David Senra?

  What is, what is, why is there such an overlap there? And I think a lot of it has to do with the feeling of control over your own life. And it's hard to have control of your own life if you don't control how you make money in the world. And, and as a result of that, also, how you spend time, how you spend your time. And since most of your, half of your waking time ostensibly is gonna be spent on work, you know, if you wanna control over your time, then you, that means you learn how to become an entrepreneur. As he, which is, we're, we are watching, and I guess, listening would be a better term, of Aristotle, learn how to do that right now. He wanted to remain his own master as he'd been in those past few months. Remember, he's by himself, nobody around, and he just has to survive. He wanted to stand on his own two feet and prove himself.

• 25:43David Senra?

  Once the decision was made, he lost no time, so there's that speed. He takes a long time contemplating. Reminds me of how Charlie Munger describes the process at Berkshire Hathaway, that a lot of their time is spent learning, learning, analyzing, analyzing, thinking, thinking. You would look at them, think they're doing nothing, and yet, when they have an opportunity before them, they make a decision really, really fast and move on immediately. Aristotle, as far as I can tell from this book, was the same way. Okay, so, he's headed to Argentina, which is... He actually becomes a nationalized citizen of Argentina. And on his journey to Argentina, he learns something that's very, very valuable. And let me look...

• 26:26David Senra?

  I don't want to mess this up, so let me pull up this quote. It's one of the most famous Steve Jobs quotes. And...okay, here it is. I'm gonna read this to you, real quick. This is Steve Jobs talking. "When you grow up, you get told that the world is the way it is, and your job is to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Have a nice family life. Save a little money. But that is a very limited life. Life can be much broader when you discover one simple fact. Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. You can change it. You can influence it. You can build things that other people can use. You can poke life, and something will pop out of the other side." So what is Steve Jobs telling us?

• 27:10David Senra?

  He's telling us that life is malleable. And most people think it's just rigid. It's, "Oh, I was born here, this is what I have to do. Okay, I'm gonna go..." They tell me to go to school, "I'm gonna go to school, I'm gonna go get a job, go get married, I'm just gonna wait till I die." Steve Jobs is like, "No, no, that's the wrong thing. You can change it, you can mold it." That is maybe the most important thing, meaning the most important thing to realize, because it affects everything else. It's very like a meta-skill, right? "To shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it. Embrace it. Change it. Improve it. Make your mark on it. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again." The reason I bring that up is because in this section of the book, when he's on this boat, has no money, no family, he's by himself, he's still a kid. He's a kid. He realizes that everything is malleable, okay?

• 27:55David Senra?

  So, he's poor, he's in like what they call the steerage passengers. And he's basically like in the, like in the hull of the ship. And it says steerage passengers received one meal a day. They ate either standing up or squatting on the floor. Space was cramped, the smell appalling. You can imagine why this smells so bad. I'll let you fill that in. And similar, kind of related to this, the next sentence. Sanitary conditions were primitive. So, Onassis is in this, what does he do? He realizes, they're like, "Well, if you pay another 20 bucks, you could transfer to a cabin where you share with six other people, but like you're not in the hull, right?" Well, he doesn't have the 20 dollars. So, he says, "The alternative was a personal approach

• 28:39David Senra?

  to the purser," which is this guy running the section they're in, "which is the course he chose. Reinforcing his plea with a five dollar bill," meaning a bribe, "he sweet-talked," as he puts it, "and somehow persuaded the purser to let him stay in the aft part of the ship." So, he's realizing, okay, like, these are the guidelines they're giving everybody else. Everybody, the vast majority of the people on the ship are not thinking like entrepreneurs, right? They're like, "Oh, okay, well, that's it. I have to stay down here, and if I want somewhere else, I have to pay 20 dollars." Entrepreneurs realize what Steve Jobs just told us. It's one of the most important things that you need to learn in your life, and you'll never be the same once you internalize this. Everything is malleable. You can manipulate life, you can poke it, something will change. Your actions have an effect.

• 29:24David Senra?

  And so, young Aristotle realized like, "Okay, well, people like, it's not rigid. It's, I have to convince one person." And people are, like, they're prone to change their mind. They will respond to like, personal requests, if you do it in a right way. "Here, let me be real nice to the guy, sweet-talk him, and give him a little money." And then, maybe that, it's not guaranteed to work, but it increases my chances of working, and it wound up working for him. Alright, so he arrives in Argentina, has no money. Uh, he's, this is his first job. Um, it's, his, I'd say, often a job at a wage of 25 cents an hour.

• 30:07David Senra?

  Remember, this guy winds up being, um, if, I tweeted out a section from the book, uh, this week. He winds up, his companies all combined, um, let's say, 30 years from where we are in this story. He's starting out at 25 cents an hour, eventually he makes about 50 million dollars a year. Um, we're gonna see the same traits that make you successful when you have a large company, uh, are the same traits that make you successful when you're just starting out. And it says, "It was his first ever job, and he attacked it with gusto." He was asked by the manager whether they would be willing to work overtime. Aristotle Onassis was not sure what this implied. His boss, he was, he was working at, uh, this place called Western Electric, by the way, it's, has like a telephone exchange, um, which was very like manual back in the day.

• 30:51David Senra?

  Um, his boss explained that anyone prepared to work after 5 o'clock would be paid time and a half. Aristotle promptly volunteered. And so, they asked, "How many hours would you work?" And he says, "Hours?" Aristotle's reply was, "All night." At this rate of pay, he was prepared to work 24 hours a day. With one stroke, he and his friends were rich, quote unquote. He now earned three times the amount, uh, he needed to pay his way. So what he figured out was like, "These are my monthly expenses, and so I need to make sure I hit this every, uh, every month." Eventually, uh, rather quickly, he winds up, uh, after every month, he works this way, he buys three more months of expenses. And this is more examples of his resourcefulness. Uh, greatest description of entrepreneurs, I think, comes from Paul Grand, he says, Paul Graham, he says, "They're relentlessly resourceful."

• 31:36David Senra?

  And Aristotle definitely fits into that. He says, "Another suggestion for young Onassis, would he care to become a telephone operator? Aristotle was all for it, and involved only a few days' training. He learned quickly, and he soon, and as soon as, and soon he had mastered the mechanics. Three weeks later, he saw another chance to better himself." So again, Realizing I just need to get, I'm on one vine. I need to swing to the next, right? I'm not gonna let go of the vine I'm on till I know I can grab the other one. But I'm keep waking my way up and keep focused on progress. So, he starts out 25 cents an hour, then he does time and a half, then he becomes a, then he becomes a telephone operator and now, three weeks later, saw another chance to better himself. "Would you mind switching to night work?" his boss asked him. He starts getting more money because he's working overnight.

• 32:21David Senra?

  And then what happens? He realizes, "Well, if I'm working overnight, I don't need my bed. I can rent my bed out." Uh, this is what he liked about night work. "It left him his days free to explore new avenues of advancement." Remember, he's focused on advancing. He sublet his bed to a fellow Greek who slept in it while he, while he was on night shift. So, he ran a lot of other poor people, realizing, "Hey, most people, they want an apartment, are a place to live just because they have a place to sleep at night. So, I'm gonna give this guy my bed for cheaper and he can get an apartment since, and it's just added money to me because I'm working." Uh, he made a study of local ci- this is his first business. He winds up manufacturing cigarettes, interesting enough, actually importing tobacco. Uh, what he does here is really, really smart.

