Listen in as we hike alongside the entrepreneurial trailblazer, Bob Wisse, the founding member of Priceline, on a journey through his remarkable life and career. This conversation takes us through Bob's mother's harrowing tale of survival during WWII, her inspiring journey to America, and the work ethic she instilled in him from a young age. As we explore Bob's early ventures, from his love affair with college and transforming a mule barn into a vibrant community hub, to working for American Airlines and navigating the airline industry, we gain insight into his unique approach to employee empowerment and business success.
As our conversation with Bob unfolds, we unveil the secrets to his success in the fiercely competitive world of business and sales. Bob's instinctual knack for identifying talent leads to the growth of a travel agency's sales from $20 million to $175 million. He elaborates on the importance of confidence in closing a deal and shares his experiences with high-profile figures like William Shatner. We also get an insider's look at his time with Priceline and the missed opportunities and valuable lessons learned along the way.
We wrap up this episode by discussing Bob's life post-Priceline. His adventures span across the real estate and cannabis industry, and he opens up about his fight against cancer. Bob shares the life philosophies he's developed over the years, emphasizing the importance of embracing challenges, celebrating success, and valuing honesty and ethics in both business and life. From international business travels to a glimpse into the decadent society of Singapore, this episode is an inspiring look into the life of a self-made entrepreneur who thrived on street smarts, hard work, and a fair share of luck. Tune in for an enriching conversation with Bob Wisse, an embodiment of entrepreneurship, resilience, and success.
(0:00:01) - Entrepreneurship, Nature, and Survival Stories
(0:09:34) - Career Journey and Employee Empowerment
(0:19:44) - Sales Force Growth and Price Line
(0:29:44) - Bill Cosby, Price Line, and Advice
(0:42:55) - The Evolution of Price Line
(0:57:55) - Mastering Timing and Making Demands
(1:06:22) - Sydney Living, Priceline Price, Chinese Investment
(1:12:32) - Street Smarts, Entrepreneurship, and Success
(1:24:17) - Celebrating Success and Embracing Challenges
Contribute to the granola bar fund :)
Follow The Journey on Instagram
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Submit Feedback
Apply to be a guest
Become a Sponsor
Listen in as we hike alongside the entrepreneurial trailblazer, Bob Wisse, the founding member of Priceline, on a journey through his remarkable life and career. This conversation takes us through Bob's mother's harrowing tale of survival during WWII, her inspiring journey to America, and the work ethic she instilled in him from a young age. As we explore Bob's early ventures, from his love affair with college and transforming a mule barn into a vibrant community hub, to working for American Airlines and navigating the airline industry, we gain insight into his unique approach to employee empowerment and business success.
As our conversation with Bob unfolds, we unveil the secrets to his success in the fiercely competitive world of business and sales. Bob's instinctual knack for identifying talent leads to the growth of a travel agency's sales from $20 million to $175 million. He elaborates on the importance of confidence in closing a deal and shares his experiences with high-profile figures like William Shatner. We also get an insider's look at his time with Priceline and the missed opportunities and valuable lessons learned along the way.
We wrap up this episode by discussing Bob's life post-Priceline. His adventures span across the real estate and cannabis industry, and he opens up about his fight against cancer. Bob shares the life philosophies he's developed over the years, emphasizing the importance of embracing challenges, celebrating success, and valuing honesty and ethics in both business and life. From international business travels to a glimpse into the decadent society of Singapore, this episode is an inspiring look into the life of a self-made entrepreneur who thrived on street smarts, hard work, and a fair share of luck. Tune in for an enriching conversation with Bob Wisse, an embodiment of entrepreneurship, resilience, and success.
(0:00:01) - Entrepreneurship, Nature, and Survival Stories
(0:09:34) - Career Journey and Employee Empowerment
(0:19:44) - Sales Force Growth and Price Line
(0:29:44) - Bill Cosby, Price Line, and Advice
(0:42:55) - The Evolution of Price Line
(0:57:55) - Mastering Timing and Making Demands
(1:06:22) - Sydney Living, Priceline Price, Chinese Investment
(1:12:32) - Street Smarts, Entrepreneurship, and Success
(1:24:17) - Celebrating Success and Embracing Challenges
Contribute to the granola bar fund :)
Follow The Journey on Instagram
Tiktok?
Submit Feedback
Apply to be a guest
Become a Sponsor
So let's start this. All right, bob Wiss, are you OK with being recorded on a podcast? No, yes, well, there goes that liability. This is I Took a Hike. I'm your host, darren Mass, founder of Business Therapy Group and Parktime Wilderness Philosopher. Here we step out of the boardrooms and home offices and into the great outdoors, where the hustle of entrepreneurship meets the rustle of nature. In this episode, I finally visit the source of the legendary New York City drinking water, while learning from a sales goliath. With Street Smart and the founding member of Price Line, Bob Wiss, our topics include the words of wisdom, one of a kind interview techniques and the opaque strategy that made Price Line uniquely ahead of its time. We get a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a mega brand. When I took a hike with Bob Wiss, it wasn't until I embarked on this podcast journey that I realized the impact of problem solving in nature. And now I would like to help you. I invite you or your team to join me on a hike and experience business therapy all while on the trail. Visit itookahikecom for more information on our hiking therapy. Oh, this is going to be a fun hike, all right. So we are at the Old Croton Reserve. This is the reserve where the water reservoir, where all New York City draws its water from. Having been a Manhattan resident for almost 13 years and thinking New York water is the best water, I appreciate this place and this is where all the water comes from, so I think that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is the tastiest water in the world.
Speaker 1:It is the tastiest water with the best pH level.
Speaker 2:As a true New Yorker, it's the best In Iceland. They might disagree.
Speaker 1:You know what? That's the Icelandish but.
Speaker 2:I guess it's the Icelandish and the water is pretty good.
Speaker 1:OK, comparative, but it is very cool to be here because that is a lot of water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a beautiful, whatever you call water break.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whatever it is, that's an aqueduct. We will post pictures of it and you will hear the sounds. All right, so, bob Wiss, who are you?
Speaker 2:I'm just a kid from Europe. I was born in Europe and I've been fortunate in my life to work for a whole bunch of really interesting people, done some very interesting things, hit home runs, struck out just like every entrepreneur in the world, so I'm a very fortunate guy. A while ago I was diagnosed with cancer and when I was told I went back into my car and kind of sat down and did an introspective and I said well, if I had to die tomorrow, am I OK with that? Wow, and I went yeah, I've done almost everything you can possibly do. My bucket list is kind of clear. I still want to go to the Kentucky Derby.
Speaker 1:I can make that happen. I know several people that are kernels and if you do want to go, I can certainly make that happen. All right, so we'll work on that. Get that bucket list checked off, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it all started a long time ago. So my mother was the American dream. Ok, she was a 14-year-old kidnapped by a Nazi in the Second World War and taken to Germany oh wow and disowned by her family because she was a very pretty girl and obviously she kind of fell for the guy a little bit and he was killed on the Eastern Front. She was stuck in Germany at 16 years old, couldn't go home because the father was very anti-Nazi. And she met my father, who was a working prisoner of war, Wasn't Jewish or any of that. He was basically an electrical engineer and they were about 20 miles outside of a concentration camp and she decided that America was the place she wanted to go.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:She busted my father's cojones and told him look, we're going to America in 1954. We got on a boat, we came to America, immigrated to Brooklyn and then that started the American dream. So when she passed away I told that story. It wasn't a dry eye in a place, because the people that knew her loved her. She was a very hardworking, very fun-loving person and I kind of got my work ethic from her.
Speaker 1:So that's obviously really deep. Especially because she was in Germany, I'm sure she had seen a lot of things, oh yeah, a lot of bad things. Did she ever tell you any of those stories?
Speaker 2:I didn't really want her to remember it, ok.
Speaker 1:That's smart.
Speaker 2:I asked my dad as well, and we became estranged back when I was about 20, 25. And he would never talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's some really heavy stuff. Yeah, you got me a little shocked there. I wasn't expecting that part of the story to come out.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a major part of the story. Yeah, the American dream. Part of it was the work ethic that she instilled in me when I was eight years old. I had to go get a job, and it wasn't the fact that she didn't want to give me money, it's the fact that she wanted me to understand that work was cool, that having money in your pocket was good. Yes, so I've been working since I'm eight Delivery guy, gas station attendant, private secretary for a kind of a social club all before I was 16.
Speaker 1:OK, so you have had that hard-hitting work ethic instilled in you from an early age. Yeah, working was the only option. You didn't know anything differently.
Speaker 2:No Right, it was something that became natural, and whenever I did something, I wanted to excel at it.
Speaker 1:So that sets you up on a very successful career path.
