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Conrad Hilton

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2019-04-14

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2019-04-14

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1. “If I only had just a little of whatever it is Nikki had that made his life such a good time for him, Conrad told his attorney Myron, I think maybe I would have been happier. When Myron commented that Conrad didn't seem to be particularly unhappy, he shrugged his shoulders and said Well, it's too late now to worry about it, but I have to confess I do wish I'd had more fun. If you don't mind me saying so, maybe even some more romance. Does that make me sound like an old fool? he asked Myron. Myron smiled at him. Yes, it does, he told Conrad. An old fool, just like the rest of us.”

   2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Founders podcasts at founders podcast on Twitter or email me or do whatever you want. But I just want to close here with the regrets. And this is Conrad at 62 years old. Now it's 62 when he looked back on his life, he was of course proud of all his business achievements, but he did have certain regrets. He realized that with all he had accomplished he had never had one of the most cherished things that a life had to offer fun. His greatest source of entertainment had always been trafficking in big business, making deals, courting some grand hotel, and finally acquiring her and making her his own.”

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3. “And he's married to Zarzakabor at the time. She's like 30 years younger than him. He said this was one of the dumbest things he ever did in his life. But he said, Conrad fully understood that Zaja enjoyed spending money. And he certainly had a lot of it to spend. The question for him wasn't whether or not he could afford to subsidize her extravagant taste. It was whether or not it made sense to him. He quickly realized that Zaja didn't understand the value of money. He had worked hard for his wealth and he continued to work for it. What did she do to earn a living? Nothing, really.”

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4. “I'm not quite ready for that one yet. Long before the term multitasking became part of our lexicon, it epitomized Hilton's octopus-like juggling act, keeping several projects going at the same time. So he fantasized about owning the word fantasize. He would say he dreamed. He talked about a lot to his sons about the importance of dreaming, having dreams, and then going about and trying to realize those dreams. Ward off a story he felt was the finest hotel in the world. And I think it took him like two decades till he finally owned it. But I like this idea. He's like, I'm going to buy this because it's a big luxury hotel. It's not the best in the world, but it's one of the best in the world. And it's going to serve as practice for when I actually achieve my dreams. I don't know. I find that to be fascinating that he used that term. Okay. Okay, so this is Conrad's philosophy on money, which I found really interesting.”

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5. “It's Kobe Bryant's book, Mamba Mentality, I think the way he was dedicated to the practice aspect of his craft, physical training aspect of his craft, all the stuff that was not the actual games and the level of dedication that he put into that, I think that can make you successful on any domain. It just happened he chose basketball, but you could choose a company, you could choose whatever it is that you want to do. But I particularly like the idea that Conrad looked at things like practice. So now skipping ahead, when Hilton acquired the 1012 room Roosevelt Hotel in the spring of 1943 and announced the purchase to a close friend, his friend was only able to muster one word. Why? Because it's a fine hotel and because I've got to practice, responded Conrad. Practice for what? For the Waldorf, Conrad said.”

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6. “Instinct, call it what you will, but I recognize that little voice we all have in our heads as being the answer to our prayers. You have to be willing to listen and then make decisions based on what the voice is telling you. A major problem, as I see it anyway, he continued, is that many of us have not worked to cultivate that certain inner voice. We make snap decisions. Many of us don't even think. We just react to situations at hand. I have found that this isn't the way. So I think that's a hugely important idea. And I like how he says, listen, I call it God. I call it prayer. You might call it meditation. You might call it instinct, whatever it is. Just like that inner voice, that's what I call it. Like, you know what it is that you should be doing. You know, you might lie to yourself and make excuses for why you can't do it.”

