J. Paul Getty: The Richest Private Citizen in America

1. 0:00 – 2:31

   Getty's Last Words and the Book's Premise

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      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 to you 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 to you 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 is also writing it in the last year of his life. This book is over 50 years old. It gets published in 1976. 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 60 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 lar-- There's 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. It's very fun to read, actually. But

2. 2:31 – 4:33

   Sparrow to Eagle: Getty on Rockefeller and His Inheritance

   1. DSDavid Senra2:31

      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. Sr. 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. Sr. went into the oil business at a time when America's petroleum industry was in chaos. He brought order out of that chaos. Rockefeller Sr.'s monopolization saved the US oil industry from total disintegration. And so just because Getty doesn't think you should compare him to John D., I mean, for-- 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, a successful, a rela-relatively small but successful oil company. His dad had a successful oil company, and Getty, when, when his dad dies, Getty takes over his dad's oil company. You're like, "Oh, you got a huge head start in life." That's true by Getty's own admission. When he inherits and takes over his dad's company, it's worth fifteen million dollars in 1930. Twenty years later, that company is valued well over a billion dollars. It is J. Paul Getty that is responsible for that value creation from fifteen to well over a billion dollars. So I wanna go into--

3. 4:33 – 10:39

   George Getty's Oil Fever and Raising a Son in the Oil Fields

   1. DSDavid Senra4:33

      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 that 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 1903, and at [chuckles] he's perfect place, perfect time, because in 1903, 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 dad's first attempt in oil, in building an oil company, right? He's, 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 on the oil fields. This is [chuckles] 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 explo-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 15 years old when he's doing this. So I'm just gonna read this description of what's going on when he's 15 years old. "George Getty's business flourished and expanded during the next three years. When I was not yet 16, 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 roustabout. That's an oil field 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 roustabout's going wage, which was $3 a day for a 12-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 of his son's life. And, and J. Paul Getty got his full attention 'cause J. 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 a strict disciplinarian. So, uh, a few years after he starts working in the oil fields, I think he's around 16 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, "Okay, you wanna get bad grades? You wanna 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, regimented environment was good for me." His father also taught him the balance. He-- They were both voracious readers. So [chuckles] J. Paul Getty's, like, reading Napoleon when he's, like, 12 years old. But he, uh, 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. 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 11 years old, and he's observing all the stuff going on. He starts working in the fields when he's 15. 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 mentored 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 22, and he's gonna make a million dollars, and he's gonna retire at 24 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's my suggestion. There,

4. 10:39 – 14:42

   The 70/30 Deal, Early Failure, and Encouragement from Older Oilmen

   1. DSDavid Senra10:39

      I've built an oil business that's worth some millions of dollars. I am nearing the age of 60, 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 22. Come in and take over my business." He knows he's gonna be operating for many, many years, uh, still. He's not yet r- yet ready to retire. So he'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, his seat at the table reser- 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 y- 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 is not like his father, who, 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 themself. I think of Henry Ford, who idolized Thomas Edison at the time they meet. Henry Ford's unknown. He's a-- 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 wanna 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 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 22, 23 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. McFarlane. 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 experiment, it's almost at the very end, and he says, "I had nothing to show for my efforts as a wildcatter. 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 $500, starts drilling, and the well starts coming in at 700 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 10th or 110th 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 that one has beaten nature's incalculable odds by finding and capturing a most elusive prey."

5. 14:42 – 16:12

   Early Retirement at 24 and Unretiring

   1. DSDavid Senra14:42

      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 you, uh, think about all the mistakes you made when you were in your early 20s. 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, he's 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 seeing 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 were bringing in gushers. They were 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 unretired." And then we get another example of good guy dad. My... When he goes, talks to his dad about it, he's like, "I gotta get back in the game. Uh, 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

6. 16:12 – 17:43

   His Father's Death and Getty's Sense of Obligation

   1. DSDavid Senra16:12

      this section about his dad with his father's death. His father suffers a stroke when he's 75 years old, and this is how J. Paul Getty describes the impact that the death of his father had. Remember, he is writing this 45 years after his father dies. He 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 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 of all who knew him. 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. He says, "I was 37 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