Speaker 2:It set me up on a career path and a lot of luck that we made becomes successful. Well, nobody gets to win unless they get a little luck involved and have some good people around them.
Speaker 1:OK. Well, do you believe that we create our own luck? We put ourselves in lucky situations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you put yourself in position.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok. So, yes, I believe that as well, your work ethic got you in front of lucky situations that you would not have been in. Right, ok, good, all right, so fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 2:I went to. I was appointed to the Air Force Academy and by a congressman in Jersey City. Ok, so I went for the physicals, did the tests was going to start. This is 1969, 1970, the height of the Vietnam War. So I went through the whole rigmarole and, probably about six weeks before I was supposed to go in, they sent a representative to the address that was listed on my application, which I didn't live at. Why?
Speaker 1:is that.
Speaker 2:Because my mother used an address in Jersey City, because I was appointed by a congressman from Jersey City and I lived in Fortley, ok, so they bounced me immediately, because that's kind of one of the rules, even with Vietnam. Even with Vietnam, because now I'm draftable, ah, ok, the Air Force Academy couldn't care less with her. I got in or not. It's a question of did you apply? Were you appointed?
Speaker 1:So what was your emotional state after you got booted?
Speaker 2:I wasn't really looking forward to going to war.
Speaker 1:I don't think many were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I figured if I was going to go to war in an 810 airplane or whatever, it would be a lot safer than being in an infantry regiment.
Speaker 1:OK, roll of the dice either way, because I believe planes were being shot down as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I feel safer piloting my own plane and sitting on somebody else's plane. So, plus, it was $2 million. Education at the time, yeah, so I had to get into college. So I went to an emergency school that almost took anybody and it was in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1:OK, what school?
Speaker 2:It was a Tokyo College. Never heard of it, Right? Well, you probably heard of it on a song Tokyo Road by Brewer and Shippler.
Speaker 1:Why don't you sing it for me? I actually don't know the song I'm not singing. All right, I thought I had you there, but I will download it after and take a listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they talk about Tokyo and Tokyo is a typical rural town in Missouri. Ok, and we ripped them off. You know they came and played at our mule barn. Well, let me get digress here. So I accepted I was going to go for a semester to this college, just to get my two S deferment and then transfer back to the east coast of one of the other schools, and I just fell in love with it out there OK, in Missouri. Yeah, the reason was because they had this huge mule barn and a mule barn obviously is where they housed mules and we developed it into a first rate theater, museum, coffee shop, and I was in on the ground floor. So I got to learn a lot about a lot of things I could sew, I could cook, I could build sets, I can act, I can sing, I can dance, I can do all that kind of crap Gotcha. So in business we're all actors, right.
Speaker 1:Yes, we wear a skin or a suit that helps give us the confidence to be able to close or be in front of anybody.
Speaker 2:Or to become creative enough to spin a story Correct Right. A good salesman is about his personality, his ability to talk and communicate, and also to have fun.
Speaker 1:Build trust, trusting relationships and ultimately close the deal which is acting. Which is acting. Ok, I will give you that I actually fully agree with you on that, which is kind of you know.
Speaker 2:they're getting in front of a whole bunch of people and convincing them that you are somebody who you're not.
Speaker 1:Well, I would give them, or give it one step further. I would say it's more method acting where eventually you believe in the role, you are, the character that you portray.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did mostly musical theater, so it's hard to become fiddle or underrope.
Speaker 1:I mean, if that stick works for you in front of your client, then fiddle away, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I spent four years there and I came out and I worked in a bank for a short time. I think everybody worked in the banks in my generation sooner or later. You know $100 a week.
Speaker 1:Counting other people's money Good money in a way.
Speaker 2:And now it was just because you were envious, because people were depositing $10,000 in cash, so you were around it and you were around the money.
Speaker 1:And you're also in a banking or financial institution, which could give you a ladder up.
Speaker 2:Right, so learned a lot about that. In a very short time I was there, my mother got me an interview with Olympic Airlines, which goes back to my Greek heritage. Ok, and while I did well in the interview, my Greek wasn't good enough for I could understand Greek, but I didn't speak it very well. Ok, so they got me an interview with American Airlines. So I started American Airlines in 1975 and rose through the ranks very quickly there. I worked in JFK Airport as a supervisor of passenger service. Then I went into Manhattan and became a sales manager. Then I went to Dallas and became a group supervisor of 1,200 people. By the time I was 27.
Speaker 1:Young age, that's a lot of employees. Yeah, Stepping back though, you said you understand Greek. Can you speak Greek?
Speaker 2:Now I can speak it a little better because I've been to Greece 1,000 times since then. Ok, but if I get into a conversation with the Greek it becomes hard because they speak so fast, well, and also you're not engaged in it all day, every day.
Speaker 1:I actually know the Greek alphabet, not a boy. Yeah, you can say that came from Greek life and a fraternity. And I can say it three times before a match is burnt out.
Speaker 2:There you go. Now you're talking. That's pretty spectacular.
Speaker 1:The stupid games that frat boys play.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I was always a social member of all the frats.
Speaker 1:Ok, that was the smart move. You got invited to all the parties but didn't have to do any of the hard work. That's right. Yeah, ok, so you're managing 1,200 people.
Speaker 2:Right. So then all of a sudden a special project comes along and most of my stick with managing people is to become creative enough to make them want to work. So when I first got to Dallas, the attitude there was really bad. It's such a big airport, there was so much stuff going on that there was no cohesiveness in the employees. So I kind of started doing a whole bunch of stuff, including starting a video magazine highlighting all the employees that were there, did a newspaper, did a contest with the prizes and rewards for good behavior, and we went from the worst to one of the best stations at the Firm American Airlines.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you were a believer in the power of cultural initiatives to help empower employees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought that happy people make happy employees right.
Speaker 1:That is something that, regardless of the industry, we can put that everywhere, right, it's true. Happy employees will have smiles on their faces. Your customers or their customers will see that, and their customers will ultimately be happy as well.
Speaker 2:Plus, remember in your experience in going to an airport people are nervous, People are anxious. Going to an airport sucks. It is the worst Right, so imagine working there every day.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've traveled a lot in my career and personal life and I don't think there's ever a time where I don't feel very anxious driving or getting a ride to an airport where I feel like I'm going to miss the plane. Right, I've never missed a plane, but that feeling just of angst is only there.
Speaker 2:Well, the other half of the people that don't travel a lot are afraid of dying. They've got a metal tube going 600 miles an hour at 35,000 feet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, safest form of travel, though, right, I don't know To you and me, because we look up that stuff. Yeah, but to that Well that and it's completely out of your control, which I guess can spark some anxiety as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of our routes was New York to San Juan and that's a very tough destination because they're very superstitious. Ok, so on Tuesdays we had a 747 that carried 424 people and we would book it to 850.
Speaker 1:Because 424 is an unlucky number.
Speaker 2:No, because on Tuesday there was an accident in the San Juan airport that killed a whole bunch of people, so Tuesday is an unlucky day to fly. So people would make reservations and then realize it was Tuesday and they didn't show up.
Speaker 1:Got it, so you would overbook the flight. Oh yeah, and why is that?
Speaker 2:Because people didn't show up the no show factor.
Speaker 1:I got you.
Speaker 2:So every route has a no show factor.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think airlines still do that today.
Speaker 2:They own book routes yeah, but they're better at it now.
Speaker 1:I don't know if they're better at anything. To be quite honest, airlines have been pretty challenged these days.
Speaker 2:Well, the airline industry has changed quite a bit from our days. When I first started working, it was glamorous to fly.
Speaker 1:Yes, people would dress up. I remember that as a kid you would dress up a little bit more. You'd be excited to be on the plane. What was known as the stewardess at that time actually smiled and wanted to see you.
Speaker 2:And they were all single.
Speaker 1:They were all single they were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you couldn't be married to be a flight attendant back in the late 70s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think HR regulations and PC the. Pc world? Yes, absolutely, the PC world has ushered in some change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so because of my aggressive behavior at the airport and my interaction with employees. Bob Crandall, who was our chief executive officer, was sitting next to a gentleman that worked for Leigh Iacocca and he was in charge of raising money for the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 1:What year was it?
Speaker 2:1983. Okay.
Speaker 1:So it was for the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 2:It was for the whole restoration. Oh, the restoration year In 1986 was the 100th birthday, I believe. Got it okay. So I was put in charge of raising money, because when Crandall took it to the board, the board says we're not giving them $5 million, and so he had to come up with a creative way to get the $5 million. So they put me in charge and I did every kind of fundraising you could imagine. I did 5K runs, I did softball tournaments, I sold t-shirts, I sold hats, I sold chachkes.
