#352 J. Paul Getty: The Richest Private Citizen in America

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/54d7529797556a45

In this episode about J Paw Getty, you're gonna hear that Getty
made it a priority to build relationships with other top entrepreneurs and business people.
In fact, he was so dedicated to this idea that he set up a thing that he calls a liaison center solely for this purpose.
I am doing something similar with the founder events that I'm
Hosting
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That listen to Founders Podcast.
Make sure you come to a founders event. There is
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through the twenty ninth. These events are all inclusive.
Which means all you have to do is get yourself there and I take care of the rest. So your lodging, your meals
Access to every talk and session, everything is included.
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And other founders and investors for two days.
Make sure you go to founders podcast dot com.
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Forward slash events.
And sign up.
Hope to see you there and I hope you enjoy this episode on J Paul Getty.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help the wage earner.
By pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further
The brotherhood of man
By encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor.
By destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage.
By taking away a man's initiative.
You cannot help men permanently.
By doing for them.
What they could and should
Do for themselves.
I accept these tenets wholeheartedly.
Without reservation. That is
An excerpt.
from the book that I'm gonna talk about today that is John Paul Getty.
Actually quoting Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln is the one that said those words.
And that comes from the book that I'm gonna talk about today.
Which is as I see it, the autobiography of J Paul Getty.
This book is incredible for a number of reasons. One, when he's writing it, J. Paul Getty is considered the richest private citizen in the world.
He's also writing it.
In the last year of his life. This book is over fifty years old.
It gets published in nineteen seventy six, right before
It is published.
J. Paul Getty dies.
So this book is really
His last words on his remarkable life.
It is also incredible because of the way it is structured. It is
It's almost like you're sitting down and having a one sided conversation.
With like a a wise 83-year-old grandfather, and he's recounting his life. It's not in chronological order at all. He's just gonna tell you whatever happens to be on his mind.
at that time. But he also gives you a lot of great advice because he had been an entrepreneur for over sixty years by the time he sits down and he's still going. He works until the day he dies. And so something that J Paul Getty repeats over and over again throughout the book is the fact that he
Considers himself an entrepreneur.
His friends are entrepreneurs.
He really is just writing down the lessons that he learned in his six decade career for the future benefit
of the entrepreneurs that are gonna come after him. And so as he's telling this life story of his, there's just a lot of really great advice for you and I.
Before I get there, and that's gonna be like ninety percent of what I wanna talk to you about today. I have to start
With the relationship that he had with his father.
His father is the one that got him involved in the oil business to begin with.
He says over and over again he has a great line that he repeats.
That my seat was set for me.
Without
The love
and training of my father, I would not be the man I became.
And I think the best way to introduce you to that idea actually comes at the very end of the book.
He's talking about
the fact that he he becomes friends with, you know, the world's elite.
There's a large so many stories about, you know, the King of England and all the presidents and all the great entrepreneurs. He knows everybody. This book is thrilling. I hope you
you wind up buying. It's very fun to read, actually.
But there's a great story at the very end.
That illustrates this self awareness that he has, this respect and honor.
Remember he's he's writing these words forty five years after his father passes away.
And this is what he says.
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller
Did me the honor of saying
That my entrepreneurial success in the oil business
Put me on par with his grandfather.
John D. Rockefeller Sr.
My response was that comparing me to John D. Senior
Was like comparing a sparrow to an eagle.
My words were not inspired by modesty.
But by facts.
John D. Rockefeller began his life poor.
He began work as a lowly paid bookkeeper.
And worked and fought his way up the ladder.
I enjoyed the advantage of being born into an already wealthy family.
And when I began my business career
I was subsidized by my father.
While I did make money and quite a bit of it on my own.
I doubt if there would be a Getty Empire today.
If I had not taken over my father's thriving oil business.
After his death.
Any attempt.
To compare.
The Rockefeller Empire.
with the Getty Empire is ridiculous.
John D senior went into the oil business.
А таймэмерика'тролім індустріусь.
He brought order out of that chaos.
Rockefeller senior's monopolization saved the US oil industry.
From total disintegration.
And so just because Geti doesn't think you should compare him to John D, I mean f how many people can you compare to John D, for God's sake, right?
Uh, it doesn't mean he w wasn't a phenomenal entrepreneur. A lot of people try to discount Getty's achievements'cause
He had a uh successful uh really relatively small but successful oil company
His dad had a successful oil company.
Yeah.
When when his dad dies, Getty takes over his dad's oil company, like, Oh, you got a huge head start in life.
That's true.
But I get his own admission.
When he inherits and takes over his dad's company
It's worth fifteen million dollars in nineteen thirty.
twenty years later, that company is valued well over a billion.
It is J. Paul Getty that is responsible for that value creation from fifteen to well over a billion dollars. So I want to go into
I'm gonna start where he just talks a lot about his dad.
And his dad just seems like a great man. I would love for my kids when I'm older.
Or maybe even when I'm long gone, to describe me the way the getty
Describes his father. So
His father was a successful attorney before he founded his oil company. He's actually sent
On client business.
to Oklahoma in nineteen oh three and at his perfect place
Perfect time because in nineteen oh three there's this gigantic oil boom happening in Oklahoma.
And it is during this visit where his dad gets infected with what they call oil fever.
And his dad decides to switch careers and found an oil company.
He starts drilling for oil.
And he leases this small plot of land in Oklahoma.
He tries to drill forty three wells. This is his first this is his Tad's first attempt in oil in building an oil company, right?
He he attempts to drill forty three wells, forty two of them came back as producing oil.
And Getty's dad does something that's extremely smart. His name is George. So George Getty does something that's extremely smart. He has his son just visit him.
While in the oil fields. This is
Well before this is gonna be a Getty family business, his son is gaining this valuable experience
in the oil industry just by being on site and observing what's going on. He said that drilling fascinated him.
And he starts picking up on how drilling is done, all the jargon that is inside of the industry.
all the different jobs that are required to bring about a successful well.
And his father imparts in him something that never leaves him and actually only leaves him for two years out of his long eighty three year life.
And it's the idea that you look at
drilling for oil, the oil explor exploration that they're doing.
It is a challenge and adventure.
We're not just building a business, we're hunting and we're hunting for oil.
So this is where his dad starts teaching him.
Self reliance. The value of self reliance and hard work. Getty is fifteen years old when he's doing this.
So I'm just gonna read its description of what's going on when he's fifteen years old.
George Getty's business flourished and expanded during the next three years. When I was not yet sixteen, I asked my father if I could spend my summer vacations from school.
Working in the oil fields.
My father's reply was characteristic.
It is all right with me.
If you're willing to start at the bottom.
This meant that I would be employed as a roust about.
That's an oilfield laborer whose job it was to perform the heaviest
And usually the dirtiest work on the drilling site.
My father was explicit.
About the terms under which I would be employed.
I would receive the Roustabouts going wage, which is three dollars a day for a twelve hour shift.
I could expect no preferential treatment because I was the boss's son.
I would have to learn to hold my own.
With the other men.
I had long enjoyed the advantages and comforts that might be expected to go with being a wealthy man's only son.
To my astonishment.
I adapted readily to this abrupt transition.
I took to bunkhouse living and grub shack eating in stride.
And I enjoyed both.
His dad is just making one great decision.
after another. It literally changes the trajectory.

Son's life and
And Jay Paul Getty got his full attention'cause Jay Paul Getty was his only son.
And he talks about a lot in the book that when so from the time that he could remember
That his dad concerned himself.
With developing his character.
He says like my dad believed in work ethic. He made me learn that money must be earned. He would not give his son just money just because he was rich.
He taught him his son how to do sales.
Oh, and he was uh rather
Uh strict disciplinarian. So
Uh, a few years after he starts working in the oil fields. I think he's around sixteen years old at the time.
During the school year, he's getting bad grades and he's fucking off, is essentially what he's doing. He's just not behaving. So his father's like, Oh, yeah, you want to get bad grades, you want to fuck off? That's fine. You're going to military school.
For the last two or three years of high school, he makes him go to a military school.
And the line that J Paul Getty has about this was looking back at this
Now as an you know, an eighty three year old man, he said the strict
regimente environment.
Was good for me.
His father also taught him the balance. He they were both voracious readers.
J Pogeti's like reading Napoleon when he's like twelve years old, but he he said his dad also taught him the importance of physical culture. So he'd make his son box, run, swim,
Lift weights.
And that emphasis on physical culture is really important because he's gonna start out in the oil business as a laborer, as a roughneck, and he's gonna learn the business from A to Z, which is really, really important too.
And so when J Paul Getty is in college, he repeats exactly what he did in high school during the school year. He's in college.
During the summers he's working in the oil fields.
And during one summer he builds a really important relationship.
And it is with what he calls a leathery veteran of the oil trade.
This guy they call Grizzle. So Grizzle becomes
J. Paul Getty's mentor. These two sentences is why this is so important.
Grizzle taught me all he knew.
About virtually every phase of field operations.
And his knowledge of these fields.
was encyclopedic.
And so by the time that J Pa Paul Getty is twenty two years old
By the time he is done with college, think about what his father did for him.
He's eleven years old and he's observing
All the stuff going on. He starts working in the fields when he's fifteen.
He's got somewhere around a decade of experience before he begins full time in the trade.
He's got his father's guidance, the fact that he knew and believed that his father loved him.
And that he concerned himself with developing his character, that he wanted his son to be a success. He's got the confidence that he's worked in every single aspect. He knew the business from A to Z. He was mentor by people that had decades of experience in the oil business.
All of this is gonna come to play. It's gonna be really important because J. Paul Getty's gonna start his own oil company at twenty two and he's gonna make a million dollars and he's gonna retire at twenty four years old.
And when J. Paul Getty describes the way his his dad gently guided his career.
