NAME; John Davison Rockefeller
OCCUPATION; Famous Business Leaders, Entrepreneur , CEO, Bible study teacher, Janitor.
BIRTH DATE; July 8 , 1839
DEATH DATE; May 23 , 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH; Richford, New York
PLACE OF DEATH; Ormond Beach , Florida


EARLY LIFE
Born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839, John Davison Rockefeller moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, at the age of 16. Unafraid of hard work, he took on a number of small-business ventures as a teenager, he got his first job aged 16 as an assistant bookkeeper. This job was for Hewitt & Tuttle, a small produce commission company in New York. He worked very long hours for the princely sum of $0.50 per day, so after three months of work he had earned his first $50. Due to his deeply religious and charitable nature, he promptly gave $5 of it to his church.
During his stint at Hewitt & Tuttle, Rockefeller worked very long hours, but enjoyed life in the office. He became skilled at calculating transport expenses and helped to streamline the company’s expenditure in this area. These transport cost skills were the building blocks for Standard Oil’s monopoly in the oil industry, so his time in the offices of Hewitt & Tuttle paid off well. His insights into the workings of Hewitt & Tuttle also inspired his first business venture, which was a produce commission business. It is said that, during his time as an assistant bookkeeper, Rockefeller came up with two personal goals for his life: To make $100,000 and to live to 100 years old. (He died aged 97 with a fortune of an estimated $663,000,000,000 today).
By the age of 20, Rockefeller, who'd thrived at his job, ventured out his own with a business partner, working as a commission merchant in hay, meats, grains and other goods. At the close of the company's first year in business, it had grossed $450,000. A careful and studious businessman who refrained from taking unnecessary risks, Rockefeller sensed an opportunity in the oil business in the early 1860s. With oil production ramping up in western Pennsylvania, Rockefeller decided that establishing an oil refinery near Cleveland, a short distance from Pittsburgh, would be a good business move. In 1863, he opened his first refinery, and within two years, it was the largest in the area. It didn't take much further success to convince Rockefeller to turn his attention full-time to the oil business.

BUISNESS
In 1870, Rockefeller and his associates incorporated the Standard Oil Company, which immediately prospered, thanks to favorable economic/industry conditions and Rockefeller’s drive to streamline the company’s operations and keep margins high. With success came acquisitions, and Standard began buying out its competitors. Standard’s moves were so quick and sweeping that it controlled the majority of refineries in the Cleveland area within two years. Standard then used its size and ubiquity in the region to make favorable deals with railroads to ship its oil. At the same time, Standard got into the transport business itself with the purchase of pipelines and terminals, setting up a system of transport for its own products. Controlling (or owning) almost every aspect the business, Standard’s grip in the industry tightened, and it even bought thousands of acres of forest for lumber and drilling and to block competitors from running their own pipelines. Standard’s footprint got bigger as well, and it bought up competitors in other regions, soon pursuing ambitions of being an industry player both coast to coast in the U.S. and abroad. In just over a decade since Standard Oil was incorporated, it had a near monopoly of the oil business in the U.S. and consolidated each division under one giant corporate umbrella, with Rockefeller overseeing all of it. Everything Rockefeller had done to this point had led to the first American monopoly, or “trust,” and it would serve as a guiding light for others in big business following behind him.

Unfortunately, with such an aggressive push into the industry, the public and the U.S. Congress took notice of Standard and its seemingly unstoppable march, and they didn’t like what they saw. Monopolistic behavior was generally not something anyone applauded, and Standard became the epitome of a company too big, too dominant, for the public good. Congress jumped into the fray with both feet in 1890 with the Sherman Antitrust Act, and two years later the Ohio Supreme Court deemed Standard Oil a monopoly that stood in violation of Ohio law. Always eager to be a step ahead, Rockefeller dissolved the corporation and allowed each property under the Standard banner to be run by others. The overall hierarchy remained chiefly in place, though, and Standard’s board maintained control of the web of spun-off companies. Just nine years after the company broke itself into pieces in the face of antitrust legislation, those pieces were again reassembled in a holding company. In 1911, though, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the new entity in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and illegal.

