Janitor to Agriculture Empire
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A story about how Stuart and Linda Resnick built their multi-billion dollar empire starting from a janitor business in the 1970s.
"In the 1970s, Stuart Resnick started a janitor business. He was basically a janitor at first, then eventually hired more people and got contracts with buildings. Once he was in those buildings and had the contracts, he expanded to security guards. At one point he had 1,000 armed security guards on staff. He turned this janitor business into a security guard business, got some lucrative contracts at LAX, and it turned out to be a great business.
He sold it and made some money. With that money, he eventually bought the Franklin Mint, which at the time was one of the world's largest sellers of collectible coins.
From there, he and his wife Linda built what's now called Wonderful Brands. They own Landmark Wines, Teleflora (a $350M/year flower business), Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful, and Fiji Water. Linda started POM because she loved pomegranates and saw there wasn't a good pomegranate juice in the market.
Today, they're one of the largest farm owners in America, owning almond and pistachio farms. They do $4 billion a year in revenue. They're in their early 80s now and still stay close to their customers by reading Twitter and Facebook, looking at complaints, making changes, and running their business that way."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.