I pray that I have this
this this patience and tolerance for my own kids. I don't I'm not sure I will.
He says my father then asked the question.
that most fathers ask sons who have completed their formal educations, but have not decided on their careers.
What do you intend on doing now?
listen to the description of his father many positive qualities
for which George F. Getty was widely liked and admired.
was his unfailing habit of presenting any arguments
In a calm
Wholly reasoned.
Yet always tolerant manner.
And so he's laying out the case to his son. He's like, Listen, you know, you can what do you intend to do now?
Here is
My suggestion.
There I've built an oil business that's worth some millions of dollars.
I am nearing the age of sixty and uh you are my only child.
And he explicitly tells his son, I've built what I hoped would be a family business.
Would you be willing to consider it?
And then this speaks to the wisdom that his father had. He's not okay, you're twenty two, come in and take over my business.
He knows he's gonna be operating for many, many years.
Uh still he's not yet yet ready to retire.
She's like, hey, why don't you do this? Try your hand as an independent operator in the oil fields.
If this experiment doesn't work out
And if you're unhappy, you don't like the business.
When the year is over
You can do whatever you wish, and I will not say another word.
And so this is the deal. This is why
Getty says that his f his seat at the table was reserved for him. This is what his father proposes. He says, Okay, if you find a promising lease,
I will furnish the capital for the purchase of the ye of the lease and any kind of like drilling equipment that you need.
And if there's any profits.
I'll get seventy percent. You'll do all the work.
I'll put up the capital, obviously.
I will get seventy percent of the profits and you can get thirty percent.
And J Paul Getty agrees to this. Now his experience in the beginning of the oil industry
It's not like his father. You know his father drills forty three wells, forty two of them come back in your first shot, right?
He is not having any kind of success. He's not finding oil at all.
And he almost quits.
multiple times. And then we see something
That
reoccurs in the books that you and I talk about over and over again. And the way I would say this is that words of encouragement
matter.
Older, successful, more seasoned entrepreneurs and business people, there's many examples of them of encouraging younger entrepreneurs, younger versions of themselves. I think of
Henry Ford who idolized Thomas Edison at the time they meet Henry Ford's
Unknown. He's a d nobody he hasn't really accomplished anything, he's unknown.
Thomas Edison might be the most famous person in America.
Henry Ford describes this idea as like, Hey, this doesn't make sense.
Uh all the the very few cars that we have.
They're all either at the time either electric or steam.
I want to build a car that runs on an internal combustion engine.
And
Edison immediately understands the impact of
Henry Ford's idea.
And he says
That's the thing, young man, keep at it. And and and Henry Ford mo wrote two books
when he was s alive and he references the fact that you know the the handful of words that that sentence
From his hero.
kept him and motivated him to persevere through the inevitable struggles of bringing that idea to life.
And we see something very similar in the life of J. Paul Getty as a young man. He's twenty two.
Twenty three years old when this is happening.
I was frequently on the verge of giving up.
that I did not is due in large part to the warm hearted encouragement and advice I received from older
Seasoned oilmen.
Like John Markham and R M McFarland.
McFarlane was the owner of McMahon Oil Company.
One of America's most successful oil producing firms.
He went out of his way to befriend me.
He bolstered my sagging morale and gave me invaluable counsel and passed on knowledge and lessons.
That he had learned through long experience.
And so this year experiments, it's almost at the very end, and he says, I had nothing to show for my efforts as a wild cutter. Nothing.
But he didn't give up. He's encouraged by his father.
by these older seasoned oilmen.
He decides, hey, I'm gonna take another shot.
At this other piece of land.
He gets the lease for a shockingly low price of five hundred dollars.
starts drilling and the well starts coming in.
At seven hundred barrels of oil.
A day.
and listen to what he says. Words cannot adequately describe the elation
And triumph.
That one experiences when he brings in his first producing well.
The feelings do not diminish.
When it's the tenth.
Or hundredth and tenth well.
That comes in
As a producer.
Even later in his career, he still felt the same exact feeling, uh one of elation and triumph.
And he tries his best to describe why it's the case.
The sense of elation and triumph is always there.
It stems from knowing
Та вониз бети нетрс інкакула од.
By finding and capturing
A most elusive prey.
That is how he describes it. He's constantly describing
Exploring and drilling for oil.
As a hunt.
For oil.
And this is when he makes his million dollars really rapidly. He looks up, he's like, Oh my God, I'm rich, I'm a millionaire.
I'll never be able to spend this much money.
And he makes a mistake. Like
Think about all the mistakes you made when you were in your early twenties.
And so he's like, All right, I'm rich. I'm retiring.
And so he immediately shuts everything down.
He abandons all constructive activities, what as how he describes it.
and he chooses a life of laziness and pleasure.
But what's fascinating is like
You know, I have everything I want, I'm rich, I'm popping bottles. Like he literally says that.
I'm dating all these women, I'm in the perfect place.
And he's like, I am depressed.
And he realizes that he wants back in the game of business and this is then once he gets back in
It's a game he never stops playing.
But I love his description of this and he's just saying there's another oil boom happening this time it's in not in the the fields of Oklahoma.
It's right next to him in Southern California and he says other men
We're bringing in gushers. They're opening up new fields.
I opened up nothing that could possibly gush.
Except for far too many champagne bottles.
This state of affairs first nagged, then gnawed.
And finally became intolerable.
I un retired.
And then we get another example of good guy dad.
My when he goes talks to his dad about it, I gotta get back in the game I
Retiring's boring, this is ridiculous.
And he says, My father said nothing, not even I told you so.
So before I move on to how J Paul Getty worked, I wanna close
This section about his dad with his
Father's death. His father suffers a stroke when he's seventy five years old.
And this is how J. Paul Getty describes the impact that the death of his father had. Remember, he is writing this forty-five years after his father dies.
says the love, respect, and admiration I had and still have for my father were boundless.
His death was a blow.
That the passing years
have only numbed and he for his entire life
J. Paul Getty would keep a diary, so a large
Chunks of this book are
Words that he wrote many, many years ago.
And this is his description.
He he says, I wrote these words from the heart, they're from the heart, and they remain so, and they're about his father. His loving kindness and great heart combined with a charming simplicity of manner.
Made George Getty the idol.

His mental ability was outstanding to the last.
I can only strive to carry on to the best of my ability the life work of an abler man.
He thought his father was a better man than he was.
This is said in no sense as eulogy.
But as an impartial appraisal
of the facts. Later on in the book he said that his death, his father's death
was the heaviest blow.
The greatest loss.
that J Paul Getty had ever suffered in his life.
Says I was thirty seven when he died.
And no longer had any freedom of choice.
over what I would do with the rest of my own life.
He is describing a sense of obligation and a desire to carry on
the life's work of the greatest man that he had ever met.
Okay, so now we're gonna get into how he worked. And he was like this from
So
There's a handful of things I've tried to organize around specific topic because if you saw the notes that I have
It's just the same note over and over again, a handful of notes.
One, he's a workaholic.
Two he is
What
Many people w we consider a micromanager is actually uh at dinner with two founder friends of mine and we were talking about this idea where like the micromanagement
or being a micro manager has a really bad like branding around it.
And yet it's just a very common theme over and over again in these books.
And they were telling me about somebody else that had re
They had rebranded uh being a micromanager. He uh he says the other founder says that he's not a micromanager. He that he's just in the details. So
Uh the second trait that he has over and over again is that he is in the details.
Uh, he's definitely a uh micromanager. Third, if you know your business from A to C, there's no problem you can't solve.
And that is related to being in the details of micromanager. Number four, he's gonna say over and over again, I am an autocrat. I want control and things must.
They must be done my way.
And then five relationships run the world.
Jay Paul Getty went out of his way to build relationships with the most powerful
uh politicians and country leaders in the world.
And the most successful entrepreneurs and investors in the world. In fact the way he did this, and I'll get to this later.
is really smart.
He has a company headquarters that he calls it's called Sutton Place, but he calls it a liaison center, which is really a relationship center.
And he used that for the sole purpose of building relationships with very successful and powerful people. But I'll get to that a little later on.
And so at the time he's writing these words, he's got he owns over two hundred bus different businesses.
He's got this just relentless constant flow of information.
He's got a thousands of employees.
And so he talks about he's like, Listen, twelve hour work days are common.
and many stretched to fourteen hours or more.
A steady stream of televises, cables, written reports, and letters of all kinds poured in
From every conceivable corner of the globe.
There were countless phone calls.
They were executives of Getty companies and engineers, accountants, attorneys, and other businessmen who had to be seen personally.
And he wouldn't have it any other way, he says in the book, even at eighty three years old, I am still an oil man.
I am a wild catting operator at heart.
And several times throughout the book he's trying to describe to the reader
This misconception a lot of people and you and I know this is is the case. A lot of people from the outside think
Oh, entrepreneurs are motivated by money. And obviously we want to build wealth for ourselves and our family.
But he picks up on exactly.
This guy's decades.
He's a half century past.
The need to work for money.
And he's talking about like why he's doing this.
And he says entrepreneurs
are people who'm energy
Are constantly being used at peak capacity.
In other word, he's alive. He is fully alive when he's engaged in this game that he loves.
to play.
And so when he's not, he provides his workaholic tendencies.
Obviously to work.
So when he's not working, he's building relationships, but he's also a voracious reader.
And so when I'm thinking about this, I'm like, this is nuts. This guy's like dedicated remember he's reading Napoleon when he's like twelve years old.
Now he's eighty three when he's talking to you and I. And so what pops into my mind?
Think exactly.
The observation that
that Charlie Mongermade
He's like the people that rise in life are usually not the smartest and sometimes not even the most diligent.
But they're learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were that morning. And boy does that habit help.
Particularly when you have a long run ahead of you. When when
Jay Paul Getty started a habit habit. He didn't know he had a seventy young seventy year run ahead of him.
