Sam Zemurray, the "Banana Man," rose from a penniless immigrant in America to orchestrate a Honduran coup and lead United Fruit, turning discarded bananas into a vast empire through grit, innovation, and hands-on leadership. His life story, as detailed in Rich Cohen's The Fish That Ate the Whale, offers timeless lessons on risk-taking, knowing your business "from A to Z," and leading from the front lines.
In this episode we dive into the extraordinary life of Sam Zemurray, the "Banana Man," as chronicled in Rich Cohen's The Fish That Ate the Whale. From arriving penniless in America at age 14 to orchestrating a coup in Honduras and taking over United Fruit, the world's largest banana empire. Zemurray's story is a masterclass in grit, innovation, and knowing your business "from A to Z." We explore how he turned discarded "ripes" into a fortune, outmaneuvered giants like United Fruit, and staged one of history's boldest corporate takeovers. Packed with lessons on risk-taking, hands-on leadership, and ethical gray zones, this rags-to-riches tale echoes pioneers like Jay Gould and Sam Walton.
Key Takeaways:
Join us for another great episode of Deeply Driven Podcast
Books Mentioned
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King
Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons
My Life & Work – Henry Ford
Sam Walton: Made In America
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
Past Episodes
#3 Becoming Trader Joe | Business Masterclass from a Legend
https://deeplydrivenpodcast.com/episodes/3-becoming-trader-joe-business-masterclass-from-a-legend
#4 Jay Gould (How Jay Gould Dominated Wall Street & Railroads)
https://deeplydrivenpodcast.com/episodes/4-jay-gould-how-jay-gould-dominated-wall-street-railroads
#7 Elon Musk - Birth of SpaceX (What I Learned)
https://deeplydrivenpodcast.com/episodes/7-elon-musk-early-days-of-spacex-fly-or-die
#8 Elon Musk - Demon Mode: Relentless Drive to Innovate (What I Learned)
Sam a Murray, worked in the fields beside his engineers, planters and machete men. He was deep in the muck, swinging a blade. He helped map the plantations, plant the rhizomes, clear the weeds, lay the track.
He was a proficient snake killer, taller than most of his workers, and strong and thin as a railroad spike. He shouted orders in dog Spanish. He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor that a man can free his soul by exuding his body a life in an office. Desk bound was for the feeble and weak who cut themselves off from the actual he ate outside shark fin soup, plantains, crab, gumbo, and sour wine.
His ears in the jungle gave him expertise. Rare in the trade. Unlike most of his competitors, he understood every part of the business, from the executive suite where the stock was [00:01:00] manipulated to the ripening room where the green fruit turned yellow.
He was contemptuous of banana men who spent their lives in the north far from the plantations. Those schmucks, what do they know? They're there and we're here. This opening selection, it comes from the book that I'd like to talk to today about, which is called The Fish That Ate the Whale, the Life and Times of America's Banana King.
It was written by Rich Cohen. And right here from the start, we really see one of Sam's chief maxims, which is they're there and we're here. This was used as a way to express that those on the ground, doing the actual physical work knew much better than those who tried to govern from afar. I think this is extremely wise and practical advice right here up front.
One of my favorite maxims that Sam says a lot throughout the book is that no problem can't be solved if you understand your business from [00:02:00] A to Z. . He knew his business very proficiently. He knew it from A to Z.
We're gonna see this so many times today, and it serves a really valuable lesson for you and I that we need to know our businesses from A to Z, my friend.
This book does a great job in outlining the life of Samza Murray. It looks at his rise from the absolute lowest rank that of the fruit jobber all the way up to the head of United Fruit, who was the largest and most powerful fruit company in the United States while he was head of it , when you first pick up this book and you jump into the prologue, Cohen really pulls you into the pages quickly.
He says, the following Zamar arrived on the docks at the start of the last century with nothing. In the early years. He had to make his way in the lowest precincts of the fruit business.
Pedaling, rips, bananas. Other traders dumped into the seat. He worked like a dog and [00:03:00] defied the most powerful people in the country. By 1905, he owned steamships side wheelers that crossed the Gulf of Mexico, heading south empty. Returning with bananas,
It was said that he traveled the breath of Honduras
From Porto Cortez to Te Alpa on Mule because he wanted to know the terrain, get his hands in the black soil. This really is an amazing real life story. A story of a young man who saw value, where others simply saw garbage of knowing when to risk. Everything is he's gonna do. So many times throughout this book, living in what I would call ethical gray zones on many occasions, and simply just working harder than anyone else around him
on his rise to the boardroom. He didn't get cocky and he didn't take a comfortable desk job. He remained in the fields and connected to his workers.
He was real and [00:04:00] honest with them, and they gave him the straight details that he wanted. Not some corporate bullshit that didn't do him any good. I think for you and I, this book is packed, packed, packed, full, my friend with valuable lessons. And I quote directly from the book saying, if you wanna understand the spirit of our nation, the good and the bad, you can enroll in college, sign up for classes, take notes, and pay tuition.
Or you can study the life of Sam, the banana man. I underlined this in my book, and I wrote Excellent next to it with an exclamation point.
Out of curiosity, I just counted the references in the bibliography in the back. And there were over 275 that I counted. , For all the books that I read for the show, I like to listen to the audio book about halfway through when I'm reading the book.
'cause it helps serve as, uh, a form of reinforcement for what I've already read. In [00:05:00] addition, I generally pick up different perspectives when I'm listening versus when I'm reading. As an example, Sam arrived in New York in 1892, and when I read that for the first time, I just noted it and I kept on reading.
But when I heard it out loud, it took a different meaning for me. I immediately thought, Hey, wait a minute. Jay Gould died in December of 1892 in New York. Then it says that Sam was hustling from the first months that he arrived in the United States. And I just wanted to read two selections and then tie them together.
The first one is from this book, and then the second one is from the book, dark Genius of Wall Street. I think this just helps, gives us a little bit of visual context here of Sam's struggle in his desire and his hustle from the start.
So first from the fish that ate the whale, Sam traveled to America with his aunt. In 1892, he landed in New York. He was 14 or [00:06:00] 15, but you would guess him much older. The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children. They had to struggle every minute of every day. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead.
The key connectors right here for me were 1892. New York struggle every minute and scheming to get ahead. Now let's just jump into the dark genius of Wall Street. This is about Jay Gold's life.
If you're interested to learn more about Jay, we covered him on episode four. In the book it says December, 1892, outside the town home at the northeast corner of 47th Street and fifth Avenue, astray adventurer. And right here I'm picturing Sam did a good business selling freshly printed calling cards with the chiseled name of one of his sons.
Edwin Gould, this will get you in dead certain. He assured those who forked over $2 notes, then he [00:07:00] vanished with his profits just as his first customers were brusquely, shown the door and the balanced refused the mittens. Old Jay Gould, who laid stiff and cold in the living room at 5 79 fifth Avenue would've applauded both of the hucksters boldness and his.
While
Jay had always believed that a shrewd aptitude should be rewarded, and its absence punished. He despised fools. for my thinking here, it's like a passing from one pioneering entrepreneurial founder to the next up and coming generation.
I think Jay would've been smiling down on Sam as he's building himself up out of nothing over the course of his life in, much the same way that Jay Gould did, starting as a young man all the way through his life, building a fortune and an empire dying. One of the richest men in America at that time.