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7. “Okay, so here's a little bit on his personality and then advice on business decision making from Conrad. If someone were to have told him that he couldn't purchase a luxury hotel in which he was emotionally invested, he would become all the more determined to make that property his own. It was just the way he trafficked in the world. People thought a lot of things about him, none of which were opinions that mattered much to him. He had always lived his life on his own terms, which I think is extremely important. Throughout his lifetime, Conrad had often stated that his secret weapon in business was his close spiritual relationship to his God. He had made each of his major hotel decisions only after a great deal of prayerful deliberation. He fervently believed he would be guided in the right direction if he simply asked for such guidance. It's not enough to just pray, he once observed. You have to be able to listen. Call it intuition or call it guidance.”

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8. “So He just kind of accepted it. So this is the end result of his divorce. Conrad Hilton was never quite the same after the divorce. He was a proud man whose ego had been crushed by the dissolution of his marriage. So now he was a proud person individually, but he's also knew that in the eyes of God, he was a disappointment”

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9. “I shouldn't say a lot of time. Conrad kind of looks out after him with his own son. And you know what's weird too? Like after they get divorced, Conrad gets custody of his two older sons, Nikki, the firstborn and Baron II, but then lets Eric live with Mac and Mary. That kind of insinuates that he kind of knows. Anyways, Mary had enough. She announced that if Conrad didn't file for divorce, she would have to do it. For his marriage to end a divorce proved a torturous proposition for a man who by his own admission started every single day on his knees in church. He would make no mention of the possibility of Mary's indiscretion anywhere in his memoir, choosing instead to keep his and her dignity intact. So that's another thing. He's a very formal person. So even if he didn't want to, like, he was rather famous at the time, he's not going to have a custody fight. There was no really way to test paternity, according to the book. I haven't looked into the accuracy of those claims, but I think Francesca was born in like the 40s.”

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10. “But he knows it's not his. But again, he considers it one of his children. So that's, I guess, a whole separate part of the story. But the reason I bring this up now is because there's a good chance Eric's not his son either. He never says anything like he does about Francesca explicitly saying, hey, no, this is not mine, but his wife's having affair. They're about to get divorced. He's never home and she winds up pregnant. A lot of people suspected that it's not his kid, but he never said anything about it. And he took care of him and Eric winds up working in his company too. And the guy Mac married divorces Conrad, marries Mac, and Mac dies from a heart attack at like 47. So at that time, Eric, I think, is a teenager. And so he spends a lot of time with...”

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11. “No time to stop off and see Mary or the baby, called everyone I could think of as a substitute banker. My time's running out. That was a really fascinating part of the book to me being able to see what he's writing to himself in his own diary in arguably the worst time of his life. And so later on in life, Conrad has a fourth daughter by Zha Zha Gabor, but he knows that daughter is not his because he had already been divorced from Zaja at that time and it had been like 18 months since they had sexual, what he calls sexual relations. And yet he didn't want to call her his daughter the whole time, but there's stuff in his will and notes that he writes to attorneys and so on and so forth where he's like, listen, I know this is not my daughter. He calls her his daughter. Him daddy.”

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12. “Like we're idolizing these people and we're not. We're learning from them and we're learning the good things and we're also learning. In a lot of cases what not to do. So I think if Conrad was alive today and he could talk to you directly, he would be like, he would say, hey, listen, I screwed this up. Invest, find the love of your life. He had kids. He had a strong relationship with them. But he severely missed a large part of what it is to be human. All right, so now the book's going to go a little bit back in timeline because we're going to talk about the Great Depression's effect on not only his business, but his marriage. And this is something because he was married. This is something he was very tormented him throughout his whole life. So before the end of the 1920s, he was well ahead of his goal of acquiring at least one hotel a year. So now we're going to list off. I'm just going to listen to telling you where they're at. I'm just going to tell you how many rooms he buys. So 100 rooms cost $400,000. 100 rooms.”

