Once widely considered “The World’s Most Feared Negotiator,” Jim Camp easily recalled his biggest negotiating mistake of his career.
Camp, a former Ohio State football player under the legendary Coach Woody Hayes, was back in Columbus over the holidays—he puts it around 1971 or 1972—and went to visit Coach Hayes.
“Let’s go to lunch, Jim,” said Coach Hayes.
“Okay Coach, let’s go,” said Camp and Hayes took him to Len Immke’s Buick in downtown Columbus, a car dealership with a restaurant inside.
“Now it’s December, it’s cold, and we’re standing outside in a line of people around the block,” recalled Camp.
Inside, it was a basic restaurant, but a “real jovial big guy with a white apron in there flipping hamburgers” was making most of the burgers for take-away. Camp gets his burger and sits down with Coach—likely the most noticeable man in Ohio—and the fellow with the white apron comes over to chat.
Coach Hayes told the “jovial big guy” that Camp was a former ballplayer of his and about to come off active duty in the military as a jet fighter pilot, and when he did, he was going to California to get started with business.
“Jim, I’d love to have a young man like you in the organization,” said the hamburger man, who was in the process of building about 40 more of these restaurants around the country. “Why don’t you get $80,000 together and I’ll sell you the franchise for California?”
At the time, Camp’s military pay was $5,500 per year. He couldn’t figure out how he was going to come up with $80,000!
Camp said that, at the time, he didn’t have the breadth or thought process to think about “who can I get to join in with me?” or “how can I do this?”
Instead, he settled for the, “Gee, I can’t do that…” approach and thanked the man in the white apron, who continued the negotiation.
“Well, if you can get that together, I can teach you how to do this.” But the young Camp lacked vision on how to syndicate capital. He had no mentors who could help him out, either.
“I didn’t have the skill,” Camp remembered. “I didn’t have the fortitude to go to the banks or to anyone else or to bring a group of people together.”
Camp figured if he couldn’t see it, his mentors couldn’t see it either. For his great mentor Woody Hayes was a football man, not a business man.
But as a last shot, Camp asked his father for the money. His dad laughed.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Our whole estate is not worth $80,000.”
Camp also said that because of all the other fast-food chains popping up at the time, that his father was “absolutely convinced that there was absolutely no future in hamburgers.”
Well, the jovial big guy in the white apron was Dave Thomas. The franchise opportunity was for Wendy’s Hamburgers for all of California. Could’ve been Camp’s for just $80k.
The franchise sold three years later for $53 million!
Meanwhile, Len Immke, the dealership owner, put together a group of investors who bought up the franchise rights for over 15 other states.
Wendy’s is now, of course, a household name. They also have a strong Twitter game … https://twitter.com/Wendys
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As always,
Brian
