I was attending college in Detroit in the late 60's and working part time at McDonald's. I lived at home with my parents, but I was paying all of my own college expenses. I found that I wasn't a very good student (not true today) and people graduating in my field with majors in physics were not making much money. I dropped out of college to work full time at a McDonald's restaurant with the hope of owning my own McDonald's franchise someday.

I was making $3.00 per hour as an assistant manager at McDonald's when Sue and I were married in '72. I had been there since '67. My father wanted me to work with him at General Motors at over $6.00 per hour as an industrial chemist. He wanted me to learn a trade, but I wanted to be rich, so I stayed at McDonald's. I knew that locking into a trade would provide enough comfort that I wouldn't feel the need to push myself to get further, so I said no thank you. So much for my career as an industrial chemist.

The McDonald's restaurant was owned by Harry Granader, a long-time franchisee of McDonald's, a great man and now a philanthropist. I didn't do that well at McDonald's. I was a blue hat (blue paper cap with netting on the top that says TRAINEE in big letters) for 13 weeks before I receiving my white hat. After eight years I had only reached the level of first assistant manger. The General Manager for Mr. Granader's three stores, Charlie McCann, was my mentor. Mr. Granader was mostly an absentee owner, and I didn't know him well. I knew Charlie was going places and wanted to catch the wave. I had just attended Hamburger University, McDonald's training center in Illinois, where I graduated 2nd-Burger in Class #183. The award is actually called Archie Runner-up. I was very excited about a life with McDonald's.

However, a guy who had only worked at McDonald's a few weeks longer than I had, was promoted past two levels of management and replaced my mentor, who was ousted. He did this by speaking directly with the owner. I was disheartened.

My first thought was to work for Charlie since he was getting his own McDonald's, but he didn't think I was qualified to run his store. He referred me to another McDonald's franchisee in Columbus, Indiana as an assistant manager, but I didn't think it was the right fit. It finally dawned on me that I wasn't the type of person to do well when others determined my future. I had to figure out a way to buy my own McDonald's. I needed $100,000 down and I made $10,000 per year at the time. I figured if I didn't eat or pay taxes I could save it in only 10 years (joke).

Enter my good friend and lifelong mentor Hungry Howie (Jim Hearn). One of my friends worked for Jim at Hungry Howie's Pizzas and Subs. Jim had just converted his 24 hr Tick Tock Hamburgers to his very first Hungry Howie's Pizzas and Subs restaurant in Taylor, Michigan near Detroit and was doing well. He also owned a Dino's pizza franchise and, as you might imagine, they wanted him to get out of that franchise. His Dino's was for sale.

I would hang out at Howie's and talk to Jim about the pizza business. It seemed like the pizza business was a way for me to increase my income to the incredible sum of $30,000 per year. This was a way for me to earn enough money to get my McDonald's. I asked him to sell me his Dino's. He said no because I didn't have enough money for the down payment he wanted. He offered to help me open my own pizza place, and I could even call it Hungry Howie's if I wanted to. It had cost him only $7,000 to convert his restaurant so he thought I could get my own place open for that amount. Sue and I had $4,000 in savings and I was able to get a loan for $2,500 more. I also got a loan from a finance company and had Sears and Montgomery Ward credit cards. This was before bank cards were so available.

So I found a location and signed a lease. I started buying equipment and got all of my friends to help remodel the space. There were many people who gave free help: Linda, Frank, Mark, Phil, Chris, Steve and many more. Well, as it turned out, rather than the $7,000 I thought it would cost, it ended up costing $17,000. I was days from opening and had no money. I desperately needed another $5,000. I had borrowed all I could. I had gotten equipment from two different dealers with a promise to pay later. My dad said he couldn't loan me the money. Jim couldn't loan me the money.

Let me introduce Dee Chambers. My wife's best friend Linda Chambers' mother Dee was a widow. She had some savings in CDs. I asked this mother of a friend who barely knew me to loan me the money. And she did. She only asked that I pay her the interest rate she was getting on her CDs. Later it occurred to me what an incredible event this was. I would never recommend giving needed savings to someone to open a restaurant. 25 years later I asked how she was able to put so much trust in me and she said she never doubted it for an instant. Her daughter, Linda, still works for me as our Goddess of Finance.