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13. “For not taking the time to develop relationships and realizing that, yeah, you could have, he literally had the largest hotel company in the world and he's depressed. So we're humans. We need more than just success. And I guess I bring that up because I think a lot of people think, oh, they're rich or all they're successful. Like, what do they have to complain about? But we see that's not true. I mean, the two examples that just came to mind right now while I was sitting here thinking about that passage is, I mean, look at the people who had tons of success in the world that killed themselves. The two that come to mind right now is Kate Spade, founder of Kate Spade, and Anthony Bourdain. And it's hard to find two more successful people and more loved people. And yet, because of internal struggles, they chose to end their own lives. So I don't know. It's just important to bring that up because I think that some people might see these books as”

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14. “They got married when he was, let's say, 80. Let me just say 87. He dies at 91. You know, I'm sure he wanted that love of his life much for a much larger point of his life. At least he did find it, though. But there's several parts of this book where Conrad is extremely upset at himself for how he...”

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15. “So he's in New York City around New Year's Eve checking out the hotel Pierre for a potential deal. And this scene I'm bringing you into is just like he's in a bar. It's New Year's Eve 1941. And he's depressed. And he says, because he was alone in a room full of happy strangers, this one somehow felt even more discouraging than the others. While he had previously done a lot with his life, all around him it was glaringly obvious that others had somehow done what he hadn't. They had forged genuine relationships with spouses and partners with whom they were now happily sharing their lives. Maybe none of them had his money, but they seemed to have much more. When he put his life under heavy scrutiny, he didn't like what he saw. If only he had been at home with his sons, perhaps he would have felt better about these things. So again, this is a paradox of people.”

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16. “And the reason he's doing this is because this is a goal of his that he harbored for many, many years. Making it big in New York was still a major goal of his. All of his success somehow seemed insignificant to him when he thought of the valuable real estate in New York and how much he wanted a piece of that action. Conrad could talk to almost anybody about almost anything. Though we count, and this is a little bit about his personality, I have switched gears here. Though he counted his friends many distinguished and important heads of state and governments, one of the great paradoxes of his personality was that he was fundamentally quite shy. I think he had friends for different purposes. He'd have a friend to play golf with, a friend to ride horses with, a friend to do various things with, play cards, that sort of thing. But he didn't have a lot of close friends. He was, to a large extent, a private man. Listen, everybody that we talk about.”

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17. “Okay, so this is, he's older, wiser, and more cautious. Now we're in the 1940s. So on December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 28th, Conrad went to New York at the behest of his friend Arnold Kirkaby, a good friend who was the founder of the Kircoe Hotel chain. He says, I've got this bug in my ear about the hotel Pierre, he told Conrad. What do you think about going into a little joint venture? Ordinarily, Conrad would not have been able to resist at least closely examining the possibility of acquiring another hotel, but at this particular time he thought it best to be prudent. Now, why is he saying that? Because America was just attacked. Clearly, there's going to be a war going on. So he says, with the country at war and the battleground now extending to America's own shores, no one knew quite what to expect. At the least, he suspected that vacation travel declined. Conrad agreed to do an inspection of the Fifth Avenue Hotel in order to gauge the possibility.”

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18. “In San Francisco, he gets for $275,000. And I think he has assumed some of the debt, but it costs $4.1 million to build. So you keep collecting properties like this when not only do they make income, but you're paying one-tenth of the price it costs to build them or 120th or whatever the number is, like that's how you accumulate wealth over a long period of time. So that's kind of how Conrad did at least. Okay, so now where are we at?”

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19. “So he survives the Great Depression. America got back on her feet, and as she did, Hilton's small empire also began to recover. Because he had so stubbornly refused to default on his many bills, he found his reputation greatly enhanced among creditors and future backers. They all wanted to sell to Conrad Hilton because he was the one who didn't declare bankruptcy. This was partly how he was able to acquire so many hotels in the future. So this theme keeps popping up in these books that it's so important not to quit because future opportunities compound. And if you give up now in year one or year two or year five, you don't know what those opportunities in year 20 look like. We saw this last week again with Henry Kaiser when he was having a hard time. Basically wasn't able to wasn't really making a profit, but he kept paying his”

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20. “All of the creditors, if they wanted to, could have called in their notes and totally wiped him out, but many of them realized that he was doing the best he could under horrible circumstances. They had faith in him, and plus he was a good barter like his dad. For instance, there was a dairy supplier in El Paso whose bill was due, and Conrad said, Look, if you just extend me more credit as long as I'm operating a hotel here, I'll buy all my dairy products from you. And he did for many years. He never forgot.”