Speaker 1:But you put your sales hat on and took it to the extreme.
Speaker 2:Right and also my interpersonal skills with the employees, because I went to every single event right and represented the company and they were very appreciative of that. So we were able to raise the $5 million. We raised like $7.5 million. And then I was at the celebration of Statue of Liberty, sitting right behind Ronald Reagan. Lee Iacocca and Bob Crandall wanted to meet Lee. So I said okay. So when we got there Lee was standing like over about 20 feet away. So I said, mr Crandall, let me introduce you to Mr Iacocca. Mr Iacocca had a little buzz going and he kind of looked at Crandall, looked him up and down and he goes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he walked away and Crandall was like wow, he was not pleased.
Speaker 1:Hey, listener, thanks for hiking along with us. Discover more episodes at hikesupthehikecom, or to recommend an adventurous guest, apply to be a sponsor, discover books along the trail or to simply drop us a line. So what was the buzz going? So if you can't walk a little, we're getting eaten over here?
Speaker 2:So I raised the money for the Statue of Liberty, did the celebrations, went back to Ellis Island, of course, which was the roots of our immigration, and then I was stuck at American Airlines without a gun, and because my advice to people is be very careful of taking a special assignment, because you fall out of whichever department you were in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, once you're successful, you can be too successful.
Speaker 2:Or that you're just absent from the mindset of those people moving forward in those particular departments. Okay, Because my department was advertising, which covered this job, and I wasn't really an advertising guy, but I learned a lot about it, obviously being in the department and I wanted to get back into the field, wanted to get back and be more relevant, if you will.
Speaker 1:Relevancy is an important theme with what we're doing and why I run this show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went for a job as a sales manager in San Francisco and obviously everybody wanted to go to San Francisco or San Diego or one of the Sands. So for my resume I did a whole business plan for the San Francisco sales market which included a whole bunch of analysis on flights and airplanes and all that and I used a Benjamin Franklin quote what's a sundial in the shade? Which means if you're not brilliant, then nobody's going to see you.
Speaker 1:That's right. So it's a solar powered flashlight, which actually is a thing.
Speaker 2:Right. So I was successful in getting a job in San Francisco and while I was in San Francisco I had Oakland, san Jose, san Francisco, all the way up to the northern border of Oregon, and I was excelling at that, having a good time, playing a lot of golf. And I got offered a job to work for the Pritzker family, which is they owned a company that did import, export from China mostly Klim, which is milk spelt backwards, but Klim is a powdered milk. Okay.
Speaker 1:Who was the creative genius behind that naming convention?
Speaker 2:I think it's been around since the 30s, but the Pritzkers had this company called Getz Brothers and they had a travel agency inside of it. So I was hired to run the travel agency and I got it from. I think we were about $20 million when I took it and when I left we were about $175 million in sales.
Speaker 1:Wow. What was the secret behind that? What did you do to get?
Speaker 2:Expansion, build a nice sales force, hired some really good people. You can't do this stuff on your own?
Speaker 1:You certainly can't do it on your own. So what were some of the techniques you used to grow a sales force? Mostly by picking intelligent, thirsty people Did you have a method to identify if someone was a professional interviewer, as with many sales individuals, or you know, I guess in a way seeing through the BS.
Speaker 2:I'm a gut guy, so you know, one of the talents I have is being street smart. You grow up in New York and you see through a lot of people very quickly and I just use those skills in interviewing people by asking any questions and having them you know. If they looked at you and tried to answer it, you're kind of like I'm going to Jesus.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what's one of these questions how?
Speaker 2:do you spell chocolate?
Speaker 1:I would ask you if you were serious today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's if you would ask me if you were serious, then I would have probably hired you.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, okay, so walk me through the method of thinking there.
Speaker 2:Well, in an interview, you're trying to put your best foot forward, correct you?
Speaker 1:want. That's the best person you're going to hire, right there.
Speaker 2:Right, you want them to be non-intimidated and you want to see their extrovert self. Okay, and when you ask somebody to spell chocolate and they get serious about it, you know you want to see H-O-C-O-A-L, and you kind of sit there looking at it and go. You kidding me. But if somebody says, really you want me to spell chocolate, that's part of our interview, and you kind of go eh.
Speaker 1:All right, so I would have passed that test. How often did you get the serious answer? Too many times, too many times.
Speaker 2:So all right, so you're able to weed people out and again you ask other questions. You know the stupid question like what's your worst trait? And if they start explaining to you, you know I'm over this or I'm over that. You kind of go.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, Okay. So my worst trait is that Is that I study too hard or I work too hard. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:If somebody looks at you and goes, I really don't have any. You know you kind of sit there going eh, that's almost the answer, yeah. But if somebody tells you that, whatever they might be, I'm going to do the best that I can to fix them.
Speaker 1:That's a great answer, that's positive, reassuring, without actually giving a trait. I probably would have said you're going to have to speak to my wife for that question, because she observes all the questions.
Speaker 2:Then I wouldn't have hired you.
Speaker 1:Really All right, I'm out. Yeah, nobody likes them, momma's girl. Okay, All right. So one thing that we learned one of the best interview questions you can ask a salesperson is how do you spell chocolate?
Speaker 2:Well for me it worked.
Speaker 1:I like that one. That's a good one. I'm going to use that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just to see the reaction kind of gives you a good hint.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to just segue for a second. That's probably not a good answer, or a response. If you are being pulled over for DUI, you really want me to say the alphabet backwards. That's probably not a good one.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you that, that I would refuse to do it because I can't do it sober.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone can. Right Unless you've practiced it and that's a problem.
Speaker 2:If you've practiced it, then the cop knows that you're drunk. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:So moving on. So you have built this amazing sales force. You grew a company or a sales strategy for 20 million in revenue to 100 million in revenue, and where did your career go from then? Well then, I made a mistake.
Speaker 2:What was that mistake? The mistake was that I sat down with Bob Pritzker, who was my boss, and I asked him for a piece of the company. Ah, and since my last name is not Pritzker, he was a little offended.
Speaker 1:As most business owners would, and I will tell you this as a business owner, having had to face the same conundrum. That is a tough thing to deal with. Especially because you know, the employee has some case for asking for it. More often than not. It's a fine line and that is a very challenging conversation.
Speaker 2:So the opposite of that. You know when the end of this, not the end of the story, but in the middle of my story I had a boss that was the exact opposite, that gave stock and incentives, and all that to encourage people, Stock or options. You didn't know. Well, same thing. I mean an option is just a deferred stock right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it can be reclaimed by the company in the event the employee is no longer employed and invested.
Speaker 2:I think you have the investment part of it.
Speaker 1:The investment part. But let's face it, if you are a privately held company and you're giving out options and that employee has most of the options vested and they leave, they're not really going to want to cash in on a private company's equity, but once they go public, then you get 90 days once you.
Speaker 2:If they go public yeah well. It's a great strategy. You don't want to be in a company that doesn't go public. Back in the Okay back in the day, yeah today I would make a different. I'm talking about the turn of the century here In 2000,. We made a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Yes, if you went public. Yes, absolutely, I mean if you.
Speaker 2:Not to preempt the story, but price line opened at 24, I went to 162 in 10 days.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about that. So the Bob that I know is Bob from Price Line. So let's discuss that, because I think everybody knows PriceLinecom and PriceLine. If you don't, everyone knows who William Shatner is. I hired Will Shatner, you hired Will.
Speaker 2:Shatner yeah, I was part of the selection committee that selected him. He was our second choice.
Speaker 1:William Shatner was your second choice. Yes, who is the first choice for spokesperson for Price Line? Bill Cosby? What yeah?
Speaker 2:Very. Bill Cosby wanted cash and we weren't. We were a fledgling startup. We're not fledgling. We had lots of money behind us, but we weren't going to waste it on a spokesperson. We were more interested in trying to teach the public what name your price was. So all of our money for marketing went into teaching people what it yeah marketing yeah.
Speaker 1:Wait, hold on. So back up here. So Bill Cosby was your first choice. Obviously, he interviewed in front of you. Let me say this I am sure Price Line's happy that Bill Cosby wasn't the choice Retrospect.
Speaker 2:At the time, Bill Cosby was the Mr Dr Huxedable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, heathcliff Huxedable, he was Fat Albert.
Speaker 2:Fat Albert.
Speaker 1:He was everybody that, everywhere he was Put-In Pops, put-in Pops and a convicted rapist.
Speaker 2:Well, he wasn't convicted and he wasn't alleged at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well now.
Speaker 2:A friend of mine started a company called PAGL, which was a professional athletic golf league, okay, and they were putting on events similar to the one that they have now in Tahoe, and on his board was OJ Simpson.
