This episode dives into the remarkable rise of the Mars family, tracing how Frank Mars overcame repeated business failures to create one of the world’s leading candy empires, and how his son Forrest would inherit and expand that legacy with a relentless drive for success. It’s a story of persistence, innovation, and the deeply driven nature passed down through generations that built a global powerhouse.
This episode explores the fascinating, multi-generational story of the Mars family and their journey to building one of the most iconic candy companies in the world. It begins with Frank Mars, who, as a young boy stricken with polio, spent much of his time indoors watching his mother make candies and baked goods. This early exposure ignited his passion for candy making, which would become his life’s work. Despite his love for the craft, Frank’s early business ventures were marked by repeated failures—he endured three bankrupt candy operations, losing everything each time. Yet his perseverance never wavered. Each failure forced him to be more resourceful and inventive, ultimately shaping the entrepreneurial grit that would fuel his eventual success.
Frank’s relentless determination came at a steep personal cost. His first marriage collapsed under the strain of poverty and constant business struggles, leaving his young son Forrest to be raised by grandparents in Canada. This separation would have a profound impact on Forrest, instilling in him both a fierce independence and a cold, ambitious drive to succeed. For more than a decade, father and son lived separate lives, until an unusual twist of fate brought them back together—Forrest, then a college student and hustling salesman, was arrested after a bold advertising stunt in Chicago. Frank, now enjoying his first real taste of business success, came to bail him out. The two men reconnected, and a conversation over lunch planted the seed for what would become the Milky Way bar, the product that would transform the Mars Company into a household name.
From there, the Mars legacy only grew. Frank’s success in creating products like the Milky Way and buttercream candies allowed him to finally build a thriving business after more than 20 years of hardship. Forrest, inspired by his father’s resurgence and fueled by his own ambition, later took the company to unprecedented heights, proving himself to be as deeply driven as Frank—if not more. He not only expanded the company globally but also instilled the same relentless focus on quality, innovation, and growth that defined the Mars family legacy.
This episode highlights powerful lessons in persistence, resourcefulness, and vision. Frank’s story mirrors the experiences of other legendary entrepreneurs like Sam Walton and Ray Kroc, who likewise built their businesses through resilience and relentless innovation despite limited resources. We see how moments of extreme hardship can serve as the ultimate training ground for long-term success, and how Forrest would later channel the lessons of his father’s struggles—both the triumphs and the sacrifices—to build one of the most successful family-owned companies in history.
Ultimately, the story of the Mars family is one of passion, perseverance, and generational drive. It shows us that great legacies are not built overnight, but forged through repeated setbacks, unwavering vision, and a willingness to risk everything for a dream. The Mars family’s journey serves as an enduring reminder that with determination and resourcefulness, even the most insurmountable obstacles can lead to extraordinary success
The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
Sam Walton: Made In America
Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's
As a young boy, he wore orthotic braces and was almost entirely dependent on his mother. He couldn't stand well enough to dress himself, couldn't navigate stairs, couldn't walk long distance instead of stickball and street hockey. Frank's days were filled with the aromas from the family kitchen where he spent most of his time porched on a stool, watching his mother cook, churning out breads, pies, cookies, and cakes, and occasionally candy.
Frank was fascinated by it all, watching simple ingredients like flour, eggs, and water transform into dumplings, pancakes, and fritters was to Frank like watching a rainbow stream out of the horizon, candy, of course, was Frank's favorite.
It was fun to heat divinity pull taffy. And fondant fun too, to lick the spoon, but. It was the [00:01:00] process that fascinated him the most. Fudge required the exactitude of a surgeon the patience of a nurse. He learned quickly that candy making is a critical science, unstable and apt to fail.
And these selections are from the book that I'd like to talk to you about today, which is called The Emperors of Chocolate, and it was written by Joel Glenn Brenner. Over the last couple of episodes, we've discussed Milton Hershey and the longtime president of Hershey's and that of William Murray. And today I'd like to talk to you about the Mars family.
And this is a unique case where a family's deep drive towards high quality products and their business growth is passed from generation to generation. We'll talk about Frank Mars and how he founded the company. We'll look at Forrest Senior, his son and how he helped to grow the company, how he deflected away from the company and then later would come back and take control of [00:02:00] that original company, which was quite a thriller in itself, how that took place.
And then we'll take a look at Forrest Senior's, two sons that of John and Forrest Jr. And we'll look at how they expand in the operations by more than 35 fold in the third generation. Before we get started here, I just wanted to ask if you might be able to do me a quick favor. If you like this episode and you learned a few things along the way today, if you could just take a couple minutes and leave me a quick review.
It would help me out a lot and I would really, really appreciate it. This is a fantastic book and I've read it two times and I spent a lot of time rereading major sections of the book to develop the last two episodes and then also for this one today.
I really enjoy spending time sharing with you and understanding the deeply driven nature of those that you and I talk about. And I hope to keep doing this for quite some time, and I'm always [00:03:00] looking to improve and make things better. And I just thank you in advance for taking the time to listen, and I really appreciate your time.
I know there's a lot of things you could be doing
And I just appreciate you tuning in to listen, and hopefully you can take some things away that'll help you in your business. Alright, uh, let's jump into the book here and take a look at the Mars family.
So Frank Mars was born September 24th, 1883, and as a young boy, he would contract polio this shape, the course of the rest of his life. And as we heard at the opening, he spent a lot of time in the house with his mother watching her make all these candies. And instead of playing outside with all of the other kids, he was really enamored by watching his mother in the kitchen
Learning how to make candies and desserts. And I think that life presented his purpose to him very early. The love of candy making for him, it was simply play. It was [00:04:00] joy and it was a lot of fun. And by the time he enters high school, it says in the book that he had mastered most of his mom's recipes and he was developing many of his own recipes at this time.
He would continue working on this at home. And shortly after high school, around 1902, he would begin a wholesale candy operation, pedaling Suites to small shops outside of Minneapolis. Now around the same time, he would marry a lady by the name of Ethel Kissick.
And their only son Forrest would be born a few years later, who will talk about in more depth here, coming up shortly in order to sell his candies, it required a lot of time away from home,
in most of the candies he's selling here, are highly perishable. And many times he would cut a deal only to find out that his goods were spoiled. But Frank pushed forward and he dumped every penny he had into his business.
And the situation [00:05:00] sounded quite bleak as described by the author. Every penny had gone into the company and soon there was nothing left, no rent, money, no food. Few belongings terrified for herself and her son, Ethel Mars divorce her husband in the summer of 1910. On the grounds of non-support, she was awarded custody of 6-year-old Forrest, and Frank was ordered to pay $20 a month in alimony.
