My son Little Dennis, whose fifth birthday we had celebrated, had been murdered by an impaired driver. All I could think of were our daddy-son phone calls when Little D would sing my favorite song, “I love my daddy all the time, all the time.”
Monday on my birthday, two armed guards escorted me home to Spokane to attend the funeral at my mom’s church. That’s right—I am the son of a preacher woman.
I entered in leg irons shackled to my waist and my wrists. I felt like dead man walking; after all a part of me was dead, a very special part.
As I made my way up to the casket and saw Little Dennis so peaceful and so handsome, all the anger, rage, hurt, guilt, bitterness and remorse vanished and I thought to myself, What would Little D want?
Immediately I knew that he would want his daddy to be the absolute best he could. As tears filled the wells and flowed down my face like a torrential Niagara Falls, my eyes closed and I heard him singing, “I love my daddy all the time, all the time.”
After the funeral I said good-bye to my family, friends and those who came to pay their respects. On that dark, cold and lonely road back, I decided to get involved in the “Scared Straight” program to deter young people from making the same mistakes I had.
Soon I found myself going to the library, reading books; one was called Think and Grow Rich. That book said for every adversity comes the equivalent of a greater benefit. I remember thinking to myself, Where’s the benefit? I definitely had tons of adversity; adversity was my lifestyle back in the day.
Then I heard about a guy in California into that positive-thinking stuff, so I wrote to him explaining my situation and in a few weeks I got a call to the mailroom. I had received a package. Inside was a four-cassette audio album titled “How to Outperform Yourself Totally” by Mark Victor Hansen!
Listening over and over, I stared out into the sky through the broken windows from my cell. I remember thinking to myself, I sure would like to be able to motivate and empower people in a positive way. Back in the day, growing up in the hood, the only motivation I knew was fear motivation: You’d better, or else! What a radical paradigm shift this was for me. The more I listened as Mark sprinkled the prosperity seeds into my fertile mind, the more I became excited! I had never heard anybody like Mark before. I thought, just possibly, I could be somebody who could make a difference.
Then I thought to myself, What a great testament to Little Dennis’s memory—going to schools when I got out and sharing my story and talking about the insidious effects of drugs, crime and alcohol abuse. After all, I’ve been there and done that and look where I ended up!
For the next several years I immersed myself in a personal development retreat. No longer was I going to serve time; I was going to make time serve me. Prisoner number 265212 was going to take charge of his life and his destiny.
Finally on December 24, 1987 after spending eight and a half years doing hard time, I was paroled. My prayers were answered. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty; I was free at last!
Now it was time to put up or shut up, so I went to work speaking everywhere I could. Articles started appearing in newspapers and my speaking career was launched. In 1990, I founded, hosted and produced my own TV talk show, Choices, where I had the opportunity to interview stars of the big screen like Edward James Olmos, Ellen Travolta Bannon, LL Cool J, The Guys Next Door, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Yolanda King and others.
My life has been about overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. As I tell my story—whether it is on the news, to an audience of six or several thousand people—I share my earlier life as an example of what not to do. I also let all my brothas and sistahs know that no matter how bad things are, you’ve got the power within you to turn it around. If I can change and turn my life around from gangs, drugs, crime, prison and the ultimate tragedy of all, losing my son, anybody can do it!
Take my word for it: Being out there representing with the right attitude is the only way to go.
Dennis Mitchell
Making Mistakes Is Natural
Mistakes are a fact of life. It’s the response to the error that counts.
Nikki Giovanni
Making chocolate-chip cookies made me “Famous.” Losing the company that made my name a household word made me wonder if life would ever be the same again. Despite my missteps in business, I found that my life got better and I got stronger.
Many people who know I started Famous Amos Cookies don’t know I’m finished with Famous Amos. It’s a long story that began in Hollywood but didn’t have a Hollywood ending, and it’s why I say making mistakes is natural.
I started Famous Amos Cookies in March 1975 with a little help from my friends. Others believed it was a risky business. My shop on Sunset Boulevard was the first retail store in the world to sell nothing but chocolate-chip cookies.
Even I was amazed that a forty-year-old amateur cookie maker could achieve such swift success. The first year, I grossed $300,000. I had christened myself “Famous Amos” before I actually became famous, and out of this sweet success was born “the King of Cookies, the Father of the Gourmet Chocolate-Chip Cookie Industry, the Face That Launched a Thousand Chips.”
I have always believed that chocolate-chip cookies are special and magical. Just the thought of chocolate-chip cookies evokes emotional feelings and revives happy, caring, loving and heartfelt memories. Chocolate-chip cookies were a way of life for me before I turned them into a way to make a living. I had used my home-baked chocolate-chip cookies as my calling card in the entertainment business. A bag of free cookies always meant a warm, friendly welcome for me, although it didn’t necessarily mean that my clients got the jobs.
After two years in business, Famous Amos was grossing $1 million. A Time Magazine cover story in 1977 called me one of the “Hot New Rich.” Newsweek called me “the Progenitor of the Upscale Cookie, the Greatest Cookie Salesman Alive.” Of course, I accepted the accolades even if they went too far.