With the loan I was able to open up the 1st shop on 15 August 1975.

I had thought that since I ran a McDonald's doing over $20,000 per week that owning a pizza place doing only $5,000 per week would be easy. However, the pizza place only did $700 in sales the first full week. I paid $300 for food, $300 for labor and $300 for advertising. I had already maxed my credit and owed everyone and was going deeper into debt as I continued to lose money week after week.

Luckily, since 1971, I had been studying Scientology. I had learned what causes people to behave in certain ways and to not be adversely affected by the negativity of others. I was a trained counselor, which gave me superior communication skills. I had learned condition formulas with precise steps that helped me make better decisions and develop new strategies I could implement to improve the situation. Managing by the statistics of the restaurant I was able to create some improvement of the scene.

Sue and I lived in government subsidized housing at the time, which helped. She was teaching school an hour drive south of our house and the pizza shop was an hour north and west of our house. Still, on Friday's after awaking early, driving the hour to work and teaching all day she would still drive the two hours to come in to help out. Many times her paycheck went into the business. She would leave every morning at 6:00am and be home at 5:00pm. I would leave at 10:00am and get home at 1:00am or 2am. We didn't see much of each other for a long time.

Jim Hearn would come by on Mondays and buy some of the groceries I had just received with cash so that I could put that cash into the bank to cover the check I had just written for last week's groceries. I would tell all my creditors that I would get to them when I could, and meanwhile I continued to put out as much advertising as I could. Jim was a great help for encouragement when I was struggling. He would talk about the new ideas he had to increase sales and tell me to keep at it. I saw Jim and his family often and counted on his help until his passing in March 2013.

Jim has personally helped many thousands of people lead better lives through his consummate knowledge of the business and his uncanny knack for making sound decisions.

Over the past four decades I sought his advice on many occasions. He and his wife Ginny give me and my family an open invitation to their home in Florida, which we have taken advantage of many times. His whole family, including his daughters, their spouses and grandchildren honored my daughter's wedding with their presence. They are part of our family.

Jim was a great man and a great friend. He will be missed by the thousands of people whose very livelihoods were only possible through his work and influence.

He will be missed by the millions of customers he has indirectly served, because his guidance will no longer be available.

Godspeed Jim Hearn!

Well, back to my story. After six months the sales were finally enough to start making money. Over the next six months I made more than I had in a year at McDonald's. Things was looking pretty good.

I remember, before I got open, there was another similar pizza place opening just down the street -- Lonzo's. He beat me to the punch and opened a few weeks before I did. At the time I thought that was a big deal. Six months later he was out of business. What had I done that he hadn't? I just didn't give up. In Scientology I learned that there was no such thing as failure, just not enough push through or not enough follow through. Lonzo just didn't push through. He let the obvious fact that he was losing money determine his future, and I didn't let it determine mine.

After many more months, during a visit to see Sue's brother Mark in Texas, I got the idea to open a new store. There were hardly any pizza places in the Dallas phone directory [a large book with yellow pages that listed all businesses in an area], and the pizzas I ate were not very good.

I got together with my friend Bob Hudson who worked for me in Michigan. We formed a partnership for a new MrJims.Pizza in Texas. Bob had gotten his dad's agreement to finance the store.

I found a location, ordered the equipment to be shipped to the store, set up my wife in an apartment in Texas and was finalizing the lease for the store. The most important detail was the leasehold improvements estimate. These are the tenant's expenses to get the place from raw space to pizza place. This is for all the plumbing, internal decor, electrical, air conditioning and all the other things that you need in a pizza shop. The landlord normally pays a portion of these. The landlord thought my share would be $8,000 which was doable with our budget. I was back working in the Michigan store waiting for final word on the exact estimates. The landlord called me in the middle of the supper hour rush to say my share would be over $30,000 and I should just bite the bullet and get on with it. There was no way to come up with that money. The deal to open my 2nd store had just fallen through, Sue was already living at our apartment in Texas, and I was staying with friends.

I took a walk to be sad for a moment.

