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John D. Rockefeller

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2022-05-28

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2022-05-28

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1. “And never diverted. And once he perfected it, he walked away. He had perfected the gleaming machinery of Standard Oil, and his appointed task done, he felt he should pass the reins to younger men. The business had ceased to amuse him, it lacked freshness and variety, and he withdrew. So in eighteen ninety seven, Rockefeller walked away from the Empire that had consumed his energies for more than thirty years. He entered retirement just at the birth of the American automobile industry. automobile would make John D. Rockefeller far richer in retirement than at work.”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “To doubt the workings of Adam Smith's theoretical invisible hand. So many wells were flowing that the price of oil kept falling, yet they went right on drilling. Rockefeller feared that his wealth might be snatched away from him, as someone who tended towards optimism, he said that he would always see opportunity in every disaster, so that's what that means by that. He studied the situation exhaustively instead of bemoaning his bad luck. He saw that his individual success as a refiner was now menaced by industry wide failure, and that it therefore demanded a systemic solution. This was a momentous insight, pregnant with consequences. Instead of just tending to his own business, he began to conceive of the industry as a giantic interrelated mechanism in thought in terms of strategic alliances and long term planning. This was the start of his campaign to replace competition with cooperation. This is what I meant about these robber barons just thought differently than we do.”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “So he's going along trying to consolidate as much as possible. There is not only an economic depression that's about to happen, but also the prices drop of kerosene because there's such an overproduction. And so this is when he realized, he's like, oh, what happens in my business is my business, but also what happens to the industry is my business. And this is where he thinks. I think there's a line in the book where he thought he's like, I have to instill order in this godless industry. That's the way he thought about it. So it says rampant speculation had so overbuilt the industry that Rockefeller estimated 90% of all oil refineries were operating in the red. Go back to what the author told us, it's so important that he had these gigantic cash reserves and it was for a reason like this. 90% of oil refineries are operating the red. Remember, he never, he's always turning a profit, so he doesn't have the problem and he's got a bunch of this huge cash reserve. So it led to a rival in Cleveland, this guy named Alexander, to offer his interest for 10 cents on the dollar. Rockefeller obviously buys that up. Rockefeller started.”

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4. “He was under terrific strain in creating his oil empire. He fretted endlessly about his company. For years on end I never had a solid night's sleep, he said, worrying I was always worrying about how it was going to come out. I tossed about in bed night after night after night over the outcome. All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period. So I mentioned earlier this insane examples of his frugality number one he's already wealthy this time. His three children were forced to share in one bicycle. His son, John Jr. confessed that until the age of eight he wore only dresses because he was the youngest child and all of his older siblings were girls.”

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5. “Work and rest to pace himself and improve his productivity. It is remarkable how much we could all do if we avoid hustling and go along at an even pace. Remember his description of his neighbors that he would just like slowly plod, walking down the side of the road just sitting there thinking like that's kind of how he did his work too just step by step by step and then obviously he's got this huge advantage because he's developing one of the greatest monopolies the world's ever seen. In his rigidly composed”

