Avsnitt
-
A one point more TMNT action figures where sold than Snickers chocolate bars. Instantly qualifies as an Empire.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those.
[Tapper's Jewelry Ad]
Stephen Semple:
Dave, if I say to you the names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, what do you think of?
Dave Young:
I'm guessing that we're not talking about Renaissance artists.
Stephen Semple:
Not really.
Dave Young:
We're heading off into Turtleland.
Stephen Semple:
We're heading off into Turtleland, exactly. But isn't it interesting? That speaks to how big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are. Where you can say to pretty much anybody those names and yeah, you don't go to Renaissance artists. You go, oh, we're talking about the turtles, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah, for sure. Especially people a little bit younger than us, but absolutely.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Well, and they went through a revival just recently. There was another one of the movies out, and it's really interesting. That movie was an illustrated movie, and I went and saw that with my oldest daughter, Crystal, who's an illustrator. Man, the illustration style in it was amazing. When you talk about emotions, they really captured that teenage boy chaotic energy. You could really feel it, but that's what it's supposed to be. It was actually really, really well done. Really well done.
Dave Young:
Well, cool. Now, I have to confess, I don't know, other than I recognize the names and there's the cowabunga thing, the big catchphrase, but honestly, I raised four daughters that weren't into it, and it's after my childhood, so I didn't get into it either so I'm excited to hear the story. I've watched these turtles from afar.
Stephen Semple:
That's even interesting. When you think about that, and yet you still instantaneously knew what I was referring to, which tells you how strong a presence it had in culture given the fact that you've never seen the comics, you've never seen the movie. It didn't hit you at the right time, didn't hit your kids, and yet you were like zero hesitation.
Dave Young:
You couldn't hide from it.
Stephen Semple:
Correct, yes.
Dave Young:
It was so big. You couldn't hide from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Stephen Semple:
But that just in itself captures how big it was.
Dave Young:
I'm trying to think of what else. Oh, they ate pizza. They eat a lot of pizza.
Stephen Semple:
That's it. The first comic was published by Mirage Studios, and Mirage Studios was started by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The first comic was published in 1984. Today, Mirage Studios is like a $17 billion multimedia franchise. In 1990, just give you an idea, at the peak, Target sold more Turtle action figures than Snickers bars. Yeah, isn't that crazy?
Dave Young:
More than Snickers bars.
Stephen Semple:
More than Snickers bars.
Dave Young:
These weren't even chocolate turtles.
Stephen Semple:
No, these were the action figures. No, not the chocolate turtles. Very good.
Dave Young:
See what I did there?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, yeah, I did. In 2009, it was sold to Viacom for $60 million bucks.
Dave Young:
Man. All right.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, so Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, they did well. They were artists, and they wanted to create this comic and it sort of started as a joke. In the eighties, if you think in the eighties, there was these tacky martial arts movies that ran overnight. -
Dave
Dave Young had no recollection of this game. Really, he didn't know. But after hearing this story he applauds Howard Wexler for knowing himself.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[JS Pest Control Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple. And we're telling the stories of empires that were built up by people with an idea, business people. And Stephen just whispered today's topic into my ear and I don't know.
Stephen Semple:
You know the game. Connect Four.
Dave Young:
Connect Four. I don't think I've ever played Connect Four. It's a game?
Stephen Semple:
You've never played.
Dave Young:
You're telling me it's a game.
Stephen Semple:
It's a game. I'm telling you it's a game.
Dave Young:
Is it a computer game?
Stephen Semple:
No.
Dave Young:
It's a board game.
Stephen Semple:
No, no, it's not a board game either. And that's what makes it interesting. It's the one which is a vertical game and you connect four, you drop them in the top and you connect ...
Dave Young:
Oh, you drop those little things. Yeah. No, I've never played that.
Stephen Semple:
You've never played it? Okay.
Dave Young:
No, I never have. I've seen people doing it and I thought it was, well, it's just sort like cornhole or some stupid thing.
Stephen Semple:
But now you the game ...
Dave Young:
I've seen people playing it with a giant set and beers in their hands.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Okay.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
All right.
Dave Young:
It's that game.
Stephen Semple:
It's that game. Well, despite the fact you've never played ...
Dave Young:
Let me guess, let me guess.
Stephen Semple:
It's done pretty well.
Dave Young:
Let me guess. You have to have four colors in a row.
Stephen Semple:
You have to have four colors in a row. That's it. That's it. Connect Four.
Dave Young:
All right.
Stephen Semple:
Despite the fact that you've never played the game, it has done pretty well. Sorry.
Dave Young:
How many do they sell? Let's get that in.
Stephen Semple:
About 10 million a year.
Dave Young:
All right. That's it. Thanks for joining us on the Empire Builders.
Stephen Semple:
Wow. It's amazing how many times we do this stuff and you know something about the company. I would never have guessed that this is the one that you would not know it.
Dave Young:
Look, I don't even know if I want to admit this, but yeah, I don't have friends that invite me to play games.
Stephen Semple:
But I would've thought you would've at least remembered the advertisement. It's a pretty iconic ad that has been done. It was back in the late seventies and it was two kids playing.
Dave Young:
This was around in the 70s?
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
Did I just wake up from a coma?
Stephen Semple:
You must have. There was a really iconic advertisement where the two little kids would be playing and the girl would say, "I won." And the boy would go, "I can't see it. Where?" And then she would point out the four in a row and he'd be like, "Pretty sneaky sis," and then pull a little thing and all the pieces would fall.
Dave Young:
Yeah. I have no memory of this.
Stephen Semple:
Where were you from? Nebraska.
Dave Young:
That's basically it. We were too busy working on cornhole technology.
Stephen Semple:
I guess. Anyway, -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Conrad Hilton, despite being unlucky, created what we now know to be the hotel experience. Always improving customer experience.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Tommy Cool HVAC Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back To the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, and we're telling the stories of empires, people that started with a little idea that ended up being huge. And as we got started here, Stephen whispered in my ear that we're going to talk about Hilton.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
And we're not talking about Conrad's granddaughter Paris Hilton who made a big name what in the '90s?
Stephen Semple:
I was wondering if you were going to go there.
Dave Young:
She's like chapter three of this story, I think.
Stephen Semple:
We don't have time for that story.
Dave Young:
For her to have that lifestyle, grandpa's got to make a lot of money.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Well, Conrad Hilton, I mean, Hilton is huge.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
They now have over a million rooms. They have like 7,500 locations in 124 countries. But the interesting thing is Conrad Hilton really invented how we look at hotels today.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
He really is the founder of that idea. And as we go through this story, one of the things that really captivated me about this story, a lot of times when we're covering these things, yes, people have an observation, and yes, they're brilliant. But there's always this bit of element of luck. There's a little bit of this catching lightning in a bottle. Conrad Hilton was terribly unlucky and it's amazing the things that he had to overcome.
Dave Young:
Oh wow.
Stephen Semple:
This guy did not have luck on his side. So I want you to keep that in mind as we go through this story, which makes me admire him more actually.