• 33:03David Senra?

  "He made a study of local cigarette manufacturers who might become his customers." Uh, I should back up. His father, he, he fell out with his father, he wound up through telegrams and, and letters. They wound up repairing their relationship and he's, he's like, "Hey, Dad, you, um, have, you can import tobacco, why don't you send me some and then I sell it? I mark it up and sell it to, to Argentinians." So, he said, "He made a sort of local cigarette manufacturers who might become his customers and with his first consignment, set on a tour of their purchasing departments. Although he tried hard, he did not get very far with his new venture. At best, he was asked to leave his samples behind and await a decision. He left dozens of samples but never heard from any of the buyers. There was no point in banging his head against a brick wall."

• 33:46David Senra?

  Okay, so, before I continue, there's two examples. This is the first one, of, are probably the most important thing you're gonna learn from Aristotle Onassis is, the same way I could, I use another Charlie Munger quote. "Invert, always invert." And that, when you have a problem to solve, which is basically what running a business is,

• 34:07David Senra?

  It makes sense in Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett's advice, and then we're gonna see this in Aristotle Onassis's actions, is to start at the problem and work backwards. Most people don't do that. Most people are doing what he did. "Oh, I need to sell tobacco. Let me go knock on some doors." But he's not getting anywhere that way. So this is the first example, and then I'm gonna tell you the second example, which is what arguably, no, not even arguably, is what created all of his vast wealth, which is still probably 15 years from this time. But this is a small example of that. So, "The Noah of myself was Aristotle's unusual but effective sales technique used to break into the tobacco industry." He decided that obviously the better approach was to start at the top. This is what he does. Check this out. This is very, very smart.

• 34:52David Senra?

  Remember, he's going, they're saying, "Okay, yeah, leave some samples and we'll hear back." They don't give a crap about him. They don't ever hear back. So he's like, "All right, I gotta find a different way in." Choosing the firm which seemed to offer the best chance of a sale, he made it his business to track down the managing director. Okay, so the boss of the people that he was originally paying sales calls to. This guy named Juan. Juan became the young tobacco salesman's principal target. Early mornings, he posted himself at the entrance of Juan's office, standing there without saying a word, looking at... They call him... I'm just gonna keep calling him Juan. "Looking at Juan when he arrived, and incidentally, looking rather sorry for himself." "On alternate days, he transferred his lonely vigil to the important man's home, taking up position at his door."

• 35:37David Senra?

  So he's just basically stalking this guy at his home and his office. "Wherever the hapless Juan went, Aristotle Onassis was waiting for him, a sad and silent youngster." "After a fortnight of this exercise, Juan would not have been human had he not begun to wonder what this was all about." "If it was a battle of perseverance between two unlikely protagonists, Aristotle Onassis emerged as the clear winner." His strange sales campaign was about to enter the third week when Juan could no longer restrain his curiosity and confronted his silent pursuer. "Who are you?" he asked in a tone of mixed sympathy and exasperation. "What are you doing here? What do you want?" "I'm trying to sell tobacco," was the simple answer. Aristotle complained that he had not been given a fair chance.

• 36:20David Senra?

  The tobacco he had to offer was of excellent quality. Juan was amused. "You ought to go to my purchasing department," he told Onassis. Remember, that's where Onassis has been. He had already tried this, but just changing, just inverting, makes all the difference in the world. We're going to see that here. This was all the unorthodox tobacco salesman wanted to hear. It was one thing to call on a buyer of his own, but an entirely different matter to be in the position to say that he had been sent by the managing director. Same exact thing. One sentence changes everything. The next morning, when he presented himself at the purchasing department on the authority of the boss, his samples were carefully examined and found to justify all the claim of his tobacco.

• 37:04David Senra?

  He received an order worth $10,000. Check that out. He's making 20, well, I guess he'd make a little bit more than that, but 25 cents an hour. He started at 25 cents an hour. This is like a year later. He got an order worth $10,000. That's insane. The tobacco arrived two months later. His reward, remember, he's just a salesperson, so he's basically a broker in this situation, right? Was the usual 5% commission. The magnificent sum of $500. The first money Aristotle and Onassis had earned, other than a wage per hour. Alright, so he made $500. If you do the math, that's, at 25 cents an hour, that's 2,000 hours.

• 37:47David Senra?

  It's basically an entire year's worth of salary, working full-time. So, right there, you have an entrepreneur that's born. He was already worth a few thousand dollars, but was far too cautious, this is another, he was frugal, at least at the beginning of his life he was. But was far too cautious to give up his bread and butter job at the telephone exchange or leave his boarding house for more luxurious quarters. So, in other words, he was making money, but he was acting. He was keeping his burn rate low, his personal burn rate low, and he was just saving, saving, saving money, because he realized you're not going to get ahead in life if you spend every dollar you have. So then, he's now, he's still working, so he does this for quite a while. He works at the telephone company and is brokering tobacco sales.

• 38:31David Senra?

  Then he branches off and does another business.

• 38:35David Senra?

  And he decides, hey, I could take tobacco and I can hire cigarette rollers, because they were doing it by hand at this time. And he starts adding, I think, like, different ingredients, like rosemary and stuff like that. And his idea is, I'm gonna make cigarettes targeted at women. And so he starts out successful. When he only had, you know, like, a tiny, tiny office, tiny, tiny manufacturing center with two people doing this. He winds up growing too fast and it winds up failing. So he was employing thirty men in his small factory, but there were no profits. Rather than go broke, he swallowed his pride and closed the place. The failure of his first independent venture was a bitter pill to swallow. I actually think that was a really good idea, because he's making a lot of money importing and selling tobacco.

• 39:19David Senra?

  So if you're losing money, like, you're taking time away. When he gets older, he's got a lot of help. People can run his companies and everything else. But right now, he's doing a lot of it himself. So, closing down was a smart move. And this is, I'm gonna fast forward a few years. This is Aristotle, twenty-three years old. It says, "Aristotle and Nasus tota..." I don't know what that word is, but it means summed up or added up the profits of his first four years in business. From the modest beginning of a ten thousand dollar order for tobacco, he'd gone on to average a turnover of, best of course, a million dollars a year. In these four years, the total profit from commissions, which came to the precocious twenty-three-year-old businessman, amounted to one million dollars. So he made a million dollars by the time he was twenty-three. "He was desperately anxious to learn,

• 40:04David Senra?

  but he didn't rest on his laurels, right? I told you at the beginning that he was constantly learning, constantly studying, constantly trying to get better. He was focused on progress all the time. This is the same thing, he needs more skills. He was desperately anxious to learn. He employed a teacher to improve his French and Spanish, and he took English lessons was another. He was ambitious, acquisitive, conscious of his own talent, and increasingly fascinated by the creative possibilities of big business."

• 40:31David Senra?

  Okay, now I just want to point your attention to this one sentence. So he's very successful, his dad has health problems, he visits, goes back, visits his family. And he picks up on something, this one sentence, I think, the note I have for myself is "Stressors help you grow." I think it's the worst idea for entrepreneurs, or people that are interested in doing anything out of the norm. Not just for entrepreneurs. I just use entrepreneurs because all the entrepreneurs I study all put themselves either voluntarily and in many cases involuntarily, in stressful situations. "Stressors help you grow." Now, not chronic stress, but I think it's the worst idea for people to seek comfort.