While I know it's extremely and highly unlikely that it was Sam [00:08:00] scamming those calling cards to get inside Jake Gould's house to see him laying in state. But at the same time, it goes back to what Cohen says, that I think you can really get an education by studying Sam the banana man, along with Jake Gold and so many others that we talk about on the show.
Before we go much further, I just wanted to welcome you to the show today. I've really enjoyed reading this book. It has a lot of wise lessons that I think you and I can both use in business and I'll cover the broad scope of Sam's Life, and I hope that you'll have a good feeling for his deeply driven nature.
By the end of the episode,
Sam is fierce in business and works extremely hard, possibly as hard or harder than anyone else that we've seen so far on the show. If you liked the episode, I'll leave a link in the show notes for you. If you'd like to pick up a book for your library or possibly even for a friend or a family member.
Okay.
If you did find some value in the episode today, maybe you could just do [00:09:00] me a quick favor and leave me a review in iTunes or wherever else you might be listening to the show today. It would help me out a great deal, and I really appreciate those of you who have subscribed so far and left reviews. It really lifts me up.
It gives me a lot of energy and motivation to keep going forward, and I really, really appreciate it, and I do thank you in advance. My goal here is to really make a quality show that can help you in your business and also help the customers that you're servicing at the same time.
All right. With that, let's head back to the book and take a look at the early days of Sam, the Banana man.
As we heard, Sam arrived in New York in 1892, and he had immigrated from Russia with his aunt, He would soon make his way to his uncle's general store that was located in Selma, Alabama, where he would get a job with him stacking shelves and checking inventory.
But Sammy's really, really hungry for [00:10:00] work right here. So he goes and he takes a job with a local tin merchant, which I think was just a fancy name for a peddler at that given time listening to this, what he would do, I think this is really true grit, Sam and the peddler, they would go out to the junk piles on the edge of town and they would filter through everything, collecting tin and scraps of metal, then they would go farm to farm and his boss would go and make deals with the farmers trading scraps for livestock.
A lot of those farmers didn't have money, so they would just trade. A pig or a cow that they had for the scraps that they needed. Now, once a deal was made, his boss would say the following,
catch and tie that animal. Boy, it was Z Murray's first real job racing through the slop with a rope in his hand, paid a dollar a week. He kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the [00:11:00] junk and would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man who owned the hog.
Right here we can see that Sam has a deep drive starting at the absolute bottom.
This is his first lesson in seeing value, where others saw waste turning trash into treasure. And this is gonna serve him for the duration of his life. Now, Sam, he's gonna work his ass off and he's gonna save approximately $150. Once he has this saved up, he's gonna hop on a train and head south towards Mobile, Alabama, where the rest of his life would open up for him.
Let me just paraphrase from the book so you can get a feel of what it was like when he arrived in mobile. Mobile was a seedy industrial port filled with all the familiar types, the sharpie, the financier, the scoundrel, the chucklehead, the sport. Sam did a bit of everything. He could be shrewd, but [00:12:00] he could also be naive.
He was greedy for information and I love that. A curious young man out looking to change his path in life. Super, super curious. It reminds me of Henry Ford and what we saw when he was a young man at just 12 years old, jumping off of his father's wagon to look at a road engine that had passed by just asking tons of questions of the engineer.
It's this curiosity that drives all of these great entrepreneurs that we study that drives 'em forward. it goes on to say the waterfront was crossed by train tracks. Dozens of lines converged here. Box. Cars crammed with coal, fruit, cotton and cane stood on the sightings. The train sheds were crowded with peddlers, most of them Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia.
They bought merchandise off the decks of the ships and sold it from the carts in the streets of mobile. One evening, Sam stood on the wharf watching a [00:13:00] Boston Fruit, banana boat sail into the harbor. Just an important note right here, Boston Fruit. They were the largest fruit moving company at that particular time, and they would later become United Fruit.
So whenever you hear Boston fruit or United Fruit, you can think of them as almost one and the same. Uh, let's keep going. Sam's keen observational skills and ability to see treasure. Where others see trash soon kicks in. The bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side of the yard where they were further divided.
Some were designated as turnings, meaning that they were on their way to being worthless. At the end of the day. They were sold at a discount to store owners and peddlers. You could see them with their carts piled, high trotting through the streets, calling bananas. Bananas for sale. A nickel, a bunch. Yes, we have bananas.
We have bananas for sale. The bananas that did not make the cut [00:14:00] as greens or turnings were designated rips and heaped into a sad pile. A ripe is a banana you've left in the sun that has become as freckled as a hardy boy. These bananas, though, still good to eat, delicious even would never make it to the market in time.
In less than a week, they would begin to soften and stink. As far as the merchants were concerned. They were trash. Sam noticed everything. The care with which the bananas were handled, the way each box car was filled and rolled to a sighting. Hamid from the banana company. College men moved through the crowd barking orders.
He paid special attention to that growing pile of rips. Sam right here, he's growing fixated on that big pile of rips. I can almost see him just glancing and staring at that pile getting bigger and bigger as the wheels in his mind are churning over and [00:15:00] over recognizing this product
Where others were just viewing it as trash. This is really, really a gift for Sam. And in my notes I wrote Junk collector, meaning that his experience from collecting junk, trading it for a pig and then chasing those pigs around really helped him to define his keen eye.
For you and I, this is really an excellent lesson, that we should always be working hard and building our skills because you never know when they're gonna come into play. One day we saw this with Jay Gould in episode four, where as a young man, he did survey work, making maps, and then selling them.
Later on in life, he was a master with maps, planning out all of his railroads where he would sell mines, where he would build new tracks, where he would lay telegraph wires, really maximizing his holdings like no one else had done. So this ability to know maps and understand what they could do for him, served him throughout his entire life [00:16:00] and his business career.
I really see these learnings as like tools in our toolbox that we can keep and we can use them at any point in time. Once you learn one skill, it has endless possibilities, especially if you apply it in different areas of your life or in your business. Now, Sam, he's gonna take perhaps his first major risk right here, and he is gonna work out a deal to buy all of those rights, leaving him very little leftover to get back home where he intended to sell them.
Now there's one thing that Sam really knows is that he has to move fast because his time was ticking. The book would go on and describe his next move in the following way. Za Murray's cargo consisted of a few thousand bananas. He did not spend all of his money, but retained a small balance, which he used to rent part of a box car on the Illinois Central.
The trip to Selma was scheduled to take three days, meaning [00:17:00] he would have just enough time to get the fruit to market before the sun did its worst. Now, as they started rolling along on the tracks, things start off really, really, really slow. Three days turned into four, and then turned into five, and Sam's starting to get worried right here.
The bananas, they're starting to grow Pungent. they're gonna stop and yet another train yard in Mississippi. And Sam, he's really trying to put all of his might into pressuring the conductor in the trains man to moving faster.
You know, he's pleading with them. He is like, my bananas are gonna go bad. I've put all of my money into this. Please, let's go faster. I need to get to my destination to offload these. When he is gonna hear one of the brickman say the following, you've got a good product there. If you could just get word ahead to the towns along the line, I'm sure the grocery owners would meet you at the platforms and buy the [00:18:00] bananas right off the box cars.
Right here, I think Mr. Edison would've been extremely happy to see that light bulb go off in Sam's head. This was brilliant advice, and it plays right into what you and I have spoke about in the past to keep your eyes and your ears open to the different ways of thinking.