John D. Rockefeller was the first person in history to amass a personal fortunate of $1 billion. He didn’t stop there though; he continued to build on his already staggering wealth until it peaked at $1.5 billion after his retirement. When he died, in 1937, his net worth was estimated at around $1.4 billion, with the majority of the cash tied up in family trust funds. To put these figures into perspective for the time, when his fortunes peaked at $1.5 billion, the United States national gross domestic product (GDP) was an estimated $92 billion. This means that Rockefeller held 1.6% of the money of the entire United States! Various methods have been used to adjust Rockefeller’s wealth to account for inflation over time, in order to see how much he would be worth today. The estimates put his personal fortune at an estimated $663 billion. Let’s compare this to the richest man alive, Bill Gates . Gates’ net worth stands at around $78.9 billion at July 2015. This means that the estimate for Rockefeller’s adjusted net worth is over nine times the amount of the richest man on Earth! This makes him far and away the richest man in recorded history. By the time he died Rockefeller was known as a massively generous philanthropist.
In 1912, the year the Titanic sank, Rockefeller had the oppourtunity to insure the Titanic. This deal would have made him the richest man that ever lived (richer than King Solomon as some people believe). But he kept on saying that the Holy spirit said No. If he had gone ahead with the deal, this means that his fortune would have suffered a serious setback the very day the ship sank. Amazed by his strategies and instincts, Rockefeller reiterated during several interviews and public speaking that "God gave me this money"

CHRISTIAN LIFE
Regarding his Christian faith, Rockefeller would read the Bible daily, attend prayer meetings twice a week and even led his own Bible study with his wife.He was also the church janitor. He tithed, rested on the Sabbath and gave away much of his money to charity. Burton Folsom Jr. has noted, “he sometimes gave tens of thousands of dollars to Christian groups, while, at the same time, he was trying to borrow over a million dollar to expand his business.” Additionally, Rockefeller took time to spend with his family, something that confused many businessmen. Rockefeller’s philanthropy was extensive. As his own personal fortune grew, so did the amount of money he gave to good causes. Historians estimate that he gave away more than half of his fortune. Rockefeller routinely gave his money away. Ever since his very first pay check, of which he donated 10% to the Erie Street Mission Baptist Church, he charitably gave away a portion of his earnings. Throughout his career and life he offered considerable donations to many organisations, mainly focussing on medical research (he was a major factor in the eradication of hookworm and yellow fever), public education, and scientific research.
His philosophy of giving was founded upon biblical principles. He truly believed in the biblical principle found in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
With Rockefeller’s philanthropy, people were able to build schools, churches and hospitals. He was able to support missionaries and was able to bring the message of Christianity the whole world. His giving also led to vast improvements in education for many. He gave tens of millions to the University of Chicago, black schools, Southern schools and Baptist schools. Yet, not all the schools continually received money; improved results were a requirement. This was based upon Rockefeller’s interpretation of the parable of the talents and the Apostle Paul’s writing that, “if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
As he neared the end of his life, Rockefeller learned how to enjoy the small things in life. He learned how to tango, hired a caddy to help with his golf swing and spent more time with his family—especially his grandkids. He would also watch people who passed his house and gave dimes to children telling them to work and to save.
Rockefeller was an amazing Christian, and that he successfully passed the faith on to his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Because of his Biblical recognition that having great wealth would bring an equally great responsibility and accounting before God, Junior was reluctant to assume control of his father’s empire, when Senior wanted to retire. John Jr. raised his children to be God fearing Bible believing Christians. They prayed, memorized scriptures daily, and were taught to live moral Christian lives. He and his wife Abbey had six children, a daughter and the five Rockefeller brothers.
But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for [it is] He that giveth thee power to get wealth, that He may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as [it is] this day -- Deuteronomy 8:18.
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success -- Joshua 1:8.
Rockefeller serves as a great example of what it means to be a good steward of what God has given us. He also is a reminder to abide by those seemingly counterintuitive instructions to rest on the Sabbath and to give so that we might have more.

