Hey, everybody, you've heard me talk about your personal development plan on my podcast. Well, we've received such positive feedback about the plan that we've decided to actually make it an official resource out of it. We've created a weekly leadership plan you can have delivered to your inbox each week. The weekly leadership plan is a simple way you can develop yourself as a leader and put the practical skills we talk about on the podcast into practice. So each week, you'll get tips that will help you stay focused on the right things as a leader. To get the weekly leadership plan, just go to howleaderslead.com/plan and sign up. That's howleaderslead.com/plan. Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Bill Aquabella, one of the most renowned art dealers in the world and head of Aquabella galleries. In the art business, reputation is everything. Bill has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art and his customers, people like Mick Jagger, Steve Nguyen, and Henry Ford II, they have absolute trust in what they're buying from. They're confident spending money with Bill like they do because of the confidence they have in him. So the question for all of us is, how do we build up our reputations as leaders where people will trust us in the big moments? Well, this is an episode chock full of stories from some of Bill's biggest deals. We can learn to build up trust by hearing how he built his up. It's true for Bill and it's true for leaders. Reputation is everything. This is one of my favorite all time interviews and I can't wait for you to listen in. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Bill Aquabella . I always like to start out Bill at the beginning. Tell us about your upbringing. Well, you know, I'm an only child. My father came over from Naples, Italy in 1919. I was born in New York and during the war we moved out. My father said we're going to move to the country, move to Jamaica, Queens. I forgot it was a country in those days. So I went to Catholic school out there and when I was about an eighth grader, he pulled me out and he sent me away to school up to a Westminster school in Simsbury, Connecticut. So he was very big on me getting an education as you might think and making sure I graduated from college. You know, my father was always able to live well but never have any money. You know, he was one of these guys, you know, I don't care if I'm not a millionaire, I just want to live like one. And he was very much along those lines and he could do it. How much did that really affect you in the way you thought about your future and the way you've lived your life? It affected me a lot because I remember my father always being short of cash. I saw the pain in that. And yet he would never let on to anyone else that he was short. So anyway, it goes on. I do ROTC in college. I go in the army for six months, you know, off of this training course, that kind of thing. And then I didn't have a job when I got out of the army and my father said, " Well, you come to the gallery until you get a job." And my father was an old master dealer specializing in Italian Renaissance, Italian Baroque paintings. And in those days, David, there were more paintings and buyers. It's nothing like you read about today. You know, there was no one who was going to get there first to get the painting . It was where you were going to find the client that would like to buy it. So it was very hard to make money in that business at that time. Did you always have an inkling that you would get into the family business? I had no idea I was going to do it. I did major in art history in college and I did paint a little bit. I took a studio art course, but that's not what I wanted to do. You know, can you give us just a real quick and basic primer on the key success factors in the art gallery business? Well, you know, there are two kind of business models in the art business. One is a primary dealer. And what that is is you represent artists and you basically, in today's world, you're trying to have a lot of locations so you can entice artists to come with you because you can show them in different locations. And then the second part is the deal is a deal in secondary market, which I do. I just inventory paintings. I buy and also broker paintings, but I only have one location and I've always believed in art. So I've always reinvested my own money in paintings. I never expanded in real estate in different cities. But what I used to do to help me, I made arrangements with certain dealers around the world that we became friends. And so, you know, if I wanted to do something in London, I had a friend who had a gallery there and we'd share and we'd do it there. If I wanted to do it in Germany, I had the same. I had the same in Paris, I had the same in Italy, I had the same in Switzerland . And so that I had in the early days a way to be in all those countries if I wanted. I just had to have a partner which I shared the profits with for that particular picture that we were working on or two or three pictures. Now, I understand