YouSaid · the spoken record

Conrad Hilton

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59
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2019-04-14
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2019-04-14
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1
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  1. “Conrad would once again do what he had done whenever he felt a lack of something in his personal life. He would go about the business of filling the void, meaning he'd go and try to do another acquisition of a hotel. He wasn't the kind of man to play it safe. He was shrewd, and he liked to take chances. He wanted to live his life for all it was worth. Damn the consequences. Okay, so now I'm going to go back in the timeline, and I want to talk to you about his early life and work. And these are the parts of these books that I personally find most motivating because I just told you he died with almost a $10 million net worth. And Conrad, as we'll see, as with a lot of the people that a lot of entrepreneurs that we've covered on the podcast, they don't start in good spot. And he's definitely did not start out in a good spot. So it says he was born on a snowy Christmas day in 1887. He was the second of nine children.”

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

  2. “No woman can match her, he would opine of his Dallas Hilton. Luckily for me she could not find a better suitor, he observed of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. Besides his religion, the only thing that truly mattered to him that gave him the most pleasure”

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

  3. “He had been alone for so long that it had gotten to the point where his greatest passions seemed to take the form of inanimate objects. So I need to lay this foundation so you understand that his one true love of his life was work, especially the hotel industry, which I'll tell you how he stumbles into that. But this is a reoccurring theme, especially as he gets, because he lives, I think he lived till he was like 91 years old, something like that. And a lot of the conversations he has in his 80s, as we'll see, is like filled with regret. And it's this idea that, you know, he was alone for so long. He was married a total of three times. And it wasn't until he was in his 80s that he finally found somebody that he said he was truly loved. So we're going to hear a little bit about how what the author is saying here about his greatest passions seem to take form of inanimate objects. This is what he means. He now referred to his hotels as his women. She's a great dame, that one, he would say, of his Texas Holdings, the Abilene Hilton.”

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

  4. “When he was just a boy about ten. So he has this conversation, this conversation I'm about to tell you about what this priest happens when he's about 10 years old. And the priest tells him, the priest had told him that if he had said the Hail Mary and then Saint Joseph pray for us three times in rapid succession, God would always take care of him. Therefore, every single day for the last forty-some years, he had made sure to start each prayer session with God, with his God, with those specific prayers, in that exact order. His religion was always a source of comfort for him. Still, he often wondered how it was that a man so accomplished could also be so lonely. I'll tell you more about that later. I guess you could say it's the curse of the ambitious, he said. Perhaps I'm a walking cliche. I have everything, yet it sometimes feels as if I have little.”

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

  5. “His worth. So he says, Conrad was a new breed of businessmen for his times, optimistic when there seemed little reason to be, especially during the war and the Depression. He had faith in America in her ability to rise once again, to be a nation greater than ever before, and to prosper if just given a bit of time to do so. But more than anything he wanted to be at the forefront of this national renaissance, a crazy story is that he breaks ground. I don't know if he breaks ground or if it's actually finished. I actually can't remember, but let's say he finishes a hotel, the largest project he ever made. He borrowed like over a million dollars for a hotel. This is right at the end of the 1920s, and 11 days later is when the stock market crashes. So he just had really bad timing. So Conrad would kneel and pray every night on a small rug.”

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

  6. “He gave over 99% of that to charity. And most of that money would go to helping the children, the sick. He was really into donating to hospitals. And especially the Catholic Church, as we're going to learn today, he was extremely devout religious man. He was kind of, I would describe him, especially some of the behavior towards his children and other family members. He was a bit of a hard ass. But I wouldn't look at that in like isolation, as we'll learn, like he started his business in the depths of the Great Depression. And so as we've seen with some of the founders in the past that went through and lived through the Great Depression, it affected the way they thought about money for the rest of their lives. Okay, so let's jump into, he has this idea about being the curse, that there's a curse of the ambitious, and then we're going to go into a little bit about how his religious beliefs affected.”

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

  7. “Meaning he had earned it. A product of the Great Depression he wanted his relatives to inherit his work ethic, not his money. So what they're talking about there is I would say like a good 15% towards the end of the book after Conrad dies is this protracted fight by some of his relatives to overturn his will. And Conrad He did like 10 or 15 different revisions of his will throughout his lifetime as he aged. And in every single one, he would allocate basically less than 1% of his assets to his family members or even people that worked for him or whatever the case was. So at the time he died, he had it somewhere around what today would be a net worth, around $10 billion, maybe a little less, but an astounding amount of money at the time.”

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

  8. “Like I said earlier, it was a gigantic book 500 pages long. So I'm going to read to you what I thought was originally going to be the intro of the podcast, and this is from the prologue. And it kind of outlines a little bit, well, a lot about Conrad Hilton, actually. It says, it was true that throughout his lifetime, Conrad Hilton had been a man used to being in complete control of himself, and some might argue everyone around him. As one of the most successful businessmen in the world, he had made hundreds of millions of dollars with hotels around the world bearing his name. He certainly didn't carve out such a niche by allowing others to impose their will upon him. It had long been Conrad's belief that merely being related to him should not guarantee his heirs a carefree, privileged life. He had made his money in what he called the good old fashioned”

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

  9. “As of December 31, 2011, the assets of the Conrad Hilton Foundation were approximately two billion dollars. Probably more money than Conrad Hilton ever could have imagined making in his lifetime. After all, almost a hundred years ago, he was a man with just $5,000 to his name, all of which he decided to use to purchase the Ram Shackle Mowbley Hotel in Cisco, Texas. If not for the help of his devoted mother and an assortment of friends, he never would have been able to put together the balance of the forty thousand dollars purchase price. From there his empire grew not only in this country but around the world. It's definitely one for the record books, and not a day goes by that I don't sit and marvel at what my father did with his life. It is my hope that others are inspired by my father's story”

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