Sam saw treasure where others saw trash. That was his gift. But he was thinking really broad here. What's my next big step? That's to get them to my hometown. That's three days away.
And he was missing something. He wasn't looking at all of those little opportunities along the way but this advice is really a turning point for Sam. Let's see what happens. He's gonna have to cut a couple deals here. During the next delay, zamar went into a Western Union office and spoke to the telegraph operator having no money.
Sam offered a [00:19:00] deal if the man radioed every operator ahead, asking each of them to spread word to the local merchants. Dirt cheap bananas coming through for merchants and peddlers. Sam would share a percentage of his sales. When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town, the customers were waiting.
Za Murray talked terms through the box, car door. A tower of rips at his back, 10 for eight, 13 for 10. He broke off a bunch, but the money in his pocket, the whistle blew. The train rolled on. He sold the last banana in Selma, then went home in the dark. So not only did Sam sell all of his stock right here, he didn't have to unload.
All of those bananas at his final destination and then try to go out and just cold sell them to buyers. By this time, it could have also been possible that maybe a lot of them would've been rotten and maybe they would not have been good anymore.
So by [00:20:00] sending messages ahead, the buyers got warmed up in advance and this created a buzz and it was pure gold, as they say. what would Sam's reward be as a result of this risk? That he took $40 in profit, which in 1905 was quite a nice sum.
And I think another way to look at this is that he could have chased pigs at a dollar a week for 40 more weeks. So right here, in less than a week, he made 40 weeks worth of work. this is his first major score. I'm proud of Sam. I think that is an awesome story and he's gonna do it again and again and again.
He had figured out how to move product faster than the big guys. He locked up his niche. It was his
he would learn lessons. He became a risk taker, a salesman. He would become a brawler, and most importantly, he became known as the banana man. Now, with the [00:21:00] success, he's gonna soon move to mobile, that just makes sense that he would get closer to where the action is at, and this would put him in proximity to the docks where he buys all the rips about to be rips and over rips that he could get his hands on he would sort them all. He would take the over rips to the closest towns. He would take the ones that were ripe, and he would distribute those to towns, 50 to a hundred miles out. then the bananas that were about to be ripe went further on down the line.
He was really a master at logistics and figuring all of this out at such a young age, and his business would grow quite rapidly. In 1899, he sold 20,000 bananas just four years later. Listen to this. He's selling 574,000 bananas. And then within 10 years of starting out doing this, he's selling more.
than a million bananas a year. He had identified a fresh, [00:22:00] untapped market, and this allowed him to thrive for a really long time. It goes back to keeping your eyes and your ears open, looking for all of those fresh potentials in business where you could possibly capitalize in an untapped or an under service market.
For Sam, it was ripe
sam had gained the attention of United Fruit, who would soon sign a contract with him in 1903, in which all of the rips and the turning rips were about to become his property. As these ships came into dock,
This was a major benefit for him because he didn't have to go out and hustle all of these bananas. They just became his property so he could load 'em up onto train cars and roll 'em out. Right here, we really see that Sam is what I call the fruit jobber of fruit jobbers.
I think the author paints a really vivid picture of Za Murray's success. Let's just read for you [00:23:00] what he says. A few years before Zaur seemed like a fool buying garbage. Now look what he's accomplished, selling hundreds of thousands of bananas a year. He'd become one of the biggest traffickers in the trade, and he had done it without having to incur the traditional cost.
His fruit was grown for him, harvested and shipped for free. He was like a bike racer riding in the windbreak of a semi-truck, the truck being United Fruit. By his 21st birthday, he had over a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. In today's terms, he would've been a millionaire
if he would've stopped there, he would've been a great success story. But my friend, he's just getting started. This is still early in the book, and he wanted to really move into prime time where the real money resided. So in 1903, he's gonna take on a partner, his name was Asbell [00:24:00] Hubbard.
Hubbard was experienced and respected as a banana broker, and he opened up a lot of new doors for Sam, plus Sam needed additional capital. So what they would do is together, they would put up like $30,000, I think it was to establish business together, and they would be known as the Hubbard Za Murray Company.
Shortly after this, they would go about and acquire a small steamship company for around $10,000. Now an important thing happens right here is that United Fruit would contribute to their business putting up 25% as a silent stake in their company.
It was really a common practice for United Fruit to take small stakes in these companies because it allowed this big mega company to keep their tentacles in these smaller companies and know what was going on. And they really limited these companies from growing too big, or at least too big for [00:25:00] United Fruits own liking.
If these companies resisted taking investment, United Fruit would simply just destroy them. So they didn't really have a lot of choice. It was capital that they got for the business. however, United Fruit really had control over them. But this is their path forward. They would buy this small steamship company and this gave them some rickety ships.
And for Sam, this was pure freedom. I just wanna read the following for you. Imagine as I read this, this is you standing in the pilot house. The world looked different to Zamar. His field of operation suddenly expanded. The entire Gulf of Mexico was now open. All the waterfront town markets inlets the deltas of Central American isus.
That would be a powerful feeling. And I imagine the thoughts that Zamar had as he traveled to the Isma the first time , that feeling of unknown combined with a desire and that deep [00:26:00] drive to have success. images of bananas, just filling his boats, spilling over the sides as they're heading back to the port in the United States to sell 'em all.
Now, they would go forward and they would acquire another company called Kmo Fruit Company, and they would pay around $20,000 for this small company. it was said in the book that this company was really in shambles. They were taking quite a big risk. This company had rusty locomotives that had been abandoned in the jungle.
It had a whole pile of deeds that were uncertain on lands that they couldn't validate if they were good or not. A lot of their plantations were run down and overgrown, and it was really a risky bet. But if Sam could take those paper deeds and make 'em real. And if you could clear the jungles and lay all the necessary railroad tracks to get the bananas out of the plantations, his payoff is gonna be quite immense.
. He's all [00:27:00] in on the tropics.
As they start ml, they're just gonna import bananas on their steamships as they're getting all of their plantations scaled up and ready to go. They would just buy from a lot of suppliers in Central America. but in 1908, Sam's gonna have some really big life changes, and this is gonna play into the rest of his life and how he scales himself as a businessman and how he grows his companies.
so he would meet his wife, Sarah Weinberger, and he would be married to her in 1908, Then about a year later, their daughter Doris was born becoming a father. really changes Sam's desires, those desires to be a provider for his family. As described by Cohen, the inner voice begins to ask serious questions, how much do I need?
What will it take to keep her safe? It was after the birth of Doris that Samsa Murray decided he needed to [00:28:00] get bigger and make more. The only way to do this was to expand, and the only way to do this was to plant his own bananas. It was a realization that sent Za Murray down the path he would follow for the rest of his life, a tortured path that led him south into the jungle.
Having kids, I understand it's a major turning point for just about everyone, and this is really a time that you recognize that you're living for something greater than yourself, your namesake, your future. Seeing yourself in that little child wanting to really do the best for them,
it can really drive us in our lives and in business, let it be a force for good. I know for me, when my son was born, I really stepped up my formal education and my self-education and I was able to make several jumps in my career that helped me earn a lot more. and at the same time, I was able to help build some small [00:29:00] businesses and this really gave me great fuel, and I could certainly understand the way that Sam feels at this time, that fatherly connection, if you will.
