When Lin Manuel Miranda opened Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton during his Caribbean vacation, he couldn’t put it down. The story was fascinating. Ron Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D Rockefeller had the same effect on me.
Growing up, I only heard of John D Rockefeller’s name when I heard about the evil robber barons and cold business people that were the cause of the horrors of everything from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to the Great Depression. Reading Chernow’s biography I was exposed to a different man who made more millionaires than anyone else of his day, was devout to his faith even while son of a con-artist/bigamist, and one of the most radical philanthropists in history.
I often picture the 16-year-old Rockefeller who walked the Cleveland commercial streets with a resume looking for a job until someone finally gave him an opportunity to learn the career of bookkeeping. He celebrated that day for the rest of his life as his “job day”.
In October 2015, I got a call from my recruiter in Boston while I was getting ready for a sales meeting at Dunkin Donuts in a Chicago suburb. I’d been waiting for his call for a few days on a job I’d interviewed for. I had had similar failed interviews before, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up on the job.
Two years earlier, I had begun my search for a job in the advertising technology industry. The company I worked for was a reseller and hadn’t built its own software, so we could only sell to small businesses. I wanted to sell to the big companies that would spend big money on their projects, but I didn’t have the needed experience of selling to these big companies.
By that time, I had received over 30 rejection letters from companies like Conversant, RocketFuel, Yahoo, Centro, TribalFusion, Yume, Undertone, TubeMogul, Quantcast, and a million other ‘Googly’ sounding names. After one, four-hour Friday afternoon interview, the VP of sales in Chicago walked me to the elevator on the penthouse floor of 1 S Wacker Drive downtown and said, “Joshua, I just don’t think you’re aggressive enough for this industry”. The elevators closed, and I never saw him again. Brutal.
I answered the call at Dunkin Donuts, and the recruiter told me the Boston advertising technology company I interviewed for wanted to thank me for interviewing… And had made me an offer. Boom. I was so pumped. I had worked so hard to get into this industry, and someone was finally willing to give me a shot.
John D Rockefeller’s big ‘job day’ moment came in 1855 when he was 16 years old. He was hired as a bookkeeper for a produce company and celebrated that day every year throughout his career as his ‘job day’. As the man who eventually became the richest man in the history of the world, he always remembered that he got started by someone giving him an opportunity.
Making Others Rich
John D Rockefeller’s autobiography starts with a chapter entitled “Some Old Friends.” For the ruthless tyrant and robber baron so many claim him to be, I thought this was a fascinating way to begin. In fact, Rockefeller claims in the chapter that he never went into business for the money but for the “association with interesting and quick-minded men.”
Rockefeller rapidly expanded his oil business buy buying out competitors with the promise that their families would never want for anything again. John Archbald owned one of the initial oil companies Rockefeller bought out in Ohio, and he would go on to become President of Standard Oil and one of the richest Americans.
In Rockefeller’s book autobiography, he couldn’t stand the “small-minded people” that were jealous of the success of others. He wanted to be the kind of man that was extraordinarily ambitious. “The success of one man in any walk of life spurs the others on.”
This love of the success of others is the mark of an incredible leader. Jim Collins refers to it as “Level 5” leadership in his classic, Good to Great using the Harry Truman quote to illustrate “you can accomplish anything in life, so long as you don’t mind who gets the credit.”
To me, this is the central idea around why Rockefeller was able to make so many millionaires of his colleagues at Standard Oil. The company culture was built around replacing yourself and thinking of new ways to grow and generate wealth.
“Nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it… As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for Standard Oil to make some money” True to his policy, Rockefeller tried to extricate himself from the intricate web of administrative details and dedicate more of his time to broad policy decisions.
Raised by Con-Artist
John D Rockefeller’s father was known to steal money by pretending to have handicaps and selling products that didn’t work to people that didn’t know him around the country. He was a bigamist with two families that didn’t know about one another until later in life.
However, John D Rockefeller was a devout baptist known for his strong family values. His ledger notes he kept of his finances even through his teen years show consistent 10% giving to his local church. He refused alcohol and lived an extremely disciplined life, staying married to Laura Spelman for 51 years until her death. In an age where wealth and fame destroys most of the marriages we see in the tabloids, his life is a great example. When you consider the example he had in his father, its even more interesting Rockefeller turned out the way he did.
Radical Philanthropy
Rockefeller is known as a great philanthropist because of institutions like University of Chicago and medical research that led to great discoveries like the eradication of hookworm disease. But, Rockefeller’s most consistent and least celebrated contributions were those given to the Baptist church and denomination he committed himself to.
Philanthropy to help poor and distressed people is good, but there is something powerful about giving to the spiritual well-being of others instead because it puts the giver on equal footing with everyone else as it is done out of one’s own spiritual need. Traditional philanthropy puts the ‘giver’ in authority and does not empower the ‘receiver’.
I grew up in a family that was church missionaries in the third world. We were involved in the philanthropy world as well with a water-filter, non-profit organization and began water filtration projects that we would donate to those who needed clean water. I remember hosting hundreds of American mid-westerners that came down on ‘catastrophe tourism’ trips in order to watch those in poverty living in terrible situations. There was a certain ‘white savior’ complex in that whole scenario that put one population ahead of the other.
I think success isn’t about being rich or poor, its about progress. Philanthropy has a way of seeing wealthy people as successful and poor people as unsuccessful. Church giving is typically to fund the salaries of pastors who care forthe spiritual needs of their local congregation. Spiritual needs are equal between rich and poor. The richest man in the congregation may have the heaviest spiritual needs and the poorest may be the most spiritually strong or vice versa. This is one reason I do appreciate the consistency of Rockefeller’s church giving.
I’ll likely post more about Rockefeller and his life as I continue to write.
References:
- Title: Random Reminiscences of Men and Events. Author: John D. Rockefeller. Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17090]
- Titan: The Life of John D Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
Joshua Ballantine 