7. 17:43 – 22:47

   Workaholic, Micromanager, Autocrat: How Getty Worked

   1. DSDavid Senra17:43

      his very early days in the oil industry. He's still like this as he's writing the book. So there's a handful of things I've tried to organize around specific topics because if you saw [chuckles] 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 would, would consider a micromanager. I was actually, uh, at dinner with two founder friends of mine, and we were talking about this idea where, like, micromanagement or being a micromanager 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 m- a micromanager. Third, if you know your business from A to Z, 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. J. 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 200 bus- different businesses. He's got this just relentless constant flow of information. He's got, uh, thousands of employees. And so he talks about it. He's like, "Listen, 12-hour workdays are common, and many stretch to 14 hours or more. A steady stream of telexes, cables, written reports, and letters of all kinds poured in from every conceivable corner of the globe. There were countless phone calls. There 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 83 years old, I am still an oil man. I am a wildcatting operator at heart." And several times throughout the book, he's trying to describe to the reader this misconception. A lot of people, 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 wanna build wealth for ourselves and our family. But he picks up on exactly... He's like 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 peoples whose mind and energies 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 applies 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 is, like, dedicated." Remember, he's reading Napoleon when he's, like, 12 years old. Now he's 83 when he's talking to you and I. And so what pops into my mind? Think exactly the observation that, that Charlie Munger made. 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 [chuckles] when J. Paul Getty started that habit, habit, he didn't know he had a 70 young- 70-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 w- 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 was like, "Well, you pick your path. You figure out what is-- what ignites your soul. What do you actually wanna 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 work- with work, he speaks about why he never retired again, and he worked until the day he died. And he says, "I have been an active businessman for more than 60 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 micromanager. He's in the details, that even though he's, he's running this gigantic empire, he is actively involved. He is, uh, 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, interested. He's the exact same way. And

8. 22:47 – 28:15

   Extreme Ownership: Autocracy, 'The Buck Stops Here,' and the Air Conditioning Letters

   1. DSDavid Senra22:47

      so there's a great story I think will illustrate this [chuckles] that's told by his cousin. His cousin June is a close friend with, uh, FDR. FDR'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, and 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 independence 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 describes, like, the, in the most clearest and most succinct, uh, way possible is how Getty operated his business. He believed the leader of the company, the founder of the company, the CEO of the company, you have, you have to take extreme ownership. And he says, "Truman provided the clearest and most suce- 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 accepts direct Final responsibility, he makes full advance 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 wildcatter. But he, he talks about the fact that, you know, he's, he's on site. "I wanna 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 makes 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 faraway headquarters. And the oil men, the actual rou- roughnecks and roustabouts and wildcatters are on site. They just don't respect these, like, faraway suits in 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 field 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 30s when he's ta- th- this part of the story, he's in his 30s, and the decisions that his dad made, "Hey, let me bring my 11-year-old son out here. He'll observe. He'll learn through osmosis. He d-" Like, he'll ask questions, and then he's 15, 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? 15 years later? And so then, like, 200 pages later, 150 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 details. Many years later, he's already one of the richest people in the world, okay? He's-- There's these letters that are reprinted [chuckles] 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 this book 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 wanna 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 th- their business is in Saudi Arabia, and Southern California is way too far from the Middle East where his primary business is. He's also got businesses in, obviously, in, 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 wanna 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, a- again, it's one thing to say that you're into details. Another one to pay attention to how many days the AC's running at this museum that's, what? 5,000 miles [chuckles] away from you? And so I just wanna read this to you. "Air conditioning. I am not impressed with the argument that our art objects will be ruined if air conditioning is not available 168 hours per week. I seem to remember that air conditioning was invented only a few years ago and that all of our 18th century objects necessarily passed a great many [chuckles] 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 shall be used during the daytime only on those days which are exceptionally hot. We should have very little need for air conditioning."