Sam, he had worked out a few lessons that he knows need to take place so that he could scale and grow his business. He had the following ideas in mind. The first one was to get big, need enough capital in reserve to weather freak occurrences
That could be like a hurricane or an earthquake or flood. Two is you need to grow your own. You really need to have your own fields so that you can control all the planting in the harvesting. You don't want to be reliant on your competition or anyone else. Plus, the nice thing about bananas is they grow year round.
So you can really have a lot of control over how you set up your plantations, how you manage your crops, and how you harvest them. Then third was that of [00:30:00] diversity and that you need to have land in many different countries. So if a disaster wipes out crops in one region, you would have another one to fall back on.
These are really the nuts and bolts. These are the learning lessons that Sam knows, and he's gonna press hard after the birth of his daughter. Three things get, beg, grow your own, and diversify. So in 1910, Sam's gonna set off on an extensive tour of Honduras
as he was looking to buy land. And lots and lots of it.
He would travel across the country on Mule back, gaining a deep love for all of the terrain meeting people that were described as roughnecks, dock workers, engineers, and plantation overseers.
Sam really gains their respect by leading from the front. He's not sitting in a cozy office. He's out there on the front lines. And let's just jump into the book here. Zaur bought his first parcel of land on the edge of Oma and[00:31:00] old colonial town on the north coast of Honduras.
Much of the property ran along the southern bank of the Cuyama River, where the country is hilly and fined a thousand shades of green. This was long considered junk land, neither valued nor tended. For $2,000, all of it borrowed. He got 5,000 acres. He was soon back in New Orleans, wondering if 5,000 was enough.
Again, we see Zaur right here picking up trash that's gonna be turned into gold very soon. Gold with bananas. That is, but as the author describes here in the next section, Sam's got these thoughts rolling around in his mind. If he needs to get bigger.
There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in a common pile where certain properties become available that will never be available again. a good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is [00:32:00] dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.
Now at this point, Sam has built a very healthy tolerance for risk taking, and he has this immense drive to get big. After a short rest in New Orleans, he's gonna head back to Honduras and he's gonna act in the following way. As described, zamar returned to Honduras in the spring of 1910 with a plan achingly simple, beautifully effective head north beyond the last pave road into the delta of the Camo River.
Flashed the roll and buy as much land as he could until the cash ran out. He was playing with borrowed money, having tapped out every line of credit in New Orleans and Mobile, he had gone on into the banks in New York and Boston, whoever was lending, he was accepting.
He was out there overextended, vulnerable. He must have worried about the risk, [00:33:00] but had to know this was his moment. I think out of all the entrepreneurs that we've studied so far here on the podcast, I think this is really the first time that we see someone going this deeply into debt and overextending themselves to expand their company.
In the book it's described further that when the banks stop lending to Za Murray, he would go underground and the author believes that Za Murray, in some cases might have been paying as much as 50% interest on this borrowed money. He's really got a deep drive to expand his business and acquire as much land as he really can here.
I know on episode seven and eight we saw Elon Musk. He dumped a large portion of his personal wealth into SpaceX and Tesla,
And he almost lost it all a few times and it really put a lot of stress and [00:34:00] pressure on Musk as he was growing those companies. for Zaur right here, I mean, I believe that he has this super strong vision about what his company could become.
he had the experience as a fruit jobber, and he really had an intricate understanding about how to move and sell bananas. He had the steamships at his disposal at this point in time, and he can transport the bananas back to the United States.
He's acquiring the lands. What does he need to do? He needs to grow the bananas and he needs lots and lots of land. If we jump back into the book, we're gonna learn a little bit more here. The land would not be this cheap forever. You see him in the cantina of Oma, the big Russian in the doorway, buying drinks for everyone.
Unlike most banana executives, Zamar was comfortable with the people of the Isus. Sam adapted himself to the ways of life Of
those he contacted. He cultivated friendships and did not [00:35:00] scorn to take a drink with the peasants. He acquired a wonderful command of their language, including swear words, which he didn't hesitate to employ. Zamar is out there on the ground, building relationships, forging bonds that were gonna serve him for the duration of his lifetime.
It reminds me of Sam Walton, who spent so much of his time in his stores, knowing employees and vendors and customers. Sam's gonna say the following, this is short and sweet, and I really think it hits home. The key to success is to get out into the store. Listen, and that is a good lesson right here.
Be visible in your business. Don't hide in the fancy office. people work hard for those they trust, if you're trustworthy with the people that work for you, they are gonna work even harder. Treat them fairly and with respect. Just like Sam [00:36:00] Walton and Sam Za Murray. Both did. this was certainly key for both of them having a long duration of success.
If we go back to the book here real quickly, Zari told the locals he would bring them wealth and good jobs when it came time to hire. He offered a wage 10 times the going rate, which angered the other employers. Another valuable lesson that we've seen so many times on the show, probably 70 or 80% of the episodes now, that by paying a higher wage.
You can really attract and retain that top tier talent. Zaur. He needed a lot of workers in Honduras and he pays well. He continues to forge forward. Let's just jump back to the book here. In the course of a few months, He accumulated the Uncleared acres that would constitute his first plantation in setting a price for the property.
Za Murray took advantage of the local landowners. He had superior [00:37:00] information, understood something important, lost on the Hondurans to the peasants. The land was swamp and disease. Nothing. That will still be nothing in a hundred years. Sam knew better because he was raised on a farm.
He realized the meaning of all that black soil beneath the weeds. Because he worked as a fruit jobber, he realized the worth of the fruit that would thrive in that soil. This land picked up for a song was in fact the most valuable banana country in the world.
Right here we see all of Sam's past coming back to help him out. All those lessons he learned on the farm, and as a junk pedler chasing those pigs and starting at the lowest levels as a fruit jobber to compete with United Fruit. Za Murray had to attack from a different angle.
Now Zamar is gonna explore new territory. He knew that to compete with United Fruit, he needed to be cost competitive and he needs a [00:38:00] different approach. So what is he gonna do? He is gonna look for some government officials that he can put in his pocket. The fruit business is really, really cutthroat.
Every penny that they add to their costs could potentially drive him out of business. Cost control was extremely imperative, so they would accomplish this through a series of bribes and kickbacks. and this is gonna work out for Sam in the following way,
Though the Dil government was not the most pliable, zaur did eventually secure his concession by kickback and by bribe in Honduras, camo would be exempted from import duties on all equipment, such as freight engines, train tracks, railroad ties, steam shovels, and machetes.
Exempted two, from paying property labor and export tax. Za Murray's bananas would arrive in the United States unencumbered by such fees. This [00:39:00] meant he could sell his product just as cheaply as United Fruit. Later concessions would entitle him to clear jungle and build Ves railroads and bridges, all of which would become privately owned by Zamar.
It would be past this point that Sam would set up all of his infrastructure. He would have all of his land cleared. He put down new railroad lines so that he could move the bananas from the fields to the ports
and his freshly planted. Banana trees were loaded down with green fruits. .
With ships in hand, he'd soon be sailing them to the United States.
Here we see the deeply driven nature of Sam. In the book, the author talks about his drive as aforce to build up ml, and I just wanted to read this following selection. I think this really describes it very well.
If asked to sum up Sam in the early days when he was building his first plantation, I would use the word drive. It was drive, ambition, [00:40:00] moxie, guts, or whatever you wanted to call it, that pushed him from Selma to New Orleans, then onto the jungle towns of the itsma there, where the genie was loosened. And the man went wild.