Dave Young:
Sure. And as I think about what that brand means to me, before I know the story. I don't think in my youth I had a whole lot of experience staying at a Hilton hotel, but there were certain hotel brands that meant something, that people understood.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
If you knew if you were staying at a Holiday Inn on an interstate highway, if it had the word Holidome on it, you're in for a nice swim and a good time in an air-conditioned big space.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
And if you had the money and you were traveling for business or something, you knew that the Hilton brand-
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
Would be a consistently better experience than most one-off hotels. Most. But there was always, every downtown always had one grand hotel.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
But then if they had a Hilton too, you'd say, "Oh, well the Hilton, right?" Because the other ones have their quirks.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. And I think-
Dave Young:
The Hilton was always going to be a traveler, a business traveler's hotel.
Stephen Semple:
I travel a fair bit and I like staying in Hiltons, but I think before we go into the story, I think there's one mistake though that the, and hopefully somebody from Hilton listens to this and calls us and we can help them clean this up for them. They have one mistake that I think they've all done because they all now have all sorts of different brands. Hilton's got like 24 different labels or whatever. Here's the thing that they need to do. They need to look at each one of them and make them ... -
Would you remortgaging the house, driving around the country and put your home address in the public for Millions?
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Sample is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[JS Pest Control Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Sample and we're talking about empires and ideas that people had that turned into something big. And as Steve started the countdown for the recording, he told me that today we're going to talk about UNO, the card game UNO. And I got to admit that I didn't play UNO as a kid.
Stephen Sample:
Oh, you didn't? Okay.
Dave Young:
I didn't know anything about UNO until I got married and my wife liked UNO and we taught it to our kids.
Stephen Sample:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
And I learned-
Stephen Sample:
So you played it with your daughters then, did you?
Dave Young:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Sample:
Yeah. My nephew-
Dave Young:
It's a vicious game.
Stephen Sample:
It is a vicious game. My nephew used to love playing UNO, so I'd play it with my niece and nephew, but what would be funny is, for whatever reason, he would end up being the one getting all the cards and you have these little hands and he'd be holding-
Dave Young:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Sample:
Now the funny thing is he would think it was hilarious that he would have all these. So it was kind of fun because he would find it funny that he'd have, "Well I clearly had the advantage because I've got all the great cards because I have half the deck in my hand."
Dave Young:
Yeah. How can I lose?
Stephen Sample:
How can-
Dave Young:
How could I lose? That's like me on a golf course. I've got way more golf experience than you do because I hit the ball a lot more than you do.
Stephen Sample:
So as soon as I got looking into UNO, I couldn't help but have all these really great memories of Jeffrey and Robin and playing UNO with them because it really is a great game to play with kids.
Dave Young:
Yeah. It's fun and, like I said, I always feel bad giving somebody a card that loads their hand up. I don't know why. That's just-
Stephen Sample:
The way you are.
Dave Young:
I don't have that killer instinct.
Stephen Sample:
So just to put in perspective how big UNO is, UNO is the best-selling card game in history.
Dave Young:
Really?
Stephen Sample:
Yes. Number one.
Dave Young:
Okay. By defined as a game specifically with those like that?
Stephen Sample:
With cards, like a card game.
Dave Young:
Yeah, but not-
Stephen Sample:
Selling card game.
Dave Young:
They haven't sold more cards than Bicycle playing card company.
Stephen Sample:
No. No because-
Dave Young:
But just a specific game.
Stephen Sample:
Yes. They've sold 150 million packs in 80 countries.
Dave Young:
That's a lot of UNO cards.
Stephen Sample:
That's a lot of UNO cards. It sure is.
Dave Young:
And 80 countries?
Stephen Sample:
Yes.
Dave Young:
See, that makes sense because you don't need to speak English to play UNO.
Stephen Sample:
Right. It's very simple. Right. You don't need instructions for it.
Dave Young:
It's numbers and colors. Yeah.
Stephen Sample:
Yeah. So it was invented by Merle Robbins in 1971 in Cincinnati. So the 1970s-
Dave Young:
'71. Okay.
Stephen Sample:
Yeah. It was 1970s. Lots of tension. Gas prices are crazy. Gas rationing, Vietnam, the stuff going on with Nixon, -
Anthony Pratt wanted to elevate playing board games from games of chance to thinking games. His wife was responsible for keeping it random.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young.
Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[JS Pest Control Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple.
Today, Stephen told me we're going to talk about the board game Clue, Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. Something like that.
Stephen Semple:
There you go.
Dave Young:
It's been a long time. It's been a long time since I've played Clue.
Stephen Semple:
Did you play Clue much as a kid?
Dave Young:
Not really.
Stephen Semple:
No? Okay.
Dave Young:
It was never my type of game, and I'm not sure why.
Stephen Semple:
Okay. Well, because you would've had to play it with your sisters. That's probably the problem.
Dave Young:
Yeah, that's probably it.
Stephen Semple:
More therapy for Dave about to [inaudible 00:02:01] right now.
Dave Young:
Yeah, you had to think. There was that thinking involved and eliminating things and...
Stephen Semple:
Well, it's interesting that you bring up the whole concept of thinking because when Clue came out, so it was created in 1949, when Clue came out, pre-World War II games, especially for kids, were like these mindless games of chance or things that required a little bit of a degree of skill. That was sort of all the games. There were not really any games that were thinking games. And Clue was sort of one of the first ones to come along to break into that whole genre of how do we make a game that's more of a thinking game and, frankly, it's not just a kid game as an adult game.
Dave Young:
Sure, yeah. And then it became a movie and all kinds of things.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, all kinds of things. And the original name was not Clue. The original name was Cluedo, so C-L-U-E-D-O, Cluedo.
Dave Young:
Cluedo.
Stephen Semple:
And it was created by Andrew Pratt. Today it's owned by Hasbro, and they sold like 150 million games. So it's gone on to become like a really big deal and, look, if you ask most people about Clue, they know what it is.
Dave Young:
Surely. Yeah. We all played it.
Stephen Semple:
So it's pre-World War II and games were mindless games of chance and whatnot, and there's nothing in between, and Anthony Pratt decides he wants to develop a game.
Now, he was a pianist before the war, and he often did entertainment at murder mystery parties, and he remembers people love the murder mystery parties.
Dave Young:
Murder mystery parties have been going on that long?
Stephen Semple:
Yes. Yeah.
Dave Young:
See, I had no idea about that.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
And they were really hugely popular. It was driven by, remember there's Agatha Christie, when she was writing in her prime, was just huge. There was a whole Agatha Christie thing, and so that fueled a lot of these murder mystery parties.