But the money never came. Reluctantly Ethel set for us to live with her parents in North Battleford Canada, and Ethel didn't have any money either, and she was really desperate. That was her only choice. And North Battleford Canada is located in an isolated mining town in Saskatchewan. In just a couple of points here, the first is that we see that Frank Mars is certainly deeply driven to make his business a success, [00:06:00] but he's doing this at his family's expense and he puts absolutely everything on the line with little regard to what happens to his family.
All he really cares about is getting his business up and running. And then the second observation is that young Forrest, he witnesses all of these actions and we're gonna see that later in life. He would inherit the same deeply driven nature in business with that deep streak of coldness towards his own family
with one of his own drives to excel past that of his father. Now, as a young Forrest goes to Canada, this would be the last time he's gonna see his father for more than 13 years. When he lands in some hot water in Chicago. But for now, let's just talk about Frank and see what he's up to here.
Shortly after his divorce, Frank would bury another woman also named Ethel, and they would move to Seattle. He was basically [00:07:00] running away from his business failures in Minneapolis, and once he arrived there, he would establish another candy manufacturing company and he would do the same thing as he would dump all of his money into this firm.
And this time he thought it would be better, but within a year or so, he would fail for the second time and creditors would come around and seize all of his personal belongings and they would even take the couple's homes. Now they didn't get quite everything.
Frank and Ethel would skip town not paying many of their creditors and they would wind up in Tacoma in 1914. And what do you think he would do here? Yep. He starts another candy company and this company would also soon fail and Frank would blame this on stiff competition in the area with nowhere else to go.
the couple would return to Minneapolis
Where he takes his last $400 and plunges it into yet another candy operation. This is the fourth one that is now at this [00:08:00] time, he has no credit in very limited cash, and he's forced to focus and dig in super deep to make his operation work. He had to be inventive and extremely careful with every dollar. And this is a great lesson for you and I right here, That out of resourcefulness comes a deep learning that contributes to our long-term growth as leaders and business owners.
And this reminds me of Sam Walton and what he said in that book Made in America.
when he started out, he didn't have very much money and it forced him and his team to be innovative and resourceful. And Sam would say many of Walmart's best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things we were forced to learn and do, because we started out under finance and under capitalize in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we've grown as a company
And a couple examples of [00:09:00] this is one is distribution. They were forced to develop ways to distribute their merchandise to the stores in these small communities.
these learnings fed into their distribution superpower as they grew bigger and bigger. And then the second was that of a simple store design, which allowed them to keep overhead low so they could focus on selling goods at extreme value. In
this is a concept they would develop over the long term,
and this plays right into the way that Frank would have to operate. Super resourceful and innovative. This fourth business would also be the origin of the Mars Company that we know today. Frank would have to buy everything cash up front with no credit. He bought surplus sugar cord syrup and extracts on the cheap.
he and Ethel lived in a small room above the kitchen that they would rent and he would call, this is factory. And he would wake up each day before dawn and cook a fresh batch of [00:10:00] candies. And then
Ethel would take those out and sell them on the trolleys. this company would be named Marrow Bar after a gooey combination of caramel, nuts, and chocolate that Frank had invented.
and this bar would one day morph into what we know as the Milky Way.
He also had a popular buttercream concoction that would allow him to land an account with Woolworth and about a dozen other retailers.
So after 21 years, three business failures and a lot of extreme work. By 1923, his business had life and success, Frank had followed. His purpose and things were going really well for him, but Frank is soon about to intersect with his past and his future at the same time.
Before we get into that, let's head to Canada and we'll take a look at his son Forrest and how he's growing up with his grandparents. as a boy, Forrest would walk three miles each day back and forth to school,
where he excelled in most subjects, especially that of math. [00:11:00] he enjoyed games of skills such as chess and cribbage and Bridge and Poker
was an avid reader in a wide range of topics, and this propelled him through high school and would land him with a partial scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley,
where he would focus on mining and engineering. and while Forrest was rich in intelligence, he was financially poor. So to help pay for school, would take a job in the school cafeteria, scrubbing the floors and washing the dishes. But a very smart young man, and soon he would be showing the chef how to organize the meats on the menu.
And he had worked out deals with all the local wholesalers for steep discounts, and this would earn Forrest on average about a hundred dollars a week, which was a great deal of money in 1923. For a young college student, however, the summer approach, He would find that the cafeteria is gonna be closed and he doesn't have a [00:12:00] job for the summer and he needs some sort of income.
So in the summer, he would join a team of traveling salesmen to Hawk Camel cigarettes. And little did he know that this would soon lead him back to his father. One night when they were in Chicago, he ordered his team to Plaster State Street with posters
and up went flyers on the popular stores like Cartier and Marshall Fields and the rest of the main street shopping center. And this marketing ploy would make headlines in the newspaper all over the city and it also lands in jail. And who would call for help? Well, his father, Frank Mars. Now, it doesn't really say why Forrest called his father.
They had been estranged for like 13 years at this point, his mother and his grandparents generally referred to him as a miserable failure for most of the time that he was growing up and urged him to do better for [00:13:00] himself. Perhaps maybe he was the only one that he could think of that was in the area that could come and help.
It's really hard to say what his thinking was, but at any rate, Frank would travel from Minneapolis to Chicago to bail his son out, and the author would describe the meeting in the following way. Although force hadn't seen his father since he was six, he recognized Frank immediately short and thick set with a prominent nose and in a disappearing chin, the two men looked alike.
Both wore glasses, both had round fleshy cheeks and freckles. And strangely, they shared the same awkward rolling gate. Franks was the result of polio and Forrest, the legacy of badly bowed legs. But anyone watching them would think the trait was hereditary.
And Forrest would be a bit disappointed to see that he looked like his father. 'cause he always associated himself more towards his mother's [00:14:00] side of the family.
And he didn't wanna be anything like his miserable failure of a father As his mother called him so often, but that perception is about to change here a little bit. They would go out and have lunch where Fort learns that Frank's success in Minneapolis and that he's making like 60,000 a year and he's living in a nice five bedroom home with his second wife and his daughter Patricia.
And most of the conversation was about business. They didn't really bring up much of the past as described. Frank said nothing of his disappearance from forced life and perhaps afraid of the answers forced. Two asked little about the past. Instead, the two men talked about business, the only neutral topic they had in common.
