This college dropout billionaire has some advice for Gen Zers

After graduating from high school, John Katsimatidis wanted to spend the summer of 1966 just like any teenager would, watching TV and lounging on his parent’s couch in Upper Manhattan.

But fate had other plans for the Greek immigrant who came to the States as a baby in 1949.

Katsimatidis’ mother, Despina, couldn’t sit back and watch as her son, an outstanding student at Brooklyn Tech HS, where the average IQ was around 140, was a homebody.

So, she dragged John to the nearest grocery store and made him work on the shelves and do his best to earn an honest salary.

His mother’s insistence that he get a job that summer was integral to Katsimatidis becoming a billionaire business mogul in his own right, he writes in his new memoir, How Far Do You Want to Go?: Lessons from a Sane Billionaire (Matt Holt) . ) will be released on Tuesday.

“Life would be very different if my mother never pushed me off the couch,” Katsimatidis told The Post.

After that summer, Katsimatidis attended New York University, enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and majored in engineering, but remained unsure of what he really wanted to do with his life. With six loans left to graduate, he did the unthinkable and dropped out of a prestigious school to team up with “Cousin Tony,” a neighbor who had once hired him to work at a grocery store. Tony, a Greek immigrant who may or may not have been a blood relative, wanted to sell his stake in the store he owned with his uncle Nick.

He offered his half to Katsimatidis for free, but instead paid $1,000 monthly in the future. Katsimatidis agreed to the deal, scaring his parents.

“We sent you to the university to become humali? said his father, a cook and waiter, using slang for a box-carrier.

Meanwhile, his mother felt that he was “abandoning not only my education, but the whole family’s life-changing trip to America,” writes Katsimatidis. “I tried to tell her that it was actually just the opposite. Why work for someone else when I can have my own business? Isn’t that the essence of the American dream?”

In 1969, just nine months after starting their business, Katsimatidis and Nick were making a weekly profit of $1,000—then electrical engineers were making just $129 a week—and doing well. The “neighborhood tough guy” then tried to confuse the store worker. Nick told him to get out, but the bully returned.

So Katsimatidis brought a gun to work and pulled it out when the swindler returned.

“I didn’t hesitate for a second. I went straight to the man. I pulled the gun out of my jacket and pressed the steel barrel against the man’s head,” he writes. “You walk three blocks up to that store again,” I said calmly but directly, “I’ll blow your head off.” He didn’t say another word.”

By 1974, Katsimatidis and Nick’s grocery business, then called Red Apple, had expanded to several locations throughout New York City. Katsimatidis was only 24 years old.

“I was making a million dollars a year, but still living at home with my family,” he said. “That’s how I wanted to do it.”

As his profits grew, so did his drive to pursue a youthful passion.

Shortly before his 30th birthday, he received his pilot’s license and bought a plane from Walt Disney’s brother Roy.

“I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy when I was younger and that led me to this,” said Katsimatidis. “I really enjoyed flying, especially on Tuesdays.”

He eventually branched out into air travel, flying people to Atlantic City with a fleet of 20 aircraft in the early 1980s.

In 1986, he sold the aircraft company to an associate of Warren Buffett, who later used it to launch NetJets.

That same year, Red Apple acquired Gristedes, making it the largest supermarket chain in New York.

Decades passed, Katsimatidis was involved in politics. In 2013, he ran for Mayor of New York in the Republican primary but was ultimately defeated by former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota, who lost to Bill de Blasio.

Katsimatidis currently oversees Gristedes Foods, a grocery empire with over 30 stores in New York City. He also manages approximately 2 million square feet of real estate in New York, Florida and other parts of the US, and operates the United Refining Company’s refinery in Pennsylvania.

In 2020, he acquired WABC, where every weekday at 5:00 p.m. he demonstrates his gift of gab on the radio show “Cats and Cosby” with Rita Cosby. Forbes estimates his net worth at $4 billion, not bad for a college dropout.

“You can’t win if you’re too afraid to lose,” he writes, adding, “Great success comes with great effort—recycle everyone.”