Success Lessons from the Life of Greek Tycoon Aristotle Onassis
By the time you finish this article, you’ll be able to learn how you can tell if the years ahead are good or bad for you, and how long this season will last, so you can act accordingly: if there’s a storm on the horizon, you’ll take shelter in time, if sunny days are coming, you will take advantage of them before the opportunity passes, so that you can succeed a lot in life.
Before that, however, we first have to see what lessons are derived from the life of the Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, how the alternations of his life, from good to bad and vice versa, radically influenced his successful career. Onassis began his career as a point guard in 1933, while the Great Depression of 1929 had not yet ended. Due to the crisis, ship prices had plummeted. A ten-year-old freighter, which had cost $1 million to build in 1920, was now available for $20,000. Onassis discovered that an entire fleet of ten such ships was for sale in Saint Lawrence in Canada. He immediately bought six of those ships for $20,000 each. And a few years later, he greatly expanded his fleet: he took out a loan of $40 million in 1947 from various American banks and built 18 more ships, including oil tankers.
But in 1954 he did something that brought him to the brink of destruction. After a series of negotiations, he concluded an agreement with the king of Saudi Arabia that would give him exclusive rights to use his tankers to transport that country’s huge oil production. However, as soon as the deal became known, a storm of protests broke out against Onassis, not only from the big US oil companies, which had had the exclusive right to produce Saudi Arabia’s oil, but also from the US government. . states itself.
The oil companies officially protested to Saudi Arabia, simultaneously making it clear to Onassis that whenever their ships arrived at Saudi ports to load crude, they would not let him have it. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has warned Saudi Arabia that if they insist on upholding the Onassis deal, US oil companies will stop oil production in that country. Faced with this reaction, the king of Saudi Arabia was forced to cancel the agreement.
At the same time, the American oil companies decided, out of revenge, to cut off any cooperation with Onassis. Whenever a charter contract for any of their ships expired, they did not renew it, but instead gave it to other ship owners. By the end of 1955, half of Onassis’ tanker fleet was idle. His main source of income was drying up at a tremendous rate. That situation continued in 1956 as well. More and more of his ships were sitting idle, and those ships were mortgaged on the huge loans he had borrowed to build them. But Onassis no longer had enough income to pay off the loans. Desperate, he approached the American banks he was indebted to and asked them to take over the management of his ships. The international shipping community expected him to announce bankruptcy at any moment.
However, that bankruptcy never happened. A new season began in the life of Onassis. In October 1956, the Suez Canal was closed to navigation due to the crisis between Egypt and Israel. As a result, ships had to circumnavigate Africa, adding considerable time to each voyage. There were too few ships available to meet demand, and freight costs soared to unprecedented heights in 1957. The only shipowner who had ships available was Onassis. Due to the boycott imposed by the American oil companies, he had a large number of ships stopped in various ports. The results were predictable. Onassis’s ships were chartered by desperate merchants, the boycott ended, and acrimonious relations with the oil companies were forgotten.
Instead of destruction, triumph had come. Onassis began to make skyrocketing profits: in 1957 alone, he earned $70 million, whereas ten years earlier, he was completely in debt from the $40 million loan he had taken out. The profits were incredible. Onassis did not know what to do with all this money. His first act was to pay off all the loans he owed.
His second act was to commission the construction of new ships, including a 100,000-ton tanker, the largest in the world at the time. His third act was to give a resplendent reception in Monte Carlo to celebrate his better fortune. And after a few years, Onassis became the richest person in the world.
However, in 1973, Onassis’ brilliant season would end abruptly. What followed was a tragic season, the last of Onassis’s life. In January 1973, Onassis’s son Alexander died in a plane crash at the Athens airport at the age of 19. Onassis showed at first that he overcame that event. Immediately after his son’s funeral and burial on his private island Skorpios, he began to expand his fleet. While the fleet then consisted of more than 100 ships – including 15 supertankers of 200,000 tons each – Onassis commissioned the construction of six more tankers, two of them of 400,000 tons each, the largest tankers in the world.
But starting in 1974, things started to get worse. Perhaps because of the death of her son, in 1974 she began to suffer from myasthenia gravis, an incurable disease that affected the eyes and other parts of the body. She couldn’t keep her eyelids open and had to tape them down. She also had trouble swallowing food and slurred her words when she spoke. Not surprisingly, he was full of complaints: about his life, about himself, about his marriage, about everything.
The following year -1975- was the last in Onassis’s life: he became seriously ill with pneumonia. In dire condition, he was admitted to a Paris hospital, where he underwent surgery to no avail. On March 15, 1975, the world’s richest man died – at the age of 69. Only his daughter Christina was at his bedside.
conclusion
From the life of Onassis it follows that in 1957, the bad season that he lived until that year (he was faced with bankruptcy, as you will remember) suddenly ended and a good season began for him, when the Suez Canal was closed to navigation. and began to become the richest person on earth. But in 1974, a change of seasons occurred in his life: his good season ended that year and a bad one began, when his beloved son Alexander died in a plane crash, and Onassis began to suffer from myasthenia gravis that ultimately led to his death.
However, the season-like alternations are also derived from the biographies of many other famous people I have studied. Among them are biographies of Napoleon, Beethoven, Verdi, Churchill, Picasso, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Thatcher, Columbus, Mandela, and many others, more than 20 biographies in all.
For example:
— Beethoven’s good and bad seasons alternated in 1776, 1792, 1809 and 1825
— Napoleon alternated in 1776, 1792 and 1809
— Churchill alternated in 1875, 1892, 1908, 1924 and 1941
— Verdi alternated in 1825, 1842, 1859, 1875 and 1892
— Picasso alternates in 1892, 1908, 1925, 1941 and 1957
— Jackie Kennedy Onassis alternated in 1941, 1957, 1974 and 1990
— Elizabeth Taylor alternated in 1941, 1958, 1975 and 1990
— Margaret Thatcher alternated in 1941, 1957, 1975 and 1990
— Mandela alternated in 1941, 1957, 1974 and 1990
— Queen Elizabeth’s I of England alternated in 1545, 1562, 1578 and 1595
— Columbus alternated in 1479 and 1496.
Comparing these biographies, I came to a surprising discovery: the seasons of all the mentioned people alternated according to a certain pattern. Also, after extensive research, I discovered that the seasons of our own lives alternate according to the same certain pattern. That means, therefore, that we can foresee how the good and bad seasons of our lives will alternate in the future, with amazing precision.
So we can act accordingly. If there’s a storm on the horizon, we can take shelter in time. If sunny days are coming, we can take advantage of them before the opportunity passes. Therefore, we can be very successful in life by making crucial decisions regarding our career, marriage, family, relationships, and all other matters in life.