Show Notes

• Attending the premier of Flamin’ Hot at the SXSW Film Festival
• Growing up in Guasti
• Richard’s Ph.D
• Starting at Frito Lay as a janitor
• “Act like an owner.”
• The origin of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos
• Los Angeles Times article
• Lessons from adversity

Connect With Richard Montañez

Additional Resources

Book: Flamin’ Hot

Summary

Once called “The Godfather of Hispanic Marketing,” Richard Montañez started his career at Frito-Lay in 1976 as a janitor, and is recognized as the creator of the Flamin’ Hot line of products. He held various senior roles at PepsiCo and its Frito Lay divisions, before retiring in 2020. Richard shares the inside story of the world’s hottest snack brand.

Full Transcript

Brian

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.
Once called the “Godfather of Hispanic Marketing,” Richard Montanez is the creator of Frito-Lay’s Flamin’ Hot line of products, which has become a billion dollar business and a cultural phenomenon. Richard started his career at Frito-Lay as a janitor in 1976 and took very seriously PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico’s edict to act like an owner. He received several awards in recognition of his visionary leadership, ability to innovate, and his commitment to diversity during his 42-year career. Richard is the only four-time recipient of PepsiCo Chairman’s Award, the highest honor given to employees based on performance and work ethic. Richard held various senior roles at PepsiCo and its Frito-Lay divisions and has been named one of the most influential Latinos in corporate America. He ultimately led multicultural sales and marketing as vice president across Pepsi North American divisions before retiring from PepsiCo in 2020. Today, Richard serves on several boards and is a sought-after motivational speaker, speaking to companies like Target and Walmart, as well as universities such as USC, Notre Dame and Harvard. Richard has been featured in numerous TV and print outlets including Good Morning America, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Fortune and Newsweek. He is the author of two books and his story is now the subject of a soon to be released bio-pic from Fox Searchlight Films. This episode is sponsored, of course, by Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Spice up your life with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Welcome, Richard and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Richard

My pleasure. Thank you for that introduction. Can I get a copy of it?

Brian

Absolutely. We’ll send it to you right after the show. Richard, let’s talk about the exciting news. Your life story is being told in a movie being released on June 9. The movie is “Flamin’ Hot: The Story Behind The Legend Of America’s Favorite Snack.” Eva Longoria is the film’s director, and Flamin’ Hot is the first feature film to simultaneously stream on both Hulu and Disney+. How did it feel as you sat recently in the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, watching the premiere of your life story at South by Southwest Film Festival?

Richard

Well, I’ll tell you what, it was such an incredible feeling for both me and my wife. And after seeing the whole thing without to…we’ve seen it before, but we were concentrating on edits. This time we’ll just relax and enjoy it and [that’s] exactly what we did. It was overwhelming, inspiring to myself, and it just hit me and I realized that all the pain that I endured had a purpose and the movie showed that. Because people hear our stories, Brian, but they don’t really know the pain that we went through to get to somewhere. Every story has pain in it. And mine, just like that, it just hit me – it made it more accepting, put it that way. It’s like I can understand it now…why do I have to live this life, but if I had an easy life, there would have been no movie. So it was an overwhelming experience for both of us.

Brian

I bet it was and I look forward to sharing your story with our listeners and viewers. And Eva Longoria directing the movie, how did she become involved with the film?

