The Iced Coffee Hour - The Secret Life of Papa John Pizza

Episode Date: August 13, 2023

Take advantage of NetSuite’s special financing offer at https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Remember to use code 50ICH at checkout for 50% off PLUS free shipping: https://www.hellofresh.com NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_photography Timestamps: INTRO - 00:00:00 Einstein Inspiration - 00:02:59 Use Creativity To Build Papa John's - 00:04:27 Where Papa Got His Build Mentality - 00:06:34 Papa's First Businesses - 00:07:30 The Broom Closet Saga - 00:09:33 Why Pizza? - 00:14:06 Broom Closet Sales - 00:15:32 Papa's Work Ethic - 00:18:09 Lessons In Credit - 00:19:55 The Power Of An Abundance Mindset - 00:25:31 Taking Care Of Your Castle - 00:28:30 Treating Employees Fairly - 00:33:00 Papa's First Employee - 00:34:04 Fine-Tuning The Recipe - 00:36:15 Getting Sued For Their Slogan - 00:41:43 Going Public - 00:45:08 You Can't Stop Papa's Momentum - 00:51:07 Vietnam Is Over - 00:58:03 Business Parallels From Physics Models - 01:03:35 Raising Kids From Wealth - 01:10:22 How Papa Stays Positive - 01:16:00 The Power Of Now - 01:18:52 How Papa's Face Became Papa John's Brand - 01:20:05 Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 WITH OUR SPONSOR PUBLIC - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Shure SM7B mics, cloud lifters, rodecaster pro audio interface The YouTube Creator Academy: Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Again, netseweet.com slash iced or the link is down below in the description to get started. And now let's get back to the podcast. Thank you so much for allowing us to come here. This is my first time, by the way, ever in Kentucky. And this property is amazing. It is jaw-dropping. That's pretty special, knowing that you're in real estate. What, 150 million in assets?

And you like my property. So thank you for that. I love it. I mean, just because we don't get this in both Las Vegas or Las Vegas. Los Angeles. Yeah. The lot size is if you get an acre and either one is like tremendous. But how big is this?

This is 26 acres. Most people buy it an estate and they build houses around the estate because the states are so big. Yeah. What I did is I bought three or four houses torn down and then built an estate. So the estate's name is Valameda. It's Greek for if it is to be, it's up to me. It's accountability.

You know, I think when the framers frame the Constitution and set out the principles of our great nation, I think independent critical judgment, liberties, self-accountability, self-respect. I think those were the backbone of the individual has to take care of the individual. The state doesn't take care of the individuals. So, Valemita, if it is to be, it's up to me. Do you ever leave the property? It seems like everything you need is here.

You have like a golf course in the middle of the fountains as we were walking in. I mean, it's such a presentation when you drive by it and just. see the front of the property. It's very like a... Yeah, you know, if I had $2 billion, all as I would do is build stuff all day long because I just love to build. I mean, I just love creating spaces. You know, this little clubhouse here is fun. Yeah. Design science said the imagination is so much more powerful than the intellect. Try to run everything on intelligence. And the imagination, creativity, intimacy, the bonds we have, the energies, the vibrations, the frequent.

frequencies. That's, you know, as Einstein said, the field governs particles, you know, particles and molecules don't govern the fields. So I think creativity and independent critical judgment, creating stuff is really a key to be unhappy, whether you're knitting or you're an orthodontist and you're straightened teeth or you're an engineer and you're building homes. I think the creative aspect of the mind, as Einstein said, the imagination is most important. So where, as I was building, you know, a half a restaurant or a restaurant a day, and we had 120,000 employees. We're doing $4 billion a year. We're making $200 million a year in EBITDA. That was a lot of creativity to do that out of the broom closet. So what I do is I keep myself busy since I don't have a job, just building stuff. So, you know, I've got some work I'm doing out in Utah with some property. I've got some remodels in Naples, Florida. You saw what's going on here at Alameda.

So we always have work in progress to keep the mine active. How does that require creativity to be building one restaurant per day? For me, I just see that. I'm like, okay, you have to be highly analytical. You have to think very logically to do something like that. I feel like it, to me, I don't see the creativity in it. But how does that require creativeness? Well, if it was sheer analytics and it was sheer cause and effect,

then remember, there's 43,000 independent pizzerias. 55% is the big chains, Cesar, Domino's, Papa John's, and Pizza Hut. 5% or 10% is frozen pizza. And the other 35, 40% is the independence, the one store mom and pops. Every single independent pizzeria wants to be Papa Johns. So how we were fortunate enough and lucky enough and fortuitous enough to be the one out of the 43,000 independents that was able to create 5,000 stores, I would argue just on sheer common sense that, you know, the creativity of where you locate the store and where you put the signs and

how do you get this permitted? And for example, you know, right turns when you deliver pizzas are 40% faster than left turns. So when you locate a store, you always want to be doing right turns out of the store. It's 40% faster. I think UPS was the one that did that with right-hand turns, which I find really interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know who came up with that. Yeah. But yeah, the every store is an individual store. In fact, that's one thing that we did completely different than the chains was the mindset. But what we did at Papa Johns is we looked at ourselves as the largest independent pizzeria in the world in the country. We didn't look at it at 5,000 stores doing 4 billion a year. We looked at it at one store 5,000 times. So if that small

operator in that small town or that one or two store manager in the system wasn't making money, then the overall health of the enterprise couldn't be good. And that was a completely different mindset to approach us from the element of one store 5,000 times. Have you always been creative and liked building things even as a kid? Like where did that start? I think it started at my grandfather's. He had a farm. We did a lot of long work. Shrubs, trees, planting, flowers. But I can remember my roommate, Brian Tennyson and Greg Havell. We had a triple, which was twice as big with one less person, you know, three people. They were golf, academic scholarship golf guys.

And so they were always gone. So I got the triple to myself. But I remember we redid that room. I took all the bunks up to about six inches to the ceiling. So we had the whole space. And we had a little bit of a bar. And, you know, we had a beer tap in there. and the wine glasses hanging from the ceiling and the couch.

So we had our own nightclub on the top of Studebaker dorm in 1982, 83. So we've always liked creating stuff and creating spaces. So, yeah, I think that's kind of my nature. But you were also an entrepreneur growing up. What were some of the first businesses that you started? Was that also inspired by your grandfather? My grandfather always put us to work with odd chores and painting gutters and cutting grass. We had that business.

Pump gas on the Ohio River. for a $1.50 an hour back in the 70s. I didn't know I was an entrepreneur all along, and I had that knack, but I didn't know I had it until I got the one in the broom closet, or not in the broom closet in the bar. I didn't really know until dad said, hey, you've got to fix this bar

that I had any kind of business sense or entrepreneur sense. So, I mean, that was Labor Day weekend of 83, it had been September, and we were 64,000 in bankrupt, And, you know, within a week, I felt like I could fix that business. So if I get the storyline correct, your father was running a bar. It got, like you said, $60 or some $1,000 in debt. At what point did you know that you could turn that business around and make it profitable,

bring it out of debt? Was there some aha moment? This is really odd because, remember, this is 83, so I'm 21. First Papa John is 84. I'm 22. Dad thought he was 10, 15 grand in a hole. So within two or three weeks, I said, Dad, it's not 10 or 15. It's more like 20 or 25 end up being 64,000.

