Richard C. Wilson:
Hello, everybody. Richard C. Wilson here with Billionaires.com and our Pro Athlete Interview Series. We have with us here today, Fran Tarkenton, who is a Hall of Fame NFL Quarterback legend. He’s also someone who has broken through in business, started businesses before he even started his NFL career. Not one of these people that made hundreds of millions playing and then later on got into business. He’s been at it for a long time. We’ve got an exciting interview with him here today.

Just a few things that you may want to know about Fran. He is a serial entrepreneur. He started over 24 businesses. He’s been in the Super Bowl three times. He’s won the NFL MVP Award. He was the first athlete to host Saturday Night Live. He also introduced Tony Robbins to the world as a peak performance coach in infomercials in the late 1980s, and he introduced Tiger Woods to the world on TV when he was just five years old as well.

He has a legacy and leadership, and just reviewing the insights and lessons on their website. Some of the things that they talk about, the values they stand for, is that business is here to help people. There’s no silver bullets. You have to reinvent yourself every day. Stay hungry, don’t get complacent, and nothing takes the place of hard work.

I just recently finished the CrossFit games watching all those in Amazon Prime, and Mat Fraser was on there winning five times and his saying is hard work pays off, and that reminds me of the seventh value on your website, Fran. So, excited to have you here. Amazing what you’ve accomplished both on and off the field. So, definitely excited to see how you answer our interview questions here today.
So, let’s jump right into the first question. What was the turning point that gave you great momentum and had everything surging forward afterwards, whether it was acquiring an asset, or acting a different way, et cetera? Can you share that with our audience?

Fran Tarkenton:
I have some specific things that I did that, when I look back now, they sound crazy, but I did them. And if I hadn’t have done them, I wouldn’t be as good. In high school in Athens, Georgia, we won the state championship. And they’ve never run a state championship since then. That was 1955. I went to college at Georgia, right across the street of Athens, Georgia. I was recruited by a lot of schools, Georgia Tech, Auburn, Florida, South Carolina, whatever. But Georgia didn’t have a good program and good team at that time. They really didn’t. Their coach had been dysfunctional. He’d been there 20 years, and he just didn’t work as hard then as he did before, I guess, because Georgia was awful. And so instead of going to Auburn, some of the Georgia Tech, I went to Georgia and the freshmen couldn’t play. So we had a good freshman team. We won all three freshman games.

But I could play as a sophomore and be there. I had two quarterbacks that were already one year ahead of me that were the top quarterbacks in the country when they came out of high school. We had a spring practice and my coach, Wally Butts, he says, I was the third string quarterback, “You’ve had a great spring, you’ve already done well. We’re going to redshirt you.” “What does redshirt mean?” “That means you can give me another year of education.” I said, “I don’t want to be redshirted. I’m going to graduate in three years from now. And I’m going to go out in the world and I’m going to work or play or whatever I’m going to do. But if you want me to play, you better play me today.” “Oh, that’s a good attitude.” Fast-forward, we open our game against the University of Texas, and I was a sophomore.

I had to be about 1958, maybe somewhere in there. They had a really good team. I didn’t know they had a good team because I’m 17 years old, 18 years old, and I’m just getting into college. But I was practicing, and I knew the offense, and I knew he wasn’t going to play me. I had to do something drastic. And so I am the third string quarterback, I know what the program is, and we play them and we’re at the middle of the second half, we’re down seven to nothing. And they’re punting to us, and I’m on the sidelines standing next to my coach, Wally Butts, “You got to put me in. Charlie Britt, the other quarterback, I think he’s tired, he’s limping and maybe hurt. Let me give him a little relief. Let me go.” I’m just pestering and pestering and pestering. I’m 18 years old, and he won’t play me.
And finally, they punt to us and we fair caught the ball on the five-yard line. That’s a no-no. We got 95 yards to go to make a touchdown. We hadn’t even made hardly a first down that night. And I look, I’m right in the 50-yard line standing next to Coach Butts. And the quarterback, Charlie Britt, who was playing, was still on the bench. And I saw him on the bench, and I’m standing next to the coach. I ran from the 50-yard line down to the 55-yard line. I put myself in.