And it was during the conversation that for would learn that most of Frank's business was local and he really urged him to go [00:15:00] nationwide like Hershey's was doing. But there was an issue keeping the product fresh. Now, at this point, Forrest makes a suggestion to put the chocolate malted drink flavor in a candy bar.
This was kind of a joke at the time because they were drinking chocolate malts. At least that's how I perceived it when I was reading it in the book, but. Obviously this suggestion stuck with Frank because a short time later he had a new creation, and this creation had a center with a malted flavor and it was top of caramel, and then it was wrapped in solid chocolate and that kept the bar fresh rush.
Now, due to the low cost of manufacturing of the Noot, he could make the bar much larger than his competitors, and at the same time, he offered something drastically different. Something you could only find in a Milky Way, and it would be an instant [00:16:00] success. First year sales would be somewhere around $800,000.
Simply amazing. Now, past this point, Forrest would return to school. And he quickly transfers to Yale with the help of his father to study industrial engineering. , While Yale, a few things would take place. The first is that Forrest needed to earn money, and he sees a unique way one day when he is visiting a popular upscale department store, and he sees that the salesman is throwing away a bunch of neck ties.
So he just inquires about buying them on the cheap. He ends up cutting a deal and paying 50 cents a piece for these neck ties. And then he would sell 'em all around school for $2 a piece. He would sell 'em to the football players, the glee club singers, the boys in the fraternity, the teachers, and to make himself extremely popular, he gave away free camel cigarettes.
I guess he was still being loyal to his summer job. And then the second [00:17:00] item that we see that happens here that's extremely important was that he ended up being roommates with a gentleman by the name of Pierre Hulk, who was the nephew of Pierre DuPont. Yes. Of the DuPont Family Force. Would pump Pierre for as much information as he could extract about the DuPont business and how it was structured and how it was managed.
And force would say the following, Pierre taught me a lot about business remembered Forrest. He got me really thinking, and this leads Forrest to probably the best educational training he could find at the time that of books and more books. And let me read for you how Forrest was at the time. Forrest read every book he could find on DuPont, on Rockefeller, on Ford.
but it wasn't the entrepreneurial ambitions of these men that impressed him. It was the nuts and bolts business principles. Each [00:18:00] employed their accounting practices, their manufacturing techniques, their internal organization. He absorbed himself in these nitty gritty and seemingly mundane details. And by the time he graduated in 1928, he was ready to test all he had learned.
And these early business practices and these learnings would shape the way Mars runs its operation even to this very day. And right here, this is a strong reminder to be reading. Learning and growing, and we can learn so much from great leaders. We covered Ford in episode one, Joe Colo at Trader Joe's in episode three, Milton Hershey in episode five, and now the Mars family.
Each of these books, they only cost like 10 or 15 bucks, and they're just packed with valuable learnings. Just one idea from a book can make a significant [00:19:00] impact in business for you. And I look at Henry Ford for example. Just by studying the movement of men in his plant, he was able to optimize the way they work
simply by bringing the parts to the men.
. Save millions of hours over the long run. Have you studied the way people move in your business? If you can save an employee just 30 minutes a day, that's like what, 125 hours a year? That's an extra three weeks of work that you gain from them just by studying their movements.
And then take that times however many employees are in your organization. That's huge. that's worth far more than $15 for the price of this book. And that's just one example. If you don't have time to read the book, just listen to podcasts like this one, and hopefully I can give you 2, 3, 4 lessons on each episode that you can think about and you can brainstorm over.
And there's [00:20:00] tons of other great podcasts out there that you can listen and learn from. See if you can just implement some of these suggestions, even just a partial suggestion.
And it's really through application that we can learn and we can grow.
I believe deeply in that as I'm reading these books, I'm trying to take these lessons and put it back into my podcasting skills, trying to figure out how to make this better for you. And I love to read and learn. Alright, let's keep moving forward here and keep our focus on Forrests.
So after force graduates, he would join his father in business and he would immediately encourage his father. That they need to be in Chicago. That was the place to be. And his main thinking here was that the freight rate in Chicago was half of what it was in Minneapolis. Chicago was kind of a core hub for manufacturers, and Frank would take him up on this and he would buy a large track of land outside of Oak Park, [00:21:00] which was a large, wealthy suburb of Chicago, and he would build a big new fancy factory that looked like a Spanish style monastery with stucco walls, red tile, culping, wrought iron ornamentation, these big two story arch windows and doors.
And from the outside it didn't look anything like a factory. It could have just been a country club or a fancy institution. And we get a feel for the inside. As described in the book, everything was cutting edge designed by the engineering department of the Austin Company. Which built all of the automobile plants for Ford.
The plant was sleek, modern, efficient, and automated as possible. And it's interesting to note that the factory would remain like this for the next 25 years until Ford Steps in again and has it modernized during a bitter takeover feud. And we'll talk about that here shortly, but just [00:22:00] two years after they started construction, they're already cranking out 20 million candy bars a year.
That's quite impressive.
A year later, Frank would go on and invent a peanut flavored bar topped with crunchy nuts and caramel coated in chocolate.
to be called Snickers. And then in 1932, another major hit with Three Musketeers, these big hitting candy bars, would generate more than $25 million in sales. And by the end of 1932, Mars was now the second largest candy company in the United States after Hershey. now at this time, Mars and Hershey, they were business partners.
Frank Mars had developed a really good working relationship with William Murray, who was the president of Hershey at the time. And in the bonus episode that we did last time, we spoke about William Murray. He was the one who actually extended Mars an account and gave them credit [00:23:00] 'cause he believed that the Milky Way was gonna be a big hit, and he was absolutely correct.
Sales of his chocolate coating business went from 8.3 million pounds a year to 8.4 million pounds a month, accounting for 25% of Hershey's chocolate production, and seven and a half million dollars a year in sales. The relationship went further. Let me just read for you here. So important was the Mars business that Hershey's scientists developed a whole new line of special chocolate for each of Frank's inventions.
The chocolate coating for the Snickers bar was milky and smooth with just a hint of peanut while the three Musketeers was extra sweet and chocolatey. The original Milky Way was Enrobed with the standard Hershey's chocolate plus the slight hint of malt. And this is quite impressive that Hershey was making all of this chocolate for Mars.
Both [00:24:00] companies are doing extremely well right here, and there's nothing but blue skies ahead. But for S Mars, he was not happy. we can get a feel for how force acts through the author's words right here. Unlike his father who was permanently scarred from his early years in business four s, Mars had no fear of failure.