Speaker 1:Okay, another name that they're regretting? Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:So Bill Cosby?
Speaker 1:he won a cash. William Shatter, what Equity Took stock Okay, which is arguably a great move.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And he made about $50 million Only. Yeah yeah, small rounding error.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he was fortunate in that he wasn't restricted, Okay. So when Price Line went from $24 to $162, he got out. Yeah, he could do it With a whole bunch of it. That's so. He made money on the primary IPO and then over the years he got more stock and you know the price of stock for bookingscom right now, which is Price Line bought and changed their ticker to booking, there's about $2,200 a share.
Speaker 1:That is a phenomenal growth.
Speaker 2:Which I had something to do with, which, unfortunately, I didn't get the benefit of.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's talk about your role at Price Line and then let's wind up of why you didn't get the benefit of it.
Speaker 2:So a friend of mine came out to California and another friend of mine was recruited by Jay Walker, who was the brain behind and a brilliant man and a good man behind Price Line. Okay, so he couldn't take the job. So he recommended it to another friend of mine who couldn't take the job. So we're sitting in the Rich Carlton in Newport Beach because I was living in San Diego at the time and he says I got this interview with this guy. I really can't take the job because I took another job. Do you want to go? And I said what's it about? He says well, it's an name, your own price for an airline ticket and you got to put up a credit card, you got to take what they give you. And I said that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What are you? I'm not giving anybody my credit card and I'm going to take what they give me.
Speaker 1:By the way, I think that was my reaction at first when I heard it as well.
Speaker 2:So I said you know, my mom lives in Jersey. I haven't seen her in a while. They send me a ticket. I'll go fly out there say hello to her and I'll go for this interview. Not really serious about the job.
Speaker 1:You just wanted the free ride or the free meal. All right, that's a good strategy.
Speaker 2:Right. So I went to New Jersey, saw my mom hooked up with a whole bunch of friends and we stayed out all night getting stupid, and the next morning I had an interview at 8.30. So I went straight from the clubs. I got maybe 35 minutes worth of sleep. I showered, I shaved, I got in a car and drove up there and I had a nine and a half hour interview on Father's Day.
Speaker 1:Oh wow. What club was it, by the way?
Speaker 2:You don't want to know. I'm not going to reveal it here to protect the innocent. But so I went up there and after nine and a half hours Jay and I came to the decision he was very interested in that he would have Jesse Fink, his COO, call me and take it from there. Ok, so I pretty much thought I had the job. So Monday comes along, I had flown home so I could be with my kids on Father's Day. This is the time difference. I was able to arrive around 8 o'clock so the kids were waiting up, and the next day I'm waiting for the phone call. Tuesday comes I'm waiting for a phone call. Wednesday comes I'm waiting for the phone call.
Speaker 1:Which, by the way, the job that you really didn't want in the first place.
Speaker 2:Right, ok. So now I'm pissed. So I call this Jesse Fink guy and I said I've been waiting for your phone call. What's going on? He goes oh well, we're really busy. I said, well, you might be really busy, but I had a nine and a half hour interview where I did a brain dump on the airline industry. And now you're just going to take my stuff. And what the hell is that all about?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, Understandable. So hey she, which, by the way, that takes a lot of, I guess, courage to make that phone call. So you clearly were an extroverted person always.
Speaker 2:I'm from Jersey. Yeah, I grew up in Fort Lee, so there you go. So he starts like telling me that maybe I'm not the kind of person that they wanted to company because I was being overly aggressive and I said whether you want me or not, fair is fair. Jay said you would call me. It's now Wednesday. You haven't called me. I'd like to know what's going on. I live in San Diego. I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean here.
Speaker 1:What's the deal? You flew me out. So do you think this is a good strategy today to use?
Speaker 2:I think if you value yourself and it depends on the gatekeeper. So Jesse was a gatekeeper. Jay was the brilliant mind behind it. So Jay saw my talent. But to me I was just an administrative deal for Jesse, jesse could have seen you as a threat. More an administrative problem, right? Because they were hiring people so fast or they thought they were going to hire, so he's getting ready to hire all these people. There's only four people in the company so far.
Speaker 1:So this is right at the beginning, right.
Speaker 2:I was one of the original six. So I said look, I guess you're not interested. I'm not interested, have a nice day and never call me again, pound sand. And he's yelling at me on the phone. I'm like boom. So I just looked at my wife, I said that wasn't a great idea and she was like well, you said what you had to say, right? And I said yeah. So about 15 minutes later I get a call from Jesse Fink. He says look, maybe I overreacted, because obviously he went to talk to Jay. And Jay said what did you do? What are you an idiot? We want this guy, this is the guy that we want to hire. Call him back, tell him that I'll speak to him on Friday at 6 o'clock. His time, 6 o'clock rolls around on the Friday. I'm waiting around going. Here we go again. So at 5.59, the phone rings. Pick it up. It's Jay Walker. All right, here's the deal. We want you. In two weeks we're going to give you X amount of money, we're going to give you X amount of stock and you don't have to move. You can operate remotely from San Diego. And how does that sound? So you get what you want. So I said that sounds great, but I'll commute. And he said what do you mean? I said I'm going to be in action. If I give one piece of advice to anybody listening, is that never be remote, it's a very tough concept these days. Yeah well, still, if you're just somebody who wants to make a living, you can do whatever you want, but if you're somebody that wants to get ahead, you have to be seen, you have to be heard, you have to be in it and you have to fight.
Speaker 1:I think that is sage advice and I agree with you coming up with my career. If you're in front of the customer, you're winning that account. If you're on the phone, you're not connecting. The same way If you're on the computer connecting a little better.
Speaker 2:But you're better off. And again, remember I'm a manager that manages by walking around. Yeah, Right.
Speaker 1:Walk the floor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had all these employees. I was always in their space. I was always asking what we could do better. I was always trying to find out about their families and to build a family.
Speaker 1:So you care about your people and you have to be impressed.
Speaker 2:If I care about them, then hopefully they care about somebody else.
Speaker 1:Or you Don't want to impress you. It's not about me.
Speaker 2:I'm about making money, right, so.
Speaker 1:I would say it is about you because, at the end of the day, great employees want to work with great leaders, they want to be mentored, they want to be coached. It's no different than any football team wanting to impress the coach and not get yelled at or really shine. Get that pat on the back.
Speaker 2:Well, when I was in the American Airlines, I promoted 60 people, which is an accomplishment men and women. In the 70s and the 80s there was always men being promoted, but I promoted probably about 30 women. That's great To general managers' jobs, sales managers' job, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Pioneer Right. All right, so you are hired, you are at Price Line, you are in the trenches.
Speaker 2:I was senior vice president of product development and also I have a vast international experience because when I was working for Getz for the Pritzker family, I was the first American travel agent behind the Iron Curt All right, opening offices in Budapest, prague and Warsaw.
Speaker 1:What was that like? As you are an American and being in the USSR has got to be a challenge.
Speaker 2:Well, we didn't get to the USSR, we got to the Eastern Bloc countries.
Speaker 1:Just pretty darn close. Yeah, it was amazing, especially growing up or being in the 80s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at first you were walking through the streets and people had their heads down and if they saw you they wouldn't want to look at you because they could tell you were from. You know, you weren't wearing the sandals, with the socks, all that stuff, and I was there when they took the hammer and sickle down off the parliament building in Budapest, which is really amazing.
Speaker 1:What was that like?
Speaker 2:It was amazing. It was like freedom. You know, you can actually feel freedom.
Speaker 1:You could feel the freedom yeah and that's amazing. You could see the emotions on everyone's face.
Speaker 2:Right, it was. Like you know, they've been begging for this since the uprising in 1956.
Speaker 1:Wow, right, all right, that's empowering.
Speaker 2:Right, so back to Priceline. So we signed American Airlines first and then remember that guy told you about Bob Crandall.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So Bob decided that that wasn't a great idea. He figured that if you had a schedule and pricing that you could win any battle. He didn't need all this superfluous stuff. So we then made a deal with Delta, which I was against, which turned out to bite us in the butt. Why is that? Remember I told you, our stock went up to 162? Yes, well, it settled somewhere around in the 90s and we had given away a lot of shares to Delta to become the first major airline to sign. Ok, and I thought that was dumb because I knew that once we started ticketing and once we started getting going, that they were all going to fall anyway. Because, again, the concept of Priceline was name your own price and you can make one connection. So if you were the dominant carrier in the space, I could run rings around you with a TWA, with United American Continental, because here's a funny story for you. So I was sent to Kansas City to speak to Frontier, and Frontier is a small regional. And after the meeting I got on the phone with Jay and I said uh-uh. He said what do you mean? I said the whole concept of Priceline has to be that it's only a top 10 airline. Ok, it's got to be. You know, I feel safe and I'm getting my price.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree with you because if there was the notion that you'd be on a budget plane and you have to traverse the barrier of putting in a credit card which is scary for a customer you're not going to do well.