So here he is, it's World War II, they're in bunkers, killing time, trying to figure out how to create things that are fun. He starts thinking about, like, how could you build a murder mystery game that you could play. He's reading Agatha Christie books and discovers there's all these archetypes and whatnot. That's how he came up with the idea about, well, how about a colonel and a professor and a femme fatale and an entitled rich and a servant? -
Sylvester Stallone was not making it, trying to be an actor. So, instead of giving up, he tried a different path.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[ASAP Commercial Doors Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. I'm Dave Young. That's Stephen Semple sitting to your right, however you're facing your podcast listening device. As we normally do, Stephen whispered the topic into my ear just as the countdown thing was going, and I'm a little flustered and confused because I'm not sure what we're talking about. He said, "We're going to talk about the Rocky franchise." And literally, the first thing that came to my mind was Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, no, no, no. Not Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Dave Young:
And I'm like, really? That's an empire? Really?
Stephen Semple:
No, no, no, no, no.
Dave Young:
No, you're talking about Sylvester Stallone.
Stephen Semple:
I'm talking about Sylvester Stallone.
Dave Young:
Yo, Adrian, and all of that.
Stephen Semple:
All that stuff. All that stuff, yeah. That movie is almost 50 years old.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Came out in 1976. There's been five Rockys. There was, then, Rocky Balboa, there's been three Creeds, there's another Creed coming out.
Dave Young:
Really?
Stephen Semple:
There's plans for a prequel to be done on one of the streaming ones. There's a spinoff that's being talked about to be done on Drago. Remember the Russian, the Russian fighter?
Dave Young:
Oh, sure, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
When you go to Philadelphia, there's the Rocky statue in Philadelphia of him holding his hands up near the stairs that he ran up.
Dave Young:
Sure.
Stephen Semple:
And today, there is a lineup. There's a lineup of people to take their picture with that statue. And it's 50 years ago. 50 years ago. Amazing.
Dave Young:
Well, Sylvester Stallone, he's got to fund his retirement somehow.
Stephen Semple:
The story was first shared with me by Tony Robbins, and it blew me away. And I did a little bit of additional look into it like, is this an urban legend? And it turns out much of this is true, although some of the details, I don't know the exact numbers, but it is actually really speaks to Sylvester Stallone's determination and understanding and ability to get things done that I believe every entrepreneur needs to embrace and understand.
Dave Young:
Awesome.
Stephen Semple:
And that's why I wanted to talk about Rocky. One of the other things I want to talk about when it comes to Rocky, it won best picture, best director, best film editing. It's considered, by many, one of the greatest sports films of all time. Stallone was nominated for best actor, and also was nominated for best supporting actor in Creed. And is wild today that when you're at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you still see people who run up the stairs and do the whole thing.
Dave Young:
Sure.
Stephen Semple:
And it's that, the statue is there, and there's a lineup. There's a lineup to take your picture with the Rocky statue. And yes, I have a picture of myself with the Rocky statue. I had to do it.
Dave Young:
How long was the line?
Stephen Semple:
Actually, I was there during the week on a weekday, so it was not too bad. It was probably about 15 minutes.
But here's the story behind Rocky that I find remarkable. So Sylvester Stallone found himself, like many in Hollywood, wanting to be an actor, -
Sol Price had and idea that he was not going to let go of. No matter how many times others tried to take it away.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[ASAP Commercial Doors Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple. And Stephen, shoot, just as you hit the button, I was compiling a list because Julie and I, we've got to go pick some stuff up and you reminded me about it.
Stephen Semple:
Glad I can help.
Dave Young:
Right? We have a Google Keep list. I don't know if you use Google Keep. It's just sort of a list software that you can share with other people. And so that's where we keep our Costco list.
Stephen Semple:
Right.
Dave Young:
And it's actually a Costco/Sam's list, but we hardly ever pick up anything from Sam's. Sam's has some things that Costco doesn't and vice versa. Anyway, we're going to talk about Costco, to try to make a short story long.
Stephen Semple:
I hope we still have some listeners at this point.
Dave Young:
Right? Come on, we're only a minute in, so I think we're okay.
Stephen Semple:
Here's the thing I find it's really interesting about Costco. Today, they have basically almost 900 locations. They do like 243 billion in revenue. They have over 130 million members, and they have over 300,000 employees. They have a reputation of paying and treating employees very, very well, especially for a discount outlet. But to put in perspective, they do a little bit more than half the revenue of Walmart. But Walmart has like 10,000 locations. Costco is like 900.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Think about that volume that they do.
Dave Young:
Do. The product turn has to be amazing. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Unbelievable. It's just mind-boggling. It's just mind-boggling. And it's really interesting to stand outside of Costco and just look at carts full of stuff. Nobody goes to Costco and buys two things, right? It's just incredible. There's some legal things that we need to talk about to really understand the history of Costco, because back in 1936, there was this Robinson-Patman Act that was passed and it prevented the discounting of goods below the manufactured list price. So when we see manufacturers list price, it used to mean something. And what it used to mean is you could not go below that price. And this was to protect manufacturers and small retailers, and you could not do large purchases at discounts. It didn't matter how much you were buying, couldn't go below that price. And in the 1960s, these laws started to change, but large retailers still resisted this idea of lowering prices, because they'd sort of gotten very used to that.
Along comes Sol Price, and it's the early 1950s and he's working as a lawyer in San Diego, and he has a client in a jewelry business that's selling watches to non-profit member owned retail operation in LA called Fedco. And Fedco was a non-profit, like basically it was founded by 800 postal workers in LA, and they were leveraging the buying power to negotiate with distributors and eliminate store markups. And there was a membership fee. It was $5 for a lifetime membership for federal employees. And Sol visited Fedco and he noticed that the property was really similar to one that his mother-in-law had inherited in San Diego that sat empty. So he suggested the location to the client of his and his mother-in-law, and they agreed, and they opened under a different name instead of Fedco. -
Seeing that the world was getting faster and smaller, Howard Johnson started a hospitality empire. The first restaurant franchise.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So, here's one of those.
[Out of This World Plumbing Ad]
Dave Young:
So, are you going to actually tell me the topic, because the countdown is done?
Stephen Semple:
Oh, right. Howard Johnson.
Dave Young:
Howard Johnson, HoJo's. Right on.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Right on. The aqua building with the orange roof. We stayed at some when I was a little kid.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, is that right?
Dave Young:
Howard Johnson's, all right.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Hey, let me do something real quick. Hey, welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, it's Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, and today we're going to talk about Howard Johnson's as seen in Mad Men.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
It was a monster. It sort of preceded the Holidome trend that Holiday Inn... I think Holiday Inn kind of kicked their ass with the Holidome concept.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, yeah.
Dave Young:
That's my guess.
Stephen Semple:
Here's the thing, in 1965 sales of Howard Johnson's exceeded that of McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC combined.
Dave Young:
Wow, that's many exceeds.
Stephen Semple:
Yes. When we talk about how it used to be a powerhouse, it was a monster that just seems to have disappeared. You see the odd one here and there.
Dave Young:
Yeah. If I had to guess the trend of, as I mentioned, Holiday Inn, Holidome sort of things, but my guess is that HoJo's, Howard Johnson's big rise was before the Interstate Highway system was built or right along with it-
Stephen Semple:
Right along with it.