And he goes, well, you know, he was a youngest city judge in the state of Indiana's history, prosecuting an attorney for eight years, a lawyer for, what, 25, 30 years in Jeffersonville. So he had a good reputation in the community, and he was getting ready to take all these people around him that were friends down with him. And he said, well, just limit the losses and just do what you can do. do. And I said, no, Dad, I think I could fix this. Now, why I thought at 21, never running the business that two weeks, three weeks in, that I could pay off $25,000 and ask debts, I don't know. Fast forward to the broom closet. We had a lot of success in the broom closet. We were doing over $3,000 a week. And all of a sudden, we had to build a store to hold the volume. So we opened a store adjacent

to Mix Lounge, and the volume goes from 3,000 to 9,500 in two weeks. And I'm like, wow, if you put a sign on the front door, it really helps business. Remember the time we're doing 3,000 in pizza, we're doing 8,000 a week and 50-cent beers, and we're doing 1,000 a week in pool table. So we're knocking down 140 grand a year in 1984, selling 50-cent beers and $5 pizzas and 50-cent game of pool. You know, I'm a high, strong mammal, and I'm excited about what we're doing. So I go down to the Domino's and the manager at Domino's. I said, what are you doing a week?

Because we're doing $6,000 a week, $6,500. And I just look to the guy and I go, I'm going to kick your all in the whole world. I don't know why. I just thought if you can beat him in Jefferson with Villan, why can't you beat them in the whole world? I thought like that. And I think it was that naivity that, you know, just we're going to win. We're going to get this done.

I don't know if you call it confidence. I don't know if you call it momentum. But the thought of losing just wasn't an option. It just didn't, it wasn't like we weren't going to make the room closet work. It wasn't like we weren't going to make Papa John's work. It wasn't going to like we were going to make mixed lounge work. It was just we were going to make it work. And we did.

So when you said that to the person at Domino's, was that like the owner, maybe the franchisee, or was that just like the cashier that's just like, why do you tell me this way? I remember the guy. It was a manager of the store. It was the manager. So you just straight up as a 21-year-old was just like, hey, we're going to kick your ass. Like, where do you think that confidence came from? I just believe that if you took care of your people, we've always had a good team.

I mean, and you made the best pizza. Remember the first, the broom closet didn't have a sign on the front door. I just thought if you had the best pizza, you win. I didn't understand marketing. I had no idea that you market it. Hell, the products, you know. So we had two fundamental principles, you know, take care of our employees, our team. That's Herb Keller at Southwest, Nuts, that book is Employees First, Customers, Second.

We've learned over the years that guest experience cannot exceed the employee experience. So if you've got employees that are miserable, you're going to have guests that are unhappy. So we knew all along that we had to take care of our people. Last year I was there in 1617, I think the bonuses for the employees was over $30, $35 million. So the employees felt like it was their company. You know, it was the best place to work in Kentucky for five straight years. and they're making bonuses. We promoted from within,

so everybody's getting to promote, you know, when you build two, 300 stores a year, and you have all kinds of opportunities for growth internally. So I don't know how many millionaires there were at Papa Johns,

but I'd say it's thousands. Thousands of millions. Valions of million. Well, we started the company was $1,600. And when I got out of it, the market cap was three, four, whatever 80 bucks to share is at,

you know, three billion, three and a half billion. And where did you get the money to start up that business? I didn't have the money. I went down to Tony Manley of food equipment supply, and he loaned me the $1,600 worth of used a restaurant equipment. By this time with the bar, I'd build a good rapport and a good reputation and good credibility with Tony,

and he said, well, just pay me when you can pay me. So obviously, he must have thought it was going to work, too. But before we go into that, we got to thank our sponsor, Hello Fresh, because as I'm sure you guys know, time is money, and I cannot stand wasting my time going to the grocery store, buying ingredients, waiting in line, driving back. It's a waste of time. Today's sponsor, HelloFresh, takes care of all of your meal planning and delivers pre-proportioned ingredients right to your doorstep.

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Go to Hellofresh.com and use the code 50ICH at checkout to get free shipping and 50% off. That's Hellofresh.com code 50ICH to get free shipping and 50% off. Or use the link down below in the description to try it out today. And now what that said, let's get to the podcast. What was it about pizza for you that was so special? because I've never seen someone so passionate about the product like that. I'm still passionate. We made pizzas when I was 15 at Rockies, and I fell in love with pizza.

And I drove a forklift at the day. I also welded barges during the day at Jeff Boat, but made pizzas the night at Rockies. And a case of beer from Miller, Miller-Lyke, costs us about $9. We were selling it for 940. At Rockies, we were selling pizza for $9, and the food cost was $3. So I knew early on that I wanted a higher margin business than beer sales. I wanted pizza, and I was washing dishes at Rockies, and I hated Worsh and dishes. And so you weren't allowed to make pizzas unless you were a Fondresi, Joe John or Frank Fondresi.

So they got a good write-up in the scene. The thing took off, and sure enough, I got promoted from Worsh and dishes to making pizza. And that's when I knew that's what I wanted to do. So how did you as a dishwasher get promoted when you had to be a Fondrizi? Like did you prove to them that like, hey, guys, I'm in this for the to win it, basically. I can make good pizzas. Trust me. Yeah, I was, I was an exceptional employee.

I was always, nope. I was just at the right place at the right time. Right, right time. I was just lucky. Change your last name to Fondrezy. Yeah, yeah. Also, when you were running the first ever pizza shop out of the broom closet, was that $9,000 a week? That was revenue, correct?

That was sales. That was total sales. Yeah, I remember in the broom closet in the bar. This was early on. My brother and I on a Tuesday night did $200 in sales. And we were jumping up and down. We thought, wow, we're rich. $200 a day in a broom closet.

We really thought we had that kind of, hey, respect for a dollar, frugality. But we just thought, my gosh, you know, how can you ever spend $200 with no, overhead. So we were, that was, and so we were doing $3,000 a week, we thought, I mean, $3,000 a week out of room about the size of this bar. I mean, you're getting with it. And then we just moved it next door, literally 40 feet. And the sales went from three to nine. But what was the profit on that $9,000 a week?

That's interesting, too. When we first started in the bar, we were doing Mick Burger and a beer for a dollar. And we were destroying all the little small Denny's and Jerry's and sandwich shops around the bar. So the owner of Jerry's comes over, Charlie Moore and says, you know, what are you doing? I said, I'm doing. First of all, I said, I can't talk to you. We're too busy. I said, come back in an hour.

So he came back in an hour. We had just destroyed their lunch business with a Mickburger and a beer for a dollar. He said, what are you doing? You know, he said, he goes, what's your food cost? So what do you mean? Because of the college, they don't teach you food costs. I had no idea what he was talking about. And we added it up.

We had $1.20 in the beer in the Mickburger. because it was a double baggie burger with you know extra cheese and tomato so we had no idea that we were losing money on every sale we just know we were selling that so by the first store

our first employee who's still with us today Denise Robinson and her husband he was a driver she was a bartender and she was also really good with accounting so after that lesson on Mick Burger we started doing analysis every week on what's, um, what's the food cost, what's the labor cost. And back in those days, um,

we were running 40% 38 to 42% food. I mean, today, you know, a bad month, it's 30%. So we didn't have the buying power. We didn't measure the cups. We did a lot of things wrong. Um, but we were still making money because remember, we built the stores ourselves. We were running them ourselves. We were free labor. So we were still making money. But I'd say nine thousand a week. We were, definitely making 10, 15%. Where do you think you got your work ethic from? That was the beautiful thing about growing up is my dad's side was Democrat, extremely liberal. And he had nine businesses and they all failed.

The other side was the Akerson side, which was very conservative. And they saved their money, very frugal, seven day of work, 10 to the shop. So it was fascinating to watch one guy, really, who was actually, dad was probably the smartest one of all of us. He just wasn't principal-oriented with regards to work ethic, you know, handling the finances. I mean, he had nine bankrupted businesses. My grandfather had three, and all three were successful. So I was really blessed from a political side to watch cause and effect on a liberal Democrat. perspective. You watch the cause and effect on a conservative perspective, not only on politics,

but in business and in life. You know, I mean, my dad loved the racetrack. You know, he loved to live for the moment. Didn't mind run up the credit card, running up the debt, kind of like what we're doing today with our government. And, you know, and always, he enjoyed life. He had a good time. The problem is there are consequences. Arithmetic is not an opinion. And I got to watch my grandfather, who was a multimillioner. Every the time he died, he was in the West in Louisville, but he had a degree in accounting and law. And just his reputation, his credibility,

he thought we go everywhere. We go to the farm store. We go to the grain store, the seed store. And he would always say, I said, Papua, you got money. And he said, I don't need money. My credit's good. And I never understood that.

