Renegade Millionaire

Renegade Millionaire
By Dan Kennedy

The Not-So-Secret Recipe

In 1985, his father died, leaving behind a neighborhood tavern that was losing money and a mountain of debt accumulated keeping the joint open. John juggled it with the opening of a new, hopefully better business, a pizzeria.
It is the 3^rd largest pizza chain, behind Dominos and Pizza Hut, with $3-billion in annual revenue. Papa John’s. Better Ingredients. Better Pizza. John Schnatter aka. Papa John follows “characters” like Col. Sanders and Dave Thomas, fast food chain founders who became the iconic figureheads of their companies – themselves the key differentiator in a crowded field. An ingredient. But what are the other key ingredients?  How do you go from one tiny shop in a small Indiana town to a global empire and a personality brand everyone knows? This is the question everyone could ask themselves.

Since this is the day of casting the rich and successful as villains, an answer to that question is: luck + viciously profiteering from others’ misery; in John’s case, slavery i.e. low wage workers and selling poison that causes obesity. He was not unaware; he constructed his home to be deceptive, tunneling underneath, to hide his multi-car garage and movie theater. But then he slipped.  Here is how unfunny comedian Bill Maher reacted, after John made it known that a doubling of health insurance costs for the 80,000 employees in his system was an economic bomb they could not simply absorb:
“The filthy-rich founder of Papa John’s, John Schnatter said he’d cut his employees’ hours to avoid the costs of Obamacare. This is where I’d normally suggest boycotting Papa John’s, but that’s like telling people to boycott sadness. Nobody eats Papa John’s because they like it. They eat it because Dominos won’t deliver to crack houses.”

That wasn’t said in late night oblivion on cable. It was in Maher’s editorial in The New York Times. Schnatter has been dealing with an orchestrated, relentless political and media attack ever since hosting a Romney fundraiser and having a video go viral on YouTube in which Romney said: “Who would have imagined pizza could build this! What a home this is! What grounds these are! The pool! The golf course! If a Democrat were here, he’d say no one should live like this. But Republicans come here and say everyone could live like this.” In calling attention to John’s wealth, Romney turned the friendly, red shirted guy seen in his pizza places watching over quality, even delivering pizza himself – Papa’s in the house! into a red-eyed demonic money-grabber. Then, when John made a comment about the structural changes in employment Obamacare would force on his and countless other companies, the media pounced. His company’s #1 asset, his image, put at risk, and costly PR combat required. Fortunately, the average consumer is not all that dialed into these things, and if they have Papa on their speed dial, this too shall pass. But it speaks to the dangers in visible success.

Looking at anyone like John late in their story, when the mansions, the cars, the flashy donations (his, a 55,000 seat Papa John’s stadium at the University of Louisville), etc. have come, no one sees the ugly, grimy, fighting for survival beginnings, the flop sweat and sleepless nights wondering if this’ll be the week payroll won’t be met, the YEARS of sacrifice.

 So here is the real answer to how you go from a small shop to a global empire and earn your wealth. In 1985, John was out late at night, night after night, fishing soiled copies of customer lists and delivery notes from dumpsters behind Dominos outlets, so he could directly pursue those customers and persuade them to try his better pizza. (It reminds me of me, putting my lead generation cards under windshield wipers of cars in hotel parking lots where someone else was holding a seminar.)   You do whatever it takes. You do what no one else will do. You risk as others will not. You even steal – as this dumpster diving was theft; it’s said there’s a crime behind every fortune. You scrap and struggle and survive and find a way forward and upward. There is no other answer.

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DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

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