It simply wasn't part of his makeup. He was constantly pushing Frank to expand the business. Everything had to be faster, cheaper, bigger, better. Four stuttered around the Chicago plant as though he owned it. Shouting orders at workers on the line and advising every manager from sales to accounting. He contradicted his father at every turn and argued obsessively with Frank about the future of the firm
and workers in the factory. They would soon start complaining of Frank and they put a lot of pressure on him to RainForrest in,
but he never did. He just let him run loose and [00:25:00] possibly he felt like he had just gotten his son back and he didn't wanna lose him again. And this would continue on and it would get worse. With Fort, putting a lot of pressure on his father to expand the line and push sail into Canada. when asked why Fort was pushing so hard, he would say the following, I want to go on because it's fun.
I like building businesses. I like the tension. I like the gamble. The word challenge isn't too good a word for it. I think it's better to say the truth. I like the tension and this best, describes the entire nature of Forrest. He had developed this love of tension in college and it got stronger as he entered business.
He became more shrewd, confrontational, and drove deep and hard to expand his empire for the rest of his days on earth. But for Frank, he would soon reach the end of his rope, and in the fall of [00:26:00] 1932, he would kick Forrestout of the business in a statement by Forrest. He would say The following things got bitter I'm not proud of this, I told my dad to stick his business up his ass if he didn't want to give me one third, Then I said, I'm leaving. He said, leave. So I left Frank would be kind of generous to Fort and hewould give him $50,000 as he leaves the business, and he also gives him the foreign rights to the Milky Way. So for would take his wife, Audrey and their newborn son, FortJunior to Europe to seek out his own fortune.
Now in a sad turn of events, just 15 months later, Frank would collapse on the factory floor in Chicago and he'd be taken to the hospital and diagnosed with kidney failure he would pass away a few weeks later Forrest would not return from the funeral, and that's really hard [00:27:00] stuff right there and sad.
Also,
After arriving in Europe, we see an important lesson emerge, and this is one that you and I can learn from and let me just read for you here.You can hire lawyers, you can hire accountants, you can hire advertising men or financial types, he reasoned. But if you wanna get rich, you gotta know how to make the product.
And you aren't gonna hire anybody to make a product for you to make you rich. They'll only make it for themselves. And for this, I believe it's so true. It's essential that we understand how to make our products. It guides everything for you and I, and it sets our course. We see this in so many of the deeply driven founders that we study on this podcast,
Such as Henry Ford who designed and made his first cars. Joe Colo developed Trader Joe's and made lots of their own private [00:28:00] label brands. Famous Robber Baron, Jake Gould acquired struggling railroads, dug into them at the lowest levels of business to understand every aspect, and he used this knowledge to turn them around and make them profitable corporations.
Milton Hershey the same, developed his own caramels, sold that business for a million dollars, dumped it all into milk chocolate, creating Hershey's. He understood every step of the process. We can let some of history's greatest founders right here teach you and I a lesson know how to make your products my friend.
It's extremely valuable. Now the next move that Forrestis gonna take right here would be a little controversial in nature. In order to learn the product, he would set out to learn how chocolate was made, and he would first land a job in Switzerland working at the factory of Gene Blr, maker of to [00:29:00] Barone.
And then after that, he went to work for Nestle, who invented milk chocolate in 1875. And Forrest described his experience in the following way. I was an hourly guy. Remember Forrest? They didn't know who I was. I just told them I was an American. And the factory manager didn't care. All he cared was whether I knew anything about candy.
And this certainly taught him how to make chocolate. This is knowledge he would use later in life at a very mass scale. He would take detailed notes as there's hundreds of different little nuances that you can take to make chocolate. And this allowed Forreststo build his foundation of knowledge. And finally, in 1933, he felt that he had learned all that he could and he would set out on his own.
And it's a fine line. What happens here?
Is it okay to blatantly steal recipes or intellectual property and [00:30:00] copy it and make it your own and turn around and sell it? Of course not. We should never do that. Is it okay to work for someone, save your money, and then go out and start your own similar type of business? Of course. I mean, this happens all the time, and I think we could spend hours talking about different examples of this in every single industry on the planet, and it's a gutsy move that Forrest takes here.
And this was simply his nature. He walked a tight rope. He loved the tension, and he made it to the other side. , With this Forrestwould start his business in Slo England with a tiny kitchen and living in a tiny one bedroom apartment with his wife and his son. And he would face off against the large companies such as Cadbury and Rre, who had a hundred percent market share when he started.
Now, his first objective was to make the Milky Way, which for the European market he would call the Mars Bar. And in tradition of [00:31:00] his father, he devoted. Everything to the product, leaving very little, if anything, for his family, no heat for their apartment, and very little food to eat. His wife and ForrestJr.
Would ultimately return to America when he refused to take better care of them. I mean, talk about putting everything on the line. The author would state the following. Forrest was never ashamed of this. It was simply a matter of business, what was required at the time. And Forrest, he would say the following, my father-in-law took them back to America to feed them.
He said, matter of factly. So they went home.
And I am all for digging in very deeply to run your business, but at the same time, you gotta take care of your family and your loved ones. They're the ones that give us meaning and balance and purpose in life. It's not my position to judge Forrest here, but I hope that you and I can see that we should prioritize our families and take care of their [00:32:00] needs in a responsible way.
From this point, Forrest would press forward with some used equipment and four employees helping him to press out his first candy bars
where in London he would eventually gain a small following of retailers that carried his Mars bars. And like the Milky Way in America, the bar is much bigger than his competitors. He made it sweeter for the British taste. And since the inside is super cheap to make, his costs are lower and his profit margins are healthy right here.
Now, once forcereally starts making some money, he really starts putting his hard nose business practices into play. And one of the first things he would do is he would pay his managers three to four times more than they could make working anywhere else. And I can't help to think that he learned this by reading Ford in the same manner that we learned about Ford paying his workers more than double of market rate [00:33:00] and all of the benefits that Ford derived.
But these handsome salaries, they were tied to corporate performance, including his own. And this really forced everyone to pull their weight with most working anywhere from 12 to 14 hour days. and this would be a standard for Mars even to this very day. By paying significantly higher, he could attract the best talent in the market
and for would constantly lecture on quality. And he became quite obsessive over quality. Even the smallest of details he was said to hurl boxes of poorly wrapped product across the room, or terrorized the factory floor if he noticed even a little pinhole in a chocolate or if he saw scuff marks. And just so you can get a sense of Forrest, one of his long-term employees would say the following.
Few people wanted to go to work for him directly said Brown, who spent 37 years as one of Forres top lieutenants, but wouldn't [00:34:00] dare consider the man his friend. He described his dealings with Forrest as amicable. as long as you had a strong duck's back, if you can take a certain amount of tantrums, he could be cruel and demanding.
