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the year before Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys the team lost $9 million and just a few years later the Cowboys were making over 30 million in profit per year in fact in the middle of this turnaround the book describes Jerry
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Jones as a ruthless Cost Cutter a few weeks ago I was telling you about ingbar cprad who's the founder of Ikea starts Ikea when he's 17 uh works on it until he dies at 91 years old and ingvar wrote a document which they call the Ikea
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company Bible it's actually called uh the name of the document it's the Testament of a furniture dealer I loved it so much I actually had it printed in Bound and put it on my desk but in that document ingvar repeated something that
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was very fascinating he said for six decades that cost awareness was Ikea's Anthem and he said that his dedication to that idea was total the way that ingvar spoke about that sounds a lot like the way Sam Walton talked about his cost control and His Manic friend for
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cost control in his autography this is what Sam Walton wrote said I'm asked today when Walmart has been so successful when we're at $50 billion plus company why should we say so cheap that's simple because we believe in the
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value of a dollar we exist to provide value to our customers which means that in addition to Quality and service we have to save them money every time Walmart spends $1 foolishly it comes right out of the pockets of our customers every time we save them a
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dollar that puts us one more Step Ahead of the competition which is where we always plan to be he continues control your expenses better than your competition this is where you can always find a competitive Advantage for 25 years running long before Walmart was
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known as the nation's largest retailer we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales anyone who is committed to being great at building their businesses obsessed with watching their cost ingbar says in
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his book that we push cost awareness at all levels with almost manic frenzy the reason that ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast is because ramp gives you everything you need to make cost control an obsession just like it
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to see the product and you will see why many of the world's top Founders are running their companies on ramp go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business today that is ramp.com one more tool I want to tell you about is vesto a lot of my friends are using vesto to see
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all of their company's accounts in one view vesto helps you connect and control all of your business bank accounts from from One dashboard I know the founder of vesto Ben spent a bunch of time together and I've tried to help him by introducing him to some of my friends
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that I feel could benefit from using vesto so I called one of my friends and he said David I will meet anybody you ask me uh to meet but I have to tell you we say no to over 90% of the software that we are pitched and yet a week later
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I hear back from my friend he says Ben and vesto are great and that they signed up so I asked my friend to ask his team to explain in their own words the benefit that they get from vesto and I'm going to read you this text message
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exchange that we had and so this is hit the the response to that question can you please ask your team to explain the benefit they get from besto in their own words says it provides us the ability to view all of our bank and Loan accounts
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on one platform with a single sign on it makes it much easier to Grant access to users in one place as opposed to 20 different banks I text back what did they do before vesto we have 20 plus different Bank login across like five
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accountants we literally use 21 Banks so every bank has an account and a loan that multiple people need access and Views to just to log in and see everything would take hours and all be in different tabs if you have multiple accounts and multiple businesses make
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sure you go to vest.com that's vesto withth V and schedule a demo with the founder Ben tell them David sent you that is vesto with a V so vest.com the link will also be down in the show notes I hope hope you enjoy this episode Jerry
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Jones lived a wildli and this book is full of unbelievable stories of deals and risk that Jerry took during his career my daughter went to Stanford I couldn't stand it she was so far from Arkansas so i' think of reasons to make trips out there to try to come up with a
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little business or something I'd go out there with her and I got an old office downtown Paulo Alto and I said you know I need to get some things going out here if I'm going to spend this kind of time so I went over to Brentwood about 20 or
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30 miles from San Francisco and I bought 25 Lots like I was going to build 25 houses except I drilled four gas Wells and those four gas wells in 18 months paid me enough money for me to buy the Dallas Cowboys paying attention to my kids
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actually led me to getting involved into the passion of my life and all along what I was trying to do was hang out near my daughter a lot of things happen that you didn't have planned or you don't have the strategy for now I'm not
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saying I've done anything right but I made up my mind a long time ago that I was going to work with my kid they're involved in everything they're involved in my leasing oil and gas real estate and so when I got the Cowboys I got it so that we could all work together I
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thought I was doing it for them but the one that got the most out of it was me you're going to be sitting here in a hospital sometime in the future laying here sometime in the future and this room is going to be full of your business associates and the people you
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worked with all your life and more than likely your children and your family are going to be there because they're your children and your family but you could have them there because they're the people that you spent your life with the
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ones you worked with the ones you fell down with the ones you got up with not just seeing them on Thanksgiving and Christmas that's who you want to be with so when that time comes it's a celebration of your life and you're not
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wishing you spent a little more time seeing a few more Suns come up that's the trip that's the trip because that's going to be your glory I'm pretty proud of them Cowboys I'm pretty proud of the stuff that we've done in oil and gas it
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pales in comparison to how proud I am to have lived my life working with my kids you've got a chance to do something about that I hope you will that was not an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to about today that was actually
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Jerry Jones on this show called landman landman is about the Texas oil and gas industry and I thought that clip was so moving it piqued my interest to learn more about the life of Jerry Jones he's obviously a well-known figure here and I
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assume that there was going to be you know a bunch of biographies or maybe even an autobiography written by him turns out there's not many books on him at all was able to found one that was published all the way back in '95 so that's the book I'm going to talk to you
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about today which is King of the Cowboys The Life and Times of Jerry Jones and it was written by Jim Dent uh before I jump into the book I did some other research and I pulled out a few quotes and stories from his life that aren't in the