You know, I'm six, eight, seven years old. And the later in life, I understood how important it was. My dad had bad credit, couldn't get a loaned at a bank, and my grandfather and my mom had impeccable. Now, I was at a slam on one or the other. It's just, I'm just telling you what happened. And I'm telling you to cause and effect of that kind of ideology and outcomes on behavior. your your personality is what you think, how you feel, and how you act.

And so that's your personality. And so to watch the two completely different personalities and to be able to kind of go back and forth, I can remember in college, I was, I didn't know who was right. I mean, this is 80s. This is Reagan. And of course, Balls Day was very liberal college. And I was torn. Well, you know, this is Pappell's and my mom in the Ackson side.

in college is kind of my dad's side. It was like, you know, I really struggled in 80, 81 on which way is the best way to go. And I can only imagine the kids in this day and age where they're kind of asking the same question and they're getting indoctrinated with, you know, bad reality. The greatest mechanism for poverty to get rid of poverty is the capital market. you know, entrepreneurship. That's the greatest invention of man is capitalism, just is. And, you know, capitalism only works if, you know, the entrepreneur thrives. Now, Adam Smith called it the invisible hand. I disagree with Smith on this in the sense that if you take an employee

that's going to wash the dish than in the night or clean the sidewalk off or make the pizza, okay, they do a good job or they do not so good job versus the owner does the same job. He's got a different mindset. You know, I mean, that dish is going to be spotless. That pizza is going to be a good pizza. That sidewalk, I mean, owner, when, you know, you have property rights and it's your shop, you're going to have a whole different perspective, a whole different energy. And that's all entrepreneurship is.

That's all labor and workforce is energy. You're going to have a whole different magnitude of, uh, energy and labor that goes into your skill. That's not invisible. That's John Snodder saying, I went out of the bar, I went out of the broom closet, I went out of Jeffersonville, Indiana, and I want to live in the Garden of Eden. There's nine businesses that failed. In hindsight, from your perspective today, why do you think those failed? Is it because he overspent? Yeah. Is it bad management? Yeah. Again, you know, we'll take the Frontier Lounge, which is actually 100 yards from Mix Lounge.

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I think my grandfather loaned the money, the bank loaned to money. And, you know, next day at lunch, they go in. My dad would always get, he would say, give me a chocolate on wheels, which is bourbon and Coke in a styrofoam cup. Give me a chocolate on wheels. So he'd go in, take two, $300 out of the cash register, get a chocolate, go to the race track and blow it. I mean, that's just the way, that was just.

How do you think that's so different, though, from your grandfather? because it seems like usually these things are seen and observed by, you know, the kids. They see the work ethic and why do you think he was so much different? You know, I mean, first of all, it's two sides of the family, Accurson. You know, why are they different? I look at my grandparents on my dad's side. They were Irish and German. Snodder and Patrick.

My mom and poe, who were my dad's parents, were the most frugal, down to word. I mean, my grandfather, he worked two jobs. He was an electrician, and then he would do night work. My grandmother was a stay-at-home mother that we had Sunday dinner with after church every Sunday. How my dad came out of that environment the way he was. I never made sense of that. Again, he had a great life. He only lived to be 51.

but I mean he had more fun in 51 years and the rest of us put together going to have an 81 years. I mean, it's not a slam. I mean, it caused an effect. And it did a lot of damage to the family when he didn't pay my grandfather back and he would skip town on stuff. But, you know, when you're your dad, you love your dad, no matter what, you kind of go, okay, what can I take out of this that's most beneficial? and that was probably just to enjoy life and, you know, to love life and to, you know, be thankful and grateful for all the blessings and to be in this country. I think that's what my dad, you know, did.

Another thing my dad taught me was he wasn't afraid to fail. You go, where did that come from? I guess my own man. I guess my dad, I went, okay, if he can behave like that and still almost be successful because he was, you know, he was making $100,000 a year in 1970, he practiced a law. So he always made good money. He just couldn't handle it. But, you know, I'll learn to take risk.

I learned that you want to be in business for yourself. And I learned that, you know, you want to have a good time, but not at the expense of, you know, your finances and your physical health. It's interesting how impartial you are about the different takeaways that you got from your father's way and your grandfathers and your mother's side of the family. Do you think the pros about having an elevated sense of fun and enjoyment, on your dad's side and this kind of carefree nature was in a sense a better way to live because you said he loved all 51 years of his life rather than potentially the other side,

which is a little bit more of a scarcity mindset rather than a mindset of abundance. Living for the moment has consequences. And I think the greatest thing about our country is, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And liberty is about freedoms. the word liberty comes from the French where you know the government leave me the hell alone you know right now they want to your stove dishwasher I think now the washing machines up I mean they want to control everything we're doing I mean that's the anti-American you know so I think each individual in this great country has the responsibility to be an independent critical thinker to show you mutual respect. You can't have mutual respect if you don't have self-respect. You can't have self-respect if you don't have personal integrity. So I think it's up to each person to decide how

they want to live their life. If you do something to hurt yourself, that's one thing. If you do things to hurt yourself and or others, that's a whole different mindset. So I think as far as living for the moment and doing self, you know, self-destruction, that's an individual's decision, you know, because there is consequences, cause in fact. I think anything you do that hurts other people, that's why I'm so down on this administration, is because what they're doing to your demographics, your age, and what they're doing to the people to wake up and make this country great is just catastrophic. The border, fentanyl, the child trafficking, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

sound of freedom that just came out. We've been studying that for over, over a year, year and a half. You've got 32 trillion in debt, and all that's going to do is diminish your all's income the next 5, 10, 20, 30 years, because when you run deficits, you print money, and you print money, it's a hidden, cruel, hidden tax on the taxpayer in future years. So all these things with regulation, high taxes, inflation, leaving $80 billion of equipment in Afghanistan and letting 13 servicemen get murdered. You know, just it goes on and on. And when you're hurting the very people that, you know,

the middle class is the heart beat in the backbone of this country. Without a strong middle class, you have a two-tiered society. And I don't like a two-tiered society. and I don't like a two-tiered society because you either have rich or poor. And sooner or later, the poor folks get tired of seeing how the rich folks live and you have a revolt. A revolt wouldn't be good at all for a guy like me. When I was in Ireland, we were going to go to UK. We had a detour to Ireland because they had an inch of snow.

United Kingdom handles snow like Atlanta, Georgia. So we stopped in Ireland and I said we're going to get hotels. We found this castle to get this hotel. It turned into a hotel was an old castle. It was hot. I mean, it was cool. I mean, bowling alley, pub, golf court. It was pretty cool for, you know, just last minute.

So next day I'm checking out. Look at the lady and she's part of owner of the business. I said, this is pretty cool. How come there aren't more castles turned into hotels? And she said, well, because the owner was a good landlord. I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, he made sure that the farmers, the peasant farmers, and the people did work, had profit sharing.

took care of them. And I said, really? And they, what did with the other castles? I said, well, the landlord screwed the peasants, screwed the farmer, screwed the people that do the heavy lifting, and they burned them down. And so back to people in product at Papa Johns, if you don't take care of the people doing the heavy lifting, you don't take care of the people are really doing the work, they're going to burn your castle down. And that's where we're at in the country. And I think when you get away from the framers' ideology, and principles. I mean, out of the, say, the 45 or 50 founders of our Constitution, 37 were merchants, were businessmen and women. So, I mean, they understood free markets. They understood human nature.

