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Success Lessons: What Greek Tycoon Aristotle Onassis's Life Reveals

Aristotle Onassis was born in 1906 in the Greek town of Smyrna (later occupied by Turkey). The few facts available regarding his childhood suggest that those years were rather difficult: he lost his mother when he was still a baby, and his father remarried a year and a half later. His relationship with his stepmother was extremely bad: they were in a state of continuous warfare, he regarded her as a usurper, and refused to obey her. Also, his relationship with his father was not much better. A wealthy wholesale merchant in Smyrna, he was a strict father who was feared by his son.

As a result of these problems, Onassis did poorly in school. He did not like studying and constantly skipped class. He was also extremely disruptive and annoyed his classmates. As a result, he was expelled from all the schools he attended. Under those circumstances, it was not surprising that Onassis never finished his studies. When he took the final exams required for a high school diploma in 1922, he failed -and he never tried again.

The same year, the situation became even more difficult for him: the Turks invaded Onassis's town of Smyrna after defeating the Greek Army. Young Onassis -then 16- was caught up, as he would often recall later, in the disaster that followed. The Turkish Army swept the town from one side to the other for many days, killing, looting, and burning. Smyrna was entirely destroyed.

Onassis's father gathered his family inside their home when the Turks entered the town and closed the doors and windows. Terrified, they watched the destruction through cracks in the walls. On the fifth day, the Turks entered the house and arrested the father, leaving young Onassis as the only male there. The next day, Onassis took on the responsibility of rescuing his family. He went out into the chaotic streets of Smyrna, and there by chance he met the American vice-consul. With his intervention, the Onassis family was transferred immediately on a small boat to the nearby Greek island of Lesbos. Three weeks later, the Onassis family arrived at the Greek port of Piraeus -as war refugees- in a miserable condition.

In desperation, Onassis got there the idea to immigrate to the United States. But he could not obtain a visa, so as a second choice he decided on Argentina. Unfortunately his father was vehemently opposed, so much so that he refused to even give him the money for the tickets. Onassis was forced to ask some of his friends for a loan. He obtained an insignificant amount, and with it embarked on a risky venture. In August 1923, he departed from the Greek port of Piraeus, arriving a month later in Buenos Aires. He was only 17, clutched a torn suitcase, and was penniless.

His first priority was of course to find a job. He soon realized that wouldn't be easy. To keep himself alive, he had to wash dishes in restaurants and haul bricks on construction sites. Finally, in March 1924 he found a job at the Telephone Company of Buenos Aires as an electrician. This was not the Argentina Onassis had dreamed of.

But in 1925, Onassis's fate changed. As soon as he found a decent job, his next step was to work out a deal with his father so that he could start selling Greek tobacco in Argentina. Early in 1925 he began corresponding with his father and before long, he convinced his father to send him samples of high-quality Greek tobacco. With the samples in hand, Onassis started visiting the cigarette manufacturers of Argentina to try to sell them tobacco. He quickly received his first order, for $10,000. Since the quality of the tobacco was excellent, a second order followed soon, for $50,000. The orders came faster and faster. By May 1925 he had managed to put $25,000 in the bank -not bad for someone who had recently been penniless. And between 1930 and 1931 he expanded the business to Cuba and Brazil.

In the fall of 1932, Onassis assembled all of his savings -around $600,000- and sailed to London, the maritime world's capital, to buy ships. Because of the economic crash of 1929-1932, the ships' prices had declined precipitously. A ten year-old freighter, which had cost $1 million to build in 1920, could now be obtained for $20,000. Onassis didn't take long to find what he was looking for: a whole fleet of ten such ships were for sale in Saint Lawrence in Canada. In the winter of the same year, he was found in Saint Lawrence. After brief negotiations, he bought six of those ships in 1933 - for $20,000 each.

Onassis's career as a ship owner had begun.


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