The next morning I got on a plane went to Texas, found a different location in Garland. Bob and I opened the store in October of 1977. It did fairly well right from the start.

After a few months I sold the store in Michigan and opened another in Garland. I would work during the day at one store and in the night at the other. That store took a terribly long time to get going and lost money for quite a while. Bob and I opened another store in Richardson, Texas in 1979. That new store was not making money and our 1st store wasn't really making that much either, so Bob sold out his share to me. He went back to Michigan for a few years. Later he came back to Texas as my employee and eventually opened his own MrJims.Pizza franchise in Desoto, Texas and now owns the Duncanville store.

The First Franchise

In 1981 one of my manager's, Scott Hallman, got a windfall from his parents and decided to become the first MrJims.Pizza franchisee. We worked out a deal where I was paid no up front money and no money for the first six months of his business. I remember, when I was helping him pour concrete for the plumbing for free, that I was hoping he would do very well indeed. He opened in Mesquite, Texas in 1981 and did do very well. Better than I had ever done. He found a partner and opened another store on the east side of Plano, Texas.

A few months later a couple, Eve and Tom Osbakken, came in and bought a franchise in Arlington, Texas. They were the first people who had no real restaurant experience to buy a franchise. Again there was no upfront money and no money for the first six months. So, I would drive the 1:15 to get to his store, work with him and drive the 1:15 home. It went on for weeks while I let my own stores slide. I remember the first day of business. I assumed it would be slow and arrived late. It was very busy and no one in the restaurant had ever made dough, made a pizza, taken an order or anything else. I was ordering people about without courtesy, including Eve and Tom. I remember the look Tom gave me, and I thank God to this day that they are not temperamental people. I thought I was going to get fired. They could have easily done so, but the Osbakkens are people of honor who remained good friends and franchisees for 30 years. I watched their children grow and even presided over their daughter's wedding.

While I could end the story here with "and the rest is history", I am compelled to tell you more.

I had a franchisee who was considering opening MrJims.Pizza outside of Texas. I hired an attorney to develop the documents to sell franchises in other states. As it turns out, my documents were not in compliance with federal franchise law. I needed audited financial statements among other things. The attorney felt she could have it all done by March of '87.

In May of '87 I had over 30 stores. In that month we sold eight new franchises, and I had four stores I owned. We took in over $140,000 that month. I was doing great. I had been open a dozen years and knew I'd made it. I wish life was really like that, where you could reach some point of no possible decrease. However, as so often happens, life is not like that.

My attorney did not have the new documents ready as promised, and in July a franchisee turned me in to the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC for the out-of-date documents. My attorney advised me that there was a possibility of a $10,000 per day per violation fine (which would have been millions), or that I might have to pay all the money back to all the franchisees, or that I might have to offer to let all the franchisees out of their contracts, or I might have to serve some jail time, and possibly may be barred from ever selling franchises again. She had me cease selling franchises. This cost one couple who were ready to purchase a franchise with their life savings. They had to live off the money they were going to use for the store and by the time I was ready to sell them a franchise they didn't have enough to open.

In December '87 and $70,000 in legal fees later I finally got the documents and could begin to sell franchises. In November '87 I had six stores I owned and, including royalties, I only took in $70,000 that month. In the short few months from May '87 to January '88 I lost $500,000. Since I only had about $60,000 to begin with it was a fairly gruesome scene.

I had not paid my taxes that I withheld from my employees and owed the IRS ($111,000). In Feb. '88 an IRS agent, Melvin, came in to my office to collect the taxes. He was asking the value of the books on the shelves and what my home was worth. The IRS can force you to sell all your assets to satisfy tax liens. I remember coming home from work that day to talk to Sue. She had quit teaching to raise our daughter and was not in any way involved in the day-to-day operation of the business. I told her the situation and that the IRS could take our house. Rather than tearing into me with, "how could you do this to our family you stupid pig!" she only asked if she needed to go back to work. In view of the fact that the IRS was going to put us on a budget and all extra money would go only to taxes I thought, what's the point of paying them off earlier if it takes Sue out of the home? She was raising our children. She didn't go back to work.