They understood common sense. Human nature, both good and bad. And as a result, our country's being able to thrive for 230 years. But I do think we're pushing our luck a little bit here. Again, again, arithmetic's not an opinion. We're spending money today that's going to cost you guys and your kids down the road and just, you know, I don't say that to be slamming, but I mean, to think math is an opinion and don't think there's a cause and effect on, you know, 16% inflation in two years that's going to compound and that you, you know, you spend 32 trillion and, you know, they just did the COVID thing. I think they're missing a trillion dollars or $600 billion. I mean, yeah, I mean, 600 billion is over 600 mees.

I mean, gone, out, you know, throw it out, just burn it. That's just one aspect of it. So, but the framers did a fantastic job. They knew a cast of characters like we have today. Whereas just one lie after another from these politicians. I mean, the deep swamp is both sides are guilty. But they knew that we're watching all the kings, dictators and throughout history, they knew that in politics, stinkers rise to the top.

And how they figured out a system to keep the checks and balances, I mean, they're almost now at the point where they've got to throw away a decision on the Supreme Court. I mean, they've actually got to disregard the Constitution and totality to get their way. But how the framers put in the checks and balances to kind of keep this thing together is pretty amazing. I mean, everybody thinks we're in a democracy. not a democracy, we're in a constitutional republic. You get elected through voting, then

then you make it old to the Constitution. And I'll give you an exhibit A of how corrupt it is. It's very clear in the Constitution that Congress controls the purse strings. The Congress controls the money. And yet, we have a president that just wanted to give away $500 billion. Whether it's good cause or bad cause, I don't want to debate that. But he wanted to serpent vent Congress. There's nine people in the Supreme Court. Plain as day, Congress

controls the purse strings. President overrides it. Three Supreme Court justices who swore to the Constitution. Swore to it. It's in plain writing violated the Constitution. That's the story here. You've got three justices that are supposed to be

made an oath. It's supposed to be constitutional lawyers in yet defied reality. That's crazy. When you first started Papa Johns, how did you ensure that you treated your employees fairly correctly? And where did you learn how to do that? If you're not honest and you're playing games, you're vulnerable. I don't want to be vulnerable.

You know, I don't might make mistakes. Make a mistake you take the hit. You know, and you move on. Being honest is a selfish act. I think it's in my best interest, to be honest. I don't want to be vulnerable because you can say, well, you said this and, you know, you said this. this one. I don't want to be caught in that situation because even if you're trying to play it totally straight and totally clean, you're still going to have things that are, you know, opaque or

nebulous that you've got to either reconcile or take the hit or, you know, substantiate. But what happens when you don't treat a good employee good? They go somewhere else. And so it's, again, it's in my best interest to make sure we take care of the good employees and then try to get the employees that are not so good up to, you know, higher level of functioning and performance. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that? That's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world.

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Nispresso. What else? Keep exploring at Nespresso.com. Where's the first person you hired? Denise Robinson. Seven bucks a day. Two bucks an hour for three and a half hours. What was she doing for you?

She was waitress, bartender, dishwasher, and accountant. She's still with me today. No way. Yeah. How did you first meet her? Well, this is back to my dad. We'll go for, this is almost go full circle, one story. We take over, we're doing a couple grand a week.

Then we start the Mick Burger thing. And then we're doing the plate lunches. And all of a sudden, we're doing five, six a week, headed to seven or eight pool tables that we're doing 200 a week. And now they're doing 1,000. And I'm like, this is on the roll. So we need help. So my dad interviews Denise Robinson.

And he hires her. and this is you know she's attractive she's fit hard worker um you know great disposition um great composure i said that's great he said there's only one problem and i said what's that i called him champ he goes she can't cook well you know i'm like you you hired to cook they can't cook taking somebody are you crazy i said and i was hot it was like I'm trying to get your ass out of bankruptcy. We don't have the seven bucks and you hire a cook who's never cooked.

He goes, I'm going to train her. I said, that's, that's BS. I don't, you know, he goes, she's got a great attitude. And plus she's got a nice ass. And I went, you did what? You hired a cook that can't cook

because she's got a nice butt and a great attitude. And she worked out to be the best. best employee of all of them. And so I think the lesson from dad there was, you know, hire for attitude, trained for aptitude. But, you know, he just was able to, he would do things like that that my logical mind would say, you can't hire a cook because I didn't know how to cook, you know, anything but pizza. But he made the best hire of any hire we've ever had.

And we got her husband too. Our husband was a delivery driver for us forever. As far as cooking the pizza, how did you come up with a perfect driver? recipe and how did you understand what the customer would want? Okay, Iraqis, we cooked out of a, a blotid oven. It's kind of a cheap machine. It's kind of, it's tin and, you know, the deck on it's about this thick. And then at Greek's Pizzeria, we cooked out of Baker Pride 601, which is a, you know, it's a 1,200 pound oven.

It's the deck on it's this thick. It takes forever to get hot. But, I mean, it's a real machine. And then, like Gatties was cooking out of Impingers, Lincoln Impingers. They were a conveyor oven. They weren't too good. So I learned early on that a oven has to be the piece of equipment you get right. And so, I mean, those deck ovens were over 2,000 pounds.

But I didn't like the blotjeet cook at Rockies. It didn't have enough horse power that when you got busy, you put the pizza in there and wouldn't get cooked. A baker's pride, you never ran out of horsepower. And then we switched to Middleby Marshall conveyor ovens. That was pretty disbandous because in the early days, you get the shit burn out of you because, you know, you're just busy going over pizzas. The piece in the back would always cook bashing the pizza in the front because it was in the back.

It's hotter. So the boxes were never in the right order. A conveyor oven, the first pizza ends, the first pizza out. So that was a really big deal. And that would have been 87, 88. When George Marshall from Middleby came in and said, listen, I'll put a Middleby Marshall oven in your store and you don't have to pay me for it until you decide you want it. I'm like, it's like $13,000, $12,000 oven. I said, if it's free, I'll try it. And we used to do $1,000 in a

deck oven and you couldn't wait to drink a six pack of beer. And you could do $1,000 an hour in the middle being not even sweat. It really was quite the, quite the advancement in innovation and efficiency and just not getting burned all the time. But then what about picking ingredients and the cheeses and the breads and the pepperonies. How did you decide what the right ratio was and how to perfect that? Most people have rocks for taste buds. So they just want something cheap and filling. So I think half the population has a good taster on them. So I feel like both sides of the family were pretty discreet when it came to food quality and taste. The first thing we did is do we like it? that I like it, you know, something I can be proud of.

And without exception, ingredients, the better ingredients that taste better always cost more money. Only slightly different than that is cheese. We'll talk about cheese here in a second. But that's the only ingredient that, whether it's an olive or sausage, pizza sauce, flour. I mean, you get what you pay for. And the farmer friend out in Modesto who packs my sauce used to tell the Snappy Dog Food story. The CEO chairman of the board of Snappy got in front of all the employees. Who's the best?

Who's the best? Snappy, Snappy, Snappy, Snappy Dog Food. Who's number one? Snappy, snappy, snappy, snappy. Who's got the best quality? Snappy dog food? Everybody's going nuts. And he looks at the audience and says, how come our sales are down 20%?

And a new employee stands up and back and says, because the dog. won't eat it. And the point of that story is, you know, do they come back? Do consumers come back? You know, do the dogs eat it? So how did you go from scaling outside of that broom closet into your first chain or franchise into the next one and the next one? Because that sounds incredibly challenging, especially for someone that's in their early 20s to be able to do something like that. Yeah, we'll start at 40,000 feet, a macro and then moved down to store one. I thought the bigger you got, the easier would get. 5,000 was harder than four.