And there's something that I skipped over in his childhood that I think I should point out to you now is the fact that when he was in college, he went to the these colleges in California.
He thought it would they were terrible. And it wasn't until J. Paul Getty transferred to Oxford
that he a this actually ignited this lifelong love
For self directed learning, he said before he was being taught.
And he's like the key is not to be taught, it's to be it's to learn.
And so the environment at Oxford
When Getty was there, I was like, Well, you pick your path. You figure out what is what ignites your soul. What do you actually want to learn? Learn lifelong learning is self directed by nature. It's not gonna work any other way.
And so I don't have to even read any part of this section when he's at Oxford.
To tell you what I feel is the most important
Idea. The great founders.
Apply their fierce work ethic.
To lifelong learning too.
And all throughout this book you see
When Getty doesn't understand something, his his first step is like I'm gonna read everything I can possibly find.
About the subject.
It is self directed.
Lifelong learning.
And then the last thing I'll say about this this addiction, this obsession that he had with with work
He speaks about why he never retired again.
And he worked until the day he died, and he says, I've been an active businessman for more than sixty years.
I still mind the store.
My hand is never far from the throttle.
And so something that appears over and over again, there's large chunks of the book that are that are about this large parts
Of Getty's life is the fact that
He was a micro manager.
He's in the details that even though he's running this gigantic empire.
He is actively involved. He is in many cases he he almost every case he wants to be where the work is actually being done.
We just saw this recently in the two part series on Walt Disney. He was the same way. Two part series on Steve Jobs that just did. He's the exact same way.
And so there's a great story, I think, will illustrate this.
That's told by his cousin. His cousin June is a close friend.
with uh F D R F DR's president when this story is taking place.
And so he asked June, he's like, How do you find FDR as a person?
Is he easy to get along with?
And June's response was fantastic.
says he's the easiest man in the world to get along with, as long as you do exactly what he wants, she replied.
That's one thing you and he have in common.
And so I think when I'm analyzing the way that he approached his work, the fact that he worked all the time
that he's a micromanager, that he's in the details, that he knows his business from A to Z. The fact that he knows he wants control, that he has to have it.
He is autocratic.
The fact that he he leveraged relationships throughout his entire life.
All of these things, I think, interact with each other. I think this is a great overview. And this is happening in the early days of his career. He says, My tendency is to be autocratic.
I had long ago recognized this in myself.
I chose to be my own drilling superintendent.
Because it was the only way that I could be sure that my crews did exactly what I wanted.
And paradoxical as it may seem.
It gave me a unique sense of independent and self-sufficiency.
I never had to search further than myself when seeking
To lay final blame for mistakes or wrong decisions, he quotes a bunch of leaders.
One thing he loved about Harry Truman.
was that the the sign that he kept on his desk that he was known for and he says
Like essentially that sign it w describes like the it in the most clearest and most succinct
uh way possible as to how
Getty operated his business. He believed the leader of the company, the founder of the company, the CEO of the company. You have to you have to take extreme ownership.
And he says Truman provided the clearest and most succinct a succinct explanation of what I mean with the sign that he kept on his presidential desk.
The sign was four words.
The buck stops here.
When the man in charge, it could be a candy factory, a drilling operation, or the nation's government
Except direct.
Final responsibility he makes full advanced payment for the rewards.
And privileges he receives.
He is released.
From any need to feel beholden or indebted.
There's also another
positive byproduct of this because remember, he's he's an oil man. He's a wild catter. But he he talks about the fact that you know he's he's on site. I want to be where the work is done.
I know how to do everything. In many cases I will do it if I need to. I will directly supervise.
I will make sure my personal involvement make sure
That it gets done the correct way.
And so he talks about that like
Even at this point.
There's
Independent oil companies, which he considers himself,'cause he's he's on site. And then there you know, there's vast
oil corporations and they're at far away headquarters.
And
the oil men, the actual ru roughnecks and roustabouts and wildcatters are on site, they just don't respect these like far away.
suits and offices, essentially. And so he says an oil man who was a working boss, and that's what he considered himself a working boss.
Enjoyed a distinct advantage.
Oil field workers.
They're also known as roughnecks, riggers.
or drillers were and still are a fiercely proud and clannish lot.
When a boss knew his way around a rig and could perform any task
Oil filled workers accepted him.
as a full member of their exclusive fraternity. So think about that. Remember we go back to the wisdom
Of his father.
Getty is in his thirties when he's t this part of the story, he's in his thirties.
And the decisions that his dad made, hey, let me bring my eleven year old son out here.
He'll observe, he'll learn through osmosis.
He do like he'll ask questions and then he's fifteen, he's working the fields.
And he's working every summer.
And he does that for half of a decade.
That decision is paying dividends now.
What, fifteen years later?
And so then like two hundred pages later.
A hundred and fifty pages later I come across this hilarious story.
'Cause you know, in the details obviously means be knowing how to do every job, being where the work happens.
Getty applies it to like the most smallest detail.
Many years later, he's already one of the richest people in the world. Okay. He's there's these letters are reprinted.
In the book.
And he's going back and forth with the people'cause he's in England, he sets up because uh he has to be in Europe, even though he he loved
Many parts of the spoke is like a love letter to to California.
And he'd much rather be there, but he's willing to do things that he doesn't want to do that he's not comfortable with.
Uh he's willing to s you know, subjugate his own personal desires if it's better for his empire.
And so for the last like
third of his life he's set up in Europe because
The their business is in Saudi Arabia.
And Southern California is way too far from the Middle East where he put his primary businesses. He's also got business in obviously
In uh the Americas, he's got it in Europe, he's got it in the Middle East, but he's like okay
I have to set up in a a very
convenient location, even though this isn't the place I want to be.
And so he's having this argument over letters.
with the people that are in charge of his museum in California.
And he's pissed off because they're spending too much money.
On
Air conditioning. And so he's again
It's one thing to say that you're in the details. Another one to pay attention to how many days
The ACU's running at this museum.
That's what, five thousand miles away from you?
And so I just want to read this to you.
Air conditioning. I'm not impressed with the argument that our art objects will be ruined if air conditioning is not available a hundred and sixty eight hours per week.
I seem to remember that air conditioning was invented only a few years ago.
And then all of our eighteenth century objects
Necessarily passed a great many decades without the benefit.
of air conditioning. My instructions are that air conditioning in the museums shall be turned off at all times at night.
And she'll be used during the daytime only on those days
Which are exceptionally hot.
We should have very little need for air conditioning.
And then he obviously applies that to the finances of his business. He talks a lot about he gives advice for fellow entrepreneurs throughout this entire book. And one of this is don't be like William Randolph Hearst.
You you should reinvest in your business and you have to keep a fortress of cash.
And use debt sparingly. This is what he says.
I like to keep a lot of financial fat under my belt.
There's nothing that can ever take the place of cash.
The overwhelming majority of business problems and so many recent business failures result from businessmen exceeding themselves too far.
There is most definitely a place and a need for the use of credit in business.
However, I have always believed that the businessman who uses credit
The most sparingly is the one who has the greatest chance of
For achieving
success and he talks about the fact
That he lived next door.
Oh, this is hilarious. Uh so
He he's comparing the difference between the way William Randolph Hurst ran his business
And the way that
So he says
I have always spent ninety five percent or more of my money on my business, meaning reinvesting it into the business, okay?
While William Renner Hearst was the opposite.
He liked to live like a Roman Emperor.
Hurst beast beach house in Santa Monica.
Cost three million dollars.
I was his next door neighbor.
My house cost a thous a hundred thousand dollars.
So think about that. They both live in Santa Monica.
At the time.
Hearse's and th this is for his mistress, actually. So I don't think William ran off Hearse to live there most of the time.
So that house costs three million. I live next door. I paid a hundred thousand dollars for my house.
This is a good illustration of the differences in our attitudes towards the money.
In nineteen thirty five, a when this is taking place when these neighbors next to

In nineteen thirty five, I was one third as rich as Hurst.
And by nineteen fifty, I was twice as rich.
So again, advice for entrepreneurs don't be like Hurst.
That's what Getty would tell you. Reinvest in your business, keep a fortress of cash and use debt.
Sparingly.
So then he has more advice for his fellow entrepreneurs. He's like listen, I know a ton of great entrepreneurs
All the great entrepreneurs I know have these traits. So I'm gonna read this section to you'cause I absolutely loved it.
He's really good friends with Aristotle and Nassis, which I'll talk more about later.
But I just love
all these like stories. I I'm just obsessed with these stories of the great entrepreneurs that knew each other, their how their lives intersected.
And how many, you know, how similar they were to each other. I've been friends with a great many entrepreneurs during my business career.
All were men who devoted their minds and energies to building productive enterprises.
They concentrated.
on expanding their businesses and making them more efficient.
to produce more and better goods and services for more people.
They created jobs and wealth.
It is the mark of the entrepreneur.
That he reinvests in his business.
And he is always
Personally involved.
Aristoto Onassis.
was an outstanding example. So this is why I'm reading this entire section to you. I love this. He was a very good friend.
And it's always fascinating experience to see him operate.
I discussed business with him many times. Listen to this.
Very often.
I had a retinue of assistants, executives, attorneys, and engineers with me.
Aristotle
Would come to such meanings alone.
Yet he easily held his own on all points that were discussed.
Every enterprise he owned or controlled.
Was his personal business.
He
Was
The business one of his
ex wife or his first wife, Tino Nassus said this about Aristotle.
RE's every what everybody call them.
R can't think of anything on anything but a huge scale.
If he had been an artist
Instead of a businessman.
He would pay nothing.
But immense murals.
This innate capacity to think on a large scale is one of the several characteristics of
that all entrepreneurs have in common.
And if you think about that, he's describing what he admires in other people.
And so the the the list of traits that he just described to us.
In you know, two paragraphs.
The great entrepreneurs I know have these traits.
They're devoted their minds and energy to building productive enterprises over the long term.
Remember both.
Onassis could have r retired w decades before he did.
They're not in it just for the money.
If they were just in it for the money, they would have quit a long time ago. Think about that.
They devoted their minds and energy to building productive enterprises.
Over the long term.
They concentrated on expanding their empire.
They concentrated on making their companies more efficient.
They reinvested heavily in their business, which can then help efficiency and expansion.
They are always personally involved in the business.
And they know their shit down to the ground.
And you just saw that with Onassa. So Nassa shows up by himself and he can handle
You have ten people across the table, I know my business down to the ground.
It's been a while since I've made an episode about Onassis. I I I think it's episode eighty four, and then the last time was two uh episode two eleven. I'm going to I have another I have I think two more biographies on'em that I haven't read yet.
But I just pulled some highlights and notes. I reread them as I was thinking about and went through founder's notes and just started searching Onassus. And I found a highlight that I think explains exactly how he was able to do what
Getty just uh described. He says O Nassa spent almost all of his time working. He would pour over shipping journals.
From Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York.
Looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities.
He would scan, study, and memorize tonnage.
Prices.
insurance rates and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies
And then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections.
of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each.
Day.
And then before moving on from this section, he reiterates
More traits that he admires in others.
It's very simple.
He loves people that are resilient.
Self starting.
And then self restarting because he s repeats over and over again.
you're it's inevitable you're gonna get knocked down. You have to get back up. So you resilience
Self starting and then self restarting.
And he talks freely over and over again. Like there's downsides to this. Like I'm giving my life to my business and as a result, I mean the guy was married five times.
You think he's at home a lot?
He speaks over and over again about the fact that listen, many businessmen, myself very much included, frequently complain
That there aren't enough hours in the day to take care of the work at hand.
And so he takes his time and attention that he would dedicate to having a relationship with
His kids or his wife and he dedicates it to his business. I gave more time and attention to oil wells
Then to my home.
My autocratic tendencies were no less apparent in my personal life.
than in business. Do you see what I mean? Like
What's refreshing about this book is, you know, everybody's like, Oh, he's the richest man in the world. He must be perfect. He's like, first of all, Rockefeller, I'm a sparrow compared to his eagle.
You know, I had a wonderful dad, a wonderful position in my life.
And I was a shit he says like I was a shit husband.
He doesn't try to hide it. My autocratic tendencies were no less apparent in my personal life than in business.
I was often short tempered, brusque.
I forgot birthdays, anniversaries, and dinner engagements.
Each of my wives was jealous and resentful.
of my preoccupation with business.
And then he also has a little line in here, a little zinger, though.
Okay, he's like
They're jealous of all the time preoccupation with business, yet none showed any visible aversion to sharing in the proceeds of that preoccupation.
And him self analysing, just like how
Can I be so great at business and so terrible at marriage? It goes on.
Throughout the entire book and it just tried organizing one section. He goes, I see my marital patterns.
As a violation of Cicero's maxim.
To stumble over the same stone twice is a proverbial disgrace.
Yet I doggedly persisted
In tripping over the same boulder.
He repeats, I was very irrational with marriage because work always came first.
He talks about
He so here's the problem. He does some interesting things. Again.
This is one of the m the the benefits of reading biographies and autobiographies in in my opinion,'cause you have some of the smartest, most reductive people ever live and you just see them making
Bad decisions and mistakes over and over again.
And you realize like perfection is not required.
to attain wonderful pr professional success.
And in Getty's case, like undeniable business genius.
And like let me give you an example. I'm just making up the years, but
At the very beginning. So he gets married five times.
But the first three marriages are very bizarre. So it'd be like
Get married in nineteen thirty one.
Uh get divorced in nineteen thirty two, get married in nineteen thirty two, get divorced in nineteen thirty three, get married in nineteen thirty three, get divorced in nineteen thirty four.
And you look at a sequence of events like how?
How?
How were you making these decisions?
And then another thing is like not descri not
Communicating.
With your wife enough because
A few of his wives complain, like why are you away from the home so much?
You're already rich.
Why do you have to work?
They didn't understand what was actually driving him. And then, you know, he he's a very extreme person. He says my business interests created problems.
I was drilling several wells simultaneously.
And it was by no means uncommon for me to stay on the sites
Overnight.
For two or more days and when I wasn't on the when he wasn't on the wells.
He's traveling extensively all over the world looking for more
Opportunity to drill oil.
And he didn't see the need to change his habits just because he got married. He says I found it extremely difficult to change.
My habits.
And my patterns merely
Because a marriage license had been signed and sealed.
And then he's able to finally summarize like his failure at marriage and then his success at nearly everything else. There's a great line.
that uh I attributed previously to to Munger because he repeats it, but he said Buffett is the actual one that taught him that.
And Warren Buffett would say that it's not greed that drives the world.
It's envy.
And
Getty says he's not envious of anybody else except the people that were able to actually make marriages succeed. He says whatever my other flaws and weaknesses.
I've never been given to envy.
Save for the envy I feel towards people who have the ability to make marriage work and endure.
Happily.
It is an art.
In which I've never been able to master my record.
Five marriages.
Five divorces.
Five failures.
And he continues and this speaks to my soul'cause I feel this way too.
A hatred of failure.
has always been part of my nature, and I suppose one of the more pronounced motivating forces in my life.
Once I've committed myself to any undertaking.
A powerful inner drive cuts in
And I become intent on seeing it through.
to a satisfactory conclusion.
Think about that hatred of failure is a main motivating force. It is a powerful inner drive.
It is not the love of success, it is a fear of failure that is pushing him.
How and why is it that I've been able to build my own automobile?
Drill oil wells, run an aircraft plant.
Build and head a business empire yet remain unable to maintain even one satisfactory marital relationship.
It is one hell of a question.
And so I wanna get into a few giant leaps.
Giant leaps forward that happened in his business, and I think before I describe two of these such occasions
He talks about the importance of concentration in his own life. And so
J. Paul Getty says this. He says, My own nature is such that I'm able to concentrate
On whatever is before me.
And I'm not easily distracted from it.
That comes up over and over again in these books.
A great description of Edwin Land that I pulled up. He concentrated ferociously
On his quest.
Let's do a quote from
Getty's hero.
John D. Rockefeller Senior, this is what he said.
Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things
fail because we lack concentration.
The art of concentrating the mind
On the thing to be done at the proper time.
And to the exclusion of everything else.
A great enabler of concentration is having a long attention span'cause if you hear what just Getty just said.
My own nature's that
Then I'm able to concentrate on whatever is before me and not easily distracted from it. Charlie Munger said I did not succeed
In life by intelligence.
I succeeded because I have a long attention span. Getty.
had a long attention span.
So that leads me to these two giant leap
Forward in his business.
in the nineteen thirties, a second will happen in the late forties.
And then who reap the benefits in the the mid fifties. But
It goes back to when his father dies.
He takes over the company.
It is valued around fifteen point five million dollars in nineteen thirty.
And so the executors of his father's s estate tried to restrict the behavior that J. Paul Getty had and what he wanted to do because
They were uh under great depression.
And they're ex excessively worried about the economic situation.
The patriarch of the family is dead. Who knows? This may be the the high watermark of our wealth. What are we gonna do? They're scared. And Getty thought that was the exact wrong response. He says my own views were in direct opposition. So now at the time, they're just drill, they just explore and they drill for oil. He's like, No, no, no.
I believe now this is the time the time is right right now.
To vertically integrate.
And this is how he describes his thinking. I was convinced of eventual economic recovery, and I firmly believed in the business dictum
That you should buy when prices are low.
I urged a program of expansion.
Stocks in publicly owned companies.
With huge if temporarily undervalued assets.
We're selling at prices
That made them barely believable bargains.
There were shares selling for as little as a twentieth.
of their net underlying asset value.
That means anyone who purchased them
Was in effect
Buying twenty dollars
For every dollar he spent.
The Getty Companies, my father's and my own
were primarily engage in oil exploration and production.
They're crude.
had to be sold to refineries or pipeline companies.
I reasoned.
that would share prices being what where they were.
The time was ideal, but
To obtain control of a company.
With refinery
facilities and marketing outlets.
In other words
Economic conditions created a unique opportunity.
To put together
An integrated
Well to consumer
Oil.
Company.
It's one thing to know that is the right idea. It's completely another thing to actually have the temperament to act on that belief.
When everybody around you is panicking, he's in the middle of a financial panic.
You know what I thought of when I got to this section? Sam Zamurie.
From the the the f the book The Fish That Ate the Whale.
The life and times of America's banana king.
There is a great paragraph in that book where
Sam Zamori does something very similar. He knew the time was right for him to expand.
Listen to this description. I'm going to read this paragraph to you. It's excellent.
There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile.
When certain properties become available.
That will never be available again.
A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the
Parametric pressure.
A great businessman.
Is dumb enough.
To act on them.
Even when he cannot afford to.
So going against the advice of the people advising him, right? And going against the the current economic climate.
He starts buying shares.
In this
oil company called Tidewater.
Associated
Oil company.
His idea was to to accumulate enough shares so that he could win control
Of tide water.
Now this is hilarious.
Listen to what he says.
Tide water actually belonged to standard oil of New Jersey.
Which was controlled.
by the Rockefeller family.
He didn't know it at the time because if you listen to the multiple episodes I've done on Rockefeller and his family, they constantly would hide they'd have secret ownership in companies over and over again.
They did not want people to know how rich they were. They did not want people to know how powerful they were.
They love this network of secret allies.
They actually belonged.
To the standard oil.
of New Jersey.
Standard Oil, New Jersey was controlled by the Rockefeller.
Family, had I known this originally?
I would never have begun buying tidewater shares.