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book that I want to start with it gives you kind of an overview of some of the things I think are important to learn about him uh one I just absolutely love this it says Jerry Jones doesn't like to waste time on the rare occasion he hits
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the golf course he's been known to close a business deal by the first hole shake hands and then walk off saying why would I play another 4 hours when the deal was done Tales abound of 400 a.m. phone calls from Jones leaving those on the
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other end unsure if he's just waking up or he hasn't slept yet that is a re curring theme throughout the entire book that the fact that he pushes himself he's one of the most driven people ever meet and he has the ability to survive
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and thrive on very very limited sleep so in this case he's not waking up at 4 a.m. he hasn't gone to bed yet uh such Restless energy and single minded Drive had defined has defined Jerry Jones for decades you talk about the fact that he's this collection his Persona is part
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high stakes entrepreneur which is really the amount of risk this guy takes is just absolutely incredible we'll talk a lot about that today uh part part high stakes entrepreneur part football evangelist and part showman he's definitely got like a PT barom uh show
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Showmanship uh very gifted Storyteller rakor uh to him something I want to talk to you a lot about is the fact that his family his parents involved them in the family business at from a very young age even when that family business uh
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started you know from a very humble beginning he says my parents were entrepreneurs if you just worked hard enough then you had real opportunity that was instilled to me at a very early age the his father is going to be the most influential person in his life his
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mom describes Jerry and his father later on in the book as Twins and so he says he credits his father with teaching him to not only embra Embrace work but to never resent it one formative anecdote stands out in Jones's memory after a
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bruising High School football loss he came home demoralized and went straight to bed Pat Jones found his son and delivered found his son in bed and delivered a Stern bit of advice son if you lie in this bed you're going to be a
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loser for the rest of your life now get up and if the team asks you to be the water boy then drown them with the damn water Jerry Jones got out of bed and never forgot that lesson and then just one more quote that I want to read to you before we jump into the book uh
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again I think is really important and he he does think this is in his blood direct quote from Jerry Jones here he says by Instinct we Joneses were Risk Takers to win big you have to play the big hand so I want to start talking
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about his intense Drive uh throughout the book Jerry Jerry has phenomenal relationships and he winds up building relationships and friendships and Partnerships with some of the most successful entrepreneurs of his day and one of them is his longtime friend named
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Don Tyson so don Tyson had the nickname of as the Chicken King which I thought was humorous it says Tyson is one of America's wealthiest men having built his chicken Empire from scratch more than 40 years ago in Springdale Arkansas
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actually he scales his uh he passed away a few years ago but he winds up scaling the chicken business to over 10 billion a year in Revenue uh and this is what he said about his friend Jerry Jones Tyson talks about Jones He says this is one of
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the most driven men you will ever meet here is a guy who by God Made It by himself he planted his own crop and he harvested the damn thing and so in addition to his Drive which is repeated over and over again through all these
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stories and anecdotes by the people that worked with him and knew Jerry for a long time it's pepper throughout the entire book is the fact that he something that's repeated over and over again is the fact that Jerry has this wild cower mentality he is full risk on
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in fact there's another great quote that I found when I was researching him he says the only way to break out is to gamble and I think this is a great description of him it says Jones still operates on the oil patch mentality that
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he picked up during his early business years roll the dice until your knuckles bleed never ever do what traditionalists would do wait till he buys the Cowboys there's like so much loow hanging fruit and it was actually shocking one of the
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most surprising things I learned from reading this book is just how unsure the investment Jerry Jones Investment in the Cowboys was at the time he made it now it's you know worth probably somewhere between 8 to 10 billion dollar is the
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rumor if he tried to sell the uh Cowboys how much did he go for so it says roll the nights until your knuckles bleed never ever do with the traditional subdue Jones is determined to succeed on his own terms in his own way and one of the most important or maybe the mo not
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not even one of the most influential person that taught Jones to take risks to be bold um and to you you know Blaze his own path and basically do what he wants to do in life is his father uh Pat Jones obviously this is a great example
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of this maximum that you and I talk about over and over again it's almost every single book that the story of the father is embedded in the son and I'm going to go to the childhood of Pat Jones and Jerry Jones but I want to talk about towards the end of the when it was
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interesting there's a there's a story in the book where Jerry is worried his father's in poor health they were worried that he was about to die and there's this story where this is what Jerry's like devastated so it says as Pat Jones clung to life Jerry Jones
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leaned over to his father and whispered in his ear fight try hard don't give up we all love you so much tears in his eyes he huged the man that he calls the most influential man in his life and so as a way for you and I to try to
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understand the son we obviously want to study the story of his father so he is raised in this tiny town in Arkansas he actually had enjoyed the distinction of having one Tavern for every six citizens so there's a saloon on nearly every
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street corner most it's a you know rather poor lower lower class uh neighborhood primary Railroad and machine shop uh people that work in railroads and machine shop the description of Jerry's dad is going to sound a lot like Jerry when he's a young
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man says uh Pat Jones had the energy of a locomotive he was a born promoter uh he was raised in a tiny farming Community the Jones family lived in a leaky poorly painted Shack so his dad grew up during the Great Depression and one of the things that helped his dad
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survive the Great Depression is that he was a born salesman it says what he did best was sell sell so even from a young age he's like walking down the streets with buckets of peas and he's like selling them you know hand hand themouth
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essentially Jerry's dad gets married has kids he raises his family so they live in this like tiny second floor apartment above which starts out as a fruit stand that his dad starts so Pat Jones starts a fruit stand that eventually is going