Speaker 2:Right, especially if you're on Southwest. So we took the approach to American Airlines and says here's how you compete with Southwest without advertising. So Southwest was big in Texas then and they were taking market share, so Americans figured it out finally.
Speaker 1:So Southwest is one of my favorite stories. Herb Keller, her, oh he's an amazing guy Well was no longer around, but there are lots of business studies on his. We Will Miss you example. Yeah, yeah, hold on. The infamous New York lawnmowers upon us. An invasive species. You want to walk a little further back? Are you good to walk?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how much more time do you have? As much as you want to share? Well, there's a whole second half to the story.
Speaker 1:That's why I'm great. I'll share this and then we'll get edited somewhere in there. Herb Keller her was famous for receiving letters from someone that they called Mrs Crabb Apple, and she was constantly complaining about how she didn't like the fact she didn't have a seat where there was no meal, or she had to pay for luggage or whatnot. And finally, one of the letters, herb Keller, her's response was dear Mrs Crabb Apple, we will miss you. Classic example of knowing who your customer base and knowing who they aren't. And it's OK to not please everybody.
Speaker 2:Right, the whole premise of Price Line was built on common man. That people that were branded, let's say, you liked Hilton hotels or you liked American airlines or whatever was their frequent stay or frequent flyer programs that you were going to be very hard to move to Price. So we built it so that common man, the guy who doesn't care the price sensitive, which is 75% of the population, could take advantage.
Speaker 1:They want a great deal Again. Your barrier to entry that you had to get over was putting in your credit card, but today is not scary Today we'll put in our credit card in anything In 1996, it was pretty scary. In 1996, you were not as protected if there was fraud, which it wasn't as great. But if there was fraud you were responsible. Now you're not.
Speaker 2:So one day Jay wakes up, comes into the office. We had just launched the company. The airline business was going good. He says I need a hotel program. I said, yeah, he goes. You got six months, I went. What?
Speaker 1:Good deadline, so you need it. Need it now.
Speaker 2:Right. So we created the hotel product for Price Line, which is the largest piece of their business now Currently. Yeah, and we built it from scratch. I mean it was all the ideas of me and my team and I had some great team members. I mean again, you don't do this on your own. If you think you're the smartest guy in the room, then check yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is a recurring theme. If you think that you're the smartest guy in the room or girl then you might as well close the door, because it's going to be lonely. Yeah, but that is absolutely the utmost truth and I was Jay Walker's mystique.
Speaker 2:right, Jay was a perfectionist, but he was very sacriatic in that everybody was allowed to voice their opinion and he would never make a snap decision. He would absorb everybody's opinion and then arrive after a contemplation and come up with the best solution as far as he was concerned.
Speaker 1:So he was a true charismatic leader. Is he still alive?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he was on the cover of Fortune magazine as the modern day Thomas Addis. Oh wow yeah, because he has that's noble. He has like 1,400 patents pending or awarded. He's into the gaming business, he's into all sorts of different stretches of work.
Speaker 1:Incredibly smart human that knows the value of others.
Speaker 2:And he was a Cornell dropout.
Speaker 1:Heard this story a lot right. Some of our charismatic leaders, some of the best and brightest, are college dropouts or didn't go to college at all. Now, with that being said, do you think it's possible to reach the level of success that he had reached today as a college dropout or not, with no college education?
Speaker 2:Today. Yeah, I think there's still a lot of entrepreneurial people. That it's not about how much you know, it's how you use what you know.
Speaker 1:That's right. Your work ethic and your interaction with people, the hustle, the grit, the willing to starve.
Speaker 2:Right. We built this hotel program, which was super because there was no discounting in the hotel business at all. The only way they discounted was to give corporate deals. So if you were IBM and you booked 400,000 rooms a year, you're getting a discount. Yeah, hilton would say, ok, you have a special deal, but for common man they didn't qualify. So we built the hotel program, and one of the problems that we had to address was I want a four-heart-star hotel in New York. Well, new York's a big city, so if you're working on Wall Street and your hotel's on 178th Street and Audubon Avenue, that's impossible. It's going to take you three hours just to commute to the office. That's right. So what we did was we decided to global map all the hotels and put them in regions. So I want a four-star hotel in Midtown. I want a four-star hotel in the Wall Street area. I want a four-star hotel in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1:So you created this mapping structure, which is widely used today. With all the price lines, we have the patents on that. So did they copy the price line model or did they steal?
Speaker 2:They had to. They had to copy it Again. There was very few players around that time. Expedia was the biggest player when we were in 1996. And they were owned by Microsoft at the time. So once I built the hotel program, I went to the CEO at the time, which is a guy named Rick Braddock, and Rick was the ex CEO of Citibank. Okay, so his travel knowledge was zero and I said look, don't you just?
Speaker 1:love that when CEOs are put into plays that have no experience in the industry.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you that 90% of our senior management had no travel experience.
Speaker 1:None, but they knew their role. They're all Wall Street guys, yeah, but they knew their job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for purpose. We could argue that.
Speaker 1:Some did, some did.
Speaker 2:We had Dan Shulman. I don't know if you know that.
Speaker 1:Name's familiar yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's at PayPal, that's right. But Dan was president of our company for a while and he was very, very sharp. But I went to Rick Braddock. I said I need advertising money for hotels and he tells me that no, no, you don't. People buy airlines first and they buy hotels. I said no. I said a person that's in Long Island that wants to stay in the city there's no airline involved. I said it's a much bigger market and they're more apt to discount because they've never done it before and this was a perfect way for them to discount with nobody knowing.
Speaker 1:That's right Okay. Right so by the way, I think today I would disagree with that. I would think that at least when I buy a location, I buy the hotel first.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not worried about the flight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's what I was trying to tell him. But he was smart because he was a CEO right. So I finally got one ad out of him and we hired Leonard Nemoy to do the ad, which is kind of fun, but that was the only ad we had. And then we ran some Christmas advertising for hotels and the title was Ho Ho Hotels. And I was like you guys can't be serious. I said Ho Ho Hotels.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that is a marketing stretch. Nonetheless, I would say that I could see the marketing challenge behind that Right.
Speaker 2:So we built it. It started to go. Then I, Jay, came back into my office and said no, I said I'm tired, I don't want to do anything else, I just want to relax. You know, give me a month. You got to go to the car companies. So I went to the car companies the next week. I met with the people at Budget and I got to be very good friends with the CEO at Budget and we brought them in first, and then when Hertz came in, Hertz just dominated the space because they were a lot smarter.
Speaker 1:So why were these companies so willing to give discounts?
Speaker 2:Because it was opaque. What does that mean? It means that I asked for something, I get something, but it's not branded. Okay. So if I'm a budget customer and I want to get a budget car, I can't depend on price line to deliver me a budget product. Okay, and now my freaking flyer, or whatever motivates me to use budget, is compromised. So let's say a hotel. In the old days, hotels were run on average room rate. Right, so you could be at the plaza and your average room rate is $1,000 a night, but your hotel is only 40% full. So they went to a new system that I knew very well, which is called RevPAR, which is the same as they use in the airlines. You know it's based it would cost per mile, which is revenue per mile. Gotcha, right. So we first, we went to Marriott and all the big guys and they all said no, because the people that you're dealing with are 25 year old veterans in revenue management and the easiest thing they can say is no. When they say yes, they got to do something. That's right, right, and they take a risk. So I've been here for 25 years. If I say yes and this thing fails, you know there goes my pension and my. You know my credibility and my legacy.
Speaker 1:We're not talking about risk takers in management. We're talking about risk takers or mitigators when you're an executive owner or a leader.
Speaker 2:So we scrapped that idea and we went straight to the owners and we sat down with the owners and a lot of owners are REITs right.
Speaker 1:Real estate investment trusts.
Speaker 2:And they went. So you're telling me that I can discount. Nobody knows what my discount is, nobody knows it's my brand, but I can take whatever I want cash. I said, yeah, the people are actually putting cash on the table, so you want this? They said you know, if you've got 60 rooms in your hotel and you're only booking 20 and now you're booking 40 and getting revenue with the same staff, might as well use it. Why wouldn't you? And they went duh. So then they forced the corporate guys to come in, got it. So it took the revenue managers off the hook because now they were forced to do it. And then the owners made a big stink about it because they said look, if you're not going to do this, I'll just change my flag, because they don't care if it's a Marriott or Hilton or whatever. Obviously, from an advertising perspective and from a market penetration, it's good to be a Marriott.