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6. “Waste, he was hyper competitive. His family socialized only within a small circle of family members, business associates, and church friends, and never went to clubs or dinner parties. Club life did not appeal to me, said Rockefeller. I was meeting all the people I needed to meet in my day's work. Another great idea from him, design a schedule that you can maintain for a long time. He worked at a more leisurely pace than many other executives, napping daily after lunch and often dozing in the lounge chair after dinner. By his mid-thirties he had installed a telegraph wire between his home and his office so that he could spend three or four afternoons each week at home planting trees, gardening and enjoying the sunshine. Rockefeller did not do this in a purely recreational spirit, but mingled work and rest to pace himself and improve his productivity. There's really no work-life balance, to use the idea from Jeff Bezos, it's more work-life harmony. So I'm not doing this just for peer recreational spirit, but I mean...”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Seventy four year old Vanderbilt, the emperor of the railroad world come to him. This refusal to truckle, bend, or bow to others, this insistence on dealing with other people on his own terms time and turf, distinguish Rockefeller throughout his career. And then I need to make a point to you. Rockefeller did not invent the railroad rebate. It was a common practice in other industries, right? He just applied it to oil. So says it was a common practice in all descriptions of freighting, not peculiar to oil. It was used in merchandising grain in everything. He was just the first one to think, hey, let's do this for oil too. And then we see the personality founder is embedded into the foundation of the company. He says, I hate frills. I like useful things, beautiful things. They're admirable. But frills bore me very much. The way he built his business was really this way. No frills, no waste, and he's just focused on business and family. He detested.”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Get that, and then this deal just makes them even bigger. Even before Rockefeller accepted his first rebate, he was the world's largest refiner, equal in size to the next three largest Cleveland refineries combined. In fact, it was the unparalleled scope of his operation that enabled him to cut this exceptional deal in the first place. And so he was still rather unknown at this point in his career, but other people, people in the know, especially in the railroad industry, remember, Cornelius Vanderbilt is still alive at this point. He's much older, but he's seeing what Rockefeller is doing. So he's like, all right, I got to get on this guy's team. Ends up making an investment. That's going to come later. But Rockefeller, he just thought he was the best in the world. I guess is the way to think that because they're like, hey, Vanderbilt wants to meet with you, come to his office in New York. And Rockefeller was like, no, you're coming to me. This point is worth underscoring. 29-year-old John D. Rockefeller demanded that”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “And this is a great description of this deal from the railroad's perspective and why Rockefeller was so happy about it. Never shy about his accomplishments. Rockefeller knew that he had broached a revolutionary deal. From that moment, the railroads acquired, and remember, railroads are the largest businesses in the country at this point. Oil is going to be second and obviously overtake it. So from that moment, the railroads acquired a vested interest in the creation of a gigantic oil monopoly that would lower their cost, boost their profits, and generally simplify their lives. An ominous fact for small, struggling refiners who were gradually weeded out in the savage competitive strife. But this is also another example of the importance of stacking opportunities because the only reason he was able to do this, not only was he smart to figure out, okay, I could ship my land, the railroads, I could ship by water, I can also now ship by land through pipelines, but because he had run his business so efficiently, he was gigantic. He had to get big first to be able to get”

   2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Cleveland refiners, meaning Rockefeller and Flaggler, secured covert rates that allowed them to ship crude oil to Cleveland and then refined oil to New York for only a dollar sixty five per barrel compared to an officially listed rate the advertised rate is the way to think about that of other railroads of $2.40 and why is that important? Because their competitors don't know this is happening. So later on they're like, yeah, we're going to compete with these guys. No, you can't buy us out. Are you insane? Like, let's go ahead to head. And then when they try to buy them out, they show them the books and they're like, oh, Rockefeller and Flagler are making a profit at a price that causes me to go out of business. I have no choice but to sell.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “As the years pass, you obviously find in California, Texas. Towards the end of his career, they find it in Saudi Arabia. But it's like the most important center for oil in the world at this point. And so gold's like, hey, let's make the pipeline because not only can you ship by water and rail, now it's a new technology, and that's the way they reference. It's a really important way to think about it. It's like now we have this new technology. It was like, forget rail, forget water, forget barrels. Let's just run in pipes. And why is that important? Because that gave them more leverage to get rebates for the railroads. And so because of this massive pipeline network, they received a staggering 75% rebate on oil shipped through one railroad system. So 75% discount. Your shipping oil and you're paying a dollar. I'm shipping oil. I pay 25 cents. And then they go into, there's a lot more detail. There's a lot more people involved. I'm going to simplify this. But this is really the punchline here.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Rockefeller and Flagler played all the three major railroads against each other in seemingly endless permutations. They even managed to manipulate such notorious figures as J Gold. Rockefeller, when asked, I got to read about J. Gold, he's in all these books over and over again. Rockefeller when asked the name the greatest businessman he had ever met, instantly cited gold. Gold himself later asserted that John D. Rockefeller had possessed the highest genius for constructive organization in American economic history. And so you can think of all these rebates and everything. It's just like a network of secret companies. I'll go into a lot of detail, but Jay Gold actually does a partnership with them. Jay Gold hatch a secret deal with Rockefeller and Flagler that gave them shares in a subsidiary company. Now this was a transportation company and it was the first major pipeline network that would serve the oil regions of western Pennsylvania where at this point in time I think it's almost the entire collection of oil in the world.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Negotiations. He had a bunch of options. He could send oil by water, greatly enhancing his bargaining power at the railroads. Armed with this potent wet weapon, Rockefeller obtained such excellent railroad rates, fed by rail links, Cleveland also served as a natural gateway to Western markets. Other Cleveland refiners evidently made the same calculation, so a few years later, the city now supported fifty refineries. He is, I think, four years into the oil business at this point. Now, this is the way Rockefeller thinks. It's important for me to point this out to you. He says other Cleveland finers figured that out. Okay, we were making the same calculation Cleveland's a good spot to post up. A lot of people believe that. The city now supports 50 refineries. Rockefeller looked at that as a problem to solve. And so Flagler and Rockefeller are going to figure out a way to have way lower costs than their competitors. And so says with virtuosoic brilliance.”