as you mentioned earlier, your dad specialized in works of the Italian Renaissance and you said that was a pretty tough market. How did you go about expanding your opportunity when you really got involved in the gallery? I started with my father in 1960, the end of 1960. And I just couldn't sell those things. So I said to him, "Listen, I can't sell these things. I don't know who buys Italian Renaissance or Italian Baroque pictures." He says, "Well, what do you think you can sell?" I said, "Well, I don't know." He said, "Well, try to buy what you can sell." So I went to Paris and I bought a painting. The numbers were a lot different there. But I bought a painting for $8,000 and I sold it for $12. I said, "Well, hell, we might do something out of this." So I started and we started going. And we incorporated in 1963 for $93,000. That was our total business, the worth of our business. My father, being Italian, right after the war, bought a house in Italy in a place called San Remo, it's about a half hour from Monte Carlo on the Italian Riviera there, terrific house. And he paid at that time was a million lira, which was $1,500. He bought it in 1946. So every year we used to go there and he closed the gallery and we'd go. So one year ago, we stopped in Paris and he would go looking for these old master paintings. I met a young dealer at the time that was in Paris my age and he said, "You know, the Bonar estate has been in the courts for 15 years because the nieces of Madame Bonar, she contested the will and they've now settled and they got half the estate and they want to sell some of the pictures. But they're very expensive and all the dealers say they're too expensive and very difficult to deal with. So of course, I told my father that and he immediately said, "We're going to go see him. We want to go." So we go to the Chase Manhattan Bank, big vault there, big room. And he started pulling out these Bonars, Pierre Bonar as a post-impressionist painter. And for those times, very valuable. We incorporated for $93,000. So you know, there's not a lot of capital behind us. My father sees these paintings. So we pick out 17 paintings and he says, "I'll buy the 17 paintings." And the price was $1 million. He says, "But you got to lend me 13 others so I can have a show in New York and I'll pay you in December after the show's over." And I was thinking to myself, "This is unbelievable. I mean, we have maybe $100,000 in the bank." Okay? So they signed the papers and we take them. Okay? Well, we now owe a million dollars and we fly down to San Rainbow and I say to them, "You know, no one's doing color catalogs here. Why don't we at least do a color catalog? This guy's a color. This that's what he's known for." So we do. We print an all color catalog. We print it in Italy because it was cheaper and I come back to New York and I have them here and I pick out 10 names, not knowing any of them. Okay? But I picked out the richest people I could get that collected art. And on that list were Norton Simon, David Rockefeller, Paul Mellon, and I come back to New York and I send a letter out and I say, "Listen, we're having an exhibition of these. They're all for sale from the estate and I know you're in St. Louis and I thought, I'd give you the first opportunity should you be interested to see the pictures first." I sent 10 letters and 10 catalogs. And the exhibition hadn't even opened yet. The door opens one day. I'm sitting in the gallery and in comes Mr. Mellon. Yes sir. You come right in. He said, "I got you a letter. I'd like to see the bone art." The first picture I showed him, he said, "I like that. I'd like to buy none." It was $135,000. Now I'm saying, "Do I show them anymore? I don't want to lose this deal." God, this is unbelievable. He said, "I show them the rest and he buys $1 million." You're on a roll. $1 million of those pictures on that one day came in and that got us over the hill and out of that show we made like $300,000 at that time. I really got it started. You have any other stories, a couple other stories about how you did a big deal . So the following year I went to London and I walked in this dealer and there's a fountain on the floor. He's still a life painter. A printing company has just been sold and they say that the previous CEO had bought these fountain on the tours with company money. So I have 15 of them that he wants to sell. So I did the same thing my father did. So I don't care about 15 and I brought him back and I borrowed a few others from collectors and I sold out the whole show. In fact, there was a decorator in town called Macmillan and they bought the catalog and they would frame the color photographs and they would put it on people's tables as little decorations. I said, "Well, I know all the catalogs." So we had a lot of fun with it. It was a great start. You know, do you try to find emerging artists or do you focus on sourcing work from already famous artists? Now we just stay pretty much with the masters in all fields. We have expanded a little bit. We have represented one or two people. Our