• 41:12David Senra?

  It's a bad idea, because you're not, there's no growth, there's no advancement, there's no reaching your potential when you're comfortable. And I think that applies to your work, your physical fitness, your relationships, anything. So he says something here that I think is really interesting. He says, "At a very young age," he's talking about like, he was, he was supporting his family, sending money back, he had to pay for younger people, younger family members' education, and he's still a young kid, he's in his twenties now. But he says something, he says, "At a very young age, I had the responsibilities of a chief of a tribe." Meaning that either you have two opportunities, you're gonna, you're gonna shrink from, from

• 41:54David Senra?

  the, the situation you're in, and, and fail, and let everybody down, or you're gonna, you're going to push forward and develop the skills needed to succeed. And that's what he did. And it made me think of this tweet I saw this week by the Science account. And the account name is Massimo, but it says, "When scientists started Biosphere," they're making like this, you know what a biosphere is, I don't have to tell you. "When scientists started Biosphere 2 project in 1991, they could not understand why trees fell over before they matured." So they're in this dome, they're hidden from the natural stress of life, that's how I want you to think about this, right? "They later figured out they suffered from weakness caused by a lack of stress normally created in response to winds in natural condition."

• 42:38David Senra?

  So the winds, right? The stress, think of the winds in, from the tree, stress experienced at a young age makes them stronger. Deprived of that stress, and they fall over. People are the exact same. So don't seek comfort. Onassis, I mean, there's no description of his early life that you would say is comfortable. Even when you, when you, when I tell you about the pace of his, that he lived life at, he had like luxuries around him. Of course, he's super wealthy, but he pushed the pace. He was not like resting on his laurels. He was not sitting in comfort. Okay. So remember, he starts out, he builds his first small fortune in the tobacco industry.

• 43:21David Senra?

  But he, this is when he starts thinking about the shipping industry. And this is, well, this is how Aristotle thought about his shipping industry, or thought about the shipping industry. So he's, he's living in Buenos Aires, the foreign minister summoned him. He winds up becoming what's called a consulate. So let me just read this. "It was really at this moment, he assumed, he assumed office as consul that a ship owner was born." So he's got a basically, almost like, I guess it's a political appointment, or diplomatic duty is what they call it, between Greece and Argentina. So his first days as the consulate coincided with the beginning of the world economic crisis and shipping being a barometer of economic conditions was badly affected. So more stress. And what they're talking

• 44:05David Senra?

  about here, we're at the beginning of the worldwide great depression. So he has to, he's basically responsible for the relationship, because at this time, Greece is sending a lot of exports to Argentina. How do they get them there at this time? Of course, it's through shipping. So this is how he's exposed to the shipping industry. He kind of has an in from the very beginning. He has to deal with stuff like crew disputes, conflicts with port authorities, and all manners of problems came within his province. "The shadow of current difficulties cannot dim the glamour of shipping." And he says something great later on in life, where people are like, "Oh, aren't you worried?" He's got a long career. And as such, you're going to go through multiple economic growth periods and economic

• 44:46David Senra?

  contractions. And he's like, it's, he's like, "No," he's like, "Why aren't you worried?" At this time, he's losing, his company's losing $40,000 a day or something like that. This is way in the future. He's like, "Why don't you sell off all your assets?" He's like, "The company's worth $300 million." Like, this is, he's like, recessions, I think is the word he uses. He goes, "It's all part of the game." I think it's a very healthy way to think about it. Not, "Oh, my God, this is the end of the world, you know, people jumping off of buildings." It's, "Oh, this is normal. This happens all the time. And, and part of the game, part of succeeding at this game in business, is being able to weather these storms successfully." Okay, so it says, "His work as consul enhances love of the sea, taking him one long step nearer to his ambition. More than anything else, Aristotle on Nasus wanted to own and

• 45:29David Senra?

  run ships. And from the dream and the idea was only a short step to the intention and the plan. To persuade himself that the plan was sound, he went in for what he called a little mental gymnastics." This is actually really smart, how he decides he's gonna get involved in the shipping industry. "In his mind's eye, he visualized a ship with a capacity of half a million cubic feet of grain, which might have cost $1 million to build in 1920." That's 10 years earlier from the point we are in the story. "Now, in the year 1930, such a ship could be bought for $30,000. So it might have been $1 million in good times. Now we're in financial calamity, so it's $30,000."

• 46:10David Senra?

  "Although it had run less than half its lifespan, as an importer always concerned with storage, he calculated that it would cost six or seven times that amount, at least $200,000, to build an open storage hangar, just a roof without walls, not counting the price of land." So he's like, "What if I just buy it now and I store the ship?" Because the expenses is, you could lose your shirt if you're running, like you're paying all these expenses and you have no inventory, right? So he says, "A 10-year-old ship was good for another decade would be a floating warehouse for the price of a Rolls Royce." To Onassis, recalling his reasoning, it had a sound built-in safety factor. Even if his arithmetic proved faulty, nothing was lost. So what he's saying is, "I'm gonna buy the assets now and I'm not gonna use them."

• 46:54David Senra?

  No other people were thinking like this at the time. It's really bizarre. Because at that time, the ship's gonna be sold for scrap and would have fetched twice the amount invested. So, again, not only is he doing something smart, he's like, "Okay, the expense..." Shipping is a dangerous business, but it's dangerous because you have all these daily expenses and if you don't have cargo, right, you're gonna lose a lot of money every day. But if I'm buying ships for pennies on the dollar and I just wait till the economy approves, I have nothing to lose because what the ship would scrap, if I just said, "I'm gonna destroy the ship and sell off its parts," it's gonna fetch twice what I pay. So I've capped my downside. I have no downside and all upside. "You can't go wrong," he told himself, but continuing his monologue on a cautionary note, he took into account that while only $30,000 was needed to become a ship owner,

• 47:39David Senra?

  operating the ship could easily result in a loss of $10,000 in one round trip. He had seen it happen time and time again, breaking the back of many ship owners. So he studied the industry and realized where the downfall was. Since he did not need a floating warehouse but very much wanted to own a ship, he came to the conclusion that it would be sound business to buy a bunch of secondhand ships cheaply at this time of economic depression, but most important to keep them laid up for one, two, or maybe three years, and then move them, which is means when the economy picked up. Moving them is when you're actually operating those ships. Ships were constantly in his mind. "I must get into the business," he kept saying. So essentially, he gets his first ships for 1% of their original costs.

• 48:25David Senra?

  Okay, so I'm gonna see, obviously, we know he makes his money in shipping. I'm gonna get to the point where I tell you how he expands so rapidly by working backwards, which I mentioned earlier, but this is just, again, a reminder of how chaotic life is and how random it can be. One sick cook led Aristotle to one of his greatest competitive advantages and also one of the things that he gets criticized the most for doing. Aristotle and Nessus received a message that the ship, he's using an all-Greek crew, flying under a Greek flag, so the, think of, think of ships as many businesses and where they're registered, it's like if you register your business in, you know, California or

• 49:07David Senra?

