Milton Hershey’s journey from early struggles to candy empire success is a tale of grit, innovation, and heart, as he transformed chocolate-making with his milk chocolate recipe. Tune in to discover how his perseverance and generosity built not just a business, but a legacy that still inspires today.
Discover the remarkable story of Milton Hershey, the man who built America’s chocolate empire. Born in 1857 in rural Pennsylvania, Hershey faced a tough childhood and repeated business failures. At 19, he started his first candy venture, but setbacks, partly due to his father’s impractical schemes, tested his resolve. His perseverance paid off when a banker, impressed by his honesty, supported him in completing a crucial caramel order, laying the foundation for his success.
Hershey’s big breakthrough came with milk chocolate. In 1900, after selling his caramel business for $1 million, he developed a distinctive recipe that won over American palates. He then founded Hershey, Pennsylvania, a model town with a massive factory, modern facilities, and a tight-knit community. His milk chocolate’s durability transformed candy distribution, bringing sweets to households across the nation.
His achievements weren’t just about chocolate. Hershey’s passion for innovation drove him to experiment constantly, while his smart hiring—bringing in experts like William Murrie, who managed operations for 50 years—freed him to invent new treats.
Hershey’s generosity shone brightest in his philanthropy. In 1909, he and his wife Kitty established a school for orphan boys, and in 1918, he donated his entire $60 million fortune to it. Today, the Milton Hershey School flourishes with a $17 billion endowment, educating thousands.
Explore how Hershey’s dedication to quality, service, and community offers timeless lessons for entrepreneurs. Join us as we unpack his journey of grit, creativity, and compassion, based on Joel Glenn Brenner’s The Emperors of Chocolate. Tune in to see why Hershey’s legacy still sweetens lives today.
Books Referenced
The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
My Life & Work – Henry Ford
------> Socials
Deeply Driven Newsletter
Deeply Driven Websites
X
Deeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / X
Sitting in an old and freight easy chair, smoking a Corona Corona cigar, and playing solitaire. Milton Hershey looked more like a lonely half forgotten grandfather than a millionaire industrialist who had introduced the world to the nickel chocolate bar. It had become his habit to sit there playing cards or Chinese checkers listening to the war news on the cabinet radio.
That was the only other piece of furniture in the room when he couldn't sleep. Which was often he would prop himself up in the chair in Afghan, gathered around his legs, listening to the commentators until the soft light of the morning sky reminded him of a new day.
This selection is from the book that I just finished reading for the second time, which is called The Emperors of Chocolate Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars. And this book was written by Joel Glenn Brenner. [00:01:00] When I finished reading this book for the first time, I was so interested in making chocolate that I went out and actually bought a malaner, uh,a malaner, simply just a stone grinder that grinds all of your ingredients together.
I also purchased a coffee roasting machine so that I could roast my own cacao beans, and I bought a sous vide so that I could also make and temper my own chocolate. And after several batches, now it's extremely fun to experiment with the different ingredients and see how that impacts the final taste. And who knows, maybe one day we'll have deeply driven chocolate candy bars
For the podcast, I got the pleasure to read the book again. And I have to say, this is an excellent, excellent book and it explores the secret world of two very powerful candy companies that of Hershey's and Mars. And it gives us a firsthand look at the early days of the candy industry when most of the candy makers in America were just mom and [00:02:00] pop shop businesses.
And it highlights how both Hershey's and Mars got started. There are many failures that they would undergo, and then each of them would have their individual breakthroughs. And then from there, we get to take a front row seat and really watch them rise to the top of the market. always been fascinated with these individuals that are deeply driven to pursue their passions and their purpose in life.
Those who don't comply to what society really tells them to do. And are willing to take risk because, well, from their point of view, they're not really risk anyways. They're pursuing their life's work, their calling, their passion, their true love for them. It's natural, just like a flowing river or a beautiful sunset.
Some are lucky to discover their drive and their passion early in life. Others have to wait for life to present their purpose to them. As I was reading this book, I felt through the authors of [00:03:00] words that both Milton Hershey and Frank Mars and his family were deeply driven in their love of candy, making this carried into their life work.
and each has a unique story and set of lessons that we can learn. And I believe in a deep focus on one subject at a time, if possible. So for this episode, I'm gonna focus on the life of Milton Hershey and all of the lessons we can learn from him. And then on the next episode, we're gonna take a look at the Mars family.
That includes the founder Frank Mars, his son Forest senior. And then Forest Seniors, two sons, Forest Junior and John Mars. I think that's a unique case where they were able to take that deep commitment to their business and pass it along, and I think it's worth exploring. I find it quite interesting. Before we get started, I just wanted to see if I could ask you a quick favor, my friend.
If you like the [00:04:00] episode, if you could just take a minute or two to leave me a quick review. This would
help me out a great deal as I'm working to grow the podcast. And I do wanna make it better for you. I really love reading all of these books and making the podcast, and I hope that I'm able to do it for quite some time as I really enjoy our discussions. Any and all feedback is extremely valuable for me, and I thank you in advance.
And as always, there's links to any of the books that I reference in the show notes. If you'd like to pick up a copy for your library at home or possibly even a gift for a friend or a family member, this book, I would highly recommend it.