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21. “Extraordinary, the like the will and the perseverance that this guy had. I mean, if he would have lost it, there would have never been Hilton Empire. He did everything he could. Just he's like, listen, I'll lose all my other hotels. I'll get him back later, but I can't lose this one. Okay, so it says, listen, if I could just survive this, I could survive anything. He winds up being true. That winds up being true. Conrad was still a determined man, even in the face of so much adversity. He believed that if he could at least keep the El Paso Hilton in business, he might actually be able to write out the depression. He was the kind of man who always believed that no bad situation should be permanent. Again, another trait I think what we should all steal. So he has this Hilton, but again, the El Paso Hilton, but it's not going to be at full capacity because no one's really traveling. So this is what he does. He says, Conrad had some of the rooms of the El Paso Hilton board it up. He cut back on heating, electricity, whatever he could think of to lower his overhead.”

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22. “Hilden had more than 500 rooms. Sorry. I don't know if I just said 400. I meant to say 500. 500 rooms to Texas and different small hotels he had purchased along the way. Because these were all dilapidated establishments that appeared to be on the verge of closing, Conrad was able to get them for a steal. He even does this later in a life where he gets a hotel that costs like...”

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23. “This whole thing about being big, he tells it to his kids over and over again just be big, be the bigger person. And he also applied it to like their own ambitions. Okay, so his first hotel is a wild success, and Conrad is not the kind of person that sits around. He moves extremely fast. Now, that can obviously be a great trait, but probably not good idea to expand rapidly in a few years from now. You're going to run into the largest financial recession or financial depression that your country's ever seen. But he doesn't know that yet. So he's doing just as his personality allows. So he decided that he would focus on his new passion. In doing so, his success would be like a juggernaut that could not be stopped. By 1923, Hilton had more than 500 rooms in Texas in different small hotels that he had purchased along the way. So that, if I'm not mistaken, is he goes from 40 rooms to 500 in four years. I think I have those years correct. So he had five.”

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24. “For us to train all these employees to do the job the way we want them done, if we don't invest in them, then our turnover is going to be higher. And that means we're going to have to pay more money in training. Like, why don't we just take care of the employees that we have? You're seeing the same exact thing here for Conrad. He soon outlined for his employees his personal guidelines for success. And then asked that they adhere to them. His code could easily apply today, almost 100 years later, more than 100 years later now, as one for better living. As he put it at the time, to a quote from him, find your own particular talent, be big, be honest, live with enthusiasm. Don't let your possessions possess you. Don't worry about your problems. Look up to people when you can and down to no one. Don't cling to the past. Assume your full share of responsibility in the world. And finally, pray consistently and constantly.”

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25. “Didn't see it. It was with the Mobiley that Hilton began to understand that a staff of contented employees usually resulted in a thriving business. He began to encourage regular meetings with his staff, listening to all their concerns and taking care of each as best he could. Caring about his employees and viewing them as people with families and lives of their own rather than merely his charges would become an integral way of doing business for Conrad. And in years to come would account for much of his success as a hotelier. This is very similar to what we talked about last week with Henry Conrad.”

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26. “And at a retail shop. Removing three chairs and a sofa from another section of the lobby, he installed a newsstand. He was not, he was, I mean, as we'll see, he survived the Great Depression, for God's sake. And he would never claim bankruptcy. I heard a recording of his voice saying that he felt that 80% of the hotels in America went bankrupt during the Great Depression. And he felt that him claiming bankruptcy would be emitting quitting and he just, he refused to quit. But this whole idea of this modus operandi that he's doing on his first hotel, he does over and over again. He constantly will buy a dilapidated hotel or a hotel that's down and out and just revamp it. And then usually he would just realize these people don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to run a hotel. Like they're not using their space. Like your space is what you're paying for when you buy a hotel. Why are you not using it? So again, like something that's obvious in hindsight, but for some reason, so many people running the business.”