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to evolve into a full-fledged Supermarket but it says the family of four lived in a small apartment for over 7even years above the Fruit Stand which turns into the grocery store nurturing the store downstairs by working day and night and so this idea that both Jerry
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and his dad have this like Showmanship this PT baresque personality he's like okay well how do I get as many people into the store as possible he does all kinds of things he he at night it turns into a dance hall and then one of the most
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successful advertising and marketing promotions he did was he actually sets up a radio show inside of his grocery store in you know rural Arkansas no one was doing this at the point the reason I bring this up to you is because there's
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a lot of ideas that Jerry has when he takes over the Dallas Cowboys that you know seem obvious to us now because everybody does it but nobody was doing it back then one of Pat's ideas was his next promotion was nearly unheard of in
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1954 a live onsite radio show that mixed music with heavy endorsements for the products in the stores I don't know why I found that funny uh the guy running the radio store this guy Nam brother Hal Weber did his hillbilly act from the back of Pat's Supermarket and the
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parking lot was jammed people would drive from the surrounding 15 counties it's one of the damnest things I'd ever seen they came wondering what the heck was going on in the store this part of his life is so important because how
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young Jerry is Pat Supermarket was young Jerry Jones first exposure to hard work and Showmanship and he took to his father's example like Duck to a duck to water I worked everything Jerry said I learned how to do everything in the store I was up at the crack of dawn and
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I'd be working until midnight my dad was a driver but he was also a teacher he just somehow knew where he was going more than 60 years and after the Great Depression Jerry Jones still feels its influence it was that mentality from
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that era that drove him my dad when I was a kid it was all my dad could talk about the depression it scared the hell out of the people who grew up there especially the ones on the farms my dad passed that fear along to me that is why
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I always worked when I was a kid my dad said I'm going to teach you to work so that you don't mind working and it will become part of your personality when you grow up God Dogg it is if I wasn't down there working at the store every day I
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knew my butt was going to be in trouble and this is what his dad says about Jerry as his kid I knew that Jerry had the right instincts even when he was a kid he could talk to people just like he was an adult it was a gift Jerry heard nothing but business talk during
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breakfast lunch and dinner he understood that he wanted to make money and get ahead keep in mind Jerry is 7 years old they're talking about Jerry when he was 7 years old what he's going through in fact um I had dinner with one of the
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wealthiest people in the world uh a few nights ago and there's two interesting things especially if if you've been analyzing the books that I've been reading the last few weeks just how reoccurring this theme was and the the guy I was having dinner with he's in his
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70s and he was telling me his father was the one that originally started the business and it just drastically expanded under the second and third generation and he was telling me he's like my dad started me and my brother working in the business when we were
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sticks every Holiday from school was spent working in the family business and so there's two striking things the conversation was incredible the dinner was incredible but I learned a lot but two of the most striking things was just
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how common again like if you look at the Jerry Jones this week Leon hes last week the wallenberg's Hedy green go back to older episodes like Estee Lauder uh The Waltons I even think about like Steve Jobs's dad when he was 5 years old
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teaching Steve how to take apart um and the fact that he you could you can make a TV these aren't magical things like some you love TV and radio and electronics well guess what humans figured out how to make that in since
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she teaching his young son that from a from a early age but just it's it's remarkable to me and I need to point this out to you because it may be obvious to you but in case it's not obvious to you it wasn't obvious to me before I started reading all these books
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was just how common this is for these you know the the the the the amount of valuable education you're able to instill in your child about business and producing goods and services and working your ass off and you know trying to help
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other people and build wealth through doing that it's so valuable and regardless of Industry all the people I read about the person I was talking to they all work in different Industries and yet their family did the exact same thing and then the other thing that was
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interesting about the dinner is this encyclopedic another thing they do is this encyclopedic knowledge of business history that was in this guy's head and you know we talked about a bunch of the the books iover in the past in some
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cases he knew you know the entrepreneur or the family or whatever the case is and he filled in a lot of he just knew everything again I think it just speaks to the idea it's like what what can we do if we're trying to build the most
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powerful families possible one we get our kids involved and we we teach them the value of Business and Entrepreneurship and investing and working really hard from a young age and then obviously get them reading and studying as much of business history as
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possible because that's just is reoccurring thing so there is another thing that his that Jerry picks up from his dad and his dad was uh extremely hard worker just like Jerry's going to be but his dad partied a lot and so I'm not going to cover but there's entire
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chapters in this book about how much Jerry parties so I'm just going to give you an anecdote from his childhood that he sees his dad doing early one morning after failing to make it home the previous night Pat Jones looked up to
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find his wife staring coldly into his bloodshot eyes he happened to be in the company of two young ladies by his mother's side was young Jerry Jerry I want you to take a good look at your father Jerry if you were wondering where
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your father was last night he was right here with these you know whats son I don't want you to grow up this way so his father was known a known philanderer he in fact later on his dad's going to run and then sell uh a very successful insurance company and
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there's an anecdote in the book where it says that his father would hire Insurance salespeople based on how well they could seduce women uh so again there's a lot of these stories in this book about just the the hard again this drive to work excessively hard they also
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applied it to their night life too uh Jerry Jones describes his father as the most influential man in his life at the dinner table Pat Jones would lecture Jerry almost every night on his business philosophy he also instilled his taste
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for flamboyant risk-taking and a Fearless compulsion to do things his own way there's just 20 years age difference between them his mother points out they're as much brothers as they are Father and Son they're both this is