  New York, whatever the case is, a lot of, obviously, US corporations are registered in Delaware because of certain benefits. Well, ships are the same way, and you could register them everywhere. That's why you see a lot of the American cruise companies, they're American companies, but their assets are in the Bahamas or something else. They're called "flag of convenience," and we're gonna see him use this, this tactic more than what, what are we, 60 years, 60 years ago, something like that? So he receives a message that the ship could not proceed to Copenhagen because the Greek consul refused clearance until Greek seaman was found to replace the ship's assistant cook who had fallen ill and been taken to a hospital. So what they're saying is, they have all these like union rules, it's not like a union, but it's typical like that, it's like regulations.

• 49:49David Senra?

  It's like you cannot move this entire ship, and you can't just replace the cook with any guy in Copenhagen, you have to fly in a Greek. Bizarre rules, right? "A technicality, one man out of crew of thirty was holding up the ship." And what happens when you hold up ships? You cost tons and tons of money every day. "And threatening to upset a carefully worked out schedule, Aristotle Onassis decided to personally intercede with the consul, who happened to be an old friend and former schoolmate. But the consul insisted on the letter of the law. A Greek cook would have to be brought in as a replacement. Onassis pleaded with his friend. "His was an unreasonable request," he explained. "There was no air connection," meaning no airport to get him to, "and it might take a week or more before another Greek cook could come from Athens.

• 50:32David Senra?

  Surely you won't hold up a whole ship with valuable cargo over a small matter like this." Well, of course they do. Their answer was the same, they're not budging. "He left the consulate and went to work. By telephone and telegram, he contacted the agents, instructing them to register the ship without delay under the Panamanian flag. Within hours, the formalities were completed." So he's transferring assets from Greek to Panama. Panama doesn't have these regulations. "With one stroke of his pen, Aristotle Onassis not only freed himself of the restrictive practices which threatened to delay his ship, for the first time, he availed himself of the considerable advantages of Panamanian facilities, which simplified shipping procedures at a time when technical and legal complications were piling up for ships under most flags."

• 51:17David Senra?

  So let me just explain to you what's happening. Greek has a long history of shipping, right? And what happens over time? You're gonna say, "Oh, you're gonna pass one rule now, and then five years later, you add another rule, and then, pretty soon, a hundred years, two hundred years in the future, you have all these rules that may not even make sense." Like this, like, why do I have to fly a guy or ship a Greek, one Greek cook, and I'm holding up my ship for seven days? Meaning, meanwhile, you have newer countries that are trying to compete with other countries, like Panama and eventually Liberia. They don't have that history, so therefore they don't have those rules and regulations. And they get the benefit because now you can use Panamanian workers, like you have more money spent directly in their country because that's where the ship is most of the time.

• 52:02David Senra?

  And so you have all these benefits. Going over the Panamanian flag as Aristotle Onassis saw, it was like reverting to the conditions that existed before World War I, under all flags when supply and demand determine success or failure. An operator was able to fix the size of the crew according to the ship's needs, as opposed to just saying, hey, you need, you know, they'd have like central planning committees saying, this is how many you need. You need 30 people. What if you could get the job done with seven? Doesn't matter, you still need 30. Ridiculous. Ship's needs, there was no overmanning nor feather bedding is what they called it. Owners employed people who were good at their job, discarded those who were not skilled or efficient. That's another thing, you couldn't really fire people. Besides, a ship under the Panamanian flag was not subject to exchange regulations and could trade in any currency. This is another huge advantage he has.

• 52:45David Senra?

  Last but not least, taxes were negligible. In fact, taxes were nonexistent. So this is an example of him studying and learning, and then he had the confidence in himself and his abilities to go in his own direction. Most tankers at this time were 9,000 tons. He decided to make 15,000 tons. This is a little bit about that. Onassis was reaching the end of a meticulous investigation into the possibilities and economics of the tanker business. He wants to transport, instead of doing dry goods, now he's going to do oil and stuff, which had occupied him for some time. The financial opportunities were tempting enough, but another motive gave a strong impetus to his plans. By tradition, the Greeks concentrated on dry cargo ships, considering tankers, business-wise, a hazardous proposition. But it's a lot of money in oil at this time. Now Onassis decided to go into tankers in a big way.

• 53:28David Senra?

  So he realizes, does the math, he's like, everybody's building 9,000, he's one of the first people to build 15,000 because he realizes the economics are better. I just need to bring this up because his quick restless personality is mentioned a lot. And I note off myself, I wonder if his impatience was exacerbated by living through war and realizing that, you know, when you have friends and people die prematurely. You realize, "Oh, life's not guaranteed. I need to move as quick as possible." "Oh, and I forgot to mention, what happened to his grandmother." So, his grandmother winds up escaping on a ship by herself, right? She gets away, and they can't find her, they can't find her, they're worried about her. Remember, his mom died, and so this is the person who raised him. His grandmother was like 80 years old at the time. She's, she goes to like another island, it might be another Greek island, to escape the war that's happening.

• 54:14David Senra?

  And she, they realize, other people escaping, realize that she has money in her purse, like gold and other stuff. So, she's climbing it on a ladder, and as she's doing this, like from a ship, they, they start trying to grab her purse and, and stealing from her. And eventually, she's 80 years old, and they throw her off the ladder, and she dies. So, unbelievable. More tragedy added to the young life of Aristotle Onassis. So, this is a description of Onassis, one sentence, "A sailor's restless quest for change and the impatience of a quicksilver mind."

• 54:54David Senra?

  Um, let's see, this... I have a bunch of notes here, I don't know what they mean. "War intercedes again, or intrudes again. Do what you can with what you have, and problems are just opportunity and work clothes." Let's see what that, what that note meant. "To a shipping man in Greece who had seen, who had seen three wars between his 6th and his 16th year, not to mention, not to speak of the gruesome aftermaths, these were a momentous, deeply stirring events. The economic consequences were as grim." What year am I in? This, is this, this might be, oh, yep, World War II. Okay, 1940. Uh, so it says, oh, I'm not, now I understand what happened.

• 55:36David Senra?

  Uh, Germans, basically, he's got a bunch of, uh, ships in Europe, and they get, uh, they get basically, they're like, "You're not moving these ships out of the harbor." So, they're just stuck. So, this is, uh, "This brings a total of his mobilized tonnage up to 50,000 tons. For an independent owner, a tremendous fleet to be completely removed from his control." A tremendous amount of tons. "After 15 years," well, now we're 15 years of him being a ship owner, "of almost unimpeded progress, these were the first real setbacks in the career of Aristotle Onassis." "They were cruel blows." So, that's what I meant. The war's messing up his business, so what does he do? "Well, I can't, I'm not a country, I'm not gonna go fight the Germans, so I have to focus, do what I can with what I have."

• 56:21David Senra?

  Now with his European takers immobilized in the Baltic, he was forced to turn his attention to American-based ships. That's Onassis. Apart from looking after the ships, he reorganized his tobacco business and arranged for tobacco from Brazil and Cuba to replace the Asian supplies, which were cut off by the war at sea. So that's it. Like, I have a big problem. I'm going to focus on making my American and other ships as profitable as possible. And then, hey, my tobacco business is getting interrupted by war. Okay, I'll just import from a different country. He has no control over war, but you can control over how you react. The opposite of relentlessness is resourceful is wasteful. And then, he also preferred his organizational structure to be decentralized. So it says, "Onassis felt that he might be taking charge of a company..."