Richard

Well I’m going to take you back to the beginning, okay, so that way you have the some of the insights that people don’t know. I haven’t told that story but I wrote my first book called “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie” and it was kind of a little bit my life story, not too much, but a lot of leadership principles that I have learned over the course of my life from the streets and from corporate America and from the plant that I started at. Another reason I wrote the book [was] because I wanted my children to have some type of a history. See, I never wrote that book for money or fame. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted my children to see some of the things that I’m going to forget someday or maybe when I’m gone. But I also did it for this reason: I know that if I wrote a book, maybe they’ll write two books. You want to be that pillar in your family. If you’re going to mentor anybody, mentor your family. So I wrote the book and it did very well. It was torn apart by the English literature critics; there were some misspelled words and people were saying, who do you think you are, you can’t spell. I tell people, well, I’m not trying to win a spelling contest. If you concentrate more on the spelling versus the actual message, then it wasn’t for you. But I started to get feedback and letters from people who…it was crazy, Brian, college professors were using it in their universities, universities and moms were sending to me letters saying that they bought the book and they sent it to their sons in prison to give them some hope. And I was like, wow, this book, even though it’s criticized for the grammar, is changing lives. And the next thing, Hollywood gets a hold of it and there’s a bidding war for the rights to it. I’m just like blown away, a bidding war for my little book. So we got calls from Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, CBS – every company in Hollywood was calling us. I didn’t really know how to handle that. But I had a friend who had a mutual friend who was a producer, Demon Franklin was a producer and my friend was Sam Rodriguez. So he introduced us together and Demon had never heard about me but he started to Google me, was just impressed it, I had millions of people looking at some of my stuff. So he became, not my agent but kind of my mentor, in the process. We got a screenwriter to put three pages together and we took it to Hollywood. We met with every company you can think of, with the leadership. That’s the incredible part, that they wanted to meet me and my wife; they wanted to see if we really existed. So that was very, very flattering. I won’t tell you his name, I don’t want to embarrass him but there was a CEO that was in one of the early meetings and he said, I’m never impressed with…I know every actor you can think of and I’ve never asked for an autograph, but he goes, can I have your autograph on a bag of Cheetos? I was like, blown away, like, how can this be happening? So anyways, we had the offers and Netflix offered the most money, but they had some things in there that I just couldn’t commit to so I decided to go with Fox Searchlight. The reason I went with Fox Searchlight was because they gave me more input and they were really big on diversity. This whole thing was…what I’d like people to know [is] that this was never about making money or fame. There are other ways to make money. It’s not something that me and my wife were eager to do. We were debating, should we do this; you don’t want to throw whole life out in front of everybody to see. But people said it’s going to inspire people. I went back to my book, and the notes and different schools and I said, Okay, we’ll do it. We didn’t take the money, we went with Fox Searchlight because it gave us more input and their diversity process; one of our specifications was that we needed to have a Latina director. Now, there are very few of them out there but that was my way of giving back to my community, because you’ve heard me say this before, that the Latina is a big part of my success; coming from my grandma, my mom and my wife. So of course, I had to show my support and appreciation of women in general. I just never knew it was going to be Eva. The word went out that we were looking for directors, and then my producer called me up and he said, Eva wants to do this. I said what, Eva Longoria? He said, yeah, so he goes, come on in, she’s going to give a presentation. She gave me and my wife, and everybody that was in the room, this presentation that I’ve got to say, is one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen in corporate America. Now, I’m from corporate America, I’ve had some big meetings, with Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, you name it. I know what it is to be top of the top. When she did that – she’s an actress – she’s presenting this, so she just blew everybody away. I’ve always said, you’ve got to put that presentation in the museum on how to sell yourself. Everybody loved [it] and fell in love with her, so let’s do it. We knew that we were taking a chance now, this was her first movie. There were some people saying, well, I don’t know about that, and I was like, man, it’s her. So she ran with it. She brought in another writer to help make it more my style, our style, and then she went to work. The casting was, in my opinion, perfect. The person that plays me, I mean, the guy looks like me, acts like me. Person that plays my wife, she’s strong. I needed a strong female because my wife is a very strong woman, no question about it. So they did all that and then Eva went to work. We went and saw her in action and, Brian, she is, I don’t know how to say it, man, but she’s a boss lady. She knows how to get people to do things in an inspirational way.

Brian

She’s the real deal, isn’t she?

Richard

Yeah, I never saw her crack a whip but I saw her move, move, moving. That’s my style. I’ve never cracked the whip in my life, I don’t believe in that. She just kind of led like that but her reputation also was a big support for the movie. If you meet her I guarantee you, you will fall in love with her as a person. She’s just somebody that…she came to our house, she met my children, my grandchildren. Whatever we wanted…my grand kids have a cameo in the movie. One of the things my wife told Eva, she said, hey, the one thing I want is I want all my grand kids [in it] and she said no problem. She made that happen. You’ll never know they’re my grand kids but it’s pretty cool to have them in there. So she’s been nothing short of a blessing. She’s just a tremendous person. She’s somebody that I will be friends with for the rest of my life; she’s family now.