Four was harder than three, and three was harder than two, and two was harder than 1,000. I thought once you're paying people a million bucks a year, some cases, two million a year, CEO the last year I was there made $6 million. And you're paying people that kind of money, it should get easier. And it just didn't. But by far, the first two or three are the hardest. Store two was five times harder than store one. And store three was ten times harder than store one and two.

And store ten was twice as easy as three. It got easier at ten. But that's the only point where it really got a little bit easier. Because we could finally put in some kind of hierarchy, some kind of administrative support so we weren't doing everything. Do you ever felt that people took you less seriously because of your age and being young? And how did you overcome that? I still have that problem today.

Oh, that was the blessing. Because pizza, Domino should never let me get to store 2000. They laughed at us. They poked fun at us. They, you know, ridiculed us. but they once we got to 2000 we could do national advertising and so we had them but they should have never let me get past 300 stores and they could have stopped that now what are some of the things your competition would do you down i've heard so many stories about like yeah our competition would

would do this and they tried to undercut us here and like have you ever dealt with something like that well yeah i mean once they realized it was too late in 97 98 they sued me take down better ingredients better pizza. That went all the way to the Supreme Court. So yeah, I mean, they had lawyers. They tried to steal all our people. They'd do $3 pizzas. We'd open a store and they'd give pizza away to, I mean, yeah, they'd do everything possibly imagine, but it was too late because we were over, we were already past 2000. We had momentum. What was the, what was the claim that they, did they sit against better pizzas, better ingredients? Was that just like, you can't say that because that implies that our ingredients are inferior and they tried to sue for that? Well, we were, we were

poking them pretty bad at the time it's not so much today but at the time we did we did use better ingredients and fresh pack sauce and less water in the cheese and higher protein in the flour hard gluten content we we had all we were walking and talking better ingredients the problem is is that's subjective in other words you can't prove that a um peach pie in the frozen section of the grocery is not as good as the grandmother makes. Whereas it's common sense. The grandmother makes a better peach cobbler than a frozen peach cobbler in a supermarket. But you can't, you can't prove that.

So better ingredients, better pizza. Why, in my mind, we paid more, better for you. It was more authentic. I ate not a bunch of additives, chemicals. There's no common sense says, well, it is better. But legally, it's a subjective question. So that was how they, you know, hung their hat on that. And they won in Texas, but that's where Pizza was located.

They won in Texas. And we were going to take it down. We appealed to the Fifth Circuit. They said, this is crazy. You know, everybody says better and everybody, you know, makes a claim. And we won that. Petez out appealed it. And it went to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court held up the decision in the Fifth Circuit. Otherwise, we would have had to taken that slogan down. And when you were scaling from that first broom closet into the next 10, were you taking any profit? for yourself or were you reinvesting all of the revenue generated from these businesses to just continue scaling? Well, when I first started at the bar, Labor Daywarded a weekend of 83, I was as, they paid me 200 bucks a week. That was my pay. And I remember going into 84 and I had like 20 checks, you know, I had, well, you got September, October, November, December. So you got 16 to 20

checks, 18 checks. That I could, in other words, I couldn't catch the checks because we were overdrawn. We always made decent money, but we didn't make, we didn't really start making money until 1990, but I was still spending it faster than we could make it. And we finally got a loan for a million dollars. A loaned. They finally loaned it. And then we went through the million dollars so quick because I was buying ovens.

I was building stores, awnings, mixers. In 92, I got turned down for $3 million. And I always wondered where the threshold was, how can I make more money than I'm spending? I never, you know, I thought it would be store 50, store 100. And then we went public June of 93 with 232 stores. And we were getting close. But even at 232, I still could spend more money building stores and growing the stores we had than we were making. we went public and raised $25 million.

And that was then the need of capital. Once we went public, we no longer need a capital. So why did you decide to continue reinvesting and building more stores rather than taking some problems for yourself? Well, I lost a partnership on that. 8788, I had two partners that said we're making, at the time, making $700,000 a year and we're 200,000 overdrawn. So they didn't like that program. They actually thought I was probably taking money, which, you know, was not the case that they didn't understand the difference between a P&L and cash flow.

You can have a positive P&L, but if you, you know, if you're buying equipment, you know, you're putting out capital for, you know, signs and awnings and ovens and building stores, you can go through that. So they didn't understand that. So that was the end of that partnership. But you wanted to continue reinvesting and growing the business. You didn't care necessarily about getting some money at the end of the month to go spend on certain things. That never crossed my mind.

That was a point of contention. And, you know, we had to write a pretty good size check back in the late 80s. But that was a good divorce in the sense that when you have two different mindsets, we just talked about that with entrepreneurship at the top of the administration. If you're not really pro-entrepreneur, pro-small business, they're going to feel that. If you have one group of partners that don't want to grow, they don't want to be on their boats and drive fancy cars. Another one of a guy that wants to live in, you know, the basement of the house

and pour all the money back in. So someday he doesn't have to work. I think those two mindsets are both justifiable. Not one's right or wrong. It's just this, you're probably not going to get 5,000 stores. And this you are. But this is going to take a lot longer and be a lot more painful. So I think it was a good divorce.

Did it make you nervous, though, seeing your father and your grandfather and not feel like I should take some of it off the table. Well, I can at least secure my future now and then reinvest afterwards. No. Until 93, where we went public. And remember, 92, I couldn't get $3 million to build the company. And then all of a sudden, in one day, the company's worth over $150 million. So as soon as we went public, you know, I own 90% of the company.

So I went where I didn't have five grand. to go on vacation or buying the, you know, I drove pickup truck. So we didn't, we didn't have fancy cars. We didn't, you know, we didn't have, you know, nice homes at the time to rich beyond my expectations. And when they, I'm 31. By the way, they don't have books out there when you make $100 million out of a broom closet when you're 31 years old.

So you're saying you didn't have $5,000 to go on vacation. And as soon as you went public, you got $100 million overnight, effectively. The company was worth over $150 million. which I own like 80, 90%. I own 88 before we went public. I think I own, I'm going to say 78, but pick a number. You don't know 70.

It's going to be more than 70. Did anything change in your mindset where you're like, okay, I couldn't go on vacation. Now I'm extremely wealthy. Like, not even wealthy, but like ultra wealthy. It didn't hit me how much money that was until I retired back in 17, 18, 2000. I didn't realize. It's one thing to create.

your net worth of, let's, you know, 500 or 800 or a billion. Let's just pick a number of 200 million. It's a safe number. It's one thing to build your net worth 200 million. It's another to have 200 million in the bank and know how to invest it. If, you know, if I was the most important word in the English language is focus. And so the next thing I do, I'll be 100% behind that. I just haven't decided what I wanted to do yet because it doesn't meet my four criteria,

which we'll talk about if you all would like. But it's taken me probably three years. I haven't made any mistakes with investments. And that's a key, you know, compounded annual interest, as Einstein said, it's the most powerful thing in the universe. So we haven't had any years where we had some flat years, you know, but it's okay to be flat. You just don't be a negative 10 or 15.

Those are the years. It's called a, volatility tax. We lived that in 2000 where the market was 296, let's say 30 and it went down to 196, let's say 20. 30 to 20 is a third. But to go with 20 back to 30 is 50. So you get forever third you lose, you got a 50. So that's why you have to avoid those. So we haven't had any negative years. And we've been real solid with our oil stocks and our gold and our dividend stocks. But To understand the game of Wall Street, I mean, two months ago, 95% of the people out there saying we're going in a recession.

Market's going now, what, 31 to 35? I mean, 34 and a half, 35. I mean, maybe 35 and a half. Anyway, they don't know. They're crazy. I mean, you know, short term, as Buffett says, it's a voting machine, long-term stock market is a weighing machine. So sooner or later, the arithmetic, the objective will come into play.