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14. “Makes flag clear's ethics or lack thereof consequential for Rockefeller's career was that he was the mastermind of many negotiations with the railroads, and that was the single most controversial aspect of Standard Oil history because essentially they're just rigging the game in their favor. And why is that important? Because transportation assumed a pivotal place in the petroleum business for an elementary reason. Oil was a cheap, standardized commodity, so transportation costs inevitably figured as a critical factor in the competitive struggle. And that's kind of an echo of an idea that Buffett that Warren Buffett writes about in his shareholder letters. He's like, listen man, if you're engaged in a commodity business, you have to be the low cost provider. And so again, it goes into why they had this advantage. Like, how come they, size is going to be a big part too, but why could they keep pressing the railroads into doing these kickbacks, right? So says the overriding reason for his attachment to Cleveland was that it was a hub for so many transportation networks that he had tremendous room to maneuver and freight.”

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15. “Executives who would transform the Cleveland Refiner into the world's strongest industrial company, that is an insane sentence, the world's strongest industrial company. It's insane because it's true. Neither was interested him or flaggler. This is also good. Neither was interested in modest success, and they were both prepared to go as far and as fast as the marketplace allowed. Flagler, this is such a great description of him too, Flagler had been chastened by failure and was acquainted with the perils of complacency. Flaggler was also default aggressive and well, today they would say wildly unethical. And so at this time, remember, there's like really no rules to this game. Like, they're inventing the game. I mean, they're laying really the foundation of the game that you and I are playing today, if you think about it. So Flagler keeps this quote on his desk, gives you an idea of who he is. Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it first.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “It's just absolutely remarkable to me. So Flagler not only brings backup, but he also brings the really wealthy Cleveland family, the Harknesses. And so Harkness is going to give $100,000. He also, as precondition of his investment, he wanted Henry to become treasurer. And so Rockefeller welcomed this. He needed money. He wanted help. He wanted talent. And he's also got an older, more successful businessman at the time, you know, telling him he's like, this is what he says. Young man, you can have all my money you want. You're on the right track and I am with you. And it says, since Harkness was also director of banks, railroads, mining, real estate, and manufacturing companies, it's like a little tycoon himself, right? This tie ushered Rockefeller into new universe of business connections. Rockefeller was just 27. And then talks about his focus on not only money, but recruiting, starting with Flaggler's recruitment, Rockefeller Rockefeller began to assemble the team of capable”