Brian

Well, I hope I get a chance to meet her one day. I’m certainly going to have a chance very soon to see the movie. I’m looking forward to that. Richard, let’s back up all the way to the beginning and start from where you grew up in Guasti, California, a town built in the middle of a sprawling vineyard. Your parents and grandparents and others in your family were migrant farm workers. They picked grapes and you probably picked grapes too, growing up. I know you left school after the sixth grade. You probably didn’t know how to read or write very well and probably didn’t have a strong grasp of the English language either, Spanish, obviously, was your primary language. Now, I’m not judging, but that sounds like a very difficult upbringing. What was it like for you growing up?

Richard

Well, it’s interesting, because it was difficult. I mean, it’s still difficult for people of color today. But my life specifically, or my generation, there were none of those laws that are in place today to protect you. So you have to keep that in mind, it was just a different time. The 60s and the early 70s, different because they lacked those laws that will protect people; I’m talking strictly diversity, and it was different. One of the reasons that I just couldn’t handle school was, the language barrier, it wasn’t so much [that] I wasn’t an intelligent person. But again, back in the 60s, because of the language barrier, they automatically said that your intelligence level was low. That’s how you were looked at and I’m a US citizen; I was born here. But I know the life of an immigrant, I was treated as an immigrant. What does that mean? Well, I was treated as a second-class citizen. I didn’t want to go to school because you never got the appreciation from teachers, and especially too in my days, my generation – I mean, people still talk about it today, but I lived it – the darker the skin, the more that you have to endure. I don’t know why that is, I’m not even going to try to explain it, but I’m a dark Mexican so just going shopping the salesperson would follow you around. Where I grew up you had to stay on your side of town but all the stores were on the…I mean, the town that I ended up growing up in, it was typical main street, [it] had the main street that all the shops were on before the big malls. We’d venture off to the other side; it was always a danger. So that’s one of the reasons I stopped going to school. I remember too, one of the reasons I stopped going to school because I just wasn’t getting anything out of it. Now, the thing that I don’t like to type talk about – another reason we didn’t want to do the movie – because it’s going to show my early days and there are some things that I’m not proud of that I did that nobody knows about. Some people are going to get shocked, but I got into a lot of trouble. I’m talking about being in jail and juvenile hall and stuff like that. I’m not proud of it and that’s why I never talked about it because I never wanted to glorify that part of my life. Some people do, but no, I didn’t want to [talk about it] when I finally got my life together. So when I say that I stopped studying in the sixth grade, this is what I mean, is that I stopped studying in sixth grade. That was it. Now, will you find my name somewhere in the seventh and eighth grade and maybe the ninth grade? Yeah, absolutely. Here’s why. Because I was in a youth center, a juvenile hall type of center, as a teenager, and you had to go to school. Then when they let me out, I had – I don’t know if you remember truant officers, they were your probation officer – I had a probation officer. So I still didn’t go to school, I still wouldn’t go to school, so my probation officer would say, I’m picking you up. They would literally take you to school and sign you [in], then I would just leave. I never went back to school. That’s kind of the reason that if you check the history, you would look, hey, well, your name shows up in the seventh grade but you said sixth, I thought. Well, I’m not lying. I stopped studying, I stopped going to school in the sixth grade. But in the other years, it was forced upon me, because that was the probation system. Until I turned 18 I was literally a ward of the court.

Brian

I’ve heard you say that even though you don’t have a formal education past the sixth grade or seventh, eighth, ninth grade, you didn’t graduate from high school, let alone college but you do have a PhD. Can you tell us about that?

