#405 How Rockefeller Worked

I have a collection of these obscure Rockefeller biographies. Probably have, like, 10 of them. Many of them were published decades ago, but I just recently reread what I feel is the best the single best biography of Rockefeller. It's called John d, the founding fathers of the Rockefellers, written by David Freeman Hawke, and it was published all the way back in 1980. The reason I think this is the best biography of Rockefeller is because it has the most concise description of how he actually built standard oil, which is what you and I are actually interested in. So I just recently reread it. I stripped away all the biographical details and made a list of about a 100 different ideas that Rockefeller used to build what Charlie Munger said was the greatest company ever created. And so this episode's gonna be really simple. I'm just gonna run through these ideas with you. The first idea, to Rockefeller, business resembled a form of war. It was very natural for him to start a letter with the words, I'm in the midst of a hard battle today. He would transmit all of his messages in code, and he would cover his entire operations with secrecy. And when he was much older, he admitted this. He said, it is all too true, but I wonder what general ever sends out a brass band in advance with orders to notify the enemy that on a certain day, he will begin an attack. Rockefeller also had a very complicated relationship with his father, but there was a piece of advice that his father gave him that he followed for the rest of his life. His father told him, never mind the crowd. Keep away from it. Tend to your own business. Rockefeller was relentlessly focused on his business to the exclusion of all else. In fact, this is what Rockefeller said about this. Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration. The art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else. From the very beginning of his career, Rockefeller was obsessed with numbers. He thought that numbers told the true story of a business, and he would go over every single number of his business. He actually did this. He had this habit before he started his own company. Says Rockefeller would inspect every line of every bill and admonish others who failed to do so. He refused to be taken advantage of. And something that reoccurs throughout his career is he had this really intense disrespect for sloppy business practices and sloppy business men. He also had extreme self confidence from a very young age. There's actually a great story that illustrates this. So Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt was 45 years older than Rockefeller. He's the richest person in America and he wants to meet Rockefeller. And Rockefeller would only meet …