In this episode, we discuss the false accusation that a prominent CEO was a racist for using a racial slur, and how corporate and political interests have manipulated the media and the public to make it seem like the CEO was actually a racist.
00:00:31.000It's affecting their ability to strive to succeed.
00:00:34.000It's telling them that they can't succeed on the basis of their race and things like this.
00:00:38.000This wave of what the left has referred to or the establishment has called social justice, in my opinion, is mostly about gaining power, political power, corporate power, or otherwise.
00:00:47.000And there's one story that happened several years ago, and it's about the CEO of a very large and prominent company being essentially falsely accused, or I should say the media spun a narrative, that this CEO was a racist for describing a slur, in fact saying it was a bad thing to say, but it doesn't matter.
00:01:08.000And it wasn't just Papa John Schnatter, who's... I pronounce it right, right?
00:01:14.000There was also another story that I brought up in this old video about Netflix, where a guy was actually doing a training where he was like, here are the words to avoid, and by simply saying the word in a descriptive way to tell people it was bad, ended up losing his job.
00:01:26.000Now, that one was crazy, because the guy ends up going to HR, where they're like, what happened?
00:01:30.000And he said, I was explaining to people that, you know, these words were bad enough to say them, and they're like, what words?
00:01:34.000And he says it again, and then they're shocked.
00:01:38.000You asked him what he said, and he was saying it was wrong.
00:01:41.000Cancel culture is real, and it's been going on for some time, and it's evolving, and this is why I brought up what's happening with kids, with critical race applied principle, because this is the extension, the evolution, or another component of what we saw with cancel culture.
00:01:55.000Now we see a lot of people in media saying cancel culture is not real, it doesn't exist, because all these rich and famous people, they're still rich and famous, but here's a story of a guy who did nothing wrong, who was ousted from his own company, started taking his name down from buildings, Now that's insane, and in my opinion, it's an effort for some group to gain power.
00:02:13.000In this instance, it sounds like corporate and political interests realized they could manipulate public perception and opinion because everyone thinks, obviously, racism is bad.
00:02:21.000So they can twist things, use a morsel of truth, and build it up into a conspiracy theory or some false accusation that you can't really falsify.
00:02:30.000We're going to talk about that and we're going to talk a bit about just what's going on the labor market, what's going on with our kids, and we are joined by the CEO, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the former CEO of Papa John's, John Schnatter.
00:02:42.000Do you want to just quickly introduce yourself?
00:02:44.000John Schnatter, thanks Ian, thanks Tim for having me.
00:02:46.000Proud to be here and I think you told me to lead it off with better ingredients, better pizza, Papa John's.
00:02:52.000I used to, I gotta be honest, I did this video, you were talking about how I did this video in 2018 and you were like, it was spot on and everything.
00:03:00.000I vowed never to buy Papa John's again because of what they did to you because it was, I read the news and I'm like, this is clearly BS.
00:03:07.000Here's a guy who's on a phone call saying like, hey, here's a bad word people shouldn't say.
00:03:10.000And they were like, we're gonna fire him and destroy his life now because of it.
00:03:13.000And I used to think that the better ingredients, better pizza thing was just marketing.
00:03:18.000I'd see on the TV and I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, better ingredients, what does that mean?
00:03:22.000Well, no, we actually order pizza all the time, and when we do, we order Papa John's because I looked up the ingredients.
00:03:28.000I'm not going to name the other pizza places, call them out specifically because, you know, lawsuits or whatever, but these other big chains, they put weird stuff in their pizza.
00:03:37.000One company puts Splenda in their crust.
00:05:20.000You know, good strategy can overcome mediocre tactics, but bad strategy can't overcome great tactics.
00:05:26.000So, from the get-go, we were always authentic and about quality, but we didn't really have a tagline.
00:05:31.000So, we read the book Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Reeves, 1969 of all, and read the book and talked about how you differentiate your product with your slogan.
00:05:43.000It's got to be truthful, you know, Volvo safety.
00:06:25.000I'm very excited to meet Papa John because I learned to drive on a Camaro and his story about recovering his lost Camaro is like a hero story to me.
00:06:40.000All right, everybody, before we get started, head over to TimCast.com.
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00:06:49.000You're also helping support our journalists, of which we are hiring more people.
00:06:52.000We had two more people start just the other day.
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00:07:03.000So again, go to TimCast.com, but don't forget to like this video, share this show with your friends, subscribe, hit the notification bell, assuming all that matters, and let's just, uh, we're just gonna jump in and have this conversation.
00:07:16.000So real quick, real quick, just the general context is, I think it was 2018, the story breaks that you, you know, at the time, the CEO of Papa John's, was on a phone call.
00:08:02.000And unbeknownst to me, they taped the conversation.
00:08:05.000And throughout the call, they, they tried to bait me when I was looking at who is the laundry service, the ad agency was trying to get me riled up and to say something that was going to hurt myself.
00:08:15.000But I didn't know that at the time that that was a was a setup.
00:09:30.000But Kendi is the—I guess he's the progenitor of anti-racism, which is an ideology that states in his—I've got to be very careful how I say this, for obvious reasons.
00:09:41.000I mean, look, we're talking about Kendi says that he wants racial discrimination.
00:09:46.000So anti-racism, according to him, is more racial discrimination.
00:09:50.000So that's why, you know, they take these phrases and try to control them.
00:09:54.000And that's part of how they play this game.
00:09:56.000So to put it simply, you're the CEO of this company.
00:09:59.000You're doing a regular training phone call.
00:10:00.000It was like a sensitivity training or something, right?
00:10:57.000Yeah, I gotta point out, I said this before the show, talking about a racial slur and the history of the word and its mechanics and how people feel about it is different than calling someone that word.
00:12:04.000He was a hero on the left, and he has a bit where he goes on stage and says as many racial slurs as he can, and then actually calls two very prominent black comedians the N-word, and even I, like, by today's standards, I'm like, wow.
00:12:43.000I think the problem with you saying the word was that they were able to manipulate that in the press.
00:12:51.000Changing it from John says a word and describes it as something you don't say and can criticize someone for saying it to John used a racial slur.
00:13:00.000Used it as if to imply you called someone a name.
00:13:03.000The challenge now is there are instances where I was actually was talking to somebody We have people come on the show all the time asking us about censorship and what do we have to watch out for because we know YouTube is very, very ban-happy.
00:13:17.000And then someone was like, are we allowed to say the N-word?
00:13:31.000And they're like, yeah, yeah, because you can't say that either.
00:13:34.000Like just by saying that, YouTube's algorithm will probably flag this video, downrank it, demonetize or whatever, simply for bringing up a word like that.
00:13:43.000And so there were these instances where I was talking to people.
00:13:46.000Explaining to them the problem with not being able to even describe things anymore.
00:13:50.000There is a very famous documentary about a man named James Baldwin.
00:13:54.000I cannot tell you the name of that documentary because YouTube could ban us for simply saying the name of the documentary.
00:14:01.000And it's not using the N-word as most people know it.
00:14:03.000It's a different N-word we also can't say.
00:14:06.000And how am I supposed to describe to people the various words that can't be said if there's a bunch of different words that start with the letter N?
00:14:14.000And so when I heard that story about you, I was like, well, how do you tell your employees don't say these words when you can't actually tell them what the word is?
00:14:22.000Well, I think there's no place for the word period.
00:14:26.000The thing I like about what you're doing on the weekend is that you're working on your culture.
00:14:29.000You know, you're trying to change things and set an example and make the world a better place.
00:14:34.000And so anything that further divides our country, anything that doesn't really involve like kindness and thoughtfulness and consideration and collaborative alliances for our fellow man, I think that should just be off the table because The media kind of thrives on fear.
00:14:50.000To your point, if the journalist, the media, would have done what you did, all you did is do a little homework.
00:14:57.000I read the stories and thought about it.
00:15:10.000And if journalists really cared about their dignity and their integrity, I think it's because they're not honest.
00:15:23.000And I think the American people are tired of being lied to.
00:15:26.000But what I want to do with this situation is I want to find a way to emphasize forgiveness, pardon the unpardonable, forgive the unforgivable.
00:15:35.000And let everybody know that sometimes you're going to get a raw deal, and sometimes you're going to get kicked in the teeth.
00:15:42.000And that's not cool, especially in this situation, because the race thing is pretty brutal to be painted in that box, especially on a false narrative.
00:15:49.000But if we can find a way for other folks to inspire them to get through their adversity, then that would be, to me, that would be the bang for a buck that I get out of going through all this.
00:16:03.000I mean, when you have what we're seeing in schools, it's Critical Race Applied Principles.
00:16:09.000They call it Critical Race Praxis, CRP.
00:16:12.000We call it Applied Principles because the acronym's a little bit more accurate, in my opinion.
00:16:17.000But you have them, you know, just going to children and they're teaching children to be racist.
00:16:23.000So yeah, I mean, if it's not... I agree with what you're saying, you know, we want to inspire people to be kind, to be critical thinkers, to improve themselves, to build a culture.
00:16:33.000People need to be responsible to a certain degree.
00:16:35.000We want to help each other, but we also got to have some responsibility.
00:16:37.000Well, what's happening now is You try to be nice.
00:17:27.000Another gentleman, Mark Shapiro, who was head of governance.
00:17:30.000He wanted the marketing business, and he knew that as long as I was chairman of the board and involved, that it was a conflict of interest for a board of directors to have an account, a marketing account.
00:17:40.000Of course, when I got off the board, the first thing they did was gave Mark Shapiro the 40 million dollar
00:17:46.000marketing deal and he got a 10 million dollar package Wow, so
00:17:50.000Complete violation of duty of loyalty, but we had a couple board members that
00:17:55.000they had personal gain a company was making a lot a lot of money and
00:18:01.000we had a Washerman who on laundry service that agency he was good
00:18:07.000friends with Roger Goodell member I'm hammering Goodell in the paper going good. He'll get
00:18:12.000your act at Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the NFL I'm hammering him that you know you got to get this solved
00:18:17.000to the players and So Goodell didn't like being called out on that.
00:18:21.000So we had, we got Goodell, we got Wasserman with Laundry Service, Steve Ritchie with Papa John's and Mark Shapiro.
00:18:50.000You know, we'll live to see another day.
00:18:52.000I've got a lot of things I'm working on, I'm excited about.
00:18:54.000But a lot of good, hardworking people that wake up and woke up every day to make Papa John's great, they lost their jobs and their families got hurt.
00:19:48.000Let's play it for three seconds and get on with life because, you know, you got to figure out a way to use this whole, I don't know if you want to call it an episode or what a chapter in the book, whatever.
00:19:59.000We got to find a way to propel this and use this to our advantage to make society better.
00:20:04.000Were you freaking out when it all started happening?
00:20:24.000I knew it wasn't truthful, but I didn't understand how it happened.
00:20:28.000How do you take something, best place to work in Kentucky, making 160 million bucks a year, we're growing, we just passed 5,000 stores, and how do you make it into this mess on a false narrative?
00:20:39.000And so I didn't really quite understand it.
00:20:41.000And then probably two or three months after this broke, it was like, You know, I think they set me up.
00:21:52.000Your brain is numb because you don't understand.
00:21:55.000How they could take something that was that benign and anti-racist, it was a sensitivity training on what not to say, and then flip it.
00:22:04.000Remember, Forbes said he said the N-word, but what they didn't say is he said he never uses the N-word.
00:22:09.000Colonel Sanders used it, so they took it out of context.
00:22:14.000but it was probably five or six months into it I went okay this was a setup and then we started putting the pizzas pieces together pizzas hopefully we won't get barred on YouTube for that one and then probably a year and a half and it was like okay and now every piece I've never seen a lawsuits They do this.
00:23:13.000Let's all move on with our lives in a positive way.
00:23:16.000Unfortunately, the board of directors of Papa John's is not, we talked about coward, does not have enough solid sense of self to take the hit and admit they didn't do a proper investigation, they made a huge mistake, they panicked, and they did a lot of damage to this brand.
00:23:38.000And then it sounds like the other people were just like, hey, I'm not sticking my neck out for this.
00:23:43.000Like I said, you know, we see what happens, you know, with these these these extremists who go around with with Molotov cocktails and crowbars and bats smashing windows and attacking people.
00:23:54.000People are scared of what's going to happen.
00:24:01.000They need to be flying airplanes and making soft drinks.
00:24:04.000Papa John's needs to be making pizzas.
00:24:06.000But when you have a weak board, and they get this pressure from all this political aspect, and this group that's probably the silent you know the or the loud squeaky squeaky then they they do silly things and they need to fly airplanes and get people there safe and sound and they need to make soda pop and Papa John's needs to make pizza but some for some reason these these boards are so they pretend like they're leaders in our community and they're put together and they have high integrity and dignity and they're really made like paper dolls
00:24:37.000You know, any negative PR, they just fold like puppets.
00:24:41.000And I had a weak board and it cost me dearly.
00:24:43.000Yeah, I think I think there's a Gen X maybe, I guess.
00:24:50.000Gen Xers and younger boomers are much more interested in no confrontation.
00:24:56.000And so now you have very loud, prominent activists.
00:25:18.000So it's that very boisterous small percent that tear things up, tear buildings up, tear cities up, you know, and do crazy things that cause the rest of us a lot of grief.
00:25:33.000I think you know the worst thing out of everything when I saw this story about you was that this is one of the most if you want to if you want to if you want to call out cancel culture we'll talk you know I think the you put cancel culture in encyclopedia they show a picture of what happened of you and what happened to you.
00:25:50.000They didn't just get you fired, you know, removed from your position.
00:27:26.000Let's don't further divide the country.
00:27:28.000And I really feel like we were accomplishing that goal.
00:27:30.000And of course, our terminology, our nomenclature, the left couldn't get on it because we were not
00:27:36.000We were there just to teach free markets.
00:27:38.000And so I think the left really had an issue with us going into these universities and teaching free markets, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship.
00:28:45.000You know, how you do the technical part of a carburetor on a Toyota or whatever it is.
00:28:49.000But we actually wanted the school room adjacent to the workshop, a micro kind of deal, to teach these kids how to have a career, how to have a job so they don't get out of college and owe, you know, $150,000 in debt on student loans.
00:29:01.000Do you think that there was maybe a political component to what happened to you then?
00:29:05.000I mean, you've got special interests that don't want what you're teaching kids in these universities.