And with that, let's hop in our time machine and head back to 1857 where we find ourself in a little town by the name of Hockersville, Pennsylvania, where Milton Hershey would be born. To set the landscape. This was a little town that was surrounded by cows and corn as far as the eye could see. And [00:05:00] his parents, they were both from Mennonite families
His mother, Fannie, was said to be a very devoted follower to the faith. And somehow she had married a man that was very much a dreamer and a schemer. many people were quite amazed at why she would've ever married that of Henry Hershey, who instead of doing his farming,he had other grand ideas.
And let me just read for you how Henry was. This really shapes Milton, especially in the later years of his life. Henry read the New York Times and Shakespeare. He was enamored of science and politics, the black fields of his family's homestead. Held little interest for his vivid imagination, which was filled with romantic scheming and grandiose dreams.
Instead of farming, he wanted to become an inventor, an explorer, or an entrepreneur. When oil was discovered in Western Pennsylvania in 1860, [00:06:00] Henry mortgaged his family's farm to cash in on the boom. But within a year, the money was gone and the family had returned to Hawkersville. His future ventures were no more profitable.
He tried his hand at writing, but he couldn't get his outlands stories published. And Henry would go on to have something like 17 different enterprises And none of them ever earned him any sort of reputable living. He was always bouncing around from place to place. And as a result of this, he also moved his family around a lot when he was chasing his dreams.
this would find young Milton at a young age selling Barry's barefoot on the street just trying to help his struggling family to survive. And one of the saddest parts of all were the bitter struggles that came about between Milton's parents as they fought all the time. And it was mostly about Henry's lack of focus and his [00:07:00] inability to provide for the family.
Now with all this moving around, it would see Milton attending seven different schools from free thinking schools to Puritan schools, and he would end up with only about a fourth grade education as described in the book. And Sadis was, he was barely literate at the end of this. Now, his father wouldn't be able to teach him much about farming, obviously, because he was bouncing around with all of his wild ideas.
, Which will soon show up in Milton as a young man. On the other hand, his mother really wanted him to establish some kind of reliable trade that he could hang his hat on, and he had shown an interest in candy. So Fannie would go line up a job for Milton, working with a local confectioner by the name of Joseph r Royer,
You and I, we have [00:08:00] the distinct advantage of knowing that Milton would be famous in history,
but a young Milton doesn't know this yet and we get to see a distinct point in his life. The point when I think life presents him with his purpose. Let me just read for you. He displayed a natural flare for experimentation, perhaps from watching his father and slowly came to understand the intimate relationship between timing.
Temperature and taste. Neither here nor anywhere else did Milton Hershey learn science or chemistry. In later years, researchers in the Hershey labs noticed that Milton had no concept whatsoever of a chemical reaction. He just kept adding ingredients until the mixture tasted right and the question does it work?
Covered everything he wanted to know.
Have you ever seen someone working in a restaurant or a retail store that looked like they were just having a lot of fun [00:09:00] on their job? Joking around, they had like a free spirit.
I imagine that's the way that Hershey felt. And if we could have seen him there in that candy store with a big smile on his face, having fun, developing his purpose in life, experimenting and learning as much as he could, just perfecting his craft at that particular time. And it's with a steep focus over the course of four years
that he would finally step out on his own with $150 loan from his mother and her relatives at the age of just 19. And he would open his first establishment selling taffy, fruits, nuts, and ice cream in Philadelphia. And at first it would be a struggle for him to get things up and running, but over time and with focus.
Milton was able to grow the business to include nine employees, which that's certainly very respectable. He's getting off the ground here and he's getting [00:10:00] going and things were looking very bright for Milton at this point in time. And he was building a solid reputation, but things were about to change.
Milton's father had gotten word of his success and never having succeeded in any business before he flew into town in a big way. And he told Milton, if you wanna make money, he told his son, you've got to do things in a big way. And what do you suppose, Henry Hershey's big way.
It was, it was a display cabinet. Yep. A display cabinet. So they started to manufacture and market these display cabinets to confectioners all over the country. And their claim was that the cabinet would help them double their sales. Now this new line of business created major issues for Milton, he didn't have enough capital and he was constantly borrowing to cover his costs.
So pressures were mounting for a young Milton. Let [00:11:00] me just read for you what the situation looked like for him. Creditors grew. I patient and Milton borrowed from relatives to make ends meet. He moved into a smaller quarters, but still could not cover his expenses. His mother and her sister, Martha, who had lent him money, warned him that his father was irresponsible, scatterbrained.
A loser and said it was dangerous for Milton to be associated with him. Henry would have to leave, they said, or Milton would lose their financial support. And right here, Milton would be really torn. He wanted to do right by both of his parents, and this made him physically ill. And he would be bedridden for many weeks over this decision.
his father would come to him and he would make a deal in which he agreed to sell half of his cabinet business to Milton for $350. And the reason he did this was silver had been [00:12:00] reported out west and he wanted to go and stake his own claim, another venture that he wanted to go off and explore.
So Milton would go scrape together the money to pay off his father, but even when he's out of the picture, things wouldn't quite turn out so well. For Milton here in Philadelphia, about six months later, his shop would go under unfortunately, and he would have considerable debts to his family.
And I think at this point in the story, you and I can learn a really valuable lesson right here. And then when you take your eye off of your core business, it can have devastating impacts.
It reminds me of someone else who was intently focused on their core business in that of Harry Schneider at Inn Out Burger, who started his business in 1948, and he was focused on a super simple menu with that of just burgers and fries that were freshly prepared in a [00:13:00] super clean environment by employees that were well paid, and he had a strict focus on his core business.
He didn't venture into an extensive menu with salads and kids' menus and wraps, and a long list of dessert and all those kinds of things. He just focused on his core business. That was his main drive. And customers, they recognize this. They recognize this deep drive and his development of these high quality products, and for you and I that focus on our core business is critical.
But I also recognize that we're all humans and there are many lessons to be learned in our journey.
And if we should go off track, we just have to pick ourselves back up and focus back on our core business. Now, for Milton, there would be a silver lining that would soon present itself in his early business failure. And thankfully, he's still young.
So what he decides to do right here is to join his father out in Denver.
but once he arrives in Denver, he quickly [00:14:00] discovers that mining's not his calling, and he would go and work for a local confectioner in Denver and Milton through his watchful eye, would discover a major secret that's gonna give him the wings he needs to fly. And let me just read for you what he discovered to give caramels their chewy consistency.
Every other confectioner in America was using paraffin. The waxy white hydrocarbon mixture used in candies, but trial and error had taught a Denver candy maker whom Milton never identified by name. That whole milk would yield the same satisfying chew. And the milk-based caramels tasted better and stayed fresh for an indefinite period.
This was the game changer for Milton Hershey, and he would depart soon after this and had to Chicago with his father and they would start a second business that of making caramels. And I believe they [00:15:00] also made cough drops as well. And in the book, the author says that this partnership doesn't really last very long, which I think we understand why by now.
And he would soon depart ways with Henry again, and Milton would head for New York. Now, at this time, Milton's only about 26 years old or so, and once he arrived in New York, he would take a job with a manufacturer. And then my favorite part here,
he would grind it out at nighttime making caramels and selling them for himself. And he would save enough money to open a shop on sixth Avenue and things were starting to look up for Milton.
But his father, Henry, would soon show up on the scene
And I think you can predict what happens. Yep. His third business soon fails
In this instance, his father would encourage him to dream big like he had previously done with the cabinet . And he had forced him to move [00:16:00] into a bigger location.
Milton would find himself paying two rents and business would slow, and he would ultimately be forced to close down right here, and he would go work as a laborer just so he could save a few dollars so that he could move home back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where his mother, Fannie was located.
And by this time, his family just chalked
him up as another black sheep in very much the same manner as they saw his father.
Milton would be persistent with his mother and the rest of the family, and they would eventually agree to help him start a new business, but this time they had one condition that his father would have no part of the operations, and Milton agrees, which I think is a very smart move at this point. And lemme just read for you how this worked out With two copper kettles, a marble slab mixing paddles, molasses, and a couple hundred pounds of sugar salvaged from his [00:17:00] New York enterprise.
Milton, his mother and her sister started again. Milton made caramels, which the two women wrapped by hand in tissue paper when each batch had been cooled, cut and wrapped. Milton peddled it around town. his recipe was extremely popular, and within a few months, he managed to buy a push cart to sell further afield, but he didn't have enough money to really expand his business and his family refused to loan him anymore.
He tried the local banks, but had no luck. However, for Milton, he really believes in himself. And he takes these early failures as lessons, and he is learning from them right here. He's becoming smarter until one day he runs into what would be a giant springboard for his business. And let me just read for you how the opportunity was presented and then we'll talk through the rest of the events.[00:18:00]
And this is super key.
This is the key leverage for Milton right here and the rest of his future. One afternoon in 1887 in Englishman visiting Lancaster took a fancy to his caramels. He offered to introduce Milton's crystal ate candies to London if they could be produced. Insufficient quantity to make it worthwhile. Here was the chance of a lifetime.
But it called for more and bigger kettles, a bigger staff, and extra rooms, and all that was needed immediately. What happened next would make anyone believe in the American dream.
So with this, Milton would go to the bank and ask for a $700 loan with a 90 day repayment term. And this loan was backed up by his aunt's house. Now, when the note comes due, Milton's still not done from fulfilling his order. And in fact, he would need more [00:19:00] time and more money. So he goes back to the bank and he begs them for an extension. And the banker, Frank Breneman. He would be really impressed with Hershey's sincerity in his drive.
And he would come and take a look at the operations and he understood what they were trying to accomplish and he saw something in Milton right here. And now what happens next would go against the bank policy. Brenneman would take out a note in the name of $1,000 in his own name and then he also extended Milton's original $700 loan so that the term length would match the thousand dollars loan.
And this is the good deed. That was the turning point for Milton.
So he presses forward. And just 10 days before the note becomes due, he completes his big giant caramel order and he would get paid for all the work that he is done and he would go down to the bank and [00:20:00] pay off all of the notes. We're starting to see a glimmer of hope here for Milton that things are gonna get super, super exciting for him.
And can you imagine if that banker would've said no? I mean, that basically would've been his fourth failure in business and he wouldn't have been able to complete that large order. And that may have been the end for Milton and possibly we would've never even known the Hershey name in our modern times today.
And it really reminds me of what we spoke about in episode three with Joe Colo over at Trader Joe's,
Who scraped together as much money as he could, and he went to the bank for a loan to buy pronto markets in those first six stores would ultimately become what we know as Trader Joe's today. And Joe, he had that deep drive and the tenacity, and he puts everything on the line to make it happen. And it's a good lesson for you and [00:21:00] I that when we're deeply focused and we can see our vision and we have our goals, that we can accomplish a great deal.
And right here we can learn from Milton and we can learn from Joe. These guys were deeply driven and they went after. What they needed and they got it done. And I think that just one or two lessons from these books can have a super major impact in our businesses and in our lives. And it's such a tremendous value.
We get out of these books.
I paid less than $10 for this book in all of these valuable lessons we get.
Let's keep going here, my friend.
Alright. So after this point, Milton would focus on expansion of his business and listen to how quickly he grows it. Milton grew his Lancaster Carmel Company block by block until it covered 450,000 square feet. When that wasn't enough, he bought a factory in nearby Mount Joy [00:22:00] and opened a retail store on Canal Street in New York City.
He purchased a third factory in Chicago and a fourth in Redding. By 1890 33-year-old, Milton Hershey was wealthier than he had ever dreamed.
And for some reason, this is always my favorite part, just after the struggle and the early success, when the founder recognizes that they have that path forward and we get to sit back and just have a front row seat and see all that beautiful growth that's about to come, we can really appreciate how much they struggled to make it through and from all of this hard work and the perseverance that they're rewarded as a result if you're going through a struggle right now, let success inspire you, my friend, or listen to any of the other episodes. Everyone that I cover. They seem to have a similar, deeply driven story that involves [00:23:00] discovering a purpose, struggling to get started, growing, learning, failing, growing, learning, growing more until you're eventually able to skyrocket.
And if you're in the growth phases of your business and things are going well. I admire your hard work and your dedication, my friend. Just take a few minutes to reflect back and feel what it was like as you work through those struggles and appreciate where you're at today and let it continue to build your inner fire to do great things, my friend.
We can see that Milton really has his destiny in his hands, and he's got some options.Let's see how things are gonna work out for Milton. He would meet Catherine Sweeney in 1898, and he would call her Kitty
And they would go on to be married in a private ceremony
past this, his life would change a great deal. Milton was not aggressively hungry for [00:24:00] money. He was more focused on the creative side of the business and making an excellent product for his customers. Like Henry Ford said, for the formation of real business is service. Those are some of my favorite words in business.
Super valuable lesson for us here. That service is indeed at the heart of business. Those are my favorite, and this was certainly the case for Ms. Hershey.
Now around this time, he would be intently focused on his new wife. And I think the following paints a nice picture of how loving Milton and Kitty were towards one another.
They visited museums and great castles. Stonehenge in the pyramids often gone for months at a time. They toured extensively through Europe, the Orient in South America, taking in tourist attractions and collecting antiques. No matter where they were, Milton saw to it that kitty had a bouquet of fresh flowers at our bedside [00:25:00] every morning.
Just one of the dozens of ways he doted on her kitty, in turn, worshiped Milton completely. She supported him, encouraging him and doted on him like a nursemaid, calling him my little Dutchman. She never told him what to do, never questioned his judgment, and always treated him with respect due to a gentleman.
And the author does a really great job highlighting throughout the book the many ways that Milton and Katie shared their time together. Now, when Milton was home, he was often found in the factory and was described in the following way by the author. He could be found among the workers in the Lancaster plant.
His sleeves rolled up, buried elbow deep and cooked caramel. He still loved to trife with the recipes. He would hold court on the manufacturing floor adding a little of this and a dash of that
to a fresh batch of candy [00:26:00] until he had created something new. And Milton really loved to experiment, and now that he had the funds to do so, he would spend quite lavishly on his ideas. He would bring in the biggest and the best equipment that money could possibly buy from all over the world,
He would also quite frequently attend expositions and tour factories. He was always looking for some twist or novelty that might alter his business. Kind of similar to how he had discovered adding milk to caramels when he was out in Denver
and this right here also reminds me of Sam Walton, who spent a lot of time wondering in and out of his competitor's stores taking copious amount of notes on the things that they did well. Instead of looking for all the things they did wrong, which never results in anything.
Anyways, he looked for all of the things that they did, right, because he wanted to [00:27:00] use those to his advantage in his business. And from Sam Walton's book Made in America, he said, the following, most everything I've done, I've copied from someone else. If I was going to do one thing different, I just look at the way my competitors were doing right and try to learn from it.
And those are such wise words for you and I to live by. And we can learn from Sam and also from Milton right here,
we should pay attention to others in our industries and see what they're doing correctly, and then we can work to see how we can apply those learnings to our products and our services to make them even better for our customers. . Application after all is key, my friend. There's no need to cut others down. That's simply just a waste of time. In the eyes of Sam Walton, look for what others do well, and if you can implement them in your businesses, try to do so. And this would lead Milton to his next big [00:28:00] discovery.
