After graduating from highschool, John Catsimatidis desired to spend the summer of 1966 much like several teenage boy would — watching TV and lounging around on his parents’ couch in upper Manhattan.
But fate had other plans for the Greek immigrant, who got here to the States as an infant in 1949.
Catsimatidis’ mom, Despina, couldn’t stand idly by and watch her son — a standout student at Brooklyn Tech HS, where the common IQ was around 140 — be a couch potato.
So, she dragged John right down to a neighborhood food market and got him work stocking shelves and doing every thing under the sun to earn an honest paycheck.
His mother’s insistence that he get a job that summer was integral to Catsimatidis becoming a self made, billionaire business mogul, he writes in his latest memoir “How Far Do You Need to Go?: Lessons from a Common-Sense Billionaire” (Matt Holt), out Tuesday.
A loving push from John Catsimatidis’ mother moved him within the direction of becoming a self made billionaire.
“Life would have been quite different if my mother never pushed me off the couch,” Catsimatidis told The Post.
After that summer, Catsimatidis began Latest York University enrolled within the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and with engineering as his major, but remained uncertain about what he really desired to do in life. With six credits left before graduating, he did the unthinkable and dropped out of the celebrated school to team up with “Cousin Tony,” the neighborhood man who had once hired him to work in a food market. Tony, a fellow Greek immigrant who may or may not have been a blood relative, was seeking to sell his share in the shop, which he owned along with his uncle Nick.
He offered his half to Catsimatidis for nothing upfront but as an alternative $1,000 monthly payments down the road. Catsimatidis agreed to the deal, horrifying his parents.
John Catsimatidis dropped out of NYU to start running grocery stores.
“We sent you to the university to grow to be a humali?” his dad, a chef and waiter, said, using a slang term for a crate carrier.
His mother, meanwhile, thought he “was throwing away not only my education but additionally the family’s whole life-changing journey to America,” Catsimatidis writes. “I attempted to inform her that the reality was exactly the other. Why work for for another person once I could have my very own business? Wasn’t that the essence of the American Dream?”
In 1969, just nine months into their business enterprise, Catsimatidis and Nick were pulling weekly profits of $1,000 — electrical engineers were then making just $129 weekly — and things were looking up. Then, “a neighborhood tough guy” tried shaking down a store worker. Nick told him to buzz off, however the ruffian returned.
John Catsimatidis shares stories of his life in a latest memoir out Tuesday.Helayne Seidman
So, Catsimatidis brought a handgun to work and pulled it out when the hustler returned.
“I didn’t hesitate a second. I walked straight over to the person. I pulled the pistol out of my jacket and pressed the steel barrel against the person’s head,” he writes. “‘You come inside three blocks of this store again,’ I said calmly but directly, ‘I’m going to blow your head off.’ He didn’t say one other word.”
By 1974, Catsimatidis and Nick’s grocery business — then named Red Apple — had expanded to several locations throughout NYC. Catsimatidis was just 24 12 months old.
While making one million dollars a 12 months in 1974, John Catsimatidis opted to live at home along with his family.J. Messerschmidt/NY Post
“I used to be making one million dollars a 12 months but I still lived at home with my family,” he said. “That’s the best way I desired to do it.”
As his profits grew, so did his craving to pursue an adolescent passion.
Not long before his thirtieth birthday, he got his pilot’s license and purchased a jet from Walt Disney’s brother Roy.
“I desired to attend the Air Force academy once I was younger in order that brought me to this,” Catsimatidis said. “I actually did like to fly, especially on Tuesday afternoons.”
He ultimately got into the air travel business, shuttling people to Atlantic City with a fleet of 20 planes within the early Eighties.
WABC owner John Catsimatidis works alongside political figures like Curtis Sliwa.Dennis A. Clark
In 1986, he sold the plane company to an associate of Warren Buffett, who would later use it to launch NetJets.
That very same 12 months, Red Apple acquired Gristedes, making it the most important supermarket chain in Latest York City.
Because the many years went on, Catsimatidis dabbled in politics. In 2013, he ran for Latest York City mayor within the Republican primaries but was ultimately beat out by former deputy Mayor Joe Lhota, who went on to lose to Bill de Blasio.
John Catsimatidis ran for mayor in 2013.Getty Images
Now John Catsimatidis spends much of his time on the WABC studios, where he hosts a nightly show.Stefano Giovannini
Nowadays, Catsimatidis oversees Gristedes Foods, a grocery empire with over 30 stores in Latest York City. He also manages some 2 million square feet of real estate throughout NYC, Florida and elsewhere within the US, and operates United Refining Company, a Pennsylvania oil refinery.
In 2020, he acquired WABC, where he shows off his gift for gab every weekday at 5 p.m. on the “Cats and Cosby” radio show with Rita Cosby. Forbes estimates his net price to be $4 billion — not bad for a school dropout.
“You possibly can’t win if you happen to’re too afraid of losing,” he writes, adding, “Great success comes with great effort — outwork everyone.”