biggest artist that we represented was Lucian Freud. Lucian Freud was a well established English artist, a friend of Bacon's. He was difficult. He had a lot of male nudes and female nudes. So the subjects were sometimes a little difficult. So people in London, those dealers were a little hesitant when he had broken up with his previous dealer. Long story short, I go over there. He once said, "Lunching me." I have lunch in my bedroom a couple of times at a friend's house and he puts up some pictures and as a studio I go to see him and they were unbelievable. I mean they were big size paintings of a performance artist called Lee Bowery. He did four pictures of this huge guy, all naked. They sound difficult. They were difficult but they were still great art. So I told them, "I'll buy those three pictures from you and I'll buy everything you make for two years." So this was 1992. So I said, "I'll buy everything you make for two years. You price it and I'll tell you that." So I was selling the pictures at $600,000 and the first one finally got up there. First one came up at auction bought 30 million. This was about 10 years later, 15 years later. Now the record price at auction is I think $57 million. So this was really sort of a gutsy move. You had to step out and really support an artist that other people, you kind of scared them off. How do you build, how do you determine what's really good and how do you develop an eye and expertise to judge works like that to say, "Hey, it's worth the risk." For some reason, I kind of had an eye and a feeling for it. I don't think it's anything that I studied for. I think I just kind of had that knack. And I'm not scared of risk. My father was a gambler. I mean, that's why I later found out that's why we pretty much were always tapped out. He had a great reputation. I mean, one of the things he told me when I started worrying was, "Look, we got only one thing. It's our reputation." He said, "You can't fool with that. You've got to buy them and do the best you can." It's all relationships in our business now. You meet people that want to buy art and collect. They commit a lot of money. And so they have to trust the dealer. And they don't know that much all the time. So it's easy for a dealer to take advantage of somebody. That's one thing you don't want to do. You don't want to go for one time hit. I mean, you want to develop a client and a dealer. And so we were lucky we did that. You sold your paintings to very sophisticated collectors. You mentioned Rockefeller. I know Henry Ford II was one of your clients. What's the key to selling to such sophisticated buyers? Well, for one thing, if you have the art, it's a door opener. If they're interested in really good art. And then you have to have a reputation that you're not his person. I mean, it sounds crazy, but it's a big part of our business. You've got to be able to trust people if you're a collector, who you're buying from. The business has changed a lot now because the auction houses came in. And the auction houses were always a wholesale market. That's where dealers went to buy things amongst other places. But once Alfred Talbin bought some of these, he started changing it into a retail business. Because what he did, he would allow people to take the paintings before the auctions of their houses to see if it fit. He would make sure the paintings were cleaned. He would reframe them. Talbin was a good friend of mine. In fact, when he bought the business, he wanted to buy my business, wanted me to run South of East Forum. And I didn't particularly want to work for him. I thought he was a good friend of mine. So I just stayed with my business. But he was really the one who got the art market changed. And now Christie's and South of East are tremendous forces in our market. You know, let's go back to deal with it. I know that you made that really it was with South of East. It really disrupted the art world at the time. And I think you did this in 1990. Tell us about this deal where you really were the first to really co-op with someone like South of East. Well, it's a funny story. You know, at that time, I had made some investments with people outside the business, outside the art business. I mean, I had invested with Julian Robinson with Dan Druckenmiller. And I was watching how they were doing these leveraged buyouts, you know. So there was a big French dealer called the son of Henri Matisse. His name was Pierre Matisse. He had a gallery in New York. He represented very good artists. He had Giacometti and Miro and Chagall and Tongi. And then I could go on and on. I mean, really good, good payments. And when he died, at those days, you had to go sub-chapter S if you're going to be able to really handle it. Someone dies in the family. Otherwise, there's double taxation. And anyway, there was. So I decided why not just buy the gallery from the estate, you know. So then I'll have to pay the taxes. And they were getting hit like $12 million a month. So they were anxious through some. So there were a few other people also interested at the