In 1893, he was visiting the Colombian exposition in Chicago. He would stumble across a little chocolate maker by the name of JM Layman, and he was from Dresden, Germany. And I can almost smell the chocolate as the author says, the following,
the smell of roasting cacao beans, wasting from layman's roasting ovens Like the smell of fresh baked brownies. Enchanted Hershey, he watched in fascination as layman hauled and roasted the beans and ground them between granite rollers until they turned into a mouthwatering liquid known as chocolate Lor lako to this rich serp.
He added sugar, vanilla, and additional cocoa butter mixing and churning the ingredients into a silky, viscous paste then poured the chocolate into plain square molds and let it harden forming a bar. Anyone who can remember the first time they tasted a Hershey [00:29:00] bar
Can't imagine how Milton Hershey felt when he bit into that delicacy. Marveling at the flavor, so intoxicating, so intense and opulent. It penetrates the taste buds and heads straight for the brain on the spot. Hershey offered to buy layman's entire display, which was shipped by rail to Lancaster after the exposition closed in 1893.
And so past this point, Milton would begin to experiments with chocolate in the back corner of his caramel factory, and it's from here. The Hershey chocolate company would be born at first Hershey would just focus on sweet chocolate that did not include any form of milk as this really allowed him to quickly produce various novelties and different shapes and sizes. And it would be around this time that he would meet a gentleman by the name of William Murray.
He was in a billiards hall one evening when [00:30:00] Murray came in, and he was boasting at the time, and he was quite an outspoken gentleman and a natural sales guy. And this would certainly delight Milton listening to all of his stories of the past. He would talk about his days as semi-pro baseball player and how he could outsell more candy than Hershey's could possibly manufacture.
And of course Milton is gonna take him up on this offer 'cause he is already making quite a line of chocolates. That included some of the following, more than 100 different items. There were chocolate cigars, chocolate cigarettes, chocolate blossoms, sweet peas, Kant's, chocolate bicycles, lady Fingers, Vassar Gems, and Princess Wafers, just to name a few.
So Murray would hit the road and what do you think might happen? Yep. He outsells the plant just as he had promised. And Hershey would be [00:31:00] so impressed that he would go ahead and make Murray the gm. And then a few years later, he would promote him to president
And Murray actually stays on with the company for the next 50 years. And a few observations here, my friend, that I think are extremely valuable.
The first is something we covered on episode one with Henry Ford,
and that was the concept of hiring thoroughbreds in your business. and I think this is so valuable. Let me expand a little bit further on this for you. This is something that I learned by listening to Dave Ramsey and he says the following, that a thoroughbred is someone who is a top tier performer and they're motivated.
They've got discipline and they command excellence. They raise themselves and others around them, and they excel and they drive for the best. Then on the other side of the coin, we have what is known as a donkey, and this is someone who lacks motivation. They lack discipline. They don't have any [00:32:00] drive.
They often blame others and they just do a bare minimum of work. And a donkey for us is really just a form of cancer in our business. So right here, Murray is a thoroughbred. He's a thoroughbred amongst thoroughbreds. He's a super rock solid performer, and he lifts everyone up around him and he would push the company forward to great links.
And this allowed Milton to focus on his various creations because remember, Milton really loved creating and crafting on the front side. In Milton let him run the business for 50 years. I think this is quite amazing. So this is a great lesson for us to look for those thoroughbreds in business and let them run my friend, let them run.
Now in the book, Murray is discussed a lot and I realize this episode is about Milton and we can really see that Murray is deeply driven. And I mean anyone who stays at [00:33:00] a company for 50 years, it takes a backseat to the founder, but is ultimately responsible for such catastrophic growth that's quite admirable in my book.
And what I'll do here is I'll drop a bonus episode in about a week or so, just highlighting William Murray and the many ways that he was deeply driven in how he helped Hershey's grow. and I think there's a lot of valuable lessons in there for us that we can learn from Mr.
Murray. So stay tuned for that. It'll be up shortly, but for now, I think we can just continue on with Milton and take a look at the rest of his life. We'll go ahead and jump forward in time here a little bit to the year 1900.
Hershey makes a bold move at this point to sell his caramel business to his main competitor. For the handsome price of a million dollars, he would retain the chocolate business, but he would agree not to compete with them in the caramel [00:34:00] business. And this certainly made headlines all over the nation.
And at the time, min really couldn't make sense of why he would make this move. He was 43 years old. He was at the height of his career. He had a thriving business. He had plenty of money and a beautiful wife, a super lovely home, and he had mega respect everywhere that he went. And this was a little baffling to a lot of outside observers, and he would set out into what he called retirement, but this is gonna be very short lived as described by the author,
two weeks after closing the deal with his rival Hershey boarded a boat for Europe, the first stop on what was to be a lifelong cruise, but they didn't get very far in the journey before Hershey changed his mind. It wasn't chocolate that beckoned him to return. However, it was the voice of Henry Hershey still rumbling about in Milton's head, the voice of the [00:35:00] dreamer who had seduced Milton, the child with fantastical visions of Eden, with the 1 million from his Carmel operation, Hershey had the capital to invest in any dream he desired.
So it's interesting to see the voice and the dreams of his father, or still bouncing around in his head, propelling him to dream really big. And let me read for you just how the author would describe Milton's dream. Milton Hershey wanted nothing less than to build an industrial utopia.
