YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Lamb

lines on the record: 92
first: 2023-11-06
most recent: 2023-11-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I was sourcing my billboard trucks out of, I was having them built up around Elkhart, Indiana. Okay. Elkhart, Indiana is this mecca in the United States for the RV industry. They build all RVs. That's”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of the ice cream trucks I saw, people are hunched over running back and forth in the van, opening up freezers, passing out stuff. So you want it to be a comfortable experience for the operator. Terrible and it looks disgusting, but your kids are screaming and you're trying to, you know, you lie to your kids and you say, well, when it plays music, you know, that means it's out of ice cream. And, you know, so you lie to your kids about stuff like that. Let's get the presentation down to where you can't say no. You know, a truck drives through it looks like Disney World and your kids are losing their mind. You can't say no to that. I mean, what can you say no to on that?”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fact that I've never seen a kid turn down a sugary treat. I get a little grief for that too because I used to make this statement, hey, it's not hard sales. We're selling sugar to kids. Now, that's the worst thing you can possibly say. You're an animal. Like everything in moderation, lighten up, you know”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. If I would have had to rely on, I think it's a swan that does the big block of ice that, like you're saying, a vice that forces it into an open razor blade that spins on an axis and shaves it off. It produces a very fluffy product. I don't think I would have pursued all the way through because the speed of service is slow, the danger, the skill that you have to have. You can't just let an 18-year-old go in there with a spinning razor blade. I mean, you're going to have to train this person to be able to do that. And I didn't want that. I don't want to have something so proprietary that we just can't duplicate it on a large scale. So I found an ice shaving machine. It produced very acceptable, not snow cone, very acceptable shaved ice on a very quick timeframe, you know. In a couple seconds, you have a cupful of...”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and you go at it like crazy, then end up biting the bottom of the cone off and letting all the syrup drain out into your mouth.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's all texture of ice. The snow cone, I mean, the way I picture it, my upbringing was you get it from a truck or you get it, and then you either have to let it melt or you just take the chance of just ruining the roof of your mouth and possibly busting some teeth off.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he goes, You want to partner up? And I'm like, nah, I don't want to partner. And he goes, I'll back it. And I was like, you know, I do want to partner. I don't want to spend the last of my family's savings. But yeah, your money.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually thought he bought it just to sit at his house so he could eat it, but he ended up putting a guy in it, driving it around or whatever. One time he said, you know, hey, the ice cream truck's not making money. What's your thoughts on it making money? Because I'd turned his furniture business around a little bit. So you look at the ice cream truck and you're like, well, it's complicated. It's expensive. The product is too much. You've got to have a mechanic and a salesman. It's got to get down to a one-person operation. Your food costs are too high. You've got way too much waste. You fill the entire ice cream machines up. If you can't sell it all, you know, what about shaved? And we just back and forth, back and forth. And this became a very big conversation between us. I'm working for him. My contracts are kind of coming to an end. We were sitting at Stringtown restaurant in Florence, and he goes, hey, we've talked about this till we're blue in the face.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And again, being a serial entrepreneur, you only have to hear that one time. Yeah. Bing, my ears, my senses go up, spidey senses start tingling.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And she says, even if I buy the best flavoring that's out there, the most expensive flavoring, it's still wildly profitable. You know, you make a milkshake, you sell for $3, you got a buck fifty in it. I sell shaved ice for $3. I've got 20 cents in it. And that's 10 cents for the cup.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she put some flavoring on the guy walked out and she made three bucks or four bucks or whatever the number was, and she said, I love that. And I said, why? She goes, because I made, it's all profit.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But let me tell you another story that kind of helped that. So when I sold off the rainbow business, my personal secretary as her severance, I bought out a video store in Cincinnati because they were dying, but we moved it to Warsaw, Kentucky, which is a small town, but rural and country where they're still renting videotapes at the time. So I moved this video store down there and we get it all set up. She did a great job. I was there one time and customer came in and she was trying to turn it over into food. And she was selling ice cream and different things like that. A customer came in while I was there and she sold a shaved ice to it.