For a pygmy independent operator, such as I was,
could hardly stand a chance against one of the world's largest and most powerful major oil companies.
By the time I discovered the truth.
I was too deeply committed to withdraw from the fray.
And so now some of the owners it's not just the Rockefeller family owns Tidewater, but some of the other own owners like, Well, we don't want to be taken over by this getty guy.
So they have an idea. And so on New Year's Day he gets a call. He is hanging out
At William Randolph Hearst's Castle.
In San Simeon, California. I also visited there last year. It's it's incredible if you ever get the chance.
You said to visit. It's open to the public now.
I think it's owned by the state of California. It really is just a great illustration of this idea that you and I talk about all the time.
Mute the world and then build your own.
Hurst.
built his own world and you get to visit a part of it. It's remarkable.
On New Year's Day.
He's at the Hurst Castle. They're like, Hey, there's some guy on the phone looking for a Getty.
And so he's gonna talk to the guy calling him is Jay Hopkins.
Jay Hopkins in the near future is going to be the founder of General Dynamics, which is one of the biggest defense companies that st still exists to this day.
But at the time Jay Hopkins works
Four.
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
And so he's telling Getty what's going on. He's like, Listen
Senator of Jersey.
They decide they're gonna transfer all of its tidewater shares to this holding company called Mission Corporation.
Their idea was like well we can disperse
are holding so widely that control the company would be out of
Getty's reach forever.
The problem was
That they never told John D. Rockefeller Junior why they were doing this.
And so now Rockefeller Junior finds that he owns a bunch of shares to this mission corporation.
then he's willing to share to sell his rights.
to the mission corporation's stock for ten dollars a share.
And so he hires Jay Hopkins to help him sell this, and Jay Hopkins calls.
J. Paul Getty.
And so J. Paul Getty, of course, like yes, I want to buy it.
But he goes, Hey, suppose the Jersey standards management hears that Rockefeller intends to sell
They'll try to talk'em out of it.
And Jay Hawkins responds to J Paul Getty and he says not a chance.
Rockefeller Junior is aboard a train bound for Arizona.
They can reach him.
It's not like they can send an email or a text at this time in history, right?
They can't reach him and I have his and I have his authorization to sell.
So we closed the transaction right then and there over the telephone.
He needed that domino to fall because then it brought down another a bunch of other dominoes with it.
He talks about this armed with John D. Junior's assignment of rights, I approached
The other Jersey standard sh stockholders
with predictable results. Many of them felt that if a Rockefeller thought it was wise to sell
His mission corporation rights.
That they would be wise to do.
The same.
That was a huge leap forward.
in his business is going to unlock another opportunity, the opportunity of the lifetime. So
He is going to secure the rights for what is known as the neutral zone.
Between Saudi Arabia
And Kuwait.
And I just think there's an abundance of lessons in here for us. So
It this is the year nineteen forty eight to nineteen forty nine. He says Getty interest obtain the oil concession on Saudi Arabia's half interest.
In a neutral zone.
This is this ground that's lying in between
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Four years and tens of millions of dollars were spent before a drop of oil was brought to the surface.
But by nineteen fifty four it was evident.
That the neutral zone had immense oil reserves.
Getty companies had done considerable international business before. He's describing a giant leap up.
Right? He does not become
What is widely considered.
the world's richest private citizen without this deal.
Getty companies had done considerable international business before neutral zone.
Finds and production transformed us into a truly global enterprise.
Much work and capital and a sweeping organizational restructuring
was needed to make this new business empire viable.
Tankers.
Super tankers, pipelines, storage facilities.
And refineries had to be built.
This is my favorite
sentence of this entire section.
The list of things to be done was awesome.
But those things were done.
And so I want to spend some time on this deal. There's so many interesting lessons for you and I.
So think about this. He he's gonna miss out on the deal of a lifetime.
Then he's gonna get the deal of a lifetime, which I'll explain to you in a minute.
He's willing to move his entire life for his biggest deal. This is what I meant about
Even after he's a f a wealthy man.
What his comfort, where he wants to be, what he'd rather be doing.
If it's the for the betterment of his company.
We'll also see that it's hard to overpay for a truly great business.
Remember what Charlie Munger said we re when he's analyzing the success of Berkshire Hatway, looking back, he's like, Oh, we really made the money.
out of the high quality businesses.
So I absolutely love this part'cause he's talking about missing out on the deal of a lifetime and then getting the deal of a lifetime.
This is great.
I have made more than a few business mistakes during my career.
Some were whoppers.
In nineteen thirty two, he had the opportunity to bid
On the Iraqi
Oil.
Concession.
We were close to reaching an agreement that would have given my companies the right to explore and drill for oil over a vast area.
The initial cost
would have been minimal.
A matter of some tens of thousands of dollars.
But there was an abrupt and disastrous break.
In US crude oil prices.
The great East Texas oil fields

And crude.
So the price accrued.
craters and it goes down to ten cents a barrel.
This was a full on
Financial panic. I was reluctant to expand
into the Middle East under these conditions. Think about this. This is why again
I guess so hyped up reading the stuff because
It's one thing to know what the right thing to do is. It's another thing to have the the courage and and to the the temperament to do so. He knew
The time was to expand.
We cannot just stay oil explorers forever. We gotta vertically integrate.
There's a big financial crash.
We can pick up, you know, stock for one twentieth what we could. We have to buy now.
Two years later, same situation here.
This is tens of thousands of dollars.
To get for the opportunity to drill in Iraq.
But I didn't do it because I was scared because it was of other financial panic. This not just an overall financial panic.
With the Great Depression when it finally depended within my industry.
I was reluctant to expand into the Middle East under these conditions.
And ordered my agents to break off the concession.
negociation it is impossible
To estimate how much revenue
The Getty company lost
Because of my decision.
That is nineteen thirty two. It's gonna take him almost
What seventeen years
To get another shot.
at fixing that mistake and this time.
at a gigantic cost. But again, it's a kind of a weird thing about this this game we're playing.
It's truly hard.
It sounds so silly to say it.
But it's truly hard to overpay for a truly
Great.
Business.
I realized it was imperative.
That my companies obtain a foothold.
In the oil rich Middle East.
Seventeen years later.
Most of
the giant corporations that had many times the financial resources that Getty had at this point had already got all of these great concessions. There was one very significant area that had been passed over.
And that was the neutral zone. This zone that I've already described, it's twenty four hundred
Square mile.
In between
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
So he's like, Oh, this might be an opportunity to make up for my mistake that I made in nineteen thirty two. So he sensed the this is the biggest opportunity of his life.
He sends the geologist.
out to look at it to neutral zone.
And he gets back, he says, He sent me this terse cable.
It is three words.
Structures indicate oil.
I absolutely love that.
Are we are you and I confused at what what what that message is meant how it's that message is meant to be interpreted?
For J Paul Getty? No.
Structures indicate
Oil.
Sign the damn deal.
And this deal is going to be really expensive. And what I love is everybody around Getty saying, Oh, he he lost it, paid too much.
This guy's an idiot, he doesn't know what he's doing.
Uh I'm just gonna give you a little bit of like overview of the deal.
He had to pay the Saudi Arabian government an immediate cash ten point five million dollars.
We have to pay them a million dollars a year.
and a fifty five percent per barrel royalty on all oil produced.
We have to pay twenty five percent of our net profits to the Saudi Arabian government.
We have to build uh refinery and storage facilities in Saudi Arabia.
We have to deliver a hundred thousand gallons of gasoline and fifty thousand gallons of kerosene annually to the Saudi Arabian government.
We have to pay the salaries.
of Saudi government inspectors and other personnel.
We have to provide pension and retirement and insurance and other benefits for Saudi Arabian employees.
of the company.
And this is what I mean about it's hard to overpay for a truly great business. This deal makes him
one of, if not the richest private citizen in the world, by the standards of some oil companies operating in the Middle East, the terms were viewed as being too much.
They were called outrageous.
It was widely predicted that Paul Getty
has finally overreached and he'll lose his shirt in the Middle East.
When in fact the exact
Opposite.
The exact opposite.
Happened.
And so with this expansion of the Getty Empire at the same time, he is trying to get
His son's involved.
in the family business.
as his dad got him involved.
And this desire ends in tragedy.
To the point where he has to ask himself the question, Did I cause the pressure that killed my son?
And I think the way to start this is a conversation that J Paul Getty is having with
Winston Churchill's son Randolph.
And Randolph is telling J Paul Getty that he suffered handicaps and hardships in life because he was the son of a great and famous man.
And he says that no matter what I do, I will always be measured.
They'll they'll always measure the son's talent against those of his father.
And essentially his point is that even if he does achieve his own independent greatness, that he'll never can't possibly
Live up to his father, so they'll say that I wasn't good enough. So
Churchill, you know, I've read a bunch of books on him, done a bunch of episodes on him. He was pretty
Upset.
uh with with the way that Randolph lived his life. In fact I found a quote
That Churchill has
Uh on his son. It says your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me.
You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.
And what is fascinating about this is the contrast that Getty makes because
Throughout the first two decades of his own career.
Uh, he knew. He's like other oilmen are gonna measure my performance against that
Of my father
And it seems like Randolph kinda like
You know, had a little pity party.
I got upset about it and Getty just worked harder.
And my own guess is that one of Getty's
greatest regrets in life is the fact that, you know, he was the son of a great father, and I don't think
His
Kids would describe him as that.
Part of it's just like this fractured lifestyle he had, uh, five different wives, four different baby mamas, if I if I'm counting correctly.
Most of them are not living with them. Like think about how much
time Getty's dad spent with his son when they were growing up, Getty did not do the same.
And Getty talks about that. My father's influence and example were the principal forces that formed my nature and character.
Unfortunately, I had no like degree of influence and control
Over the lives of my own sons.
The reason for this was of course the failure of my marriages.