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still his mom describing both her husband and her son they're both Workaholics they also happen to love their work they make it their life they're they are just alike they are almost like twins so Jerry's Main love in life besides work is football he starts
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playing football when he's in high school winds up playing in college I'm going to skip over most of that cuz I want to talk about his early Orland gas career and then him buying the cou boys but I do want to pull out there's just a
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couple interesting lines that I think can tell you an entire story in like a sentence or two it's the fact that he played football if you analyze the way he played football the way he approached football it's like oh that's how he works too and so there's just these
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quotes from his co uh from like people on his team and also his coaches says he played with Reckless intensity his head coach remembers that Jerry didn't have a whole lot of anything as an athlete but when he started something he didn't quit
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the kid just worked his ass pass off night and day another coach the next page he was the fiercest competitor we had so he is Wheeling and dealing and selling as anything he can while he's in school when he gets out of school he's
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going to start working in oil and gas which I'll get to how he how he gets there this was very interesting though because I'm reading this section this entire it's it's about his personality his salesmanship his his just intense
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energy the fact that this guy just goes and goes and goes with almost no sleep and for some reason I get to this sentence after reading you know this entire chapter and made me think of Ted Turner it says Jerry has always been a total extrovert a Salesman a promoter he
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always had that tremendous energy level so back on episode 327 I did the autobiography of Ted Turner it's one of the most fascinating autobi autobiographies that I've ever read but what I did is like man why am I having why does this remind me of Ted Turner so
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much so what I did is I went and asked sage like can you describe the personality and traits of Ted Turner and it actually created to this outline for me and I'm like this sounds just like Jerry Jones this is why this was in my
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head so here's some key characteristics I'm going to read the parts almost this entire outline is Jerry Jones so I'm describing Ted Turner but really it is gives you an overview of who Jerry Jones is especially when he's young in in his
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career where we're at in the story right now key characteristics number one Boundless Energy and intensity okay known for Non-Stop talking and nervous energy he cannot sit still needs constant movement in activity this sounds like Jerry johon worked
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incredibly long hours often sleeping in his office okay number two extraordinary vision and belief had absolute conviction in his ideas this is again still about Ted Turner wait till we get to the the the massive bets these R huge
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risky bets that Jerry Jones placed in his life had absolute and why would you do that because you have absolute conviction and ideas uh in in Ted Turner's case particularly about the future of cable TV was willing to be early and made bold predictions had an
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obsessed Ive work ethic live by the MoDOT early to bed early to rise work like hell and advertise uh he would consistently be the first to arrive and the last to leave he pushed himself and his organizations relentlessly again
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still about Ted Turner it's it's the same person we're describing the same exact personality type complex personal background deeply impacted by childhood experiences and the relationship with his father developed a fear of Abandonment and the need for constant
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companionship struggled with personal relationships despite business success also at the same time they were both charismatic leaders they had incredibly enthusiastic and infectious personalities they could be incredibly persuasive oneon-one Jerry Jones is one
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of the best salesp people you could ever read about they were both known for thinking unconventionally and making themselves Unforgettable strategic risk taker willing to bet big on their convictions often competed against much
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larger companies and had more commitment and desire than their competitors and then finally this extreme level of self-confidence to act on their beliefs extremely self- assured not afraid to challenge industry Giants and believe strongly in their ability to succeed it
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is remarkable how much of just like what I remember reading about t Turner like really just jumped out of me as I was going through this biography of Jerry Jones now when we move into his early life and his early career you see this
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like Relentless drive also produces this like frantic energy he was he had this deep burning desire to get rich and he wanted to get rich and and go into football and he talks about this like a decade and a half before he had the
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money to buy the Cowboys but it was so overwhelming all the different businesses that he tried and in in many cases failed at before he winds up making a ton of money in oil and gas so it says for more than 15 years Jones had moved like a human meteor since leaving
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the University of Arkansas he had helped his father turn his new business which was a moderate sized insurance company into a blooming success he had also invested in real estate pizza and chicken he winds up getting married and
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also having three children at the exact same time he borrowed $50,000 this guy's going to be up to his eyeballs in debt he borrowed $50,000 from John Ed Chambers which was his father-in-law who owned a small Bank in Arkansas what did he do with the money Jones had the
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chance to invest in both McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises instead he decides to buy the Missouri rights to a Pacha chain called Shake problem is this pizza chain goes out of business now he's got a bunch of Misses
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but he also has a few solid early Investments one of those being in his friend Don Tyson's Chicken company but for most of the 1960s Jerry a young Jerry J is trying all these things and he's failing at a bunch he says there was so many times where I was down on
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one knee one of the hardest things I would learn would be keeping my head together during those tough times you just have to Buck up and go on to the next decision if you don't move move with enthusiasm to the next deal you
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lose so he is in his mid-20s he is vastly overextended he was borrowing as much money as he could and he's also buying and trying to invest in real estate and he's almost broke because they're almost calling in the loans so it says by the late 1960s Jones
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financial problems had become so complex and so intense that his hands would shake and he would cry the strain of all the debt he's under is overwhelming his biggest financial burden was a $500,000 investment he had made on some land he
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planned to eventually build a Walmart on the property so sell to Sam Walton it sounds like this okay friends advised Jones to sell off the land so he pays $500,000 for this plot of land Jones stubbornly stuck to this investment thanks to an array of failed Investments
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Banks started calling in his loans one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do is sit across the desk from a banker who's calling in a $50,000 loan then turn around and ask him for another $50,000 shown says one afternoon so he owns a bunch of land he also owns a