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is the true origin of Kona ice because I said, can you imagine if that truck would have been beautiful? Can you imagine if the product would have been good? And this is almost a two-week conversation that I just kept obsessing over where I'm sitting there and I'm like, what about if that truck would have been all glass on the side and you could have looked in and it would have been a high school girl or a college girl driving it with a uniform on and you could see what she was doing. And the products would have been fair and reasonable and the experience would have been engaging. What would have happened?”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My wife and I kind of jogged behind them. Here around the corner comes a 72 Chevy van, blue smoke rolling out of the back of it. And this funky music playing. And I was like, oh my gosh, it looks just like a child predator. It's just screaming. And this guy sticks his head out the window and he doesn't have a shirt on. He's got a beautiful array of fresh prison tattoos. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating that, but he was heavily tattooed. So they got their popsicles and I'm paying the guy and they're opening up their freezer burnt icing crusted popsicles and they are disappointed. However, I know for a fact if the guy would have turned around and come back, they would have had the experience all over again. Became”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the origin story, and this is true, no embellishment. I moved into a subdivision. We're in the backyard with my kids. We hear the music, and my kids all look at each other and take off running to the front yard. And I remember it very distinctly.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, what I hated about Rainbow was the lack of residuality. Truly, you have to sell another vacuum cleaner every single day. I had buddies that were in insurance and they worked their butts off for a couple years, then coast for the next 20. And I'm like, yeah, I want some of that. And so what was so fabulous about the ad truck was the $500, $600 a day, but it was you're at the mercy of the ad media buyer. You're at the mercy of how much can I generate? I ended up with multiple billboard trucks, but it was all on me, how much can I sell? But I was always in the back of my head looking for I want to be able to sell something and make a little bit of money on it for the rest of my life.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to charge because you've got to inherently, you've got gasoline and labor. So you've got a couple hundred bucks a day in expenses. So you're going to need to get 500 to $700 a day for it to be profitable. So I started selling each individual side of the truck. The truck holds looks like a big tepee or whatever, and then it has two sides to it. So I started, what I would do is I went to all the casinos in Cincinnati, because they were the biggest media buyers at the time. What happens in casinos when they come to towns, you know, after a while, they stop buying all the ads, the revenues go down, and this thing kind of petered out. But then Kona had started up.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if they would have kept going, I would have done really well. But, you know, they slowly, they're going to pay me $100 over for the sales for the next five years. But, you know, then they started shutting down because they didn't have all the skill sets to keep running it. So I got about probably a third of what I was expecting. And, you know, all the other little things that happen in life, you're like, oh, well, that didn't work out. Well, okay, that didn't work out.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you go get a retired guy and say, hey, go get stuck in traffic. And it's brilliant. Slow down. You're going too fast. I ended up with a bunch of those trucks, and that's kind of a segue into Kona Ice because the billboard truck business was.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will give you credit, guy. You have certainly done your research. I could not get billboard space in Louisville where I wanted it. And I'm on eBay. I'm looking, you know, trying to do maybe temporary billboard or signage or something. And I came across a billboard truck. And I thought, huh, and I bought a billboard truck. And then it became its own business on the side. Oh,”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. 18 by 24 signs. I'll put them at every intersection. Business started going up. The city of Louisville calls the furniture store and said, we're getting ready to fine you for all these signs. You can't put signs up. And I'm like, we paid some high school kids to do it. I'm so sorry. We'll get them down. He goes. So a week later, they call back because there's more signs now because, you know, and he goes, we're going to find you $1,000 a day. Well, we were making probably $5,000 a day. I was like, I'll take the fine.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, charge you interest and they make the profit on the couch. So yard signs. And I produced like a thousand yard signs, buy here, pay here, furniture, you know, no credit checks, blah, blah, blah. And I started putting them all over Louisville, Kentucky.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's not bank financing. So you come in and you want a couch and you put up $200 down and you pay them $50 a month till the couch is paid off. And”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had finance people running a sales operation And so you really needed salespeople, and you needed some marketing. And I was, I'll tell you this real quick. I didn't have a marketing budget, so I would come up with these yard signs. Now, remember, it's buy here, pay here furniture. So it's not.