But this is not gonna be enough for Sam. He aggressively continues to buy more land on borrowed money. He's doubling down on his risk. He really has this drive to get even bigger. his view was to go all in or get out,
and for his business partner, Asheville Hubbard, he is gonna get out. This was too much for him. Sam's gonna end up buying out his share of the business for $160,000. It was said Sam would get his 45% share, and I'm almost certain that he was using borrowed money to buy out his business partner, as it was described in the book.
[00:41:00] This deep drive is gonna see CU ml exporting around 5 million bananas a month,
which is just crazy.
Mad respect for Sam Za Murray right here, and how far he's come, just since the age of 15 or 16 when he started pedaling his first gripes. But. This is soon to come under attack and it's gonna force Samur to stage a coup to have the president of Honduras replaced. Yes, you heard that correctly. He's about to have the president removed from office for his benefit.
Now this will take a couple years and I think this is really crazy and I'm gonna just summarize how this happened in the book. It's quite lengthy and I just wanna walk you through here the high level details about how this went down.
So the Honduran government, they owed millions of dollars to British creditors for a railroad that they had borrowed money [00:42:00] for, and they hadn't made any payments at this point. They were putting a lot of pressure on the President, McGill Dilla, to start repaying the loans.
Now at this time, the president of the United States, that was Taft, he's gonna step in with a plan. He had crafted this plan with the Secretary of State Philander Knox. And this plan would become known as the Knox Plan. The reason they had developed a plan to help Honduras is that they didn't want British forces anywhere on the American continent.
So this NOx plan was gonna be administered by some Wall Street bankers, and it would be led by JP Morgan. they were gonna refinance Honduras's debt in exchange for control of its customs revenue. So they would send officers to Honduras to collect taxes on imports and exports. This was [00:43:00] known as the NOx plan.
Well, this was essentially seen as a takeover of the Honduran economy by those in business and also by the local people. It was not popular in Honduras. This really threatened to wipe out those generous concessions that Zamar had worked so hard for.
If he loses these tax free imports and exports, that's gonna force him to not be as competitive with United Fruit because obviously his costs are gonna go up.
So Sam was obviously concerned, and he's gonna be summoned to Washington, DC where the Secretary of State knocks that is, has a really stern warning for him, and he tells him the following, don't meddle in Honduras. It's not your concern. Go home and stay out of it.
But we know Za Murray so far up to this point, do you think he's [00:44:00] just gonna go sit on the sidelines? Of course not.
Let me read from the book. In Defying Philander Knox and J PMA Morgan, Sam z Murray was challenging two of the most powerful men in America. Z Murray's scheme can be described as a coup disguised as a revolution. It would not be hard to stir popular anger in the country since most Hondurans hated the NOx plan.
And what are his first steps? Well, that's an excellent question. As it happened, the deposed former president of Honduras, his name was General Manuel Bonilla. He was living in exile in New Orleans. This is just a crazy, crazy story. Murray e Bonia, their friends, they had a lot of business dealings together.
So they have this respect and they have this relationship now in [00:45:00] Honduras. Nia was quite popular. He was pro-business or rather sympathetic towards Kumo and Zaur, and he had these really good looks that made him popular. So in order to get him reelected, that helped a lot. nothing better than having a good looking guy running for president who was popular with the people.
So Za Murray is gonna go around and he needs some help enlisting people to form an army. And he would tap a gentleman by the name of Lee Christmas. This guy was really well known as being a drinker in a brawler and a master of handling machine guns. In Christmas, he's gonna go round up about a hundred crew that was described in the following way.
The Murray's mercenary army would have perhaps a hundred soldiers, a ragtag band of guns for hire, a private gang in cast off [00:46:00] clothes, every shape and color, every weapon and motivation. This group was supplemented by recruits from the isus,
What comes next is just epic adding to the thriller. Sam really knows how to play his cards right here. Sam had secretly purchased a former warship that was called the Hornet, and it had been converted over into a civilian ship. At the time he purchased this, it was bigger and faster than anything that Honduras had in their fleet.
So right here,
he has quite an intimidation factor now, secretary Knox, he had gotten word that Za Murray owned the Hornet, so he ordered surveillance 24 7 against the ship. Now in December of 1910. The ship's captain files a routine request to sail to Nicaragua and they were gonna go down there and just pick up some iron ore.
It was like seven or eight days [00:47:00] down, three or four days in the port, five or six days back home. Just normal stuff. Nothing to see here. But Secretary Knox, he is a little bit suspicious and he orders his agents to dispatch with the Hornet. So he's got his men onboard in their sailing out of port, and they would ride on the Hornet for the first 70 miles, I believe it was.
They would search the ship thoroughly. There was no contraband. Za Murray wasn't on board. Lee Christmas wasn't on board. Ben wasn't there. Everything looked normal. So after this first 70 miles, uh, they would be happy and they would end up getting off of the ship. Now, as soon as the agents exited the ship, here's what would happen.
The captain killed the engine beyond the horizon, then drifted like a cork. he headed east. When the signal came sailing through the islands of the Mississippi sound, [00:48:00] he dropped anchor and waited. It was a cold, gloomy time of year. Captain Johnson finally spotted Za Murray's sleek little boat where the mercenaries were playing poker in the cabin below.
It was speeding towards the hornet getting more distinct as it came. It tied up alongside then a man tall and lean in a long overcoat. Climbed aboard. Any trouble getting out? He asked. No, sir. Good said Za Murray. I'm gonna bring the others over now. A few minutes later, Bonia Christmas and Maloney.
Uh, Maloney was another high profile, uh, principal conspirator that was also being watched. They boarded the Hornet, helping stack weapons, rifles, bullets, grenades and machine guns. These guys, they did not mess around. Murray, Murray meant business. He's really taking radical actions right here to secure.
His [00:49:00] property and his concessions. He doesn't want anyone messing with his concessions in all of these elements. They were gonna be used to overthrow the Honduran government that was currently in place, so they would sail south and five days later it says under the cover of fog, they would appear off the coast of the Bay Islands.
They were able to take over the islands with very little resistance. But this would set off alarms with the Honduran president and he orders all of the coastal cities to be fortified.
Listen to this, another strategic move by Sam aboard the Hornet. Za Murray's gonna sell the boat to a local Honduran citizen, and that would keep him from violating the US Neutrality Act. I tell you, zaur,he's smart. He knows exactly what he's after right here
the Hornet would eventually [00:50:00] be seized in January, I believe it was, for violating the Neutrality Act. By this time it really didn't matter because his little mercenary army, they had taken over the city of Trujillo that was on the mainland. And then from here, they're gonna have several small battles that are gonna take place.
And they would eventually take control of one of the major ports, Porto Cortez, and then they would also take control of the Treasury. There's a lot of popular unrest against his government, and he's gonna resign office, and he would hand over provisional control to another president that would hold the office just for a few months until they could have a formal election.
And then in February of 1912, Bonia would win in a landslide and he would be triumphantly returned as the president of Honduras , Sam Za Murray's coup worked [00:51:00] perfectly and well beyond any of his wildest expectations. Zaur had effectively accomplished what the US Secretary of State told them not to do.