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bunch of rental properties so it says one afternoon he went to visit an elder lady who lived in one of his rental houses she was more than 3 months behind on payments when she told Jones that she didn't have the money to make a payment
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he turned and walked away as he drove off he began to cry the banker who had made the half a million dollar real estate loan learned of Jones generosity to the old lady and persuaded the bank to give Jones an extension on his
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payments now here's the crazy part there is like a there's like a benefit I I don't know how to describe this so like being a little nutty or being a little crazy uh I guess the way to think about this was put best by Charlie merer where he says
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never underestimate the man who overestimates himself I'm going to read the full quote from Charlie merer because I think he picked on up on something very unusual so Charlie says while an excess of self-regard is often
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counterproductive in its effect on cognition it can cause some weird successes from overconfidence that happen to cause success never underestimate the man who overestimates himself and so Jones is in his 20s you know doesn't have a track record a lot
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of track record of success and yet he's just so damn stubborn it's like I'm not selling anything I'm going to go down fighting okay so they're like sell this piece of land you nut job right it's $500,000 what are you doing and he's
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just saying no because he has this Relentless drive and self-belief in himself and he winds up being right this this is like the whole story I almost accidentally even stumbled upon that idea from Munger uh when I was rereading the highlights for this book it's like
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never underestimated the man who overestimates himself why 30 years later Jones still owns that piece of property which now has long been paid off there's a Walmart that is on it on that piece of property and then after that they
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develop this new interstate highway so this piece of land that he buys they build a walm on it makes the piece of land more valuable and here comes the highway that land is now valued at $20 million he refused to sell the $500,000
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piece of land you know what is this 20 years later did I say or 30 years later it 30 years later it's now $20 million and there's so many examples and really that is the theme of of this conversation this podcast is all these things that Jones did shouldn't have
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worked out but they did work out like even when you get to the Cowboys when you see the financial uh performance of the Cowboys before he bought them was just like unbelievable that he turned this around and it turned out to what it
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did uh so in and he he he catches a break here so remember 1960s has just been absolute hell for this guy uh you was crying he's out to his eyeballs in debt he's like having meetings with banks for like give us your money he's
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like not only I'm not going to give you your money your money I want you to give me more money it's just it's a completely crazy story so in 1970 his father sells the insurance company the modern security life that I was telling you about that Jerry helped his dad
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build as a result from what I've read Jerry Nets about $500,000 from that sale then he's like all right I'm going to move now my little young family to Little Rock Arkansas and I'm going to get into the oil business so Jones puts out the word
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that he was ready to enter the oil business a relative introduces him to this Oklahoma oilman named Bill Sparks again let's go back to never underestimate the man who overestimates himself within while an excess of self-regard is often counterproductive
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in its effects on cognition it can cause some weird successes from overconfidence that happens to cause success so he's introduced hey I want I'm moving my family I'm going to get into the oil business and he's introduced this guy
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where this guy is shopping an oil deal that everybody is like you're you're crazy he says no everybody is telling Bill Sparks no the one person that doesn't tell him no is going to be Jerry Jones this is insane so Sparks wants to come out on his own he's working for a
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company and he's like listen I think I found this essentially Meandering underground river of oil and I'm almost positive if we drill here and if we can sketch this out we're going to find a river of oil 7,000 ft below the ground
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the and it's called the red fork sand no one believed him the company that he was working for thought he was so crazy that they fired him they're like this is the stupidest idea we've ever heard you're fired so Bill Sparks is shot in the deal
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again the funny thing about this is that this is a deal that everybody said no to wait till you see the financial performance of this deal and so one of Jerry's Partners in oil and gas is describing Jerry for us probably one of
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Jerry's worst traits is his inability to say no to risky Ventures he does love highrisk High return Ventures so he loved this bill Sparks idea Bill managed to sell the idea to Jerry when he couldn't sell it to anybody else remember that the same exact thing
33:26
is going to happen when he buys the cowboy I think the owner of the Cowboys if I remember correctly he shopped the Cowboys to like 75 other people before he did the Jones it's crazy and then you talk about this like frenic energy that
33:41
and this like this he just he's involved in so many things so when Jerry gets pitched this idea from Bill spars what is Jerry doing and this is why I love it was like kind of humorous and funny to to read the book cuz you're reading about all these like investing in pizza
33:55
and chicken and real estate and so now he's getting pitched the deal and what was Jerry doing when he gets pitch the deal he was selling mobile homes like what is going on here so it says Jones and his partner Jim duy were selling
34:07
mobile homes when they got word of sparks' scheme so Jones decides Jones and duly team up with Sparks and this other guy named ran rxs they have the the funniest names in this the book by the way ran Ricks wait till we get to the owner of the the Cowboys name that
34:21
that Jerry buys it from so you got Jim duly Jerry Jones Bill Sparks and Rand Ricks okay and so I was trying to figure out I was like where the hell do he get the money from this is why it was so important for the sale of his father's
34:35
insurance company okay so Jones's Faith he's like okay I'm gonna buy into your idea Jones's faith in Bill Sparks paid off the group hit their first well the first well so keep in mind this deal that bill sparkon Sho to everybody everybody said this is not going to work
34:51
uh his previous company said this is so stupid we're gonna fire you the first well the first time they drill that well is worth more than $4 million so what does that mean hitting that first well meant that we could go to the bank and borrow money and keep
35:06
drilling it meant everything in the world to us the group hit their next well and the next one and the next in all they hit oil in their first 15 Wells that they drilled this is what Bill Sparks said about this right off the bat
35:23
Jerry believed in me why I don't completely know other than the fact fact that he was hungry to get rich he wanted to strike it rich but there was another thing all he could talk about was that he wanted to make enough money to buy a
35:36
football team after the first successful well came in the partying began so this is what I mean about just these like these guys work excessively hard and party hard so what do I mean about partying hard you know they're they're starting to get rich the first
35:50