I had hoped and desired
Then my sons would enter the family business, eventually taking over for me just uh like I had taken over for my father.
I had a wish to perpetuate a dynasty.
I would experience many disappointments before learning that I could not predetermine their careers.
or the course of their lives.
So none of his sons
were interested. There was one son
that showed an interest in that worked in the family business.
And that was his son, George.
And so there's many times throughout the book where
He's just so excited to have a son that's interested in the same things.
That he's interested.
talks about in his
Uh, like the diary entries, oh, met with George today in London. We talked business for twelve straight hours. This went on and on.
And so he's gonna call his son's death an accident. Other people have described it as a suicide. I do not know which
Description is accurate.
All I know is that what they all agree on
That he drink
And he combined drinking with taking barbiates.
And so this is where he's talking about the fact that oh my God, did I cause the pressure that killed my son?
And so he gets
Call to the telephone.
And
He immediately knows something's wrong because he gets on the line and they said, I think you better brace yourself, Mr. Getty.
He is told
that George, his son, had a stroke and that he's unconscious
In a hospital. And then
It's updated and it says George died a few minutes ago.
And he is not alone when he takes the call, so we have a description of what happens. He says it's impossible for impossible
For me to recall much about my emotions or reactions.
My memories are vague and confused.
I am told that I sat for hours.
Staring into space saying nothing.
And I can only remember one thought.
That it was untrue.
That it was impossible.
I had always believed that my first son George would outlive me.
By at least thirty five years.
The next day I learn from the newspapers, television, and radio.
But they had refrained from telling me.
George had not died from a stroke.
But from the effects of a lethal combination of alcohol and barbituates.
One question will continue to gnaw at me.
To the end of my own days.
I remember the conversations I had.
With Randolph Churchill.
And I know that all too many businessmen and executives rely on a few evening drinks
And sometimes barbituates.
As a means of easing the tensions and pressures created by their work.
Is it possible?
That these were unduly greater for George because he strove too hard.
To live up to the images
Of his grandfather and me.
In other words, did I cause the pressure that killed my son?
Absolutely devastating. He experiences multiple
uh family tragedies.
His twelve year old son.
uh dies from complications of surgery.
He had survived having a tumor.
Uh taken out.
And then had a s like series of ongoing surgeries and died from complications of one.
one of his grandsons gets kidnapped and he's famous or infamous for like trying to negotiate with them. His whole is like I got fifteen other grandchildren, if I just keep
immediately, you know, paying out money.
I'm signaling to the world that if you want to make money, just kidnap one of my kids.
There there's entire books. I I ordered five different books on Getty.
One of which is dedicated to like what happens, like this danger of
You know, he says I I you know, I wanted to create a dynasty and much like the Kennedy family, the Kennedy family dynasty, because Joe Joseph Kennedy w had similar um
Instincts, desires.
There's just a lot of tragedy that happens there. So I'll read the book. I'm not sure if I'll make a a podcast on it.
If there is some lessons in there for you and I then I will, but this guilt is uh present. He mentions it multiple times. Uh uh he definitely had to live with doubt and and guilt over the role that he played in his son's lives.
And so moving on to another, I would say, tenet of his career is the fact that relationships run the world
He went out of his way.
when he's not working and I guess this is considered work as well, to build relationships.
with you know world class entrepreneurs.
He knew
Essentially every single U S president, nearly all the leaders of the countries in Europe and Middle East. But he did this intentionally. He does something that's very fascinating. I mean he talks about why it's so important. So he he sets this thing up which I which I mentioned called
The liaison center.
So he buys this
gigantic estate and it's a very old estate. I think it was first created in like the fifteen hundreds. And it's called Sutton Place. And if you Google Sutton Place Getty, you'll see it. It's
I think it sits on like a thousand acres. It's like seventy two different rooms.
It served as a de facto
corporate headquarters. And so he would invite all the people he wanted to build relationships with.
They could work out of it, they could stay for days.
And he says why.
He says the liaison center would provide an easy, relaxed atmosphere and pleasant surroundings in which getty executives and businessmen from all over the world.

Exchange views and ideas.
Yet conduct no formal business.
Naturally.
Plans and programs could and probably would
grow out of such meetings.
And there are many such examples in the book where
J. Paul Getty does this in his own life, and so he knows it's valuable. And I just want to give you one example, and I already mentioned his very close
And he says during the nineteen fifties, Aristotle Onassus and I formed a close
Friendship and association.
In several business ventures displays a role.
Because as he continues to expand
And now his empire is essentially at almost near its zenith.
He's gonna need to hammer out a deal with Onassus that Onassus would not offer to other people that weren't
His friend.
Relationships run the world.
Aristotle Anassis had obtained what amounted to a monopoly.
on tanker transportation of all oil produced in Saudi Arabia.
The oil companies were up in arms.
For they had their own taker fleets.
or tankers under charter.
The Getty interests were in the middle of a large scale tanker construction program.
In anticipation of the neutral zone production.
An Onassus monopoly.
Would wreak havoc.
With those programs.
and with much other getty company planning.
But Ari and I were friends.
There was a bond of mutual trust and confidence between us.
As always, when the two of us sat down and talked,
Obstacles
We're quickly
Ironed.
Out.
Our conversation ended successfully.
And with a handshake.
Which for Arizona.
constituted an ironclad agreement.
As can be gathered, these meetings with Arionassis
had far reaching consequences.
And so by the nineteen fifties he is a billionaire, a legit
billionaire. That's what they call him. And he's talking it towards the end of the book.
Like what he's reflecting back as his life on his life as an eighty third old man, like what
Actually drove me.
And I think this series of reflections is a perfect place to close.
He says the billionaire.
I harbored no desire to be the world's richest man.
Not at any time in my life.
I have gone this far on this particular path.
There is no reason
Why I should not go further and see where it leads.
It may well be that I will learn something from it myself.
I made my first million dollars quickly.
Almost overnight.
I was stunned at the realization that I had so much.
I believed it was all the money I could ever use or need.
And I stopped working entirely.
I can face myself squarely in the privacy of my study.
Late at night.
And say.
That it was not greed.
Or any desire for more money.
That caused me to come out of retirement at the age of twenty six and begin working again.
I look back over the years and search my memory.
And my conscience.
For the reasons that motivated me.
I recall the elements of
Clearly.
The challenge inherent in the search for oil
Was a powerful factor.
As was the sense of responsibility I felt towards my father.
In the business that he had created and built.
What followed was a constant source of astonishment to me.
If I can claim personal credit
For having made the best of my advantages.
It is by likening myself to a tennis player.
Once into the game.
I did my damnedest.
To be competitive.
I always sought to return the ball.
No matter from which direction
Or with what velocity.
It came into my side of the court.
I always saw it.
To return.
The ball.
That is a great summary of why he kept getting after it. The challenge inherent in it.
The continuation of his hero, his father's life's work.
And then Getty's inner.
Competitive drive.
I really enjoyed the book. I hope you read it. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player or available at founderspodcast.com.
You will be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and fifty two books down.
One thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon.
One of the things I loved about this book was how Getty repeated that he made it a priority to learn from history. If you really think about it.
What Getty learned.
about how Rockefeller built his oil company wound up being worth billions.
when Getty but was building his own
oil company.
Into this constant reading that he mentions and this stu this love of history.
I think he Getty understood the truth.
in what Charlie Munger said that learning from history is a form of leverage. I think that is why so many
Char m Charlie just puts it to the best. It's like why so many of the people that you and I study on the podcast
They just spend so much time learning from the great people that came before them. Getty obviously included in that now.
Learning from history is a form of leverage and I built a tool that actually gives you
The superpower to do this on demand. It is called Founders Notes. Founders Notes
Started out as the internal tool. I built this for myself.
To keep track of all my notes.
On a highlight.
All my transcripts for every episode that I've ever made.
Everything that I've ever used to make the podcast is now in one searchable database.
And by searching this database it actually gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge
Of history's greatest entrepreneurs.
And use it when you need it.
Existing subscribers and founders' notes have been using it to make decisions inside their company. They've been using it to prepare for client meetings. They've been using it to prepare for board meetings. They've been using it to find ideas on hiring, marketing, leadership, recruiting, anytime.
That you hear me reference a past founder.
or a past idea on that podcast, that ability comes from me searching founders notes. So what you were about to hear is a demo of me using founders notes, included
with Founders Notes is a private podcast feed. There's actually these
Fifty short episodes.
waiting for you there. I am going to play
One of those short episodes now.
I was asked
How did history's greatest founders think about hiring?
What strategies did they use to hire?
All I did was a keyword search in Founders Notes to answer this question. It is a perfect demo of how valuable a subscription to Founders Notes is. If you want to have the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of His Greatest Founders on Demand.
you can get access to
by going to foundersnotes.com. That is founders with an S, just like the podcast.
Founders Notes dot com
I wanna start out first with
Why this is so important?
There's actually this book that came out in like nineteen ninety seven. It's uh called In the Company Giants. I think it's episode two oh eight of Founders.
It's two Stanford NBA students, if I remember correctly.
and they're interviewing a bunch of technology company founders. And
In there, Steve Jobs is one of'em. This is, you know, right be I think even before he came back to Apple.
And
they were talking about, Well, yeah, we know it's important to hire, but in a typical startup, a manager or a founder may not always have time to spend
Recruiting other people.
And
st I I first read this this Steve's answer to this, you know, I don't know, two years ago and I never forgot it. I think it's excellent. I think it sets up
Why
uh this question's so important and you should really be spending especially in the early days like
Basically all your time doing this.
Uh, in a typical startup manager may not always have the time to spend recruiting other people, then Steve jumps in. I disagree totally.
I think it's the most important job.
Assume you're by yourself in a startup and you want a partner.
You take a lot of time finding a partner, right? He would be half of your company. I'm gonna pause there.
