The Empire Builders Podcast

By: Stephen Semple and David Young
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.
    The Empire Builders Podcast
    Show more Show less
Economics Leadership Management Marketing
Show more Show less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • #185: Dirty Dough (part 2) – No Money? Invest Time.

    #185: Dirty Dough (part 2) – No Money? Invest Time.
    Dec 26 2024
    Bennett Maxwell continues by explaining how, when you are starting out, it is critically important to invest time and win peoples hearts. 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. [ASAP Commercial Doors Ad] Rick: Told you, Brian. Brian: Told me what? Rick: This is part two of last week's episode. Brian: Oh, yeah. And it was getting good. Rick: If you missed it, go back and listen to part one first. Take it away, fellas. Stephen Semple: It's very compelling. I could put my business hat on and go 500 square feet, one oven timed single employee can do this and if the product's really great, that's quite compelling. But you still got to pound the pavement to find those franchisees and you still got to have a pretty good pitch. So if I'm a potential franchisee, what's the pitch? A Dirty Dough franchise? Bennett Maxwell: I think I would kind of reiterate with just what you just told me as well. So it's hitting on the team first. We have a really experienced team. Now our CEO, Jill, who I mentioned is now our president and our CEO is Gregg Majewski, who was the CEO for Jimmy John's during all of their rapid growth and now he owns another X amount of brands. So okay, here's the team, but that's one thing. The other thing is cost. How much does it cost to open up us versus a competitor? And we're going more towards the how do you lower the barrier of entry to entrepreneurship by allowing new people to become entrepreneurs? Well, what does it take to become a business owner? You need time, money, and expertise. Well, we've taken away the expertise out of it because you don't need to be a baker. All you have to do is learn how to use an oven. Stephen Semple: Right. Bennett Maxwell: The time it takes to run a business is generally correlated pretty closely with the number of employees. Stephen Semple: Yes. Bennett Maxwell: If a competitor requires 50 employees before opening day and we require 15, which one is going to take more time? Stephen Semple: Correct. Bennett Maxwell: And then the money it requires, well if you only have a 500 square foot build out or even a thousand square foot build out in only one oven, you don't have to buy all the mixers, nor do you have to have all the storage for all your raw ingredients because I'm shipping you a finished product. Now you no longer have to have all of the same amount of capital. So it's less capital, less expertise, and less time required backed up by a really good product. Generally speaking, we get a little bit better reviews than anybody else. I mean a 4.8 star and some of the competitors are 4.6, but it's also more by unique product. Go try to make a three layer cookie at home or in Insomnia Cookies or Crumbl Cookies store by hand and you can't do it. So we corner the market on having a unique product and the barrier of entry to competing with us is you go spend a few million dollars like the idiot that I was before you even have a freaking franchise open. You know what I mean? It was a high risk, but now I think it's paying off because we've allowed our franchisees to sell a more unique product and nobody else has broken into that space yet, probably due to the cost. Stephen Semple: So what's the typical investment that somebody would require to open up one of your franchises? Bennett Maxwell: 250, 275 is average. If you get a good space that's a second gen and your construction cost is low, you can open it up for less than 200.
    Show more Show less
    25 mins
  • #184: Dirty Dough (Part 1) – A Chairman’s Story