• 57:06David Senra?

  Oh, so he's... They have this giant Argentine navigation company, him and another giant ship owner. The government's trying to get him, these two guys, to invest. And he's thinking about it for a while, and then he's like, "Wait a minute. I've identified a potential problem." And this is really smart on his behalf. He says, "Onassis felt that he might be taking charge of a company, which was so big that the government could not be indifferent to its future and the prospects of thousands of employees." So that's the very opposite. He had a bunch of companies, but they're all decentralized and small, right? Just the ownership was similar. "There was bound to be, to say the least, interference. Onassis came to the conclusion that the risk was too great." And so what happens? Like, five years later, there's an economic depression,

• 57:51David Senra?

  and the government takes over that company, which could have ruined his investment. And then, this is what I meant about the opposite of relentlessness is resourceful is wasteful. He says, "Onassis, who has never cut himself off completely from his early years of struggle, cannot watch waste with indifference." Okay, now I want to get to probably the most important thing that ever happened to him. And this is what I meant about Charlie Munger's quote, "Invert, always invert." At the time, you have... This is after World War II. You have a bunch of these old warships. Remember, Daniel K. Ludwig, the invisible billionaire, made his money doing almost the exact same thing as what Onassis is doing. And that's buying these old ships, retrofitting them so they can transport oil.

• 58:31David Senra?

  Right, but Aristotle, he's making a little bit of money. He's doing well, but he can't, he can't grow his, remember he has, I think, the largest private. Winds up having a largest private fleet in the world, if I'm not mistaken. And, but how do you get that if no one will lend you money? So he's going around all these banks there. First of all, they don't want to deal with a foreigner. So he has to do these agreements where like you have to have an American agent. So 51% of the company has to be owned by American. He can control the other 49%. This winds up coming back to bite him because they're saying that there was like fake. Basically, like he was lying, he could really controlled it, even though, and interesting enough, some of his lawyers that

• 59:11David Senra?

  set up this ownership agreement wind up working for the American government and prosecuting him. He gets out of it with a fine, but I thought that was really fascinating. But um, he realized like these guys, no one will lend me any money. What the hell? What am I gonna do? Like, I don't have the money to buy all these tankers. So he works backwards. What is he trying to do? Right? I want to, I'm going to a bank. I say, hey, I want to buy these old, these used American ships. And I don't think it's just American, but ships from World War II. I'm going to retrofit them and I'm going to carry oil and that's how I'm going to make money. Right? And the banks like get lost. So what does he do? He, he works backwards, just like he did with the getting into, uh, to selling tobacco.

• 59:53David Senra?

  He goes to the oil companies, works out the deals and says, you know, this is, we're going to agree upon this price. Let's say whatever the case is, and I'm going to read you the numbers here in a minute. And I'm gonna say, I have this contract, but I don't have the ship yet. Right? So then he takes this contract because they're at the time. And a lot of these, the largest companies in the world at this time are oil companies. So that's completely different. So then he takes that contract, goes back to the banks and said, hey, look what I have here. If you'll lend me no money to buy the ship, I have an agreement saying for five years, they're going to pay me X amount of money. This is guaranteed money. It's coming from the oil companies. You think they're going to run out of money? No, they have more assets than almost everybody else in the world. And this causes him to be able to expand his fleet massively just by working backwards.

• 1:00:38David Senra?

  So please learn from this. All right, ready? It was a single obvious solution. A ship of 30,000 tons made $120,000 a month. A five-year charter amounted to 60 monthly installments. And not only that, the bank, the contract specifies, hey, you're going to be paid $120,000 a month for six months, or excuse me, for six years. No, 60, for five years, sorry. For a total of $7.2 million. The bank is comfortable because the oil company's saying, I'm paying this dude $120,000 a month. He's going to be able to pay you back. So he basically erases their risk in their turn, in their eyes at least. This then was the proposition he put to the Secconi Oil Company. The Secconi Oil Company is what, is today mobile?

• 1:01:21David Senra?

  I guess, isn't mobile Exxon now? I forgot the exact, you could look it up if you're interested. But you know how they were broken up and they're constantly like, the alt derivatives of Standard Oil at some point if I'm not mistaken. So he says, "Give me a firm commitment." He presented his complicated proposition in the shape of a simple simile. The wealthy and powerful, this is Onassis. "The wealthy and powerful oil companies were in relation to his ships what a tenant was in respect of the house he occupied." This is not a quote, but I meant, this is how he described it to people. "The wealthy and powerful oil companies were in relation to his ships what a tenant was in the respect of the house he occupied, for which he undertaken to pay rent.

• 1:02:03David Senra?

  If the tenant was Rockefeller," remember, Standard Oil. "Onassis suggested persuasively, 'it did not matter whether the roof of the house had holes or was gold-plated. If Rockefeller agreed to pay the rent, that was good enough for anyone lending money on the house. It was the same with ships.'" Do you see his analogy there? He's like, "My tenant is Rockefeller. Do you think he's not going to pay me?" I'm getting paid. Eventually, the oil companies consented to this construction and their assurance to pay come hell and high water was a commitment which he gave the oil companies absolute security and established a principle which made shipping finance history. So this is what his Daniel Lugwig uses, Onassis uses, Stravos, which I might cover in the future.

• 1:02:46David Senra?

  His brother-in-law winds up dying in Switzerland at the age of 86 with a net worth of $22 billion, mainly from using this idea as well. With this insurance in his pocket, Aristotle Onassis hurried to Metropolitan Life Bank for the best part of the year in time-devying negotiations. The two men headed exploring this deal, arguing, fencing, moving forward. So basically, for over a year, he's been trying to fight and get money, not working. Now, once he does this, now the climax was a hand. It was a matter of a few minutes. Think about it. Going in the opposite direction, starting, you know, the logical way from beginning to the end, takes a year, doesn't get anywhere. Works backwards, close the deal in a few minutes. When Onassis produced a new formula, they agreed to give him the blessing alone, provided there was a firm commitment by the oil company to pay in all circumstances, which there

• 1:03:31David Senra?

  was. This was now no more than a formality. His exhilaration was more like, he was super happy at this time, obviously you could imagine, was more like that of a man who had solved a problem, like the triumph of a scientist who had discovered a new formula. This is the formula he built his business on. For the banks, then think about, from their perspective, he's just solved a huge problem for the banks and now he's added a new asset class for them, so they love it too. For the banks, there was suddenly a new field for investment. And one by one, financial institutions abandoned their opposition to putting money into shipping. The dollars began to roll in. The Onassis formula opened the gate to an outflow which eventually rose to $2 billion.

• 1:04:14David Senra?

  And then I just want to, on the same page, there's something here that I think is really important, that you need to have perseverance and belief in the inevitable. Thinking about why, what are you, why are you working in the field you're working in? In his case, he just thought this was inevitable. Aristotle Onassis had not the slightest intention of submitting to this defeatist group, or this defeatist view, what it means that, there's a limit, everybody's telling him at this time, there's a limit. Like, oh, you know, we went from 9,000 tons to 15,000 tons, now we're at 18,000 tons. You're trying, Aristotle, you're trying to get us to go to 28,000 tons. Like, this is not possible. And Onassis, not only did he not believe it wasn't impossible, he thought it was inevitable that, he's like, "The economics make too much sense, and ships can keep getting bigger, they're going to get bigger."