This idea of looking at each new hire as a percentage of the company is genius.
Why should you take any less time finding a third?
Or a fourth of your company.
Or a fifth of your company.
When you're in a startup.
The first ten people will determine
Whether the company succeeds or not.
Each is ten percent of the company.
So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all a players?
If three.
Three of the ten.
Uh we're not so great.
Why would you start a company where thirty percent of your people are not so great?
A small company
Depends on great people.
Much more than a big company.
Does. Okay, so
To answer this question.
The advantage that um
That
I have making founders and that you have as as a byproduct of listening to founders.
is not only that I've read you know three hundred something biographies of entrepreneurs now, but I have all of my notes and highlights stored in my ReadWise app.
And that means I can search for any topic. I can look at the past highlights of books.
Or I could search for keywords. So what I did is
First o of all, like what I've started to do with these AMA um questions is I read them.
decide which ones I'm gonna do next and then think about it for a few days.
I don't put any I just literally that m that I know that's the next question.
Just let my brain work on it in the background for a few days.
And then I'll go through
And start searching all my notes. And so that's what I did here.
And so there's a bunch of, you know, I don't have I may have like ten or fifteen different founders talking about hiring.
The first idea is the most obvious, but I think
probably works best when you're already established.
So Steve Jobs is talking about hey, you know, the great way to f to hire is
Just fine great work.
And find the people
That did that and then try to hire them.
When you're Steve Jobs
That's a lot easier. Right. Than if you're just somebody that doesn't have reputation, maybe don't have resources.
Maybe your company's rather w uh new or not as well known.
David Ogie, I just did confessions of an advertising man.
couple episodes ago, I think three oh six or something like that. Three oh seven.
And
He did the same thing.
But he's David Ogy at that point. So he would find he'd go through magazines, find great advertising, great copyright.
And he'd write the person a letter.
And then set up a phone call.
And he says he wouldn't he was so well known and you know, he's one of the best in his field.
That he wouldn't even have to offer a job.
Just the conversation, then the person would the the
He'd want to hire the person, never mention it, and the person would apply to him.
Um, and so again, I think if you can do that
Then of course it's
Straightforward. Fine for somebody who does great work.
Usually you can do this. I actually have a friend of I can't say who it is. He's doing this right now, actually.
Um, I have a friend that's really good at doing this. He's finding people that do great stuff on the internet and then just cold
Yeah. Call DMing them. And then
Getting convincing them to work on things.
And
That usually works, especially with people like younger people earlier in the career.
There's a bunch of different ways to think about this and a bunch of different ways to prioritize. So
The first thing that that c that came to mind that I found surprising is you read any biography on Rockefeller.
And he had a couple ideas where
He felt
The optimization.
you know, table stakes that you're intelligent and you're driven and you're hard working, right? We don't even have like if you're listening to this, you already know that.
But he prioritized hiring people.
With social skills.
And so this is what he said, the ability to deal with people
Is as purchasable.
A commodity as sugar or coffee.
And I pay for I pay more for that ability.
than any other under the sun.
There's a two the second part to this, though.
And this is also works well if you have access to more resources.
He Rockefeller would hire people as he found.
As he found talented people, not as he needed them. It's not like okay, standard oil has
Six open spots. Let's go find six candidates, right?
He'd come across what he considered a talented person. He didn't even matter if he didn't know what they were gonna do. He's like, I'm just gonna stack his team.
And if you really think about the the his partners of San It Oil.
He essentially built a company.
An executive team of
Founders.
Of course.
'Cause he was buying up all their companies. So it's very rare, but
Um, there's a line from Titan I wanna read to you. Taking for granted the growth of his empire
He hired talented people as found.
Not as needed.
And then I found another idea.
in the hiring, like the actual interview process.
So there's this guy named Van Ever Bush.
I did two episodes on him, I think it's two seventy and two seventy one. He is the most important American ever.
uh in history uh in in terms of
Connecting the scientific field, private enterprise, and the government.
The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Van Ever Bush. Van Ever Bush uh is like the force gump of this historical period. He is involved in everything.
From the Manhattan Project.
to discovering like a young Claude Shannon to building
uh a mechanical computer, like this guy literally has done he just he pops up in these books over and over again. If you were reading
about American business history during World War II and post World War II, you are going to come across the name Van Ever Bush over and over again.
Uh, I read his fantastic
autobiography called Pieces of the Action.
And I came across this weird highlight.
And so this is his brilliant and unusual job interview process.
And so he's talking about this organization he's running called Amrad.
At Amrod, I hired a young physicist.
From Texas named CG Smith.
The way I hired him is interesting.
An interview of that sort is always likely to be
on on an artificial basis and somewhat embarrassing.
So I discussed with him a technical
On which I was then genuinely puzzled.
The next day he came in with a sol with a neat solution.
And I hired him at once.
Here's another idea. This is from Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell's the founder of Atari, founder of Chucky Cheese.
And Steve Jobs mentor. He hired Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs was like nineteen at Atari.
Hm.
would ask people their reading habits in interviews. This is why.
Uh one of the best ways c his whole thing was he wanted to build a
all of his companies w laid on a foundation of creative people. So that's what he's looking for. He's like, I need creative people.
One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question, What books do you like?
I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits.
Actually which
Books people read is not as important as the simple fact that they read it all.
I've known many talented engineers who hated science fiction but loved
Say books on bird watching.
A blatant but often accurate generalization. People who are curious and passionate read
People who are apathetic and indifferent don't
I remember w that that's such a great line, and I obviously agree with it.
I remember one
I'm going to read it again. A blatant but often
Accurate generalization.
People who are curious and passionate read, people who are apathetic and indifferent don't.
I remember one particular woman who during an interview told me that she had read
Every book that I had read.
So I started mentioning books I hadn't read and she had read those too.
I didn't know.
How someone in her late twenties found
That time.
This much time to read too much.
But I was impressed I was so impressed that I hired her right there and assigned her
to international marketing.
Which is having problems.
This is why. This is why I'm reading this whole section to you.
A job with a lot of moving parts.
benefits from a brain that has a lot of moving parts.
It wouldn't be possible to have read that many books.
Without such a brain. So do you see what I mean? Like
We start with
Steve Jobs saying this is the most important thing that you your role as the leader of the company and the founder to do, right?
And you are in
It's so important to study and this is why I'm glad this this question exists and why I'm glad that I've I took the time and I had like the foresight to like, hey, I should really
Organized my thoughts and notes.'Cause there's no way
I would have remembered all this.
without being being able to search my read wise, right? But you have Rockefeller saying, This is what's important to me.
You have
Bush saying this is how I hire.
Now you have Nolan Bush now.
Saying well
Here's another weird thing that I learned.
Um, let me go through uh what Warren Buffett says about this. So this is about the quality. One thing that is consistent
Whether it's Jobs, Buffett, Bezos.
uh Peter Thiel this just pops up over and over again.
they talk about the importance of trying to find people that that are better than you.
the the hiring bar constantly
has to increase. Now obviously the larger the company gets, that's impossible.
Uh, Steve Jobs has this great quote.
Where he's like, you know, Pixar was the first time I see I saw an entire team.
Entire company of A players.
But they had four hundred players. They had four hundred
Team members.
He's like at the time Apple had three thousand. It's like it's impossible to have three thousand A players. So there is some
Number
that your company may grow to, where it's just you're just not.
You're not gonna have thousands of A players.
In my argument, I don't even know if you get a four hundred. I guess y I mean, I'll take Steve's word for it on there and Pixar
definitely produce great products, but it's probably a lot lower than that as well.
So Warren Buffett would tell you to use
David Ogies.
Hiring philosophy.
And so Warren said, Charlie and I know
That the right players will make almost any team manager look good.
Again, that is why it's the most important function of the founder.
maybe directly next to the product.
Right above the product actually,'cause those are the people building your product.
We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogie and Mather's founding genius, David Ogie.
This is what Ogby said. If each of us hires people who are small smaller than we are.
We shall become a company of George.
But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are.
We shall become a company of giants.
David Uh Jeff Bezos rather, used a variation of Ogee's idea too.
Jeff used to say in Amazon every time we hire someone.
He or she should raise the bar for the next hire.
So that the overall talent pool
is always improving. They talk about this idea on Amazon.
Where?
The the the future hires that we do should be so good.
that if you had applied for the job you already have at Amazon, you wouldn't get in.
That's a very interesting idea.
Take your time with recruiting.
Take your time with hiring.
There's this great book on the history of
PayPal.
It's written actually I've I've recently become friends with the author. His name's Jimmy Sony.
Um
And this is in his book.
The the most fascinating thing that I found was that PayPal prioritized speed.
So from the time they're they're founded to the time they sell to eBay?
It's like four years.
Jimmy spent more time researching the book than than fo he spent six years researching the book.
I always tease him'cause like you took longer on a book than they took to start and sell their company.
It just speaks to like the quality he's trying to do. But
tha as a byproduct of that, like obviously they move fast, but they prioritize speed over everything else except
In one area.
Recruiting.
Max Ludchin kept the bar for talent exceedingly high, even if that came at the expense of speedy sa staffing.
Max kept repeating.
A's higher A's, Bs higher C's.
So the first B
You hire takes the whole company down. Let's read that again.
A players hire A players, B players hire C players, so the first B player you hire takes the whole company down.
Uh additionally the team the company leaders mandated that all prospects here's another idea for you.
All prospects must meet every single member of the team.
Now the next one is the most bizarre.
It makes sense.
If you study I I did this three part on Larry Ellison, three part series on Larry Ellison. I should read those books again.
'Cause the the podcast is like fifty times bigger.
Then.
than when I uh publish those episodes. And he's just
It's crazy.
So he would hire
Based
on the confidence the self confidence level of of the candidate. Listen to this.
I have tears in my eyes. I don't know why I'm laughing.
