How Byron Allen became a billionaire

help all right so let's talk about it let's talk about i started my company from my dining room table in uh 93 and i did a television special where i interviewed a bunch of funny friends i remember that right so a weekly one-hour show called entertainers would buy her an hour and uh i started i sat on my dining room table and i called all 1300 television stations and asked them to carry the show for free and on average they all told me no about 50 times and literally i sat at my dining room table from sun up to sundown and i got about 50 000 no's and after a year of doing that i was able to squeeze out about 150 yeses i got a station a tv station and every market from new york to waterloo iowa right and so that was my lineup now tribune had said to me if byron if you get 75 of the country we will sell your commercial time because i said to the tv stations there's 14 minutes of commercial time i'll keep seven minutes you keep seven minutes i'll sell my seven minutes to national advertisers you local tv station you sell your seven minutes to local advertising right you sell it to local banks car dealers supermarkets i'll sell my seven minutes to mcdonald's and pepsi and johnson and johnson and general motors you sell yours to the local you know and they didn't pay for the show they i get paid that's right they didn't pay for the show i gave them the show for free you produced the show did everything myself it's the hardest thing i've ever done sat there for one year and just worked the phones like crazy for one year the hardest thing i've ever done give away a tv show for free right so now the problem was after i did that good old tribune said we changed our mind we're not going to give you an advance of 400 000 so you can go into production and produce this tv show so i said okay i'm not going to sit here for one year until these tv stations i'm not going to deliver what i told you i would deliver so i didn't have two nickels to rub together and i decided i'm going forward and i went forward i didn't know how i was going to get it done but martin luther king like he said that's faith taking step while they're taking that step whatever you don't see the rest of this there and you know there's a staircase there it is right so i went forward and it was tough my home went in and out of foreclosure over 14 times over about a four or five year period from bankruptcy to billionaire from bankruptcy to billionaire that's exactly right there was uh uh i there were days i didn't eat there were days they turned my phone off and this is before mobile phones i was calling people from a pay phone and i got to know the lady really well at the bank and i'll never forget her she says your your file keeps coming on my desk she says what are you doing i said well i'm not paying my mortgage because um i'm paying the cameraman and i'm paying the sale person and i'm paying to get tape and i'm paying to have my show edited and i'm paying to put it on the satellite and i'm just trying to put a show in production i don't have the money to do it and she says listen up honey she says don't let don't let it go past day 89 because day 89 day 90 it goes to the lady next to me agnes and you don't want your file to go to her desk agnes is not as nice as me so i said day 89 and that was it and i showed up every day on the 89th day and i paid my mortgage but i was floating and finally i turned the corner and i signed up all the movie studios to buy advertising before that i was selling one 800 spray on hair and after i got the movie studios okay envy yeah there it is [Laughter] we sell it to everybody right so we kept selling and i went i got movie studios and i said i'm gonna go to soft drinks i got soft drinks and i went to fast foods and i went to packaged goods and i went to pharmaceuticals and i went to automotive and i went industry by industry by industry and i went to board of directors i went the ceos and chief partners with you this is me assistant this is what that means i'm on the phone i'm going i'm going day and night i'm on the plane every night i'm five you know six meetings a day whatever it is and finally i put another show and i say you know i know all these television stations i know all these advertisers i put another show on another show next thing you know i have 43 shows on the air one of the largest privately held libraries in the world and i went to verizon i said look i want to launch 10 networks with you they said we won't give you 10 we'll give you six we launched six 24-hour hd networks i went back a few uh years later and said i got a seventh network we launched the seventh network because we ended up being one of the largest producers of court shows we launched a seventh network and then a buddy came to me and uh a guy who's satellite at my networks success begets success and he came to me and he said uh can we have dinner did you guys hear that success begins success he says you don't realize this before i was the ceo of this satellite company that satellites our networks he said i used to be the chief operating officer of the weather channel and he said you should buy the weather channel he goes i know you don't think about the weather channel in la because it's always 80 degrees and sunny but it's a great business and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars and the people who own it just don't want to own it anymore because they're in a partnership a three-way partnership it's bain is blackstone and it's nbc universal and they want to get out of the deal and i said okay he started talking about it and i said okay let me get into it we got into it i said you know what i'm gonna buy the weather channel and i called a guy up and i said you know we have an opportunity we have an opportunity to buy the weather channel and i said it generates uh quite a bit of capital and uh i need 310 million dollars oh so you didn't use your own money i didn't use my own money okay i borrowed it okay so the guy i called him on a friday morning you got his number yeah yeah i'll get you his number and uh and by the way here's what i knew he has a hundred billion dollars that he manages so when you have a hundred billion dollars that you manage you have a problem you have a hundred billion dollars that you must shepherd invest and get back with a return right you have to do something with that money you got to do something with it right there it is so i said look i'm here to help you got 100 billion i'm here to help you unload some of that put it somewhere and get that return i'm an asset called him on a friday morning he sent his top executive to see me the next business day monday at two o'clock sat in my conference room for four hours he said this is one of the most amazing business stories i've ever heard you are a brilliant entrepreneur i'm going to give you a commitment letter a term sheet tonight and a commitment letter tomorrow morning please close on the weather channel and we did see if you know money money will know you and love you and be with you money's easy don't be afraid of money let money love you money will always be with you there's plenty of money yeah money loves me did you have cool when he said that or were you were you like all right thanks man and or did you give a little scream no i said like i'm here to help

Channel: DJ Sbu

Views: 17,687

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Id: ShsS_LsXecM

Length: 7min 28sec (448 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020