You just had to know how to shake it off. And throughout the book, the author describes many times over and over how Forrest would often fly off the handle at little things, screaming at employees and managers at the top of his lungs for 30 to 45 minutes, throwing things and degrading people and firing people for minor things.
So he paid very well, but at the same time, he was extremely demanding. And several employees said that if you wanted to work for Mars, you just had to get used to force launching into a tirade and let him yell and throw things. And there was really no need to argue back. That would just heat him up even more.
And eventually he would just move on to [00:35:00] the next person and leave you alone. I mean, have you ever had a manager or worked for anyone like that? I have a few times over the course of my career and Pushing back just really seemed to make it worse. In the end, I just let him blow off this steam and once they settle down we could generally talk things over.
but Forst, well, he sounds quite a bit different than most, and I think his deep drive for that tension in business made him this way
he wouldn't stick to just candy. In 1934, he would venture into the pet food business as he believed that it was possible
to make a more nutritious food for cats and dogs. As most pets at the time, they were just fed table scraps and Forrest. Well, he was a hundred percent correct in his assumptions, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on the Mars pet food business, but let's just say in 2023, they were the second largest producer of pet food in the world selling about $20 [00:36:00] billion globally, just a billion and a half dollars behind their largest competitor who is Nestle.
Now, as force builds his empire in Europe, he would also study other industries like cement and steel manufacturing. And he borrowed from DuPont Planning Systems to help him develop a flat organizational structure.
he would also routinely rebuild his candy manufacturing equipment from the lessons that he learns so that he could make it less wasteful or easier to operate or faster to produce. And one of his longtime consultants would say the following, whenever he could, he applied the principles of economics, mathematics, and science remembers Charles W.
Kaufman, a professor who worked for Forrest as a consultant in the 1960s. He was way ahead of everybody else in the industry. They were just candy makers, he was an entrepreneur. And for this aspect, I really [00:37:00] admire Forrest. And I think we can learn a solid lesson here. And that is to pay attention to everything going on around us.
And to be curious, my friend, there's so many learnings that we can discover in our industries and also in other industries that we can apply to our businesses. Look at Sam Walton is an example. I mean, he looked at the supply chain industry and he discovered that of barcoding. And he used that system of barcodes to help him develop a central distribution system so that he could reach all of those small stores in those rural communities.
And as this grows and scales, it allows 'em to be more effective. Than anyone else in the business when it comes to distribution of merchandise. And as a result, Walmart would become a leader in low cost retailing that we all know today. So Sam and Forrest [00:38:00] were both like-minded people in this aspect, and they're both good teachers for you and I that we can learn from when it comes to applying applications in new and innovative ways.
and another lesson I believe forced used from Ford is that he allowed his workers to stop the line if they noticed anything wrong. In fact, he expected them to stop the line and he would get upset if they didn't . He would often rant on about how employees represented customers inside of the factory and they needed to keep their eyes open for any sort of defects and stop the line.
And he always preached quality, quality, quality. It was his number one priority. Above and beyond anything else, stop the line, damnit and fix anything that's wrong. And with this mentality, Mars would quickly climb the ranks of the candy companies in Europe ranking third by [00:39:00] 1939. So what is that? It's like five or six years.
He's the third largest candy maker in Europe. But for Forrest,things are about to change. Around this time, world War II would start, and the British government, said that they were gonna impose a heavy tax on foreign owned businesses. Well, Forrest isn't gonna have any part of this. So he would turn his operations over to his top manager at the time who was Colin Pratt, and he would return to America.
Now. he couldn't just come back to the Mars operation in America. They didn't want him. He had been kicked out, but he had other candy coated plans in mind when he arrived. he went over to see Hershey starting first with a plant tour. at the end of the tour, he would tell the guy that he wanted to see the president and he would say, tell him Mars is here.
That's all he needs to know. Forrest would [00:40:00] go and meet with William Murray for the first time on a hot August afternoon, and they would have some small talk and exchange pleasantries and whatnot. after a while, Murray basically says, why are you here? Can I help you? What do you need?
at this point, force would pull out a handkerchief from his pocket. And the way the author writes makes me feel like I was really in the room witnessing how this all went down. let me just read for you, force pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and laid it on Maurice'sdesk. Take a look.
Murray saw a dozen brightly colored candies, violet, orange, yellow, red. Each about the size of a fat nickel. I've had 'em in my pocket ever since I left New York. Try one. Murray was impressed. A Hershey bar never would've withstood the train trip. Not on a hot day like today.
forced candies, didn't seem to be affected by the heat. Murray. Bit one open [00:41:00] and examined the chocolate inside the thick, sugary shell. This is brilliant. smiling. Absolutely brilliant,
and almost immediately they're gonna strike up a deal. Mars would put up 80% and Hershey would put up the other 20%, and Murray would go tap his son, Bruce, to be partners with Forrest as Murray had been grooming his son for quite some time to enter the candy business. So this looked like the perfect opportunity.
And in return, Fort had promised to treat Bruce like family making sure that he was involved in every step of the operation and that he would be treated as a true equal partner. Now, it's important to note at this time that Murray always had a very positive and friendly working relationship with Frank Mars and those at Mars, and he assumed that Forrest Mars was gonna be similar in nature and to close the deal, [00:42:00] Forrest would say, well call them m and ms for Mars.
And Murray, what do you think about that? Sold. They shook hands and the operations would begin in 1940, and Forrest would get a lot of extras out of Hershey, especially from Murray. Now, as World War II was going on, Hershey's was considered an essential business for wartime production of nutrition, mainly that in their ration D bar, and they would provide m and ms with unlimited supplies.
Now, without this force would've never gotten all of the ingredients that he would've needed. Plus, Hershey's would devote food scientists and engineers to help perfect the candy, and they would also supply the operations with a great deal of expensive equipment to help press the m and ms, and then also to help wrap the candy.
These are extra [00:43:00] items that Mars never would've gotten when he returned to America.
now in the end for Bruce Murray, things aren't gonna work out so well for, would treat him really bad, forcing him to work 16 hour days. he would order him to generate sales reports every morning. And if they didn't meet his expectations, he would write in big red letters, failed across the front of the report, and he would hang them up in the men's bathroom for everyone to see.
