Dominos was started in 1960 and grew to be the largest independent restaurant business on the planet.  Started by an orphan who was swindled out his life savings.  This is a true rags to riches story.  Sometimes you just need to hang in there and not chicken out.

David 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 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.

[Armadura Ad]

David Young:

Stephen, it's pizza day. Is that right?

Stephen Semple:

30 minutes or free, baby.

David Young:

It sounds like Domino's. Huh?

Stephen Semple:

Domino's, all right.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, Domino's is interesting. It was founded by Tom Monaghan in Michigan, back in 1960. In the ’80s, he sold it to an investment place and he sold it for about a billion dollars.

David Young:

About a billion?

Stephen Semple:

About a billion. So he did okay with his investment but there's kind of a couple of funny twists in there, including some things with his brother. I would not relish Christmas with him and his brother because basically, it happened in 1960s, his brother was working at this pizza store that was actually called DomiNick’s. And it went under, and Tom and his brother borrowed 500 bucks. They scraped together 500 bucks for the down payment to buy the store. So they buy the store and it was not an immediate success. So, you know how we talk a lot of times around the chickening out period in terms of-

David Young:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Stephen Semple:

And you're working on it and people chicken out. How long does it usually take for the chickening out period to happen, Dave? One more time in the client.

David Young:

Three to four months usually.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, it really becomes strong at the six-month period, right? Well, at the six-month period, his brother said "I'm out, I can't do this any longer. It's just not working" and so basically, he bought his brother out by giving him... They had this old VW Beetle that they use for delivery and that's basically what he bought his brother out with. So he bought his brother out with basically this car and he went on to become a billionaire. How would you like those Christmas dinners?

David Young:

Let's say the guy made his choice.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, I know. But still, it'd be one of those weird ones but here's the thing about Domino's that's really interesting, is when they bought the store, the store was small and that really limited the amount- like pizza stores in those days were limited by the number of seats you had and how quickly you could turn those seats. And Tom had a really interesting background. He learned something in the newspaper business. He grew up really poor, he grew up in foster homes and the like. He couldn't afford university so he enrolled in the Marines, during the time he was in the Marines, he saved money for university, and then he got swindled, he got swindled the money. So he never ended up being able to go to university, so he needed to make money.

Stephen Semple:

He basically took over a newspaper stand and this is what he learned in the newspaper stand, he said "wait a minute. I can't only sell so many newspapers from a stand. I can sell a lot more newspapers if I deliver door-to-door" and he had heard about somebody else in another community doing door-to-door. So he started delivering newspapers door-to-door and this learning stayed with him because the key was door-to-door, do it fast. If you can do it fast you can make a lot of money doing door-to-door delivery.