He quit Wall Street to sell meat (now he makes $270M/year)

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
The headline here is The $300 Million Butcher. I'm in. It's just a reminder that if you're the best at anything, money will never be a problem for you.
All right. Pat LaFreda. Do you know who this is, Pat LaFreda?

**Shaan Puri** (0:21)
Freda?

**Sam Parr** (0:22)
I feel like you definitely know who this is, because this is like, if there's two things that you like, it's red meat and denim jeans. So I feel like this is right in your alley. It's a family owned business. Do you want to hear the story here?

**Shaan Puri** (0:33)
Yeah. Oh man. I love the name of his website. Pat LaFreda, meat purveyor.

**Sam Parr** (0:39)
Purveyor, so good. Can we change this podcast name to My First Million? Business purveyors.

**Shaan Puri** (0:45)
Dude, at my hot dog stand, its first logo was Southern Sam's Purveyors of Fine Wieners.

**Sam Parr** (0:52)
Was it actually purveyors? Yeah, yeah.

**Shaan Puri** (0:54)
If you Google Southern Sam's logo, you'll see the logo.

**Sam Parr** (0:57)
Oh, wow. This is like a legit looking logo.
Purveyors of Fine Wieners, premium quality. And then you have the smoke and the hot dog with the smoke lines coming off. Yeah, it's good, right? Although there's something wrong with the beveling of these letters. There's some of this little MS painting.

**Shaan Puri** (1:13)
Well, I paid this guy Billy.
It was Billy from Nashville. I gave him 50 bucks and he gave me this logo.

**Sam Parr** (1:20)
This is not bad though as a branding thing.
All right, so here's this story of the... The headline here is the $300 million butcher. I mean, this caught my attention.
I didn't think a butcher could be worth hundreds of millions, but it's just a reminder that like, if you're the best at anything, money will never be a problem for you. You're the best plumber, money will never be a problem for you. It doesn't matter what you are. There's a guy in Dubai, is just the best at trimming, what's it called, split ends that women have. And people will fly to this guy to get him to cut their split ends. You're the best at anything, money will never be a problem. All right, so here's the story. Back in the day, early 1900s, 1909, there's a guy named Anthony LaFrieda, and he migrates from Italy and he comes to Brooklyn and he opens up a butcher shop. And he opens up a butcher shop and their idea is they don't wanna just do hamburgers like everybody else. So the way a hamburger normally works, I think a hamburger and a hot dog, they're basically the worst parts of meat mashed together. So it's like not the premium cuts of meat that you could sell separately a steak. And they mash it together and that's what a burger was, it was the scraps.
And he said, we're gonna use whole muscle cuts only. And he had this great line, which is, you can't hide your sins in the hamburger. And he viewed that that's what the other butchers would do is they would just hide the sins as we all the bad parts smashed together. Hey, there you go, that's your hamburger. So that's the first La Frida blend. And it was like different parts of the muscle. So business is okay, normal butcher shop. 1950, New York butchers go on strike and restaurants have no meat. And he decides to seize the day. So what does he do? He drives down to New Jersey. He goes and he buys up a bunch of the meat and wholesale. He brings it back, he starts selling direct to restaurant. And they open up La Frida Meats in the meat packing district and it's going good, but nothing spectacular.
And in fact, the grandfather, then the father takes over the business. It's not growing. By the late 80s, things are getting bad. Restaurants are switching to Cisco, which is like the sort of Costco for restaurants of how you get food delivered. And the company's kind of dying. And so the son was never allowed to be in the business. This is Pat Jr. And the father was like, son, I want a better life for you. Don't stay here. Go to college, get a good job. Don't be a butcher.

**Shaan Puri** (3:39)
Don't be like me.

**Sam Parr** (3:40)
Don't be like me. And he says specifically, he goes, why would you want to do this? You're going to be rubbing together pennies for the rest of your life. And so he's forced out and Pat goes and he becomes, he goes to a good school and then he goes and becomes a stockbroker on Wall Street for nine months. But he hates it. And he just comes back. He begs his dad, let me be in the family business. And he petitions with the sister and I think the mom or the aunt or something like that, like let Pat Jr. into the business. And so the dad relents. He says, fine, if you really want to do it, do it. So here's where we're at. This is now like 1994, not that long ago.