The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
Here are some things I learned about bananas from this book:
All the bananas you eat are clones of the same original banana (called a “Cavendish”)
Bananas can grow 20 inches in 24 hours
Bananas led to multiple governments being overthrown. This is because the companies that controlled the banana industry - “Big Banana” if you will - needed friendly governments to run profitably (e.g., get various tax breaks)
Running a banana company well required vertical integration - growing the bananas in central America, owning the ships that brought them to the US, and marketing / selling them to consumers. Selling bananas was a race against time - as soon as you plucked them, they’d start to ripen (and eventually go bad)
The book tells the story of Sam Zemurray, a Jewish Russian immigrant who takes over the whole industry and becomes a millionaire. He starts small. He buys "ripes” - bananas too close to being ripe to sell - on the cheap from the banana companies and hustles to sell them before they go bad. Eventually, he owns banana farms in Guetamala and effectively operates a navy as well. It feels like an “only in America” story and was a fun read. Kudos to Cohen for an engaging and unique writing style.
Things to learn from Zemurray:
Be willing to hustle / outwork other people - his original business was about taking what others viewed as trash and making money on it
Be focused on the details / on the ground. Zemurray spent time in Central America as well as the docks in New Orleans, where he could learn more about what was happening in the market. A lot of his competitors were ensconced in offices in Boston or New York, which gave him a big competitive advantage
Resiliency and “hanging around the hoop” - at one point in the story, he’s essentially bought out, given an honorary title, and told to leave the company alone. But as it continues to struggle, he finds enough voting shares to kick out management and take back the company
The key theme, though, is hunger. I’m not sure if Zemurray was passionate about bananas, but he was definitely hungry. He started in the industry by literally “hustling” bananas nobody else wanted. He spent plenty of time in Central America, crossing it on a mule and understanding how things were on the ground. “They're there, we're here!” was something he’d like to say.
The book made me think a bit more about the idea of hunger. We privilege “passion” today, telling people to do what they love and that work shouldn’t feel like work. Maybe we should focus more on hunger. I’d define hunger as the will to succeed / grow / develop and to do whatever it takes to get there. It transcends whatever you’re doing - if you take a hungry person and put them in another job, odds are they will continue to outperform.
Passion, on the other hand, is tied to something specific. The idea that we should all follow our passions seems to imply that it’s not worth doing something you don’t like, that whatever work you’re doing should be pleasant. The hungry person doesn’t care about work being pleasant.
To be really good at anything, you need at least one of passion or hunger, but I’d argue that hunger is more durable and reliable.
There are a couple of obvious questions. First, if you are leading an organization, how do you find people that are hungry? Talent, which came out earlier this year, has all sorts of interesting ideas.
But more importantly, how do you make yourself hungrier? (if that’s what you want1). I think this is a tough question, as it's a second order desire (e.g., wanting to have a different preference as opposed to the thing itself). I think the average person would probably be better off by being slightly more hungry in some area of their life, as hunger pushes you to be better and do cooler things. The main things I can think of are 1) surrounding yourself with hungry people and 2) creating an environment around you that makes you hungrier (which is admittedly a pretty vague description).
There is probably a trade-off between hunger and happiness at some point. Plenty of super-hungry and ambitious people live unbalanced lives. I don’t think this is for most people. But the average person, I’d argue, would be better off by being slightly more hungry in some area of their life.