And then in 1949, the two would have an out and out brawl in which Murray would be demanding respect from Forrest. He was tired of the behavior and they would both be screaming and yelling at each other, throwing insults and accusations, and Forrest would order him out of the M and MSS plant,
Telling him that he needed to go on the road as a lowly salesman. If he wanted to stay with the company, Murray's not gonna have any [00:44:00] part of that, and he would resign from the company and just to get away from Forrest, he would sell his stake for about a million dollars,
which looking back was a hell of a deal for Forrest. Now if we turn our focus to sales. M and mss, they would start selling decent out of the gate, but over time they would flatline at about $3 million a year in sales, which was disappointing for force because he expected a lot more. And what we see next I think is very interesting.
And it would be something that Mars uses a lot in the future once they uncover a secret here. So instead of brute force sales, or possibly even pulling the plug on m and Ms. Forrest would hire an advertising firm by the name of Ted Bates and Company and they would go and produce a detailed study of m and m sales and for wanted to know who was buying and why they were [00:45:00] buying.
And then on the flip side of that, who was not buying. And this was a first of its kind approach in the candy industry. In the study really found that children preferred m and ms over every other type of chocolate that they were offered. But the problem here is that children don't control the purchasing power.
so how would he overcome this? Well, a gentleman by the name of Rosser Reeves, who is head of the ad agency, would come up with probably one of the most famous taglines in history. And I think you know what it is, even before I say it here, it's melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
And this message was really aimed at parents by the way, of their sticky fingered children. And it is a dramatic success with this popular tagline. They would generate the M and MSS cartoon characters That we can all recognize [00:46:00] today. And they would use those in advertisements and they would run them during popular children's shows and sales would reach $40 million by 1956, making it the most popular candy in the United States.
And it's this research and marketing concept that they would use going forward as a company to understand and promote products and Forrest. While he's doing quite well here,
he has the successful m and m's brand. He has Mars Europe and he has the largest pet food business in the world at the time, but. He's not satisfied and he's gonna soon turn his eye towards his father's original business that's still operating in Chicago where they had started all those years ago. And now he felt that he had the right to this business, as he had convinced his father to build that plant and claimsto have given him the idea [00:47:00] for the Milky Way
How Forrest takes over the original Mars business reads like a mini thriller in itself. It reminds me a little bit of what we talked about on episode four with Jay Gould and we spoke about all the stock manipulation, the smooth talking, the lucky breaks, the lawyers and the deaths, and so much more to acquire his railroads.
Well, the same is gonna be true here in the candy industry, and I'll do my best here to walk us through the takeover.
When Frank Mars died, most of his stock went to his wife, Ethel. Now Forrest had been trying for many years to convince Ethel to let him run the business, and she wasn't having any part of this action. He also tried to convince his half-sister Patricia to sell her one third as she wasn't even involved in the company.
And he said that he could make her a very wealthy woman by doing so, but [00:48:00] she suckedto her guns, at least for now, and she wouldn't sell. Then in 1945, Ethel Mars died and half of her stock went to Forrest, and this was a stipulation of Frank's will, and this was the break that Forrest really needed. And he started his bitter takeover.
After this, he would immediately insist on being given an office in the Chicago plant and also access to the company books. They thought that by appeasing Forrest, he would just sit there and be quiet, but that is not gonna be the case.
He would use this position to keep track of everything, especially the operational style of the CEOKAnd let me read for you what the author would say regularly assailing the board with acid tongue memos about Kreen baer's performance. His memos accuse Kreen Baer of. Slip shotmanagement, decrying the lack of oversight [00:49:00] in wasteful business practices that he argued were costing Mars millions.
Forrest would try to have Koppen Baer removed by the board He would fall short, and for that Koppen Baer would be really upset and he would have force banned from the facility. So what does force do? He goes and files a lawsuit for breach of Fialduty. And this would start to impact the company in a very serious way in terms of revenue because they were engaged in a bitter battle at this time, and forced,he didn't really care.
He just wants to get control of the company because he knows he is gonna just turn it around anyways, once he's in there.
As this dispute ranges on Koppen, Baer again thought he could appease Fort and he would give him three board seats as kind of a peace offering. But Fort is really gonna use this additional power to Forrest his way [00:50:00] deeper into Mars. And in 1953, he would get a modernization plan passed by the board so that he could have the original plant expanded and he would bring in all the latest and newest equipment.
as Kruer hadn't done anything to modernize the plant since it had originally been constructed all those years ago.
And for some products, he would cut the time down from 16 hours to just 35 minutes, which was quite impressive.
And he just uses this modernization to dig himself deeper into the business. Now, finally, in 1959, he gets another break here when the expansions are almost complete, Koppen Baer would retire and force sees blood in the water right here. He would go and jump up support from the board members to push himself into being the chairman and the CEO.
[00:51:00] Now, he would win half of the battle, and he would take over as chairman and the CEO. That spot would go to James Fleming, who was the husband of , his half-sister, Patricia. In Fleming, he turned out to be a disaster. He had basically just been a puppet for Kruer, and he knew very little of the business, and he also refused to work with Forrest.
And Forrest saw this weakness almost immediately, and everything in the boardroom would become a battle. They would have vicious fights in the boardroom. Things would always come to a head, and they would have blows over every single decision.
And as a result, sales would be impacted. They would drop by over $8 million from 50 million to 42 million in just like three or four years. Patricia saw this decline and she really knew that her husband was not skilled to run [00:52:00] the company, and she knew that Forrest was the proper choice to be running the business.
So she would eventually agree to sell her shares in the company, pushing fors, total ownership up to 80%. And then shortly after this, he would convince the rest of the remaining board members to sell their 20% to him. And at the age of 60, he would finally take over as the chairman, president, and CEO of Mars, Inc.
And after this, he makes dramatic changes almost immediately in the Chicago plant. And this would match the rest of his corporate culture as described by the author. Forrest ripped out the executive dining room. Fired the French chef, tore down the office walls, stripped the oak paneling and sold the art collection, the rugs, the stained glass, and the corporate helicopter.
He then [00:53:00] increased salaries by 30%, replaced the fixed annual compensation with incentive pay, and handed each associate a time card. The company was filing his.
With this newfound control, the next major move was for forceto begin the process of removing Hershey as a supplier of their chocolate. his father Frank, saw them as a partner, but Forrest believes that they're really a major competitor and it's unnerving for him to have Hershey's have any control inside of his business.
He knew that he relied upon them for all of his chocolate, and he didn't want any part of this. And that reminds me a little bit of Henry Ford, who was heavily reliant on outside companies to manufacture most of his automobile parts when he first started. And then slowly over time, he brought most of that work in house and he rapidly expanded his plant and he took [00:54:00] control of his own destiny because Ford had this really grand vision and he didn't want anyone standing in his way.