Dave Young:
... in some places.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
But in the East probably predates it.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, because there's a couple of really interesting things. As we mentioned, it's not a big powerhouse today. There may even be people that we're talking to that might not even know what the heck Howard Johnson is. At its peak, it was massive, and basically it was a motor hotel along with a restaurant. They would have both. They had the restaurant, they had the motor hotel along with it.
Dave Young:
Right.
Stephen Semple:
Now, it started on the restaurant side. That's where it started. In fact, it was the first ever restaurant franchise. They were the first ones to do franchising for a restaurant.
Dave Young:
So it was the prototype for Denny's and all of those.
Stephen Semple:
All of those, yeah.
Dave Young:
Howard Johnson's was there.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, and the type of restaurant it was was that fast casual dining. Yeah, really. It was kind of like a diner. It was the first ever franchise and the first location, this wasn't the franchise location, but the first location was Arlene Cape Cod, right at the intersection of Route 28 and Route 6A. Howard Dearing Johnson grew up outside of Boston in Quincy, and his first business was a drug store that he inherited from his father in 1925, along with a whole pile of debt.
The business was a money-loser. It had a soda fountain, a newsstand, and sold ice cream. Again, very much like those 1920s drugstores. We think about a drugstore today, and it's not a place that you hung out. In the 1920s, it was a place that you hung out, and I said there was soda fountain, all that other stuff. They sold three flavors of ice cream, -
Even if you make an awesome product, if you don't help your perfect customer identify with your brand, it won't sell.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those.
[Tapper's Jewelry Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple, and we talk about brands, building big brands, big, exciting, profitable brands, and yet, during the countdown, Stephen didn't mention which brand we're going to be talking about, but he did mention a category. Somebody built an empire so big that their product actually created the category of light beer.
Stephen Semple:
Yes, and the reason why I have to look at it that way is it's a big company that made it happen, but it's still a pretty interesting story, because light beer, look, it's a huge category in the beer business, and it was not always that way. In fact, when light beer was first launched, it was a huge failure. It bombed, and it was Miller that created the first success in this space and really created this as a category. At its peak in 1977, Miller Lite was the number two beer in America.
Dave Young:
We've talked about Miller Lite and their campaign, and they had the world by the tail with Miller Lite.
Stephen Semple:
They really did, yeah.
Dave Young:
Then somebody talked him into changing the campaign.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Yep.
Dave Young:
Because it was at their peak, when it was the Less Filling, Tastes Great.
Stephen Semple:
Yes. That's what made it, and we're going to talk about how that came about, because it's a really interesting story. Because calorie-reduced beer was introduced in the market in New York by Rheingold Brewery as Gablister's Diet Beer.
Dave Young:
Yum.
Stephen Semple:
Sorry. Gablinger's Diet. It was introduced as a diet beer, and it was made using a process developed by chemist Herscher Gablinger of Basel, Switzerland, so it's this Swiss chemist created the process. The version used by Rheingold was developed by Joseph Owades. Now, Joseph then offered the recipe to Peter Hand Brewery, which created Meister Brau Light, so the second one that came out was Meister Brau Light. Now Peter Hand Brewery got into financial trouble in 1972 and sold several of their labels to Miller, and Miller relaunched the light beer as Lite Beer from Miller, not Miller Lite at first, it was Lite Beer from Miller, and Lite being L-I-T-E. It didn't do well. In fact, it was a dud. Around the same time, another brewery was struggling with a light calorie-reduced beer, and the category was simply not working. The problem was the ads were aimed at dieters.
Dave Young:
This was the era of Tab soft drink. There were diet things. Everything was diet, diet. My guess is they steered the diet industry in a different direction.
Stephen Semple:
The whole diet thing, just for the beer category, didn't work, but here's when things get strange. When they were doing market research on it, because Miller really believed there was an opportunity here, and when they did market research on it, it showed that 90% of Miller drinkers had tried the light beer once, they had tried it. They didn't say they disliked it, but they didn't buy it again. On one hand, you can go, "Well, the advertising's working, the promotion's working, our drinkers are trying it. They're not saying they dislike it, but they're not buying it again." Here's basically where they landed. The Miller beer drinker at that time was really described as the two-fisted drinker, -
David McConnell ditched his door to door book selling gig to pursue the bribe that he we giving for attention.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the Not-So-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Travis Crawford HVAC Ad]
Stephen Semple:
Ding dong. What makes you think of when the doorbell rings, what ad? Ding dong.
Dave Young:
Ding dong. Well, I was expecting a topic, first of all.
Stephen Semple:
Okay, well work with me here. What do you recall?
Dave Young:
Shoot, in the last five years, just chasing people away from my front porch.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, okay.
Dave Young:
Avon calling.
Stephen Semple:
There you go. Avon calling. That's who we're going to talk about.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I don't think they're doing that anymore.
Stephen Semple:
No, they aren't. But that recall is really, really interesting from the fact that you were able to remember those ads. Because those ads have not run, they stopped running in the late sixties. We were like...
Dave Young:
Oh my gosh.
Stephen Semple:
We were really young when those ads stopped, and yet you were still able to recall it.
Dave Young:
And I'm probably recalling it as a persistent meme in our culture that Avon calling, it became, not, it was woven into probably movies and TV and mass culture, so that for the next decade or decade and a half, it was still echoing, right?
Stephen Semple:
Correct.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Stephen Semple:
So think about how powerful that was. We're going to talk about Origin, a little bit about Avon.
Dave Young:
I think that's a fascinating phenomenon. I'm anxious to hear the Avon story. It reminds me of cigarette jingles as well that ended when they banned cigarette advertising in the mid-seventies. Yet for the next 20, 30 years, I mean, anybody that was alive then could still tell you Winston tastes good like a cigarette should, right? There's so many of those. So yeah, they just become a part of us.
Stephen Semple:
And they're powerful enough that they're, as you said, spoofing them on Simpsons and things along that lines. But back to Avon. So Avon's a really old company. It was founded in 1886 by David McConnell, and today, it's still around today. They do 9 billion in sales, they have 23,000 employees. There's over 6 million representatives of Avon, and it's still privately held by Natura Holdings out of Brazil. And they're giving you an idea, there are four Avon lipsticks sold every second.
Dave Young:
Dang, that's a lot of lipstick.
Stephen Semple:
Boom four, boom four, boom four. Isn't that incredible? Isn't that amazing? Avon's founder, David McConnell, started in sales back in the 1880s as a door to door book salesman. And so we've heard this happen with other businesses because he then used a popular gimmick. Remember Wrigley's? Remember how Wrigley's didn't start by selling gum? The gum was the free giveaway? McConnell offered a free gift in exchange for a moment of the customer's time. So it was a gift with appointment. And guess what he gave away? Perfume.
Dave Young:
Oh, okay.