Now, it scares me a little bit when I tell the story. My teammate said, “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be redshirted.” I said, “Shut up. We got 95 yards. We got to score.” I think we took 21 plays. Little short passes here, little short passes there. A run or two. And we’re down to the five-yard line. It’s fourth down, and we could have kicked an extra point, or we could kick the field goal. But I didn’t want to kick a field goal. I wanted to score a touchdown to tie the game up. So, I scrambled a little bit back and forth. And there was a end named Aaron Marks who was over in the left corner of the end zone, had a little bit of room. I threw it and he caught it, and we scored a touchdown. We’re behind seven to six. It’s the first year of the two point conversion. So I could have a two point play, or I could kick extra point.
They sent in the extra point kicker, Durward Pennington. I waved him off. I’m 18 years old. I waved him off. I told my players and I said, “If we don’t make this two-point conversion, I’m going to have to take the Greyhound bus from Austin, Texas to Athens, Georgia.” And so anyway, I called to play. I scrambled to the right, I’ve moved it back, I threw another pass. I’m completed it for a two-point conversion. We’re up eight to seven. We’re in the middle of the third quarter.

They drive down and they’re in the middle of the fourth quarter, and they score. Coach Butts put the other player in. And I went nuts. And from there I was going to transfer. And my freshman coach talked me into staying, and then I played for the rest of the, we won SEC championship. If I don’t do that, if I don’t take that initiative, I may have never played.
So, what’s the story? The story is this. Get in the game. You can’t make things better if you’re on the sidelines. You got to go and be in the game. Whatever the game is. And that’s how you learn, that’s how you function, and that’s how you bring some energy, and some knowledge, and some victory to what you do. I started over the years maybe 24 businesses. I started my first ones when I was 25 years old, and it didn’t work. It was a food place here in Atlanta called Scrambler’s Village. It just didn’t work. Then I had a guy from New York. He had some technology and his company, he was bankrupt. Not a big company, didn’t do much business. Somehow I got to know him and he said, “Would you just take over my business?” And I did. And he stayed and worked with it. But we took it out of bankruptcy. It was a technology business. It was kind of an state-of-the-art technology.

So anyway, I learned a little bit of technology. Then I had one guy who was a technology guy, and we went around for about two years, and I’m retired, I’m going full going here. And we just couldn’t make it work. We didn’t have the marketing, we didn’t have the way to get to the potential customer. And so I asked my guy, I said, “Then tell me, we got to do something about, we got to get a partnership. We can’t do it by ourselves.” He said, “Well, IBM would be a perfect partner.” IBM, this is 1980. IBM was the Faang stocks in one. They were it. They were the King of kings, Lord of lords. The most successful company of that era that’s ever been.
And I said, IBM with all their money and all their success, they were Microsoft, they were Apple, they were Google, they were all these things, Nvidia. And these guys are going to help, they’re going to want us to work with them. And our revenue was maybe 75,000 a year, and we were losing about 200,000 a year. And that’s all my money. I don’t even know how I had that much money, but I did. So I said, “We got to get help. We can’t just stand here.” And so then he makes the IBM thing, and I said, “Hi.” He said, “Do you know the chairman?” I said, “I don’t know him, but I’m going to call him anyway.” And so I called the chairman of the board of IBM. And he was a lovely guy. And so I called his secretary and I said, “Can I speak to your boss?”

And she said, “Who are you?” I said, “My name is Fran Tarkenton. I used to play football.” “Will he know you?” I said, “I think maybe he will. I don’t know, but I think he will.” His name was John Akers. And he was a wonderful guy. And so he gets on the phone and he talks, he wants to talk a little football, a little that. I said, “John, I won’t talk business. I’ve got this product here that I’ve taken on, and it’s got great promise, I think. But I don’t know anything about technology. I’m just learning. Here you are the greatest technology company in the world. But my guy, I got one guy who’s my technology officer, and he tells me that we’ve got some technology that will fit in with IBM. And I’ve laughed at him, but I told him I’m going to call you.”

And he was laughing. He said, “Well, why don’t you just come up here and I’ll get some people together to look at it?” And I did. I got him, went up to outside of New York City to their headquarters up in Westchester, New York. And he had about 25 of his people in a room. 25 people. IBM, they were the richest company in the world. And I’ve got to go. And they know I’m a jock. So I brought up enough footballs for everyone to sign. I think it was 26 footballs. I brought a stopwatch. And so I told the people, IBM, they wore blue suits. And I and John Akers went in that meeting, but his people were, and I knew they were bored to death. “Why would he have us waste our time to talk to him? He’s a jock. He doesn’t know anything about technology.” And they’re right. I didn’t.