Now Forrest had the same aggressive growth vision as Ford. And so in 1965, he would send notice over to Hershey letting them know that he was gonna start phasing out their chocolate coating. And this really took the Hershey executives by surprise. And this is gonna be a major hit for Hershey's right here, because at the time, they were doing around $12 million a year in sales, I believe it was to Mars.
Now Forrest, he would need to spend something around $20 million to ramp up his chocolate production line. And this is a point the Hershey executives tried to argue back to Forrest, just saying, Hey, it's cheaper to buy directly from us versus making your own. Why don't you just save that money? There's no need to build out your own line.
We've been partners for a long time [00:55:00] and we're gonna continue to take care of you. But Mars is in this for the long haul. He didn't really care one bit about the short term.
If he was gonna make candy bars, he was gonna do it properly. He was focused on one goal that of being number one. And that kind of reminds me a little bit about how Jeff Bezos runs Amazon investing very heavily into logistical infrastructure such as warehouses and controlling their own fleet of vehicles for quick delivery.
And then also building out AWS way in advance of any of the cloud computing demand that would rise up. Bezos would dump almost all of the profits that he earned back into the company for the long haul, building his grand vision around extreme customer focus and Forrest, he's the exact same, the highest quality products for his customers.
[00:56:00] Now at this point, Forrest would give his plant managers six months. To bring in the best equipment they could find and to begin producing chocolate that was on par with Hershey's. And this would be quite a major feat that they need to undertake. And one thing that I found really impressive here was how much Forrest would spend on constantly upgrading their equipment as a company.
They carry no debt, so thus they could invest super heavy back into their operations, giving them a huge superpower advantage over their competition that would normally lag behind them in manufacturing, trying to operate with legacy equipment.
and this would set up future generations of the company quite nicely. And I think at this point it's a good time to pivot and take a look at the third generation of the Mars family. We haven't spoke about them just yet, and what we'll do is we're gonna flash back in time a [00:57:00] little bit here to take a look at a young Forrest JR.
And his brother John, at home.
Now, while their father Forrest was quite wealthy, in fact, one of the wealthiest men in America, the boys, never really knew this. They lived in a modest home. They had average cars. They barely had enough clothes. They didn't have anyone helping in the house. They didn't have people doing yard work, they didn't have cooks, they didn't have cleaners.
They did everything that they needed to do in their household by the people who lived there. It was very basic and very plain, and in the book it said in the House of Mars. No one got away with anything he or she didn't work for. There were no free rides. No shortcuts and excuses. Well, they just weren't tolerated.
He would constantly critique his children. He never said that he was proud of them, and he sure as heck didn't show them any affection. And just to [00:58:00] go and get a deeper feel here, let me read for you how meal times were in the Mars family. This is quite something.
He turned meals into Inquisitions, mercilessly cross-examining his three children about their schoolwork, friends pastime every aspect of their lives. He would test them with logic problems, pose insoluble riddles, taunting, and pushing them to prove themselves to him. To this day, John. Forrest Jr. And Jackie view mealtime as an ordeal.
the Mars children have a terrible time with food. Said one intimate acquaintance, they're all yo-yo dieters. They never sit down for a meal. They have awful recollections surrounding food and their father. And that sounds quite terrible to me, to be honest with you.
and we see here that Forrest is projecting his very poor [00:59:00] childhood and his abandonment of his own father onto his children right here. And his Forrest junior and John got a little older. They would be sent off to prep school. In which they were relieved to get away from their father's grips, but that wouldn't completely solve all of their issues.
they were barely given enough necessities and they often had no money. in fact, most of the other students thought the boys were just there on some kind of scholarship. For poor kids. Forced would relentlessly tell his boys that there's nothing like being broke and that it forces you to make your way in the world
just like he had done growing up through high school and college. He thought that the money would ruin them and they needed to feel the same pains that he had suffered.
Now, John would go on [01:00:00] to major in industrial engineering once he arrived at Yale and Forrest Junior would get a degree in economics from the same school. And then after that, they would both enter the family business and the author states that they weren't so eager to go work with their father and that no amount of any hard work could ever please Forrest and just listen to the way he treated him.
This is just awful.
He would lash out in anger whenever he found the slightest flaw in either son's performance. These degrading scenes often took place in front of other executives, some of whom still retain vivid memories of four seniors Tirades, he was terrible to them, says one longtime associate.
He would shout and call them dumb and stupid. He would harangue them over the smallest details. Everyone in the room would fall silent and you could hear him screaming all the way in the factory. It was [01:01:00] horribly embarrassing, and it goes on to say. John received his own lessons in humility. Once at a meeting of advertising executives in West Germany, four senior ordered his younger son, who was 29 at the time, to get down on his knees and pray for the company.
John quietly obeyed, remained on the floor for nearly an hour as the executives discussed the company's marketing strategy. Former Mars Associates say these experiences have haunted the brothers for many years, and I can certainly see why that would be the case. My goodness. And these are just a few examples.
There's so many more examples in the book of how terrible he was to his sons. now, if we step in the shoes of forced Mars senior, he was preparing them for something big. And from his viewpoint, this behavior was [01:02:00] justifiable to drive home his expectations of how things should be run to make his sons ruthless leaders and strict managers he wanted his legacy to live on.
And the next actions he would take are quite astonishing. Let me just read for you here. he was preparing his company for the future. In the end, he gave his sons the most generous gift he could. In the fall of 1973, he turned ownership of Mars Inc. Over to his children.
It was a remarkable step. One of the unmistakable traits of the most successful entrepreneurs is a possessiveness and an insatiable need for control. the compulsions that bring men like Mars to the top, however, are often they're undoing many.
A family dynasty has been wrecked by a domineering patriarch, unable to pass the baton to the next generation, but [01:03:00] for Mars never control for control's sake. Like Milton Hershey. Forrest was a dreamer, but never to be tied down to the mundane toil of running a company. Now that he had subdued his father's company, established Mars as a dominant power in the industry.
He was ready for new conquest, and so he gave his stock away, resigned his offices, and simply walked away.
Four senior, loved that tension of business, not the control. He did the correct thing here, and he turned the business over to his sons,
basically giving them billions upon billions of dollars. He groomed them aggressively to take over the business. Were his actions in the way that he treated his sons proper? it's hard for me to say, and I'll let each listener certainly make their own decision there, but thereare facts here. They [01:04:00] were both growing men.
They were both very smart and they could have walked away at any point, but they chose to stick around. They took the abuse and they were rewarded handsomely as a result.