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, nothing will build an ego like success and that. And again, I will freely admit you get a little big for your britches. I was very young and I was winning all the contest and they fly you to Hawaii. They go on all these trips. And yeah, you get a little bit too big for your britches. And then, like I said, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to quit this business. And my wife said, Are you sure? I guess we are living pretty good and we get these trips every six months that we go on that are fabulous. So she wasn't a fan, but I just thought I had some other options out there that turned out not to be as wonderful as Rainbow was.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad had stepped down from the company. I thought he was treated very poorly. They rewrote the history of Rainbow. And my dad, who I feel like was responsible for a massive... Part of this growth, all the programs we're running, they were my dad's ideas. And he got like two paragraphs in the history of Rexair. And I was like, you know, I'm done. You know, I'll go do something else. Little did I know how much money I was making. In comparison to the real world, but I did. I got very discouraged. I didn't like the new management coming in. I got a couple other opportunities and I just started slowly disassembling the organization. I would start selling the offices off to the managers and it slowly just all went away.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I ended up with six offices. This is by the time I was 25. I had 300 salespeople. I was running a multimillion dollar business at 25, selling vacuum cleaners and started door-to-door. I guess when I say it like this and I'm having this revelation, I'm like, hey, that's not too bad. It's amazing.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you basically was in Lexington after I graduated. I stayed there for a year and then I moved to northern Kentucky and I started my own office. And very magically, I mean, I don't want to take too much credit for it, but we built one of the largest offices in the region within a year. So, yeah, I mean, I'm, again, I'm 23, 24 years old. I'm making $10,000, $20,000 a month.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's all on how you interpret no and the way I was always taught, the way I believe is the answer is no based on the information that I have right now. So the no is not going to change by you pressuring me. The no only changes if you give me more information. So, okay, why would you not purchase the, well, it's just too much. You can buy a $200 vacuum cleaner at Walmart, or I can buy a $1,500 vacuum cleaner from you. Well, let's break that down. Let me go ahead and do a 15-year cost study. So these vacuum cleaners that you buy from Walmart are going to break down every three or four years. You've got to buy bags. You're not getting the job done. Or you can spend $1,500. You've got a product that'll last 15 years. But most importantly, you're going to get the job done. So let's make it to the point where it's just an obvious yes, and you'd feel almost stupid saying no.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was an old Zig Ziggler, and God help me if I don't quote Zig Ziglar a thousand times a day. But my dad, the joke was that I think he put Zig Ziglar tapes in my crib when growing up because I can talk like Zig Ziggler and I can recite most of the stuff. But his great line was timid salesmen have skinny kids. And so I wasn't going to be timid. I was going to ask for the order. That's how I married my wife 31 years ago is I asked. I didn't assume, I just asked for the order.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the guy who just sits back and smiles real big. And I'm like, you know, John, if this was a set of golf clubs or that John Deere riding lower, you and I could talk about this all night, but it's not. This is a product that's going to make Judy's job a lot easier in the house. And all we really need to know is if she wanted, would you help her get it? And I think she wants it. So the question comes down to, would you help her get it? And of course you would. So what's your middle initial? Because you just ask for their middle initial. You pull out the sales receipt and you put your head down. If you get T or S, you've got the sale. But you got to do the presentation right. You got to bring them all the way through the journey.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm laughing, having a good time. I come in, and I just try to disarm them a little bit. But God, there's so many nuances of selling. And I'll give you some fun things. If at some point you can figure out whether the guy's got a hobby or not. So let's just say, and I'm always looking in the cars, in the garage when I come in and say, man, you guys got a beautiful garage. Why don't you show me your garage and he'll take me out? And if I see a set of ping golf clubs. Or a John Deere riding lawnmower. And probably most wives don't realize that a set of paying golf clubs cost fifteen hundred dollars. But I will announce that at some point if I'm not getting the sale.