A real life chocolate town where anyone who wanted a job could have one. Where children would grow up with salary, crisp air, where mortgages would dwindle in perpetual prosperity, clear water, and clear consciousness. This was Hershey's vision of a home suite home. This would be a place where leisure and education would be valued as much as hard work where the houses would boast gardens, electricity, and [00:36:00] indoor plumbing, where big city amenities would be available to all free of charge.
And for this, Milton's gonna be mocked and made fun of by his friends and his family. And a lot of his business associates, they really thought he was off his rocker. . But he doesn't really seem to care.
He wasn't after the money. He loved the grand Dream, and he loved to invent new things. and to begin his dream, he would purchase 1200 acres of undeveloped land in Pennsylvania, just like a mile from his birthplace, which was perfect.
But why?
Milk, chocolate. Of course. His chocolate was known to be very sweet, and he believed that he could mellow it down by adding milk. And for this, well, he needed the cows, and this gave him the perfect location in which he could build a new plant, and then he could also develop his chocolate utopia. And Milton initially believed that it would be very simple just to add milk [00:37:00] to his existing chocolate foundation and that this would do the trick.
But he is about to be in for a long road of trial and error.
You see, to make milk chocolate, you can't just add milk because it's 89% water, and then the cocoa butter is 80% fat. So that's not gonna work out so well because we all know the oil and the water, they're not gonna mix together. So what the European makers had discovered was that you needed to dehydrate the milk and then you could add the powder into your formula.
the author would say the following, given his success with caramels, where the addition of fresh whole milk had dramatically improved the quality of the candy, Milton Hershey believed he could outdo his European counterparts.
so he ignored everything they had learned over the centuries and set out to recreate for himself what the masters had already perfected. from this [00:38:00] point, Milton's gonna launch straight into trial and error.
He would go about buying the biggest and most expensive chocolate, making an equipment anywhere in the world, and he would work behind closed doors. He hired Watchmen to stand guard while he was working. It was said that he works 16 hours a day and it was trial after trial. He would use rich milk one day and it would fail.
He'd switch over to skim milk and that would fail. He'd sell all of his cows and bring in new cows that produce less fat, and that would fail. He'd try to add the sugar early to the concoction that would fail. He'd try to add the sugar late. Nope, that would fail. It was just trial after trial in those trials went months and the months turned into years, and he still didn't have a formula with all of these failed attempts.
And meanwhile, in the United States, the chocolate business is [00:39:00] starting to boom. So Milton's starting to fill the pressure a little bit here and with no formula yet, he puts it on hold and he orders the construction of his factory to start in 1903. And this reminds me of Ford a little bit right here. Who left his job from the Edison Electric Company because he was so sure that the automobile was gonna be a success.
He would say the following. The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company, but only on the condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself to something really useful. I had to choose between my job and my automobile. I chose the automobile or rather I gave up my job.
So like Ford, Milton knows that his milk chocolate's gonna be a success and he takes a bold move to expand his empire right here. And his initial factory would be two football fields [00:40:00] long accommodate somewhere around 600 workers, I believe it was. And it was capable of producing around a million dollars a year worth of chocolate.
And he brought in the biggest and the best equipment from Germany. He put in new cocoa bean roasts. Grinders presses conscious. And Hershey would oversee all aspects down to the smallest detail. He would approve every decision, and he just kept growing and expanding his utopia.
He would build homes for himself and for his workers. In the middle of the town, he put in 150 acre park. He built five 18 whole golf courses. I don't quite know why you needed so many golf courses, but he built them, 23 acre public garden. he put in a zoo so that everyone can get around.
He also built a trolley system. And then as an interesting note here, in [00:41:00] 1902, he actually held a contest to name the town. And the winning name was that of Hershey Coco. So we sent that into the postmaster and they felt that that was too commercial of a name for a town to issue a zip code against. So they shortened it to just Hershey, which is quite amazing because in later years just having that name, Hershey would draw in millions of visitors from all over the country and would ultimately be a major marketing ploy for Hershey's
now, finally, in 1904, the initial factory would be completed. And I say initial because over the years. The factory would grow quite considerably
it turned into a complex web of buildings that were all stacked on top of one another, totaling something like 36 acres of floor space. And it had a labyrinth of halls and mazes to get around, and it was [00:42:00] really quite the complex where they made a lot of their candies that they would distribute throughout the United States.
But if you recall during this time, he had put a complete stop to experimenting with milk chocolate.
And his major challenge still at this point was how to condense milk So Milton Hershey would bring in some experts who just slowed him down with his experiments. And like Ford Hershey really had a great disdain for these experts, and he would promptly fire them when he saw that they weren't really helping him advance his formula forward.
And at this point, he's starting to get a little bit desperate. He's got this large factories sitting there ready to mass produce, and his expenses are starting to stack up from building out his utopia. But this isn't gonna stop him. He just orders some Minnfrom the plant to help him with his various experiments that he's conducting.
One day, a man by the name [00:43:00] of John Schwabe. Was able to successfully condense a kettle full of milk in just a couple of hours, and Milton is so happy by this that he gives the young man a hundred dollars bill on the spot.