time. But there were 4,700 items in the deal. Okay, so I couldn't handle that in terms of, I couldn't keep track of it all. And my gallery, I have 20 to 25 people working for me. In those days, I had maybe 20, maybe 15. And I just couldn't. So I went to Sotheby's and I said, listen, I got a deal. Do you want to make a deal? The Talbot and CEO said, sure. So I said, okay, I'll do it on one deal. You got to put up all the money. And I got to be in charge of the deal. Because I didn't want them to do it. You know, they're good, but they're not that good. That's too much money. So anyway, they agreed and they issued some commercial paper. We ended up buying the whole thing for $153 million. And it was the first time a dealer in the art auction got together. And that really caused a stir. All the dealers were screaming at me, you know, why are you going? There are enemy kind of thing. I said, you're wrong. If we don't get with them, we're going to be alone. That went very well. I mean, we had to sell $300 million worth to break even. And I sold $300 million in 18 months. How do you go about moving that much inventory that fast? And what kind of skin in the game did you have in that deal? I had $15 million. But that doesn't matter. I couldn't lose. I mean, if I lost, it was more than my skin, the $15 million. I mean, you're out of a lot of trouble there. But anyway, what happened? How do you sell all that? Right? It's a big problem. So what I did, I made packages up. I mean, I have 550 murals in there. OK? So I made packages of murals. I made packages of shagamas of everything. So no one could buy one picture. They had to buy the whole package. Now, this was a time when the Japanese had been buying a lot. And I was doing a lot of business in Japan. The Sotheby's had an incorporation in Nevada. And we did this deal in Nevada. I went out to Nevada. I got a warehouse out there where we could keep all the stuff. And then I found a very nice gallery about one block away from the warehouse. So I went in there and there was this nice couple that I did. And I said, I got an idea for you. You want to listen to a deal I had? So they're sure. So I said, how about we buy you for two years or three years? We'll cover all your expenses. We'll do everything for two or three years. I want to use them to display the work. I told you know, so what I did, these Japanese would come over to New York. I charted a Gulfstream. I'd get them on the Gulfstream. On the Gulfstream, I had these albums which had the packages in it. And they'd go through these houses, pick out what packages they wanted. They picked out a package and I would call ahead. They'd get it out of the warehouse. They'd hang the whole gallery with that package. So we'd get out there and then they'd see the whole thing. And on the way back, we started selling these packages to the Japanese. It was great. You're known for being an incredible salesperson. What do you think really makes a great salesperson? And what advice would you give people on how to really get good at selling? That's a difficult question. There are all different kinds of salespeople as you know. I mean, everybody has their own technique. You know, you got to have something that you think people want to buy. You got to believe in the thing you're selling. Someone gives you something you don't believe in. It's pretty hard to sell. I can't sell something. I don't believe it. And so you just have to, if you believe in something, you have to have a reason you believe in it. And you use that to convince the other guy that each should have it. Can you tell us a story about your most challenging private sale? Steve Nguyen, who is a big client of mine and a friend. I mean, I sold a picture for him at Picasso. I sold it for $139 million. I mean, this is all public knowledge, numbers. I'm not talking out of school. And the money was coming in the next day. And I'm at home and I get a call after dinner. And it's Steve. And he says, "Bill, I've just put my elbow through the painting." I said, "Come on, Steve. This is not funny. Money's coming tomorrow." Sometimes I thought I'd put him a joke or something. So no, it's true. And I said, "Oh, I can't believe it." So of course, the deal fell through. And I restored the picture for him, had it restored. And he collected his insurance. It was an incredible accident. His vision impaired and now he's almost totally blind. So that was that. And he took the picture back. And then two years later, I resold it for $155 million for him. I was going to ask you how you got over the loss of closing a deal like that. It didn't take you too long. Well, it took maybe it was three years. I don't remember it was two or three years. But how'd you mentally work through that? I mean, that had to be a huge disappointment. Well, I tell you, in the art business, when you're dealing with those things, you win some and lose some all the time. You kind of get used to it. I'm pretty hardened on some of that stuff. Like you can't let that get you down. In the early days, it would get you down a big time. So