successful Wall comes in how they celebrate they ran out an entire Hotel so they ran every single they're in Oklahoma City at the time they ran out every single room in this hotel uh they invite over 500 people and says they would run out every room in the hotel
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and the party would go all night just about everybody got drunk naked and jumped in the pool and so then Jones doesn't stop there his excessive drive his excessive self-confidence he's like hey I drilled oil successfully you know
36:15
what I'm going to do I'm going to drill for natural gas so he winds up partnering with this guy named Mike McCoy he walks into Mike McCoy's office in 1980 he was coming off one of the greatest financial and emotional highs of his life Jones had sold one of his
36:27
oil production companies in 1976 and walked away from the red fork sand that deal with Bill Sparks with a profit of more than $50 million this is another one of his Partners you see how everybody that runs into Jerry Jones he's remarkably
36:41
consistent the way his partners and his co-workers all describe him essentially they're just he doesn't change Jerry has never met a high-risk deal that he didn't like he's a risk taker and the riskier the better you have to be a
36:53
gambler to play in this business if you get disappointed over failure you shouldn't be in this business at the same time if you get too high over success you will bust yourself the excitement in the oil and gas business is unmatched by any other business
37:10
there's a great line when you watch landman I think the best single line in that entire series says the the billionaire oil founder one of the main characters in the show says our business is a constant state of Crisis interrupted by periods of immense
37:28
success so Jones goes to Mike McCoy he's like okay let's get into the the the gas drilling business let's let's drill for natural gas this is what Jones was referencing earlier at the very beginning where he's like I'm going to
37:39
drill for gas out in San Francisco when my daughter was at Stanford so they're like okay we're going to take a shot at two Wells we're going to drill for natural gas near San Francisco and then in Southeastern Oklahoma at the same
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time okay almost immediately the project met with disaster this is the first one they do is Oklahoma almost immediately the project met with uh disaster when an employee made a half a million dollar mistake after drilling the customary 8
38:03
in diameter hole he tried to pour cement into the casing to add support to the well instead he mistakenly dumped cement into the well itself ruining it Jones took the bad news and stride remember what their description of the oil and gas business if you get disappointed
38:19
over failure you should not be in this business you you made a mistake that's fine you get up and you drill again this is exactly what they did the partners invested in another $500,000 they moved the drill bit 100 ft the next day they
38:31
learned they had hit a natural gas well worth over 40 million doar the same time they're Drilling in San Francisco the first reports from the well near San Francisco were not good the guy running the the job for them out there called
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and said we had turned up nothing then he called back 8 hours later and said we're going to be rich the well outside of San Francisco would produce $40 million worth of gas over a 2-year period Jones and McCoy had made $80 million on their first two natural gas
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Wells the crazy stories in this book continue this is one of the biggest I think this might be the biggest deal he does this next story is the biggest deal uh he does before he buys the Dallas Cowboys it is also the hardest to
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explain and the one that he has the most controversy over so Jerry has a friend this guy named Sheffield Nelson Sheffield Nelson was CEO of Arkansas Louisiana gas company which is a state regulated utility company before Nelson was CEO of this
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utility company him and Jones had been friends for almost a decade they owned a bunch of businesses together so they owned a television station a racehorse a farm and a condominium and so in January 1981 Jones forms a new gas drilling
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company he's going to call it Aroma production Jones is then going to do a deal again with the state regulat utility which people call one of the greatest sweetheart deals of all time the agreement that he signs with the company that his friends is CEO of it
40:13
allows Jones to sell gas to Arkansas Louisiana gas company which is also known as ARA at a price that was Far higher than what the utility was paying others in the field so he managed to sign an agreement with them where they would pay him
40:30
$44.50 per th000 cubic feet more than nine times what the previous producers had been receiving from the same company and in a few years this deal gets even Wilder because in 1985 the natural gas industry was deregulated and so the price of gas drops dramatically
40:49
unfortunately under the terms of their agreement the utility company was committed they had to buy as much gas as Jones could produce at the maximum legal price so what does he do at this point he goes and him and his partner this is
41:05
same guy Mike McCoy they go and they make deals with other gas producers to turn their leases over to Aroma production because Aroma production has a guaranteed contract where they can sell it for a higher price than if you were drilling the gas yourself McCoy and
41:20
Jones pointed out to land owners and potential leasers that they could receive a much higher return on their gas by working out deals with our coma instead of continuing their low paying contracts with Arkansas Louisiana themselves and this is the end result
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Arkansas Louisiana gas company was paying Aroma production4 million a year for gas that it didn't need and so if you sign a bad deal one way to get out of that deal is to actually buy the company to buy out the company so then
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Arkansas Louisiana gas company announces that it's actually buying our coma production so our coma production was started from scratch in 1981 in 1987 Jones and his partner sell it for $175 million which means if you calculate how much money they took out
42:09
of the business plus the sales price Oromo production had walked away with more than $300 million now this again goes back to never underestimate the man who overestimates himself there's another Wildcat I think it was I can't
42:21
remember if it's mty McCree Monty McCree or um maybe Sid Richardson he said I'd rather be uh I'd rather be lucky than smart well here's an example here so they walk away with $300 million Jones and McCoy had drilled more than 200 Wells and they had come up empty on
42:39
exactly one so Jones is going to get to the end of the 80s he's around 47 years old when he's going to buy the Dallas Cowboys winds up after all all of his adventures in oil and gas he winds up having about $90 million in cash now he
42:53
has enough money and the opportunity to do what he's been wanting to do so if you go back throughout the book for over 20 years says as early as the uh 1960s all throughout the time he was in the oil fields in the 1970 Jones would tell
43:06
anybody who would listen that someday he'd buy a football team as early as 1982 he started sharing his blueprint with his old college roommate his college roommate is Jimmy Johnson this is a guy that when he buys the When U Jones buys the Dallas Cowboys he fires
43:22
their long-term coach Tom Landry and immediately hires Jimmy Johnson and what told him in 1982 he's like hey you keep doing what you do best which is coaching and I'll keep doing what I do best which is making money and one of these days
43:34
we'll do this together in the NFL so the owner of the Cowboys at this time was this guy named bum brigh HR bum bright I love these these names and he is going to be forced to sell the team there's actually a history of the owners of the
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Dallas Cowboys being forced to sell the team because they had a severe cash crisis so bum brigh had made a bunch of money in trucking oil real estate and banking he's making a ton of money in the early ' 80s by 1989 his financial
44:03
Empire is crumbling his bank is in utter disarray because it's suffering these catastrophic real estate losses in fact at the time he's selling the Dallas Cowboys his bank is being run by Fe Federal Regulators now bright is motivated to sell for the same reason