Stephen Semple:
Most of the customers McConnell dealt with were housewives who were home in the afternoon hours while their husband was away at work. And so he decided to work with a local pharmacy to create a fragrance that he could give away, little quantities for anybody who was willing to listen to the book pitch. But a funny thing happened, they were way more interested in the perfume than the books. So just like Wrigley, -
Do not confuse Strategy with Best Practices. Creating a great strategy will allow you to stand out, not fit in.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. Here's one of those.
[Colair Cooling & Heating Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, with Stephen Semple. The topic you whispered in my ear today is not a brand name, it's not a service, it's not an invention. My favorite word to describe this is President Bush, the young one, the W.
Stephen Semple:
Okay.
Dave Young:
He called it strategery.
Stephen Semple:
Strategery.
Dave Young:
You want to talk about strategy today.
Stephen Semple:
I do.
Dave Young:
Or strategery.
Stephen Semple:
Strategery. Well if you think about it, this whole podcast, every episode is really about looking at a business and strategically, what did it do that made itself really successful. I get a bit frustrated because, a lot of times, businesses don't invest in strategy. They don't want to have a strategic session and invest in that. We all know that strategy ends up becoming really important. Then there's lots of things that are being paraded around as strategy, that frankly, aren't strategy, they're other things.
What I wanted to do is talk a little bit about what strategy is, isn't, and how you create it, and why it's important. Basically, I think it distills down to this. When people sit around in a group and go, "Hey, let's think about this thing that we can then parade out to people in an industry, we have this idea." That's not strategy. That's best practices.
Dave Young:
Okay, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
They're best practices because they're looking at, "Oh, here's the best things that have gone on in the industry." Those are best practices. If it's something that's really common, it's a tactic. It's not a strategy because a strategy can't be repurposed.
What a strategy is, is a business looks at its problem, "I've got this problem. I have these assets that I can leverage. Here's a creative way in which I can use these assets to solve this problem." Now what often ends up happening is it solves the problem so well, that they then systematize the solution, and now it becomes a best practice. Then that best practice gets so adopted in the industry, it becomes a common tactic that everyone does. That's what happens.
But for it to be a strategy, it can really only be used in that situation.
Dave Young:
Okay. Can you give me some examples?
Stephen Semple:
Great examples. M.M. LaFleur. They invented this whole idea of mailing out clothing to people on this subscription basis, where they then try it on and send it back. They didn't start off going, "Hey, let's do this." They had a problem. They had clothing and they couldn't find a place to store it. But because they had been doing these private fittings, they had an asset. The asset was, "We have the contact information of all these customers, along with their sizes, and their preferences. We can actually send clothing out to them that we think they would like." They did it to solve a problem, and in the process, made more sales in a month than they had done in the entire history of the company. They then went, "Huh, let's turn this into a thing. Let's systemize it and make it actually our business.?"
Dave Young:
Yeah. I looked it up, it's episode 54.
Stephen Semple:
Thank you. That was looking at their problem, looking at these unleveraged assets, and solving it in a way in which it had not been solv... -
What do you d
What do you drink when water is not good for you and your only other option is alcohol? Well, you rename root tea to root beer.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those.
[Tapper's Jewelers Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, Dave Young here along with Stephen Semple, and we are sharing stories about empires, business empires, brands that were built and grew really big, and figuring out what they did to make them grow really big. And Stephen just mentioned today's topic, whispered it in my ear as the recorder was counting down, and you said that I probably haven't seen this in a while. But I feel like it's maybe still around, but it's Hires Root Beer.
Stephen Semple:
Hires Root Beer, yes.
Dave Young:
Hires Root Beer, and I was kind of a root beer snob when I was a kid.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, were you?
Dave Young:
Not so much anymore, right? But I knew the difference between Hires and Dad's and A&W and all the big root beer brands.
Stephen Semple:
Which was your favorite?
Dave Young:
There was nothing that compared to an A&W root beer coming out of a fountain, not a can.
Stephen Semple:
Yep.
Dave Young:
Going to A&W and having a root beer in a giant glass cold mug. But we're here to talk about Hires Root Beer.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, which is now owned by A&W. I do not believe that Hires is still available in the US. You can get it still in Canada. But at one point, they were the largest in the United States. And Hires is actually kind of the inventor of the root beer business. And today it's like $600 million a year of root beer sold.
Dave Young:
Wow.
Stephen Semple:
So I thought-
Dave Young:
That's a lot of root beer.
Stephen Semple:
I thought it was worth exploring.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Because this is the origin of root beer.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So it's the early 1870s, and the population in the United States is booming due to massive immigration. And sanitation is becoming a huge problem in cities. Polluted water is spreading disease and people frankly turn to alcohol for safe drinking. The average American at that time was consuming seven gallons of alcohol a year.
Dave Young:
Wow.
Stephen Semple:
Primarily beer and things along that lines, but part of it was because of water. So in 1874, protests start around alcohol, the anti-alcohol movements start. But the challenge is there's no good alternative to water. And so, Charles Hires is a pharmacist, and he always had these little side hustles and was always looking for opportunities. And while he's on his honeymoon, he is served this beverage called root tea. And it's made by fermenting, so it's carbonated, but the fermentation is cut off before alcohol forms. And it's really popular in these rural areas, but not in urban areas.
And he's a member of the Temperance Movement, so he knew it was hard to find good alternatives to alcohol. So he starts to experiment on recipes for root tea. And he felt this could be a temperance drink because it had the feeling of a beer, and it could be sold in stores. And it was delicious, and he felt he could create a shelf-stable version. The first version of it was this powdered mix that you would boil, add water, add sugar, add yeast, let it ferment, cut it short, and there it would be. Right? And so, he met with this local Reverend, Russell Conwell, and he was sharing with him this idea of this root tea. -
The secret to creating something viable is you better be highly engaged in it. Tope Awatona learned this lesson the hard way.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[No Bull RV Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple. Today, Stephen mentioned, it's the app, Calendly, C-A-L-E-N-D-L-Y, Calendly. I've used it. We still use it for a couple of things. It's a way that you can give people a link to sign up for a time on your calendar to talk to you or make an appointment with you or make an appointment to get their haircut, or I think all kinds of things now.
Stephen Semple:
The first time I was exposed to it was through you-
Dave Young:
Oh, all right.
Stephen Semple:
... where you had sent me this link, and I was like, "What the heck? What the heck is this?" which then caused me, after experiencing it as a customer, because the cool thing as a customer, it's just a link you click on, there's no software or anything, and then it sends you something that immediately populate your Google or iCal or whatever, that I ended up exploring it. Now I use it for absolutely everything because it even has automated follow-ups and all this other stuff I'll do. I found, especially if you're trying to get a group of people together, it's a complete game-changer because you can also put all your calendars on it. It'll look at everybody's calendar and find the free spot. This experience I've just talked about, hold that in your head because it becomes important to the story. Calendly was founded by Awotona, I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, in Atlanta in 2013. Today, it has over 400 employees and is valued at $3 billion.
Dave Young:
A real unicorn of a startup.
