October 19, 2021 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dawn and Casey share how they connected through similar childhood traumas and how they learned to improve their own marriage to break the cycle; and Jimmy Liautaud tells the story of how he created the well-known Jimmy Johns sandwich restaurant.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Time Codes:
00:00 - Dawn and Casey's Battle with Themselves
35:00 - Jimmy John's founder Jimmy Liautaud
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
One of the most important subjects we talk about is marriage,
and that brings us to our Relationship Story Hour with
(00:32):
our friend JP d Ganz, who runs a group called Communio.
Communio is committed to healing marriages and they do phenomenal
work across the country. And you're about to hear from
two people and about the trials they faced both to
be together and to stay together. Here's Jp with their story.
(00:53):
Don and Casey Cochrane have been building a life together
in Jacksonville, Florida, a good life, raising kids together from
different relationships, finding fulfilling work, and navigating issues of intimacy
and trust. But to really appreciate their strength and growth,
we have to go way back to their childhoods. Young
(01:18):
Casey was dealt a hand with some very tough cards.
If I was in a broken home. My parents divorced
when I was very young. My dad remarried. He committed
suicide in nineteen seventy five. He was what we now
(01:40):
call manic depression. But he two days before my eleventh birthday,
he shot himself in the head. And I'm the one
who found him. I'm the one opened the door and saw.
You know. It changed how people perceived my brothers and myself.
I mean we were picked on. My mom was scared
(02:01):
and alone with three boys who were eleven and eight,
but she didn't know what to do and she remarried
within a year and a half two years and they're
totally wrong. Guy. He was abusive, alcoholic. I was the biggest,
so I got the beatings. So they divorced. My mom
(02:23):
met this guy, Bob, and they ended up getting married.
He was a great guy. We were in and out
of church, like we would go to church. After my
dad died. We were in church a lot, and the
youth group and the church poured into us. And that
was a major part of my life, was being in
the youth group and being around guys who were Christian
(02:47):
men who did was a thing called R's Royal Ambassadors.
We were very involved in that. I went to high school,
graduated and went on my own way, did all the
things that everyone was all the drinking and all the
party in and all this stupidness that the teenagers do.
And I got out of high school and joined the Navy,
came to Jacksonville, got married, got divorced right after that.
(03:11):
I mean it was less than the year we were married.
She cheated the whole time, and then I cut another
girl pregnant and decided to do the right thing, married her,
stay been married for about eleven years, divorced. Both of
us were unfaithful to each other. And then I met
Dawn in nineteen ninety nine. Like Casey, Dahn also came
(03:35):
from a broken family. Though she began life with a
place where she felt like she belonged, it didn't last.
My mom was pregnant with me and left my biological
father and went to live with my grandmother, and she
already had three other kids. Apparently my oldest brother was
(03:59):
living with my grandmother already, and my two other brothers
were in foster care. And and when I was born,
my biological father, when he found out I was a girl,
said he didn't want me. I didn't know any of
this until much much later, like five or ten years ago.
(04:21):
My brothers were put in phosphor care as a spike
move on my biological father's part, who I have, as
far as I know of, never met. I've never wanted
to know him, so it's never been a loss to me.
So anyway, my grandmother, I live with her until I
was seven, and my grandmother, I called her my heart.
I mean, she gave me love and affection and just
(04:44):
everything I needed. She died of cancer when I was seven,
which just totally just devastated me. I knew that my
mom was my mom because she came to visit me
twice when I was little, and I knew that my
grandmo mother was my grandmother, But I called my grandmother Mama,
(05:04):
and I called my mom by her her name. I
called her aunt, pat aunt, Pattie or whatever everybody else
was calling her. But I knew she was my mom,
and as a little girl, it made sense to me.
But when I think about it as an adult, it's
kind of messed up, and you know, but but back
(05:27):
then it didn't just seem normal to me. My grandmother
she was married too. I didn't know this at the time.
A pedophile. He had molested my mom and my aunt,
and I didn't know that. But as soon as my
grandmother got sick. I was removed from the home and
put in with family friends, and I just thought I
(05:49):
was because my grandmother was sick. I found out much
much later it was because of him, and I did
not know that. I didn't know that's why. So um
so that was kind of made me feel kind of
gross when I found that out. But I grew up
with a lot of love in that home, you know,
with my grandmother and I lived in a small town.
There was a lot of family around, and I never
(06:12):
felt unloved during that time. But when she passed away,
I had to go live with my mom, who had remarried.
By this time, she had another child, my sister, and
she'd gotten my brother's back out of foster care, and
my older brother was living with her, so they were
everybody was there but me, and so I had to
go join this family that I never ever felt part of.
(06:36):
I always felt like an outsider. And my sister's father
adopted us, and I guess he tried, but I don't
think he knew how to be a father, and him
and my mom split up, and when they did, he
just kind of dropped all of us. My youngest brother
he ran away when he was fifteen, and he never
(06:58):
came back. He's been, he's still gone. We don't know
where he is. We don't know if he's dead or alive.
Right now, and you're listening to Don and Casey Cochrane
and it doesn't get more real and raw than listening
to them share with all of us the really deep
trials that no young people should have to endure, but
do all the time when we come back. More from
(07:20):
Don and Casey Cochrane from Jacksonville, Florida, a part of
our Relationship Story hour here on our American Stories. Folks,
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the our American Stories family. If you
agree that America is a good and great country, please
(07:42):
make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters.
Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
(08:09):
we're back with our Americans Stories and our Relationships Story,
our always. That's brought to us by the great folks
at Communio and JP Dgance. Go to communio dot org
if you're a marriage needs strengthening. They do terrific work
and heal wounds that otherwise would not be healed. And
(08:30):
now let's return to the story of Casey and Dawn Cochrane.
Here's JP. While many people long for normalcy in their life,
normal doesn't necessarily mean good. Here again is Dawn. Well,
my mom married my stepdad that she knows, you now,
I mean things were normal, We had a normal life
(08:51):
because when she was married and divorced my dad, she
would be gone and my oldest brother would be in charge,
and he was only eighteen and he was in charge
of four kids. And during that time I was sexually molested.
And nobody knows that. My mom never knew that. I
(09:12):
never told my mom that. She to this day doesn't know.
The only person I ever told was Casey. I mean
I didn't even tell my previous husband that, and you know,
so it was just nothing. Nobody ever told, you know,
but my brother doesn't even know. I think if my
brother had found out, he probably would because it was
his friend. He probably would have killed the guy who
did it. I just felt alone. I just felt like
(09:39):
I had nobody my you know, I never felt like
anybody cared about me after my grandmother died, and so
I finished out high school and it was okay. I
met my ex husband and you know, we dated and
got married and we were married for thirteen years. We
(10:03):
had a son. During that time. I was unfaithful to
him before I had my son, and then I thought, well, okay,
that was a mistake and I was guilty and I
just can't do this again. And I tried to make
it work, and that's when we had my son. Then
I thought this isn't working and I left because I
(10:24):
knew that I would do it again. So I thought,
I got to get out of here. I'm not the
type person that can be told what to do. I
he was just very controlling and he didn't I mean,
he was never abusive, and I thought life is too short,
so I left. For about a year, I was single.