Was it worth it? I'm not sure. But they're both gonna stick around for the long haul. Now, the two brothers, they're gonna grow the business from $1 billion when they take it over in 1974 To listen to this, hold your breath. 35 billion by 1999 when Forrest Jr. Finally retires.
And as we move forward, I just wanna highlight some of the top ways in which the brothers would work to expand the company. There's a lot of detail in the book, and I would highly, highly suggest picking a copy up for your library.
the two brothers would work together and run the company as co-presidents. John was known as the chief decision maker in the [01:05:00] brains behind Mars, and he's often given the credit for the massive growth of the company.
And for the next 25 years, both brothers work 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and they would spend as much as 70% of their time traveling the globe visiting their various factories.
And they were always on the factory floors. They didn't have a long rank and file of executives. They kept a flat organizational structure, and this allowed them to work directly with the plant managers. No one in the company or the industry for that matter, outworked them, and They were certainly the most deeply driven of anybody at Mars
They were certainly the most deeply driven of anyone at Mars carrying the company legacy forward. They would continue with most of the hardcore business philosophies that Forrest j. That four senior had implemented, and they [01:06:00] would just push that framework into new plants and into new offices. As they expanded,
The two brothers here, they would clamp down on decision-making and they would say that everything needed to run through them first. even very small decisions needed their attention, and they were maniacal about making decisions and they would often lash out at employees for making small decisions.
Even that of moving a plant in an office. As described in the book, one employee was just torn into shreds over simply moving a plant.
They said that it was their money. So they would make the decisions
another decision they would make would be to spend aggressively on upgrading the plants, building new plants, and they focused aggressively as well on developing super big hitting products.
Oftentimes putting a lot of research and development into them, and a lot of market testing. [01:07:00] And then this would feed into that of a massively increased advertising and promotion budget. And then this would all be backed up by a super aggressive sales force. Who was adamant about selling to every business that had shelf space, and they worked even harder to make sure that all of their candy was positioned perfectly in the checkout lanes.
And it was said that sales reps would often stash Hershey's products in the back of stores so that their stuff would be front and center. And these guys, they were driving for aggressive growth to be number one. Now they would have a heavy focus on international operations, and in 1995, they would open their first plant in Russia and
They would spend more than a hundred million dollars on this plant, and it would employ more than 650 workers. At the start, sales would quickly reach [01:08:00] $300 million a year, and then they would go about dumping more than $25 million. In Russia alone, and this is just an example of one country, Mars would go on to open more than 70 independent business units in countries all over the world from Helsinki to Hong Kong.
And at the end of this, it would account for more than 15% of worldwide candy sales. And this is a number that still holds true today. Now, if we turn our focus to acquisitions, Mars would almost never buy any competing companies, and Their motto is, we don't buy and sell, we build.
the brothers are smart right here. And they recognize that their culture and like no other, and they see outside cultures as simply a disaster in the making. ' cause it would be quite a culture shock for any outside company coming into their organization as they operated quite [01:09:00] drastically as compared to anyone else in the candy industry.
So they would generally pass on any acquisitions that came their way. Now, something really interesting happens here. After 20 years of sitting on the sidelines, four senior would hold a secret meeting with the Nestle chairman at the time to discuss a possible merger.
And it was said that he wanted to see the company thrive. And he felt that a merger with Nestle would make them a super giant. However, for Junior and John, they're not gonna have any part of this, and they would back for senior down probably for the first time in their entire lives.
And they would also be quite astonished by this action. And of course, they didn't die, that it ever took place. And like most things at Mars, it's surrounded with a heavy dose of secrecy because they're a privately held company and thus they don't divulge any [01:10:00] information. And if they do, it's very, very little information.
And that I think is a true luxury. If you're a business owner, It's your prerogative how much you wanna share or not share, especially as a privately company. I think this is a good place to close the episode down. This book is an absolute delight. And as I've been doing on the last couple of episodes, I just wanted to take a few minutes to recap some of the most important lessons you and I learned today.
I believe that reflection helps us to build deeper connections and helps us with our memory retention. , Even just a few minutes can have a really big impact. And as I review each one, just imagine how you might apply the lesson in your business, because application is key, my friend.
All it takes is just one idea to make a huge impact.
So the first lesson that we spoke about today is that of [01:11:00] scarcity. In resourcefulness,
as Frank was starting his business for the fourth time, he had very little money and no credit, and this forced him to really dig in deep and to be creative and to watch all of his costs. And as a result, we see some very innovative and new candy creations, and also in the way that he had to sell and market them to get them out for distribution in the stores.
And we learned at the same time from Sam Walton. Who was forced to develop an effective distribution system to take advantage of deep discounts from manufacturers and then to be able to pass those along to all of his stores that were located in rural communities. So both forcedand Sam, they had very scarce times and these scarcities really forced them to be innovative and served as [01:12:00] foundations for their company growth
The second lesson was that of reading and growing all the time. the lessons we learned from the books that we read give us a major advantage in business Force learned most of his business practices by reading. And implementing. And we've also learned that Ford and Joe Kelo were avid readers.
and most importantly, they applied their learnings to their businesses. So for us it's about reading and applying. The third lesson today that we talked about was how to make a product and that we should understand how our products are made down to the smallest details.
And when we can do this, it really gives us a great power to make quick decisions and set the expectations of our organizations. Frank Forrest both started their businesses by making their own products, [01:13:00] and they never lost sight of this. They were always focused on the highest quality products.
So focus on your products, my friend, and know them well. The fourth and final lesson is to pay attention to everything in our industries and have a curiosity about other industries and focus on how we can implement those learnings in our business. The author would say that Forrest applied principles of economics, mathematics, and science to his plants, along with engineering viewpoints from industrial and concrete manufacturing.
these applications allowed Forrest to be a leader in plant developments and certainly in the candy industry. So the lesson here is to keep your eyes and ears open, be curious, and always ask questions because these learnings keep us fresh and they keep us growing, [01:14:00] my friend.
Those were my top lessons for the episode today on the Mars Family. I've really enjoyed learning about the chocolate industry and that of Milton Hershey, William Murray, and the Mars family over the last three episodes. It's been a lot of fun making this podcast and I felt like I learned a lot along the way.
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 help me out a lot. and if you have any friends or business associates that you think would like the episode, feel free to share it with them.
Let them listen as well. I would appreciate you taking the time to do that. And I also thank you for sharing.
thanks for taking the time to listen today. I hope you've learned some things along the way and can apply them to make your businesses better. Until next time, make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood, my friend.