Book Review: Titan

So I just finished reading the book Titan by Ron Chernow. This book was a total tomb! It took me close to a year to crawl through the whole book; I thought at one point that I was never going to finish reading the book! I first held a copy of the book years ago at a friend’s apartment and I was always fascinated to learn more about John D. Rockefeller Sr., who many people consider America’s first billionaire. However, the reality is that Rockfeller never reached one billion dollars net worth in his life; rather at its height, Rockefeller had a net worth of +$900M USD. Regardless of technicalities, this kind of money in the late 19th and early 20th century was unprecedented and his story is a rather crazy one. Born into a broken family, Rockefeller had to leave school at age 16 with a half finished high school education and go work to support himself and his siblings. From working jobs in his youth, to starting his own commodities trading enterprise, to getting into the oil refining business at the right time, this book was the story of a great life. Here are the five biggest lessons I learned from the richest American (adjusted for inflation) of all time.

1. It’s important to maintain accounts and bookkeeping is the secret to success in business. Rockefeller was meticulous in his bookkeeping (a.k.a. accounting), which was actually one of his earliest jobs. He calculated and tracked everything down to the cent, leaving nothing to waste. In our age of the abundance mindset, this kind of focus on personal accounting is truly a lost art. How often do we spend money randomly, which adds up, and then wonder where all our money went at the end of the month? This kind of frugality is truly missing in our world today, but this is perhaps the secret to building true wealth.
2. Business is all about competition and in business, it’s never about emotions. However, ethics are important. Rockefeller was an aggressive person when it came to business; there’s no other way to say it! He was always slow to plan and quick to execute his plans when they were totally flushed out. Rockefeller and his associates used predatory tactics in an age when the federal government had not implemented antitrust laws yet, which is both genius and callous. They implemented rebates, predatory pricing, set up shell companies that masked ownership, as well as bullied competitors. There’s a fine line between competing fairly and stepping too far over the line as later the Standard Oil company was broken up into 34 entities by the federal government. Business ethics is important and it’s always a good idea to compete hard, but compete fairly.
3. Thrift and resourcefulness are timely personality traits that will be useful throughout a person’s life. Rockefeller was always a fearless problem solver throughout his life and was never afraid to dive head in. He was a big believer in being thrifty (letting nothing go to waste) and resourceful (doing whatever it took to achieve a particular business objective). This inherent drive is quite remarkable and definitely made an impact on me. I think that being thrifty and resourceful are values that aren’t celebrated in today’s age of abundance, but I think that they are still extremely important. The important thing is to never let any opportunity go to waste because you can never be certain that the opportunity will come back again.
4. You can be wealthy, but still face real hardship and problems. This book taught me that wealth does NOT solve all our problems. When Rockefeller had made it big, he suffered from family members who squandered his wealth as well as family members who lived wasteful lives, thereby Rockfeller had to come in and rescue them multiple times. This was most prominent with his brother Frank. Moreover, Rockefeller experienced grifters who would always try to get something from him throughout most of his adult life. He often felt isolated because of his wealth. Moreover, wealth did not prevent scary health problems within his family. I guess that the lesson is: don’t think money will solve all your problems, because it won’t.
5. You have to have a good family life and work well with others in order to do well professionally. I think that I’ve realized this truth as I’ve gotten older too. Having a good family life brings balance to your life and moreover, it reminds you that work is not the most important thing. Furthermore, doing well professionally is all about how well you can relate to others and work collaboratively. Rockefeller worked with the same group of people over many decades and it’s this continuity/shared experiences over many years that led to the success of the Standard Oil Company. To do something big, you can’t do it by yourself. Rockefeller never went into business by himself; it was always with other business associates.

These were some of the most important lessons I learned from reading the book Titan. A very well written book overall, but definitely a very long book that will take someone many months and weeks to crawl through. It’s good though because the mindset change from reading this book will help someone be more thrifty, resourceful and efficient in doing their job or whatever endeavor that they are passionate about. I’m glad that I paid $7 to get this book and that I read it end-to-end!