But, I mean, Wall Street, they're nuts. I've seen it. I've seen Papa John stock at 90, but I'm like, it should be 75, and I've seen it at 35, and it should be 60. I mean, they never get it right. And so you have to know that. You're never going to out maneuver or out think somebody that's irrational, short term, but long term, you can play them like fools. How do you not get complacent? Like 1993 comes around. You go public, $150 million valuation on that business. How do you, still keep your foot on the gas and be just as motivated. I've got 10 of the best therapists in the world, and they can't figure out how to get rid of that. No, that's, I mean, that's the problem is learning how not to work. That was, you know, when you're going from 5,000 stores,

120,000 employees to zero in one day, that was a real shock, you know. So, but I think you, you know, the spiritual work I've done, and the advice I've gotten is from a lot of smart people and myself is be patient but opportunistic. Four criteria, it's got to be authentic. Do you all see I like real? I like stuff that's real, you know, it's truthful, authentic, genuine. I like that.

Two is it's got a better humanity. Pizza was fine, but it does. It's got an obesity issue. That bothers me. It's processed food. That always bother me. So whatever I do next, I don't want to be selling tobacco or own the bar or, you know, something that's not healthy for humanity.

I want something that benefits humanity, i.e. Papa Farm, I'm playing with that. Three is it has to be sustainable. I don't want to be feeding this thing every month. I mean, I don't want to have to put in, you know, $100,000 or a million dollars a month to keep it alive. And four has to be scalable. I like big stuff.

So I haven't met or found anything that meets those four criteria of yet. Does it need to be profitable in making money? You need to make money because when you do things at the level I do it, you have to reinvest. You know, we just went over that exercise. We're making 700 grand a year and spending a million. You know, because, you know, when you, when you do something that's authentic and high quality, it always takes more time and costs more money.

And so if you're not making a profit, you're not going to be able to execute a level that would satisfy me on my personal standards. So you still at this point continue to care about building wealth, increasing your own personal, I would say. Well, I'd say most people make hundreds of millions of dollars to make hundreds of millions more. I made hundreds of millions of dollars so I can enjoy my life. Now, the caveat there is there's no reason to do something stupid. I mean, you know, I mean, there's no reason to tickle the tail. And I mean, I've got a deal a day that comes over my desk because everybody needs capital. But as soon as I invest in something, it's going to take my time.

You know, let's say we do something with a, a, organic small retreat. The CEO is going to call me, well, the maintenance guy quit or the pipes in the building burst. I don't want to hear that unless I'm doing it, unless I'm running the show. You know, now if I'm running the show and I've got, you know, a way to go in and really expand it and grow it big, then I don't mind the pipes bursting and people quitting. But until I find that thing I want to focus on, I don't want to be bothered with.

You know, my concept of a perfect day is I don't want any phone calls and no meetings. How you all got this done? I don't know. But, you know, good for you guys. I think we're convincing. I think that's it. We're persuasive. I wonder, I feel like what could be interesting for you would be something in media.

Because it seems like you're highly opinionated. You have certain things that you value, right, near and dear to your heart. And you want something where I feel like you could potentially push that ideology through. Make it a large change. And that's very scalable. It's highly scalable, highly lucrative. And also, it does change the world to something that you could view as better, right? And there are other media companies that already exist that maybe could be bought out that mirror some of your opinions.

Well, Toronto didn't tell me you guys, we're looking for capital. If you got an idea on that media, I'm not sure. I think you'd be fantastic. You're fantastic on camera. You're well-spoken. I don't see that. I don't see that. I see it.

And you have TV experience. You're articulate, which, I mean, we've done so many, so many podcasts. And some people, they have, they struggle to get their words out in a very constant way. In a cohesive way. And you do it very well. No, you're kind. I don't see that. When I look at the interview, I don't, first of all, I usually don't look at the interviews.

And second, when I do at them, I mean, I don't get upset with myself. But I don't think, okay, that was really good, you know. I've heard you say in some interviews that you were always worried about going broke. Uh-huh. I'm curious where that came from. And at what point did that stop? Yeah, that was a real, I think that was a real limitation in my character. We grew up and again, my dad made, he was making a hundred grand a year in 72.

And he wouldn't pay the bills. They turned off our water, turn off our electricity. The look on my mom's face when they, you know, would try to repossess the car or we were a year behind, exactly here behind on our house payments and the water would be turned off and I remember a lady across the street uh phyllis huber her husband was john he owned budget rental cars in liuble she would cat around in a mercedes blue mercedes convertible bins and my mom was going to lose you know had a moat beat up Monte carlo and was you know going to lose the car and i can just remember when they would turn off the water and the gas my mom was just humiliated and I mean I don't remember that

the exact conversations, but paying the bills was like a big deal to my mom. And she hardwired me that if you don't, you know, Papa was all about credit, you know, your word, your bond. But mom was, if you don't pay your bills on time, then, you know, you're worthless. And that was a little bit overkill on that. And so we're cruising through the 90s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Everything's going well. And I'm still worried about being broke. I'm literally thinking that, you know, and I guess if you do enough drugs and I guess enough divorces and I guess enough gambling, I guess you can go through, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, but you really got to work at it.

But I was worried and by this time, you know, we're at store, turn of the century, we're over 2,000 stores and, you know, you just got to grow with your management style, your competencies and your present. So we started hiring coaches. And, you know, most of the coaches, they weren't, they weren't all that smart, you know, and so they really weren't helpful. But I did bump into one guy. He was really smart. And he looked me over and up and down. He said, you know, pizza boy, you got a problem. So what's the problem? He goes, hey, Vietnam. What do you mean? He goes, it's not your house. It's not the bar.

It's not the broom closet. They're not going to turn your water off. They're not going to turn electricity off. Your mom's not going to go to bed crying because the bills aren't paid. Vietnam's over. You made it. Stop it. I said, what do you mean?

Vietnam's over. It's over. We're here today. And it stuck. And that was the end of, you know, that fear. That was 99. One of the greatest gifts that I ever got was a guy going, you know, it's not Vietnam. You know, it's not the bankrupt bar.

It's not the sweaty broom closet with no air conditioning. It's not. How do you feel like that held you back? Because I very much operate from the fact that like every day I'm like, something's going to go wrong, prepare for like going broke. And I'd like prepare for the worst in everything is like my baseline. And a lot of people have said, well, that's a scarcity mindset. You shouldn't be doing that.

You should operate from abundance. But I'm like, well, you know, you never know. How old are you? 33. Well, I mean, give yourself a break. When I was 33, I couldn't carry your luggage. At 60, you take the position, the universe is always working for you. The universe is never working against you. You just don't realize it. And so once you learn to fall in love with the unknown, you know, unlimited possibilities, unlimited opportunities, unlimited success, infinite opportunities. Once you realize the universe is always working for you, never against you, then. you kind of get rid of that a little bit. But I think the byproduct of being too much on the broke side or there's something going to go wrong is, you know, attitudes and emotions are infectious. They're contagious.

So if you're worried about not paying the bills or you're worried about something going wrong, which I think is a terrible mindset, I'm not being critical of you. I'm just, you know, I think to be, you cover the downside, the upside takes care of itself. I get that. you know, I have a helicopter. You don't want to go to a helicopter with one pilot and one engine and one hydraulics and one avionics. That Kobe Bryant had no avonics, no terrain avionics on that chopper. And it was a Shikorsky, which is a $11 million helicopter and one pilot.