00:29:10.000They certainly ripped that out the moment they could.
00:29:13.000Well, you're asking the conspiracy question.
00:29:17.000Well, I guess is the conspiracy beyond just being set up by, you know, people want to make money?
00:30:15.000So a lot of people, you know, conspiracy is a dirty word.
00:30:19.000And yeah, I gotta be honest, I'm fairly anti-conspiracy in a lot of ways because you need a lot of evidence to back up these big stretches.
00:30:25.000However, when you tell a story like that, that you said, you know, solve this to the players and the coaches' benefit, is that what you said to players and coaches?
00:30:34.000Goodell needs to solve this debacle to the owner's and player's satisfaction.
00:30:39.000To take that and clearly take it out of context to make you look bad, a standalone complex would be when a bunch of people do something that effectively acts in concert to create the appearance of a conspiracy, but they're actually just doing it independently.
00:30:54.000So if you had 10 people who all stood up at the same time and yelled that they were fans of Papa John's, people would assume they orchestrated it.
00:31:04.000They came together and planned it at 10 o'clock.
00:31:07.000We're all gonna stand up and shout, we like pizza!
00:31:09.000A standalone complex would be, seemingly by chance, they all stood up at the same time, independent of each other for some reason.
00:31:15.000So when you see what happened to you, perhaps, it doesn't need to be a conspiracy.
00:31:19.000It could just be that when people saw there was an opportunity to go after you, political components were like, now's our chance to get rid of these free enterprise programs in these universities.
00:34:18.000I'm curious as to how this is happening, how you could have the program that espouses independence, individuality, entrepreneurship, that's the one that gets removed?
00:34:28.000I mean, that should be the resilient side of things, right?
00:34:32.000You do have a way with turning things on their head.
00:34:34.000Let me chew on what you just said, because you just did in real time what you did back in 2018.
00:34:51.000Well, what I mean is, if you teach people to be responsible, independent, smart, cunning, and to be good people to try and help others, how is it that these are the ideals that seem to be faltering?
00:35:03.000You know, particularly in this story, but in my experience, I think a lot of people are seeing it.
00:35:07.000You tend to have the big government, you know, entitlements.
00:35:13.000Maybe there's something that being a good person misses.
00:35:19.000I'm not saying don't be a good person.
00:35:22.000But maybe when you're a good person, you overlook the fact that some people might be lying to you.
00:35:25.000Well, again, back to with your audience here on, you know, you gotta own your own BS.
00:35:44.000I mean, I made sure that nothing was going to happen to them.
00:35:48.000And, okay, we now have established they want the $160 million, they want the marketing business, you know, so they want to get rid of John.
00:36:10.000I mean, that is about as bad as you can do to a founder of a pizza company that did it by the book, that played the long game, and took everybody up with it.
00:36:19.000And the question for the house is, how come I didn't see that?
00:36:43.000But then you got to flip that on its head and go, I don't want to go around life going, I got to worry about people screwing me every second of the day.
00:36:48.000So as you can see, we haven't quite reached the forgive the unforgivable.
00:37:48.000We really were more in the people business than the pizza business.
00:37:51.000It was a fantastic group of individuals.
00:37:53.000And that's how we got the thing over 5,000 stores.
00:37:57.000But I think you can't, you know, you just got to stay positive with this.
00:38:06.000I think that if you take care of people and you do the right thing, then sooner or later, you know, karma is a real deal.
00:38:12.000I mean, karma, you know, what goes around comes around.
00:38:15.000You're definitely right about forgiveness.
00:38:16.000I think we're about to enter the age of like more transparency, especially in government.
00:38:19.000And when we start changing our government, there's going to be, we're going to start finding all these crimes and criminals within the politicians.
00:38:25.000And it's going to be really, you know, people are really going to want to punish them.
00:38:29.000But I think we have to forgive these people.
00:38:32.000Hillary Clinton's email scandals, for instance, we got to forgive these people and make sure that if we move forward in society, it's all together.
00:38:38.000Otherwise, those rich people in the shadows are going to try and avoid getting caught, and they're going to try and do damage to the people attempting to move the system forward.
00:38:45.000So, I'm full with you about this forgiveness era.
00:38:50.000I mean, some people are really, really bad people.
00:39:00.000If there's no justice for horrible crimes, then people lose faith in the system because... I've already lost faith, man, because the justice is... And you don't bring it back by saying bad people can get away with bad things, but good people get punished.
00:39:11.000Well, you know the Ben Franklin quote, a hundred guilty people Better to escape than one innocent suffer.
00:39:16.000I think that maybe that's 10,000 guilties should escape rather than one innocent suffer.
00:39:45.000I don't know if there's a real, simple solution to everything we're seeing.
00:39:49.000I don't want to get too dark, but we saw a year of rioting.
00:39:54.000We saw — you know, I talked about this earlier on my other channel — 60 Secret Service agents injured at the White House after left-wing groups pulled down the barricades, started fires in a Secret Service guard post and in the church.
00:40:06.000Sixty Secret Service officers injured, and they get away with it.
00:40:09.000In fact, when Donald Trump was brought to the emergency bunker because of this extreme violence, the media mocked him and made fun of him.
00:40:19.000And now you have January 6th with those hearings today, and it's inverted completely.
00:40:23.000Now the officers are crying on camera.
00:40:26.000Now, of course, I think what happened on January 6th when you actually watch the footage of the violence is horrifying and wrong, and these people should be held accountable.
00:40:31.000The problem is you have a large group of people who see what just happened.
00:40:35.000They see 60 officers can be hurt, the president can be ushered to the bunker, and the media will laugh.
00:40:41.000But then you get, you know, a few hours on one day with another riot, which is also bad, and they're holding congressional hearings about it.
00:40:49.000This is going to shatter regular people when they're looking at what's going on and they're going to say, I'm not playing this game anymore.
00:40:56.000And what I mean by that, I think a lot of people are going to start becoming just completely non-compliant in the sense that they have no confidence in the system.
00:41:03.000If someone says, you know, if the government issues a mandate, do X, they're going to be like, why should I care?
00:41:08.000You know, it's a free for all on this side and nothing, I'm just not going to engage anymore.
00:41:13.000This is going to lead people to feel like the system doesn't work, they are insecure in their person, in their belongings, in their family, and it's going to destabilize the country unless there is justice.
00:41:23.000And that means, by all means, justice for the people on January 6th, so those rioters who were fighting with cops and attacking them will get charged for their crimes.
00:41:30.000But it also means all of the rioters from the past year have to be charged and held accountable as well.
00:42:19.000Whether you're left or right, the people that wake up every day and make our country great, they're just trying to make the right decision for their families.
00:42:28.000Sometimes I get on my... I have friends both sides, and I love them both.
00:42:32.000Sometimes I argue with my friends on my left because I'm going, I think your ideology overrides your intelligence, because that doesn't make any sense.
00:42:39.000But it's a healthy dialogue back and forth.
00:42:42.000The progressive elite at the top will scorch this earth.
00:42:48.000And that's the piece that upsets me, is that I don't think that the folks at the elite progressive left top have any regard for the working men and working women.
00:43:23.000So they're willing to sacrifice the individual, not protect those rights.
00:43:27.000That's part of why centralized planning of governance doesn't function, because they're out of touch, they can't identify with the crowd.
00:43:34.000Well, also because it foments revolutions.
00:43:36.000If you keep sacrificing different groups or ignoring their needs because your focus is solely on the greater collective, you end up with all of these different organizations around you saying we're tired of being mistreated.
00:43:48.000When you focus on the individual, when you guarantee the individual's rights, you have a whole grassroots network moving all the way up from people who are like, I feel like my rights are being protected.
00:43:57.000So as the progressive left starts to gain more and more power, starts to dictate what the Democrats do, you start seeing more utilitarianism, and in turn, you're going to see more and more chaos.
00:44:07.000I mean, I think that's why they left the, leave the borders open in Mexico, because those folks are going to come over and vote left.
00:44:14.000And they shut the borders to Cuba, because those folks are going to come over and say, you don't want to have what we just had for 30 years.
00:44:20.000Hypocrisy is pretty unbelievable in those two border situations.
00:44:24.000We saw in Miami what the pollsters were saying was safe Democrat went Republican.
00:44:30.000Because the people in Miami know exactly what these words mean.
00:44:34.000The people in South Texas are actually experiencing the problem of the illegal immigration.
00:44:39.000But I will issue a partial clarification or partial correction.
00:44:44.000These people don't need to come and vote left.
00:44:46.000There's a lot of people who say that if illegal immigrants come across the southern border, they will become citizens and immediately vote.
00:44:56.000But the census doesn't ask you if you're a citizen.
00:45:00.000So when a million people come across the border this year already, they can place these people in certain areas.
00:45:08.000Then on the census, how many people live here?
00:45:11.000And that will affect the amount of electoral votes that area will have.
00:45:16.000I think it was the Heritage Foundation said that California gets one extra electoral vote based on their illegal immigration.
00:45:22.000Even if these people don't vote because they can't, because they're not citizens, it still is more power in the electoral process for these groups.
00:45:30.000Now, if they do, it's also more congressional seats.
00:46:51.000You don't understand why this is happening.
00:46:53.000Unfortunately for many of these people, you have the Pied Piper of the progressive left telling them the real problem is not that they've opened the borders or that they've destroyed industry.
00:47:04.000The real problem is the industry itself.
00:47:07.000So what happens when you have people who instead of saying, hey, wait a minute, maybe it's a problem that a million people this year crossed our border welcomed right in by Joe Biden.
00:47:43.000When you have, and they're doing it out of military bases, out of I believe military bases, The Biden administration, these are videos that have been published.
00:47:51.000You see them taking kids, putting them on planes, they flew them to Tennessee and then just released them into community centers.
00:47:57.000Republican politicians, they were shocked.
00:48:07.000A thousand times more respect for the illegal immigrants who come to this country believing that this is their opportunity for freedom and opportunity than I do for the progressive left that come out and say America is evil and racist and it's a hellscape.
00:48:22.000But a system cannot be maintained when you have a million people just come in.
00:48:27.000Economies are not infinite bubbles of free resources.
00:48:31.000Economies have ebbs and flows, they have balances, there's supply and there's demand.
00:48:34.000So if you have a massive influx of a million workers or people looking for work, at the same time you have massive unemployment and labor shortages, I mean, you're adding more problems to the mix and we've yet to solve them.
00:49:13.000When the people immigrate here legally, we are getting the best.
00:49:17.000These people who are leaving Nigeria and come here and they're extremely successful because we are getting passionate individuals who are like, I'm going to have that dream.
00:49:24.000The challenge, I suppose, is the people who are jumping the line.
00:49:29.000I mean, Biden is basically just shuffling them through and dropping them off.
00:49:33.000We need to be able to make sure people survive, people flourish, and that a rising tide raises all ships.
00:49:38.000Yeah, I'm thinking about vertical farming, because with this influx of people, and like you said, they consider the mouths to feed.
00:49:43.000Have you followed like the, like it's called the phenomena of vertical farming, and like Arrow Farms, I think, in Jersey is the largest indoor vertical farm where they like, grow greens. You can really only grow green vegetables like
00:50:18.000Now, we could have done that on a regional basis, but we had a heck of a time and spent over 100 million bucks a year just getting the chemicals out of the ingredients.
00:50:48.000You're saying with 5,000 stores, it was difficult to do organic, trying to get the chemicals out of the food.
00:50:53.000How do we, as this wealthy nation, support a million people coming in You know what's funny is when it comes to the climate change stuff, they say America is one of the biggest polluters.
00:51:03.000Well then the last thing we need is a million people coming in and adding to that.
00:51:08.000Yeah, this is, um, this really hits home with me.
00:51:12.000This is near and dear to my heart because the next, whatever, next Papa John's I do, whatever, the four criteria, it has to be in my soul.
00:51:19.000It has to be something that I breathe and really feel, you know, sacred.
00:52:24.000Yeah this is an aura ring it measures your sleep.
00:52:27.000If you're not sleeping good at night, yeah, this is the body recovers mentally, emotionally, physically, um, all your organs at night, especially on your deep sleep.
00:52:36.000So you, this modestly, it's 300 bucks.
00:53:37.000But this is really good for your sleep.
00:53:40.000Talking about the universities, we were talking about the program to teach people free market and then the big government side.
00:53:46.000We opened this podcast talking about these kids who are being indoctrinated.
00:53:51.000They're being told they can't succeed because of their race, things like that.
00:53:56.000And I'm worried that this is going to teach a generation not to try.
00:54:01.000They can't be successful and will make them dependent.
00:54:04.000So, you know, when you were telling the story about how you have this college program, I mean, they're going to the grade schools right now.
00:54:09.000I'm curious what you think about, you know, what our kids are going through and what do you think is going to happen with that?
00:54:22.000Because under, you know, between 15 and 40, those generations, you got processed food, you got social media, you got internet, you got all this technology, you got all these technical devices around, you got pharmaceuticals, you got super high anxiety, you got a little bit of deterioration of the family.
00:54:40.000I'm really worried about that demographics.
00:54:43.000And when I hear critical race theory, the law of unintended consequences here are, you know, there's going to be tentacles going every which way.
00:54:51.000I'm worried that's actually going to hurt the black community more than it's going to help them.
00:54:55.000There's a viral video right now where there's this black father.
00:55:00.000And I think it's actually one of the best criticisms of the critical race applied principles.
00:55:05.000So theory would be just the academic literature and the applied principles would be what they actually tell the kids and what they implement.
00:55:13.000And this is a father who says, he just very politely says, Hey, you know, uh, my, my kids came home and they were very scared.
00:55:20.000And they said that you talked about slavery and, and, and Jim Crow, but nothing in between.
00:55:26.000I'd appreciate it if you just, you know, let my kids be kids and grow up a little bit.
00:55:30.000Cause I want them to be the best they can be, but they're being told they can't.
00:55:33.000So, you know, and that, that was basically it.
00:55:47.000What I don't like about what's happening in these schools and what worries me is that we had the story the other day of fourth graders being told to go through this critical race, you know, applied principles packet and answer all these questions.
00:55:59.000And they tell the white kids that you're oppressors, that you're evil, you know, that, you know, you need to recognize what you've done and your ancestors, you know, the sins of the fathers are yours.
00:56:07.000And then they tell the children who are not white that you can't succeed because of your race and because of these things.
00:56:13.000What's going to happen to a kid who's told they can't succeed?
00:56:15.000They're going to say, when they fail, when they stumble and fall and hit their knee, they're going to look at the crack in the ground and say, that's the fault of the white man who made the sidewalk, not me for not paying attention.
00:56:26.000If you go through life that way, refusing to acknowledge where you have made a mistake, how could you ever possibly improve?
00:59:26.000So I bring this up because there's a lot of people who are grifting, who are manipulating, who are trying to make a quick buck, but there's really easy ways to make legitimate money if you just think and you work hard.
00:59:37.000Well, you know, back to this board of directors, I mean, you can talk about what they did evil, this, that, you know, the other, and just how wrong and it's horrific, but it's, it's their problem.
00:59:49.000All I can do every day is wake up and put the best version of John Ford that I can put forward.
00:59:54.000And as long as I'm better myself and I'm better than the people around me, then hopefully that'll spread a lot, a lot better and a lot more poignant and a lot more graceful than people that are doing wrong.
01:00:06.000So when we had people from your crew show up, we also had a bunch of free, you sent us some pizzas.
01:00:13.000So we're downstairs and Papa John's Pizza shows up.
01:00:15.000I was told by some of the people who were working with you that you can, they were like, oh send him a picture, he will point out everything that's wrong with the pizzas.
01:00:22.000And at first I was like, do you mean like the Right.
01:00:25.000since he left, they've ruined the pizzas.
01:00:26.000No, no, no, just like the pizzas aren't perfect, right?
01:00:29.000So actually one of the first things you do is you come in, you're like, let me take a look.
01:00:32.000And then you point it out, you know, here's where they made mistakes.
01:00:35.000This should have done this, this should have been better.
01:00:37.000I only bring this up because you mentioned there was a bonus thing that you had.
01:00:40.000That you were paying out a decent amount of the profits and bonuses to your staff.
01:00:46.000Well, the guest experience can't exceed the employee's experience.
01:00:53.000If the employee is having a miserable day at work, they're going to take it out on the guest.
01:00:57.000So, we always put the employees first.
01:01:00.000And a big part of that was we made them feel like owners.
01:01:02.000And we did that through profit sharing.
01:01:04.000And if you got the product right, and you got the service right, and you had a good attitude, usually the customer was pretty happy.
01:01:10.000So we figured out how to measure that.
01:01:12.000We put out a great pizza, and when they got it right, and with good service and good attitude, then we paid bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars.
01:01:21.000So our employees, not only were they getting promotions and getting raises, they were getting huge bonuses.
01:01:26.000And so that was what I call a win-win-win-win-win.
01:01:29.000Was there a percentage that you allocated to this?
01:01:31.000Well, the managers, for example, are 20%.
01:01:35.000But it goes right up from the manager, right up to the supervisor, right up even to the people in the office.
01:01:43.000We had the bonus system aligned from top to bottom.
01:01:46.000So most corporations, the guy not only at the top gets his four, five, six, seven million bucks, and the people at the bottom get taken advantage of, which is immoral.
01:02:23.000Measurement meant the quality, which you just alluded to, the 10-point scale and the quality of the product, how long it took to get the pizza there, how many times the phone rang, did the driver add a hat on, did the driver smile, that kind of thing.
01:02:32.000The measurement system, the matrix to measure the quality, and what we call demonstrable value, which is basically the customer experience.
01:02:39.000And the second thing they took out was the principles.
01:02:43.000We really are big on principles, and we think you got to have core values.
01:03:32.000Well, real quick, though, to follow up on this point, the reason I brought this up is that Bernie Sanders proposed 20% stock sharing with the workers so that when profits come in, a quarter of the profits are divvied up and then sent out to the workers.
01:03:45.000It's fascinating to me that, you know, I've heard quotes from you about minimum wage being too low.
01:03:50.000You're talking now about this bonus structure, and it sounds like a lot of the things the left claims to want, you are actually doing.
01:03:56.000Chick-fil-A gives half the money to their managers.
01:03:59.000Half the profits go to the store manager.
01:04:00.000So I'm big on ownership and I'm big on splitting the pie up.
01:04:04.000Say you're making $100,000 a year and you give employees $30,000 of it.
01:04:12.000Believe it or not, within a year or two, they're going to have that number up to 140 or 160.
01:04:18.000So that 70% of 100, if you had 100% of 100 within two or three years, the 70% of the
01:04:26.000number is going to be a bigger number.
01:04:27.000So yeah, it compounds itself for sure.
01:04:29.000Chick-fil-A, they pay their staff really well also, right?
01:05:15.000We had $5 pizzas in the Broom Closet, $0.50 beers in the front, and $1 McBurger on the side.
01:05:20.000Was it like the similar ingredients as to what you used as the years went on, or did you kind of tweak the We always, we always really did have good integrity with ingredients.
01:05:28.000We didn't have the ingredients when we started off with that we had when I left in 18 because we didn't have the money to, you know, to get rid of all the chemicals and some of the other things.
01:06:00.000How did that become a freestanding building?
01:06:03.000We're in the broom closet and we're in there for a couple months and we're doing well in the bar.
01:06:09.000We're selling 50 cent beers and we're doing these dollar McBurgers and we're doing real well and so we start selling these five dollar pizzas on the back and you know we do ten dollars a day and then we do a hundred dollars so one Tuesday we did 200 bucks on the Tuesday in this broom closet.
01:06:22.000My brother and I were jumping up and down.
01:08:23.000I walk in this Domino's and I look at the manager and I said, what are you doing a week?
01:08:26.000He said, I'm doing $5,000, $55,000, $6,000 a week.
01:08:27.000And I looked at him and I said, we're doing $9,000.
01:08:33.000And I turned around and walked out of that Domino's, and I thought, if I can beat them in Jervisville, Indiana, I can beat them in the whole world.
01:09:17.000And the dining room was all the expense and the capital outlay.
01:09:21.000So the second store, we went to the formula, put $100,000 in to build it, do $10,000 a week in sales, make 10% profits with $1,000 a month rent.
01:09:30.000And that formula got us to about store 20 or 25, which would have been $19.89, $19.90.
01:09:36.000And then from there, we just kept getting a little bit better and kept growing that top line.
01:09:40.000And then, as I said, went public in June of 93.
01:09:43.000Did, uh, did Domino's have a dining room too?
01:14:29.000Enzyme, calcium, sulfate, ascorbic acid, vitamin C, which is vitamin C, calcium phosphate, L-cysteine, yeast, cornmeal, they mention, they break down what enriched flour is and what's in it, so folic acid and stuff like that.
01:14:41.000But I noticed there's these dough conditioners, I don't know what that is.
01:14:44.000That's potassium bromate, but they're not calling it potassium bromate anymore because they use it in yoga mats.
01:16:07.000This is not run for the employees, or for the team members, or for the quality of the product.
01:16:13.000If they're staying pretty clear with this, pretty clean with this, that's a real good thing to uphold that better ingredients, better pizza promise.
01:16:20.000But did you always have soybean oil in it?
01:16:23.000We always had canola oil in the sauce.
01:16:24.000Did you use different oils in the sauce?
01:18:22.000So, when we hired kids out of college, these food scientists, we tried to get them to learn how to take chemicals out.
01:18:31.000And what you were just reading on that list, these kids have been taught how to add stuff And they looked at me like I was crazy.
01:18:38.000I said, you know, we need to get this stuff out of here because you have no idea what it's doing to your stomach and your evolutionary part of our system that doesn't know how to deal with all these chemicals.
01:18:48.000And we lost a lot of food scientists because they like putting stuff in.
01:18:53.000They like putting all those chemicals in and being kind of a witch's brew of chemicals to make up, you know, taste or You know to extend the product whatever and we said no we
01:19:02.000like to keep things real simple And if I can't read it and two or three you know
01:19:06.000Four ingredients per ingredient, and I can't pronounce it Then I don't want it in the product and that that took some
01:19:11.000doing and that was over a hundred million bucks a year when?
01:19:13.000I left I don't know if they're still doing or not I'm gonna spend in it to get the stuff out was over over a
01:19:17.000hundred million bucks to so to walk it I thought so
01:19:21.000Now, there's two ways to look at this.
01:19:23.000One is, you want to keep the integrity of the Better Ingredients Better Pizza promise alive and well and healthy by walking the talk, and walking the talk costs a lot of money.
01:19:32.000The flip of that is, processed foods may be addictive.
01:19:35.000So we may have been actually putting something in the product that wasn't as addictive as if you put the stuff in there.
01:19:41.000We never got around to figuring out were people eating less Papa John's because it didn't have chemicals in it and it wasn't addictive.
01:19:48.000That was a trade-off that we looked at.
01:19:52.000They have like slot machines where like they make you addicted to these social media platforms.
01:19:56.000You want to get the likes and You know what scares me, man, is that Dave Thomas, Wendy's, he was very much a better ingredients kind of guy, or at least that's the way I remember I was a little kid.
01:20:06.000I remember going to Wendy's and they had a salad bar.
01:20:08.000But as soon as Dave Thomas passes, it goes Wall Street, right?
01:20:12.000They want to make the profits, crank the profits up, crank the margins up, cut costs, cut corners, and then you end up with worse ingredients, worse burgers, right?
01:20:25.000KFC's got one-time great fried chicken.
01:20:28.000Average KFC does about a million, too, in volume.
01:20:30.000The average Chick-fil-A does five million.
01:20:32.000So when you start running the business for Wall Street, you can have some short-term success, but in the pizza category in particular, it's so hyper-competitive that if you're playing games with product quality and not really taking care of your employees, then sooner or later it's going to catch up with you pretty quick.
01:20:48.000I worked at Wendy's in 1980 when we used to patty the beef in the back and do everything by scratch.
01:21:32.000I don't want to say it was bad, but Chick-fil-A is really, really good.
01:21:36.000And, you know, whenever we go to Chick-fil-A, the service is great, people are working really hard, everything is clean and set up properly, and it's a well-oiled machine, and the food is always fantastic.
01:22:08.000And this processed food is very dangerous.
01:22:10.000And we're going to have to get our arms around it because it's a big culprit in some of the most prevalent and outrageous health issues we're having with our country.
01:22:20.000I heard this, it may be apocryphal, but I heard that after Colonel Sanders franchised out and sold, he went to go try the new KFC and he said it was awful and disgusting or something like that.
01:22:32.000I read that somewhere on the internet.
01:22:34.000I had something in the garlic butter at Papa John's and it was, I don't know if it's a different recipe than it used to be, but it was harder to digest than I remember it being.
01:23:10.000I've got an organic garden I play with.
01:23:13.000I would, you know, when you came in and you were looking at the pizzas that were made by the local Papa John's and you were like, oh, see, there's a problem.
01:23:18.000And you're like pointing to the crust.
01:23:20.000I'm like, man, a pizza made by you must be the best pizza.
01:23:40.000And so I made every single pizza and that got old.
01:23:43.000And so, um, but that was kind of funny, but no, there's plenty of folks.
01:23:46.000Um, there's great pizza makers at Papa John's and there's a lot of them that can make a better pizza than I can, but I do like making pizza.
01:23:52.000So you had to learn how to trust other people to make your ingredients similar to what Tim's doing with the Timcast brand.
01:23:58.000He's letting other people create shows on the network.
01:24:03.000It's like letting somebody watch your child.
01:24:05.000I mean, you know, I can only imagine a mother, you know, dropping her newborn off, you know, four or five, six months into the grandparents, even.
01:24:16.000I mean, you just, you know, when it's your baby, it's sacred.
01:24:51.000Then I've got to see the product and say, OK, here's my notes on it.
01:24:55.000And I definitely think, you know, maybe this is a bit arrogant, but if I was the one always doing everything, it would be, you know, top tier, A++, but it's impossible.
01:25:07.000It's not possible to be doing every single aspect.
01:25:11.000You need to have people who can take that load off, who can start expanding the business.
01:25:16.000And you've got to do your best to find the talent and the drive and the passion for people who want to do it and do it right.
01:25:19.000I can only imagine going to 5,000 stores is... I couldn't even imagine that right now.
01:25:24.000Well, what's the saying, if the captain of the ship has to be the captain of the ship, he's really not a good captain.
01:25:30.000A good captain has plenty of people around him that can run the ship just as good as he can.
01:25:33.000The issue you got is, you have the producer, the manager, the supervisor, and the leader.
01:25:59.000You know, maybe once we launch enough other shows, I'll be pushed into the back and maybe just... You know, look, you made your pizzas for some time, and then you eventually were just running the company, but you still knew how to make the pizzas.
01:26:11.000I definitely think there'll come a time where, you know, I think even within the next five years or so, it's gonna be impossible for me to do four hours per day of podcasting.
01:26:23.000And first of all, my throat's gonna explode.
01:26:25.000But also, it's just, if this is gonna be something bigger, better, more important, if we're gonna be building culture, Then my talents are better served helping other people start filling that role and expanding and helping make those changes.
01:26:37.000Inspiring people and having fun and making that content.
01:26:40.000I'll probably be better off doing that.
01:26:43.000So you know one of the things I used to work on Saturday and Sundays.
01:26:46.000I used to actually do podcast recordings.
01:26:48.000I decided to pull that back and focus on the vlog and now it's much more relaxing.
01:26:53.000But it gives me more time, so I reduced the amount of content I did per day as well.
01:26:56.000I used to do three additional segments, which totaled about 50 minutes.
01:26:59.000Cut that out, so I'd have time to go to the bank, to file paperwork, to deal with legal stuff.
01:28:05.000And then I've got my two other channels, which are fairly similar, which is me sort of, you know, monologuing, right?
01:28:10.000That's the segment that you saw when I talked about your issue in 2018, the circumstances around what happened to you.
01:28:15.000And I really do think that in the next few years, this is going to be what ultimately survives and carries on.
01:28:21.000Something that is longer, more in-depth, I think.
01:28:28.000You know, a lot of people have told me they like the in-depth breakdowns that I do, you know, personally.
01:28:33.000But I gotta figure out a way to empower more people to this idea of freedom, individual responsibility, the free market stuff.
01:28:42.000To a certain extent, I wouldn't consider myself a laissez-faire capitalist.
01:28:44.000We've got to figure out how to grow that.