• 1:04:58David Senra?

  And so this is what, how he's thinking about that. He says, "Aristotle Onassis had not the slightest intention of submitting to this defeatist view. For more than a decade, he had been obsessed with the idea that the future of transportation was in bigger and bigger ships. And the opposition of the oil companies did nothing to undermine his faith in this new development, which he thought was inevitable." So he's ahead of the curve, and if you're ahead of the curve and you know what's happening, you just wait. And eventually, they're talking about, you know, 20,000 ships, 20,000 ton ships. Eventually it gets to like 100, I think he builds one that's like 106,000 tons. So way bigger, remember, but he still tells like 9,000 tons, almost 10x what they thought was possible. This is example that knowing human nature pays dividends.

• 1:05:39David Senra?

  Though he could be pugnacious and persistent, Onassis had little of the hard-faced, unyielding tycoon in his mental makeup. Besides acceding to reasonable requests where others were likely refused, seemed a sound investment in human relations, which made many friends." So he's playing a long game here, he's not gonna, like, when he's doing negotiations, he leaves something, makes sure everybody walks away with something. Cause that, he's not, he's not doing one-off transactions, where he's just gonna take everything he can. Realizes, hey, humans, like, the benefit of a compounding relationship in business over a long period of time, is gonna make a lot more than me thinking from the short term, just trying to make maybe 5 or 10% more. So, again, I think him studying history, politics, and the like, he clearly understood humans.

• 1:06:25David Senra?

  This is what I meant earlier about how he focused on the highest value activities, and I said Berkshire does the same thing. "He was already shredding the load of routine work, but reserving decisions strictly for himself." So what they're talking about there is that, if you remember how the organization, how Berkshire Hathaway's organized is,

• 1:06:44David Senra?

  when they buy a company, They basically just, they're like, "You guys are running the company. You do whatever you need to do. And we're gonna leave you alone. We're just gonna stay in Omaha. We're gonna control two things. One, we're gonna control the investment decisions for all the profits that the Berkshire portfolio companies make. So we're gonna decide where that money goes. And like, right now, I think, I just read Berkshire's sitting on like 100 billion in cash, or something like that. So that kinda gives you an out, uh, indication of how they, what, how they're looking at the current economy. And the second thing is, we're gonna control compensation. Because incentives are so important for, for human behavior. And so they control two things, and the rest is completely decentralized. So Onassis is like, "Listen, routine work, paperwork, I'll let the attorneys handle that, I'll let the people in the office handle that, once we do it.

• 1:07:29David Senra?

  But I'm gonna reserve the decisions for the company. Where we're putting our assets, what we're doing. That, that, that's not ever getting outsourced. That's literally my job every day." Um, and I just, there's, again, he echoes, I don't know why, but he echoes, and it's interesting, I'd be very curious if, cause Charlie Munger's famous for reading hundreds, hundreds of biographies. I'd be very curious, I'm, I'm sure he studied Aristotle, Onassis. Um, because this, this is how one of Aristotle's partner describes Aristotle. But it's also, if you change the name Aristotle, it's very much how Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, there's so, such an echo here. It's, it's crazy to me. Um, operate. Says, uh, so this, he says, "Onassis is a curious man.

• 1:08:13David Senra?

  He explores, asks a hundred questions, orders a report, asks more questions arising from it, never accepts a statement without checking. He masters the most complicated subject, then makes his decision quickly."

• 1:08:26David Senra?

  So, he thinks, thinks, thinks, and then when he's ready to act, he goes full force.

• 1:08:31David Senra?

  Aristotle becomes rather famous, infamous in some cases. Obviously, he marries Jackie Kennedy, uh, towards the end of his life. But he's way famous before that. It's not a good thing. Um, he didn't really like it. He also becomes indicted. Um, he's, he had, there's so much, so much in this book and his life, that I'm just gonna have to leave out of the podcast, cause this guy moved at 100 miles an hour, every day, for like, four decades. Uh, like at one time, he's got the, he owns like a whaling company in the Peruvian, at the exact same time, like the Peruvian Navy, uh, it's attacking his ships, they confiscated, he's under indictment by the Justice Department, and he's fighting with the Prince of Monaco. It's just like, what? What is this guy doing? It's, it's crazy, but this is Aristotle on Becoming Famous.

• 1:09:13David Senra?

  "Before I used to operate quietly, no one gave me a second glance," which I think is the best way. "The press never bothered me, and I was free to come and go as I pleased. Now it is like being a movie star. People ask for your autograph. The crackpots start writing, they start writing him letters. If I'd known what was coming out of this Monte Carlo business, uh, publicity-wise, and they'd give me a million dollars, I would not have gotten into it." And he says, "If I were in the passenger business, the publicity would be worth millions. In the cargo business, it only hurts. It's like having a wonderful laugh that gives you a sore throat." And he, at the, when he was alive, he had to be one of the most famous people in the world. Um, this is the financial performance of his company, 30-plus companies, and then we're fast forwarding into the 1950s.

• 1:09:57David Senra?

  Uh, they estimated the liquidation value of his fleet between 150 and 200 million dollars, and reckoned that he had paid off more than 40% of all his mortgages, meaning the mortgages on the ships. And once you pay off the mortgage on the ship, they become, the profit margins are insane. They worked out that his net income before amortization charges was nearly 50 million dollars a year. And that can go up and down, and it's, it's pretty crazy. Um, well, at this time, Onassis spends a lot of time, uh, in Hollywood and Washington DC, and around politics in general, and he makes a statement that he says, "If you knew how the food was made, you wouldn't care to eat it." And he talked about the, the show business of that, and political business, which he felt, it's, he never explicitly says it, but it almost sounds like he thought they

• 1:10:38David Senra?

  were similar, like they were attracted to the same kind of people, and, and, and operated on the same dynamics, which I've heard before, too, that there's a lot of similarities between show business and politics. Uh, and somebody said, uh, "Politics is show business for nerds." "Onassis had little doubt that the lawyer's assessment of the Justice Department's case was correct, which shattered him was that the indictment," this is what I was talking about earlier, and we knew this because in, um, the Invisible Billionaire podcast I did, the Maritime Commission winds up being, uh, like- Basically 100% corrupt, then it's replaced by another commission, that one becomes corrupt. But there was just all kind of bribing, wheeling and dealing. Obviously, these are parts, listen,

• 1:11:14David Senra?

  there's a lot to learn from Aristotle analysis, but he's never caught doing anything, but I mean, you think about human nature, there's a good, very good chance that these guys were getting sweetheart deals and they were getting them, you know, by leveraging the fallibility of humans. So this book is very much in like a glowing light, but I'm kind of reading between the lines here. I'm like, okay, this guy definitely paid off people. So, you know, no one's perfect. We're not idolizing these people. We're learning their good ideas and then we're discarding the bad parts. What chattered him was that the indictment had obviously been framed by Attorney General Herbert Bronwell, whose legal firm had advised him in the first instance that he was acting strictly within the law.

• 1:11:58David Senra?