And the way the author describes the discovery just makes you feel like you were almost there alongside Milton. But it took many more trials before Hershey hit on a workable solution Using a heavy concentration of sugar, Hershey boiled the milk mixture slowly under low heat in a vacuum. When the batch came out, it was smooth as satin, like a batch of still warm taffy.
The concoction blended effortlessly with other ingredients, resulting in a chocolate that was light brown in color, and mild to the taste.
this process is. What gives Hershey its slightly sour taste, and it's one that would distinguish it from those of the European competitors. [00:44:00] And I guess you could say it's the American flavor of chocolate. ' cause it's interesting to note that in many parts of the world, the Hershey's taste is not very popular and most people don't even really consider it chocolate of any good quality.
however, at this time in America, people were demanding chocolate. And Milton could mass produce a lot of it in his new factory, and thus, he's able to be one of the first to reach a lot of new markets, and especially with those of younger kids who would taste chocolate for the first time. And when you get that first taste of chocolate, your mind builds these powerful connections about what chocolate should be.
And thus, the magic of Hershey's would spread rapidly across the United States. And that would ultimately build a super solid foundation in the hearts, in the minds, as well as the taste buds of so many who were just getting [00:45:00] into chocolate for the first time.
And in just two years, Hershey would be doing around $2 million a year in milk chocolate sales, which was more than double of the capacity of his original plant. And right here, he makes a really smart move. He would pare down the products that he's selling and he would choose to just focus on the nickel candy bar and move towards a nationwide distribution system.
And let me just read for you how this worked. He envisioned his nickel bars resting on counters at lunch and Nets, grocers, bus stops, and Newstands. This was a new concept in candy sales, which had previously been limited to candy stores and druggist.
He single-handedly developed these new outlets distributing his products through the brokers who were emerging to serve the developing retail sector. It's thanks to Ms. Hershey that we can now find candy [00:46:00] wherever we look.
And most candy makers at the time, they only had limited distribution as a typical chocolate candies would spoil within a few weeks, so they would just distribute within their local area. But the Hershey milk chocolate had an extremely long shelf life, and it allowed him to push into markets all over the United States.
And as the popularity of Hershey's increased, the plant would just expand many times over and over Along with the town of Hershey, Milton would add inns restaurants, gymnasiums, swimming pools. He built a theme park for the town. He would go and start his own bank, and from that he would encourage.
All the workers in the plant to buy their own homes versus renting them so that they could feel what it was like to be a homeowner.
And the extent to which Hershey gave to people in the town, I think is [00:47:00] quite honorable. He would go on to develop all of the local schools. He established a junior college that had free tuition for the townspeople. He built a $3 million community center, Now with all this money and no children, Milton would shift his focus into his philanthropy work and he would set up a school for Orphan Boys in 1909.
And for you and I, the thinking of Hershey here is really profound. Let's just listen to what he tells us about his giving nature. Well, I have no hairs.So I've decided to make the Orphan Boys of the United States. My hairsthe biggest influence in a boy's life is what his dad does.
and when a boy doesn't happen to have any sort of dad. He is a special mark for destiny. I'm afraid that most of our orphan boys have had a bad time of it, and many have never gotten the right start. They tell [00:48:00] me that youngsters who go to prison never had a chance. Well, I'm going to give some of them a chance my way.
Milton would initially place a hundred boys onto various farms with house parents, and each day they would do chores like milking the cows and planting fields, hauling grains, and making sure everything was in order.
And then during the day, they would all go to school together. They would be provided with clothing and food. Milton would bring in the best teachers that he could find for the boys. and it's at this point that things are really looking bright for Milton with his orphanage and also the business is going exceptional, but there's some dark days on the horizon.
In 1910, his beloved wife Kitty would be impacted by a chronic illness in this greatly impacted Milton in the same manner as his parents' relationship many years earlier. This really bothered Milton and he [00:49:00] would go and have the best doctors brought in to try to cure Kitty, and he took her all over the United States to different spas and clinics.
Alta no avail. He was said that he would make her various tonics, he would try all different kinds of medications, and nothing just really seemed to work at all. So this would go on for about five years. Uh, if we fast forward to 1915, they would be in Atlantic City and Kitty would fall even more ill with pneumonia.
And sadly, she would pass away at the age of just 43. And this really had a big impact for Milton. She would be buried in the Hershey Cemetery and twice a week for the rest of Milton's life, he would have flowers brought to her grave to memorialize her and honor her. And after her death, Milton, he's just devastated and he wants to do something really big to honor her life .
Kitty had been the original [00:50:00] mastermind for the orphanage, and Milton was gonna make a bold move, one that I find quite admirable. And out of all the biographies that you and I have covered so far on this podcast, this is certainly the largest single gift of pure love that we've seen so far. Let me just read for you.
After Kitty's death in November, 1918, Hershey donated his entire estate to the Hershey Trust for the benefit of the school, including thousands more acres of land and all of his stock in the Hershey Company, which was valued at more than 60 million. He made no public announcement about the gift. There were no press releases, lauding his generosity.
In fact, it was five years before the press got wind of the donation. On November 9th, 1923, the New York Times ran a front page story detailing Hershey's Philanthropy, [00:51:00] creating a sensation throughout the business community. Many industrial giants had set up foundations for charity, but most had wheeled their fortunes away upon their deaths.
