Episode Details

What I learned from reading Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. 

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[1:23] He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that came only in the last quarter of his long life. Less well known is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real-estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

[1:54] In all endeavors he was a promoter and self-promotor without peer, a relentless advertiser and an unfailingly imaginative concoctor of events to draw the interest of potential patrons.  

[3:16] Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams. 

[3:54] He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs. His life is well worth knowing.  

[5:36] Barnum’s was 16 when his father died, leaving his family with debts: Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery “to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us this side of the grave.”  

[6:22] He knew even then that he would only be happy working for himself. 

[7:56] Like most persons who engage in a business which they do not understand, we were unsuccessful in the enterprise. 

[8:16] He is running a lottery and learns something he will use later in his career: He began to develop his insight into the complicated nature of his customers, a realization that outwardly respectable people might have interests that were not entirely respectable.  

[11:06] The day he became a showman. He starts a newspaper, gets sued for libel, goes to jail, and organizes a parade on the day he is released: His ability to marshal not just his own paper but also the goodwill of others was a harbinger of things to come.  It was the first example of his flair for drawing attention to his beliefs, his enterprises, and himself.  

[13:48] Seemingly small but consequential details would never elude him. 

[14:15] His lottery business is outlawed by the state legislature. He is broke: He blamed himself for his situation, writing that “the old proverb, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ was too true in my case.” Still, he was confident in his ability to make money.  

[17:03] I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.  

[18:42] Up and Down, Down and Up: He struggled to find further success in the years that followed. Barnum would spend much of the five years after on the road with various acts. “I was thoroughly disgusted with the life of an itinerant showman.”  

[20:03]  Broke again at 31: Barnum later wrote, “I began to realize, seriously, that I was at the very bottom of fortune’s ladder, and that I had now arrived at an age when it was necessary to make one grand effort to raise myself above want.” 

[22:00] The clever way he is able to get the money to buy the American Museum: He decided to seek out the retired merchant who owned the building in which the museum was housed, with the quixotic goal of persuading him to buy the collection for him on credit, arguing that he would be a more reliable tenant than the struggling Scudder family (the current owners of the museum). This, against all odds, Barnum was able to do. 

[23:52] The customers he wanted and how he positioned his product: Barnum wanted to attract this rising middle class. They had more money and were more likely to spend it on wholesome activities, and with their higher rates of literacy, they were more susceptible to newspaper ad