9. 28:15 – 33:38

   Financial Discipline and the Traits of Great Entrepreneurs

   1. DSDavid Senra28:15

      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 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 Hearst ran his business and the way that he, that Getty ran his business. So he says, "I have always spent 95% or more of my money on my business," meaning reinvesting it into the business, okay? "While William Randolph Hearst was the opposite. He liked to live like a Roman emperor. Hearst's beas- beach house in Santa Monica cost $3 million. I was his next-door neighbor. My house cost a thou- $100,000." So think about that. They both live in Santa Monica at the time. Hearst's, and th- this is for his mistress, actually. So I don't even think William Randolph Hearst lived there most of the time. So that house costs three million. I live next door. I paid $100,000 for my house. This is a good illustration of the differences in our attitudes towards money. In 1935, when this is taking place, when these neighbors next to Hearst's mistress. "In 1935, I was one-third as rich as Hearst, and by 1950, I was twice as rich." So again, advice for entrepreneurs, don't be like Hearst. 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 wanna read this section to you 'cause I absolutely loved it. He's really good friends with Aristotle Onassis, 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 l- how their lives intersected, and how many, you know, how similar they were to each other. "I have 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. Aristotle 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 was always a 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 meetings 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-wives or his first wife, Tino Onassis, said this about Aristotle. Ari is every- what everybody called him. Ari can't think of anything, on anything but a huge scale. If he had been an artist instead of a businessman, he would paint nothing but immense murals. This innate capacity to think on a large scale is one of the several characteristics 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 devoted their minds and energy to building productive enterprises over the long term. Remember both. Onassis could have re-retired we- decades before he did. They're not in it just for the money. If they were just in it for the money, they would've 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 Onassis. When Onassis 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 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 him that I haven't read yet. But I just pulled some highlights and notes. I reread them as I was thinking about-- I went through Founder's Notes and just started searching Onassis. And I found a highlight that I think explains exactly how he was able to do what Getty just described. He says, "Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pore over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York, looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study, and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates, and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each day."

10. 33:38 – 38:37

    Five Divorces: The Cost of Work Above All

    1. DSDavid Senra33:38

       And then before moving on from this section, he reiterates more traits that he admires in others, and 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 resilience, self-starting, and then self-restarting. And he talks freely over and over again. Look, 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 than 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, a little line in here, a little zinger though. Okay. He's like, they're jealous of all the time and preoccupation with business, yet none showed any visible aversion to sharing in the proceeds of that preoccupation. [chuckles] And him self-analyzing, just like, how can I be so great at business and so terrible at marriage? It goes on throughout the entire book, and I 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." And he talks about the-- he-- So here's the problem. He, he does some interesting things. Again, this is one of the, the, the bene-benefits of reading biographies and autobiographies, in, in my opinion, 'cause you have some of the smartest, most productive people to ever live, and you 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 are 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 interest 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 'cause 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 'cause 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 have 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 have 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 have 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 the 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."

11. 38:37 – 46:32

    Concentration and Buying During the Depression: The Tidewater Move

    1. DSDavid Senra38:37

       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 Edward Land that I pulled up. He concentrated ferociously on his quest. Let's do a quote from Getty's hero, John D. Rockefeller Sr. 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 is that, that 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. The first one happens in the 1930s. The second will happen in the late '40s, and then he'll reap the benefits in the, the mid-'50s. But it goes back to when his father dies. He takes over the company. It is valued around fifteen point five million dollars in 1930. 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, in the 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, you know, the high water mark 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 dri- 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, were 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 engaged in oil exploration and production. Their crude had to be sold to refineries or pipeline companies. I reasoned that with share prices being w- where they were, the time was ideal 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 it 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 Zemurray from the, the f- the book The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King. There was a great paragraph in that book where Sam Zemurray 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 barometric 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 Tidewater. Now, this is hilarious. Listen to what he says. Tidewater 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 loved this network of secret allies. So it says they actually belonged to the Standard Oil of New Jersey. Standard Oil of 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 that owns Tidewater, but some of the other own- owners are 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, he-- s- to visit. It's open to the public now. I think it's owned by the state of California. It really is this great illustration of this idea that you and I talk about all the time, mute the world and then build your own. Hearst 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 Hearst 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 s- still exists to this day. But at the time, Jay Hopkins works for John D. Rockefeller Jr. And so he's telling Getty what's going on. He's like, "Listen, Standard Oil 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 our holdings so widely that control of the company would be out of Getty's reach forever." The problem was that they never told John D. Rockefeller Jr. why they were doing this. And so now Rockefeller Jr. finds that he owns a bunch of shares to this Mission Corporation, and he's willing to share, to sell his rights to the Mission Corporation stock for $10 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, is like, "Yes, I wanna buy it," but he goes, "Hey, suppose that Jersey Standard's management hears that Rockefeller intends to sell. They'll try to talk him out of it." And Jay Hopkins responds to J. Paul Getty, and he says, "Not a chance. Rockefeller Jr. is aboard a train bound for Arizona. They can't 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 au-- 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. Jr.'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, and his business is going to unlock another opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime.