Speaker 1:Of course you have a brand standard.
Speaker 2:It's good to be the Holiday Inn. It's good to be a Rich Carpon.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you have a loyalty with your customer at that point because they want to follow the brand standard.
Speaker 2:So that became successful. Cars became successful. I had a guy from so, you created the car program as well, right. So I had a guy from National. I was at a Christmas party for National Car Rental and he came up and he hugged me. He says I was full at Christmas and I said who are you?
Speaker 1:He says I'm from.
Speaker 2:Orlando yeah, he says yeah, every car, every car was gone.
Speaker 1:Because of the price line, because of the price line. So you essentially boosted all of these companies. Right, you were the conglomerator.
Speaker 2:I mean you were the first real discount that didn't affect them in the marketplace and the opaqueness and the opaqueness is what won Okay, because if you had to. You're competing against Southwest Airlines. Southwest Airlines puts a price of $59 Dallas, new York, which is the bread and butter of American Airlines. So American Airlines says it's $250, $275 to fly American. But here price line, here's a thousand seats a day at $59.
Speaker 1:So they can now compete without watering down their MSRP, their public pricing, and they don't have to seem cheap Right Meanwhile, at price line customers they can chalk it up to oh well, it's price line, they're buying in bulk. So therefore, that's why they got me the discount.
Speaker 2:Well, the whole theory was that we were margin. We weren't margin players. If you were an airline, you were allowed to give me 10 prices for the same seat and we would pay you the closest with making whatever. So you could go in $10 increments. And then it was about first choice. So the problem that we had just this is important the problem that we had is that market share is the Bible for the airlines. All right, so if they're a hub and they have 52% of the marketplace, they don't want you coming in, but when they're 25% of the marketplace, they want all the share. So you had to figure out how to be fair. So one of the patents that I have is a randomizer that guarantees you a first look at your percentage of the market share. So if you were American Airlines with 52% of the market share, you would get 52% of the first chances at that price. And if you didn't take it, then I could go.
Speaker 1:Then round rob into the next one. So in that case, how does price line profit? Are you taking the discounted price from the airline and marketing. It changed quite a bit from when we were Well at least back then Was ityou take the discounted price from the airline and on a call, or you already had a block that you can buy. It was an inventory.
Speaker 2:So if you go on and try to book an advantage seat on American, sometimes you can't get them right Because there's no inventory, although you can get a coach seat or a first class seat or a business class seat. So they manipulate the buckets and they said I'm going to take 10% of my airplane and make it available for discount. Okay, right. So we would bang the machine and say is there any seats in this bucket? If there are seats in that bucket, then we'll offer the price.
Speaker 1:So is this a real time call? A customer says I want to fly from.
Speaker 2:Well, it's online, but we really didn't have a phone presence. It was online.
Speaker 1:No, no. So when I say a real time call, oh yeah, it was not on seconds. Yes, okay, so basically a customer in San. Diego wants to fly to LA on his day and then boom, they say I want this ticket. Then price line online. We bounce back to you and say you got it. Okay, so you didn't own inventory, you did a real time call, right, okay.
Speaker 2:So it was. I think we launched on April 7th of 1999. And on May, on March, I think it was 10th Jay calls me to his house and he says, bob, we got a problem. I said, okay, what is it? He says well, our chief technical officer, who was a brilliant kid, but he was building this mammoth computer system and he wasn't going to be ready for launch. I said, well, one's he going to be ready? He says well, probably eight months Now. We've already invested $40 million in advertising and newspapers and print that were coming that were coming. He says so it's up to you, bob. I said it's up to me. Now. I'm not a computer guy. I mean, I know my way around what I liked for the computer to do, but I'm not a coder or whatever. So I went home, put my kids on my lap, started to cry a little bit.
Speaker 1:How the hell am I going to?
Speaker 2:do this. So the next year I was pretty scared. The whole company was depending on me. We're in for about 200 million, so Bob's human Right. So the next day I went in I had my whiteboard. You know, I had him bring in two whiteboards and a whole bunch of magic markers. I said how am I going to do this? And I started to think about who's the smartest person in business over the centuries and I came up with Henry Ford and I said Henry Ford, because of production line. So if I can break down the transaction into different components, then I can have different people transfer that information and start to, you know, at least have some sort of tracking. So if I could hire 20 travel agents, they could at least get the process going and then try to figure it out as we go down the line. So as I started to do that I'm going on a whiteboard and I'm starting to figure it out I said, well, I could automate this piece of it and I got some friends that could probably do this piece of it. And then this is a piece that I need some help on. And here's a piece that I need some help on. So how do I get there? So I called up all my contacts, some really smart people, and by April 7th we had the whole thing automated with CRTs that basically acted as operators and the information would come in, go to the CRT, it would start to search on its own, it would find something, it would jam it through the ticketing process, it would throw it through accounting, it would do all that stuff and it was all automated. So you are MacGyver, I don't know about that.
Speaker 1:It seems like it that day I was so. You did what you needed to do. You got it done Right so.
Speaker 2:Portitude Well, with like three hours of spare Still dead.
Speaker 1:You got to remember A win is a win.
Speaker 2:There's a team of like 20 guys that are working day and night and then going out to a club, maybe for six hours, to blow off some steam. Which club? You know which club.
Speaker 1:I'm going to make some assumptions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what they say about assuming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, then I'll presume.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it started to work. Everything was great. So I felt pretty good about what I had done. They give me, like this, employee award. The whole cafeteria was full of people screaming and cheering. It was a good day, Awesome. And then. So I went back to my so-called boss. Even though I reported straight to Jay, Jay had a guy in between us you know for the Daly stuff and I said to him okay, so here's my deal. I said I want as much stock as the CTO has. I said if I have to save him, then why would he make three times more than me? That's right. So we went into this whole thing and the short story is that I made a big noise. I told him I was quitting, Packed my box. Jay went crazy and they matched my request.
Speaker 1:Okay, is that good advice for today, in this day and age to-.
Speaker 2:It depends on your situation, right? If you have a solid case, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you are the lead, the best, the known hero, always that you should stand up for what you want and make demands.
Speaker 2:It's about timing.
Speaker 1:Timing is everything.
Speaker 2:All right If you're going to go tell somebody you're the best just because you think it. Better check yourself, but if you just hit, a home run, then that's an opportunity to shine. Remember Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:You know, sundial in the shade Yep.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's been my motto for my whole life it's timing and it's not being ridiculous.
Speaker 1:So a successful life is for those who take it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think you can just let it. It doesn't come over as a wave.
Speaker 1:What I can say from plenty of experiential data and evidence is those employees that are great but they don't ask for what they want, don't get what they want Right. Same thing in life. If you don't ask, if you're afraid to ask a question, worst case you get a no Right. If you're afraid to ask a question, you will never get what you want, because people are not going to give you wealth, riches, promotion, unless you are ready for it and you ask for it, right. But there's a right way to ask for it Asking, Maybe it was Henry Ford.
Speaker 2:He said well, how can you afford to keep these people? He says how can I afford to let them leave? Yeah, that's right. Why would I train them for seven or eight years and then pull them off to somebody else?
Speaker 1:That's right, let them grow out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm training my best. Yeah, so I believe in that.
Speaker 1:So that's Lesson for employers is take care of your best people, because someone else will.
Speaker 2:So chapter two at Priceline Mm-hmm. So I've done all these things. I built a packaging program that could combine all three and I pitched it to the senior management and they said, no, we're going to do insurance. I said no.
Speaker 1:So I went to insurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so name your own price for insurance. Name your own price for fall manage name your own price for gas, groceries, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:You really cornered the market of name your own price.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I said we have all the stuff. I have 90% of it built already. All we have to do is turn it on. And what we'll do is we would attract a lot of business customers, because business customers get no advantage in packaging. But if you're going to Cincinnati and you need a hotel and you need a car, then you're ripe for me. Yeah Right, Because I can. In travel business, everybody wants to hide their fare. Remember the opaque part of it. So when you buy a package you don't know what each component costs.
Speaker 1:So you can shuffle the prices from each and the cost from each.
Speaker 2:So an airline will sell you a ticket for 50 bucks if you buy a million tickets, right, and if you don't tell anybody, yes, so what you do is you make a deal with them. Then you go to the Holiday Inn or Hilton or whoever and you say I'm going to buy a million rooms and they say, well, here's your price. So the whole deal behind a wholesaler if you know anything about the travel business there's wholesalers that build your packages you want to go to Hawaii and all that stuff and what they do is they buy volume and then they price out the volume in the beginning to for a break even. So they buy a million airline tickets and if they break up, even at 600, then they drop price just for profit. So they were charging $120 a ticket originally on all the package and all the packages are bought early Because people want to go to Hawaii, they're planning and all that, and then you can dump packages. That's why you see these packages for $85 three nights.