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27. “For young Conrad, he seemed to know it too. When the deal was completed he sent his mother a telegram Frontier found water deep down here launched first ship in Cisco. So he definitely had like this not only a southern accent but a southern like vocabulary even when he was living in LA and he owned a bunch of some of the most famous hotels in New York. He routinely appeared with like a cowboy hat on. It's kind of funny. There was one thing Conrad Hilton knew for sure was important, the careful utilization this is so important super important about his dedication to efficiency and not waste and you it's weird that you see these corporations nowadays. They do the opposite. They overindulge themselves when they're successful says there was one thing Conrad Hilton knew for sure was important, the careful utilization of space. To that end he ripped out the lobby and section it into bedrooms. He then reduced the size of the front desk by half”

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28. “Down in a dumps, crappy little two story building. But the owner of the time had nothing but demand because he's in a good market, right? So it says Conroe was astonished to find the place that was fully occupied with a waiting list of customers attracted to the loan room cost. They already started not only that, he had people, he had three separate customer segments here. He said people that would rent it by the hour, the day, and then longer, like weeks or months. So as though the Mobley had the appearance of a flop house, that was the word I was looking for. It's a flop house. Conrad still saw a great promise in it. He became even more enthused about the 40-room facility than he had been about the possibility of striking a rich in the oil industry. Therefore, when he learned that the Mobley's proprietor wanted to sell it and enter the oil fields himself, Conrad made an offer of $40,000. That's the $40,000 that I referenced at the opening of the podcast. This, his second foray into the hotel business, would be the decision of a lifetime.”

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29. “Place was fully occupied with a waiting list of customers attracted to its low room cost. Remember last week we talked about Mark Andreessen's idea that the most important indicator with success in business, it's not the product, it's not the founder, it's the market, in his opinion. And he's saying when you have a market that is growing, somebody's going to satisfy that market. It has to be satisfied. So it might as well be you. The mobile is, you know, kind of a”

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30. “So he winds up finding a bank. He does a deal. He's like, okay, I want to buy. Remember, he still wants to be a banker, right? And he agrees in principle to a deal. And then the person that owns a bank changes his mind. So now he's really down because he's just like, this sucks. They agreed on a price. And then the guy's like, no, no, you know, I'm not going to do it anymore. So frustrated and bitterly disappointed, Conrad retreated to a nearby hotel called the Mowbley to ponder his next move. The Mobley was a two-story red brick down in the dumps operation, catering to the roughnecks who worked on the oil fields. And they're not joking. I went and looked up what it looked like. Yeah. Very humble beginnings to the Hilton Empire. When I first saw it, he would recall, it looked like a convenient place to sleep, nothing more. Despite its dilapidated condition, Conrad was astonished to find that the”

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31. “He remembers later on in his life. She tells him, You'll have to find your own frontier, Connie. Everybody call him Connie, by the way. And so this is the mindset that Conrad had at 32 because he's still hell-bent on being successful, even though everything's done up until this point was a failure. I thought, I dreamed, schemed of nothing but how to get a toll hold in the amazing pageant that was Texas.”

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32. “So now we got to the part of him finally finding his life's work. So, ironically, the automotive technology, and it does it by accident, as we're going to see here in a minute. Ironically, the automotive technology that had claimed the life of Conrad Hilton's father would be the impetus that would propel Conrad to his next venture, the oil fields of Texas. He wouldn't be a wildcatter though. Instead, he would exploit the booming support apparatus that was springing up around the oil industry. So he wanted to sell pickaxes, basically, using that metaphor that's widely known. It says, with $5,000, his entire life savings pinned to the inside of his coat, Conrad Hilton, now 32, soon after struck out for Texas. So I jumped ahead a little bit there. So his father undoubtedly wanted him to take over his business. But his mom, who was also a very strong and iron-willed woman, told him, no, this town is not big enough for you. And she says, the quote from her that he, that he...”