(10:46):
I met my ex husband when I was eighteen and
I was with him for fifteen years, so I never
really had a single life. So I was thirty three
when I left him, so I was kind of making
up for lost time, and I was, you know, I
was going to the bars and I was, you know,
hanging out with my friends, just being free for the
first time in my life. And I was having a
(11:07):
good time. But I found out that guys were really jerks,
and I'm like, I am done. I'm just done with guys,
don't I don't want to be in a relationship. I
don't want a boyfriend. I don't want anything to do
with guys at all. But of course that's not the
way things turned out. My friend wanted to go to
(11:32):
this particular bar that old people hung out all that,
and I'm like, I don't want to go to this bar,
but okay, fine, we'll go. And I had been to
the beach the day before and I was completely sunburned,
and usually I would go out in jeans and a
T shirt or whatever and just be really casual. But
I had to wear this dress because I was completely
(11:55):
sunburned and I didn't want anything touching me. And I
never dressed like that to go out, but I did
that night, and my tag was sticking out. I was
out with friends just to go dancing and have a
good time. So we're there and the bar had one
(12:15):
of those standing rails. We're in seats and the rails
right in front of us, and I see her there
and her tag is sticking out, and I nudge my
buddy and I said, hey, man, see that girl over there.
I'm gonna go hit on her. And he's like, okay, whatever,
I'm being a smart out like and I walk over
and I tucked her tag in. Well. When he did that,
(12:40):
I was standing with my friend and I spun around
like I just turned around, like who are you? You know?
And I said, excuse me, I'm not flirting with you,
Not that I wouldn't flirt with you, but I'm really
in or retentive and I got to fix this. And
I tucked her tag in and I turned around and
walked away, and my friends like, she's like, oh my god,
(13:00):
he's so cute. And he had a tattoo on the
back of his neck. And she saw the tattoo on
the back of his neck and she's like, oh my god,
he's in a gang. And I was like, he's not
in a gang. Do you know what bar we're in.
We were not in any place where there would be
gang members hanging out. I's like, I gotta get out
of here. I mean, I've got to get out of
this bar, and so we left because there was not
a place I hung out ever. I didn't even want
(13:22):
to be seen in this bar. My friend wanted to
go back the next week because she was looking for somebody,
and I wasn't sunburned the next week, so I had
on regular clothes. So the next week, we're sitting in
a different location, right on the edge of the dance floor.
I thought he was with this girl that he was with,
and so I was like, you know, I thought he
(13:42):
was just another one of the jerks. I'm out of here,
you know, I'm not going to sit here and deal
with this guy who's obviously with somebody. He's flirting with me.
I'm done, you know. So I thought he was with
this girl. It was like every person in the bar
that came over to talk to me was drunk, and
I don't do drunk. I just don't. Everybody was just
bugging the crap, and I was really getting ready to leave,
(14:04):
and we were talking about some of the one girl
that came over and whatever, and then I overheard her
and her friend, who I didn't recognize, talking about the
girl who had just hit on me and about how
she was dressed on all that. I said, I heard that,
and then well, he doesn't know, but I saw him
when I walked in and and I told my friend,
(14:29):
I said, there's that guy. And I said, and he's
not with that girl because the girl that he was
with was sitting on this other guy's lap. Okay, I'm
going after that. And so we started talking trash about
this girl. And I made sure that I positioned myself
in a place where he could see me and hear me,
and so we started talking trash about this girl and
(14:50):
he turned around and he said, I heard that. Well,
my drunk friend, she's like, you remember us, and because
she knew from the last week, and he's like no,
And I was like, you tucked my tag at my
dress last week, and he's like, that was you because
I look completely different because I never dressed trashy like
I did the week before, and I had jeans and
(15:10):
everything on. So then that was it. He asked me
if I wanted to dance. We've been together ever since.
Even though the connection they made was immediate, their path
to marriage wasn't exactly romantic. We got married ten months
to the day that we met ten months and we
(15:31):
got married because the police was up on our apartment
and we were looking for another place to live, and
we started looking at houses and we had to be
married to get the loan. And I said, no, I
don't want to be married. I absolutely do not want
to be married, because I thought marriage was just a whole,
(15:53):
just sham, because I had been married and I thought,
I mean, I got married for all the right reasons.
Thought I did anyway, and I was engaged for three years.
I got married, did the whole big wedding. God. I
was getting married for you know, life, and it didn't
work out. And I'm like, I'm not doing this again.
I mean, I'd just rather just live with you and
then maybe later down the road if we're still together,
(16:15):
then get married. But I'm not, No, I'm not doing this.
Somehow he talked me into it. I don't know how,
but he did. He talked to me into marrying him,
and the Conquerence discovered what so many couples do. Marriage
can provide strength to deal with challenges together, but it
certainly doesn't erase those challenges. It's a blended family. Because
(16:36):
I had two daughters and she had a son. I
think that the difficulty for us was the kids, how
we did things differently. He put me in a bad place.
I always my daughters were moved to South Florida after
my divorce, so I always felt guilty when I would
see them that I didn't want to be a disciplinarian.
(16:57):
I didn't want to come down on them hard. And
she's pretty strict disciplinarian about hey, you're going to do this,
And I forced her into being the bad guy a
lot of times and when I shouldn't have, because I
didn't want my daughters to thank dad's a butt, you know.
I didn't want that because I was very, very involved
in their life until I was divorced, and I mean
I did everything with my kids, and then my ex
(17:19):
moved himself, and there was a lot of bitterness, but
it was just there was some times where I thought,
you know, my daughters would do something or say something,
especially there in the very beginning that was completely inappropriate
to her, and we almost broke up then and there,
but we made it through it. It was about respect
for me because his girls had no respect for him.
(17:42):
But I was going to make sure they respected me.
You know. They didn't have to like me, but they
were going to respect me. When we come back, more
of this remarkable story done and Casey Cochrane's story. Here
are now American stories, and we returned to our American
(18:07):
stories and our relationship story hour brought to us by
the great folks at Communio and go to communio dot
org to learn more about the remarkable marriage work all
over the country. You have a civic organization at church.
They park alongside you and bring everybody together on one
common goal strengthen the marriages in the community. And now
(18:29):
back to Dawn and Casey's story. We've been hearing from
Dawn Casey and how they met and got married and
how after that they had a sort out how to
be parents together to children from different relationships. They say
being a mom is hard, but being a stepmom is
(18:50):
probably harder, especially when you have forces fighting against you.
And he wouldn't do anything, and it made me mad
at him. I'm like, okay, you've got to step up
and be the dad, but he wouldn't, and so I said, okay, fine,
you know I have to do it. And it really
it costs problems between us, like the time Dawn had
(19:12):
to come to her son, Cody's defense. One time when
we first got together that Christmas, Cody got in trouble
for something. They were laughing at Cody for getting in
trouble and Cody was five years old. Amber was sitting
on his lap and him and Amber were laughing and
m and I said, are you really laughing at Cody
(19:34):
getting in trouble talking to him? And he's like, He's like, no,
m Amber just told me a joke. And I was like,
so you're gonna lie to me, you know, You're really
You're just there to lie to me. And I told
him at that point, I said, because he was trying
to make Amber happy and not be the bad guy.