Stephen Semple:
Really, really is. Interestingly, in 2021, Calendly moved to a completely remote workforce. They have no office space anywhere any longer. Tope was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States when he was 15. He went to the University of Georgia where he did computer science, and he graduated with business. During school, he was working for a while at CVS as a cashier. Then he got a job doing door-to-door selling alarm systems in Athens, Georgia, on full commission. One of the things he learned was the best time to knock on doors is right before dinner. He's one of those guys, right before dinner.
Dave Young:
Yeah, right before dinner because everybody's home.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Now, he made good money, way more than CVS. On the first day, he made like 500 bucks because he sold two units. But the rest of the week there were no sales. But he still liked doing it because he understood there was a hit rate. He also liked that he could influence how much he could make, become better, work harder, make more. And it was a different outlet for him than coding.
He graduates from university. He had a few offers. He landed a sales job at a luxury travel company and then IBM. But he started looking for a small, fast-growing company to work for because there'd be more advancement opportunities than a big company like IBM. So gets a job where he moves to Kansas City, and he's working for a company that digitized files and managed content. Now, this was an interesting experience for him. Because while there, one of the onboarding things that they did for all the new employees was they would meet the founders of this company where the founders shared their story of starting this company and growing this company. For him, -
Edwin Lowe, yes the Beano... uhm Bingo guy took all he learned and created Yahtzee. You need to be observant.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is... Well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Travis Crawford Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Steven Semple. And as we always do, Steven... Wait a minute. You didn't whisper anything in my ear during the countdown?
Stephen Semple:
No, I didn't this time
Dave Young:
We're going into this blind. I have no idea what we're going to talk about.
Stephen Semple:
I didn't this time, but there's one thing I ust wanted to mention before we got into it is we're north of 156 episodes. I think this is 157 or 158. And when you think about it-
Dave Young:
Isn't that crazy?
Stephen Semple:
It is crazy. We've crossed the three-year mark. And for you and I, we haven't missed, we've not missed a week in that three years.
Dave Young:
I'm amazed. That's double the number of birthdays I've had, at least.
Stephen Semple:
I wanted to recognize that because I was looking... when I was doing the preparation and looking at this, I went, "Wow, three years. That's quite amazing." When we started this adventure, I knew we had committed to a year, and here we are still at it, which I think is pretty cool.
Dave Young:
It is. I don't have any stats handy, but I know that podcasting, this is one of these things that is like, "Oh, this is going to be fun." It's going to be fun to do a podcast. And it is. My participation in it is a lot of fun because I show up, you do a countdown, and I chat. But I know that it's a heavy lift, and people thinking that they're just going to start podcasting, unless you're just going to just start your own live morning show without any back-end production, it's not an easy thing to do. And you've got a whole team working behind the scenes.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. There's you and I. And then we have an outsourced person who does the production, and then Dylan Bernier turns all this stuff in the shorts and whatnot. And then Matthew Burns and Gary Bernier get it all posted to the social media. And I'm going to say, if this group of people were not working on it, this would not still be going today. And I think last I looked at the stats, most podcasts I think are 10 or 12 or 14 episodes or something like that. They-
Dave Young:
Yeah. That's as far as you get.
Stephen Semple:
As far as you get. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, this is a grind. This is more work than I thought it would be." And things along that line. So, well-
Dave Young:
You're like, "I'm going to go back to grad school," and, "Oh, God, what was I thinking?"
Stephen Semple:
Exactly.
Dave Young:
I started podcasting in 2010 and got 30 episodes in before I gave up. And I think it was just because the shine came off, the shiny object, for me, and nobody knew what a podcast was in 2012. So-
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. So I just want to thank you, thank the team, and just recognize this milestone. But onto the reason why people actually have tuned in, it's not to hear us chat back and forth.
Dave Young:
It's not.
Stephen Semple:
Well, it's not about that. It's not about praising ourselves. What we're going to talk about today is a game called Yahtzee.
Dave Young:
Yahtzee. I grew up with Yahtzee. I mean, Yahtzee's been around for a long time.
Stephen Semple:
Sure has. Yeah.
Dave Young:
And I never played it until, I think after I got married. -
Recognizing problems growing a new game and then looking for solutions that have worked in the past. WTG, Robert Angel.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands.
Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young.
Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Tappers Jewelry Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. I'm Dave Young, and Stephen Semple is sitting right here with me. Well, we're recording. We're virtually sitting directly next to each other. I'm in Austin. He's in Canada. He's right there, and he just whispered the name of today's topic into my ear, and it's Pictionary. And man, it's been a long time since I've played it, but I have played it. I don't know the whole story about it, so I'm all ears and I've always sucked at it because I couldn't draw a paper bag to save my life.
Stephen Semple:
I'm with you there.
Dave Young:
And convince you that it was a paper bag.
Stephen Semple:
My challenge is drawing even a straight line.
Dave Young:
Yeah, exactly.
Stephen Semple:
Pictionary is a pretty big deal. In 2001, it was sold to Mattel. At that time, they're in 60 countries, 45 languages, and just in the United States, 11 versions of the game. And I haven't looked into what the different versions are, but they have sold a total of 32 million games worldwide.
Dave Young:
Oh, that's amazing.
Stephen Semple:
That's a big deal.
Dave Young:
It's almost like Charades, but you're drawing. Help me remember, literally, it's been a long time since I've played this.
Stephen Semple:
It is very much Charades on paper, and that was the inspiration to the game. So it started in 1982 in Spokane, Washington. Robbie Angel has a degree in business and he's working as a waiter and a bunch of his friends would stay in to play games, right? Because they don't want to go out to spend money. They want to hang out together. And so what would happen is they would start drawing something and people would guess what it was. And again, it was like this whole idea of Charades on paper.
But the problem was what made it slow was they would struggle with a word to come up with. That would be the slowest part of the game. So it'd be like your turn to draw something and it would take you forever to even think about what it is you wanted to draw. So they would start opening the dictionary to look for words randomly to come up with the idea to draw. And they realized this would make a great game. And it led to the name Picture plus Dictionary, Pictionary.
Dave Young:
All right.
Stephen Semple:
And so they started thinking about doing this as a game. And Robbie's Mom sent him Trivial Pursuit to make him understand how to package a game, because remember how innovative that game was at the time in terms of the packaging. In looking at Trivial Pursuit, he realized the words would become the challenge. And he also looked at Trivial Pursuit and he saw Trivial Pursuit has 6,000 questions, so he probably needs 6,000 words, but he looked at it and said, they've made it work with that. So that's probably the goal. And them, he created four categories.
So the whole idea categories and the number of words came from looking at Trivial Pursuit, and you need to make it fun. So how do you make it fun? It was by creating a time limit. The other problem that he noticed was one team versus the other.
Dave Young:
You already draw poorly. Now do it fast.
Stephen Semple:
I'll do it fast, but at least we only have to watch you for a short period of time. The other problem that he noticed was when it's one team... -
Liquid Death is what happens when a very creative marketing guy got frustrated with the lack of courage from clients and bosses.