Batch followed aromatic batch. Famous Amos expanded from coast to coast. I was the nut who brought nuts to Nutley, New Jersey, when I opened a Famous Amos bakery there in 1976. It wasn’t long before my bewhiskered brown face was to cookies what the pale-faced Quaker was to oatmeal and the Colonel was to chicken.
I was hotter than a baking pan straight from the oven. It seemed I could do no wrong. In 1979, I made $4 million and in 1980, $5 million. I had more than 150 people working to fill those cute little cookie bags and never-enough cookie tins with three and a half tons of handmade, fresh-baked cookies a day.
Within five years, my face, my trademark battered Panama hat, and my simple embroidered Indian pullover shirt had become known far and wide. In 1980, I donated the hat off my head and the shirt off my back to the Smithsonian Institution as icons of the entrepreneurial spirit that is as American as chocolate-chip cookies. Here was proof that a black high-school dropout from a broken home in Harlem could still make it in this country. For a while it seemed like a cosmic, never-ending experience. But like all sugar-induced highs, it didn’t last.
In 1985, my cookie empire began to crumble. I was promoting it like crazy and having good fun, but I forgot one little thing. I forgot to put a good management team under the flying carpet. The financial side was flying without a navigator, and before long, outside investors had begun chipping away at my stake in Famous Amos Cookies.
I brought in the Bass Brothers from Texas as investors to pump more capital into the company, reducing my stake from 48 percent to 17 percent. The deal didn’t last long, and another group bought out the Bass Brothers. My equity slipped again, and by that point, I was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations.
The new group was losing money and wound up selling out to Bob Baer, the founder of Telecheck, and his two sons. In 1987, the company was in the hands of its third owners in two years. I had no stake in the company by then, but I still had an employment agreement that paid me $225,000 in salary and expenses to promote the company.
In 198
8, the Baers sold the company to a venture-capital group based in San Francisco. When that group sought to lessen my salary, I felt unwanted and unwelcome. In my lectures, I advise people to move on if they do not like the people they are working with. Since that’s what I was dishing out to others, it had to be good enough for me. On March 1, 1989, my contract with Famous Amos was terminated, and I left the company I founded with nothing.
To secure my freedom, I signed a “divorce decree” that included a two-year noncompete clause, which expired at the end of 1991. Another agreement, which I had mistakenly thought would expire with the noncompete agreement, gave Famous Amos the rights to my name and likeness in any food-related business.
The company hadn’t failed me. I failed it. The lesson was humbling. I had passed on the name “Famous Amos” to people I had no feelings for. I was no longer “Famous Amos.” To me, “Famous Amos” had been more than just a name. I did not know it at the time, but I was beginning a journey that would help me discover who Wally Amos really is.
After leaving Famous Amos, I launched a career in lecturing, doing for a fee of $5,000 or $7,000 what I had been doing as a spokesperson for the cookie company. I gave inspirational, motivational lectures to colleges, corporations, professional associations and conventions. I also did some consulting. It was bread and butter, but it was never as sweet as flour and sugar and butter with chips of chocolate mixed in.
After the noncompete clause expired, I started a new company, Wally Amos Presents Chip and Cookie. I couldn’t use “Famous Amos,” of course, but I could use Wally Amos, because that’s my name, and I thought it sounded very Walt Disney-ish to say “Wally Amos Presents.”
In December 1991, People magazine asked Hawaii correspondent Stu Glauberman to do a “Where Are They Now?” story about me. The February 1992 story described how I was embarking on Chip and Cookie, the sequel to Famous Amos, and how my fresh-baked cookies and my Chip and Cookie dolls and books and T-shirts were catching on at J.C. Penney stores in Hawaii.
That story attracted a lot of attention—including some at the Famous Amos Cookie Company headquarters. In April 1992, they responded with a lawsuit.
In my book Man with No Name, I recount how the new owners of the Famous Amos Company dragged me into U.S. District Court to try to prevent me from using my name and likeness in any business. I told myself that this was a case I couldn’t possibly lose and that they couldn’t possibly rob me of my name. Once again, my sense of what was right was wrong. The court ruled against me, and the upshot was that I could not use my name or the word “Famous” with the name Amos in connection with any cookie, beverage or restaurant business. I lost the case, my name, and the Chip and Cookie venture. But I did not lose my family, my positive outlook and myself. I learned that you don’t need a name to sell cookies; you need a cookie that tastes good. So I started the Uncle Noname Cookie Company.
In March 1995, I celebrated the tenth anniversary of losing management control of the Famous Amos Cookie Company. Why celebrate these mistakes? Because I’d learned from them. I learned that mistakes usually happen for a reason. I learned that a business needs a skilled, experienced management team. I learned that I should have spent more time doing what I was good at—marketing and promoting and glad-handing—rather than trying to do all the things I wasn’t good at. I also learned how vital it is to be focused and disciplined.