He had overthrown a foreign government through his own wealth and his own will and his own strategies. It was an extraordinary example of a private American business taking over a country and shaping their destiny. Sam and Cual, they're gonna be rewarded very, very handsomely. Listen to how this worked out for them.
Their sweetheart deal, included the right to import all necessary equipment, duty free, no taxes on trains, tractors, machetes, a huge cost saver carte blanche to build railroads, highways, and infrastructure wherever they needed a $500,000 government loan. An [00:52:00] enormous sum then to reimburse all of its revolutionary expenses.
And I just read that to say that the government gave them a loan to basically overthrow the government. That that's crazy. They also got an additional 24,700 acres of prime land for future banana cultivation. In short, no taxes, no duties, free land.
Exceeding his expectations, I think is exactly correct. That is simply amazing a huge gift basically handed to Sam in the eyes of the Honduran people. Sam is held in super high regard, and this would cement his legacy in the country to many as a hero, but in the surrounding countries, he's seen as a villain fearing that they could possibly be next in this term, banana Republic, it had been coined by Ode [00:53:00] Henry and in a 1904 book, cabbages and Kings, and it was used to describe fictionalized versions of Central American nations that had gotten taken over by the banana trade.
However, this term is later gonna become associated with real life cases, and most of these would be attributed to Za Murray and United Fruit in later years. But regardless, Sam was undeterred by any of this, and it really makes me think of Jay Gould right here, who was constantly downcast in the newspapers for his shady dealings.
. Gold paid almost no attention. He drove forward with a full force and a passion doing what he believed was correct for his business. He was simply relentless. Both of these guys, za Murray and Gold, they're one in the same. If you ask me here, when it comes to charging [00:54:00] forward with might and aggression they are both bold.
Sam's plan to get big, to grow his own and diversify. This is the fuel that drove him very, very deeply and he would be heads down as described in the book.
,
it was time to work like a dog, build his banana business, pay his creditors, accumulate his money. Za Murray lived in the jungle with his workers, spoke their language, knew what they wanted and what scared them. It's why he was hated and why he was loved
because he was a person and a person you can disagree with and be angry at, but still admire. Whereas United Fruit was faceless in a way that terrified It was why the workers rallied to the Banana Man as their own.
By 1913, he had saved enough to buy back the Steak United Fruit owned in Kumo, a move that would secure Zer Marie's independence. He was too busy [00:55:00] building out his banana empire, which in the wake of Bonilla's, victory, sprawled gloriously across the cu amo river valley.
Through the 1910s cu Ymo Fruit Company, boomed Za Murray reinvested profits to buy more land, and even his own railroad in Honduras pushing steel tracks deeper into fertile hinterlands. He upgraded his little navy with newer ships, And by the 1920s, the CU Yamo fleet was a familiar site on the New Orleans waterfront.
locals affectionately called it the Little Navy, as if it were a national fleet of its own.
At this point, United Fruit. They're growing, really concerned about the size. Of Kumo and in 1925, they're gonna make an offer to buy Zamar out. And he's gonna say the following hell, I'm having so much fun and I'm a young man, why should I quit? And that is exactly [00:56:00] correct. Why would you ever wanna sell Unless you have a super solid next plan like Sam, he's not gonna just go sit on the couch at this point.
At least I don't think so. The same for us that we need to think really deeply before we consider selling our businesses. My friend, look at what Joe Colo taught us at the end of episode three that he really regretted selling Trader Joe's. And I'll just briefly paraphrase what Joe said. I have to admit the truth that I regret having sold Trader Joe's and now I've had to pay something for this beyond the loss of my shadow.
It's a strong lesson for us to think deeply, my friend, know what your next steps are and what your plans are. Don't just sell unless you know exactly what it is. Your next steps are.
Sam is loving his business. The Banana [00:57:00] Wars are heating up between these two companies and
Kumo, they had grown into United Fruit's most vigorous competitor grabbing a lot of their market share and prime plantation land. Banana prices were said to often be a battleground with each company trying to undercut the other United Fruit.
They're gonna slash prices almost a cost. What's really forced Sam to be innovative and efficient, and he would push the boundaries of his lands right up next to United Fruit property lines. And this really heated up a war between these two companies. This war's gonna start soon spilling over into the public.
In the State Department. They started to grow really concerned about the stability of the region because the last thing that they wanted was two American companies firing up a civil or regional war over their business [00:58:00] practices. So it was described that in 1929, the State Department would bring both of these companies together and they're basically gonna force a merger.
Za Murray and United Fruit, they're gonna go back and forth for many months on a lot of different specifics. To Za Murray, he had his blood in this business. He had his sweat and his tears in the company over 20 years of building right here. And he's not gonna just let the company go for nothing
because they weren't buying just a company. They were buying Za Murray's hard and soul. He had put everything into this, let's just jump into the book real quick here. He was putting a price on his company, which was more than a company. It was his body and soul. 20 years in the jungle, epic Journeys on Mule Back, mobile, new Orleans and Porto Cortez.
Cuma Fruit was the Murray in the shape of a corporation. His [00:59:00] personality made manifest his work and his love. Where he tested his theories, informed his philosophy, get up first, work harder. Get your hands in the dirt and the blood in your eyes. and here he was preparing to sell it to United Fruit.
Now they wouldn't have any progress in the boardroom, at least any meaningful progress. It would need to get worked out another way, and I think the way this gets settled is the Sam Za Murray way,
which the author describes so well in the book. Let me just read for you. Bradley Palmer, United Fruit's largest shareholder and ranking director, track Sum Murray, down to a pub in London where he was eating alone. Palmer ordered a pint of bass sum. Murray ordered a pint for himself, 12 pints. Later the deal was done, not a buyout, but a merger
with the smaller company becoming a [01:00:00] division of the larger. This was key for Zamar, not only for reasons of pride, but also because it meant none of his workers would be fired. nor any of his plantation shut down. The deal would be structured as a stock swap.
when Zaur brought it to his investors, holders of ml stock signed agreements, allowing their shares to be exchanged for the shares of United Fruit, Sam would receive 300,000 shares of United Fruit. For his shares in Kumo, his stake after the merger would be valued at more than 30 million a figure worth considering as it would make Samsa Murray who had arrived in Selma with nothing.
Three decades before one of the richest men in America United Fruit would take possession of Kumo, the best banana company in the world, with 35,000 cultivated acres in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico. 15 [01:01:00] top of the line banana boats and the capacity to produce and ship 6 million bunches a year.
past this Samza Murray would go into retirement as the largest shareholder of United Fruit with something like a 10% voting stake. He would return to New Orleans Society where he would purchase one of the largest mansions on St. Charles Avenue. And it was said that he also purchased like 25,000 acres outside of New Orleans, that he has improved.
He would spend a lot of time, uh, donating money to, to Lane University and working with them on various programs, and a lot of the buildings would undertake his name as he was a generous donor. But the entire time he has a really watchful eye on United Fruit. And in 1928, United Fruit had made something like $45 million in profits.
[01:02:00] Just four years later, as the Great Depression was getting started, around this time, profits had declined to 6 million. The company was in a death spiral, and Za Murray had seen his personal fortune drop from 30 million just down to three. So where would Za Murray go for answers the boardroom? Not a hell's chance.
He goes back to his roots
as described in the book.
He went to the docks instead, where he spent the winter of 1932 walking through warehouses and standing on the decks of the banana boats, talking to the fruit peddlers and captains, loaders and Steve doers. The people who really knew it was the end of his retirement, though, few realized it at the time.