the time in grade help you deal with those guys. You get absolutely. And success, I imagine. Well, it's going to happen sometimes. But not that way, hopefully. I heard about a painting that you were going to sell to Mick Jagger, that also kind of fell through the cracks. Can you tell us a little bit about that one? This was a solution for oil painting. And Mick had married Jerry Hall. I don't know if he married him, but he had a baby with her. And Lucian Freud was doing a composition, and it had a man on a couch reading a book, had a dog under the couch. And in the mid-ground, it had Jerry Hall nursing her baby. And then behind was an open window to a street in London. And it was a big picture, maybe 88 inches high, and about 40 inches wide, is it? And so, he was a very slow painter. And a painting like that would take maybe two years to do. I mean, where a person would sit, he maybe once or twice a month for him, but for many, many months. And then Mick Jagger wanted to buy the picture. He kept calling me up, "Look, I want to buy the picture." I said, "Look, Mick, I don't even have a price on it, because it's not finished yet." And he was bugging me. So I call up Lucian Freud, I said, "Listen, Lucian, Mick wants to buy this picture. Let's put a price on and sell it to him." So we do. We put a price on it, we sell it to him. And of course, it was more to be done, so more time go by. And I'm at home one time in New York, I get a call from Freud. And he says, "Bill, I want you to be the first to know the pictures had a sex change." I said, "What are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, Jerry Hall didn't show up for two cities, so I changed her head into a man." I put David Dawson, which was his studio assistant. I put his head on her body. I said, "Okay." Well, then Jagger calls up and say, "God, what is this? What's going on? What can we do? This is ridiculous. You've been sitting there for four months. I said, "Mick, there's nothing I can do." Obviously, you don't have to buy the picture, but there's nothing I can do. Because Freud was like that. I mean, he couldn't tell Freud what to do. That was an embarrassing situation. But anyway, I had to buy the picture from Lucian, and I thought, "I'll never sell this picture." And you know what the first person I showed it to when it arrived in New York bought the picture? Well, it wasn't that it was the clincher for the story behind it. Well, actually, no, that was not the clincher, but it helped. It was a fun story, and they enjoyed that, the fact that they had turned Jerry's head into a male. How often do you find that kind of emotion, those little storylines, the things that personalize a picture? How often does that really prove to be the thing that really gets someone to want to invest in a major painting? It usually isn't the major's thing, but it doesn't hurt. A lot of times, I mean, obviously, people buy those pictures because of the quality of the painting and the work of the artist. But a little story, a little romance like that, you know, always helps. Well, I know you've added your daughter, Eleanor, and sons Nicholas and Alexander to the business. What's the biggest challenge running a successful family business? And what advice can you give to others? You know, we have a lot of people who listen in there and part of family businesses. I don't know if there's any real advice to give on that, other than in my case, I never tried to get them in the business. They just followed me in one at a time. And my last one, Alexander, he didn't want to do it, so he went to Wall Street for a while, and then he decided to come in. And what I tried to do for him, you know, art business, you got to know how to buy and sell a painting. You know, there's no way you're going to make money. And so they had to learn how to be individual dealers on their own. So I let them buy and sell what they liked, which is not necessarily exactly what I like. And all I would do is I'd try to protect him from a total disaster. But I would let little disasters happen. So they kind of get a feeling that disaster can happen. By now, they luckily, they have established themselves in the trade, which is very important. Because if other dealers don't respect you, they're not really a dealer. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Bill Aquavella in just a moment. When we talk about reputation being everything, what we're really talking about here is trust. Do people really trust you? In my conversation with Stephen M. R. Covey, the former president and CEO of Franklin Covey leadership, our entire conversation was about trust and how to cultivate even more of it as a leader. Clearly, you need to be trustworthy. That's the starting point, but you've got to also be trusting. You got to be willing to extend that trust. But there's a risk to trust and there's a risk not to trust. And I think not trusting is the greater risk in today's world, the collaborative, interdependent world with multiple generations characterized by disruption. And we need change, we need innovation, we