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17. “The discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. That's Charlie Munger saying. For all Rockefeller's self-assurance, he needed one associate who would share his daydreams, endorse his plans, and stiffen his resolve, and that indispensable alter ego was Henry Flagler. And what's crazy to me is now having read that biography of Flagler and now having read Rockefeller's biography twice. I just could not, like they're both extremely formidable people. Rockefeller assembled like the dream team of business. They would both be unbelievably gifted on their own and the fact that they were able to work together for 15 to 20 years, not fight and to actually help each other.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “forward motion of his career, how quickly he evolved from humble supplicant to impatient businessman. And that is also what caused him to break up with his partners. Because he saw this gigantic opportunity in front of him like, hey, calm down or slow down, you know, don't be so daring. He would think things through. He's very patient in the way he mastered his plans and his conspiracies. But once he was sure, he just took off. And so at this point, we're still not in standard oil. They're going to eventually make the company official. They're going to sell shares. This is still a partnership. And now this is where, what I meant was like Rockefeller is also smart about grabbing partners that lack things that have skills that he lacks. So this is where he pulls in Henry Flagler. Not going to repeat anything that I talked about last week, but this is really important because I think this is an illustration of what Charlie Munger says and the role that he really feels that he played for Warren Buffy. He's like, everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “That's really important because at this stage, remember, he's primarily a refiner, right? That's important because there was a finite number of competitors. So he could kind of wipe out the entire board. And by the time other people jump in, he's just too powerful to stop. At one point, he controls like 90% of every single important part of his industry, the next nearest competitor is like 20 times less his size, to give you an idea of just the difference between the company he's building and the company all of his competitors are trying to build. And then we see again the benefit of impatience. And really, what I told you, I think it was on the Alexander the Great podcast of what I learned about the intolerance of slowness. That's actually Alexis Rivas, who's the founder of Cover. I actually met him recently. I flew out to LA just to meet him because I just love that description. It's one of my favorite things anybody's ever said to me. He's completely intolerant of slowness. Rockefeller is the same way. One is again impressed by the fantastic”

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20. “It's impossible to comprehend Rockefeller's breathtaking ascent without realizing that he had always moved into battle back by abundant cash, whether riding out downturns, because remember, you're talking over the first 40 years, 30, think he retires from Sanadoro like 40. I think he ran it for 30 or 40 years. I can't remember. There had to be, I don't know, three, four major financial panics in there, and he takes advantage of every single one because he's got a ton of cash when everybody's kind of running away. It's impossible to comprehend Rockefeller's breath taking ascent without realizing he always moved into battle backed by an abundant cash. Whether writing out downturns or coasting on booms, he kept plentiful reserves, so in good times and bad, right? And won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper.”

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21. “At this stage of his career, he turned inescapably to the bankers. One can hardly recognize how difficult it was to get capital for active business enterprises at this time. In the beginning, we had to go to the banks almost on our knees to get money and credit. When dealing with the banks, he facilitated between caution and daring. This is wild. So kind of like the euphoria and terror, you know, entrepreneur emotional rollercoaster you and I always talk about. He often went to bed warring about how he would repay his large volume of loans. Then he awoke in the morning, refreshed by a night's sleep, and determined to borrow even more.”

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22. “I recently learned this maxim from Sam Hinke that I think is fantastic. is exactly what Rockefeller did here. There were two types of oilmen, those who thought the sun boom boom was an unstable mirage and who cashed in their profits as soon as possible, and those like Rockefeller who saw petroleum as the basis of an enduring, unenduring economic revolution, having the longest view in the room benefits Rockefeller later on because a lot of his competitors that he buys out, they're so short-sighted. They just sell because they're like, okay, I can just make money right now. And there were so many of them that had that short-term thinking, which I think is completely natural to humans, by the way. And it's just that greatly benefited this just slow, methodical march to complete industry domination that plays out in this book. We got to go back to just how stressed he was and the fact that his bottleneck is always going to be money. And then eventually he's just going to get so much more money that that becomes like his main asset. And that's what usually helps him put a lot of his competitors out of business.”

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23. “There, watching the people that work in his house cut little pieces of wood for the fire. And he's like, well, how long is that? So he's like 14 inches. He's like, try 12. They try 12. They notice no difference. Just like, that's just the way he thought. And he applied that to everything. And then he talks about the stress of trying to build a business in a brand new industry. There's a ton of uncertainty. He says in this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic warrior who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night. I ran up and down the tops of freight cars when necessary. I hurried up all the boys. And I think later in life he talks about all the stress and anxiety during those period. Like even as the richest person on the planet, it wasn't worth it. He's like, I never recovered from all that stress.”