  That's what I said earlier, they're playing both sides. Tom, yeah, go ahead and do this 41, 51, 49%, you're good. And then he moves to, he goes from private practice to government and then back to private practice. And it kind of gets like this incestuous relationship and they kind of screw him here. If he was under indictment, why were the authorities not making a move? He was not waiting any longer. From his Madison Office Avenue, he sent the following telegram. So he writes to him, he goes, "Listen, I placed myself at your disposal during my visit to this country for any information you or your department might care to have." And he says, "At this time, he took a poor view of the caliber and standards of some people in high positions and said so." So he's saying, he says, "What aggravated him was that the Attorney General did not even give him a chance for a talk, not replying to his telegram."

• 1:12:43David Senra?

  And now he's yelling. He says, "This is the man whose legal firm had been paid big fees to advise me." So, you know, there's some shady stuff on both sides happening here.

• 1:12:54David Senra?

  And he also, some of this Aristotle makes mistakes. He brings this on some degree on himself at the time. So the theory is not only that he may have paid people off, but there's another theory, because at this exact same time, the indictment was happening in the United States, he does his deal with Saudi Arabia. He's like, "Hey..." The American companies just come over here, they're drilling your oil, they're transporting your oil, like, why don't you do it? And we'll do like a joint venture kind of thing. And he was gonna take like 10% of their business away from them. But like I just said earlier, like, these oil companies, these American oil companies are some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world at the time. And they have a very incestuous, loving relationship with the US government.

• 1:13:39David Senra?

  In fact, it's very hard to determine where an oil company begins and the government, or the oil company ends and the government begins, or vice versa. So, there, one theory is that the indictment came because they, they're trying to take this business to Saudi Arabia. So they're like, okay, well, you wanna try to take our business, we're gonna try to put you in jail, we're gonna find you. So it says, "One theory was that this indictment and the taker affair had been engineered to punish him for his alliance with the Saudi Arabians." They regarded this Saudi Arabian deal as Anasas' revenge for his treatment by the US authorities. So there's, it's not sure which one of these is true, right? Was he punished by the Justice Department after the Saudi Arabian deal? Or is he doing the Saudi Arabian deal because he thought that he was being punished unfairly? So it depends on which perspective.

• 1:14:24David Senra?

  We don't really know. Acting on the assumption that is what is good for the United States, oil companies is good for the United States, Aramco, which is the Saudi Arabian oil company, but it's also made up, if I'm not mistaken, this time, they have like, these, United States oil companies have like, interest in it. I don't know if it's, if it's just like a payment based on like fees, or if they actually own equity in it. Arm in arm with the government, voiced extreme consternation. So this is the government coming after Anasas, and the oil companies at the same time. That's what I mean, you don't know when one starts and, where one starts and one ends. So they voiced extreme consternation. "A dash of xenophobia aggravated the ugly mood." Remember, xenophobia is brought up all the time in modern day. Xenophobia is nothing new, at all.

• 1:15:09David Senra?

  In fact, most of this book is about the fact that like, you'd only get deals, like, Greek would give deals to Greeks, they wouldn't mess with Argentinians, and they wouldn't mess with this person. It's just a very like, tribalistic undertones in this entire book. "A dash of xenophobia aggravated the ugly mood. American officials were just said to be perturbed lest transportation of oil became dependent on the naturalized citizen of a country, Argentina, which had not always readily cooperated with the West." So they wanted Americans in control of Saudi Arabian oil, not in Argentina.

• 1:15:38David Senra?

  So the book goes back and forth on this for a long time. This plays out for a very long time. I'm just gonna go to the very end.

• 1:15:44David Senra?

  It says, "As he was wont to do, Aristotle Onassis was sitting on the deck of the Christina," that's his yacht, "staring out at the wide expanse of the sea. He liked the loneliness of the night, when all was quiet and he could be alone with his thoughts for hours." I do too. "Sending them out as if it were across the ocean and over the horizon like tentacles to bring back new ideas and solutions to old problems." The subject that agitated him at this turbulent stage was the indictment hanging over his head in the United States and the civil claim linked with a criminal proceeding. So they hit him both. They drop him, they hit him with a civic charge first, civil charge first, and then a criminal charge as well. "As a result of his communion with himself in the dead of the night, he decided abruptly to take the next flight to New York." He did not like it, like it was just weighing on him too much. He's like, "I'm just going there, I'm gonna face whatever happens."

• 1:16:28David Senra?

  And a lot of other, uh, he's not the only one under indictment, a bunch of other people in the shipping industry are.

• 1:16:34David Senra?

  Let me just wrap it, wrap up this part of the book. The Justice Department wanted 20 million, they settle for 7 million, the day after they settle for 7 million, they drop the criminal charge. So, we still don't know who, it sounded like both, both sides to me were up to some shady crap. And knowing, studying human nature as I do, like, they're both doing some shady, shady things, let's just put it that way.

• 1:16:59David Senra?

  Okay, I need to read this part to you.

• 1:17:03David Senra?

  Oh man, the shipping industry is insane. And I'm gonna, hopefully this makes sense, he's a lot of numbers in here, but just bear with me, cause this is Aristotle, just, Aristotle describing, like, the volatility, volatility obviously can make a fortune and can destroy a fortune, right? And it, but it's very hard to not have, to not become wealthy without some form of volatility, right? And hopefully the volatility is obviously going in your direction. So check this out about the volatility of the shipping industry. "Onassis mused about the vagaries of the tanker market in which he had made his millions." This is a quote from him. "Take the last 20 years, roughly the period since the end of the war, World War II that is," he said, "asking indulgence in case his memory is not accurate to the last $100,000."

• 1:17:48David Senra?

  Immediately after the war, I'm just, I'm gonna omit the size of the tankers, cause they're not important, but the numbers are, the dollar amounts are important. Immediately after the war, a tanker, which cost the government about $2.5 million to build during the war, and having given good war service, fetched as much as $4 million. Okay, so what he's gonna trace here is that the price of the underlying assets in the shipping industry go up and down based on if you can make money with those assets, right, like anything else. So you're buying a used thing, they paid 2.5 million, they got good service out of it in war, and they're gonna sell it to you for $4 million. By 1947, with a few years behind it, it could be sold for $2 million.

• 1:18:31David Senra?

  So now it's back down to half price, right, almost the original cost. One year later, the price was down to $1 million. Another year, and the value was up to 3 million. So 2.5 million, up to 4. Down to 2 million, down to 1 million, back up to 3. This is a very short amount of time. So you could see if you're buying at the right time, you're gonna make a lot of money. You buy on the other end, you're destroyed. By 1954, though they were now 14 years old, their value tumbled to $400,000. But with the Suez Crisis, what they're talking about there is the Suez Crisis has to do with Suez Canal. It's also known as like the Second Arab and Israeli War. Happened in the 50s, closes down the canal.

• 1:19:16David Senra?

  Causes a huge boom for the shipping industry. Because now, everybody's worried about oil transportation, and so all the prices go up. But I'll get to that in a minute. So, in case you haven't heard that before, I think it's rather famous, but anyways. But with the Suez Crisis, 1956, saw these tankers going up to a fantastic 4.5 million dollars. So, let's say 4.5 million from 400,000, so almost 10x, a little over 10x, even though they're getting older, right? And on the other side of this boom comes the Depression. Come 1958, 59, and they were down to rock bottom, $200,000. So think about the volatility of this asset I'm describing to you.