Eight passengers, one pilot. I mean, you know, you just, you got to have redundancy. So I think you, but you can't look at it what's going to go wrong because you'll go through people. And I was, in the mid-90s, I was going through people. Too many people. That's your barometers. Are you losing good people? And when you're losing good people, then you've got to take a hard look in the mirror. And I think it's a constant, you know, the difference between wisdom and sin is the ability to self-confront, you know, so whenever I have a problem, like let's say we have a little disagreement on what we're doing here. I'm always going to go in

and go, okay, what did I do to make that problem? You know, I'll go inward first. Okay. my God, I did say I paid for the plane ticket. Oh, we did talk. I did tell you two hours. Or the other way is, no, you told me you needed two hours and now you want five. So, you know, I mean, you go in first and then you, if you're not the problem, you know, and you know in your heart to heart if you're the problem, you're the instigator or at least part of the problem. And then you go outward next. But the difference between sin and wisdom is ability to go inward and self-contfront. I'm curious because it seems like you've had so many. aha moments in your life from what you heard from that coach to that moment when you did 9,000 a

week and then you realize that the local Domino's was doing 6,000 a week. What's different about those specific moments to give you that epiphany from all of these other moments that happen in your life that don't have that same level of change within you? Okay, you don't get rich by cash in the check. You don't get, it's not a one-step process. You get yourself in position to get yourself in position to cash the tech to get rich. So everything, success is nothing but discard the bad and you keep the good. Easy said, sometimes, you know, hard to do. You got to have the discipline.

We always understood that the grand victory was not a one day or one year process. The grand victory is baby step wins every day. Maybe step wins every week, every month, every year on the way to the grand victory. Sooner or later, people are going to look up and say, wow, they've got a thousand stores or or $5,000. It's like somebody that lays bricks. We're going to go out and watch these guys lay bricks here because they're 70 years old. They get off doing this labor at 70 years old.

I mean, they're strong as an ox. And then they go walk five miles. And, you know, all they care about is church laying brick, their family, and fishing. And they're 70 and they'll probably live to be 100. you know but when you look at a building that's 100 stories and the brick on the outside it was one brick at a time and all of a sudden you look up one day and there's a hundred story building on a brick and so if you do the baby steps it's a brick one day at a time and you keep having these little baby wins every week and sooner or later you're going to have a grand victory so those little

best a little you know hiring you know a great CFO a great iS person being first on the internet these are all little baby wins that we try to do and accumulate every day to eventually have, you know, 5,000 stores and celebrate the grand victory. How did your philosophies change over time going from essentially a startup to a large business owner and your roles throughout the entire process? Do you just learn as you went along? And how did your day-to-day activities change?

We always believe from my mom and my grandfather's side that an integrity-based, you model of discipline, accountability, frugality, taking care of people, collaborative. We always had that on a three-dimensional world of Newtonian physics, the product, what we pay people, service, cleanliness of the store, the look of the store, on the integrity-based cause and effect, we had that figured out. We didn't have the terminology for it back in 1985, but the principles and the ideology were set from the get-go. The quantum field of the physics of manifestation and secretiticity.

We didn't really understand that until the last four or five years, that, you know, that, that the molecule and the particle are controlled by the field. Energy and frequency and vibration control, you know, the particle, the molecule, the atom. We didn't understand that. We pretty well lived in a Newtonian realm, a Newtonian world. We're good at it, look around, you know. You want somebody who can move particles and move molecules, you're talking to the right guy.

And, you know, if you want to build a railroad across the country, you've got to sling a hammer and nail nails, but there is an easier way to go through life. And I think the problems we're having today, especially with our politics, and the division in this country is not going to be solved at an Etonian level. Too much, too much fighting, too much quid pro quo, too much disregard, the hatred, the anger they have. I think it's going to take a spiritual realm and of goodness, kindness, and compassion to fix the problems we have. And we always had each or respect and kindness and compassion. But I don't think we understood it in the realm of frequency and vibration and source.

You know, I mean, what's 99.9% of everything out here is dark matter. We don't even see the energy I'm talking about. Yet, you know, when you look at universes expanding infinitely, infinite times per second, you realize the amount of energy and vibration that's out there. is how do you tap into that through the quantum field? And we found Joe Dispenza being, that is probably the best we've seen at tapping into the quantum field through the penal gland to get divine inspiration.

He thinks the penal gland is the intent of the divine. And the divine has all the wisdom, all the knowledge, all the equilibrium, all the brilliance that we need. We just got to tap into it. Have you always had those beliefs or was there a moment that kind of clicked for you where it's like, you know,

I can control my own reality. Whatever I believe will eventually come to fruition. Newtonian physics is my game. It's all analytics. It's all arithmetic. It's all mass and inertia and momentum. I mean, geometry. I mean, that's my world.

I mean, you know, that's where I excel. The quantum field where you have the intent and you have the emotion come back of what it feels like when now that, that's that's the last five years four years but i think we all thirst for something greater than ourselves i mean what are we here why we here you know what's our purpose and if you you break it down to where everything's Newtonian materialistic then you know really they mean there's nothing higher than that there's nothing more important than that there's nothing more sacred than that so now the the quantum where you you move particles and molecules and matter with energy versus moving molecule and particles in matter

with molecules and particles of matter. That's just coming into fruition. The quantum work, the quantum field work. And a lot of scientists are working on this. And it's really coming into play quite nicely the way it hangs together. Even though I can tell you, if you put out the intent and you do get in the right state where you're out of the three-dimensional world into the quantum field of nobody, no thing, nowhere. It does work every time. I still don't believe it, though. As I said, I go, you know, this is what you do.

It's Einstein's physics. It makes total sense from a scientific perspective. And it works. It's very pragmatic. And that's what I always look at is at. It's a work. But you're going to tell me that I'm going to cook to my penal gland, put an intent out, feel like it would come back in a state of nobody,

nowhere, nothing, darkness. and it's going to happen. I'd say you're out of your mind, but I've never had it not work, ever. By the way, the closer your desires are your intent to the current reality, the faster they happen. I can put an intent out that I want to be worth $3 billion. But that's a stretch right now, you know.

It's farther from the three-dimensional reality. The easy stuff, you know, that's, that's, already right here, excuse me, it's going to happen much quicker with that intent. But to spend his work is, it's great. I spent time with Joe. He's a wonderful human being. Smart as hell. And he's unique.

He's a doctor, chiropractor. So he got that aspect of it. He's a triathlon. He's an incredible athlete. He had a really bad crash. Car ran over him on his bike. So I had to deal with that on some of the spinal column issues and health issues. He's also an artist.

But his kids are unbelievable artist. so he's an artist. So you got this unique guy like Einstein was scientific, analytical, but he said the imagination is more important than intelligence. So Einstein was kind of an artist too, and the way he had to think about, you know, speed of light, etc. and Joe to spend his work is definitely going to change the world if we could just be more of us like, you know,

getting that quantum field of bliss and love and compassion and kindness and generosity and graciousness. and thankfulness, we'd solve a lot of our world's problems pretty quickly. We've got to try to get Joe on. Graham, yeah. Got a cool message to share. I'm really interested about raising children with this level of wealth. Do you find it challenging to instill the correct values in them, maybe as a parent probably should with their kids, about not feeling entitled, having to work hard, the true value of a dollar?

How are you able to do this with your children? Is it impossible to do with this level of wealth? That's a great question. And it's got an answer that's not exactly flattering. But I dated my girlfriend in high school for nine years. We had a child together. She actually lives across the street. She lives based on the property.

She's an attorney. Your child or your girlfriend from that long? No. My child. I was, okay, that would have been. I like it. No, it's my daughter. It's my daughter.

My daughter and my grandson live across the street. Okay. And she's interning and she's self-made. And, you know, I help her out here and there with stuff. But she's pretty independent. And then I was married for 32 years and we had two children. And my wife was extremely attentive to the kids. And they lived an unbelievable lifestyle.

And she was a great mom. But the one thing we did fight over is, she pampered the kids. It's a problem when it comes to work ethic. When, you know, I mean, when I'm six years old, I've got to get up and go work on my grandfather's property, you know, and, you know, my kids are 14 and they can play computer games all night and I get out of bed.