    #184: Dirty Dough (Part 1) – A Chairman’s Story
    Dec 20 2024
    Bennett Maxwell understood that to run a successful company he needed to know the business and be the least important person in it. 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. [Waukee Feet Ad] Stephen Semple: Hey, it's Stephen Semple here, and we've given Dave another break. Dave Young has been getting lots of breaks lately. But he's a hard-working guy, so it's good that we can give him a week off. And I'm really excited. I have with me Bennett Maxwell, who's the CEO of Dirty Dough. And I'm going to let him explain what Dirty Dough is. And in fact, I'm even going to let him explain what a CEO is, because we were talking earlier about whatever the heck that is. Bennett Maxwell: You can write it chairman over CEO, because we'll probably get it in the story that I have a CEO, which is why I don't know what the hell a chairman is because I'm like, it's the title you get when you have a CEO and they're like, get out of my way. Here's a title. Stephen Semple: Even better. Even better. Right out of the gate, I made a mistake. But it's not about the titles, it's about what you've built. And it's pretty cool what you guys have built and how you found yourself in the food business. Because one of the things that is remarkable about so many of the stories that I've come across for the Empire Builders Podcast is how many of the businesses have been started by people who are not from the industry. And you're the same. You're not from the food business. So tell us a little bit about the beginning, and then how you ended up stumbling into Dirty Dough. Bennett Maxwell: Yes. The beginning of me or the beginning of Dirty Dough? Stephen Semple: Beginning of you. To me, that was really interesting. Bennett Maxwell: Okay. Beginning of me. Raised in Utah, one of nine kids, to a single mom. And there was seven boys. So me and my brothers were always hustling to make some money, selling everything from lawn aeration door to door, to discount cards for the schools, to shaved dice. My first real job, I would say, was Cutco, which is all sales as well. Learned a ton of good referrals or referral based sales from that. I served a two-year Mormon mission in Tijuana, Mexico. Stephen Semple: Because Cutco, they do door to door knives, right? Bennett Maxwell: Not door to door, or at least not how I was trained. It's sit down with your close friends and family, tell them that you make $15 an hour presentation or commission, whichever one's higher. But they don't need to buy anything. And just go get practice. And then at the end of the presentation, you say, "Okay, Stephen, whether you bought or not, who are 10 people that would be willing to listen to our presentation?" And you're like, "Oh, yeah, I could think of them." Like, "No, I need you to think of them right now. And now I need you to call them." So that was a really good practice of ask for referrals, and unapologetically ask for referrals. Really good. And I think that's led to a lot of success with Dirty Dough, which we might get into. But a two-year Mormon mission. And then I did a lot of door to door sales, pest control, satellite, direct TV led me to do solar. Started a solar company, and then that kind of led me into the Dirty Dough side, which, going from solar to cookies is a little bit of a stretch. Stephen Semple: Now, if I remember correctly, when we were talking, you had built the solar business up to a stage where you were able to sell that business and exit out of that business.
    Show more Show less
    20 mins
  • #183: Talking A.I. – Terminator or Jetsons

    #183: Talking A.I. – Terminator or Jetsons
    Dec 11 2024
    Stephen talks about how embracing AI is the best way for the world to head into the future. It will be brighter and more creative. 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. [No Bull RV Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, with Stephen Semple. And Stephen told me that today he wanted to talk about AI, and I'm just assuming that the hammer's about to drop and that this podcast is now just going to be replaced by some kind of chatbot. Is that what you had in mind? Stephen Semple: How do we know it hasn't already been [inaudible 00:01:52]? Dave Young: Well, gosh. Good point. Stephen Semple: At the core of this podcast is this idea that we need to be looking outside our space and looking for opportunities and kind of being open to things. Dave Young: Mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: And I wanted to put a little bit different look on what I think the AI opportunity is and bring a little bit of historic perspective to a couple of things. So that's kind I wanted to do here. So here's the interesting part. Let's go back a hundred years. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: We're in the 1920s. We're in that period leading up to World War II. The Industrial Revolution is really getting going at this point. And if there was an economist out there looking forward and looking at the Industrial Revolution, here's one way that they could look at it. At the time, one out of three people worked directly in agriculture. A third of the people were farmers, and not support the agriculture, farmers. And today, it's like 1.5%. It's like out of a hundred people, there's a couple people who are farmers. None of us even meet farmers anymore. So if you were an economist and you called that correctly, you would say, "Wait a minute, the Industrial Revolution is going to wipe out one of the largest employers in the economy," it would be really easy to make the call, the economy is going to be a disaster. Our biggest employer is going to go from 30% to 1.5% of the workforce. So it'd be an easy way to call the Industrial Revolution. And it did work out that way, except, it didn't. Because here's the other part that's interesting is according to a study by MIT, now, this one doesn't go back to 1920, it goes back to 1940, 60% of the jobs that we do today did not exist in the 1940s. The vast majority of the work that we do today, almost 2/3 did not exist. So the economy created a whole pile of new jobs. But here's the interesting thing, it's not just high-tech jobs, it's ancillary jobs to that. So for example, heating and air conditioning repairman did not exist in the 1940s. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: While there was plumbing, a lot of homes did not have indoor plumbing. Being a plumber was not a huge thing in the 1940s. So it's not just these changes bring, you got to look at, "Oh, well, what are the jobs in AI?" there's going to be all sorts of opportunities that are going to present itself that we haven't even dreamt of or thought of that we got to keep our eye open to. Dave Young: I agree with that. I agree. I've not dived in headfirst into ChatGPT and all of the other AI things like so many of us, many our Wizard of Ads partners have done. And I'm not sure what it is about it that when I have dabbled, it's been a pretty good experience, pretty eye-opening. I've gotten some ideas, things like that. I'm not going to ask it to write anything for me, but I am asking it for some ideas,
    Show more Show less
    15 mins

What listeners say about The Empire Builders Podcast

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available