need collaboration, and you got to trust to create that. Go back and listen to my conversation with Stephen M. R. Covey, episode 41 here on How Leaders Lead. You mentioned other dealers. How have you always looked at your competition and how much did it really affect what you did? I mean, it affected me in that they were very tough competitors, as you might imagine, especially now. Now there are many buyers and not so many paintings of the quality that everybody wants. So the competition to get those paintings is very difficult. Are people today more collectors passionate about art or the investors? What do you see happening? Well, in the early days, I would say that most people were collectors, about 80% of them were collectors and some bought paintings that keep up with the Joneses and others bought them for investment. Today, I think it's the complete opposite. I think 85% of people buy for investment and very few people buy for social reasons and a few people buy because they're actually passionate about art. The money has gotten so big. And I'm talking about the field that we deal in, which is the masters of 1920s and post-war. I mean, they've sold a war hole portrait of Marilyn Monroe that was an 17 inches or 20 inches. They got 230 million for it. So they've turned it into an alternative investment, for sure. You've worked with so many renowned leaders and famous people. What do you see as, let's say, the top three characteristics of those that you admire the most? It's hard not to be impressed by someone's success and the wealth that they've created. It doesn't always make them a great guy or a genius. But the best people I think, they get along with other people very well. They know how to handle other personalities and they're very articulate about expressing their ideas and what they want to do. I think it's really pretty easy once you meet a really successful person to say , he's really a good CEO or, you know, others talk a lot, but nothing happens. You probably know better than I do because you're closer to the next. I'm asking you the question. How do you think you've evolved? Bill is a leader over the years. Your own personal leadership style. Well, I don't know that, you know, I'm not leading a lot of people. I mean, I have a small business, a family business, but I always get along with people. You know, it's much easier to be friendly with everybody than having an enemy. I'm interested in people. I like to know what they do, how they do it. I'm not an envious person about it anyway. I'm fascinated by their success, how they do it, and I try to learn from them. How do you stay on top of the business trends? Because you've seen a lot change since you got into business in '61. For my business, I have to travel. We do a lot in Europe. In the old days, the art market was very inefficient. I mean, you'd go to Paris, buy something, bring it back, profit. I could buy something in Germany, sell an Italy profit. I mean, now with the new technology and everything, the market's very efficient . Everybody knows what everything is worth. So now you have to know what you're doing if you're going to buy and sell things. How much did the internet and digital, how much did that change or impact you and your company? It's changed us a lot. It's very much part of our business now. I mean, in the old days, you would send a photograph to someone that you want to sell them with painting. And then he'd send you back a letter sometimes, or he'd send you back a telex in the old days. Now, from my iPhone, from this phone right here that I have in my hand, I sell paintings anywhere in the world. I've sold them in China. I've sold them because the image is so perfect. And then two seconds later, they call you back. But what does that do? With the time changes and everything, you're working twice as hard as you've ever worked. If you're going to do everything, you probably know that better than anybody. You know, I would imagine that the availability of high value works of art would be much greater than today than it was maybe a year or two ago. Is that the case? I mean, there are different kinds of paintings as far as classifications of paintings. You know, contemporary painting where the artist is painting and he gives galleries exhibitions of his work and they sell that. That's called a primary. That's suffered some, I think, in this world, quite a bit. If you get a trophy today, what I mean by a trophy, a great Picasso, a great Van Gogh, or a great Monet, or, you know, a really major picture, you can sell it. Are there more of those trophies available today or not? No. No. It's harder and harder all the time. What's the biggest cause of that, you think? Well, most of them end up in museums, eventually. And the people that have bought them in the last 30 years have been extremely successful, wealthy people. So they're in very strong hands and they don't sell. It's very hard to get them. You know, I understand, though, you told me the story and it's a great story about you had a portrait of your father painted. And Wendy and