And so I have my autographed footballs. I said, “I’ve got these footballs. I’ll sign for you or your grandkids or your kids, and then I’ve got a stopwatch here, because I only want to take up 30 minutes of your time. I know you don’t want to be here. I know John Akers told you to be there, and I want to make it as painless as possible.” And so they’re laughing about that. And so I had an old-fashioned stopwatch. So I click it. I said, “30 second, we’re out of here.” I said, “Here’s my chief technology officer, Mike Ryan, and he’s my only technology officer. Our revenue was last year a couple of hundred thousand. We lost money on that. We don’t do marketing very well, but he thinks that new people would understand what I’m talking about.”

So I said, I turned to him, Mike. He spends 30 minutes telling about our software. I said, “Okay, stopwatch went off. I’m going to sign the balls. Thank you for being here.” “No, no, no, we want more. We want to hear more.” We stayed there another two hours. And he kept going. And so we left. And I get a call from John Akers. And John Akers says, “Oh, wait, you really put a wow on my people. They really love what you’re doing.” I said, “They did?” “Yeah, they want to come down to Atlanta to see what you’re doing and have more conversation with you.”
So 20 of them came down to this building that I’m in right now here in Buckhead, Atlanta. And we sat down and we went for three or four hours, and they had a bunch of people all in blue suits. Wow. They left. I said to our guy, I said, “We’ll never see them again.” Next day John Akers calls me. He said, “My people love what you’re doing. We want to be a business partner of you. We want to sell your product through our sales force all over the world.” “I mean, you do?” I said, “Okay.”

He said, “We’d like to invest in your company.” I said, “My company has no value. We don’t generate much revenue and we lose money. And you’re IBM. You’re the biggest company in the world.” And he was giggling, laughing. I said, “No, I can’t do that. We got to think of something else.” He said, “No, no. I want to invest $10 million in your company.” I said, “$10 million?” That’s like a billion dollars today. I said, “I can’t do that. We’re not worth that. We’re not even worth a hundred thousand dollars. We’re not worth anything. And you’re going to give me $10 million? You want to own the company?” “No, I don’t want to own the company. I want to doubt about it.” So, he forced me to cut a deal. And I think IBM took maybe 20% of the company, and I had 80%. And we started selling our products all over their sales force all over the world.

And the second year together, we did about $20 million in sales. And then we kept growing from there. And two years after that, we did $180 million. Could not have done it, obviously, without the partnerships that we had. And so we went from a hundred thousand a year to 120, $140 million a year. And it taught me a great lesson, is, tell the truth, be authentic and build something up that’s not to be. And so we formed that partnership. Unlikely, right? And it was great for IBM, it was great for us. And that’s my first big business deal.
And I’ve always got great partners that we can help, because we’re nimbler, faster, and we have technology now, we have more tools now. And so now all of us in business today, we can do more things today than we ever could. And if we don’t start doing that, and then in another year make that better, and another year make that better, you won’t make it. But if you do it right and you keep pushing the button, then we can change the world.

Richard C. Wilson:
Wow, that’s amazing. I think telling it on the personal sports level as well as in business, I think is especially helpful. I don’t have the success that you have had, but I can definitely relate to the need to really put yourself in the game and put yourself out there. I think a lot of the success I’ve had is for me starting businesses when I was in grade school, middle school, high school and college. And some of the best job opportunities, and career opportunities, and business opportunities, came from me seizing an opportunity, reaching out to everybody in the Yellow Pages in a certain section, or everybody in the Chamber of Commerce, or to every billionaire about interviewing them for Billionaires.com, etc, and it’s really putting yourself out there. There’s a quote that I like, it’s called, it goes, “Authority is taken, not granted.” And when you put yourself out on the field and you just go and put yourself into the play, I think that level of initiative, and passion, and confidence, is really what’s needed.