Dave Young:
Welcome to, The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple, is a Marketing Consultant, Story Collector, and Storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is... Well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Tappers Jewelry Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young, here along with Stephen Semple. Stephen just told me that today's episode is Liquid Death. So I don't have any direct experience, but there's something in the back of my mind that tells me it's a fairly recent product and it's just canned water.
Stephen Semple:
Yup. You got it. Ring the bell. Ring the bell. Once again, Dave Young, is on the ball.
Dave Young:
There was a YouTube video for water. I don't even think it was real, but it was Earth Juice. Yeah, Earth Juice. So Liquid Death, who thought this was a good idea?
Stephen Semple:
Here's what's different about them is its canned water rather than plastic bottles.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
It's put into metal cans. And the guy who thought of this idea was Mike Cessario, and he launched the business on December 18th, 2018. And in 2024, the business was valued at $1.4 billion. And what was reported that time is they were doing $263 million in sales, and he grew this without any outside investment. He bootstrapped this whole thing at the beginning, which is really quite remarkable. And the bottled water business is a huge market. There's like 16 billion gallons sold, $53 billion over like 80... And there's like 80 brands in the United States. So it's a big crowded business.
Dave Young:
And these aren't even flavored waters. These are just bottled still water.
Stephen Semple:
He does do some flavored waters now and some sparkling waters. But it started as just bottled water. Yes.
Dave Young:
Nestle, it comes to mind. Nestle and Coke and Pepsi have their big brands, Dasani and whatever the other one is.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
You and I are about the same age. When I was a kid, you couldn't find a bottle of water to buy if your life depended on it. If you're traveling and you're thirsty, you stop at a gas station that has a water fountain or you have a thermos or something. I don't even remember how I got a drink of water when I was a little kid on a trip.
Stephen Semple:
It was brutal. I remember in university when I was working as a DJ and I'd be on the road traveling and the only thing that you could get, you could get an iced tea or pop, and I didn't like pop. So it was like... and you would get to the stage of I was sick and tired of these ice teas, I just wanted to water. And bottle water was not around. It's a big business today. And Mike actually had no experience in water. He came from the advertising industry. I thought you would like this story.
Dave Young:
Think about this product, right? It's called-
Stephen Semple:
Liquid Death.
Dave Young:
Death, Liquid Death.
Stephen Semple:
Liquid Death.
Dave Young:
And it's made of one ingredient plus an aluminum can.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
And some paint.
Stephen Semple:
Correct.
Dave Young:
So it's 99% marketing.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
That's it.
Stephen Semple:
Yes. So he did graphic design for a big agency in California called, Crispin, but in advertising and working for a big agency he got burned out. He bounced around between different agencies, and he also got really frustrated with customers not wanting to do things that are bold and in... -
Brian Cook is a force to be reckoned with and figured out how to redefine in-person service during a pandemic.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-So-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[No Bull RV Ad]
Stephen Semple:
Hey, it's Stephen Semple, and we've got a special episode for you today. Once again, boy, Dave seems to be getting a lot of time off lately. I hope he's enjoying it. But who I have with me today is a special entrepreneur, Brian Cook, who he's got a couple of really interesting things to share with us today. So Brian founded a company called MedStretch. He's a franchisee of this program. They've had a bunch of success, and there's definitely a few really cool things that he shared with me that I think are going to be awesome lessons for everybody. So Brian, starting off, correct me, I couldn't remember, because I had a bunch of different notes from when we spoke. When did you found MedStretch? How long ago was it now?
Brian Cook:
So we founded StretchMed in November 2019. That's we opened the first location.
Stephen Semple:
Right, because I remember it was pre-pandemic and I couldn't remember how close. So you open up this thing that is in-person exercise in November of 2019, and I think something special happened in 2020? Like holy crap.
Brian Cook:
Yeah, definitely. We had a blistering success, sold a few franchises right off the bat. Actually, one of our first customers came in and loved the program so much, he bought three franchises. We got a few open, and then COVID shut us down, and then we had to do that whole thing. And it definitely took some wind out of the sails, but after a year or so, maybe even two years, we kind of get back on track and things are going great now.
Stephen Semple:
So you almost had a start and then almost a reset start again when the world tried its best to get back to normal and if you do any travel these days, whatever the heck normal is.
Brian Cook:
Yeah, definitely. And it did force us to get really deep into digital marketing, where we hadn't done that yet. We were mostly doing pop-up events and kind of in-person things, which is frankly a lot of work. Effective, but a lot of work, where COVID really forced us to get real granular in the digital marketing. Organic posting in some ways did us a favor where now we do really, really well with the marketing.
Stephen Semple:
It's amazing how many businesses that I've talked to and researched where they actually sit back and said not that they would ever want to go through it again, and not that they would ever wish it upon the world, but surprisingly they really improved their businesses during COVID. It's like, it's amazing the things that we all said was impossible. Like, oh, you can never sell this remotely, suddenly became possible.
I remember with one customer, I had a conversation with them because they were in the home renovation business and saying, "Hey, you know what? You always have to be in the home." Three weeks later we're doing online selling via Zoom. It's amazing how all of a sudden it became possible and now that's how they're doing it. And it's not like we went a hundred percent back. It's really quite incredible. One of the things that you shared with me that was also interesting is how many franchises do you have now? I know you're on track to get to a hundred pretty quickly, but how many are you at right now?
Brian Cook:
Yeah, so we've got 30 open and we've got 25 more in the queue. So 25 more that are purchased in the process of site selection,... -
A failed suspension idea for the navy, slinky becomes a toy so popular they sell over 300 million of them.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Seaside Plumbing Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. I mean, that assumes that you've listened to an episode already I guess.
Stephen Semple:
Very presumptuous, very presumptuous.
Dave Young:
That was very presumptuous of me. I'm Dave Young, Steven Semple's here, and he's got a new story for us and told me just before we got started here that it's going to be slinky. It's Slinky. It's Slinky. Yeah. Childhood favorite. I used to love playing with a Slinky, and I could keep one without getting tangled for about an hour. Then it'd just be a tangled mess of scrap iron. So I'm going to take a wild guess as to the origins.
Stephen Semple:
Okay, go for it.
Dave Young:
Because I could be completely wrong. I don't have any basis for this other than a hunch, because it feels almost like the Silly Putty story. He made a thing that was, oh, this is stable and it's industrial and it won't hold its shape, and it's of virtually no use. Let's let children play with it. I feel like a spring made out of flat steel that's springy, but not springy enough to really help you as a spring, somebody just said, well, this is kind of fun just to play around with in your hands. Is this an accidental toy or did somebody set out to say, oh no, we're going to build a toy out of a spring?
Stephen Semple:
You're pretty close. It was started in 1943 by a mechanical engineer, Richard James, and to date, they've sold over 300 million of these things. It was inducted in the Toy hall of Fame. It's on the Toy Industry Association Century Toy List. In 1999, Slinky was a US stamp.