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24. “My competitors are paying double, right? They're paying more than double for barrels. This is something he just keeps killing people on costs. And this is, I'll get to it later. I'll make the point later on because I know I have notes on this. But the idea is just like you have lower costs, means more profit, more profit means he starts buying out his competitors. It's just virtuous cycle that he uses over and over again. But this is like an insane, I can't stress this enough. He had this insane attention to every single process where it's just like at one point they're like soldering, I think or closing barrels or something like that. And he's like, how many drops of solder do you use? Like 40. Have you tried using 38? They tried 38. It leaks. They tried a 39. It doesn't. And he just, he's bragging about that later in life where he's just like, that one thing saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because of the scale of my operation. He applies this at home too. I have highlights I'm not going to include in the podcast, but it's an old man sitting.”

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25. “I'm bringing in house. At first, he had paid $2.50 for barrels before he showed in an early demonstration of economies of scale that he could manufacture them himself more cheaply. Soon his firm made thousands of blue barrels daily for less than a dollar per barrel. So I was paying two hundred fifty from his outside supplier. Rockefeller was always convinced he could do things better than other people. He gets it down to a dollar. So dollar fifty times a thousands of day, thousands a day. Remember we're in the 1860s, this crazy other refiners bought and shipped. Oh, this is wild to me too. So you need timber right in your factory. So other Cleveland refineries would buy and ship timber to their shops, where Rockefeller had the wood sawed in the woods, then dried in kilns, reducing its weight and slicing transportation costs in half. So now all the timber that I need.”

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26. “Competitive products you own one of them, right? Or you're about to monopolize the use of one of them, and your other two quote unquote competitors are knocked out by the war. So it says the war had stimulated growth and use of kerosene by cutting off supply of southern turpentine, which had yielded an ingredient in a rival aluminate. The war also disrupted the whaling industry and led to the doubling of whale oil prices moving into the vacuum, kerosene emerged as the economic staple and was primed for a furious post war boom. One thing Rockefeller was adamant about from the very beginning, no one will have lower costs than me, and then I'll get into the point that you're building a business, stress is normal. It's just something that you've got to work through. As a self-made man in a new industry, Rockefeller was not held back by president or tradition, which made it easier for him to innovate. He continued to value autonomy from outside suppliers. That's just a fancy way to saying if that business process”

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27. “On objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business, this made me think of a paragraph I remember from his autobiography. I read that for Founders No. 148. If you want to listen to it after this episode, and he said we devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. The company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization. That task starts now. This is why Rockefeller is just in the right business of the right time. Remember, this is before the light bulb is evented. Thomas Edison is 18 years old at this point in the story. Says the war, the Civil War just ended, right? But it had stimulated growth in the use of kerosene. Why? Because it cut off supply of southern turpentine, which had yielded, which was a key ingredient in a rival aluminum. So imagine you have a product and there's all these world events taking place where it's going to knock out of two, there's three.”

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28. “Now back to Titan. Having emerged as his own boss, he would never again feel his advancement blocked by short sighted mediocre men. This is all about control and self belief. He thought that most other entrepreneurs in the oil industry sucked, and he didn't want them on his team. And part of this again goes back to his just insane self-belief. Rockefeller had unyielding faith in his own judgment. And so this is a description where we are in not only the career of Rockefeller, but also in history. By the end of the Civil War, Rockefeller had established the foundations of his personal professional life and was set to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunity beckoning him in post war America. From this point forward, there would be no this is such a great sentence to think about the way Rockefeller approached it. This is what's one of the things I most admire about him. From this point forward, there would be no zigzags or squandered energy. Only a single minded focus.”