He peppered them with questions. He wanted to know the specifics, the mood on the isus, the color and size of the last harvest, the speed of the crossing, how fast is the [01:03:00] captain running her? Sam is gonna discover that they're running the boats really slowly.
This was an effort to help save fuel. In addition, the boats were only like half full, and this was costing them quite dramatically. This was a prime example of those poor decisions that were coming out of the boardroom that were severely crippling the company. So what he would do is he would send detailed summaries to the board as described, but Anna Boats running half speeds, half full rips dumped into the sea, fields of undernourished stems, labor unrest in the banana towns where the company had stopped spending.
He included suggestions. Ideas, repurpose the boats, follow the fields, control the supply. And his letters, this wise advice that he would send, they would go unanswered. So where does he head now? Well, [01:04:00] now it's time for him to go to the boardroom because he's appalled at the lack of response and the incompetent leaders that are in place.
So as he arrives at one of the meetings, he's really appalled at something that's taking place. They were having this great debate about a manager in Guatemala who had requested $10,000 to build a much needed irrigation ditch. So what they were doing is they were calling in experts who would detail all the cost, and they would talk about the pros and the cons.
And they were just going down these ridiculous rabbit holes.
But Za Murray, he's getting really heated. These guys are not there and they don't have any fricking clue and he can't take it anymore and he's gonna stand up and say the following.
Zamar grew restless to him. Such a debate was symptomatic of a greater problem. The executives running [01:05:00] United Fruit did not understand their role, what they could and could not do. He raised his hand, stood to speak this man in Guatemala. Is he your manager?
Isn't he? Zamar asked, yes. Then listen to what the man is telling you. You are here. He's there. Said Zamar. If you trust him, trust him. If you don't trust him, fire him and get a man. You do trust in the job. Zamar went on to explain his frustration with how the company was being run. Then offered a few ideas.
Now his ideas are gonna be rejected by the board. Imagine this, you have a man with 30 years in the trenches, you bought his freaking company and you're rejecting his ideas. I mean, that's crazy to me. So put yourself in Za Murray's [01:06:00] shoes. Can you only imagine seeing how these goons or effing up your company, the one that you started as a kid?
You're out there hustling every day, working harder than anyone else. Za Murray, he's not gonna take this. He's really pissed off and he would go away mad at this point. He is officially unretired, and I think we just read that a couple paragraphs ago. But he's done and what's he gonna do? He's gonna spend the next several weeks traveling around talking to the largest shareholders.
He's gonna make his case over and over. That United Fruit was led by a bunch of corporate executives that basically didn't know anything. They didn't even really know that they were doomed, and he's gonna convince these largest shareholders to sign over their proxy votes to him. And I ask you, if Sam showed up at your house and you had been sitting there watching the price fall from a hundred down to [01:07:00] 10, and you knew Sam's deep history and his drive and his legendary status, what would you do?
I know for me, I'm turning over my proxies.
And that was the right choice by so many who would turn over proxies to him and he would go back to the board a few weeks later let's just see how all this goes down. I'm gonna paraphrase here from the book.
When Za Murray spoke to the board again, several months later, he had with him a bag full of proxies. The voting rights turned over to him by other shareholders, along with his own shares. These proxies could give zamar control of the company, though he kept their existence a secret for the moment. Anyway.
The best tycoons are like magicians. They know when to share information and when to withhold. The meeting took place on the 10th floor of the United Fruit Building at one Federal Street in Boston on a January morning in [01:08:00] 1933. It was an iconic corporate showdown of the era, remembered and discussed. To this day, the Board of United Fruit made up of the elite Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, a descendant of two presidents Canning h Cox, the former governor of Massachusetts, Bradley Palmer, the company officer who negotiated the buyout of Kumo.
One of the few people in the room sympathetic to Za Murray Francis Hart, the oldest son of an original investor in Boston Fruit.
The chairman of the board was Daniel Gold Wing, who descended from an old New York, England family. The president of First National Bank of Boston Wing looked sconce at un credentialed ill bred strangers who wandered in off the street to him. Ur was still Sam the banana man.
The fruit jobber from the docks.
And remember that fruit jobber, that's the absolute lowest rank in [01:09:00] the business wing, simply sees a peasant walking into his boardroom. Let's keep going here. . He already knew what Sam could teach him about the business. Nothing. Wing welcome Za Murray without looking up, greeting him as Tom McCann characterized it, frosty at best.
Za Murray waited as the board went through its task
when it was finally his turn to speak. He chose each word carefully explaining his ideas in the thick Russian accent that he never could shed. when Zaur finished, wing smiled and said, unfortunately, Mr. Zaur, I can't understand a word of what you say when an asshole, the minute the table started to laugh, zaur Murray's pupils narrowed to pin pricks.
His hands tightened into fist. He muttered, then stomped out. Perhaps the board members believed Za Murray had been chased away, was [01:10:00] fleeting back to New Orleans. In truth, he had only gone to retrieve his bag of proxies returning to the boardroom. He slapped them on the table and said, you are fired. Can you understand that Mr.
Chairman? What followed was the sword of graveyard silence in which each board member recalculated his own prospects. You gentlemen have been effing up this business long enough. Samari told them, I'm gonna straighten it out. I didn't wanna watch the greatest company in the world go to hell in a hand basket.
Samari explained Victor Cutter was fired. He had run United Fruit for eight years, had served in its ranks for 30. Za Murray retained just a few members of the United Fruit Board, including TJ Coolidge, who would become one of Sam's confidants, and Francis Hart, whom Za Murray made President a had positioned [01:11:00] perfect for heart, who was a link to the old banana royalty.
His presence would reassure certain partners and politicians as well as more tradition minded investors, gave the illusion of contiguity suggesting there had been no radical break. Of course, there had been, the past was dead and gone. All power would now be concentrated in the hands of one man, Samuel Za Murray, who named himself United Fruits managing director of operations.
It was in these years that Za Murray became known as the director of the Banana Trade. A man who with a single phone call could undermine governments.
To date on the podcast, that's gotta be my most favorite corporate takeover that you and I have ever talked about. One man walks into a boardroom, fires the chairman [01:12:00] and the CEO, and takes over the company. Impressive. The smartest banana man in the world is back in charge.
Such a powerful lesson for you and I that with this intense focus and determination, we can really accomplish what we put our minds to. Zaur has 30 years in the industry, starting in the bottom in the muck, chasing pigs, hustling bananas, building plantations, taking over governments, and dominating in the boardroom.
This guy is a living example of knowing his business from A to Z.
As he would often say, there's no problem you can't solve if you know your business A to Z. Amen. Mr. Zamar. Amen. I believe it to be true. We have to know our businesses like the back of our hands. Hell better than the back of our hands.
past this point. Zamar takes over United [01:13:00] Fruit. It's plagued by inefficiencies, piles of debt, pissed off workers. Morale is shitty. The stocks in the shitter and is growing pretty much close to worthless. And guess what Ari's gonna do? I think you already know.
Yep. He's gonna head out into the field and he would immediately undertake a six week tour. The author describes it so beautifully. I just wanted to read it for you. United Fruit had over a million acres under cultivation owned hospitals and schools, thousands of miles of highway and railroads, peers and warehouses
Za Murray visited as much of it as possible, stopping in Honduras, Guatemala, Columbia, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Cuba. He walked in the heat, stood in the fields, strolled through the towns, drank in the bars, laughed with the vaquero, uh, which is Spanish [01:14:00] for Cowboy. His manner was as informal as can be.
