#67 Conrad Hilton: Hilton Hotel Dynasty

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show, so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. As of December 31st, 2011, the assets of the Conrad Hilton Foundation were approximately $2 billion, probably more money than Conrad Hilton ever could have imagined making in his lifetime. After all, almost 100 years ago, he was a man with just $5,000 to his name, all of which he decided to use to purchase the Ram Shackle Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas.
If not for the help of his devoted mother and an assortment of friends, he never would have been able to put together the balance of the $40,000 purchase price. From there, his empire grew not only in this country, but around the world. His is a true, genuine American success story. Or as his son Baron once proudly put it, it's definitely one for the record books, and not a day goes by that I don't sit and marvel at what my father did with his life. It is my hope that others are inspired by my father's story.
So that was just a random paragraph I found towards the end of this gigantic book that I'm going to talk to you about today. So that book is The Hiltons, The True Story of an American Dynasty, and it was written by J. Randy Taraborrelli.
And just two quick things before I jump back into the book. One, don't forget to sign up for the Misfit feed. Every other podcast I do is available exclusively for Misfits. To sign up, all you have to do is tap the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player, and within like 15 or 20 seconds, you have access to that feed.
And of course, like every other podcast I do, both the free ones and the ones for Misfits, none of them have ads in it. Second, if you want access to yet another private podcast feed, this one all you have to do is leave a review. If you leave a review, screenshot it and send it to me at foundersreviews.gmail.com. I'll reply back to your email with the private podcast feed. And if you're listening on like Overcast, all you have to do for that is tap the star, which is how you recommend individual episodes on Overcast. It turns gold, take a screenshot of that, send it to me. Okay, so let's jump into this book. There's a lot, I have a lot of notes. Like I said earlier, it was a gigantic book, like 500 pages long. So I'm gonna read to you what I thought was originally going to be the intro of the podcast, and this is from the prologue, and it just kind of outlines a little bit, well, a lot about Conrad Hilton, actually. It says, it was true that throughout his lifetime, Conrad Hilton had been a man used to being in complete control of himself, and some might argue everyone around him. As one of the most successful businessmen in the world, he had made hundreds of millions of dollars with hotels around the world bearing his name. He certainly didn't carve out such a niche by allowing others to impose their will upon him.
It had long been Conrad's belief that merely being related to him should not guarantee his heirs a carefree, privileged life. He had made his money in what he called the good old fashioned way, meaning he had earned it. A product of the Great Depression, he wanted his relatives to inherit his work ethic, not his money. So what they're talking about there is, I would say like a good 15% towards the end of the book after Conrad dies, is this protracted fight by some of his relatives to overturn his will. And Conrad, he did like 10 or 15 different revisions of his will throughout his lifetime as he aged, and in every single one, he would allocate basically less than 1% of his assets to his family members, or even people that worked for him or whatever the case was. So at the time he died, he had somewhere around what today would be a net worth, around $10 billion, maybe a little less, but an astounding amount of money at the time. And he gave over 99% of that to charity. And most of that money would go to helping the children, the sick, he was really into donating to hospitals, and especially the Catholic Church. As we're going to learn today, he was an extremely devout religious man. He was kind of, I would describe him, especially some of the behavior towards his children and other family members, he was a bit of a hard ass.