12. 46:32 – 52:47

    Missing Iraq and Winning the Neutral Zone

    1. DSDavid Senra46:32

       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, uh, this is the year 1948 to 1949. He says, "Getty Interest obtained the oil concession on Saudi Arabia's half interest in the 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 1954, 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, supertankers, 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 wanna 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, a wealthy man. He's willing to subjugate his, 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 Hathaway, looking back, he's like, "Oh, we really made the money out of the high-quality businesses." So I absolutely love this part because 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 1932, 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 had been opened up, and crude," so the price of crude craters, and it goes down to 10 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 get so hyped up reading this 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, stocks 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, but a financial panic within my industry. I was reluctant to expand into the Middle East under these conditions and ordered my agents to break off the concession negotiations. It is impossible to estimate how much revenue the Getty company lost because of my decision. That is 1932. 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 2,400, uh, 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 1932." So he sends... Th- th- this is the biggest opportunity of his life. He sends the geologist out to look at, to the 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, [chuckles] what, what that message is meant to... How is m- 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 of $10.5 million. We have to pay them a million dollars a year and a 55% per barrel royalty on all oil produced. We have to pay 25% of our net profits to the Saudi Arabian government. We have to build a refinery and storage facilities in Saudi Arabia. We have to deliver 100,000 gallons of gasoline and 50,000 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.

13. 52:47 – 58:44

    Family Tragedy: Sons, Dynasty, and Guilt

    1. DSDavid Senra52:47

       And so with this expansion of the Getty empire, at the same time, he is trying to get his sons 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 n- even if he does achieve his own independent greatness, that he'll never... he 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, um, 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 oil men are gonna measure my performance against that of my father." And it seems like Randolph kinda, like, you know, had a little pity party and 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. And part of it is 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 him. 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 that 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 and 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 12 straight hours." Just 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 e- they all agree on, that he drank and he combined drinking with taking barbiturates. 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 called 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 35 years. The next day I learned from the newspapers, television, and radio what they had refrained from telling me. George had not died from a stroke, but from the effects of a lethal combination of alcohol and barbiturates. 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 barbiturates, 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 12-year-old son, uh, dies from complications of a 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 point is, like, "I got 15 other grandchildren. If I just keep immediately, you know, paying out money, I'm signaling to the world that if you wanna make money, just kidnap one of my kids." There's, 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, 'cause Joe- Joseph Kennedy had similar, um, instincts or 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. Uh, he mentions it multiple times. Uh, he definitely had to live with doubt and, and guilt over the role that he played in his sons' lives.

14. 58:44 – 1:01:39

    Relationships Run the World: Sutton Place and Onassis

    1. DSDavid Senra58:44

       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 US 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, um, and 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 was a, a very old estate. I think it was first created in, like, the 1500s, 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, 1,000 acres. It's, like, 72 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 could meet, 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 wanna give you one example, and I already mentioned his very close friendship with Aristotle Onassis. And he says, "During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed a close friendship and association in several business ventures." This plays 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 Onassis that Onassis would not offer to other people that weren't his friend. Relationships run the world. "Aristotle Onassis 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 tanker 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 Onassis 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 were quickly ironed out." Our conversation ended successfully and with a handshake, which for Ari constituted an ironclad agreement. As can be gathered, these meetings with Ari Onassis had far-reaching consequences. And so by the 1950s, he is a billionaire, a legit billionaire, and that's what they call him, and he's talking towards the end of the book. Like what-- He's reflecting back as his life, on his life as an eighty-three-year-old man. Like what actually drove

15. 1:01:39 – 1:03:46

    Getty's Reflections: The Billionaire and the Tennis Player

    1. DSDavid Senra1:01:39

       me? And I think this series of reflections is the 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 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 sought 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'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and fifty-two books down, one thousand to go.

Episode duration: 1:03:46