And I told him, I said, get your kids, get
(19:57):
your stuff, get out of my house. I said, because
I'm done. I said, I'm not. I'm not going to
do this. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not going to
have you appease your kids while you're sitting here and
making fun of my kid for getting in trouble while
I'm trying to teach him a life lesson. And you know,
so he came and apologize because I just I wasn't
going to have bad kids on my perspective, I was
(20:21):
trying to be the good guy. When we first got together,
I worked two jobs and I worked shift worked, so
it was like I'd go on Saturday day shift, and
then Sunday I would work three to eleven, and then Monday,
I would work three o'clock in the afternoon until seven
o'clock the next morning, and then I would go into
eleven o'clock that night till seven in the morning, and
(20:43):
then I was off until Saturday. For a couple of years,
the first couple of years we were together was like that.
With time and effort, Casey and Don worked through these
issues that so many busy parents and step parents go through,
and things were looking up. Dawn made big strides at work,
and so did Casey, who became the director of utilities
(21:05):
for two navy bases. Everything seemed to be going great,
and then Casey let his guard down. So when I'm
working and all that, I was watching some porn pretty
often and never thought really anything about it at all.
Started playing some games you see on Facebook you can
(21:27):
play this game or whatever, and was talking to people
in the games. Became flirting with people in the games,
and I cheated and she had no clue. I was
completely blindsided. I didn't see any of that coming. I
mean I was at home doing my thing, you know,
(21:49):
and you know, keeping the house going, keeping the bills going,
you know, while he's out, you know, working. I just
thought he was, you know, traveling, doing his thing. He
came home and confessed, and he's telling me, and I'm thinking,
this is not my life, you know, this is somebody
(22:13):
else's life. This isn't this can't be, you know, how
can the person who you know, I've loved, my soulmate,
how can he be telling me this? And I just
was sick. I didn't eat for three days. All I
did was cry. I went to my best friend's house
the day that he told me. She asked me, what
(22:35):
do you want to do? And I said honestly, and
she said yeah, And I said, I just want to
go home. I just want to go home and I
just want I just want him to hold me and
I want him to tell me he loves me. And
she said, then you need to go home. And I
forgave him that night, I mean the night he told me,
(22:55):
and it wrecked her. I watched it wreck her in
front of me, and it was the hardest thing I
ever did, but it was also the most painful thing
I ever did because of what I saw her go through.
As we moved forward, she told me she forgave me,
(23:18):
and which I was in shock that she would forgive me.
I thought that my marriage would be over, that our
life would be over, and it's not what happened. We
went to some counseling. The marriage counselor actually told us
that we were way ahead of most people. Dawn and
Casey may well have been ahead of others because of
how aware they each wore and how committed they were
(23:39):
to making their marriage work. But even after their marriage counseling,
Casey knew that something was missing. We were never ever
in church. I refused to go. I had had a
really bad experience with my egg's wife. It was around
Christmas time. I wanted to go to church, and she
(24:00):
was like, I don't need to go to church. I've
never had to go to church before, you know why,
And I just begged her. We were sitting in the
driveway or discussing this, and I was bawling, crying, and
I know that I need to be in community, and
I know that I need this. Just go and we
went to a Christmas service with a friend of hers.
I never read the Bible. I never went to Sunday School.
(24:21):
It wasn't me. So we went. I didn't like the church,
but I told he so I said, okay, I said, okay,
it's not that bad. You know. I guess we can.
He said, do you want to start looking for a church?
And I said, okay, we can start looking for a church.
So we went on the hunt. We went to more
than a couple. We went to like seven different churches,
(24:41):
and like a Celebration was always at the top of
our list, but for some reason, it wasn't the first
church we went to. It was like it was like
God was saying, you need to visit these other churches
before you go to your first choice. So we visited
these other churches, and then when we visited Celebration, we
never went to another church. And we walked in there
(25:02):
was nothing going on. We sat down in the sanctuary
and there was absolutely nothing going on. I think the
like the house music was playing and I lived at Casey,
and I said, this is our church. We joined this
marriage emptinestrous group who were all fantastic people. The people
(25:23):
who do our Bible say, they invited us to breakfast,
and we're hanging out, we're having a really good time,
and we just started talking about our lives and you
know what brought us to the church, and this and
that and the other. And I just didn't even warn
me that he was going to do it. I was,
I was in mid bight, and I just, I mean,
I literally felt my food coming up. And that was
(25:45):
the first time that we ever actually told anyone about
any of this. We had held all this inside for
two years, two and a half years, and it changed everything.
It just it was like relieving pressure off of a
wound or something. It was like. And we expected people
(26:07):
to judge. I think at least I did, but we
didn't get judge. We got love. And it was just
God's love pouring into us through all these great people.
And here we are and we're moving forward, and it's
been three years. Everybody that I've talked to said, you
(26:28):
have to share your story. You have to because somebody's
going to get a blessing out of this, and you
need to share your story. And while you think it's
you know, it's just pain for you, your pain is
going to help somebody else, and you've been listening to
(26:49):
the story of Dawn and Casey Cochrane and my goodness,
when she finds out about her husband's infidelity, this is
not my life, and how she mustered up in her
the capacity to forgive, well, it revolutionized that relationship. We
didn't get judged, We just got love. Dawn and Casey's
story brought to us by the great folks at Communia,
(27:10):
with special thanks to JP Dugance and also to our team.
Dawn and Casey's story a great love story, a great
Jacksonville story. Here on our American stories, and we continue
(27:38):
here with our American stories. And now it's time for
our series Ditch Digger CEO with Gary Raybine. Gary's the
founder and president perhaps the best and biggest paving company
in the country. As an entrepreneur, he's met many incredible
businessmen and women throughout his life and in this series,
Gary brings us their stories. Let's just say that today's story, well,
(28:02):
it's a tasty one. My whole life, you know, we
were poor, graduated last to my high school class, mixed race. Father.
Mother was an immigrant from Lithuania. Dad was a book salesman,
became a plastic molder and became a successful guy. That's
Jimmy Leotol, a man who went from the bottom of
his class to the top of the sandwich business. But
(28:25):
you might better know him as Jimmy John. That's right,
the founder of the freaky fast and freaky good Jimmy
John Sandwiches. It all started with Jimmy in a predicament.
Like many great entrepreneurs, Jimmy wasn't a great student. After
graduating high school. College wasn't really the best option. I
(28:48):
had no plan. B. I had nowhere to go. My
parents wouldn't let me live in the house, and my
dad's house, you're out, period. That's it. Both of Jimmy's
brothers and his father served in the army. His father
was a firm believer in the discipline that military service
instills and young people, so he gave young Jimmy an
ultimatum either enlist in the army or open your own business.
(29:12):
While visiting some friends at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois,
Jimmy stopped doing new sandwich shop and talk to himself, Wait,
I could do this, and so he opened his very
first Jimmy Johns in Charleston, Illinois. Was the first thing
in my life that I could do. I was dyslexic,
I couldn't read, but I was a leader and I
(29:33):
was smart. So the teachers thought that I wasn't making
an effort, and I am add So this was the
first thing in my life that I could do. Two
dollars and ten cents people would give me for a sandwich,
and then they'd tell me thank you. I never knew
how to do math, how to be an accountant, but
I became an accountant. I became very good with math,
and so the numbers. You know, if I saw a
day that I lost money, I had to work harder.
(29:55):
I had just scraped that manna's jar. More. I had
to get another three months out of that mop head.
I had to make that toilet paper roll last as
long as I could. And you know, those were just
things that I did because it was the first thing
in my life, the first thing that I could do.
And I again, you got to remember, I had gone
through my dad's bankruptcy in seventy two and seventy six.