Speaker 1:Last minute deals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the whole premise there.
Speaker 1:Because they already made their revenue number, so the rest is just gravy on top.
Speaker 2:So instead of that, they came up with the great idea that they were going to recreate the IPOs in Europe, in Australia and in China.
Speaker 1:IPO meaning.
Speaker 2:A new stock.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, initial.
Speaker 2:So they put this guy in charge who doesn't have a passport, and I said, well, ironing, yeah. I said you guys are making a mistake, let me do it. And while this guy is brilliant, it was very good at what he did. He just didn't know the international market. And when you deal with the international market, you're dealing with culture. When you go to China, the people that are important listen. The other people are sleeping.
Speaker 1:We heard that on one of the episodes of this podcast, Lou Kimball. He ran Foot Locker International and dealing with each individual culture has very complex challenges.
Speaker 2:Right German, it's straightforward and yelling and screaming.
Speaker 1:They're not happy, you will know it, yeah.
Speaker 2:You will be insulting.
Speaker 1:You are the dumbest person in the room if you are not British.
Speaker 2:So I said, let me do this. So I lived in Sydney for nine months and we started. We couldn't call it price line there, so we called it my price. Why is that? Because it was already patented. It was a drug store that was a name your own price line and started in Hong Kong. I lived in Hong Kong or commuted to both these places for a year, and then I had an apartment in London for three years.
Speaker 1:What was your favorite place to live? To live.
Speaker 2:I don't know Connecticut.
Speaker 1:That's where your family is, that's where the heart is All right. So Bob is from Connecticut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Greece. I have a lot of family in Greece, holland. It really depends on what you're going for. If you're going for romance to Greek islands, yeah. If you're going for party, rio, cape Town, singapore, you know, it really depends.
Speaker 1:Partying in Singapore.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Would not have thought that, with all the strict laws, yeah Well, there's strict laws about strict things. But no gum chewing.
Speaker 2:They have a separate part of town that's just dedicated to the decadent society.
Speaker 1:Huh, okay.
Speaker 2:And it's got a name, but I don't think we should use it on the podcast. Okay, I'll tell you when the microphones are off.
Speaker 1:They're enough, I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:So just a fast forward Lee Kaixing, who was he's one of the richest people in the world. He was a gateway to China through Hong Kong. If American businesses wanted to go into China for manufacturing or anything, they had to go through Lee Kaixing.
Speaker 1:He went through him.
Speaker 2:Right. And then he had a company called Hutchison Wampoa. Hutchison Wampoa is the largest owner of commercial real estate ports and airports in the world. Okay, when you talk about the Chinese owning airports and ports, that's Lee Kaixing Got it All right. And then he had a guy that worked for him that ran Hutchison Wampoa named Canning Fuck F-O-K. Okay.
Speaker 1:Sorry to laugh. Yeah Well, we all did. I can't tell you the jokes but I can imagine the jokes because I'm thinking of you.
Speaker 2:Right. And Kaixing is a very small man, canning Fuck is a small guy too. And then Ian Wade, who I loved to death. Ian Wade was an English guy working in Hong Kong. Remember, at that time you still had the English rule in Hong Kong and I was flying on an airplane one day for my commute and I opened it and it was the Wall Street Journal and it says price line should buy price line. And we were going through a tough time with our stock. At the time I told you we went to 162. Well, we were down to 90 cents. Yeah, all right. So we had to beef up the stock and one of the reasons is that they were trying to do all these IP. I told them they didn't need to do other IPOs, that when you opened up Hong Kong and Sydney and all that, the strength of your business grows and the value of your stock. And the other thing is that the Americans don't give a shit about, don't care about you, didn't care, that's fine. Yeah, they don't care about the Chinese. Yeah, they don't care about the Australians. And the Australians could give a crap about the.
Speaker 1:US. Well, this is business, right. You're competing with your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they had to rebuild the systems and like this is the internet, you don't need to rebuild system. One system can operate the world Well, again, they didn't listen to me, so so the moral of the story is always listen to Bob. No, but at least think If I say something that's probably worth thinking about.
Speaker 1:If Bob says it, then he's probably thought it out, so you should think about it.
Speaker 2:So I went and met with Kenny Falk and Ian and I said look, I think you guys should buy A major stock in price line US and break down this crap and just add it to their company, as opposed to trying to do separate IPOs. So Jay was trying to get out at the time and he owned probably 30 percent of the company. It's still at the time.
Speaker 1:Which is a lot of the company Right.
Speaker 2:So I remember our stock was at 90 cents. So I worked with the Chinese and they bought all of Jay's stock for four dollars.
Speaker 1:Which made him a lot of money. That is a great multiple.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it made him a lot of money. He got him whole because he put a lot of money in, but then he had taken a lot out. You know, obviously with the stock he wasn't hurting.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And the Chinese bought it. The stock went to eight. Then they split the stock six to one and then they sold it 38. So they made a lot of money, A lot, and everybody that is a big multiple, and that's when price line started. It's a huge climb to where it is today at $2,200 a share.
Speaker 1:That is insane Rapid growth. So you are the man.
Speaker 2:Well, I was part of it, but I had to get out, do you? Because I had 90 days. I had to get off everybody and got the Chinese to buy it. I could understand that, yeah, At that time Jay Walker, who was the guy, and Rick Braddock, who was the chairman, didn't like each other Because Jay wanted to branch out into gas and groceries and all those things and Rick was like no, you know cars, I had a thing worked out for a name your own price for diamonds.
Speaker 1:It would have been huge, it would have done very well. I think there are some sites that do that in a way.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a glut in diamonds, believe it or not, but the glut is in one carat, half a carat, up to about two.
Speaker 1:Well, what were you saying about common person? Yeah, what can the common person afford? Now, two carats is a bit more than the common yeah, the one carat. Half a carat and one carat absolutely. Yeah, those were, you know the earrings and the ring, the first engagement ring for the common person that's falling prey to you must get a diamond.
Speaker 2:You could get a you know one carat diamond for 400 bucks. You would take it, yeah for sure, and then you would fit it onto a band and whatever. There are plenty of Costco diamond sales around that price Right, but again, that was too forward thinking for them.
Speaker 1:Got it. So they asked me to leave Okay.
Speaker 2:Did they?
Speaker 1:take care of you on the departure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. They paid me a lot of money and they signed me to a contract that I wouldn't write the book.
Speaker 1:But you can do this podcast, oh yeah that's been a long time ago.
Speaker 2:I left in 2003.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, things have certainly changed since then, but if we're really looking back at your successful journey and story, you are a hustler from the beginning, always a strong work ethic and mentality, and you saw opportunity in people and you trusted your own judgment and you, essentially, are responsible for creating what the price line is today, along with others.
Speaker 2:Yes, not solely, but Jay Walker is the guy without his vision.
Speaker 1:There's a domino effect right Without hiring you, and him standing up to hire you and all of those things Without you going and saying I'll take the job, but I'm showing up to the office Right Without you traveling overseas.
Speaker 2:Here's the one thing they don't teach you at MIT and then Harvard and then all the Ivy League schools. It's called Street Smarts. You, I love that. All right. Street Smarts is, you know Jay was talking about opening up a university where we would pay students to go there, as opposed to you paying a. It was kind of like the Mormon church. You know, I put you through school, I give you the best education I possibly can give you, and then you pay me 10% of your salary for the rest of your life. Wow.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But it's a multimillion dollar education.
Speaker 1:I think Facebook was doing something along those lines. I'll need to be fact-checked where they would sponsor the best and brightest to go to college and then they would have to work for Facebook.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, in your way, you were capitalizing on the loan. You were becoming your own student loan bank.
Speaker 2:Well, more importantly, we were creating a wealth of knowledge, kind of like the Young Presidents Association, right, yep, the Young Presidents Association. Why are they successful? Because they have all these smart people. Whether they went to college or didn't go to college, everybody could get into YAP because of their their acumen, their result, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I will fully agree with you that you can't teach entrepreneurship, and I'm not talking about the college courses about entrepreneurship. No, you can't teach street sports? Well, I'm getting there. So entrepreneurship is born or an entrepreneur is born, Right? They are not made. I agree with that 100% you need the guts right, you need the intuition. Now street sports.
Speaker 2:Well, you need to find out if you have the guts.
Speaker 1:You have to be put to the test.
Speaker 2:That's why this university that we were talking about, you know, I told Jay, I said I'll teach street sports. Yeah, and he goes, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's a great idea. If you didn't grow up with street sports, I don't think you can take a crash course on that, but it's true, I grew up from.