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29. “threaten him. Do you really want to break this up? Yes, he says, and calls their bluff. They go along, knowing that their firm's assets will have to go to auction. They're sure they're going to win. Rockefeller doesn't have that kind of money. He bids, they bid, he bids, they bid. Rockefeller wins the auction. A few weeks later, the newspaper announces his new partnership, revealing who had backed his bid, and the news that Rockefeller, at twenty five years old is the owner of one of the largest refineries in the world. And this is what Rockefeller said about that on that day. His partners woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud. They were shocked. They had seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man that they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more.”

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30. “It wasn't the sort to persist in a flawed situation. So I had remembered that as he wasn't one to persist in a flawed situation. He was going to either fix it or get out of it. So he has belief in what he's doing, belief in the future of the industry, his partners want him to slow down, he refuses. So this is where they figure out, this is where the partnership's going to dissolve. I'm actually going to pick up a different book and read from it because I read the story. There's this book called Founders number 33 or 32. I can't remember. It's this book written by Ryan Holliday. And I think his description of what's about to happen in the book is actually really good. So I'm going to read from that right now. So it says there's a story about a young John D. Rockefeller who found himself stuck with bullying corrupt business partners. He wants to break with them, but he can't because they control the votes. They're squeezing his business to death. They abuse him. They talk about forcing him out. What is he to do? Quietly, Rockefeller lines up financing from another oil man and waits. Finally, there is a confrontation.”

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31. “If I'm doing something bad, yeah, I borrowed $100,000 at a time where I think the average American who makes something like $10 a week or something like that, that's a lot of money. So it says it was a stupendous sum, but all Rockefeller could see was that his partners lacked his audacity. His partners were irked by both Rockefeller's frugality and his extravagant spending. His tight fisted control of details and his advocacy for unbridled expansion. These are traits that may seem conflicting in their minds that actually work extremely well together. Daring in design, cautious in execution, it was a formula he made his own throughout his career. I actually remembered it differently, but he says he was.”

