#211 Aristotle Onassis: An Extravagant Life

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Oct 16, 2021

Dive into the extravagant life of Aristotle Onassis, whose story reads like Greek mythology. Explore his captivating charm and tumultuous relationships, especially his unconventional marriage to Jackie Kennedy. Discover how early tragedies, including the burning of Smyrna, shaped his resilient business acumen. With a relentless focus on detail, Onassis became a master at absorbing knowledge. The podcast also examines the paradoxes of his world—success intertwined with deep personal loss, especially the impact of his son's death.

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ANECDOTE

Onassis' Early Life and Smyrna Catastrophe

Aristotle Onassis, raised by his grandmother after his mother's death, enjoyed a privileged childhood.
This was disrupted when the Greco-Turkish War and burning of Smyrna destroyed his family’s fortune and forced him to flee.

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Early Business Education

Involve children in your business early for valuable real-world education.
Onassis' father, Socrates, employed him in the family tobacco business, teaching him valuable skills.

ADVICE

Relentless Resourcefulness

Be relentlessly resourceful, like Onassis, to overcome challenges and improve your situation.
On a ship to Buenos Aires, he paid extra to sleep on deck after days of poor conditions below.

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What I learned from reading Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady.

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He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested.

The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seeming inconsistencies.

Onassis had long since begun to formulate a personal business philosophy. The key to success was boldness, boldness, and more boldness.

He was constantly visiting and inspecting ships, talking to ship owners and other importers and quietly absorbing everything, making a very conscious attempt to learn as much as he could before going into ship-owning seriously.

He was quite observant about what, to others, were trifles but, to him, were important details. He often quoted Napoleon: “The pursuit of detail is the religion of success.”

Onassis was a man of the pier, but with the cocksureness of a king.

She simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis, a paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.

Onassis was a born orator. He could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound.

Onassis spent almost all of his time working. He would pore over shipping journals from Antwerp, Vancouver, Hamburg, and New York, looking for intelligence, trends, and opportunities. He would scan, study and memorize tonnage, prices, insurance rates and schedules of the world's great and small steamship companies and then attempt to outbid his competitors. He read the maritime sections of at least six foreign language daily newspapers each day.

And I, of course, will do exactly as I please.

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