When I was in show business, I sat in on many recording sessions and television tapings. Whenever a performer missed a note or flubbed a line, the producer or director would chat sanely with the artist and/or the backup musicians and roll the tape again. “All right, Take 14, rolling,” the producer might say. It was just a mistake. Why is it that when someone makes a mistake in business or in personal relationships, it’s cause for anger? Humans aren’t perfect—even if they’re singing stars, movie stars or cookie bakers. We all make mistakes. We’re all in a state of training, a state of becoming—becoming a better worker, a better student, a better parent, a better spouse, a better friend or a better person.
I remember the time I caught a worker who had burned a rack with twenty trays of cookies. I settled down and explained to the worker the cost involved in sacrificing twenty trays of cookies on the altar of carelessness. I told the worker to do another take—more carefully. Patience and understanding and sound advice can go a long way in guiding and encouraging employees and friends through their mistakes.
Another thing I’ve learned from my mistakes is that it’s important to work from your strengths. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus your time and energy on the things you do best. Leave the rest to the other members of the team.
When all is said and done, mistakes are the process through which we in turn create success. Mistakes create the foundation for our life. That foundation is experience, which in turn creates the light that leads us into our future. That light is called wisdom.
Now things have come full circle. I have launched another cookie company, Aunt Della’s Cookies, named after my aunt, Della Bryant, who first made chocolate-chip cookies for me at age twelve. Life continues to get sweeter and sweeter.
Wally Amos and Stu Glauberman
The Race We Run
Is Not About the Finish Line
When I went to the playground, I never picked the best players. I picked guys with less talent, but who were willing to work hard, who had the desire to be great.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson
It’s hard to say no to Superman.
When Chris, my younger brother, was five years old he wanted to enter a thirty-yard dash at “Fun Day,” a City of Dallas summer youth program. It was a project that was designed to give kids alternatives to hanging out on street corners during summer vacation. Chris, who insisted everyone in our family call him “Superman,” had always been fascinated by running, jumping and, yes, flying.
Each time we went to the park he would stand along the sidelines hypnotized as he watched the older kids race. And although he didn’t really understand the concept of running a race—or so I thought—he somehow knew that the atmosphere of competing and doing your best provided one of the greatest feelings in the world.
For three weeks, he had run over to me, panting and out of breath, with the same question, “Can I run today?”
For three weeks my answer had remained the same, “We’ll see.” That tired, worn-out phrase my parents used on me whenever they didn’t know exactly how to say no with good reason.
On this particular day I caught a glimpse of the sparkle in Chris’s eyes. He wanted, no, needed, to run in a race, so I agreed to give him his shot.
As one event finished and they geared up for the next one, I learned that the other two kids in Chris’s race were seven and nine years old. I had wondered why they looked so much bigger and more developed than my gangly five-year-old shrimp of a brother who’d just lost one of his front teeth.
Oh, no, I thought. He’s gonna get creamed. He’ll hate me for letting him sign up!
I jogged over to the starting point, thinking I should pull Superman from the race. Maybe encourage him to run with kids his own age. But something in the child-of-steel’s spirit told me age was nothing but a number in his mind.
The official called for the runners to take their marks, and I told Chris I would be waiting for him at the finish line and that I’d be proud of him no matter what happened. I laid a big sloppy kiss on him and sent him to the starting blocks, certain I was making a big mistake.
The race began, and Chris took off as if he’d been shot from a cannon. And just as I’d imagined, the two older kids, one to his left, the other to his right, were leaving him in the dust. All of the spectators were going crazy, cheering for all three kids. I jumped up and down, waving my hands, wearing a smile as wide as Texas.
Chris kept his eyes on me and continued to run his little heart out. Finally, he crossed the finish line, leaping into my arms.
“Way to go, Chris,” I said, holding back a founta
in of tears. “You were soooo good, baby! You ran so hard! I’m proud of you.”
He hugged my neck so tight I was sure it would snap. With his sweaty face buried in my neck, he kissed me, pulled away and asked excitedly, “Did I win?”
Surely, he thought he must have won as hard as I was smiling. I laughed but never thought twice about my answer to his question. Instead, I continued to flash my megawatt smile, took one look at the gleam in his eyes and the joy spilling out of his chest, and said, “You sure did, baby. You sure did.”
Fran Harris
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this piece took the lesson of determination and joy her brother taught her that day and went on to earn a spot on the Houston Comets’ first WNBA championship team in 1997.]
Bondage of Fear
Few are too young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn.
Booker T. Washington
As you read this, I want you to know and be aware that there are thousands around you who can’t read it.
I grew up from the 1940s to the 1960s and attended school during segregation. Some of it was good and some not so good. I realized at a very early age I did not, could not, read like other children. During my early years in elementary school I learned what terror was—not the world terror we know today, but just as real and just as powerful to a seven-year-old little boy.
I think back to those days, sitting at my desk, staring at my reading books, Oh no, the guy behind me just stood up. I’m next. As he is reading I try desperately to remember the words just as he is saying them. I can’t do it. Why do I have to do it anyway? They are going to laugh at me again; the snickering has already started, because they know I am next. This, they think, is their time to get a good laugh. I remember thinking, Oh, please don’t let her say I’m stupid again. I have to remember the story; oh, if I could only remember each word as it is written, then they won’t know I can’t read.