44:18
that forced the original Cowboy owner this guy named merchison Jr uh who sold bright the team in 1984 he was in a financial free free fall and the ground was coming up fast now here's really interesting thing essentially merchon or
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meron I don't know how to pronounce his last name essentially handpicked brigh to sell the team to and bright did not he didn't love football in fact before he owned the team he'd only ever gone to ever two cowboy games in his life and
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the reason he was persuaded to buy the team was he's like oh there's enough depreciation in the team that I can use the team as a tax write-off for at the time is booming oil business so so I need to go back to this idea that
44:58
there's o over and over again we see Jerry making an investment that other people they're they're just not sure bets at the time and in many cases people were offered the same deal and a ton of people said no so buying the Cowboys was not a sure bet the
45:12
difference was that unlike BM brigh Jerry's like obsessed with football he's actually obsessed and I want to read this quote uh from Graham Duncan about the importance of being obsessed in a second so Jerry's going to buy the team for 140 million what is he buying he's
45:29
buying a football team that in 1988 the last year before he was a principal owner lost $9 million a team and an organization that was incapable of selling the majority of the luxury suits sweets I think like 90% over 90% of the luxury suites were
45:43
unsold were sitting empty attendance had dropped by almost 25% and only one home game the entire year had sold out BM brigh starts shopping the team cuz he's in dire Financial stress right he tried to sell for $180 million he pitched 75 people
46:02
before he got to Jerry Jones that said no and we see this immense appetite for taking risk again from Jerry Jones because what do you do he has 90 million in cash he empties his entire bank account then he borrows the remaining
46:13
balance at steep interest rates financial advisers at the time warned that buying the Cowboys was quote ridiculously overpriced and financial suicide Jerry Jones risk tolerance in the 1980 199 kind of reminds me of of what Elon did after he sold PayPal when
46:30
he he cleared I think 180 million after taxes when they sold PayPal and he put 100 into SpaceX 70 into Tesla and 10 into Solar City and I think one of the advantages that Jerry has here and why he's going to this phenomenal turnaround
46:43
one of the reasons is because he's completely obsessed he's completely obsessed with football and doing deals and selling and just winning so this's this uh great excert from uh the Tim Ferris podcast where he interviews this guy named Graham Duncan that I always
46:56
keep on my phone I and I listen to and read over and over again and he this is a direct quote from Graham talking to Tim he says one question I like to ask people is if you're hiring an analyst what criteria are you looking for in the
47:06
analyst he's talking about money managers and people who've been managing money and managing people before begin to look for things in their analyst that make those analysts most valuable to them and this guy said what I'm looking
47:16
for is a trace of fear in myself okay I'm trying to hire somebody that makes me almost scared why what I'm looking for is a fear of a trace of fear in myself that this guy is coming for me that he will replace me and I think what he's capturing is that the level of
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intensity that obsessiveness that you see in a minority in any field because they found the game they want to play and they bring an intensity and an obsessiveness to it that over time they're just working so much harder it's
47:48
like Wayne Gretzky finding hockey at H5 he's obsessed and he's just going over and over and over again and and there are people in the finance industry who are like that they are just obsessed with investing in this really distinctive way Warren Buffett from a
48:04
young age obsessed it is obvious people say oh there's like all these these people criticizing Jerry Jones in the book He's just doing this for money hey he wants to make a lot of money but he's you could clearly tell he's not doing
48:16
this for money because 30 years after this book was published he still owns the Dallas Cowboys he's obsessed with owning a football team and and and running a football team and you could just clearly see this and as a result of this Obsession he's going to work so
48:29
much harder at this than the previous owner did who wasn't really interested in football he's like oh this is great this a where I can you know offset some taxes for my oil business where Jerry's like no I'm going to build the best football like not like football
48:42
organization he's trying to win on the field but also football company and he just he he really invents a lot of ideas that are used you know throughout sports that to you and I looking back 30 years later like why they weren't doing this
48:53
back then it just seems so obvious so again just one of his superpowers Jerry can sell sell sell he was selling since he was a nine-year-old greeting customers at his family supermarket in college he sold shoes from the trunk of
49:04
his car he would make up to $700 selling student tickets before his college football games so he buys a team and he immediately just like we said that he has in in common with Ted Turner it's like I'm going to blaze my own path I'm going to run the business not how it
49:18
used to be run how you think I should run it how I want to run it immediately takes over the team and then turns the entire staff over there there's a bunch of detail in the book but I think this one sentence gives you an idea of what
49:27
he does it says he took a wrecking ball to the past and so we see immediately these reoccurring like personality traits these the way he wants to run his business he's going to be obsessed with speed he likes to take risks in bunches
49:38
he's really just intense and rather a little crazy he's obsessed with speed with making decisions and acting on them as quickly as possible he learned to take his risk in bunches in the Oklahoma oil fields this is he describes his reasoning why he takes risks in bunches
49:51
some of your risks are bound to be busts the more risks you take the better the chance of one of them hitting Don Tyson who built the Tyson poultry Empire who I've already referenced a few times here talked about his friend again during
50:02
this time I know a lot of intense people but no there is nobody as intense as Jerry Jones Jerry is a little crazy he can change moods without blinking he's got two personalities he's got the PT Barnum the roak and turer the
50:16
Storyteller and then on the other side is the tough businessman from Arkansas he can immediately switch from very Charming to a very tough man very few people know how to read him his complexities as an individual can be disarming he runs into any project
50:33
believing that he can beat any man at anything goes back to the Charlie Monger never under underestimate the the man that overestimates himself this is somebody on several interviews uh with Jerry describes him life is not about smelling the roses with Jerry life is
50:49
hard work he just doesn't have any time for things like philosophy or poetry you get the feeling that he will break your balls if you you cross him you have to be on guard with him all at all times and so when you actually analyze like
51:02
what he actually did when he took over the team it's just just a reminder I I think it's important it's like most businesses are actually poorly run even businesses you would think like an NFL team in 1989 you know this isn't like it
51:14
was the 60s like nl's not nearly as big as it is today but it was still like a you know a big business a business that sold for $140 million in$ 1989 and yet it was just run very shittily there's no other way to put this it's crazy that that somebody would
51:32
run that business and allow it to lose you know 9 million a year before he takes it over so what does he do he just asks himself like well he goes around and he's like what is the potential for generating revenue and Jones just has a very simple way of operating he's like
51:48
what did the previous owner do wrong and why do they lose so much money and then you ask yourself like what's the highest impact thing I can do if I need to generate money I I just bought business I emptied my bank account I'm you know
51:59
60 million in debt just on uh the high interest rates this thing has to make money right away what are you going to do and the idea was just like well you have all these luxury suites the luxury suites sell between 400,000 and 1.5
