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The Empire Builders Podcast

By: Stephen Semple and David Young
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  • Summary

  • Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.
    The Empire Builders Podcast
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Episodes
  • #162: Avon – Ding Dong Avon Calling

    #162: Avon – Ding Dong Avon Calling
    Jul 17 2024
    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,
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    17 mins
  • #161: How To Create A Strategy – Let’s get real.

    #161: How To Create A Strategy – Let’s get real.
    Jul 10 2024
    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...
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    19 mins
  • #160: Hires Root Beer – The Origin Of Root Beer

    #160: Hires Root Beer – The Origin Of Root Beer
    Jul 3 2024
    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.
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    17 mins
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