I, when we were able to see your gallery and you were so kind enough to show us around, we saw the painting. It was really neat. It's a cool thing to do. What's the story behind it? I had a lot of conflicts with my father. We were very close, but in business, we argued a lot about things. He wanted to do it one way. I wanted to do it another way. And so we used to get in some pretty ugly fights. And at one point, we weren't talking and it was a very difficult time. And I'd played golf out of detail with a friend of mine who was much older than I was. Donald Grant used to be at Foreign Stock and Company. And he was a wise old man. And we were driving out to the country. And I was telling him about my father. And he said, you know what I mean? What you ought to really do is have someone paint a portrait of your father. You know, I started thinking about it. And I said, you know, this is a good idea. So I went and I told my father, you know, I'd really like to have a portrait done of him. And there was an artist called William Draper, who was a portrait painter. And we commissioned a portrait of my father there. And he loved it. I mean, it was great pals again. It's fun. Everything for the moment. All it takes is a little art to bring people together. You know, speaking of going to your gallery, I was blown away by the gallery and the way you presented the art. But you also have like an incredible location. Tell our listeners where your gallery is located and how you found it. Well, we're located at 18 E 79th Street between Madison and Fifth. We're very near the Metropolitan Museum and near the Miracle Mile there, museums. The building was a gallery for Duvine. Duvine was a very big time dealer in the 19th century. And early 20th century. And his gallery had moved there. And Norton Simon was one of the big collectors in the 60s. And he bought Duvine's gallery. And he bought the building. He bought the library, bought the inventory, everything, bought last time. And he sold off the library and he kept the paintings he wanted. And the building was for sale. So my father at the time said, we ought to buy this building. And I have to tell you, we'll go back to the fact that we didn't really have a lot of money in those days. Anyway, the building cost $550,000. And we made a deal with Simon. We gave him a Renoir, a Fontan Latour. And I borrowed $175,000 from the Dime Savings Bank. I got a mortgage with a balloon at the end. And we've kept the building ever since. Did you live right across the street from that building? I did. I actually, when I got married, we moved in that building. 21 E 79th. And my mother and father actually moved in at 31 E 79th. So we all lived right across from the gallery. And for our lizards out there, this is like the prime real estate in New York. You're about a stone's throw away from the museums and Central Park. It's absolutely incredible. Pretty good real estate deal. Maybe you should have gone into real estate, Bill. Maybe. Maybe. What would be a sale that you should have had in your opinion that just didn't happen? It was a Mary Lasker. She was a collector in New York. And she had eight matheses. And I was dealing with her to buy the eight matheses. I was probably 30 years old at the time. And there was a dealer in London who called me up and said, look, I'm dealing with her. Let me finish dealing with her. And then you can join us and put the pictures. I said, OK, so he ends up buying the pictures, but he never let me in the deal. That was a tough deal where I lost. That wasn't what I could do. What'd you learn from that? Never to trust that guy. You know, speaking of trust, integrity has to be the number one thing in your end. It's the biggest reputation. Reputation is extremely important. It really is. I mean, if you have a good reputation, people believe you and they trust you. And you want to do a good job for them because they come back. They're happy. That's the key to being, I think, successful in the art business. You know, I remember you telling me a story about where a little bit of booze got in the way of a big sale, too. Again, we were in London and there was a dealer there that I did a lot of business with. We had bought a Matisse together and there was a Japanese fellow called Mr. Fuji, who was interested in buying impressionists in modern pictures. And so we wanted to sell him this picture. And in London, those days, everybody would have big lunches with wine and everything and have their clients in. So we invited Mr. Fuji in for lunch. And of course, the wine came out and Mr. Fuji enjoyed the wine. He had two friends with him and they were all enjoying the wine. I mean, I was rather concerned because I wanted to sell the picture because, again, I needed the money. So we finally get downstairs and they brought out a vintage brandy that they thought he should have. So he took a sip of that and he literally just fell over off the chair. And the two people went and picked them up and said, "Mr. Fuji, have very bad cold and dragged him out and he never bought the picture." The