• 1:19:58David Senra?

  Before they fulfilled their 20-year lifespan, they were once more worth $400,000 each. All these values based on their earning capacity in a freight market which fluctuates just as crazily from a peak of $40 per ton to a low of $4 per ton. So not only are the assets going up and down, but what you can make on them, of course, is going up and down. And this is Onassis, this is still a direct quote from Onassis. He says, "The stock exchange fluctuations of the 20s and 30s by comparison, or Monte Carlo roulette for that matter, were as mild as flutters at a church bazaar."

• 1:20:30David Senra?

  So I just want to include that part because it really does give some context of the industry that he chose to make his living in and how just dangerous and chaotic it was, which again ties into his personality. So I'm cutting out a lot of parts. He starts an airline. In this case, he's sitting down with the premier of Greece and he does this like $500 million investment into Greece. But I just want to grab this little part out because there's a book, I don't think I've ordered it yet, but it's all about the feud between, just like I like comparing, if you went back and listened to the podcast I did, comparing and contrasting the methods that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they're very different in how they're building rocket companies.

• 1:21:12David Senra?

  I think it'd be interesting to do one from a historical perspective because obviously that the race between Blue Origin and SpaceX, SpaceX is still ongoing. But I think in the future I might do a founder's episode just on the relationship between, and the feud between Aristotle Onassis and Stravos. His last name is N-I-A-R-C-H-O-S, so Neuroshosh, something like that. But so just give you a preview of that in case I do that one day.

• 1:21:42David Senra?

  He's sitting down with the premier of Greece. His name is Kramanalis. Kramanalis is one of the few people who seemed unaware that only a short while earlier, Onassis had given a frank and pointed account of his relations with Stravos. So the premier of Greece is trying to get him to team up with them. Because they're like, oh, he's brother-in-law, didn't realize. And so now this is Aristotle really succinctly describing.

• 1:22:04David Senra?

  His relationship with them. He says, "In business, we cut each other's throats. But now and then, we sit around the same table and behave for the sake of the ladies, meaning their wives, the Levano sisters, so their married sisters, who remain totally unaffected by the rivalry of their spouses." How bizarre is that? They go to war and then maybe see each other at the holidays? I don't even know. But Stravos, Onassis dies relatively young. At the end, this book ends, well, I'll tell you, the book ends, it's printed when Onassis is 62 and he dies a few years later. Stravos survives for quite a while. He dies at 86, so.

• 1:22:48David Senra?

  But I do think they're both interesting people that prior require further study. Real quick, I just want to go tell you a little bit more about how the Suez Canal or Suez Crisis, however you pronounce that, affected Onassis. And he basically made 60 to 70 million dollars really quickly from that. It says, "Onassis was still suffering from the after effects of the Saudi Arabian affair and the oil companies boycott." So like I referenced earlier, when he tried to take that, the about 10% of the business from the American companies from Saudi Arabia, they blacklisted him. So it says, "He found it difficult to get new businesses. Because I was in the doghouse with the oil companies, he said, and could get no new charters,

• 1:23:32David Senra?

  I had a great number of idle ships on my hands." And that's really bad because it's going to cost him a lot of money. This is around the time he's losing about $40,000 a day. Suez was a godsend. So he has all these ships just sitting there at a time when now you need ships. "As soon as the canal was closed, Onassis' ships took advantage of the skyrocketing rates. His idle ships turned into mints," meaning just printing money. "Instead of facing grave difficulties, his position was ideal in these circumstances." "Look at this bastard," his competitors were saying. He himself said, "This is poetic justice." Poetic justice helped to bring off a tremendous financial coup. His estimated, he estimated his profits arising out of the crisis at anything between 60 and 70 million dollars.

• 1:24:18David Senra?

  But again, we go back to how crazy this industry is, but the shipping boom did not last. Unexpectedly and to the surprise of the highest authorities, Onassis continued, "Instead of taking an indefinite time to open up again, meaning the canal, it only took a few months to clear the canal. This had the effect of suddenly turning the whole subject upside down, but still to make sixty or seventy million dollars in a few months. None of the belligerents had won the Suez War, but the only big, so it means like, near a country won the war, but the only, the only ones that won were the big tanker operators. Onassis, Stravos, which is his brother-in-law, Levanos, which is another Greek rival of his, but also his father-in-law. So Stravos and Onassis marry Levanos,

• 1:25:00David Senra?

  who's like, who's, who's a famous Greek shipping tycoon before Onassis and Stravos were in the business. He's like fifteen or twenty years older than them, and they marry his daughters. And Daniel K. Ludwig, the American ship owner, who had built their supertankers just in time. So Ken, another example of books being the original links to kind of all tie to each other. And one other thing I want to tell you, speed and making the inconvenient convenient. I came across this and I thought it was a really unique quote. I haven't heard from anywhere, so I want to share it with you. "He was having difficulty controlling his temper." And now this is a quote from Onassis. "People think the great advantage of the Panamanian or Liberian flag is taxation,"

• 1:25:44David Senra?

  he said, speaking vehemently. "Over and above taxation," but he's saying, yeah, he saves on taxes, but it's an important part. "Over and above taxation, the advantage is the lack of restriction, absence of interference," meaning he likes control, "or delay," and he likes speed, "by governments, free currency exchange," which, which helps because of the volatility currencies, "and speed in decisions." And this quote I thought was fascinating. "To compete in the most constructive way, one has to make the inconvenient convenient." Just want to read that one more time to you. "To compete in the most constructive way, one has to make the inconvenient convenient."

• 1:26:23David Senra?

  And finally, the last sentence of the book, I want to bring this to your attention. It says, "The end of the story?" Question mark, not at all. Aristotle Socrates, which is his middle name, Onassis, was setting out to show that life begins at 62. He's already married to Jackie Kenny at the time. Reason I wanted to bring that point up is because he sure, I'm sure he didn't think he'd be dead in five years from now. His son dies in a plane accident at 24. Onassis never recovers and dies himself two years early, or two years later, rather. And his whole family had a, um, like devastating. He winds up divorcing his wife. His wife dies from a drug overdose, a drug overdose, uh, like a year or two before he dies.

• 1:27:08David Senra?

  Um, his daughter dies of a pulmonary, uh, something to do with her heart, but it sounds to me like drugs too. When she was in her 30s, his son dies at 24. So it's also, also very tragic. But the reason I bring that up is because he's, you know, ending the book saying, "Oh, I'm just getting going. I have so many more ideas." He didn't think he was going to be, even though, you know, 69 is not too young to die. It is rather, I mean, it's kind of young in this, in that sense. Um, but the reason I bring that up is we don't know how much time we have, so let's make the most of it. Let's go out and live the life that we want to live, do the things that we want to do and work on the things we want to work on. I'll close there. I'll leave a link in the book. It's very hard to get. Um, some of the, I've seen this, this, this, I think there, you can get the book for as

• 1:27:51David Senra?

  little as three bucks and as much as like $95 if you're interested in it. I'll leave a link like I always do. Thank you very much for the support. I appreciate you listening and I'll be back next week with another biography of an entrepreneur.