My top 10 highlights from the episode: (watch on Spotify) 

1.  In the end his strategy has always been one: "I want to be the best at everything I do. That’s all."

2.  I asked him how a man who started with a small factory, in a remote village, had come to rule the global eyewear industry: “Appetite comes with eating."

3. “We were a poor family. My mother was a widow. I grew up without a father and in an institution. Growing up without a family is something you can’t explain unless you’ve lived it. It marks you.”

4.  “I have always thought of myself as privileged for the passion I had inside, and for my enormous desire to do.”

5.  “I realized I was good because when I delivered my finished work, I immediately got new orders and never had to make changes. Even though I was young, I realized that I had something more than my competitors.”

6.  "If you want to stay in the market you must always seek perfection. And not perfection as a disease, not as an abstract ideal to refer to, but perfection as a fact.”

7.  “If you have to sail, it’s better to choose the big sea rather than the small one."

8.  In 1961, Del Vecchio invests 500,000 lire for 33% of the company, the equivalent of about 6,000 euros today. Sixty years later, his share, 32% of EssilorLuxottica, is worth about 25 billion euros. From 6,000 to 25 billion in sixty years. (28.92% annual compound return for 60 years)

9.  He is one of the wealthiest people in the world and is asked the secret to his success. “There is no secret. It's decades of hard work.” He's asked why he still works. He replies: “I enjoy it.”

10. Those who have competed against him call him a true predator. Rivals called him a hawk. He would circle, wait, and strike.

Listen to #394 An Orphan Who Built An Empire: Leonardo Del Vecchio and the Founding of Luxottica on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.