And I recently read the book called Be Useful by Arnold to my daughters. And in that book he says that everybody doubted him and laughed in his face when he said he wanted to be a big star in Hollywood. They said, “I can’t even understand what you’re saying right now. How are you going to be a star?” And they tried to give him supporting roles, or have him be a counselor at the entrance to a dance club, or a German soldier. He kept on turning those down and says, “No, I want the main role.” And he really put himself out there and went straight for his goal. Just like you. You didn’t want to be a redshirt your first two, three years. You wanted to be on the field playing and show what you could get done. So that’s great. Appreciate you sharing that.

And I guess the story with IBM going from a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, and losing money, to doing 20 million in revenue and then growing to 80, a hundred million plus in revenue, that’s a life-changing move. And I guess having the courage to just get 30 seconds with IBM to hear your idea was what made the huge difference, right? You put yourself on the field, you gave yourself a shot at making that happen, and then everything from there unfolded and became big. So that’s awesome. Appreciate you sharing both of those stories.
All right. My second question is, what is the most valuable strategy that’s worth far more than a million dollars that you wish somebody provided you with earlier on that you could share here now?

Fran Tarkenton:
I was a sponge. I asked questions going back to my childhood of having the wagon to take the groceries for the little old ladies in Washington, D.C. I paper routes. All my football, I got to be a better player because I talked to the great legends of pro football. Johnny Unitas, who was a hero of mine, spent a lot of time with him. A guy named Y.A. Tittle who played for the Giants, spent a lot of time with him. There was a great quarterback at the Bears of the 40s and 50s named Sidney Luckman. And I reached out to all those people to find out they’re the elite, right? How did you do that? And they wanted to tell me. And I wanted to listen.

And so therefore, I was a sponge. I went out and did that all of my life of playing, and all my life up to right now. I am not smart enough now. I want smart enough then. I want to be the smartest quarterback there ever was. Because I had to call my own plays. And what I started doing is putting in the offense on the teams I played with. The New York Giants in New York and also back to the Vikings when we went to three Super Bowls in about five years. And all that knowledge came from my wanting to be better and learn from these people who’d already had enormous success. And that was kind of my mantra, all my life. Still is.

I played in a lot of Pro Bowl games. And so we had a group of players from one part of the NFL against another part of the NFL. We played in the LA Coliseum, and we had one of the coaches. So my coaches in successive years were Tom Landry of the Cowboys, Hall of Fame coach; Vince Lombardi, who we played against at Green Bay; Don Shula, who was the Hall of Fame coach for Miami.
And when we went to these one week to work out to play in the All-Star games, I would talk to those people every day. “Tell me your philosophy of offensive football. Why do you do this? Why do you do that? Why do you do that? Why do you do that?” And so I took that time to get smarter. Because these are the best coaches in football. I already talked to the best quarterbacks in football. They made me what I was. It wasn’t me. It was them. I’ve never lost that need to be better. I don’t know everything. I want to know more. I want to be smarter. I want to be more efficient. And now in business, it’s about marketing.

In football, you got to score points. I can do that either by throwing it or handing it off somebody, or maybe our defense makes it play. But we’ve got to get points. So, we got to build it around, how do we survive and how do we succeed? Business is no different. It’s all marketing really. If we don’t have a way to go to market to find people efficiently to use our product, and if our products don’t work, it didn’t work, right? We got to have products that work that can help them solve problems, and then the marketing help them get in front of more customers more efficiently and get more sales.

Richard C. Wilson:
Wow. What’s fascinating is I know you’ve only listened to one or two of the 45 billionaires that I’ve interviewed so far, and you’ve probably read a dozen or two dozen if not more, of the 120 books authored by billionaires I’ve gotten through so far. But the number one thing is that they are voracious readers, learners, and sponges, exactly like what you just said. And it’s interesting how common that comes up. And a lot of it does come back to, I think, the thirst to be successful, right? The hunger, the ambition, wanting to learn from those that are exactly where you want to be in the future. It’s hyper specialized knowledge. You’re not just learning football, you’re learning from some of the greatest quarterbacks ever, some of the greatest coaches ever. So yeah, interesting, right on trend with what we’ve heard from many others that have reached a level of success that you have.

And I think it’s that constant improvement, the constant iterations, always getting more efficient, more effective, dialing in the mindset, philosophies. Really interesting. And I guess what you’re saying on the business side is that it’s not just being more efficient and effective. If you have a product that’s very effective, then it’s like, how do you get distribution? How do you get marketing so that it gets in the hands of potential clients? So awesome. Yeah, great feedback, great advice. I’m sure a lot of people benefit from hearing that.
Now when I get to my third question, what would you say is the number one most costly mistake you have made or you’ve seen other founders, investors, or people make throughout your career, either professionally in football or in business?