At age 61, Milton Hershey was still very much alive, and yet he had given away virtually everything he owned. Hershey told Murray he had no need for money and saw no reason to wait to give it to others.
Now, this book was published around the 1999 timeframe, and the author would say the following, I'm just gonna paraphrase here
the gift had grown to be worth more than $5 billion. And it made the school one of the richest private educational institutions in the United States, and it provided a home and an education to more than a thousand boys and girls. and it also provided an endowment of more than $35,000 a year per child, which is quite impressive.
And I did a quick [00:52:00] search. And in 2023, it looked like the endowment had grown to over $17 billion. The school's housed on a modern campus, more than 3,200 acres, state-of-the-art gyms, ice strings, auditoriums, and there's a founder's hall that includes a large Marvel, rotunda.
And inside the rotunda is a bronze statue of Milton Hershey, with an inscription that reads His deeds are the monument. His life is our inspiration.
as we zoom away from that inscription, we can feel a connection to Milton Hershey in the love that he felt for the thousands of boys and girls. That would be his heirs for generations to come. Now past this point in Milton's life, he would play a strategic role at Hershey. He spent a lot of time in Cuba developing sugar farms so that the company would have a stable supply for production and he would [00:53:00] also be influential in the cocoa trade and the development thereof.
And of course, he stayed super active in his orphanage, expanding it and growing it and making it better All of the time.
His longtime President Murray would ultimately run the company. And in Milton's final years, they would spend a lot of time together playing cards, smoking cigars, and just reminiscing about the day has gone past. His life is one of a deeply driven man. He really loved to experiment. And invent new candies.
He was fortunate to discover his purpose early in life, and he used his talents to grow his business. He put wise men on his team, and at the end he gave it all away. It's simply a beautiful story and I'm glad that I could share it with you, my friend. As we wind down the episode here,
I just wanted to take a few moments to reflect on a few of the most [00:54:00] important lessons we learned along the way. Reflection is super critical for you and I. It helps us build deeper connections and allows us to recall those important learnings. And I just wanted to share with you here five lessons that I took away
the first lesson was that of staying focused on your core business. Young Milton took his eye off of his core business early on trying to sell those cabinets and it caused him to fail. We spoke about Harry Schneider over Inn Out Burger, who focused on his core business of a simple menu with a high quality of customer service, and it really allowed him to grow a cult like following over many years.
So the lesson here is to keep your focus on the core business, my friend. , The second lesson really goes along with the first lesson, and that is of a deep focus in tenacity. Milton was in a position where he needed a bank loan to fulfill a large contract. So what he did is he dug [00:55:00] in super deep to focus and honor his word and fulfill the contract, and by doing so, he was able to repay the bank, and from that, he expanded his business quite rapidly.
The third lesson is that of service. Now, Milton, he really loved to experiment and create those high quality candies for his customer. And he put service at the heart of what he did, and he hired quality managers so that he could focus on the things that he loved. And this is very similar to what we saw with Henry Ford and in a quote that I just love, he said, for the formation of real business is service.
And I believe that 100%. So lesson number three, my friend, is that of Service
lesson four is paying attention to what others are doing in your industry, and this is how Milton crafted his caramels by [00:56:00] observing a man that he was working for. In addition, he dives into the development of milk chocolate after having attended an exposition in Chicago where he saw a small candy maker working his craft.
He put both of these lessons into use in his business and in a similar fashion. Sam Walton did the same. He spent a lot of time in his competitors' stores and was always looking for those best ideas that he could use in his own business. Never search for things that your competitors are doing wrong, that's not helpful in business.
Instead, look for things that they're doing well and things that we can implement and have success with. And then the fifth and final lesson is that of hiring thoroughbreds in our business. Hire those people that have a deep drive to be successful, those that lift others up all around them. Milton did this by hiring William Murray, who [00:57:00] was his GM and president for more than 50 years, and this allowed Milton to really flourish in the crafts that he loved.
Hire Thoroughbreds my friend, and let them run. They will make you successful. These were the top five lessons that I learned throughout our episode today. I think there's a lot more in here, but I just wanted to highlight the top for you.
If you have time, I'd highly suggest picking up and reading the book. It's quite a fantastic read.
It covers so many pioneers in the world of chocolate. Looks at the intense competition between Hershey's and Mars.
And that deep shroud of secrecy that exists in the industry. If you liked the episode, if you could just do me a quick favor and leave me some feedback that would be greatly appreciated and it would really help me out a lot.
I enjoy making these podcasts for you, and I hope to be able to make them for a really long time, and I'm focused on making them better for you. And I also wanted to let you [00:58:00] know that I recently set up a newsletter. My intention here is just to share all of the top learnings from each book that I read.
I read a lot of books for the show, and I also read a lot of other business books that I don't cover on the show, and you'll get all of these learnings. I have a stack of about 40 unread books next to me right here. It seems like my pile is growing each day, and I can't wait to share these with you.
So if you'd like to learn more about these lessons, it's free to sign up. Just go to deeply driven podcast.com, and then at the top of the page, you'll just see a newsletter tab. Click on that and you can sign up. It's super easy. Thanks for taking the time to listen today, my friend.
I hope you learned a few things along the way. Until next time, make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood, my friend.