Dave Young:
Really?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. But the origin goes back to, if you think about 1943, World War II was going on, and the control of the sea is critical to supply lines. Richard James is working on a way to keep sensitive instruments safe at sea and what his ideas are-
Dave Young:
To suspend them from springs.
Stephen Semple:
Suspend them from torsion springs and what does he do? He accidentally knocks over one of the springs and it looks like it starts to walk. So what he does is he goes home and he says to his wife, "I think we got a toy here now." Now he seemingly had brought home all sorts of strange things. Keeping in mind, during World War II toys were also made a cardboard because there was a shortage of steel and things along that lines.
Dave Young:
He can't go making toys out of spring steel in 1943.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, a little tough. Also, the Navy rejects the idea for the equipment, but he continues to tinker with it and for two years he experiments with different wire. He finally lands on, it's 98 coils of Swedish steel, and it's about two and a half inches tall. It's Betty who comes up with the name Slinky because they're running around trying to come up with the name. Betty goes, "I think we should call it Slinky."
Dave Young:
Springy. No, it's stretchy. No.
Stephen Semple:
Right. Yeah.
Dave Young:
Slinky is great.
Stephen Semple:
Slinky is a great name. So they decide to borrow $500 and they make 400 of them. Look, it's like no other toy in the market, and no other toy has really come along like Slinky really, if you think about it.
Dave Young:
No.
Stephen Semple:
But now he has to convince... So he's got this thing that's completely diffe... -
Taking a true look at where your business is taking you and working hard to give customers what they want. Bill Rosenberg, way to go.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Colair Cooling & Heating Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple, talking empires. And what better way to get an empire started in the morning than to have a donut?
Stephen Semple:
There you go.
Dave Young:
And a cup of coffee.
Stephen Semple:
That's it.
Dave Young:
So today's topic is Dunkin Donuts.
Stephen Semple:
Dunkin Donuts. There we are. America runs on Dunkin, right?
Dave Young:
I don't know a lot of history about them. I have childhood memories of Dunkin Donuts and then no memories for a long time, and then sort of rediscovered them when my daughter was going to school in Boston. I think they're a Boston or Massachusetts origin story.
Stephen Semple:
They are. Very good.
Dave Young:
But I feel like they've had some ups and downs maybe.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, they've had a bunch of ups and downs. There's no question. But they are. They're from Quincy, Mass, just outside of Boston.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. So they were started by Bill Rosenberg in 1950, and today they have close to 13,000 stores. They're the second-largest restaurant chain in the US, they're worth about $9 billion. And if you're in New York City, they have an unbelievable concentration in New York. There's one every five blocks. And I'll tell you, it was weird when I was in New York last summer, and you're walking around, it felt like there was one every two blocks. It's more how it felt. But there's literally one every five blocks in New York City.
Dave Young:
Including the airports, right? They're everywhere.
Stephen Semple:
They really are. So the origin of Dunkin really goes back to the late 1930s because the US economy at that point had been struggling for close to a decade. With the Great Depression, unemployment peaked at 20% in an era where there was little in the way of safety nets. And this actually had a big impact on the food business because at this time, snacks have started to be reinvented as lunch. So we're seeing this movement towards these smaller packaged foods. People wanted something small that was a fun to eat item, that was not expensive, that really started to dominate the food market. And we've seen that in other podcasts that we've done with other foods. So Bill Rosenberg is from Boston, and he has a successful food truck business. And by 1946, he's starting to make enough to start a brick-and-mortar location. So when he launches the business, here's something Bill notices, is that in his food truck business, 40% of the sales were coffee and donuts.
Dave Young:
Wow. Okay.
Stephen Semple:
That was 40% of the sales from the food truck. So when he launches the business, he realizes that he wants to create a new idea centered around coffee and donuts. And you know what, it's interesting. When we go back to companies like Toys R Us and things like that, or even a Dollar Store, it's this observation of, "Hey, here's this thing that's selling." Or in Toys R Us cases, they looked at it and said, boy, toys are a big part of a department store. Maybe we should just do something along that lines. So this is similar to what he saw. He saw, look, coffee and donuts is a big part of the sales. Why don't I create something around that? -
Building trust is not easy, but when you are consistent, unique and true to yourself people take notice. No Bull RV has done this very well.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is ... Well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
[Tommy Cool Air Ad]
Matthew Burns:
This is not Stephen Semple or Dave Young. I've commandeered the entire podcast at the request of Stephen. So I am here for a reason. I've got with me a client of Stephen's, Rick Showers of No Bull RV in the Edmonton area of Alberta, and you guys have heard us talk about him before, he's been on the podcast before, but we've had a very specific topic that we want to talk about today, and we're talking about the amazing use of social media that him and his team, we have one of his team members here, her name is Natacha. Natacha, what's your role with No Bull?
Natacha:
Technically by title I'm HR.
Matthew Burns:
That'll be part of what we talk about. Great. And then what are some of the other things that you're doing there?
Natacha:
I'm doing anything I can to support Rick, I guess, and just build the business and making sure all our pieces are aligning together and that we're really approaching things from a whole business level, not just bits and pieces at a time.
Matthew Burns:
Okay, fantastic. And Rick, that's a very politically correct answer. What is Natacha to you? What does she do for you?
Rick Showers:
She does pretty much all the stuff I don't want to do.
Matthew Burns:
There we go. That's the answer. That's the answer we wanted.
Rick Showers:
She sees to it that it gets done. Let me put it that way.
Matthew Burns:
Exactly. Well, no, and her job is to support you and all the things that we're honestly, truly ... Business owners, especially entrepreneurs, we get caught up in doing everything at the beginning and then we realize I'm really not good at this list of 20 things, so I'm going to get somebody else who's much better at it than me. I'm going to concentrate on what I'm good at. And that's your Natacha. What we really want to talk about today is how you guys are using social media and its effect, the kind of the bonus effect it's had on your recruiting and the onboarding of new staff members. Rick, talk to me a little bit about your perception of this and how it's affected you guys there at No Bull.
Rick Showers:
The perception of the social component?
Matthew Burns:
You got it.
Rick Showers:
Well, as a user, I always thought it was a bit of a pain in the ass, frankly, because there's one more social channel coming after another. As a business owner, I was always skeptical and never really liked the fact that competitors, for example, or other business categories were actually using it to try and flog product, which to me always seemed a little bit counterintuitive because it's not really a social thing. They're looking at it as an advertising channel. So we approach it a little bit differently and wanted to stand out by just being different.
Matthew Burns:
You're highlighting your people on social media, you guys are spending time talking about the vulnerabilities of some of your units because you guys are in used RVs and you're pointing out the negatives and saying, "Hey guys, well, we take care of this for you." And you're very upfront. I remember one post where you were trying to do a video when a bird was squawking in the tree next to you and you're like, "Come on, man, we're doing a video." It was so funny. But yeah, I mean, social media really is meant to be social. - Visa fler