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33. “No, how does he Almost 30. Yeah, he's almost 30. He receives devastating news. He received a shocking telegram from his mother telling him that his father had died and asking him to come home. He was shattered that he was unable to pay his last respects to the often critical father he still loved very much and respected deeply. So, what happens actually his father owned the town's first automobile? It was actually a Ford model, and he was killed on New Year's Day when he was, the vehicle failed to negotiate a turn in the road. And it was actually the town they lived in, their first death by car accident. Says, although Conrad knew full well that his father would have wanted him to take over the family business, he realized that San Antonio's boom days were over. If he were ever were to make it big, it wouldn't be here.”

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34. “Same situation. Not only was he their manager, but he was their agent and he was their roadie as well. So he did not shy away from doing hard work and he preferred to do everything himself. Okay, so then right around this time, that was in 1916, the World War I'm going on. So in 1917, he's actually drafted into the Army. And because he has experience working in Gus's dry goods store, he's sent to France. And he's running basically, they call it the Quartermaster Corps. So he's not on the front lines, but it's basically managing all the supplies that the soldiers need. And he uses like this time as a learning experience. It says being in France gave Conrad a whole new worldview and expanded his scope of experience outside of his humble beginnings. This direct quote from him. Before I had been a big frog in a small pond, now in Paris, I realized I was just a tadpole in a big ocean. So while he was sent away, I think he's...”

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35. “Sounds a little crazy, right? However, he was able to raise capital, but his dad had warned him previously. He's like, this town is way too small for a bank. It's going to fail. That's exactly what happens. So customers fail to materialize. And by year's end, the bank would close its doors. Another failure. Would his father always be right? Conrad wondered. Restless for new challenges in 1916. This is another weird twist of events here. Conrad at 29 years old took on the management of a musical group formed by his violin playing sister Eva and two of her female friends, calling themselves the Hilton Trio. Conrad was certain that people would flock to see the trio. There's more of his optimism. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Despite his best efforts, his first entrance into show business was a colossal failure. And I just want to, before I move on from there,”

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36. “So it at least serves one term there. The work was way too boring. And he says, okay, returning to San Antonio, more frustrated and more determined than ever to make it. He reasoned that since there was no bank in his small hot town, he would become a banker. This is something he wanted to do for a long time. With about $30,000, $3,000 of his own, and the rest scrounged up from friends and investors, Conrad opened the New Mexico State Bank of San Antonio in September 1913. He was just 26. So the reason I brought up the fact, first it was surprising to me that he was a lawmaker, the youngest ever for the state of New Mexico. But he met a lot of people in those two years that he was a lawmaker to the point where now he was well known in society and he was able to, people like kind of trusted him, even though he was really young. I mean, think about being 26 year old today and trying to start a bank.”

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37. “Loss statements the daily profit and loss statements of every single hotel every day. He did this his entire life until the point where his eyesight was going bad. I think it was in like 70s or 80s this time. So you'd have to have somebody else read the P&Ls to him. But he was obsessed with numbers. Okay, so it's in 1911 when he was 24. The territory of New Mexico was admitted to the Union. Again, I have to repeat, he did not know he was going to be a hotelier until he stumbles into it by accident. So he's like, okay, well, we're going to go into the United States. So this is actually shocked me. He says, Conrad entered the political arena. He was swiftly elected to a seat in the lower house of the new state's first legislature. He doesn't last long there. He says he found working as a lawmaker slow and dull.”

