#066: Famous Amos – We hope he made $100M in the last sale

Wally Amos built, sold, worked for, and quit. He got brought back and might have got a return on the final sale just because he liked baking cookies. 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 back to the Empire Builders Podcast. I'm Dave young, and I'm alongside Stephen Semple. And Stephen, you got the story today of another cookie guy, another famous cookie. This one's really famous. Stephen Semple: Totally. Dave Young: Totally famous. Famous Amos. Stephen Semple: Famous Amos. Yeah. So Famous Amos Cookies was started by Wally Amos on March 9th, 1975 on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. And here's what's really interesting. It is the first, it was the first cookie store in history, and this story is... There's a lot to it. There's success. There's decline. There's return. There's so much going on here that I really don't know what to say other than it's really interesting journey that we're going to go on. Dave Young: Lots of chapters in the Famous Amos story. When you say the first cookie store, like all the others were just like a bakery where it was other things besides cookies? Cookies, they also had. Stephen Semple: Right. Yeah. This is the first one where it was just cookies and that was it. It even predates another podcast we did, which was Mrs. Fields' Cookies. It even predates Mrs. Fields by a couple of years. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Yeah. So first cookie store in history, and it's a really interesting journey because Wally went to school to study to be a secretary. Dave Young: Really? Stephen Semple: Yeah, and the first job he got was in the mail room of the William Morris Talent Agency, which is one of the top talent agencies in the world. He worked his way up, and he became the first black talent manager. First one, so he was really groundbreaking on that. And he reached a point where he decided he wanted to leave the agency and set up his own agency to manage his own clients, but this new agency he started was really struggling, and he would go home at the end of the days and he'd feel frankly depressed, and he wanted to feel good about things. So at the end of the day, he would go home and he baked cookies at night. And he'd baked these chocolate chip pecan cookies like his aunt made. Dave Young: As one do. Stephen Semple: And he really did this to self soothe. It was never a business idea. It was something he did to make himself feel good. Dave Young: Just made some cookies. Stephen Semple: Made some cookies and he'd bring them back to the office. And when clients were in, he'd give them to clients. And one day light goes off. He said, "The one thing that makes me happy is making cookies. Why don't I start this as a business?" He gets on the phone. He calls old clients. He gets an investment from Marvin Gay and a bunch of others. He raises $25,000 from these well known musicians and decides I'm going to start this business. So in March of 1975, he opens the first shop dedicated the cookies in the world called Famous Amos Cookies. Dave Young: Famous Amos Cookies. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: I love the fact that the cookies were a form of therapy for him. I mean, it's like a Ted Lasso moment, isn't it? It's... Stephen Semple: It sort of is. Yeah. Yeah. And so he opens it up in this highly visible location in Los Angeles on the seedy, because at the time very seedy Sunset Boulevard was full of runwa...