Okay.
'Cause this is it.
You read about Larry Ellison and
He's one of these people it's like really easy to interface with.

Yeah.
You just know exactly who he is and what's important to him. That's why I think it's so funny.
Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest.
New college graduates.
When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, Are you the smartest person you know?
And if they said yes, they would prepare them.
If they said no.
They would say who is
And they would go hire that guy instead.
I don't know if you got the smartest people that way, but you definitely got the most arrogant.
Ellison, and this is why.
The personality of the founder is largely the culture of the company.
Apple is Steve Jobs.
Apple's just Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives.
Right. I was just t texting a a founder friend of mine.
Uh, he listens to the podcast. I actually met him through the podcast.
And he's going through this like
uh process of self discovery. Like he's already started a bunch of companies that are really successful, but he's like
I think I'm more of this type of founder than the other type of founder.
And that's good that he's doing that because he's he's
Hopefully his next mission is like his life's mission, you know?
And you can't get your life's mission unless you d you figure out who you are.
Ellison knew who he was.
Ellison's swaggering combative style became a part of the company's identity. This arrogant culture had a lot to do with Oracle's success.
Here's another odd idea for you.
Izzy Sharp, the founder of Four Seasons, actually could figure it out that in his business, which was hotels, right?
that hiring could hiring the right p person
could actually be a form of distribution for his hotel.
He gave me the idea.
'Cause of what? What do we know? What do you and I know in our bones?
That history's greatest founders all read biographies.
They all read biographies of people that came before them and took ideas from them.
Izzy Sharp is trying to build four seasons. What do you think he did? He picked up a biography of Cesar Ritz.
The guy that it Rith Carlton is named after the great arguably the greatest hotelier of all time.
And when he realized like oh shit.
Rits
He uh he says, uh remembering that Cesar Ritz made his hotels world famous by hiring some of the foremost chefs, we decided to do something similar. So what is he talking about? Caesar Ritz.
went out and partnered with August Escafier.
What Caesar Rich was h to hotel to building hotels.
August Escafier was to French cooking. And so what happened is you partnered with world famous chefs.
People come into your restaurant.
That's in the hotel.
Because the world famous chef and now they know about your hotel that leads to more ga that me leads to more activity in your restaurant that you own, but also leads to more brand recognition of your hotel. And then by as a byproduct of that, more people staying at the hotel.
So
Hiring as a form of distribution. This is fascinating.
That is a fascinating idea.
Okay, here's the problem.
You can
Identify great people.
Right.
Maybe they even want to come work. Like you've identified them.
you've sold them, hey, uh this is what this is our mission, this is what we're sh we're doing.
And yet
humans have have complicated lives.
They have spouses, they have kids, they have
A reason maybe they can't move across the country.
to work for you, even though they want to.
So
There's a problem solving element that you see in these books.
On
you have to solve like you've already identified the person.
You've recruited them. They can't go for some other reason. Okay. Well
The great founders are not gonna take no for an answer.
I read in um
in this book called Lift Off, which is about the first six years of SpaceX, this is what Elon Musk did.
They had anticipated his friend's issue, having convinced Mus they needed to bring this brilliant young engine from Turkey on board.
It became a matter of solving the problem. His wife had a job in San Francisco.
She would need one in Los Angeles, right? Cause that's where SpaceX is at the time.
They're these are solvable problems, and Elon's better at solving problems than almost anyone else.
Must therefore came into his job interview prepared.
About halfway through Mus told the guy
That he wants to hire.
So I heard you don't want to move to LA.
And one of the reasons is that your wife works for Google.
Well, I just talked to Larry and they're gonna transfer your wife down to LA, so what are you gonna do now?
To solve this problem.
Musk had called his friend Larry Page, the co founder of Google.
The engineer sat in stunned silence for a moment, but then he replied, Given all that
He would come to work at SpaceX. That's really smart.
There is another idea.
When you're promoting.
Are you gonna promote from within or from without?
You know, that's
dependent on you, depending on what's going on.
I do think this is interesting though. There's a guy named Les Schwab.

this really uh valuable chain of uh t like tire companies in the Pacific Northwest.
Actually found out about him'cause Charlie Munger's like, hey
You should read this biography.
He didn't say it to me, personally.
He said it too uh in like one of the Berkshire meetings.
That

one of the smartest uh financial incentive structures of any company that that
Charlie Mugger had come across. So this is what Les Schwab did. He did not
Want to hire from
He didn't want to hire
other people from other companies'cause they might come with bad habits. He liked to train his own
Executives.
And so he says in our thirty four years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside.
Every single one of our
More than two hundred and fifty managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires.
They have all earned their management job by working up.
And then another thing, if you're gonna hire the best of the best in A players
They're eight players don't like to be micromanaged.
Um and so this came in Larry Miller's autobiography.
Called driven.
He owns like he owned like ninety three companies.
All throughout Utah, car dealerships, movie theaters, all kinds of crazy stuff, but he also owns the the the NBA team Utah Jazz.
And what was fascinating is he's trying to recruit Jerry Sloane as the coach at the pa at at the point. And Jerry Sloan would only take the job on one condition and I really like it.
I really like this idea. If you hire me, let me run the team in business, right? That's what you're hiring me for.
One of the best things we had ever done was hire Jerry Sloan as coach. At the time he said, I'm only gonna ask you for one thing.
If I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions. If you hire me, let me run the team slash
Business.
Here's another idea.
From
Thomas L uh Edison that I think is fascinating.
Really, th I th the way I think about a founder is like you're developing skills that you can't hire for.
you you're gonna hire for everything else.
But you shouldn't be hireable.
And Edison wasn't.
Edison expressing his views on the preeminent role of applied scientists, which that's what he considered himself.
Coin the expression I can hire mathematicians, but they can't hire me.
And so when I read that paragraph for the first time, the note I left myself was develop skills that you can't hire for.
Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable.
Uh Estee Lauder would give you advice that you need to hire people aligned with your thinking and values.
Hire the best people. This is vital. Hire people who think as you do and treat them well. In our business, they are to a top priority. So this idea is like
That seems kinda weird. Like hire people
Who think like
You.
There's obviously not one right way to build a business. I think the your business should be an expression of your personality and who are who are as a person at the core.
And so I think there is an
Art.
To the building.
Of your business.
And the reason he used the word art, I don't mean in like a hoity toody, you know, pretentious manner. That's not me at all. I don't even care about I don't art at all, really.
I mean that you're making decisions not just based on economics.
Like there are non economic
Important decisions based on how you're building your business. Like you could probably make more money doing a decision A.
But decision A is goes against who you are as a person.
Or you just don't like it, or it's just not as elegant or beautiful.
And so therefore you don't do it. So that's what I mean about you know, hire people who think it's you do.
And what for whatever reason when I read Essay Lauder say that, I was like, Okay, that there's like this art to what she's doing.
one thing that's gonna be helpful in recruiting.
Uh, this comes from Peter Teel. I think this is the book Zero to One.
understand that most companies don't even differentiate their pitches to potential recruits and to hiring. So therefore like they're just gonna bu as a byproduct of that, you're gonna w wind up with a lower overall talent base.
And so he says, What's wrong with valuable stock, smart people are pressing problems? Nothing.
But every company makes us these claims.
So they won't help you stand out. General and undifferentiated pitches to join your company. Don't say anything.
about why a recruit should join your company instead of money of instead of many others. So that idea of like your pitch
Your actual
He would tell you you're y you shouldn't be building a undifferentiated commodity business.
But
even above and beyond that. Like you're the the the mission that you're trying to engage everybody to join you in.
that pitch, that sale sale you're trying to make to potential recruit should be differentiated. Should not
If that person's applying to five other jobs.
There should not be like it's like
They may not like your mission, they may not like your pitch, but they shouldn't be able to compare it to anything else.
Uh another quote from Nolan Bushnell.
higher for passion and intensity. That's what he would do.
All right, that's what he did when he found Steve Jobs.
If there was a single characteristic to separate Steve Jobs from the massive employees, it was his passionate enthusiasm.
Steve had one full uh one speed.
Full blast.
This was the primary reason we hired him.
And one thing all these founders have in common is that he know how important hiring is.
And when something's important.
You do it.
Yourself.
This is again Elon Musk on hiring. He interviewed
The first three thousand employees at SpaceX.
That's how important it was.
One of Musk's most valuable skills was his ability to determine whether someone would fit his mold.
His people had to be brilliant.
They had to be hardworking and there could be no nonsense. There are a ton of phonies out there.
And not many who are the real deal, Must said of his approach to interviewing engineers.
I can usually tell within fifteen minutes and I can share
I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them. Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired.
through the first three thousand employees. It required late nights and weekends
But he felt it was important to get the right people for his company.
And then the close on this we started with Steve Jobs telling us
why it was so important and why should be a large part of how you spend your time.
And now we'll close with what you do after.
What do you do after you hire the person? This is what he says. It's not just recruiting.
after recruiting, it's building an environment that makes people feel they are surrounded by equally talented people.
And their work is bigger than they are.
the feeling that their work will have a tremendous influence
And as part of a strong
Clear.
Vision.
So that is the end to that twenty minute
mini episode. I just re listened to the whole thing.
And it it really does, I think it's a perfect explanation and illustration of why I think
Founders notes is so valuable'cause tha some of those books I haven't read
In five, six years.
And just
the ability to have a searchable database of all this
These ideas like this collected knowledge.
of some of History's greatest entrepreneurs to reference and then contextually apply to our own businesses.
It's nothing short of
Like it's magic. That's the really the way I think about it. I think it's a massive superpower. It gives me a massive superpower. I couldn't make the podcast without it.
I also think if you have access to it, it'll make your business better.
And so if you're already running a successful business, I highly recommend that you invest in a subscription.
And you can do that by going to founders notes dot com.