Speaker 2:But if you have the noodle in there, you Okay, if you're a kid you can grow it. But there's, if there's no seed if you're a timid guy and whatever no, you can't change that.
Speaker 1:So I believe you should hire people in personality and work ethic over their learned ability or talent, because you could always train certain skills you can train talent.
Speaker 2:A resume is a piece of cake.
Speaker 1:It gets your foot in the door. Now having street smarts, having been in a fight or talked yourself out of getting beat up, that lasts with you forever and that could help you turn the art of a deal.
Speaker 2:Right, or also how to figure out what the other person's angle is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or how to scrap and find a meal or food.
Speaker 2:I mean, when we started Price Flying, we hire all these Harvard and MIT educated kids and they were brilliant. Yeah, of course, but when you asked them to do something, they said well, no. And when I went to school, they said you couldn't do that. And then they and you'd say, well, nobody's had this ever before. This is outside the box. So we hired hackers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, they weren't ethical when we hired them.
Speaker 1:But you turned them into ethical.
Speaker 2:Right, because we wanted to break the system, so we knew how to fix the system, so we had guys trying to bang our system. That's how we got it with the credit card. The safety and the credit card was that we had really good people trying to break the codes, yeah.
Speaker 1:So fast forward. Your career at Price Line had ended Right and you went on to starting different ventures of your own. You used your street smarts, your intuition, your intelligence.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I got thrown a curveball.
Speaker 1:Got thrown a curveball. Why's that Sure?
Speaker 2:In 2006,. You know, I was tired of being behind a desk and all that, so I wanted to be outside. So I started building houses. I had been dabbling in building houses for most of my life, but I started to take it seriously and I was building houses and purchase New York and in Harrison, new York and I got caught in 2008 with a whole bunch of vibrancy Yep, so you know, I had my ups and downs. I got divorced. I still live with my ex-wife.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I got cancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that kind of slowed me down. But now I'm involved in a couple of things. I was in the pop business for, you know, three years trying to fix that cowboy mess.
Speaker 1:That is a mess because everybody's rushing in to find the pot of gold.
Speaker 2:Well, half the people smoke in the pot.
Speaker 1:So that I realized too is until it becomes a fully regulated industry, you're going to have people that are Well, you know who you compete with the most. Getting high on their own supply.
Speaker 2:Well, do you know who you compete with the most? As the farmer itself, of course.
Speaker 1:Of course. That's the reason why certain natural medicines that grow in the ground are illegal. Can't profit off of a mushroom, can't profit off of a plant. Right, you have to make it illegal, yeah right.
Speaker 2:You have to make it back.
Speaker 1:Blue China is legal because you can't profit off of somebody's bathtub gin. Although it could kill you too. Right, well, that's half the issue, yeah.
Speaker 2:But people grow corn.
Speaker 1:You can grow corn. You can grow lots of corn. You just can't turn it into mash.
Speaker 2:Well, what happens is that there's the pot business and then there's the farmer. And I'm not talking about the small-time farmer, I'm talking about big-time farmers, like in Kentucky. Yeah, they've been growing pot for 100 years. Yeah Right, they started to grow tobacco. Tobacco started to get wiped out, so the tobacco farm started shrinking. They went into hemp, right. Closing Well, our forefathers grew hemp, but for oil Right the CBD was becoming very popular, very popular yeah. But what was happening was they were selling their plants to processors. Processors were processing it and trying to put it out in the market. But the market was so volatile. When I first started it was $3,800 for a liter of CBD oil. When I left it was at $450. So what happens when the price keeps dropping? The processor has no money, but he's got a lot of inventory and the farmer's stuck with the plants. So the farmer started to process his own and then compete with the processors because they weren't paying them. So they said well, screw you, I'll just do it myself, and that's when the price started to drop and nobody knew. Nobody knew anything.
Speaker 1:So is it going to bounce back?
Speaker 2:It's starting to bounce back down. I mean with more legalization and more regulation.
Speaker 1:Legalization. But it's more than just legalization. Just because something's legal doesn't make it happen, it's regulation yeah, it's regulation.
Speaker 2:That is going to be what's set to end Right, because what we were doing when I left was that we were identifying the plant to the field and what part of the field it was growing, in case something happened. So you had a barcode on every plant. So you actually are processing like a business, you're acting like a true inventory management business, but the unfortunate part about it is that's expensive, especially in the CBD market, because that's all oil and powder, like in plants. You now have dispensaries and you can make money off of THC, but it's hard to get the licenses. Well as with everything, there's a little bit of corruption in getting those licenses.
Speaker 1:You think, yeah, just a little bit, but sometimes there is major profit to be had. There's always some corruption behind it, right?
Speaker 2:So now I'm dealing with some new currency concepts. Okay, you know I retired for a while With cancer and all that. I've been living a good life. My ex-wife has nothing to worry about, so she's got a good life. My kids are 34 and 38.
Speaker 1:So they're grown Two grandchildren. Yeah, life is good. Do you feel like you're successful?
Speaker 2:I believe that I made a difference.
Speaker 1:You made a difference.
Speaker 2:That's important so is that your definition of success? I think it's better than success.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:Well, I always had this dream. I had this interview once with this guy and he was trying to sell a Pritzker's travel agency and I knew all about his travel agency and it had real problems. So he wanted me to go to Pritzker and say buy this for some ridiculous amount and that he would take care of me. And that's not me, I work for you. Yeah, I'm loyal, right? So I told him. I said look, here's what I want. I want my picture in a Wall Street Journal in Dots.
Speaker 1:Pixelism. Yeah, you know how they used to have that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2:I had the little pixel things.
Speaker 1:I remember in our class having to do that and I hated it. It was so hard to do all those dots.
Speaker 2:So which was the joke? So then, six months later, I'm on the phone with Pritzker, jay and Bob, and Jay was the patriarch of the family, bob was my boss, but one of the brothers, and Warren Buffett. And then these guys, because PSA owned this travel company and they were asking me about it and I was trying to be diplomatic and I said, look, you know, if it was my money, I wouldn't buy it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Buffett says well, why don't you come out and take a look? All right. So Jay and Bob say hang on the phone. I said I'm going to send some of my guys and we're going to do a deep audit on them. We want you to part of the team. Now this is unbeknownst to these guys that I was arguing with before that wanted me to betray the Pritzker. So the night before we put our strategy together and then I show up the next day and these guys were shocked what are you doing here? It goes around, comes around my friend. Here's Johnny, here's Johnny. Yeah, by the way, you have a striking resemblance to Jack.
Speaker 1:Nicholson. That's amazing. So parting words, any sage wisdom that you would give to either a budding entrepreneur, success minded individual or, in your case, someone who needs to sell.
Speaker 2:I'd say stand your ground, be kind. I think being kind is one of the biggest attributes anybody can have. We're all on this earth for a very short time, and being an asshole, there are times for that, but the most important thing is to be kind.
Speaker 1:It's easy to be an asshole, but you are right. We are in this rented suit until we have to return it.
Speaker 2:Right, and being kind pays back. You talk about karma. I mean, I see it all the time. I see that kind people get rewarded in space and in business. If somebody's struggling, you're not competing against them. You're in this together, right? If you're in a company and somebody has a better idea than you, good, embrace it, try to make it better. If you're a salesperson, you know the sales starts when the person says no.
Speaker 1:Haha.
Speaker 2:Right. If the person says yes, it's easy. The person says no, that's when you become a salesperson.
Speaker 1:That's when you have to turn it on and turn the no into a yes. That's right. In fact, you should sometimes embrace the fact you got the no, because at least they gave you some feedback. Which gives you energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to be honest, I mean don't somebody asks you to cross the line. Look, I'm willing to go up to the line, but I won't cross the line.
Speaker 1:So be honest, be ethical, be nice, celebrate your partners, your friends, your business colleagues. Celebrate your family most of all. Celebrate your family, Celebrate yourself.
Speaker 2:Because when you celebrate with your family, everybody wins. That's right. Right, Because I'm not doing this for me. I didn't travel all around the world and spend a shitload of nights in hotels For me. I wanted to make sure my kids were happy, that my wife was taken care of, that my parents were happy before they passed so successful.
Speaker 1:Well, bob Wiss, while most people went to work today, you went to hustle, and what do you think of that aqueduct back there? I think it's beautiful. It's man-made construction. You want to take some pictures there, right, yeah, we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not the Hoover Dam, but it's not the Giv-a-Dam.
Speaker 1:Next time on I Took a Hike. We are enchanted by the inspirational tales and trails of a storyteller. When I took a hike with Mitchell Slater-