52:11
million a piece okay and he also read the rule book for the NFL league and he realized that selling a suite off also offers an additional bonus uh according to the NFL rules uh revenues from the boxes are not shared with other NFL owners the way ticket revenues are so
52:28
he's like okay how what did the previous owner do they had 188 luxury suets you know how many the previous owner sold six six so he spends all his time he's just like I'll just make up the huge difference here if I just able to sell
52:43
the sweets okay so now within a few years so he buys a team in 1989 the book is written in 1995 six years later uh the Suites are all 95 to 98% occupied profits from those Suites alone over the last few years since Jones has bought
52:57
the team $50 million just from that one product then he looks and he's like hey we have one of the best locations in the entire building is on the 50 yard line it's the Press Box why the hell are we giving them the we give these seats away
53:13
for free to writers for the local Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers and so he's like what's the difference they could just move them over there to like the 5 yard line or something like that they could still see the game they still
53:22
write about it and so then he moves again this is just very common sense most business are poorly run if you just sit there and think about it and obviously it helps that he's obsessed it's like uh yeah I'm not going to give you the best seat in the house for free
53:33
you know how much the valuable the seats are you're going to be moved over to the five yard line and I'm going to sell the Press Box that that's on the 50 yard line the literally the best seat in the house then he identifies more
53:43
opportunity hiding in plain sight there was no ads inside Texas stadium at the time so he's like okay uh he did something that had never been done before this is what I mean about really low hanging fruit like opportunity hiding in plain sight he's like we're
53:56
going to put ads inside the stadium so when you're watching the game you also see the ads and he asked himself like who's likely to buy the ads well probably beer companies uh car companies local car dealers local banks local
54:06
supermarket chain sells a ton of ads at the time they they were not allowed to sell beer and alcohol he's like well that's the problem I need to people like to drink beer uh while they're watching football so he goes and Irving County city council where the the sadium is
54:21
they're the ones that have to Grant a sadium license to sell beer and wine so he realizes okay High leverage use of my time and activity I'm going to convince the city council members to give me the ability to sell beer and wine which he
54:34
wents up making I forgot like $1.5 million per game $2 million per game in alcohol sales and Profit just by doing this so he winds and dines them gives them free seats on the luxury suites brings them into a locker room after games and very shortly after it says Jo
54:49
Jones won his vote at the next city council meeting millions and millions of dollars were now rolling in from previously untapped resour ources he's maximizing his Revenue sources at the exact same time he develops a reputation
55:01
as a ruthless Cost Cutter any positions that are not generating Revenue he winds up cutting he began hiring sales and promotions people while weeding out non-revenue producing jobs you won't find many people around here with the exceptions of scout coaches and
55:14
secretaries who are not making money for Jerry Jones he wanted no fat he wanted this lean cash flow machine if you go back I told you this before but one of my favorite alltime biographies I've ever read is like the early days of of
55:27
uh Microsoft it's called hard drive Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft Empire if I remember correctly one of the things that jumped out and I've never forgot since I read that book for the first time few years ago was the
55:35
fact that the first Bill Gates ran Microsoft like this in the early days the first 30 employees of Microsoft it was 28 programmers Bill Gates and a secretary and Bill was doing all the sales and something that jumps out as you read the book is like a lot of the
55:49
ideas that Jerry Jones applied to to this business it's just like it's the difference between like do you give a damn about what you're doing or not and if you give a DN you're just going to pay attention you're going to pay attention to these little obvious
55:58
mistakes that previous management or maybe other competitors were doing it's like I don't I can just do a better way and I have trust in my own judgment that I'm able to do that another thing that he doesn't shy away from is the fact
56:07
that he is ruthless he the good thing about being entrepreneur is like building your business like you get to literally like make your own world within the world and if you know yourself which I think Jerry Jones definitely knows himself is he just
56:19
understands that he wants to be number one he wants to be in charge and so there's a lot of people if you're going to have long-term partnership with Jerry they say whether it's an oil and gas whether it's in football you have to be
56:29
comfortable being a number two and if you're not and you kind of cross that line Jerry can be ruthless him and Jimmy Jones were or Jimmy Johnson rather were College roommates they were friends for a long time he fires because Jimmy Johnson had a hard
56:43
time sharing the spotlight with Jerry Jones you know Jerry's the owner he's the one that calls the shots he winds up firing his friend and his coach after Jimmy Johnson won the second Super Bowl and he winds up hiring another one of
56:56
his friends it's guy named Barry Switzer who lasts a little bit longer but he was more comfortable playing like a number two role now all these there's a bunch of uh things in the book where they're describing the people in Jerry Jones
57:10
life and they give like little small biographies of them I've skipped over most of them because I want to focus on Jerry Jones this just shocked me so much I had to share with you and it's just a reminder that one of the benefits of
57:19
reading biography is like the ability to step outside yourself and realize like we all have to deal with we all have problems to deal with but it helps to also so be thankful to never have to deal with some there's always somebody has it worse than you do so I'm reading
57:32
about Barry Switzer and his parents and what he had to live through were nuts so his dad was a bootlegger sold you know drugs and alcohol he was The Gambler he loved to chase women he would like go around with a gun like a 38 revolver and
57:48
just like shoot in the air and like shoot it in the house and listen to how Barry Switzer's parents died so Barry Switzer's parents Frank Switzer suffered a violent death he was shot by a jealous girlfriend who feeling immediately remorseful for shooting him
58:06
helped him into the backseat of her car and drove off in a rush towards the hospital she was speeding down a gravel road she drove the car she lost control drove the car into a bridge and the car exploded and both died in the fire a few
58:23
years later his mom who was also a drug addict she was addicted to alcohol and prescription medication she had a very strain relationship with her son she goes and tries to they're having a fight she goes and tries to kiss her son on
58:36
the cheek but he turns away she then leaves goes to the closet finds a pistol walks out to the back porch and shoots herself in the head and so Jerry Jones long-term Partners the people work with him for a long time talk about like if you want to work with them it's very
58:51
easy to interface with them says what does it take to get along with Jones this is one of his partners first of all you must have a desire to succeed and you must also have a willingness not to be number one and then the book ends
59:04
describing the impact that Jerry Jones had on that organization the Cowboys Financial Ledger portrays one of the greatest turnaround stories in all of sports the team lost $9 million in 1988 the year before Jones bought the team the Cowboys have averaged more than 30
59:19
million in profits per year over the last three years and then I read they're doing over a billion dollars in Revenue a year now and that is where I'll leave it for the full story recommend reading the book this book is full of wild
59:33
stories if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player are available Founders podcast.com you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 379 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon