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The Empire Builders Podcast

The Empire Builders Podcast

Auteur(s): Stephen Semple and David Young
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 Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.The Empire Builders Podcast Développement commercial et entrepreneuriat Entrepreneurship Gestion et leadership Marketing Marketing et ventes Réussite personnelle Économie
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  • #223: Untuckit –

    #223: Untuckit –
    Sep 18 2025
    Snippet Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick in business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Pinpoint Payments Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple. And we're talking about empires being built and fortunes being made and brands being established and something different happening. And you mentioned the theme for today's show. The topic is a shirt brand called Untuck it. Stephen Semple: Untuck it, Dave Young: And I am a little familiar with them. Number one, Stephen Semple: Oh my God, a fashion brand that Dave's a little bit familiar with. Dave Young: Oh, I own two of them. I have two shirts. And I feel like I'm responsible for the brand. Stephen Semple: Okay. Dave Young: I'm just that kind of guy that my torso is the weird length and I cannot for the life of me keep a shirt tucked in. So years ago, I quit trying, unless I'm going to be in a tuxedo with a cummerbund that tightens that up. I'm like, you're not going to find me in a tucked in shirt because it'll untuck itself. So I've always embraced the idea of buy shirts that look good, whether they're tucked in or not, and Untuck It actually created dress shirts. Stephen Semple: Yes, sir. Dave Young: That you don't tuck in. You've got quite enough tail to be tucked in. So I'm interested in how they got their start. And I bought my two shirts from an actual Untuck store in a mall in Portland, Oregon. Stephen Semple: There you go. Yeah. Dave Young: So I think I know where you're headed with this, the experience. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Today they have, I think they're approaching 90 stores now today, and they also now have got a women's line and of course a major strong online presence. But it was founded by Chris Ricobono and Aaron Sendez in Hoboken, New Jersey in 2010. And they are, as you said, a shirt designed to be worn untucked. And in fact, their early ads featured Chris basically walking down the road talking about how this is what he wanted to create. And they're kind of funny actually. If you go look at them, they're a great origin story. And he's walking down the street in New Jersey and he has this unbelievably serious tone to him about how he wanted to fix this whole shirt problem. And that actually in the early days, David Letterman and Colbert and whatnot were making fun of these ads, which he loved. Like, "Hey, I'm getting some free press here." But yeah, go and check them out on YouTube. Kind of great. I can really understand why those ads work. So Chris grew up in New Jersey and he took finance and college, and he was actually always really nervous about corporate America. He was worried about his career. And so his whole idea was he was going to get a job, but while he got the job, he was going to look for what the next thing was going to be. So he was always looking for the next idea. And he was nervous in corporate America because he wasn't good in crowds, and he wasn't good with spreadsheets and he wasn't good with socializing. So he always sort of felt like he was an outsider there And eventually got a job being a salesperson and medical devices for GE. And he was there for about 10 years, but he knew he was never going to be long-term. And while he was at GE, he did an MBA at Columbia and it stimulated a lot of ideas for him, and he knew he needed to get an idea. And the early one that he did actually was a wine blog. He did this wine blog called Pardon That Vine. Dave Young: Oh wow.
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    21 min
  • #222: Avis – They Try Harder…

    #222: Avis – They Try Harder…
    Sep 10 2025
    Avis found a loophole for selling used cars at whatever price he wanted. This became the norm for all rental companies. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [ECO Office Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young, here alongside Stephen Semple. And again, breaking from tradition, if you listen to the episode just before this, which is the Hertz Rental Car, you realize that we have a spoiler. Stephen told me the topic of this podcast, gosh, a whole podcast ago. Stephen Semple: That's it. Dave Young: We talked about Hertz Rental cars, and now we're going to tell the story of Avis, number two, but they try harder. Stephen Semple: If you haven't listened to Hertz, I recommend go back and listen to it because these two stories kind of tie together. And it is interesting. We think about Avis as number two. They're not number two any longer. They're now number three. It's now Enterprise, Hertz, Avis. But that's a whole different thing. Avis is still... Look, it's a massive business. They have 5,500 locations. They do 5 billion in sales. They're a big deal. And they were founded by Warren Avis in Detroit in 1946. So just shortly after the end of World War II. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So the war's over. Troops are returning home. Cars are now being produced for the domestic market. Because, if you remember, one of the things we talked about in the last episode was you could not sell a car domestically. All car production was going into the war effort. We've got people returning home. Roads are being built. The suburbs are the place to be. Cars are now being produced for the domestic market, and sales are exploding for cars. It's going crazy. And so Warren decides to open a Ford dealership. He sinks 10 grand of his own money in. He gets a $75,000 loan. But there's one problem with being a new car dealer at this time. The federal government puts a cap on what you can charge for a car. So there's price controls on cars. So it's actually hard to make a living selling new cars because the margin is really thin, even though lots of people want to buy it. Dave Young: If you're renting cars, you're selling them over and over and over almost. Stephen Semple: Well, you're really close. Warren finds a loophole that you can hold onto a car for six months, and then sell it as a used car, no restriction. So this is what he starts doing. However, this creates an expensive inventory problem. So it's hard to do and hard to grow because he's holding onto the cars for six months. Around this time, Warren Avis rents a car from Hertz. Now, if you remember in the Hertz episode, while Hertz did amazingly well during the war because you couldn't get a car and they had cars for rent, at the same time they couldn't replace their cars. So the cars by this time were pretty rough. Dave Young: Yeah. Oh, I bet. I mean, usually rental cars now, you don't have to have very many miles on them to have them be a little rough. Stephen Semple: And Hertz was also in what was now becoming poor locations because Hertz had located in downtown locations, and now people are moving out to the suburbs. So it was out of the way, kind of a crappy car. So Avis decides to take his new cars that he has on the lot, rent them, and then sell them as used at the six-month mark, which means he would always have new cars for rent. Dave Young: Yeah, this is the business model they're all in now. Stephen Semple: Yes.
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    15 min
  • #221: Hertz – 10 Years After The Model “T”

    #221: Hertz – 10 Years After The Model “T”
    Sep 3 2025
    Walter Jacobs was an automotive geek. From the assembly line to owning a Ford dealership to Rental Car King. Walter built and Empire. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. Teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is ... Well, it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients, so here's one of those. [Travis Crawford Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple, and we're talking about empires. We're talking about big businesses that started out as usually smaller businesses. None of them ever start big, Stephen, when are we going to talk about businesses that just started huge? Stephen Semple: I don't know that they're as interesting, Dave Young: But today we're talking about Hertz Rental Car. Stephen Semple: Yes. Hertz Rental Car. Dave Young: And in my mind, they've always been the big one. They're the big guy. They're the top dog. Stephen Semple: Well, actually in the market today they're number two. Enterprise is the largest one, and they're number two, and then Avis is number three. Dave Young: But the Enterprise combined ... They conglomerated a bunch of them, right? Stephen Semple: Yeah. And there's even a few that are under Hertz as well these days. None of them are just one banner anymore. Dave Young: Yeah. Everything's becoming one brand. Stephen Semple: They're big. They do over nine billion in revenues in 160 countries, and they're part of the S&P 600. So they're a big deal. Dave Young: They've been big for a while. Stephen Semple: They've been big for a long time. Dave Young: I remember when Avis started, this was back in the Mad Men era. The big idea, the big advertising slogan for Avis was, "We're number two, but we try harder." So at that point, Hertz was number one. Stephen Semple: Yeah. We'll find out as we go into the story, Hertz was the first national brand as well. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: So they really, and in many ways, kind of created the car rental business as we know it today. Dave Young: Awesome. Stephen Semple: They were founded by Walter Jacobs in 1918 in Chicago. And as I was saying, today they do like nine billion in revenue. So it's 1918 in Chicago, and the Model T Ford has been out for 10 years. There's about six million cars on the road, which is about 60 cars per 1000 people in the United States at that time. So they're pretty new, but you'll see a car. They're not foreign, but they're not new. It's kind of at that stage where you'll see them. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: So now back to Walter Jacobs. Walter's this real car junkie, and he had started out actually working on an assembly line, and now he owns a Ford car dealership. He really sees cars as the future. And when he opens the dealership, he has some sales success, but he runs into a problem. Lots of people are coming in to test drive a car, but they really still see them as a novelty. So if you think about it, there's no driver's license. Vehicles are standard, they're not automatic. And he would take people out for this test drive and it's kind of exciting, and it's a thrill, but what he's finding is that people are coming to do these test drives for the thrill. They're not really buying, to the stage where people come back and offer him money to take the test drive. Dave Young: Do another test drive. Stephen Semple: It was almost like an amusement ride for them. So lots of people want to drive, they don't want to buy it. And Walter looks at it and goes, well, people like the idea of a car.
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    18 min
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