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38. “His management structure on how to manage hotels, which he, of course, slowly learned over four decades. And he's like, now you're turning over the management of the hotels to these other people. We don't want to do business with them. We want to do business with you. So anyways, so he's doing everything he could to keep the enterprise afloat. With the family solvent, thanks to Conrad's bright ideas, he enrolled at the New Mexico School of Mines in nearby Sakaro, some little tiny town. So he didn't really like school, but what he learned there proved invaluable as he excelled at higher mathematics, providing the best possible mental muscles necessary, now direct quote from Conrad, for whatever career he would choose. So he sucked to school, but he really liked numbers. And again, this is something he carries with the professor's life. Every day he would read and analyze, even when he had, I think tens of thousands of hotel rooms, he would read the profit.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Like vertically integrated corporation that he would need to actually eventually become the largest producer of bananas in the world. But anyways, to a certain degree, Conrad emulated that in the sense that at the beginning of his career, he was not shy about, you know, he would be the maid, he would check you in, he would take care of your bags. He would do everything. So later on in his life, he knew exactly, like he was able to systematize what an actual way to make, I would say, like a structure for hospitality to the degree where he does a deal that he comes to regret later on in his life, where he sells off the rights to the Hilton brand overseas. So in like Asia and Europe and whatever case is. And the companies that had signed up and were doing joint ventures with him at that time canceled because they're like, no, no, we want to do business with Conrad Hilton because we believe in...”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Conrad manage the hotel, but he worked the desk. Was the concierge, and did pretty much everything he could think of to keep the enterprise afloat. So there was going to be like a 10-year gap before he goes back into the hotel industry, but he's the exact same thing when he goes back into the industry. He knew, remember that quote from Samuel Zamurray that I always referenced the banana king, where he's like, as long as you know, there's no problem you can't solve if you know your business from A to Z, how he started pedaling bananas. Bananas are about to go rotten. That's how he got his start. Then he literally went into every single section of owning the land that a bananas were produced on to cultivating the bananas to owning the ships that they were on to owning the just every single entire”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “So they get to work right away within six weeks. The news hotel spread throughout the area all the way to Chicago saying, hey, if you're going to this little part of San Antonio, why don't you stay at the Hiltons? And then it says, this is one of the, I guess, the advertisements they did. It says they serve the best meals in the West and they have a boy there who is a cracker jacket making things comfortable for you, meaning Conrad. Everyone got something out of our hotel. Travelers got cleanliness, comfort, and a good table for their $2.50 a day. We all worked hard and no one harder than my mother. And this is, I should have told you, but this is a direct quote from Conrad. Now, towards the end of his life, looking back at how important this lesson was for him. He said, we all worked hard and no one harder than my mother. I wouldn't take a million dollars for what those days taught me. And I'd give a million dollars for one of the suppers that she'd served.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Okay, so it says we should open a hotel. Okay, this place needs a hotel, meaning the city in. Conrad further suggested that while his father ran the hotel, his mothers and sister and sisters could handle the kitchen duty, and he, meaning Conrad, would be responsible for baggage. He further speculated that $2.5 a day for each bed would be a reasonable amount to charge guests. Much to his amazement, his father actually thought the idea might work.”