I remember powdered milk. It sucks now, I'm sure if
(30:18):
I was hungry enough, I would have ate that, but
it was awful. I hated that stuff. You know, I
just made it happen. I don't know that I was meant.
I I didn't have a plan B so this is
just this all I knew. And so that's what I did.
When I first started Gary, I went down to Eastern
Illinois University with two buddies of mine. I opened January thirteenth,
nineteen eighty three. We had fourteen shifts a week, so
(30:40):
I worked Monday, Tuesday day, Wednesday, Thursday night, and I
basically drank beer and smoke pot Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
And that's what I did. So that worked for me
for about a month before the first guy quit and
then I was seven days and my other guy was
seven nights, and that worked for me for about another
month and a half until the night guy quit. And
he called me about four to thirty in the afternoon
and said wit And so I stayed in the sandwich
(31:02):
shop and closed the store at two in the morning,
got up again and opened it up. And so I
started working open to close. So the first week it
was brutal, the second week it wasn't so bad. By
the third week, I started to learn who my customers were.
By the fourth week. It was the first thing in
my entire life that I ever really could do. I
was a fat kid. I never played sports. I was bullied,
you know, gone through a bankruptcy with my dad in
(31:24):
seventy two and seventy six. Running out of money was
real for me. And here I was. It was all
up to me to make it happen. And I learned
that I could work open to close. I learned. I
learned my customers names, I learned what they liked to eat.
If they were heavy set like me, I always put
a little extra mayo on. If they were skinny like you, Gary,
I took a little off. And then at night, at
one o'clock in the morning, when the bars closed, that's
(31:45):
when I served all the ends of the meats. It
was still meat, they just wasn't as pretty. But that
was my original tough deal was that I never knew
that I could work from eight in the morning till
two thirty in the morning, seven days a week. So
that was the first big obstacle. People say, hey, you know,
Jimmy John, when did you really make it? You know,
when did you really make it big? Well, I made
my first million dollars in a year in nineteen ninety four,
(32:06):
and from nineteen ninety four until today, I've only made
more money every single year since nineteen ninety four. And
in nineteen ninety four, when I made the million, I
had no debt. I'd lived in ten cities, opened up
ten stores, and ten years paid for every store with
my own money. And the reason that I did it
with my own money is I didn't know how to
make a business plan. First time I went to a bank,
I was so intimidated. I didn't even know what to
(32:28):
tell him. I just knew that I needed thirty five
thousand bucks and I was going to open a sandwich shop,
and I knew what I needed to buy to do,
and so I would save up my money and I'd
also work a store for a year, replace myself, save
my money. So ten years, ten stores, ninety four, I
made a million bucks and a couple of things that
I realized now that I've been through what I've been through,
I made all my money nights, weekends, it's Martin Luther
(32:49):
King day off. We don't get a day off. It's
Columbus Day. There's no day off. It's the weekend. In
the restaurant business, there's no day off weddings, funerals. There's
no weddings and funerals. Our restaurant business is a lifestyle
and choosing the lifestyle that I chose, and sacrificing family
time and sacrificing a whole lot for what it is
that I attained. I was able to do it because
(33:11):
you know, I did what I did. I really believe
that with the Internet and with iPhones, I think that
people only see the glam of life. People only show
the glam of themselves. That they're the selfie. Look at me,
look at me, look at me. And at the same point,
they most likely assume that that's what founders and CEOs
(33:31):
do as well. And the fact of the matter is
it's not even part of my life, you know. I
think that they don't know really how it all happens.
It's only perception. And then the celebrity success stories like
the Jenner daughter, she's twenty one years old, going to
be a billionaire with her makeup, or they look at
Mark Zuckerberg who's worth forty billion, and where's a sweatshirt
and jeans? You know, they just assume it's just a
(33:52):
very casual thing. Well, it might be in software, but
it certainly isn't at turning salamis into into you know,
into wealth. Back when I first left Charleston, it was
important and moved to McComb, Illinois, which is one hundred
and fifty four miles from door to door. I used
to drive that route every week, and I had to
learn how to leave my sandwich shop alone and have
(34:13):
my manager treat my customers as if I was there.
And so I began profit sharing with my managers way
back in the mid eighties, and I did full transparency
on the financials, so they saw all the money that
was spent because they ordered the food. They saw what
their electric bill was because the electric bill came to them.
So I started full transparency and profit sharing back in
(34:34):
the mid eighties before anybody did it. Now, Chick fil
A might have been doing it now. Chick fil A
splits fifty fifty with their managers, so the managers really
act like owners because they're treated like owners. And so
I started that back in the mid eighties and now
to this day are Jimmy John's company stores. We share
profits with the managers and we really believe that rates
(34:55):
an environment that enables them. I've got managers that are
six figure managers and that doesn't happen in the business,
but I've been doing it forever because there's a lot
of detail that goes into running these sandwich shops, and
it's all about the small stuff. If you take care
of the small stuff, the big stuff takes care of itself.
And the only way you can have them think about
managing paper towels and managing the electricity and turning the
(35:16):
air conditioning up at night and back down again when
you arrive in the morning is when you tie them
to the financial statement and it becomes a free market situation.
And then they realize the harder they work, the more
they make. Then it's lights out. Now we're just partners.
That doesn't require areas supervision, and these guys just they
operate on their own. They become unicorns. In addition to that,
fourteen of seventeen department heads at Jimmy John's all came
(35:39):
from the sandwich shop and they're all millionaires now. To
be able to take these kids and teach them and
let them come up and grow into the company is
really a wonderful thing. So it feels good. You know
it feels good. It's no fun eating a big chocolate
cake alone. Believe you me. So it's wonderful to share.
But my greatest accomplishment as I raised children who are
(36:03):
hard working, that are grounded, that are balanced. If you
looked at it in their social media, you would never
see anything that has to do with our lifestyle. It
is not a value of theirs. They'll look you in
the eye, they'll shake your hand, they'll contribute. I've got
some really good, grounded kids, and I think that's probably
my greatest reward that I have in my entire life.
And of course Jimmy couldn't do that without another very
(36:26):
special person. I was sitting here in the podcast right
now and my wife dropped off my lunch for today.
You know, my wife sets me up for success. You know,
yesterday morning we were in the We're Big Farmers down here.
We went and took a walk around a farm for
four miles. And my wife is always there for me
to be my She's my life partner. You know, it's
not normal to have a woman grow as I've grown.
(36:48):
You know, I went from survival to success. We just
celebrated twenty years together, and this woman has kept up
with me the whole time. And when I'm weak, she's strong,
and when she's weak, I'm strong. I think we just
got lucky. I really think we just got lucky because
I'm not a perfect man, and I've failed in many
ways and she has as well, and we both admit it,
and yet here we are today, stronger than ever. You
(37:09):
gotta have chemistry. That's what gets you through the hard times.
If you don't have the crazy chemistry and you hit
one of those incredible obstacles that you will face as
a couple, the only thing really that gets you through
as chemistry. So my advice there is kiss a lot
of frogs until you find the chemistry that makes you
crazy so that you can get you through the hard times.
Because without chemistry, it doesn't work. And typically what you're
(37:31):
looking for, what you think you're looking for, when you're
really ready, it's totally opposite of what you think you're
looking for. There's no such thing as the old spice
guy on the white horse running down the beach with
his shirt off. That that that's that's a commercial. That
ain't real. You've been listening to Jimmy Leotoad a k a.
(37:51):
Jimmy John, the guy who founded that entire, big, big
national franchise that well, you know my name and it's him,
and we love these stories, Jimmy's story of Jimmy John's.
Here are now American stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
One of the most important subjects we talk about is marriage,
and that brings us to our Relationship Story Hour with
(00:32):
our friend JP d Ganz, who runs a group called Communio.
Communio is committed to healing marriages and they do phenomenal
work across the country. And you're about to hear from
two people and about the trials they faced both to
be together and to stay together. Here's Jp with their story.
(00:53):
Don and Casey Cochrane have been building a life together
in Jacksonville, Florida, a good life, raising kids together from
different relationships, finding fulfilling work, and navigating issues of intimacy
and trust. But to really appreciate their strength and growth,
we have to go way back to their childhoods. Young
(01:18):
Casey was dealt a hand with some very tough cards.
If I was in a broken home. My parents divorced
when I was very young. My dad remarried. He committed
suicide in nineteen seventy five. He was what we now
(01:40):
call manic depression. But he two days before my eleventh birthday,
he shot himself in the head. And I'm the one
who found him. I'm the one opened the door and saw.
You know. It changed how people perceived my brothers and myself.
I mean we were picked on. My mom was scared
(02:01):
and alone with three boys who were eleven and eight,
but she didn't know what to do and she remarried
within a year and a half two years and they're
totally wrong. Guy. He was abusive, alcoholic. I was the biggest,
so I got the beatings. So they divorced. My mom
(02:23):
met this guy, Bob, and they ended up getting married.
He was a great guy. We were in and out
of church, like we would go to church. After my
dad died. We were in church a lot, and the
youth group and the church poured into us. And that
was a major part of my life, was being in
the youth group and being around guys who were Christian
(02:47):
men who did was a thing called R's Royal Ambassadors.
We were very involved in that. I went to high school,
graduated and went on my own way, did all the
things that everyone was all the drinking and all the
party in and all this stupidness that the teenagers do.
And I got out of high school and joined the Navy,
came to Jacksonville, got married, got divorced right after that.
(03:11):
I mean it was less than the year we were married.
She cheated the whole time, and then I cut another
girl pregnant and decided to do the right thing, married her,
stay been married for about eleven years, divorced. Both of
us were unfaithful to each other. And then I met
Dawn in nineteen ninety nine. Like Casey, Dahn also came
(03:35):
from a broken family. Though she began life with a
place where she felt like she belonged, it didn't last.
My mom was pregnant with me and left my biological
father and went to live with my grandmother, and she
already had three other kids. Apparently my oldest brother was
(03:59):
living with my grandmother already, and my two other brothers
were in foster care. And and when I was born,
my biological father, when he found out I was a girl,
said he didn't want me. I didn't know any of
this until much much later, like five or ten years ago.
(04:21):
My brothers were put in phosphor care as a spike
move on my biological father's part, who I have, as
far as I know of, never met. I've never wanted
to know him, so it's never been a loss to me.
So anyway, my grandmother, I live with her until I
was seven, and my grandmother, I called her my heart.
I mean, she gave me love and affection and just
(04:44):
everything I needed. She died of cancer when I was seven,
which just totally just devastated me. I knew that my
mom was my mom because she came to visit me
twice when I was little, and I knew that my
grandmo mother was my grandmother, But I called my grandmother Mama,
(05:04):
and I called my mom by her her name. I
called her aunt, pat aunt, Pattie or whatever everybody else
was calling her. But I knew she was my mom,
and as a little girl, it made sense to me.
But when I think about it as an adult, it's
kind of messed up, and you know, but but back
(05:27):
then it didn't just seem normal to me. My grandmother
she was married too. I didn't know this at the time.
A pedophile. He had molested my mom and my aunt,
and I didn't know that. But as soon as my
grandmother got sick. I was removed from the home and
put in with family friends, and I just thought I
(05:49):
was because my grandmother was sick. I found out much
much later it was because of him, and I did
not know that. I didn't know that's why. So um
so that was kind of made me feel kind of
gross when I found that out. But I grew up
with a lot of love in that home, you know,
with my grandmother and I lived in a small town.
There was a lot of family around, and I never
(06:12):
felt unloved during that time. But when she passed away,
I had to go live with my mom, who had remarried.
By this time, she had another child, my sister, and
she'd gotten my brother's back out of foster care, and
my older brother was living with her, so they were
everybody was there but me, and so I had to
go join this family that I never ever felt part of.
(06:36):
I always felt like an outsider. And my sister's father
adopted us, and I guess he tried, but I don't
think he knew how to be a father, and him
and my mom split up, and when they did, he
just kind of dropped all of us. My youngest brother
he ran away when he was fifteen, and he never
(06:58):
came back. He's been, he's still gone. We don't know
where he is. We don't know if he's dead or alive.
Right now, and you're listening to Don and Casey Cochrane
and it doesn't get more real and raw than listening
to them share with all of us the really deep
trials that no young people should have to endure, but
do all the time when we come back. More from
(07:20):
Don and Casey Cochrane from Jacksonville, Florida, a part of
our Relationship Story hour here on our American Stories. Folks,
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the our American Stories family. If you
agree that America is a good and great country, please
(07:42):
make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters.
Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
(08:09):
we're back with our Americans Stories and our Relationships Story,
our always. That's brought to us by the great folks
at Communio and JP Dgance. Go to communio dot org
if you're a marriage needs strengthening. They do terrific work
and heal wounds that otherwise would not be healed. And
(08:30):
now let's return to the story of Casey and Dawn Cochrane.
Here's JP. While many people long for normalcy in their life,
normal doesn't necessarily mean good. Here again is Dawn. Well,
my mom married my stepdad that she knows, you now,
I mean things were normal, We had a normal life
(08:51):
because when she was married and divorced my dad, she
would be gone and my oldest brother would be in charge,
and he was only eighteen and he was in charge
of four kids. And during that time I was sexually molested.
And nobody knows that. My mom never knew that. I
(09:12):
never told my mom that. She to this day doesn't know.
The only person I ever told was Casey. I mean
I didn't even tell my previous husband that, and you know,
so it was just nothing. Nobody ever told, you know,
but my brother doesn't even know. I think if my
brother had found out, he probably would because it was
his friend. He probably would have killed the guy who
did it. I just felt alone. I just felt like
(09:39):
I had nobody my you know, I never felt like
anybody cared about me after my grandmother died, and so
I finished out high school and it was okay. I
met my ex husband and you know, we dated and
got married and we were married for thirteen years. We
(10:03):
had a son. During that time. I was unfaithful to
him before I had my son, and then I thought, well, okay,
that was a mistake and I was guilty and I
just can't do this again. And I tried to make
it work, and that's when we had my son. Then
I thought this isn't working and I left because I
(10:24):
knew that I would do it again. So I thought,
I got to get out of here. I'm not the
type person that can be told what to do. I
he was just very controlling and he didn't I mean,
he was never abusive, and I thought life is too short,
so I left. For about a year, I was single.
(10:46):
I met my ex husband when I was eighteen and
I was with him for fifteen years, so I never
really had a single life. So I was thirty three
when I left him, so I was kind of making
up for lost time, and I was, you know, I
was going to the bars and I was, you know,
hanging out with my friends, just being free for the
first time in my life. And I was having a
(11:07):
good time. But I found out that guys were really jerks,
and I'm like, I am done. I'm just done with guys,
don't I don't want to be in a relationship. I
don't want a boyfriend. I don't want anything to do
with guys at all. But of course that's not the
way things turned out. My friend wanted to go to
(11:32):
this particular bar that old people hung out all that,
and I'm like, I don't want to go to this bar,
but okay, fine, we'll go. And I had been to
the beach the day before and I was completely sunburned,
and usually I would go out in jeans and a
T shirt or whatever and just be really casual. But
I had to wear this dress because I was completely
(11:55):
sunburned and I didn't want anything touching me. And I
never dressed like that to go out, but I did
that night, and my tag was sticking out. I was
out with friends just to go dancing and have a
good time. So we're there and the bar had one
(12:15):
of those standing rails. We're in seats and the rails
right in front of us, and I see her there
and her tag is sticking out, and I nudge my
buddy and I said, hey, man, see that girl over there.
I'm gonna go hit on her. And he's like, okay, whatever,
I'm being a smart out like and I walk over
and I tucked her tag in. Well. When he did that,
(12:40):
I was standing with my friend and I spun around
like I just turned around, like who are you? You know?
And I said, excuse me, I'm not flirting with you,
Not that I wouldn't flirt with you, but I'm really
in or retentive and I got to fix this. And
I tucked her tag in and I turned around and
walked away, and my friends like, she's like, oh my god,
(13:00):
he's so cute. And he had a tattoo on the
back of his neck. And she saw the tattoo on
the back of his neck and she's like, oh my god,
he's in a gang. And I was like, he's not
in a gang. Do you know what bar we're in.
We were not in any place where there would be
gang members hanging out. I's like, I gotta get out
of here. I mean, I've got to get out of
this bar, and so we left because there was not
a place I hung out ever. I didn't even want
(13:22):
to be seen in this bar. My friend wanted to
go back the next week because she was looking for somebody,
and I wasn't sunburned the next week, so I had
on regular clothes. So the next week, we're sitting in
a different location, right on the edge of the dance floor.
I thought he was with this girl that he was with,
and so I was like, you know, I thought he
(13:42):
was just another one of the jerks. I'm out of here,
you know, I'm not going to sit here and deal
with this guy who's obviously with somebody. He's flirting with me.
I'm done, you know. So I thought he was with
this girl. It was like every person in the bar
that came over to talk to me was drunk, and
I don't do drunk. I just don't. Everybody was just
bugging the crap, and I was really getting ready to leave,
(14:04):
and we were talking about some of the one girl
that came over and whatever, and then I overheard her
and her friend, who I didn't recognize, talking about the
girl who had just hit on me and about how
she was dressed on all that. I said, I heard that,
and then well, he doesn't know, but I saw him
when I walked in and and I told my friend,
(14:29):
I said, there's that guy. And I said, and he's
not with that girl because the girl that he was
with was sitting on this other guy's lap. Okay, I'm
going after that. And so we started talking trash about
this girl. And I made sure that I positioned myself
in a place where he could see me and hear me,
and so we started talking trash about this girl and
(14:50):
he turned around and he said, I heard that. Well,
my drunk friend, she's like, you remember us, and because
she knew from the last week, and he's like no,
And I was like, you tucked my tag at my
dress last week, and he's like, that was you because
I look completely different because I never dressed trashy like
I did the week before, and I had jeans and
(15:10):
everything on. So then that was it. He asked me
if I wanted to dance. We've been together ever since.
Even though the connection they made was immediate, their path
to marriage wasn't exactly romantic. We got married ten months
to the day that we met ten months and we
(15:31):
got married because the police was up on our apartment
and we were looking for another place to live, and
we started looking at houses and we had to be
married to get the loan. And I said, no, I
don't want to be married. I absolutely do not want
to be married, because I thought marriage was just a whole,
(15:53):
just sham, because I had been married and I thought,
I mean, I got married for all the right reasons.
Thought I did anyway, and I was engaged for three years.
I got married, did the whole big wedding. God. I
was getting married for you know, life, and it didn't
work out. And I'm like, I'm not doing this again.
I mean, I'd just rather just live with you and
then maybe later down the road if we're still together,
(16:15):
then get married. But I'm not, No, I'm not doing this.
Somehow he talked me into it. I don't know how,
but he did. He talked to me into marrying him,
and the Conquerence discovered what so many couples do. Marriage
can provide strength to deal with challenges together, but it
certainly doesn't erase those challenges. It's a blended family. Because
(16:36):
I had two daughters and she had a son. I
think that the difficulty for us was the kids, how
we did things differently. He put me in a bad place.
I always my daughters were moved to South Florida after
my divorce, so I always felt guilty when I would
see them that I didn't want to be a disciplinarian.
(16:57):
I didn't want to come down on them hard. And
she's pretty strict disciplinarian about hey, you're going to do this,
And I forced her into being the bad guy a
lot of times and when I shouldn't have, because I
didn't want my daughters to thank dad's a butt, you know.
I didn't want that because I was very, very involved
in their life until I was divorced, and I mean
I did everything with my kids, and then my ex
(17:19):
moved himself, and there was a lot of bitterness, but
it was just there was some times where I thought,
you know, my daughters would do something or say something,
especially there in the very beginning that was completely inappropriate
to her, and we almost broke up then and there,
but we made it through it. It was about respect
for me because his girls had no respect for him.
(17:42):
But I was going to make sure they respected me.
You know. They didn't have to like me, but they
were going to respect me. When we come back, more
of this remarkable story done and Casey Cochrane's story. Here
are now American stories, and we returned to our American
(18:07):
stories and our relationship story hour brought to us by
the great folks at Communio and go to communio dot
org to learn more about the remarkable marriage work all
over the country. You have a civic organization at church.
They park alongside you and bring everybody together on one
common goal strengthen the marriages in the community. And now
(18:29):
back to Dawn and Casey's story. We've been hearing from
Dawn Casey and how they met and got married and
how after that they had a sort out how to
be parents together to children from different relationships. They say
being a mom is hard, but being a stepmom is
(18:50):
probably harder, especially when you have forces fighting against you.
And he wouldn't do anything, and it made me mad
at him. I'm like, okay, you've got to step up
and be the dad, but he wouldn't, and so I said, okay, fine,
you know I have to do it. And it really
it costs problems between us, like the time Dawn had
(19:12):
to come to her son, Cody's defense. One time when
we first got together that Christmas, Cody got in trouble
for something. They were laughing at Cody for getting in
trouble and Cody was five years old. Amber was sitting
on his lap and him and Amber were laughing and
m and I said, are you really laughing at Cody
(19:34):
getting in trouble talking to him? And he's like, He's like, no,
m Amber just told me a joke. And I was like,
so you're gonna lie to me, you know, You're really
You're just there to lie to me. And I told
him at that point, I said, because he was trying
to make Amber happy and not be the bad guy.
And I told him, I said, get your kids, get
(19:57):
your stuff, get out of my house. I said, because
I'm done. I said, I'm not. I'm not going to
do this. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not going to
have you appease your kids while you're sitting here and
making fun of my kid for getting in trouble while
I'm trying to teach him a life lesson. And you know,
so he came and apologize because I just I wasn't
going to have bad kids on my perspective, I was
(20:21):
trying to be the good guy. When we first got together,
I worked two jobs and I worked shift worked, so
it was like I'd go on Saturday day shift, and
then Sunday I would work three to eleven, and then Monday,
I would work three o'clock in the afternoon until seven
o'clock the next morning, and then I would go into
eleven o'clock that night till seven in the morning, and
(20:43):
then I was off until Saturday. For a couple of years,
the first couple of years we were together was like that.
With time and effort, Casey and Don worked through these
issues that so many busy parents and step parents go through,
and things were looking up. Dawn made big strides at work,
and so did Casey, who became the director of utilities
(21:05):
for two navy bases. Everything seemed to be going great,
and then Casey let his guard down. So when I'm
working and all that, I was watching some porn pretty
often and never thought really anything about it at all.
Started playing some games you see on Facebook you can
(21:27):
play this game or whatever, and was talking to people
in the games. Became flirting with people in the games,
and I cheated and she had no clue. I was
completely blindsided. I didn't see any of that coming. I
mean I was at home doing my thing, you know,
(21:49):
and you know, keeping the house going, keeping the bills going,
you know, while he's out, you know, working. I just
thought he was, you know, traveling, doing his thing. He
came home and confessed, and he's telling me, and I'm thinking,
this is not my life, you know, this is somebody
(22:13):
else's life. This isn't this can't be, you know, how
can the person who you know, I've loved, my soulmate,
how can he be telling me this? And I just
was sick. I didn't eat for three days. All I
did was cry. I went to my best friend's house
the day that he told me. She asked me, what
(22:35):
do you want to do? And I said honestly, and
she said yeah, And I said, I just want to
go home. I just want to go home and I
just want I just want him to hold me and
I want him to tell me he loves me. And
she said, then you need to go home. And I
forgave him that night, I mean the night he told me,
(22:55):
and it wrecked her. I watched it wreck her in
front of me, and it was the hardest thing I
ever did, but it was also the most painful thing
I ever did because of what I saw her go through.
As we moved forward, she told me she forgave me,
(23:18):
and which I was in shock that she would forgive me.
I thought that my marriage would be over, that our
life would be over, and it's not what happened. We
went to some counseling. The marriage counselor actually told us
that we were way ahead of most people. Dawn and
Casey may well have been ahead of others because of
how aware they each wore and how committed they were
(23:39):
to making their marriage work. But even after their marriage counseling,
Casey knew that something was missing. We were never ever
in church. I refused to go. I had had a
really bad experience with my egg's wife. It was around
Christmas time. I wanted to go to church, and she
(24:00):
was like, I don't need to go to church. I've
never had to go to church before, you know why,
And I just begged her. We were sitting in the
driveway or discussing this, and I was bawling, crying, and
I know that I need to be in community, and
I know that I need this. Just go and we
went to a Christmas service with a friend of hers.
I never read the Bible. I never went to Sunday School.
(24:21):
It wasn't me. So we went. I didn't like the church,
but I told he so I said, okay, I said, okay,
it's not that bad. You know. I guess we can.
He said, do you want to start looking for a church?
And I said, okay, we can start looking for a church.
So we went on the hunt. We went to more
than a couple. We went to like seven different churches,
(24:41):
and like a Celebration was always at the top of
our list, but for some reason, it wasn't the first
church we went to. It was like it was like
God was saying, you need to visit these other churches
before you go to your first choice. So we visited
these other churches, and then when we visited Celebration, we
never went to another church. And we walked in there
(25:02):
was nothing going on. We sat down in the sanctuary
and there was absolutely nothing going on. I think the
like the house music was playing and I lived at Casey,
and I said, this is our church. We joined this
marriage emptinestrous group who were all fantastic people. The people
(25:23):
who do our Bible say, they invited us to breakfast,
and we're hanging out, we're having a really good time,
and we just started talking about our lives and you
know what brought us to the church, and this and
that and the other. And I just didn't even warn
me that he was going to do it. I was,
I was in mid bight, and I just, I mean,
I literally felt my food coming up. And that was
(25:45):
the first time that we ever actually told anyone about
any of this. We had held all this inside for
two years, two and a half years, and it changed everything.
It just it was like relieving pressure off of a
wound or something. It was like. And we expected people
(26:07):
to judge. I think at least I did, but we
didn't get judge. We got love. And it was just
God's love pouring into us through all these great people.
And here we are and we're moving forward, and it's
been three years. Everybody that I've talked to said, you
(26:28):
have to share your story. You have to because somebody's
going to get a blessing out of this, and you
need to share your story. And while you think it's
you know, it's just pain for you, your pain is
going to help somebody else, and you've been listening to
(26:49):
the story of Dawn and Casey Cochrane and my goodness,
when she finds out about her husband's infidelity, this is
not my life, and how she mustered up in her
the capacity to forgive, well, it revolutionized that relationship. We
didn't get judged, We just got love. Dawn and Casey's
story brought to us by the great folks at Communia,
(27:10):
with special thanks to JP Dugance and also to our team.
Dawn and Casey's story a great love story, a great
Jacksonville story. Here on our American stories, and we continue
(27:38):
here with our American stories. And now it's time for
our series Ditch Digger CEO with Gary Raybine. Gary's the
founder and president perhaps the best and biggest paving company
in the country. As an entrepreneur, he's met many incredible
businessmen and women throughout his life and in this series,
Gary brings us their stories. Let's just say that today's story, well,
(28:02):
it's a tasty one. My whole life, you know, we
were poor, graduated last to my high school class, mixed race. Father.
Mother was an immigrant from Lithuania. Dad was a book salesman,
became a plastic molder and became a successful guy. That's
Jimmy Leotol, a man who went from the bottom of
his class to the top of the sandwich business. But
(28:25):
you might better know him as Jimmy John. That's right,
the founder of the freaky fast and freaky good Jimmy
John Sandwiches. It all started with Jimmy in a predicament.
Like many great entrepreneurs, Jimmy wasn't a great student. After
graduating high school. College wasn't really the best option. I
(28:48):
had no plan. B. I had nowhere to go. My
parents wouldn't let me live in the house, and my
dad's house, you're out, period. That's it. Both of Jimmy's
brothers and his father served in the army. His father
was a firm believer in the discipline that military service
instills and young people, so he gave young Jimmy an
ultimatum either enlist in the army or open your own business.
(29:12):
While visiting some friends at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois,
Jimmy stopped doing new sandwich shop and talk to himself, Wait,
I could do this, and so he opened his very
first Jimmy Johns in Charleston, Illinois. Was the first thing
in my life that I could do. I was dyslexic,
I couldn't read, but I was a leader and I
(29:33):
was smart. So the teachers thought that I wasn't making
an effort, and I am add So this was the
first thing in my life that I could do. Two
dollars and ten cents people would give me for a sandwich,
and then they'd tell me thank you. I never knew
how to do math, how to be an accountant, but
I became an accountant. I became very good with math,
and so the numbers. You know, if I saw a
day that I lost money, I had to work harder.
(29:55):
I had just scraped that manna's jar. More. I had
to get another three months out of that mop head.
I had to make that toilet paper roll last as
long as I could. And you know, those were just
things that I did because it was the first thing
in my life, the first thing that I could do.
And I again, you got to remember, I had gone
through my dad's bankruptcy in seventy two and seventy six.
I remember powdered milk. It sucks now, I'm sure if
(30:18):
I was hungry enough, I would have ate that, but
it was awful. I hated that stuff. You know, I
just made it happen. I don't know that I was meant.
I I didn't have a plan B so this is
just this all I knew. And so that's what I did.
When I first started Gary, I went down to Eastern
Illinois University with two buddies of mine. I opened January thirteenth,
nineteen eighty three. We had fourteen shifts a week, so
(30:40):
I worked Monday, Tuesday day, Wednesday, Thursday night, and I
basically drank beer and smoke pot Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
And that's what I did. So that worked for me
for about a month before the first guy quit and
then I was seven days and my other guy was
seven nights, and that worked for me for about another
month and a half until the night guy quit. And
he called me about four to thirty in the afternoon
and said wit And so I stayed in the sandwich
(31:02):
shop and closed the store at two in the morning,
got up again and opened it up. And so I
started working open to close. So the first week it
was brutal, the second week it wasn't so bad. By
the third week, I started to learn who my customers were.
By the fourth week. It was the first thing in
my entire life that I ever really could do. I
was a fat kid. I never played sports. I was bullied,
you know, gone through a bankruptcy with my dad in
(31:24):
seventy two and seventy six. Running out of money was
real for me. And here I was. It was all
up to me to make it happen. And I learned
that I could work open to close. I learned. I
learned my customers names, I learned what they liked to eat.
If they were heavy set like me, I always put
a little extra mayo on. If they were skinny like you, Gary,
I took a little off. And then at night, at
one o'clock in the morning, when the bars closed, that's
(31:45):
when I served all the ends of the meats. It
was still meat, they just wasn't as pretty. But that
was my original tough deal was that I never knew
that I could work from eight in the morning till
two thirty in the morning, seven days a week. So
that was the first big obstacle. People say, hey, you know,
Jimmy John, when did you really make it? You know,
when did you really make it big? Well, I made
my first million dollars in a year in nineteen ninety four,
(32:06):
and from nineteen ninety four until today, I've only made
more money every single year since nineteen ninety four. And
in nineteen ninety four, when I made the million, I
had no debt. I'd lived in ten cities, opened up
ten stores, and ten years paid for every store with
my own money. And the reason that I did it
with my own money is I didn't know how to
make a business plan. First time I went to a bank,
I was so intimidated. I didn't even know what to
(32:28):
tell him. I just knew that I needed thirty five
thousand bucks and I was going to open a sandwich shop,
and I knew what I needed to buy to do,
and so I would save up my money and I'd
also work a store for a year, replace myself, save
my money. So ten years, ten stores, ninety four, I
made a million bucks and a couple of things that
I realized now that I've been through what I've been through,
I made all my money nights, weekends, it's Martin Luther
(32:49):
King day off. We don't get a day off. It's
Columbus Day. There's no day off. It's the weekend. In
the restaurant business, there's no day off weddings, funerals. There's
no weddings and funerals. Our restaurant business is a lifestyle
and choosing the lifestyle that I chose, and sacrificing family
time and sacrificing a whole lot for what it is
that I attained. I was able to do it because
(33:11):
you know, I did what I did. I really believe
that with the Internet and with iPhones, I think that
people only see the glam of life. People only show
the glam of themselves. That they're the selfie. Look at me,
look at me, look at me. And at the same point,
they most likely assume that that's what founders and CEOs
(33:31):
do as well. And the fact of the matter is
it's not even part of my life, you know. I
think that they don't know really how it all happens.
It's only perception. And then the celebrity success stories like
the Jenner daughter, she's twenty one years old, going to
be a billionaire with her makeup, or they look at
Mark Zuckerberg who's worth forty billion, and where's a sweatshirt
and jeans? You know, they just assume it's just a
(33:52):
very casual thing. Well, it might be in software, but
it certainly isn't at turning salamis into into you know,
into wealth. Back when I first left Charleston, it was
important and moved to McComb, Illinois, which is one hundred
and fifty four miles from door to door. I used
to drive that route every week, and I had to
learn how to leave my sandwich shop alone and have
(34:13):
my manager treat my customers as if I was there.
And so I began profit sharing with my managers way
back in the mid eighties, and I did full transparency
on the financials, so they saw all the money that
was spent because they ordered the food. They saw what
their electric bill was because the electric bill came to them.
So I started full transparency and profit sharing back in
(34:34):
the mid eighties before anybody did it. Now, Chick fil
A might have been doing it now. Chick fil A
splits fifty fifty with their managers, so the managers really
act like owners because they're treated like owners. And so
I started that back in the mid eighties and now
to this day are Jimmy John's company stores. We share
profits with the managers and we really believe that rates
(34:55):
an environment that enables them. I've got managers that are
six figure managers and that doesn't happen in the business,
but I've been doing it forever because there's a lot
of detail that goes into running these sandwich shops, and
it's all about the small stuff. If you take care
of the small stuff, the big stuff takes care of itself.
And the only way you can have them think about
managing paper towels and managing the electricity and turning the
(35:16):
air conditioning up at night and back down again when
you arrive in the morning is when you tie them
to the financial statement and it becomes a free market situation.
And then they realize the harder they work, the more
they make. Then it's lights out. Now we're just partners.
That doesn't require areas supervision, and these guys just they
operate on their own. They become unicorns. In addition to that,
fourteen of seventeen department heads at Jimmy John's all came
(35:39):
from the sandwich shop and they're all millionaires now. To
be able to take these kids and teach them and
let them come up and grow into the company is
really a wonderful thing. So it feels good. You know
it feels good. It's no fun eating a big chocolate
cake alone. Believe you me. So it's wonderful to share.
But my greatest accomplishment as I raised children who are
(36:03):
hard working, that are grounded, that are balanced. If you
looked at it in their social media, you would never
see anything that has to do with our lifestyle. It
is not a value of theirs. They'll look you in
the eye, they'll shake your hand, they'll contribute. I've got
some really good, grounded kids, and I think that's probably
my greatest reward that I have in my entire life.
And of course Jimmy couldn't do that without another very
(36:26):
special person. I was sitting here in the podcast right
now and my wife dropped off my lunch for today.
You know, my wife sets me up for success. You know,
yesterday morning we were in the We're Big Farmers down here.
We went and took a walk around a farm for
four miles. And my wife is always there for me
to be my She's my life partner. You know, it's
not normal to have a woman grow as I've grown.
(36:48):
You know, I went from survival to success. We just
celebrated twenty years together, and this woman has kept up
with me the whole time. And when I'm weak, she's strong,
and when she's weak, I'm strong. I think we just
got lucky. I really think we just got lucky because
I'm not a perfect man, and I've failed in many
ways and she has as well, and we both admit it,
and yet here we are today, stronger than ever. You
(37:09):
gotta have chemistry. That's what gets you through the hard times.
If you don't have the crazy chemistry and you hit
one of those incredible obstacles that you will face as
a couple, the only thing really that gets you through
as chemistry. So my advice there is kiss a lot
of frogs until you find the chemistry that makes you
crazy so that you can get you through the hard times.
Because without chemistry, it doesn't work. And typically what you're
(37:31):
looking for, what you think you're looking for, when you're
really ready, it's totally opposite of what you think you're
looking for. There's no such thing as the old spice
guy on the white horse running down the beach with
his shirt off. That that that's that's a commercial. That
ain't real. You've been listening to Jimmy Leotoad a k a.
(37:51):
Jimmy John, the guy who founded that entire, big, big
national franchise that well, you know my name and it's him,
and we love these stories, Jimmy's story of Jimmy John's.
Here are now American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.