flâneur

Founders: #379 Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys)

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Jerry Jones rolled the dice until his knuckles bled. He started working at 7 years old. Jerry could sell, sell, sell. He sold fruit at his father’s grocery store in grade school and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car in college. After failing to sell pizza franchises he tried real estate and insurance. He never met a high risk deal he didn’t like. Jerry got pitched a deal to drill for oil that everyone else had already said no to. Jerry said yes. That well made $4 million. He hit again on the next 14 wells. Jerry decided to drill for natural gas next. He drills 200 wells. He hit on 199 of them. He sells that company for $175 million. He has $90 million in the bank. He buys the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. 75 other people had the opportunity to buy the team and said no. He empties his bank account and borrows $50 million at steep interest rates. The year before Jerry bought the team the Cowboys lost $9 million. Financial advisors told Jerry that the Cowboys were ridiculously overpriced and that he was committing financial suicide. Within a few years the team is printing $30 million a year in profit. The Dallas Cowboys are worth $10 billion today. This episode is what I leane

[00:00] David: 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 Jones as a ruthless cost cutter. A few weeks ago, I was telling you about Ingvar Kamprad, who's the founder of Ikea, starts ikea when he's 17, works on it until he dies at 91 years old. And Ingvar wrote a document which they call the Ikea Company Bible. It's actually called the name of the document. It's the testament of a furniture dealer. I…

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