Fran Tarkenton:
Here is the mindset that I think all of us have to have. I know that I’ve got to have this. There are a lot of people out there. “Oh, I want to sell, sell, sell. I want to get customers, customer customers.” Whether if they need the product, and maybe they need one of the products, “Well, I almost sell them 10.” A lot of people do that. That’s totally the wrong way to do it. The right way to do it is to be able to, with a mantra. If I cannot help you make with my tools, and our strategies, and our technology, if I cannot be able to help you grow your business and get more customers efficiently, I don’t want to work for you.

Well, you’re supposed to have sales. Some people think that I’m a pretty good salesman. I’ve never sold anything in my life. And when I go in to talk to people about my businesses over the years, I say, “This is what we do. This is how we do it. And does this make sense to you or not?” And if it doesn’t make sense, I move on. I don’t try to twist anybody’s arm. I don’t have a sales rally going forward, a good closing argument. I have no interest in working with people that don’t want to work with me. And some don’t. And I’m not naive to know that I can solve every problem there is in the world. But we tell people the truth, and we work with them, and we have a lot of successes, but our success has turned into more opportunities. We never stop the process. And when you stop the process, it all stops.

Back in the day, we had Sears Roebuck, we had JCPenneys, Montgomery Wards and all these shops. On the wall of my office that we’re in right now, I got three personal letters from Sam Walton, who was the founder of Walmart, the greatest businessman I think that ever lived. Sam Walton, he was a store manager at JCPenney. He had an idea of how to be more efficient in that business. And so he wanted to start Walmart. He pitched it to JCPenney and all those companies I just mentioned, now I’m going to touch it. He started it when he was 51 years old in Bentonville, Arkansas. And he built efficient buildings, not fancy darn things. And he put the right products in there, and he had the right strategies and so forth. And he did that. He had no technology. And 21 years after he started, he was I think the highest revenue business in the world. He had a zillion Walmarts and a lot of Sam’s Clubs all over the world. And in 21 years, at 72, he died.

I look back at him, I’ve got those letters he wrote to me on my wall, I got pictures of me going to his stores, to open stores up, and I went up and opened 40 stores, or went to 40 stores with him, and he’d walk around the place and talk to the people. “How are you doing? What products are working? Are their prices right? Are they too high? Are they too low?” He was out there. This brilliant guy was brilliant because he asked the questions. He was curious. It was what you do. And he was a great role model for me. And it’s a shame he died so young, but with no technology in 21 years, he became the number one company in the world.

And it wasn’t new technology. It wasn’t Apple, it wasn’t Google, it wasn’t Microsoft, it wasn’t Nvidia. It was blood and guts. And that foundation of who he was. He didn’t go to Harvard Business School. He didn’t go to the Ivy League schools. But he learned it out in the field. Everything you learn is out in the field. Talking to prospective customers, your own people and so forth, to be able to solve more problems and do it efficiently.

So I owe whatever success I’ve had to Mr. Sam. Well, God, you’ve learned. Yeah, you’re 84 plus year, yeah, and I’m still learning at a faster clip today than I ever was before. And that’s fun. It’s fun when you go out and you help people do better. That’s the mission of business.

Richard C. Wilson:
Got it. Great. So basically you’re saying, explain what you do. Be honest about it. If it’s not a fit, you’re not trying to convince them to buy something they don’t really need, or to buy more than what they need. Ask a lot of questions, find a mentor. And you’re basically saying that Sam Walton was a huge part of your success, a mentor, somebody that you modeled some of your work after. And it’s his ability to be on the ground talking to the frontline people, his employees, and the foundation of who he was character wise.

And I guess you ended by saying that the whole point of business is to help people do better, to help people be better, to help their business grow using your technology solution, et cetera.

So awesome. Yeah, I took about a whole page of notes during this interview today. I hope everyone listening got a lot out of it as well. Thank you so much, Fran, for being here. And we hope to have you on stage at one of our events soon. Maybe we could do a fireside chat or something. So, appreciate all of your time. Take care.