invisible billionaire

What I learned from reading How Larry Gagosian Reshaped The Art World by Patrick Radden Keefe. 

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

(4:00) The dealer has been so successful selling art to masters of the universe that he has become one of them.

(5:45) We think of genius as being complicated, but geniuses have the fewest moving parts. Gagosian is simple. He's basically a shark, a feeding machine.

(6:00) A novice is easily spotted because they do too much. Too many ingredients, too many movements. Too much explanation. A master uses the fewest motions required to fulfill their intention.

(10:00) His own publicist described him as “A Real Killer”

(12:00) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

(17:30) There is always a blueprint. Joseph Duveen was the art dealer to the Robber Barons. 

Biographies of Duveen:

Duveen: A Life in Art

Secrets Of An Art Dealer

Duveen

The Artful Partners: The Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen

(18:00) Numerous friends of Gagosian caution me not to mistake this merry-go-round of parties and galas and super yacht cruises for a life of leisure. This guy is always working. This motherfucker works 24/7. The parties are marketing showcases in disguise.

(19:00) The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. (Founders #296)

(19:30) The best way to raise the price of something is to say that you would never sell it.

(23:00) If Gagosian possesses one secret weapon that has equipped him for success it might be his disinhibition.

(33:00) The niche Gagosian pursued was seen —at the time —as low status. The secondary business was perceived as a backwater by dealers. It was considered a bit distasteful.

(42:00) He disdains formal meetings. He finds bureaucracy and protocol dull. There is no hierarchy. There is Larry and then everyone else.

(44:00) Gagosian reaps huge profits from asymmetries of information.

(51:00) Art is just money on the walls.

(54:00) David Geffen is still as liquid as the day is long.

(56:00) The competitive drive of self-made billionaires does not go into remission once they’ve made their fortune.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

----

Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube 

----

Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !

[2:00] I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.

[4:00] I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night.Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort.

[5:00] When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.

[6:00] It’s not what you do it’s how you do it:

Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288)

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)

[8:00] I never considered my dreams wasted energy. They were invariably linked to some form of action.

[10:00] For me, work was play.

[13:00] I vowed that this was going to be my only job. I was going to make my living at it and to hell with moonlighting of any kind. I intended to devote every ounce of my energy to selling, and that's exactly what I did.

[14:00] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242)

[20:00] This was the first phase of grinding it out—building my personal monument to capitalism. I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had laid.

[21:00] Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.

[26:00] I was putting every cent I had and all I could borrow into this project.

[28:00] Perfection is very difficult to achieve and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary.

[29:00] If my competitor was drowning, I'd put a hose in his mouth.

[44:00] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254)

[47:00] The advertising campaign we put together was a smash hit. It turned Californians into our parking lots as though blindfolds had been removed from their eyes.

[48:00] Authority should go with the job.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

----

Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube 

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. 

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

----

Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !

----

[2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.

[4:00]  An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things.

[5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.

[5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies.

[6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent.

[8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)

[10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries.

[23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket.

[25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)

[28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older.

[28:00] Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"

[29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.

[29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211)

[30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."

[31:00] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.

[32:00] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.  The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[37:00] The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them.

[40:00] Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it.

[42:00] He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.

[43:00] The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it.

[43:00] Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes

----

Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast