Tom Monaghan Quotes

120 Tom Monaghan Quotes

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Though my status was lowly, I could build empires in my mind and imagine myself as wealthy and successful.
Tom Monaghan

I had no other source of income, and I was feeling the weight of the debts we had to pay off.
Tom Monaghan

My purpose was clear, and the knowledge that the future success – or failure – of the business rested on my shoulders alone was welcome.
Tom Monaghan

If it is to be, it is up to me.
Tom Monaghan

I’ll never forget how inadequate I’d felt on opening day, when that first customer walked in and gave me his order. I stared at him like a fool. At that point I had made only two or three pizzas in my life, and the thought of him standing there watching my fumbling efforts was paralyzing. … Fortunately he let me off the hook by saying, ‘I’ll come back in about twenty minutes and pick it up’.
Tom Monaghan

[On Carroll Teboe and Jay Phillips making deliveries] A few times when they weren’t around, I’d take an order on the phone, make the pizza, then lock the door and do the delivery myself. It was a crazy situation.
Tom Monaghan

Much as I loved pizza, I couldn’t afford to eat my own product, unless it was a burned one or an order someone hadn’t picked up.
Tom Monaghan

I realized then that it took just as much time to make a small pizza as a large one, and it took just as long to deliver a small pizza. This revelation was a major breakthrough in the history of Domino’s Pizza.
Tom Monaghan

I kept wondering when my new partner would mention the five hundred dollars he was to put into the business, but he didn’t mention it, then or ever. With Jim Gilmore, as I was to learn, the only convenient time to pay a debt would be when the devil gave him a choice between that and playing goalie on hell’s hockey team.
Tom Monaghan

I told her I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was thirty.
Tom Monaghan



Divide and conquer: It’s an ancient military concept that applies perfectly to the logistics of pizza delivery. It would be important throughout the growth of Domino’s, and it’s crucial in fighting the emerging pizza wars of 1987.
Tom Monaghan

I’ll never have another drink the rest of my life. I’ve kept that promise.
Tom Monaghan

[On Dominos domino logo] He came up with a red domino and put three white dots on it, which he said represented our three stores. ‘You can add a dot every time you add a new store’. That didn’t seem so wildly impractical at the time…
Tom Monaghan

I didn’t even have an office. My briefcase was an old cardboard box.
Tom Monaghan

Keeping cards repaired and running was always a major item… Sometimes I wondered whether I was in the pizza business or the used car business.
Tom Monaghan

I had only a few work rules… Nobody is late for work; everybody works at least one weekend night; nobody sits down in the store.
Tom Monaghan

If someone refused to pay a driver for an order, I didn’t call the police. I just went and demanded the money… I didn’t hesitate to swing a punch to persuade them to pay up.
Tom Monaghan

Fire a guy if you have to, but don’t beat him up too.
Tom Monaghan

[On what led him to start having pizza taste tests] If you only listen to people who like your product, of course you’re going to hear good things about it.
Tom Monaghan

A blind person’s senses of taste and smell are sharper than those of a sighted person.
Tom Monaghan



[On being asked about placing more advertising] Don’t get us more business… Advertise for some good managers.
Tom Monaghan

Sometimes I would drive to a competitor’s store and just sit there in the car for several hours watching what they were doing. I’d try to estimate how much business they had and think about what they might do to be more successful, which in turn would tell me things we might do to make Domino’s more successful.
Tom Monaghan

[On Larry Sperling] He was always telling me ‘You’ve got to get your costs under control, Tom. You are great at generating business; sales are terrific. But your net is nowhere commensurate with your gross.’
Tom Monaghan

Think fast, solve problems on the spot, and don’t worry about finding out what caused any screw-ups until after you’ve got the store open.
Tom Monaghan

If you’re doing nothing but twelve-inchers, you can become proficient as a pizza maker twice as fast.
Tom Monaghan

One of the toughest things I’ve had to deal with in developing Domino’s is loss of a talented person who has contributed a great deal and who leaves for what I think are the wrong reasons… I think his [Terry Voice] wife saw Domino’s as competition. It’s easy to see how a wife might feel that way, but it can make things difficult.
Tom Monaghan

Our business can put a lot of stress on martial relationships, and we try to help through our company-sponsored partners program.
Tom Monaghan

[On an employee creating a lot of red-tape paperwork internally] He could think big, and that was rare. I thought big, too. The difference was that I had to pay for the ideas and he didn’t.
Tom Monaghan

[On his headquarters being burnt by fire] Added up, our loss come to almost $150,000… Our insurance paid only $13,000.
Tom Monaghan

[On receiving his $13,000 insurance payout cheque] This is what I paid thousands of dollars for?
Tom Monaghan



While I was cutting back on all corporate spending and trying to figure out ways to cover up our fire losses, on the other hand I was in the midst of the biggest expansion in our history: nearly doubling the number of stores. I was retrenching and expanding at the same time!
Tom Monaghan

[On looking for additional store locations and flying by plane] No sooner were we aloft and headed west than the windshield started growing a skin of ice… And I started beating on the windshield with my fists, trying to knock the ice off. The pilot told me to cut it out… We had to practically chop our way out of that plane; it was an absolute cake of ice.
Tom Monaghan

I vowed then that I’d never again attempt to pilot a plane if there was any kind of weather problem.
Tom Monaghan

Our growth looked like the path of a kite that shoots straight up, then flips and drives to earth.
Tom Monaghan

Our fall, which we came to call the Crash, was the result of two executive decisions. Both were carefully considered and had the endorsement of all of our advisers. But both were dead wrong.
Tom Monaghan

I’d heard Ray Kroc tell banquet audiences the story of how he and his secretary, June Martino, and his right-hand man, Harry Sonneborn, had celebrated when they realized that they’d become multimillionaires the instant McDonald’s stock went onto the Big Board. The possibilities for us looked juicy. But I had no idea what sharp fishhooks were concealed in them until I bit.
Tom Monaghan

Our goal was to open a new store each week, and we were attaining it, week after week.
Tom Monaghan

Our best advertising on campus… and the fastest, was word of mouth.
Tom Monaghan

[On giving away pizzas on a new store opening which was not successful] That was the last time we ever gave away pizzas.
Tom Monaghan

Our bills grew beards, and then the lawsuits started coming in.
Tom Monaghan



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