E-mail a friendGeorge Foreman
airdate September 3, 2009
Ring magazine named George Foreman one of the 25 greatest fighters of all time. He's an Olympic gold medalist, two-time former world heavyweight boxing champ—becoming, at age 44, the oldest fighter ever to win the title—and successful entrepreneur. Foreman grew up as a rebellious kid in Houston, TX and credits a U.S. Job Corps camp with turning his life around. He's also an ordained minister and founder of a nondenominational center for youth who need direction. Foreman shares his success secrets in Knockout Entrepreneur.
Former boxing champ talks about becoming the spokesperson for the George Foreman Grill. (1:25)
Full interview. (11:48)
George Foreman
Tavis: George Foreman is a two-time heavyweight champion who has enjoyed tremendous success outside the ring as a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. His latest is called "Knockout Entrepreneur." He joins us tonight from New York. Champ, nice to have you on the program.
George Foreman: I'm so happy to be with you.
Tavis: Glad to have you on. What is a knockout entrepreneur?
Foreman: Well for me, I used to go down and box, and if you wait around for a 12-round decision you'll never know where it goes. So I like to get a knockout, and I tell people if you want to really get out there look to knock 'em dead, but you got to learn to sell.
Tavis: How did you learn how to sell?
Foreman: It's strange, I left boxing for 10 years and I went into the street preaching ministry, and I didn't want anyone to even recognize the old George Foreman, the boxer. People wouldn't even stop and give me the time of day. So I learned how to attract them - I'm George Foreman. Yes, I lost to Muhammad Ali, Joe Frasier. They'd stop. And I realized that's what you've got to do - you've got to learn to sell or you will starve.
Tavis: How did, for those who don't know this part of the story, you end up going from boxing to street preaching in the first place, George?
Foreman: (Laughs) I had an experience back in the '70s where I literally had a vision I was dead and alive again. It scared me so much I became an evangelist. I couldn't even make a fist. And this went on for about 10 years - couldn't even box or anything. And of course everybody started calling me brother and reverend, doing funerals and weddings. Ordained minister is what I did. And for 10 years I didn't earn any money, and after 10 years I became broke, bankrupt. It scared me back into boxing to support my family and my ministry.
Tavis: How do you juxtapose those two things - being a minister of the gospel and being an entrepreneur? I'm not saying it's obviously impossible, you're doing it well. But how do you square those two things?
Foreman: Well, the most important thing is God gave you the strength to look after your family, and I don't think that anyone in their right mind - and when you say I'm a father - and I've seen a lot of guys say, "I've got one kid, two kids." I have 10, as a matter of fact. That's an easy thing to say, but can you support 10? If you do, you're going to have to get 10 jobs, and get out there. (Laughter) If you can't find jobs, you're going to have to create work for yourself. That's a knockout entrepreneur. Go make yourself a job.
Tavis: The book is full of what you call Georgeisms. How did you come across many of these pieces of advice?
Foreman: Well, you live and you learn. I learned early on, like I said earlier, you will starve if you don't learn to sell. There are a lot of people with the luxury of getting up every morning with a secure job, but there's always a chance that they're going to lay you off, and I decided, look, I was going to find ways to support my family no matter what. And you've got to come up with "isms," like the shotgun approach. You just can't count on one thing straight-shooting; you've got to have a big shotgun with a scatter, or the buckshots are going to get something. And I have so many businesses, every now and then, one will be successful.
Tavis: When you say you have so many businesses, some of them we know - of course, the George Foreman grill is - there are classes that are taught around the country about how you pulled that off. Take us back to how that came to be and how your name got attached to it. I love the story about this.
Foreman: Well, I was a darling of Madison Avenue. I'd done so many commercials, from Kentucky Fried to McDonald's - you name them, I was selling them. And one friend told me, "George, you're making all these companies wealthy. Why don't you get your own product?" I said, "Sure, how much money you going to pay me?" They said, "No, no, no, we'll be your partners. You get a product." And someone put this George Foreman grill in front of me. It wasn't George Foreman and it wasn't attractive as it is now. I didn't pay much attention to it; there wasn't any money attached.
But my wife kept saying, "Try it, George, I like it." She tried it, used it, and forced a burger on me." Ah, I said, "I'll do it." (Laughter) For 16 grills, I decided. I was going to give one to my aunt and all my cousins, and the next thing you know people would come by and say, "You know what, George? We love you." And I'd say, "What, my boxing?" And they'd say, "No, the grill." (Laughter) Doctors started even suggesting that their patients use the George Foreman. Ten million, 20 million, and to date almost 120 million of those grills sold.
Tavis: So it really should be called George Foreman's Wife's grill.
Foreman: Really - she got the money anyway. (Laughter) I'm on a payroll - I'm on her payroll.
Tavis: See, now, this takes me back to your ministry, George, because sometimes - and this is me talking, not you, but sometimes it seems to me at least that God wants more for us than we even dream of for ourselves. Here you are doing a deal, and you hope to get for yourself 16 grills out of it, and now you've sold 120 million of them.
Foreman: That's true, because I found something that worked. I was back into boxing, I needed to lose weight, but I needed protein and I didn't want to burn my hand in the oven. So this grill was perfect. I just took it around, I was going to take it to training camps with me and make certain my family was cooking great. Next thing you know - success. You're right, it's definitely a gift from God to align yourself with something like this.
Tavis: So once you pull something off like the George Foreman grill - by the way, before I go forward, do you have any idea how much - and I'm not asking for specific figures, unless you want to share them - but I'm just curious, because I could only imagine, as much money as you made in boxing, you made a whole lot more off the George Foreman grill. How much more have you made off of that than you did in your entire boxing career?
Foreman: Wow, if I tried to put it to dollars I wouldn't come close to it, but I even had to - I sold the company after a while. People want to buy one, two, three, they say, okay, I'll buy them all. So I sold the company for over $120 million.
Tavis: Wow. Do you have any idea off the top of your head how much you may have made in your career?
Foreman: Oh, no, it's been that much. (Laughter) And I have too many cousins watching your show, by the way. (Laughter) All I need to slip up and talk.
Tavis: Well, you got those 10 kids, and they know their daddy's doing okay.
Foreman: That's right, and someone was talking to me about the president's popularity dropping in the polls. I said, you fix that - my kids, when I come in the house and I didn't bring money and gifts, my polls dropped too. (Laughter) But as soon as I came in with gifts and cars, the polls would go right back up. So learn to give, and they will love you.
Tavis: We know the story, those of us who are fans of yours - you've got five boys named George, you've got five daughters, at least two or three of them who have the name George somewhere - George - what are the girls' names?
Foreman: That's Georgette and Freeda George.
Tavis: There you go.
Foreman: By this time, my wife told me, "Forget it - I'll remember the names, George." (Laughter)
Tavis: So you got five boys named George, two of the five girls have some form of George in their name. All the kids, all the family, they work as a part of these businesses now?
Foreman: (Unintelligible) I told my kids - there's one who's going into boxing. I suggested, look, you can do anything you want so long as you get a college degree. So Monk was George III, graduated Rice University, he's a very intelligent boy. Now he's taking on boxing. He was my full-time manager and became wealthy and decided he wanted to be a boxer.
Now George III, Big Wheel, he's also my manager now, so once - and George Jr., the oldest one - they run all my businesses.
Tavis: What did you say to the one that wanted to become the boxer?
Foreman: I said, "Look, if you get a college education, I'm not going to say anything." He proved himself a champion to me when you sit there and watch your kids walk across that podium and receive that diploma. That's as much champion as I'll ever expect out of any of them. I'm so proud of them for that. Now he wants to get out to be a boxer; I'll help him split that million as well.
Tavis: (Laughs) How did, for you, education become so important?
Foreman: Yeah, and it's a frightening thing. I left boxing, of course, became an evangelist, and I looked up one day, I was facing bankruptcy. I didn't have any money at all - didn't even have a profession. All I had were these, and I thought boy, you should have gotten an education, George. And it's scary to be a middle aged man with nowhere to go.
I told myself, no, no one of my kids will ever come to that fate again. Get that college education so that you can make a contribution to your family, yourself, and your country. And that's why it's so important. I've got scholarships all around the country for other kids, to make certain that if they can't pay their grades, they can't pay for the school, I'll step in if they make the proper grades.
Tavis: What's your process for deciding - we should all be so lucky, so blessed, to have persons come to us with opportunities to go into business, but when you get all these ideas thrown at you, presented to you, what's your process for figuring out whether or not you can be a knockout entrepreneur with this project?
Foreman: Integrity. The most important thing is that whenever you get on television or you do a commercial or an ad, you say it's true, it better be true. And if someone is trying to sell me the Cadillac in the window - we can make a lot of money, George - no, it's not about making a lot of money, but can we make a lot of friends?
The one thing about the George Foreman grill, you go home and I know that grill is going to take care of you because I said it would. And I don't want anything just to make a million dollars and it make enemies for me. I had enough of that in boxing. (Laughter)
Tavis: Have you always been this way and it just took time for us to see it, or did I sense somewhere in your life there was an attitudinal metamorphosis? When you were boxing back in the day, I don't recall you being this big, happy, wonderful, smiling, friendly guy. Where did all this come from?
Foreman: Can you believe my first role model was Sonny Liston? He was heavyweight champ of the world and his motto was, "If he comes to me, I'll kill him. And if he runs, I'll catch him and kill him." And he'd stare you in the eyes and he seemed not to have any friends at all.
And I followed that philosophy for a long time, and then I just experienced a religious experience and I found Jesus Christ. I started screaming, "Jesus Christ is coming alive in me." I had also a vision I was dead. I got a chance to get home and fall in love with my family and found out they're human beings. That's the best invention ever, and I love human beings and I'll never treat one ever, ever bad again.
Tavis: The last thing I want to ask you about, because again it speaks to your metamorphosis, we all, boxing fans, at least, remember the rumble in the jungle, the historic fight between you and Ali, now 35 years ago. How did you get beyond that on a personal level?
Foreman: Wow, that was the most devastating thing that ever happened to me as an athlete. I was champion of the world, no one had ever beaten me. I'd even knocked out the guys who had defeated Muhammad Ali. Then I'm in the ring with him, beating him up pretty good. He'd hit me a few. Then after about six or seven rounds, he started screaming, "That all you got, George?" What a frightening moment for me. That was all I had. (Laughter)
He knocked me down and took my crown - embarrassing. Where do you go from there? Devastation. I'd wake up in the nights sweating, always reliving that seventh, that eighth round where I didn't beat the count. But then 20 years later with Michael Moore I got the second chance and I won the title I'd lost 20 years earlier. But you learn that now as a historical event, I'm so happy I was in that bout.
Tavis: Why so?
Foreman: Because now when people forget about me I can just bring up Muhammad Ali, and they say, "Oh, you're the one? The rope-a-dope?" "Yeah, I'm the dope, remember?" (Laughter) That's my identity - the old dope from the rope-a-dope.
Tavis: Yeah, it's a great joke, but George Foreman is long away from being a dope with all the money this cat has made and continues to make, being the kind of knockout entrepreneur he has become. That is his new book - "Knockout Entrepreneur," by the former heavyweight champion of the world, George Foreman. Big George, love you, man. Glad to have you on the program.
Foreman: Thank you so much.
Tavis: Thanks, Champ.
Back to September 3, 2009