learning there? Do not serve alcohol. When you look at the world, where's the hot spot in art these days? I mean, when you look at the United States, still, and will be, I think. We've done business in the Middle East, we've done business in Asia, and good business. But still, the United States right now is still the best collectors are here. But when you look back in your career, what have you loved most about your business? First of all, I love art. I mean, I love dealing in it and I love the people I meet. I meet great people. When I was a kid, Henry Ford was a palamine because we'd talk about it, but then we'd go out at night together. We used to have a great time. We'd meet in Paris, we'd be in London. And so, we became friends. You could have never done that unless you were in a business where he was interested in it. What have you like least about your business? There's a lot of monkey business in our business. They're not always a lot of good guys. What bits of advice, Bill, would you give to aspiring leaders? I don't think you're being a leader. If you don't have ambition, I'll tell you that. I mean, unless you're willing to believe in our obsessed, but what you want to do in today's world with the competition we have, you're going to have a tough time. I tell my kids that all the time, say, if you look around and are tough as competitors, they're obsessed. They don't quit at five. They're going all the time. Yeah, so obsession. Obsession of passion to do it. You've got to have a passion. And you have to have the ambition to want to succeed. What do you think? Well, I think people who are obsessed and passionate and can't wait to go to work on what they do. I think that's a key trait for any successful person. Yeah, I really believe that. I mean, I think you and I love to play golf, and you're a good golfer, and I'm a struggling golfer. But I want to work on it until I get better. And I'm 81 years old. I'm still trying to get better. And no one's going to succeed if they don't want to get better and try and have the ambition to prove. You know, Bill, I understand you have a phenomenal personal collection. You also said, you know, said earlier, you hang on to a lot of paintings and keep them. So I have to ask you this, if you had one painted you'd want to display in your house, what would it be and why? The three painters that I have collected and others, but in majority, in my house are Picasso, Matisse, and Miro. Those are the three I've always liked. I bought a lot of those, and I've kept them. And the first painting I bought by Picasso was a Dora Mar of 1938 with a red blouse and a kind of purple hat on a chair that looks like a Van Go gh chair with yellow chair. It's a cool picture, which I like. That's probably my favorite picture. That's great. Let me close by asking you this, Bill. You know, what's what's your on finished business? When you look at your life and where you're headed, what do you want to get done that you haven't done yet? I just want to keep improving what I have. I want to make sure we have good art to sell. I like it. I like doing what I'm doing. I don't know how much longer I have going, but I'm going to try to go as long as I can. It's fun. Maybe I can turn you into a collector. Hello. I don't think I can afford it, but I will tell you this. I'm glad I pulled your arm, and I'm glad I asked you to do this podcast because I've learned a lot that I didn't know. You obviously are a great leader in your industry, and I appreciate that you've taken the time to share some of your experiences and insights. It's been fun. Thanks for having me. Can you believe some of Bill's stories? It's pretty incredible that Bill has been able to accomplish all he's accomplished in the heart world, but I think it's important to note he's been at this for a long time. Building your reputation is all about the long game, even when you have to suffer short-term losses. Think back to that elbow in the Picasso story. When things went south, Bill dealt with the issue immediately. He made a call to the buyer to let him know what had happened, which I can imagine was a very difficult call to make. But not only this, he worked with Steve Wen to correct his mistake by having the painting restored so they could sell it again at an even higher price. Bill tackled the issue head-on to maintain his integrity and reputation with people on both sides of the situation. There 's so much to learn here from Bill that can help you develop as a leader. Here's something simple you can apply this week to put some of this into practice. The next time you face a challenge, I want you to face it head-on. Make the hard phone call and do the extra work to correct the mistake if that's what's needed. Here's why you build trust when you address tough situations directly and swiftly. It's the pathway to building a rock-solid reputation as a leader. Do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that for great leaders, reputation is everything. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. I'll see you next week. [ Silence ]