01:28:46.000And so what I'm trying to say is it'll probably come a time in a few years where those other channels take a backseat and this becomes the primary flagship or whatever.
01:28:55.000But that's only going to be because we'll have 100, 200 employees producing movies, documentaries, other podcasts, and just have this massive network.
01:29:02.000And I'm going to have to do quality control, basically.
01:29:04.000So, you know, I could make a mean, figurative podcast pizza, or I can teach people how to make, you know, and then oversee and make sure they're all doing it right and we grow that business.
01:29:14.000Well, you know, just one meeting with you and two observations.
01:29:21.000Remember, I did not see this board of directors doing what they did.
01:29:25.000I think your gift is you have an acute ability to really be able to cut through things and really get to the heart of what's going on real quick.
01:29:34.000And you do it in a way that's actually very congenial.
01:29:37.000It's very, you know, it's very nice, which is most guys that are that sharp usually are pretty Poignant with their bite, but I think you've got a great way of just cutting through the nonsense and getting right to the meat of the matter.
01:29:50.000That's gonna be a tough attribute to replace.
01:30:01.000You know, what's fascinating is the things I've already dealt with in trying to run and start business.
01:30:06.000The Board of Directors thing, you didn't see coming, but I have to imagine that, you know, throughout your career, you had a ton of beef and problems and, you know, complaints and threats of lawsuits.
01:30:18.000Well, good judgment comes from bad judgment, and bad judgment comes from bad experience.
01:30:23.000So it just, that comes, it just, you know.
01:30:27.000Again, the longer I live, the less I know I know.
01:30:30.000Just when you think you're on top of life and you got it figured out, it's like raising kids.
01:30:36.000You're just not quite as good at it as you thought you were.
01:30:39.000There's always something coming from somewhere and that's just what makes life so interesting.
01:31:31.000What we do is we have a system that I mentioned earlier, the measurement system, where we have secret shoppers and we order pizzas and we order enough that we know through a bell-shaped curve with standard deviation who's doing what.
01:35:02.000We had two fundamental principles when we started out, and that is take care of our people, be good to our employees, our team members, what makes Papa John's great, and take care of our product.
01:35:13.000The last couple years, I feel like we lost our way with those two attributes.
01:35:17.000I'm pounding on the board of directors pretty hard.
01:35:29.000Right now, with COVID and all these XX dollars, excess dollars, they can't do anything wrong.
01:35:35.000The phone rings off the hook, regardless how good the pizza is.
01:35:39.000And so, but sooner or later, you know, Our luck's going to run out, and we're going to have to get back to serving good pizza with good service.
01:35:47.000I'm pushing pretty hard, but I'm sorry to hear that.
01:36:04.000Again, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
01:36:07.000I mean, if you want, you know, it's garbage in, garbage out.
01:36:09.000I mean, I've not figured out how to get quality or authenticity or superiority without paying for it.
01:36:15.000I just haven't figured out, you know, how you get something really good at the end if you don't start off with really something good in the beginning.
01:37:00.000A lot of people are, I think, you know, a lot of people probably became fans when they realized that they were steamrolling you and they were coming after you and it was unjust.
01:37:08.000So a lot of people were probably just, you know, they looked into your story, they learned about how you treat your employees, they learned about your story with your car, and they're like, here's a guy who works hard, was successful, and boy, did they screw you over.
01:37:19.000I'd say boycott these no-good you-know-whats.
01:37:22.000But the problem is, I love the franchisees.
01:37:25.000I mean, if it was just these corporate, you know, bank robbers, you know, these folks that are just out for the money, I'd say let's boycott Papa John's until they get back to taking care of the employees and taking care of the product.
01:37:37.000I can't do that because I love the franchisees and they're the small business owners at their interface.
01:37:41.000So if I could, if I could say boycott all the corporate markets, um, you know, um, then, you know, then that may be a go, but right now we can't say boycott Papa John's, uh, even though the products slipped and the concern and the, the love for the employees has slipped because it will hurt the franchisees and I would never do anything to hurt the franchisees.
01:38:01.000Is there a situation where if the corporate wanted to change the ingredients to something terrible that the franchisees could override that and say, we're going to use this at this restaurant?
01:38:13.000They could be pretty verbose about it and boisterous, but you gotta understand the franchisees are probably going to want to go along with the cheaper ingredients because they'll make more money short term.
01:38:24.000So franchisees are probably a little bit more looking at the finances and the economics, whereas the founder looks at it from the spirit and the soul of the brand, from the authenticity and the quality and the passion for doing it first class.
01:38:39.000That's why I like a business like Papa John's.
01:39:19.000We got rid of, we cleaned, there was a three-legged stool, which is really a four, but three, the three-legged stool on the University of Louisville, and it was corrupt, was the Board of Trustees, we had to get rid of that, was the Athletic Department, we had to get rid of all those folks, they were paying athletes big money to come to Louisville.
01:39:38.000And then the foundation, which they embezzled money out of.
01:39:52.000And no matter what they do, you can't fire them.
01:39:54.000And we were going to put a stop to that and make sure that we're here for the kids.
01:39:59.000And we're here to better their education.
01:40:01.000We're not here so that you can make $200,000 a year and go to Italy every other year.
01:40:08.000We ruffled a lot of feathers trying to clean that university up.
01:40:11.000Myself, David Grissom, and we had a great board of trustees.
01:40:14.000We worked hard on that for about two and a half years.
01:40:17.000But remember, we're hitting them from the top with a three-legged stool, getting ready to be the fourth, and then we have this entrepreneur classes inside that university.
01:40:24.000So we're stepping on a lot of toes with free markets, entrepreneurship, voluntary exchange, and at the same time cleaning house over here from an administrative level.
01:40:34.000Jonathan Warner says, Sir, when I was in training nearly a decade ago, you presented me and my brothers with pizza and a hell of a drag race with your beautiful Camaro.
01:40:43.000You honored my brothers that day and from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
01:40:47.000Appreciate you beating it out of the races.
01:40:49.000The one thing I did love is running at Z-28 with Don Schumacher, Lear Pritchard, and that whole team.
01:40:59.000One of the things they did when they ousted me is they took my car away from me and wouldn't let me race anymore.
01:41:04.000So I miss those days at the racetrack.
01:41:09.000They're the greatest fans in the world and I got to race that car and then, to your point, we got to give money away just about every other weekend for some kind of charity.
01:41:20.000Matter B Gaming says, Sell Ian is a pirate t-shirt for $40, then give us the option to download a copy for free so we can see how much money is lost to piracy.
01:41:33.000We've been, we've been arguing about whether pirate downloading content that's being sold.
01:41:38.000And I mentioned to you guys beforehand that if someone idea for a future currency with our new crypto thing would be if someone took my digital art and sold it, the crypto would pay them and me.
01:43:29.000And they've gotten a little bit out of shape.
01:43:32.000And they know if I come back in, First thing we're going to do is have to clean our act up.
01:43:36.000And I think that's a little bit of a deterrent for the franchisees that want me to come back.
01:43:41.000Because we are going to, if we do get back, if they crash the thing, which we've crashed it three times before with bad product and bad service and no measurements and no prints.
01:46:46.000The FDA comes in from one of these food processors that we talked about and says, hey, that product is inadequate and it's not up to standard.