Just another banana man in the mud. Kick boots and khaki pants, tall and friendly, standing in the shade, watching the cutters cut and the loader's load. examining the straw filled box. Cars lingering in the dives where men got drunk and spoke the truth now and then asking a seemingly simple question.
For Za Murray, it must have been a second youth
once again, he had a job and knew just what to do,
Being on the ground gave him everything that he wanted to know so that he could make changes. He would replace incompetent and lazy men. He put the power back in the hands of local managers to make decisions.
They were no longer relying on some fool, an office that was thousands of miles away. He would sell old ships, He would abandon ones that could no longer be [01:15:00] repaired, and then he would stock the good ships from top to bottom with fruits that were ready to unload and sell in America.
he had all of the properties reevaluated to help lessen the tax burden.
Za Murray would serve at the top of the organization for the next 25 years, it was said that he saved the company within the first month that he took over. The stock price would jump from 10 to 26 and then continue climbing from there. And I know that if I was one of those individuals that had signed over my proxies, I'd be smiling ear to ear in just three or four pages of this book.
We can see some insanely valuable lessons. Let me just summarize them real briefly. First, he got rid of workers who were donkeys, the ones that were dragging the company down. He focused on hiring the best, and we've spoke about that so many times on the podcast. Now, hire the best. This is what Samari did.
second. He puts the [01:16:00] decision making on the managers.
When employees are empowered, they're more engaged in the business and they're willing to work harder. Trust your employees and let them run. If they can't be trusted, replace 'em.
Third was to always keep the equipment up to date. Invest heavily in your tech, in your equipment. And then fourth, control your cost. Simply by having properties reevaluated. He saved more than $4 million a year in taxes. And remember, this is the early 1930s, I guess. Anyways, that's a huge amount at that time, and these are just the obvious lessons.
There's so much more in this section alone, and it really drives home the point that we should always be reading and learning. Sam is such a great teacher for you and I from grinding hard, knowing his people, setting examples. He was a master strategist, especially at knowing his business [01:17:00] A to Z. It's really a buffet of learning.
The author says it best in the beginning of the book, and I just wanted to read it again. If you wanna understand the spirit of our nation, the good and the bad, you can enroll in college, sign up for classes, take notes, and pay tuition, or you can study the life of Sam, the banana man, and I just looked on Amazon yesterday, this book, 18 Bucks.
Hang with me here. If you want a hundred x something, pick up this book, my friend,
I believe that would be easy to do. A thousand x, 10,000 x.
Or dare I say even more just from this $18 book. Now, from here, Sam is gonna go on and he is gonna run United Fruit for 25 more years. There's tons of details in the book, and I highly suggest picking a copy up for your library and don't let it sit on the shelf, move it [01:18:00] to the top of the queue if you can.
There's tons of great lessons here. Possibly share it with a friend or a family member even. I've just covered the highest level lessons with you here today.
So after this 25 years, Sam would retire in 1954. He would spend most of his time in his mansion in New Orleans, and he's gonna give really generously to Tulane University and many other charities that he was involved with. And sadly, Sam would pass away on November 30th, 1961. He would leave about half of his $30 million to charities.
The author says something interesting here at the time of the publishing of this book in 2012, that there were very few people alive that personally knew Za Murray, and I think Rich Cohen did a really good job of talking to those few people who were still on earth and documenting their stories and collecting all of the facts and memorializing all of those fine [01:19:00] details.
And I guess 13 years later, maybe those people have passed on now, and maybe there's no one alive that really knows Za Murray, . But like I mentioned, Cohen has captured their understanding and documented it so well in this book. And I picture students walking past Za Murray Hall or many of the other buildings that bear his or his family's name at Tulane University.
And maybe a lot of them don't even know the rich history about Sam, the Banana man, and the valuable lessons that they could learn by studying his life.
If they could just pick up this book, I believe they would feel more connected to the university in which they're attending and would also help them enhance their education, especially if they're studying business.
There's so much more in the book. Again, I highly recommend it. I hope you can pick up a copy.
And for me personally, I feel that I'll be covering Sam the Banana man again in future episodes. I think [01:20:00] there's a lot to unpack here in the life of Samza Murray, and I've really just gotten started
at this point. I'd just like to turn our attention for a couple of moments to the top lessons that we learned today from the book. if you've listened to past episodes, you know that I have this firm belief that we should all be taking time to reflect on the things that we read. This really helps us build those deeper connections, and I just wanted to share the top five things that I took away from the book here.
The first lesson was that of working hard and building our skills. We saw Sam start at the very bottom, learning every aspect of the fruit business later in life. These lessons really helped him turn around United Fruit, and it also allowed him to connect to his workers that were on the front lines, building trust and building loyalty.
The second lesson. Was keeping your eyes and your ears open to different ways of [01:21:00] thinking. when Sam was trying to move fast and transporting his ripe bananas, he got advice from a rail yard worker to call ahead. And this let merchants know that bananas were on the way.
He ended up selling out quickly. And this was a game changer for Sam if he would've been stuck in his ways. He may have faced RU and early on. So think this is valuable. Keep your eyes and your ears open, my friend.
The third lesson we saw today was about being visible in your business. As we read and heard so many times today, Sam was constantly in his business out in the fields, in the warehouses, talking to and learning from employees. We saw the same with Sam Walton who said the following. The key to success is to get out into the store and listen.
I couldn't agree more when we're out in the field talking and learning or growing, and those are the nuts and bolts [01:22:00] that we need to know our business A to Z. The fourth lesson is that of thinking deeply about our actions, especially when it comes to potentially selling our businesses. We learned from Joe Kalo at Trader Joe's that he admits that he regretted selling Trader Joe's.
Sam was also forced to merge cu AMO into United Fruit
.
. So I think the takeaway here is just to think deeply, my friend, about your next steps. The fifth and final major lesson is that of pure drive and determination.
When Sam saw that United Fruit was struggling, he had the chairman and the CEO removed. He took over the company and he used his 30 years of experience to turn the company around raising the stock price from 10 to 26. And it was this deep drive and determination to get out in the field, connect with the workers, and [01:23:00] this told them everything that he needed to know to save the company within the first 30 days that he had taken it over.
It's this deep drive and determination that propels us and will always move us forward. Those were my top takeaways
i've really enjoyed spending this time with you today. The purpose of the show is to discuss the top lessons from each of these books.
I really wanna focus on delivering high quality content and value for you and your business. If you'd like the episode, if you could just take a moment and leave me a quick review, I would greatly appreciate it. Possibly even share the show with a friend or a family member if you think they might benefit as well.
If you have any book recommendations that you would like me to cover. Just shoot me a quick email at Larry at Deeply Driven podcast.
I also have a newsletter at Deeply Driven Podcast. If you go there, then you just look at the top of the page. You'll see a [01:24:00] newsletter tab. Just click on that and the rest of it super simple to put your email address in and you can sign up. I'll send you the top lessons that I learned for each book that I read.
And I just wanted to say thank you for listening today. It really means a lot to me. I hope to see you back here soon. Until next time, make a beautiful day in the neighborhood, my friend.