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh God, I nobody's looking to buy a vacuum cleaner. That's the whole thing. So you knock on the door. You've got an appointment because Mary Smith has bought a rainbow, so she gives four of her unwilling friends. And so you call their friends and say, hey, Judy, I was wondering if I could schedule a time to come in and show you and John of the Rainbow. I'll be quick about it. I'll do it fast. You guys get a little three-day, two-night vacation package, timeshare presentation. We didn't say that part, but get a little three-day, two-night vacation. It pays for your hotel accommodations. So let's schedule a time. And she's like, my husband's never going to go for this. I know, but tell him I'm fun. It'll be a good time. I'm never going to pressure you guys. I just want to show it, get the credit, and I'll be out of your hair. All right. And Lord forbid the husband answers the door because he's pissed at me immediately. And they all start announcing we are not by.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a summer selling vacuum cleaners. He goes, well, because you have to transport a lot of samples and things, it's usually a minivan. And I'm like, for the love of God, man, I look like this. I can't drive a minivan. I'll never get married.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was a fairly good student at UK. I got the grades and the big job interview that came on campus was a pharmaceutical rep, Merck pharmaceuticals. And everyone in my little peer group was talking about it. And they said, Lamb, you know, you should do this because you've got all the sales experience. You've got enough chemistry background. So I get a suit. I go to the interview. I sit down with the guy. And man, I'm going to town. Because I sold vacuums all the way through college and I was actually pretty good at it. So I'm in there telling this pharmaceutical rep that, you know, I'm a good salesperson, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da. And we're having this conversation. It's going good. And he said, man, I'm really excited about this interview. And I said, I am too. He goes, you got any questions for me. And I said, yeah, how much do I make? And he said, I'll never forget this. He said, $36,000 a year and a company car. And I said, what kind of car? What kind of car? Because my God, it better be a Ferrari because I make $30.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that was it, guy. I think ego is checked at the door when you're in sales. I have no inhibitions, and I say that. And I don't say it boastfully. I say it almost apologetically. And the fact that I'm not extremely attractive gentleman, but when I was asking girls to go out, I was never offended when they would say no. And I would just go on to the next one because it's a numbers game. A numbers game. Just like vacuum winner says. So, okay.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I'm asking the manager, and she says, Well, I'm trying to make it even because you sell more. And I'm like, well, how is that fair? And I remember going home to my dad and I'm fussing around. And he said, Tony, listen, when you work for somebody, they're always going to tell you when to work, how to work, and basically establish your worth as a person. And I'm like, wow, that's very sobering as a sophomore in high school. But it stuck. And I thought, yeah, you're right. So eventually I just moved back into detailing cars and I had a pretty good little car detailing business for the rest of my high school career.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I'm always surprised when people know details of my life. Yes, I worked at the Gap was my first W-2 job. I detailed cars for a long time and then I wanted to get a real job and I took this job at the gap for $3.35 an hour, which was minimum wage at the time. But the lesson that I pulled from the gap, and I'll never forget this, was I was at the gap and they said, hey, they're announced this big Christmas contest. And whoever sells the most, and I'm like, well, I'm going to kill everybody. And I come in and my schedule has been cut. And I'm scheduled for like 20 hours this week. And Charlie McKay is scheduled for, you know, 36. I'm like, how am I supposed to beat him?”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's the rainbow vacuum cleaner. So it's an in home door to door. They use referrals more so than they go door to door. So if someone buys a rainbow, they'll send you to four of their friends so they can get a free shampoo. And he started out, you know, when I was little, I think he was a regional or a district salesperson or whatever. But then as I got older, he promoted up through the company. And when I was in high school,”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad's just got this bigger than life personality. And I had the weirdest perspective ever growing up because my dad did very well selling vacuum cleaners and he drove nice cars. We had a nice house. And then I had buddies who their dads were doctors or lawyers and they didn't live as nice as we were living. And they're like, what does your dad do for a living? I was like, he sells vacuum cleaners. My perspective was, okay, on the hierarchy of life, you've got vacuum cleaners sales and then doctors and then lawyers and bankers. So I always aspired to be a vacuum cleaner salesman because I thought that was the road to Mercedes and a quality of life.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there's times that, but the responsibilities I've got four kids and a wife, and I'm sitting there with one truck thinking, can I scale this? But, you know, I was having a great time. My kids thought I was the greatest because I'm driving an ice cream truck.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone knows that guy, or you've read about that guy that just he can't get out of his own way and he's just entrepreneurs till he dies and he never hits anything big.”
2023-11-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kona Ice: Tony Lamb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT