EYL Case Study: Famous Amos Lost His Company And His Name In One Deal

In this powerful clip of EYL Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings dive deep into the remarkable yet heartbreaking story of Wally Amos—the creator of the iconic Famous Amos cookies. From his trailblazing start as the first Black talent agent at William Morris Agency, guiding legends like Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye, to building a cookie empire on Sunset Boulevard, Amos’s journey seemed destined for greatness.

But success came with challenges. As the business grew, so did the complications: mismanagement, lack of mentorship, and rapid scaling all played a part in unraveling everything Wally had built. In a shocking turn, after selling his multi-million dollar business for a fraction of its value, Amos lost not only his company but also the legal right to use his own name or likeness for any future ventures.

Find out how Amos’s struggle mirrors timeless lessons in entrepreneurship—highlighting the critical importance of understanding business fundamentals, legal trademarks, and the impact of trusting others with your finances.

Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings also shed light on familiar stories of financial mishaps among celebrities and business owners, emphasizing why every creator, artist, and entrepreneur must actively safeguard their brand and legacy.

Despite countless obstacles—financial losses, lawsuits over his name, and battles with depression—Wally Amos’s original love for baking endures. Today, he's found new hope inspiring others and sharing his Aunt Della’s cookie recipe, never letting circumstances define his spirit.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or simply love a moving real-life story, this episode will leave you with invaluable takeaways about resilience, ownership, and learning from the past. Don’t miss this compelling lesson on business, branding, and personal legacy.

**Key themes:**  
- The rise and fall of Famous Amos cookies  
- Wally Amos’s groundbreaking career and setbacks  
- Trademarks, licensing, and the legal side of business  
- The dangers of mismanagement and unchecked trust  
- Lessons all entrepreneurs need to hear

Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insightful conversations and powerful life lessons from *Black Out with Ian & Rashad*!

**#FamousAmos #BusinessLessons #WallyAmos #Entrepreneurship #BlackOutPodcast #BrandBuilding #Ownership #TrademarkLaw #LifeLessons #CookieEmpire #BusinessFailure #Resilience**

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:43):
For today's story is teachable moment. Yeah, it's actually a
little different for us. It's pretty sad. Most of the
story times are like upbeat, but this is a story
and it's definitely a teachable moment. It's a story to
learn from, but it's not really the most.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I think most of our stories, there's always like a
triumph and it's like, oh wow, I can't believe they
came from those odds to do this, or they use
their intelligence, their network to do that, and this one's
a little different.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, but it's still a story that needs to.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Be to absolutely learn from the mistakes.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yes, So Wallace Wally Amos Junior. You know, it's crazy.
So most people, if you heard of the cookies famous Amos,
that's that's him, probably know him for that. Yeah, they
probably know him for that. But I didn't actually know.
I was doing some research, so I know he did that.
But what I didn't know was that in nineteen sixty

(01:38):
two he became the first black talent agent with William
Morris agent yep. And he had Diana Ross and the Supremes,
Marvin Gay, Sam Cook.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah yeah, and he had Simon and Golfing.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah. Yeah. That was a old town.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, that's pretty extremely big think about, like Diana Ross,
Marvin Gay and Sam Cook.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, that's crazy if I like, who does that? Who
finds that type of talent?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So, but he's he was raised in Tallahassee, Florida. Shout
out to Tallahassee, tally Ho's what they call it, fam
you Tallahassee Community College, Florida State University. Yep, it's a
college town. Shout out to Tallahassee. So he's from Tallahassee.
He's born in nineteen thirty six, so that was like

(02:23):
what he's still living, still living, man, still living, still
going shout him. You know, come from a no Southern
background and his aunt apparently.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Made homemade cookies ant della. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, that was famous in the neighborhood and everybody loved it.
You know, just a traditional type of just in the
in the kitchen, just making.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Cookies, making chocolate chip cookies.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
So that never really left.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Him, even though he went to you know, pursue a
career in you know, managing artists and things of that nature,
and eventually went to Hollywood, but he always had his
down South roots of cookie.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
That actually was what he would give to some of
his artists. He would present them with cookies like so
like and the arts of coming and he had like
a snack before there was riders and you had to
have all those things, like, he would bring the cookies
to them.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, and he actually went to culinary school also before
before he became a talent agent. He went to culinary school.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Was no joke.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
So yeah, So so, like you said, he used to
gift his clients cookies and that kind of branched off
to people saying like he should probably start his own company.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, and those same clients who you know that he
brought the talent from, they became people that like, listen,
we loved it what you got, we love the product.
We're gonna help you, We're gonna become investors.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Investors, man, that's important.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
That's a fact because it started because yeah, he was
doing William Morris. He tried to branch off and through
his own thing with that, and that didn't really work out.
So the relationships that he established, they said that they
would bankroll them. So it cost twenty five thousand dollars,
which was a lot of money in nineteen seventy five. Now, man, Yeah,
you know what I'm saying. Nineteen seventy five, that's like
a couple hundred thousand, and that's where he started his

(03:57):
company with.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I think Marvin Gaye was the first guy to say, like,
IM gonna help this guy.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, he started his company with what you called famous
amos and uh first year and Bitter said three hundred
thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
So that's crazy. I read that. I said the way
that three hundred and seventy five. Yeah, he's multa.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
No, he was, he was. He was good.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
So he hit he hit, He hit it out the
park right away, and by nineteen eighty two he did
twelve million dollars in revenue.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah. So after the first story, he started franchising. He
was on Sunset Boulevard and Cali Man was doing it big.
But he started franchising the stores out and generated some
more income.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah. So he really became a big name, a household name.
He you know, he's in the Smithsonian Institute. Yeah, he
has his hat and his shirt.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I saw his commercials.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Man.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
He said, like, he got so good at selling cookies
because he used to have to pitch talent to record label.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
And he had the relationships and it was a good
product too. Famous Amos Cookies was legit.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
They still legit.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, what I'm saying they changed the rescue BASTI. So,
so in nineteen eighty two, he's twelve million dollars. So,
like I said, twelve million dollars in the early eighties,
probably thequivalent of forty million.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Now, like a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
It's a lot of money, right, So he became a
household name, and he starts to you know, buy property
and he's living a high life, right, So in nineteen
eighty five that's when things start to kind of fall
in story changes. So he still did pretty decent that year,
but they made ten million instead of twelve million. So

(05:23):
now he's you know, it's a loss, like first year
when he's starting to like go backwards. He was going
up and then now he's starting to like go down
a little bit, right, So he makes some changes, He
fires some managers and put some other people in positions.
So he said admittedly, like he was never he didn't
really understand how to run business. He's a talent agent
and he's a cook.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
To his own credit, admitted, I don't know how to
run a business.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
But he didn't have any mentorship and even in his
people that he's around, an artist and things that nature,
he didn't really know what was going on.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
So it's all good, make twelve million.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
I don't know how to run a business.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's astonishing, Yeah, yeah, it was. And it's it's crazy
too because remember we interviewed Ryan Leslie and he said that,
you know, scaling can be like detrimental to you, like
if you're not properly prepared and you're growing too fast,
that can actually hurt. He's actually better to have a

(06:16):
smaller audience or to grow the slower pace, but to
be able to manage it, because like when you can't
manage your scale, now you're really screwed.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
That's his whole blueprint too, That was that's Ryan Lesli's
blueprint that even with the smartphone, was like smaller audience.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, and that's what you said like before, like less
it's less is more sometimes, so now it starts to
like just fall apart. He's on vacation and he finds
out that he has a house in Hawaii. Shouts to
all the good.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
People he lives there now.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Alohallow, does he still live there now? Yeah, everybody knows
I used to live in Hawaii. Tell the whole vibe
out there. So he finds out that his house is
actually being auctioned off.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, like that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
That's the crazy news to just wake up to, Like, oh,
by the way, they auctioned your house three pm? Like
what he didn't even know his house was in foreclosure.
Like when this happens, we're making light of it, but
it's just crazy. So it's like but once again that
just goes to show you, like especially like a lot
of celebrities, and you know, like even with the Fat

(07:24):
Joe situation, people know, like he went to jail for
tax evasion. He was telling his story. It was like
he had his accountant that was paying all his bills
for him, and you know, he's being a rapper and
he felt like, you know, he's not really paying Jim
Jones like, yeah, Kevin gart bunch of So what happens
with Fat Joe is that the accountant apparently started like embezzling,

(07:46):
stealing money, not paying his taxes, not paying his bills.
He found out because he's like he always had excellent credit.
He tried to get a car and it was like
his credit was like four fifty and he's like what
And then he realized that all of his bills haven't
been paid for months, and and also along with bills,
they had his account never paid his taxes. He had
to do like six months in federal jail. So I say,

(08:07):
I have to say, this is something that's unfortunate. It's
been going on for a long period of time when
people like put trust in other people to take care
of their finances and they don't know what's going on
with their own money and by the time they realize.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
It, it's too late.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, we see it having too much man, way too much.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
So so yeah, so so that was just like when
he realized like, okay, things is really starting to go
down crazy. So now he's scrambling and he brings outside
investors in to help out with this company because now
he's starting to lose money company. Yeah, so he took
I think like three million dollars of investors' money, but

(08:45):
that didn't really work out but those alone, so now
he has to pay that back. But then they left
and the company's losing even more money. So now it's
it's like spiraling out of control at a very rapid pace.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
And what are you going to do when that havings?

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, so in nineteen eighty eight, he sells the company
to three million dollars. He sells it for three million dollars.
He sells the company in nineteen eighty eight to the
Shansby Group. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly for three
million dollars. So the crazy thing about it is that
now he sells the company for three million and they
keep them on as a brand ambassador. So he makes

(09:20):
it deal with them, and he's not allowed to use
his name anymore.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, because part of the cell is the trademark.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yep, so famous and amos he can't his name is
he can't use his name, can't use it? So but
he can. So it's crazy. So he built the company
from scratch, from nothing, right, built it to a multimillion
dollar corporation, sells it for way less than what it
was value for just a few years earlier.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
He was hurting.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Not only do they tell him that you can't use
your name, but they keep they give him a job
to be the spokesperson for the company of the name
that he can't use. Yeah, he's doing that, which it
has to be extremely like think about that, like think
about like you start a company named Troy's Sneakers, right,
you love sneakers, and you build it to a multi

(10:10):
million dollar company, and ten years down the line, you
got to sell it and they're saying you can't use Troy,
you can't use sneakers anymore, but we want to pay
you a salary to go around the country promoting Troy Sneakers.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
I mean he found out about it when he tried
to start a new cookie company.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
We're gonna get to that after a while it was like,
it's not after you ates, I can't do this, and
he leaves and he's like he tries to start a
new company, and they.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Soon they're like, now you can't use that name for yeah,
we don't know, infringement part off.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
So then he starts the company called Uncle No Name.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, uncle names may yeah, which.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Is a play on that he has no name. Now
it's really unfortunately, it's really really tragic, tragic. It's really
tragic situation all the way around.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Man.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
That so yeah, so Uncle no Name he starts that brand.
But so the crazy thing about it is that as
he's doing the Uncle No Name, the company gets sold.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
This is the worst part again, Yeah, it's the worst part.
So this is the worst part of the story.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
So now because he even said like he had depression
for a little bit, he stopped baking at all, like
three years because Uncle Noman didn't work out.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Really yeah, I think they started making muffins. He went
away from.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Cookies, so he stopped baking. He cut his beard off.
His whole thing with trademark was his beard in the hat.
He stopped wearing a hat, cut his beard off. He
did even want people to recognize him in the street.
It's like, I don't want people. I don't want to
it's sold. I don't want them like this depressing, you
know what I'm saying. So but as all of that's
going on, Shansby the company that he sold to for

(11:48):
three million in nineteen ninety two, they sold.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
It a company four we might have heard of. Yeah,
sixty one million.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah to Kellig, big, big breakfast company.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Man.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
So yeah, they sell it, he sells it. They sell
it for sixty one million in nineteen ninety two, and
then it gets sold again in nineteen ninety eight to.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Keepler Crazy that's what the elf ye keeper cookies? Aye? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:19):
So then so then they so. Then in nineteen ninety eight,
Keebler decides to bring him back as a brand ambassador.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
It done got.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Flipped fives ready, they kind of flip over comes, you
know what they did. You know he said when he
came back and hurt his heart. I mean he had
he tried the cookies, but they changed his recipe and all.
Now they changed the rest respect like that. Everything.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Oh man, they let so.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
But but at least he was able to work a
deal out where he made a deal with Keebler for
Uncle Wally's muffins. Yeah, so they let him have a
I guess like a subsidiary company within the company. That
way thinks of that nature. And now he gives some speeches.
He's still a lot.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, he's still a lot. He's still I think he
lives in where he was living in Hawaii, and now
I think he's back in South Carolina. He's back south,
but he's still making cookies. He's still making cookies. I
think the original idea came from his aunt Deela, and
so that's what he's going back to. His new company
is at Della's Cookies because he can't use famous amis.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
So I mean moral of his story. There's so many
different morals of his story points and learning points. It's
just like where do you begin? But I think the
first one is business. Everything is a business. Like a
lot of time people look at it like I'm a
good chef. Well I'm a recording artist. How many times
is like that's not good enough. You gotta be able

(13:49):
to understand that no matter what you're doing, is a
business behind it.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, I mean, just think about it. If he had
licensed his name instead of selling it in that deal.
He could have done that, you know what I mean,
Like his fortune, his fortune would have been a lot different, right,
you know what I'm saying, Like you, he's done now
he can't use his own name.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Nah, you can't.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
And it's like mismanagement is a lot of and it's
a lot of people say a lot of time like
ignorant and bliss. It's really not. It's extremely dangerous, especially
when it comes to business. And like we did an
episode on trademarks and licensing and and the legal side
of it is extremely important as well, right, Like the
people understand that, Like you got to understand the legal
start or have a lawyer at least to help you.

(14:32):
And it's important to people get taken advantage off.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
You think he would have. I mean if he sold
it for three million, right, Like what did he get
the proper valuation even know what evaluation was at that.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Point, or he probably just needed the money, just need
some money. I'm gonna sell it like you saw it
three million. Then ten years later they get sold for
sixty one million and you can't even use your name.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Nah, man, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, it's like I said, man, it's a tragic, sad
learning experience. Nonetheless, it's still a learning experience, and I
think entrepreneurs, business people, inspiring entrepreneurs, inspiring business people can
learn from You gotta learn from other people's mistakes.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, I mean, and he still has his health at
the end of the day, he's still alive and breathing
to tell the lesson. So I mean, at the end
of the day, somebody gonna learn from his mistakes.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, I mean. That's the worst thing in the world.
Where somebody take your name, you can't use it, like that's.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Like, yeah, I mean, like you said, it broke his heart.
He takes the cookies, He's like, yeah, they change the recipe,
nothing is the same, but his name lives on. Like
that's those are like we talked about the Vendom Machine episode,
Like those are still in vending machines right now today.
Somebody's eating famous same as cookies. Earners up. You ever

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