01:46:57.000That processor goes to their lobbyist, which are probably paying a half million bucks a year.
01:47:02.000That lobbyist goes to that senator, that congressman, and says, hey, You know, the FDA agency's jamming me up here, I need to get this product through.
01:47:10.000The center or whatever calls the agency and says, hey, if you don't pass the product, we're gonna terminate you or get rid of your agency.
01:47:16.000So the agency is at the beck and call of the lobbyist, i.e., you get all these chemicals and our food supply is poisonous.
01:47:25.000Yeah, potassium bromate particularly is a scandal.
01:48:26.000But I guess the issue is, if you say you're anti-racist, someone will take that clip and then try and spin it.
01:48:32.000Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you've got to look at what's the intent.
01:48:36.000I always look at where somebody's heart's at.
01:48:38.000If somebody comes in and says, you know, by the way, Tim, you look sharp today, you know, or, hey man, I like, you know, you're looking, you know, I mean, one's a compliment, one is, you know, put down, but you said the same thing.
01:48:53.000So it's always, I just look at the intent, I look at the heart.
01:48:59.000But the media and the board of directors and the university, they certainly didn't.
01:49:02.000You give them the opportunity, you know.
01:49:03.000But you know what, to be honest, I don't think it mattered necessarily.
01:49:06.000They would have found something to twist.
01:49:08.000If they were coming after you, they were coming after you.
01:49:11.000They were coming after me, and it's quite flattering.
01:49:14.000They couldn't have found enough other stuff, you know, to get rid of me, so they had to fabricate something.
01:49:20.000There wasn't enough meat on the bone to say we had a violation of Sorbane's Oxley, or we have a bad culture, or sales are bad, or we're not making enough money.
01:49:30.000So what they do, they go out and fabricate a false narrative with racism.
01:49:34.000There's a, there's a less common saying, if somebody wants to steal your bike, no amount of bike locks will stop them.
01:49:41.000You know, uh, so, you know, this is something you, that hacker friends of mine have pointed out.
01:49:45.000And I think that's the common among many of my friends.
01:49:48.000If somebody, if you want to get a security system, it will stop the people who are passing by, who look in your window and your door's locked and they'll keep walking.
01:49:55.000But if you are the target and they're out to get you, they'll find a way.
01:49:57.000So it sounds like in your case, they were just like, we'll take whatever we can get and we'll make it the thing.
01:51:34.000I have heard a lot of people, well I shouldn't say a lot of people, a couple people say that, you know, they worked for Papa John's and now we have this and they said it was great.
01:51:41.000The employees were treated really well.
01:51:42.000We had scholarships for the employees.
01:51:44.000Like I said, we were the best place to work in Kentucky.
01:51:48.000It was really a blessing from God to watch that thing operate and to give all these raises and all these promotions.
01:51:54.000I mean, just, you know, just to watch the smile on, you know, when people go home and parents say, you know, I got a raise and they tell their kids, I mean, you know, they get new cars, they get new homes.
01:52:04.000I mean, that's probably the most gratifying thing of the whole gig is when watch people get promotions and get raises.
01:52:10.000Did your brother, oh, did your brother stick with, what was the last thing you said?
01:52:51.000To really do a good job, you have to be proud of what you're doing.
01:52:59.000And when you're making good pizza, and you know it's good, you have an emotional attachment to your job.
01:53:06.000So now all of a sudden we're, and I've heard this from franchisees, the corporate really doesn't care what we're serving, just get it out the door.
01:53:12.000That lack of pride, then that seeps down to the place is not clean, the service is not as good, and you don't take your job with the kind of fondness or affection that you would if you really made a good pizza.
01:53:24.000So yeah, once you know how to make a good Papa John's pizza, it's with you for the rest of your life.
01:53:28.000Would they use bread machines to get the dough ready, or do they do it by hand?
01:53:40.000It does make that position a lot easier.
01:53:44.000I don't know enough about dough machines to say it's a lot better or a lot worse.
01:53:49.000I know it's not better, but I can't really slam on dough machines because I don't have a lot of experience, but I can tell you that it's put in there for cost savings.
01:53:57.000And usually when you save cost and it's not 100% hand-tossed, then you're probably sacrificing quality.
01:54:03.000The human heat seems like you want to put your love and your spirit into it.
01:54:25.000The interesting thing about the movie The Founder, the reason I bring it up somewhat jokingly, is that you had these two brothers who were very serious about the quality of their food, and this guy comes in and he's like, nah, fasts, out the door, powdered milkshakes, whatever, by the land, and it was very corporate, not quality.
01:56:24.000Yeah, the one thing, one problem I had when I was at Papa John's, it seemed like every time I stepped away, the thing kind of crashed and burned.
01:56:31.000So I was basically a prisoner of my own creation.
01:56:34.000Today, Rob Lynch, the CEO of Papa John's and the board of directors, they're basically prisoners of my creation.
01:56:40.000They're the ones that, you know, I mean, I get dividends, you know, stocks at an all-time high, and I don't have to do anything.
01:56:45.000So, I like the fact that Shaquille O'Neal's an employee, you know, we pay him to do the ads, and we pay Rob Lynch as an employee, and he basically works for the shareholders.
01:56:54.000I like being an owner and letting them be the employees and letting them be in the prisoner of my creation.
01:57:24.000Where I had some chickens and we had a little bit of land, but we didn't really do much other than having some chickens.
01:57:28.000And then, uh, now we moved out here from- I was in New York five years ago for a little while, and then we were in Philly for a little bit, now we're out here, now we got our own chickens, we got our own garden, we're growing our own vegetables.
01:57:44.000Now they're up to laying four eggs per day.
01:57:47.000We got an incubator, and this is gonna be real tough, but we got a bunch of the eggs in the incubator, and it looks like there may be like four or five that are growing, and then we're gonna have a bunch of baby chicks, and then we're gonna open up Chicken City, and there's gonna be families, and it's gonna be fantastic, man.
01:58:05.000Clef the Misfit says, I swear to God, if you don't make a vlog episode of Papa John's house making pizzas and riding in the Camaro, then the whole channel is pointless.
01:59:03.000If you go back to Pluto, I think, you know, B.C.
01:59:06.000He has a saying, what was great architecture, what was great engineering, what was great poetry, simplicity.
01:59:15.000And if you really watch somebody that's really gifted, take Tim and watch what he does, he makes it look, you know, or you take a sculpture, you watch Tiger Woods hit a golf ball.
01:59:23.000They make it look so easy and common and what we have found that the key to complexity, you know, the universal complexities actually are achieved through the porthole of simplicity.
02:00:07.000And then the last question we have for you is one of the most important questions that you could ever possibly answer.
02:00:12.000But first, Alex Maggior says, Quality has gone down the toilet in the last two years.
02:00:18.000It was my family's favorite and now we don't go there anymore.
02:00:20.000I hope you can save the name from Columbus, Ohio.
02:00:23.000I'm sure it kind of sucks to hear a lot of people saying, you know, things like this, but you know, a lot of people have that, have those comments.
02:00:31.000But now for the most important super chat, the most important question so that you can settle the age old debate.
02:00:38.000Vantasy says, Tim, can you please ask the Papa if pineapple belongs on pizza?