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32. “How robber barons just think a lot differently. It's like I only want to buy up all the competitors, I want to control the whole industry. So says Rockefeller disclosed an incident that cast light on his relations with his partners. They were very angry when I borrowed money to extend our business of refining oil. They came to him. Why have you borrowed $100,000? That's an insane amount of money, by the way, at this time. Why have you borrowed $100,000? They exclaimed, as if it was some sort of offense. So they had a hard time understanding. He's like, he's super frugal. On one end of the spectrum, extremely frugal. Not going to let the business waste a penny. But he's also on the very other end of the spectrum willing to spend and to borrow and to go big. I will borrow every single dollar the banks will give me because I believe, remember, he's got this like messianic belief in what he's doing. He's this weird combination of extreme frugality and extreme boldness. You know, he's like, I can't believe they're upset.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Was thinking or what he was going to do next, right? As part of Rockefeller's silent craft and habit of extended premeditation, he never tipped off his adversaries to his plans for revenge, preferring to spring his reprisals on them. He's about to do this to his partners. And why? Because Rockefellers like this, you know good Christian dude in his viewpoint, but he also has these things where it like kind of slips from time to time where you could see that he has just this extreme distaste and disgust for people that don't take their work as seriously as he does. Rockefeller wanted to be surrounded by trustworthy people who could inspire confidence in customers and bankers alike. He drew a characteristic conclusion. The weak immoral man was also destined to be a poor businessman. And so he wanted you to take it seriously, but he also wanted you to be bold. He did not come into this industry to take part. He came in to take over. His idea was like, I'm just going to control everything. Remember, we talked about this over and over again.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them. And this is one of my favorite stories. I'll get there in a minute. I just want to bring out something that's really important, one of the best quotes from Michael Jordan I ever heard was that successful people listen, those who don't listen don't survive long. Rockefeller would agree if he heard Michael Jordan say that. He listened closely to what other people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was a humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, quote, it is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know. So we're going to see what him and his partners are fighting over. And really, we're going to get to two things before we get there, because this is something you and I talk about over and over again. It appears over and over again in entrepreneurship. Bad boys move in silence. Rockefeller was not going to tell adversaries what he”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Point is made on the very next page. Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade. He had an unfailing knack of knowing who would help or hinder him in his career so he's having beef with his partners at this point. Let me repeat that. He had an unfailing knack for knowing who would help or hinder him in his career. He recruited the very best. His team was by far like his entire team as we go through this you'll realize like, oh, all he's doing is recruiting other founders. So the management that winds up managing and running standard oil for decades where all people had run their own businesses. And he not only did that for partners, but let's say if you could beat him at something, whether you're an attorney or like a supplier, he's like, oh, this dude, it was better than me at that. Okay, I'm going to go hire them. It was just really, really smart how he approached everything. So he's partnered with the clerks at the point. He said, the clerks were the first of many business partners to underrate the”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “above all temperate and reliable, shrewd and completely devoted to their business. That is a great, it's amazing that that sentence can compress the idea and the traits that Rockefeller used for his business. He was calculating and daring at the same time. He was reliable, shrewd, and completely devoted to his business. By the time Rockefeller arrived in the oil regions, it looked as if oil would be more than a transient phenomenon. Look that way to him. He's going to have a massive advantage over other people who had short, who only wanted to book short-term profits.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds and the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple. Second quote, you should remember that good ideas are rare and when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. And this is more about the early days of the oil industry. Really think about what's happening here is Rockefeller is early enough to build a compounding defensible advantage, but late enough to know that this industry won't disappear. And so it says the business in the early years was sort of goldfield rush, he reminisced. Great fortunes were being made by some of the first adventurers, and everything was carried on in sort of a helter skelter way. Rockefeller represented the second more rational stage of capitalist development when the colorful daredevils and pioneering speculators would give way to the men who had grown up in the hard school of life, calculating and daring at the same time.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “I almost feel like we should have a minute of silence thinking about how insane that is. If Rockefeller entered the refining business with some reservations, he soon embraced it as the big, bold opportunity that he had craved. Never won to do things halfway, he plunged headlong into the business, and his enthusiasm overflowed into his home life. Sharing a room, this is before he's married or anything, he's sharing a room with his brother William. William's going to be one of his partners in Standard Oil for basically their entire lives, sharing a room with his brother William. He often nudged him awake in the dead of night. I've been thinking out a plan to do so and so, he would ask. What do you think of this scheme? He's like 24, 25 years old when he's doing this. Keep in mind. Rockefeller leaped into oil with a zest reminiscent of his absorption in the Baptist church. I just want to read two quotes from you from Charlie Munger, both expressing the same idea. One comes from poor Charlie's almanac. The other comes from the book, The Towel of Charlie Munger. He says, the wise ones...”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “to build his own when he was disgusted by a suspicious error in a plumber's bill, he told his partner Let's hire a plumber by the month, let us buy our own pipes, and all other plumbing material. The refinery also did its own hauling and loading, such was Rockefeller's ingenuity, his ceaseless search for even minor improvements that within a year refining had overtaken produce as the most profitable side of the business, despite the uneasing vicissitudes, can't pronounce that word, of the oil industry prone to catalystic booms and busts, that's an understatement he would never experience a single year of loss that is insane.”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “In a few pages from now. So it says in the very early days, Rockefeller was not detached from the practical side of refining as he was when his empire later grew and he withdrew to his office. He was often seen at 6.30 in the morning at the refinery going into the shop, helping roll out barrels, stack hoops, or cart out shavings, since a residue of this is a byproduct part, since a residue of sulfuric acid remained after refining Rockefeller drew up plans to convert it to fertilizer, the first of many worthwhile and extremely profitable attempts to create byproducts from waste materials. Very few other people remember this is the very beginning of the industry, so it's not like there's a lot of things they had to invent for themselves. Shaped by a childhood of uncertainty, he aspired to be self-sufficient in business no less than in life. This is what I meant about control. If there's a business process, if there's a vendor that was important to his business, he would find a way to do it himself. Rockefeller reacted to a perpetual shortage of barrels by deciding”

    2022-05-28 · Founders · #248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source