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43. “Become a hotelier, I guess is what they call it. Okay. In 1907, the financial panic that came without warning hit the country and all but wiped out Gus Hilton's finances. Gathering his family about him, Gus spelled out the dire situation and asked for suggestions. Casting his eyes upon the floor, 19-year-old Conrad, after a few moments of silence, looked up, broke into a smile, and announced, We should open hotel. Let's take five or six of our ten rooms of the house that they lived in and make a hotel. This place needs a hotel, so what would happen is Gus had nine children every time a child was born.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Okay, so this is interesting though. So I just gave you a description of all the different ventures that Gus was into. And I read that. I'm like, damn, that's like, wouldn't it be better if you were just focused on one or two things? I mean, preferably one, preferably one. And turns out it might have been a better strategy for old Gus. So this is how the first ever Hilton Hotel comes by one necessity and two accident. And then I'm going to go into the first few careers that Conrad had because it wasn't until he's in his 30s that he actually discovered what it was going to be his life's work, which was hotel.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “The night in his room, he read her autobiography. It was called Optimism, the message of which he found transformative. Keller wrote, Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope. So I would definitely say that Conrad internalized that lesson because he was definitely optimistic throughout his entire life, even when he had no reason to be, which is very difficult. With the newfound courage gleaned from Keller's book, Conrad eventually announced to his parents that he would not be returning to school. His decision was final, he said, even though he was only 15. Gus responded without appearing to show the slightest sign of annoyance. All right, he decided. I guess you'll be worth $25 a month on a full-time basis. So now he's just making $5. Now he's making $25 because he's working full-time. I believe now, looking back, that my parents took note of my conviction, and this encouraged them to change their minds.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “I think he would come to regret being this critical. Just remember I said that for later on on the story, especially when it comes to Nicki, because Nicki, he has a tragic ending to his life. Okay, but we're not there yet. We're still, when Conrad's a young man. Okay, so he's working with his son. He's working extremely hard. He's around, let's see, he's around, I think, 15 years old at this time. And they kept sending him to these different schools. He would drop out, not want to be at home learning from his father. And they would always, especially his mother, would overrule his decision. He's like, no, I can learn everything I need to know at home. So he actually finds inspiration from the biography of Helen Keller. So it says one day he found a copy of the book by Helen Keller. The 23-year-old Alabama native who was handicapped after contracting scarlet fever as a baby.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “But at home as well he expected a lot of his children He actually saw something of himself and Connie and wanted nothing more than to see the boy make something of himself. Therefore he pressured him a great deal and was often critical when some observers felt it might have better served the boy to be encouraging. So this part about being really hard on his son, pressuring him a great deal to be successful and being critical that you could say that paragraph that's talking about how Gus was to Conrad Conrad was exactly the same to I would say mainly to his two older boys, a lesser degree to his third son. But he has two boys, Nikki and Barron.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “And so, as we're going to see, his dad was really tough on him. And I definitely think that Conrad emulated his dad to some degree with his own children. So it says Conrad summer vacations were spent back in San Antonio working for $5 a month at A.H. Hilton. That was the name of his dad's store. An ever-growing business that now housed the post office, the telegraph office, the Stude Baker Dealership, a livery stable, and a lumber building materials operation. Gus Hilton was nothing if not entrepreneurial. Not only was he managing the store, but he also bartered with prospectors, giving them provisions, clothing, food, and money in return for a percentage of their profit. On some days, he would take off into the wilderness to sell tobacco and food to beaver trappers, sometimes trading his goods for theirs. Gus was busy all of the time. Tough and unyielding, not only in business,”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “First learn the value of hard work and tough negotiation. Now that sounds like a good place to start, right? Your father owns his own business. This is where you're learning about how to deal with customers and how to deal with inventory, but this description gives you a more accurate idea of his early living conditions. Pictures of the homestead show a dilapidated structure that looked at it as if it might collapse at any moment. We're talking about cowboy country here, observed one of Hilton's relatives. Cowboy hats, horses, stagecoaches, dirt roads, moonshine, and saloons, the works.”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Most of the children were born in the Adobe dwelling that housed Gus's general store, Gus's father. And this was in San Antonio, a territory of New Mexico. New Mexico was not part of the Union at the time. He says, because he was the family's firstborn son, he was expected to take his place in the general store while he was still young. Thus, it was at his father's elbow that he began his apprenticeship into the world of business, mastering the laws of supply and demand and honing the entrepreneurial skills that would serve him so well for the rest of his life. An adventurous, high-spirited lad he also undertook on his own such productive ventures as going into the produce business, by cultivating a piece of his father's land and then by planting and later selling vegetables door to door. Though he could barely peer over the counter at Gus's door, he was there almost every day after school. This is”

    2019-04-14 · Founders · #67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source