That's created some problems that way. But, you know, all three are good kids. I've got a friend in the real estate business that's quite wealthy, and he just had a son. and he's adamant that his son's not going to grow up like the other kids where they're spoiled rotten. But, you know, this millennial situation is one of the reasons I haven't jumped back into anything yet

in the Gen Z is they want higher paying jobs, more flexibility with ours, more time off. They're the worst tippers, so they're not generous. They don't feel like they have to show up or show up on time. I don't understand how that works where you, you know, you don't show up or you don't show up on time.

You don't have any problem not showing up. You want a cushy job with less hours, with more benefits. By the way, you're not generous. I don't see how that arrangement works with marriage or works with kids or works with an employer. I mean,

when you, your personal integrity is on the line when you take a job and you say, I'll show up. That's your personal integrity. And when you don't show up, okay, you hurt Starbucks. You hurt the company. Well, yeah. Well, you hurt the manager. Well, yeah, I kind of did because we hurt the system. Well, she got to come in and pull my shift. Well, the other employees have to work harder because I didn't show up. I mean, that's enough damage there with your self-respect. Look at what you did yourself. You know, you said you'd show up, said you show up on time and do the job, and you don't. I mean, how can you feel good about yourself? So this is going to

be interesting how we've gotten away from, you know, a lot of the values, you know, and now number one thing's money. It used to be religion and faith and values were 45. Now, I think that's 18. Used to be money was 18 and now it's 45. So this is going to be interesting how this, the millennials and the Gen Zs handle a mindset of, I really don't want to work. Works kind of something I really don't want to do. I really don't want to show up. When I do work and, make money. I'm not a very good tipper. That doesn't work good. Of course, I'm in the service business, so I think I'm big on tipping. So, you know, but back to my kids, I mean, they're honest. For the most part, they're hardworking. And, you know, my son's 25. You know, my two daughters

are in the mid-30s. So they're good. Let's see what they do with their lives. How did having kids change your philosophies on life and business? I think, kids, you get excited about coming home. But as much as I love the kids, what I really like is the grandkids. But that's what I like your grandkids. And both my oldest grandson, Grayson, and my youngest grandchild, John Buck, whatever it is, they both have it, you know, and, you know, it is when you meet somebody and they've either got it or they don't.

And they walk in and, and, you know, And they just take over the room. You know, they're, and they're just happy. So I think that's, I think the family aspect of it. I mean, at the end of the day, if you don't have support from friends and family, I mean, I've got so many people that I'm associated with that come from good families, and it's, it's just a real asset. And then I, you know, I've got friends that come from, you know, mom, OD,

dad doesn't want anything to do with them. And, I mean, it's, it's hard on the case. kids. It's hard on them and my heart goes out to that, you know, when they don't have that family unit to fall back on. I think it's a tremendous asset to have. And I, it's not a nicety. It's a necessity. It's a necessity to have, you know, I mean, we all have good days and bad days. It's nice to have that support system in place. And I think that starts with friends and family. How are you able to find the silver lining in everything? It seems like through all of the trials and tribulations that you've been through, you're still able to find the good in it.

and then use that to your advantage time and time and time again. Did you learn to teach yourself that? Did you have to learn how to find the silver lining in order to be fine, to be positive still? Or is it an innate thing, some inherent quality you've had? You know, when they were trying to come up with the airplane around the world, it's like six guys came up with airplane all the same time on all different places in the world. It's just one example.

This happens all the time. And so there seems to be a higher intelligence. the field, the energy, where there's, you know, something more going on that we really understand. But I look at it from a pragmatic perspective. And, you know, my three-dimensional world is pretty sweet, frankly. You know, I'm healthy. My kids, my friends, everybody, nobody around us right now is having any health issues. And, you know, that's what happens.

You know, as you get older, that's something you got to really look out for. But the key is you got to stay grateful. I mean, you know, you know, we just, you know, we just. really are not that smart. I mean, if you really look at the source, the creator, you know, what, you know, the one sentence that you just asked me the question, four billion neurons fired, their subconscious picked up 2,000 of those, and your conscious picked up three. I mean, what's going on? I mean, there's enough electricity going through your body right now to go around the earth 10 times. I mean, it's just, it's the intelligence of the creator is so,

brilliant. You know, what's faster than speed of light? Well, whatever created the speed of light. How fast speed of light? 186,000 miles a second. Second. The plane goes 500 miles an hour. I mean, the intelligence of this source is just so magnificent and brilliant that we're

never going to understand it. But we can certainly appreciate it and understand that we, don't have the ability to really understand. You know, I used to have a saying of Papa John's. This is a Johnism. People that don't know, they don't know. Well, they don't know. And I just think that, to think you know it all or think you've got to figure it out,

I think that's the beginning of the end. So if you just start with the premise of I'm thankful for this day, I'm thankful for my health, I'm thankful for this three-dimensional world, I'm thankful for the ability to go into a five-dimensional world. and try to figure things out at a higher level. And I think if you just stay really grateful and gracious and humble, I think that's 95% of it. You read a lot? Do you read Eckhart Toll? I've never heard of that.

Eckart Toll? It sounds very similar to what you're saying to something I've read in Eckart Toll. What's it about? He's got, I mean, he talks about the ego a lot. So like your identity, your vision of who you are. And then also a lot about presence and not being too concerned about the past or anxious about the future. stuff like that.

Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. The, the present moment is hard. Yeah. You don't want to live in the past because you can look at the past like my dad. Learn from it, you know.

You know, it's great. But you don't want hard on not paying bills. You know, you pay the bills. In the future, you can get too tied up with that too. But,

you know, that's where the quantum is is because the present and the past and the future are all here now. Exactly. It's a mind, you know, the creator, the source,

just slowed the speed of light down slow enough that we can have a three-dimensional world. If you really look at quantum physics, there's no separation. There's really no you or no me. It's us, everybody, which is a mind screw in itself. I got one last question for you if we got to wrap up. When did you decide to make your face the brand of Papa John's? And do you feel like that was in that positive in what way? That happened.

We had done some commercials from 2007-08. And I was in a suit in time. And nobody really believed that was Papa John. They thought I was an actor. And Jordan Zimmerman came up with Papa's in the house in 0809. And I remember in the conference room and headquarters, I said, oh, shit. You know, I'm not too sure about this. He said, you think it'll sell a lot of pizza?

And I said, oh, it'll sell a lot of pizza. But I said, once you're in the spotlight and you have conservative values, even if you're not political about them. which I wasn't at the time but we ran the company on conservative values in my opinion that's why we had the success we had I knew that I was going to become a target for the left so we

took the stock from October of 08 was 680 a share then when I got off the bus in 16 it was $88 a share. So 12-fold. So it was a good run.

It worked out. And both things happened. We sold a hell a lot of pizza. And then, you know, as you know, I got crucified or something I really didn't say. But another problem with that is the timing. If that would have happened today with all the knowledge the consumer now has about woke and cancel culture. And they had a tape of what I said. It wouldn't have been.

wouldn't have been a big deal, you know, been like, hey, you know, could have said it differently. But the intent and the position of, you know, was something that was anti-racist, not a racist, slur was plain as day from the get-go. We just couldn't get the word out because, you know, the time, Twitter was paying, setting the computer up for clicks. So you had 600 million clicks in eight minutes. We don't even know how many of those were real people or how many of those were manufactured by Twitter just to hammer me because you know,

through a fundraiser for a few Republicans. So, yeah. But it's been wonderful having you guys. Thank you very much for having us. Letting us into your home. Beautiful here. Gorgeous.

And yeah, we really appreciate it. Who's going to run the camera as we go around the ground? That's Jack. I got it. Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Thank you guys for tuning in. How much time do you need? Till next time. To walk around that. No, to you want to say.