MORE FACTS ABOUT ROCKEFELLER
1. He is considered the richest person in history, with an estimated net worth when he was alive of $660 billion in 2007 USD equivalent.
2. Rockefeller became well known in his later life for the practice of giving dimes to adults and nickels to children wherever he went. He even gave dimes as a playful gesture to wealthy men, such as tire mogul Harvey Firestone.
3. The Rockefeller Foundation has distributed more than $14 billion in current dollars.
4. By the 1870s, Standard Oil held nearly 90% share in the oil refining industry of the US.
5. He taught Sunday school, served as a trustee, clerk, and occasional janitor at the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church in Cleveland.
6. Standard Oil wanted to make sure customers knew they were getting 42 gallon in a barrel of oil, so Rockefeller shipped his oil in a distinctive blue barrel. Today a barrel of oil is abbreviated “bbl,” and the first “b” stands for “blue.”
7. Rockefeller remained totally abstinent from alcohol and tobacco throughout his life.
8. Rockefeller’s father was a traveling conman who traveled the country selling herbal-remedies, gaining him the nickname “Doc Rockefeller.”
9. John D. Rockefeller’s personal fortune accounted for over 1.5% of the total United States GDP in 1937.
10. Every year, Rockefeller celebrated the anniversary of landing his first job.
11. He hired substitute soldiers to avoid Civil War combat.
12. The court-ordered breakup of Standard Oil made Rockefeller hundreds of millions of dollars. The monopoly was broken up into 34 separate entities that included companies that would become ExxonMobil, Conoco, Chevron and Amoco. The court order turned out to be a financial windfall for Rockefeller, who still held a quarter of Standard Oil’s stock after his retirement. The individual pieces of the company were worth more than the whole, and as shares of the individual companies doubled and tripled in value in their early years.
13. Winston Churchill would have written Rockefeller’s biography—if his price hadn’t been so high.
14. Rockefeller suffered from alopecia and lost all hair from his body and head in his 40s.
15. Rockefeller lived so long that his life insurance company had to pay him $5 million.

SOME SELECTED ROCKEFELLER QUOTES
"If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it".
"Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing".
"This Sunday School has been of help to me, greater perhaps than any other force in my Christian life, and I can ask no better things for you than that you, and all that shall come after you in this great band of workers for Christ, shall receive the same measure of blessedness which I have been permitted to have".
"There is nothing in this world that can compare with the Christian fellowship; nothing that can satisfy but Christ".
"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people".
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship".
"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake".
"Giving should be entered into in just the same way as investing. Giving is investing".
"I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts".


Blessed [is] the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight [is] in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper -- ps 1:1-6.

Educating.

To think he was a janitor....days of little beginnings.

Appreciated as the richest american ever lived but Mansa Musa of Mali is the richest as far as being rich is concerned

ladyF:
Educating.

To think he was a janitor....days of little beginnings.

He was never a janitor as an ordinary man. He was and remained a janitor as a billionaire. it was more of a service to God because he did it in the church.

.

Its only God that can that do this to a man.
That's my role model

firefox4th:
Appreciated as the richest american ever lived but Mansa Musa of Mali is the richest as far as being rich is concerned

Recorded as the richest MAN that ever lived. Musa comes behind him though.

winner01:
Recorded as the richest MAN that ever lived. Musa comes behind him though.

I wish you could read wider, Mansa Musas could not even be fully quantified becos of the magnitude and even richer than Solomon, mind you this is true .

firefox4th:


I wish you could read wider, Mansa Musas could not even be fully quantified becos of the magnitude and even richer than Solomon, mind you this is true .

None of them comes close to King solomon, His wealth was worth trillions of todays Dollar, He sold to Kings and their nations and still cannot be fully quantified. (wikipedia is your friend)....
Experts believe mansa musa's worth to be $400b as of today (estimated due to inflation), thanks to gold and salt that came from his country... But did you know that just two generations later after his death, his record net worth was gone.
Many people still feed on the "remains" of rockefeller till date.