I hired a new attorney and he worked with the IRS collection agent. We worked out a budget and I had to pay a payment to the IRS of $1,000 every week on Monday. Then after a few weeks it was decided that was not enough and the payment was boosted to $1,960 every Monday. We had to deliver the check in person to the IRS office. One week we didn't get it in till Tuesday and the agent gave me what he called a "courtesy call" to advise me that if I was ever late again he'd come in and take care of business.

This put the IRS ahead of all my other creditors. So I ended up not paying my credit cards and lots of business debt. I sold or closed all the company stores and began to rebuild.

It was at this time that I did a weekend handling at a Scientology church. It involved a couple hours of counseling and writing up a new plan to handle the dangerous situation I was in. After that weekend my statistics started to rise.

I let go of most of the staff and just kept at it. Over the next year I paid off the IRS and started making some headway with selling new franchises. After I stopped selling them I had almost no new people come in.

I continued to improve the product and the system, finding faster ways to make the pizzas more consistently and creating better advertising campaigns. I paid or settled all the old debts.

And the rest is history.

We now have over 50 stores and are growing. I am doing very well and make sure all the legal rules regarding franchising are followed. I keep my taxes paid up to date. I still haven't gotten my McDonald's yet, but maybe I'll do it someday.

MrJims.Pizza

At the end of 2014 I changed the name of my company from Mr. Jim's Pizza to MrJims.Pizza. People have asked why I would change the name of the company after nearly 40 years. It's a long story.

In 2004 shopping online was becoming ever more popular. An ex-employee, Jason Weible, was developing his own online ordering website for pizza ordering, ePizza.cc. He had worked for MrJims.Pizza as a high school student. He contacted me to give him input on his website. We exchanged several emails in 2004. By the end of 2004 I felt he had a very good site that would work well to sell pizzas online. This was at a time when AOL was the biggest internet service provider. Most people still connected by dial-up modems. I felt like no one would turn on their computer, dial-up a connection, log into our website, create an account, wait for a return email, log back into our site, and then finally go through the work of learning how to place an order, when they could just pick up the phone and call us. We had their caller ID and could easily send through their last order in seconds.

Six months later in June of 2005 I started thinking that this internet thing may catch on. If it did catch on and internet connection speeds increased, there may be people who would order pizzas online. I needed to get my foot in the door with that market so that my brand would be there already if it ever caught on. I re-contacted Jason to see if he was still running his site. He was. So we began setting up online ordering for MrJims.Pizza. In August of 2005 we took our first online order. At the end of May 2006 we became the first chain to have all locations accepting online orders. Then I hired Jason to work for me full time and build a web-based point of sales system that could be used inside the store for our phone order takers.

Since that time our online orders have continued to increase and increase. It is now the biggest percentage of our sales. I learned in Scientology that one must strengthen the cause of any affluence. I wanted to fully incorporate the idea of the internet into the actual brand to expand internet sales even further.

I began trying to think of different names for the company that would incorporate the idea of the internet into the brand. One of them was Pizza@MrJims.com. But none of my ideas seemed to gain traction with the friends and family that I surveyed. Then I found out that .pizza was going to be a new top level domain. That would give us the ability to use MrJims.Pizza, which surveyed very well with everyone I asked. I didn't even know when it would be available for end users. I even considered buying the whole .pizza top level domain. The fact that it was $185,000 just to sit at the table to then bid on the the top level domain thwarted my verve, so I waited. I couldn't really do anything with the new name until we had the name secured. There was a degree of uncertainty for the entire future of the company for many months. Finally 10 Dec 2014 was set as the date when the public could buy .pizza domain names. By 10:00am on the 10th we owned MrJims.Pizza

Mr. Wooley, MrJims.Pizza Executive Director, and our advertising agency worked at a fevered pitch to nail down the final logo design for the new company name. And I must say, they did a fantastic job.

In recent years, we have continued to broaden our product line, introducing Hand Stuffed Crust, Ultimate Double Cheese Crust, Dinner Made Easier and Detroit Style to name a few. I have also integrated the internet into all aspects of our business, including our custom order entry system, networked phone systems and targeted advertising.

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