Richard

It just came to me in the spur of the moment. Many years ago, I was teaching an MBA class at a very prestigious school in California. I won’t give you their name, because I don’t think they want anybody to know that one of their teachers didn’t have a high school diploma. But one of the students was challenging me. That’s why I say that I don’t care what room you’re in, there is always somebody in a room who is going to try to steal your destiny; your job is to be ready, not to allow it to happen. So sure enough person asked me, Mr. Montanez, all my professors have PhDs – knowing well that I didn’t have one – and I said, well I have a PhD; I’ve been Poor, Hungry and Determined. And I realized that I do have a PhD because there was so much knowledge that I gained from being poor, so much knowledge that I gained from being determined, and a tremendous amount of knowledge that I gained from being hungry. I always looked at it that [way] like I’m really well educated, I’m just not educated the same way as everyone else. I read a book a week. I would never say to someone not to seek an education or higher education. I’ve helped support millions of dollars in scholarships across the country so it’s really big on me. That’s why I always tell…sometimes it’s a dilemma for me. I’ve spoken at Harvard, Notre Dame, some of the top universities in the country and I’ll always hear this – never fails – Mr. Montanez, well, why should I get an education? You don’t have one. And I’m going to say, wait. Timeout, timeout. Hang on, wait a minute, let’s back up there. Look how far I can go without an education; just imagine how far you can get with one. And so that’s why I’m always an advocate of if you can get the education, go get it. But if you can’t, don’t worry about it, it’s not the end of the world.

Brian

You’ve definitely been educated through your experience, and I always say we’re the collective sum of our total experience – whatever that experience is – and your experience looks a lot different than most people’s experiences in this country, but it’s still education. And arguably, you’ve learned more from that kind of education than a lot of people learn from formal education. Richard, let’s fast forward a few years in your story. I know you met your wife, Judy – you mentioned her – you two met as young teenagers and you were married and had your first son, I think, while you were still teenagers. Then at the age of 19 you made a career move that would change the course of your life. How did the opportunity to work for Frito-Lay present itself?

Richard

We’ve known each other since we were kids. And the truth is, it was love at first sight for me, I don’t know about her but for me it was. I said I’m going to marry this girl. We had my first son when we were 17 so we were just still kids ourselves. I had worked at a chicken ranch, I was a gardener, I worked at a car wash, so I looked at working at Frito-Lay as my big break. It came by my neighbor telling me they were hiring. I said, let me just go take a shot at it. Judy filled out the application for me, I took it, by God’s grace I got hired. That’s kind of where my career started. I remember they said, you’re going to start as a janitor. I started in the graveyard shift, 11 pm to seven in the morning. I wanted to tell my grandfather, my dad that I got the job. It’s kind of interesting where the plant is, that it used to be part of Guasti. So in that area, what people don’t know is the history of Guasti, the area [where] I grew up, it was actually, at one time, it was the biggest wine producing area in the country. It was bigger than Napa Valley, it was hundreds and hundreds of square miles. They called it the biggest vineyard in the world and it was founded by an Italian, he came over from Italy. So all that land, there was nothing but vineyard ditch for miles – vineyards and vineyards and vineyards – so it was ironic that the plant was based right there. It wasn’t too far for me to go to tell my father and grandfather. I remember my grandfather, he said, what are you going to do? I said, I’m going to mop the floors, I’m gonna mop. And he looked at me, and he was as serious as can be, he just said, hey, when you mop the floor, you make sure that it shines so when people see it they know that a Montanez mopped it. And that, I believe, that’s the reason I’ve been successful my whole life, is no matter what I do, it isn’t about compensation. It’s about my last name, it’s about my legacy, my heritage. Whatever I do, I’m going to make it shine. I took that on and it made a difference. I saw that I had an influence. Now when you think about influencers, everybody wants to be an influencer. Everybody wants to influence the world. Not so for me, I’m not trying to influence everyone, only the right ones. And what does that mean? Well, I say when it’s the right one, you’re an influence to them and they’re an influence to you; you help each other. If you’re not influencing someone, move on. I learned that early in my career there; if you didn’t get it, I don’t have time to explain it to you, there’s somebody out there that I’m going to…that’s why I say it’s the right ones. A good example is when I called…I’m getting ahead, but we’ll back up. When I did call the CEO for my idea, I influenced his secretary who’s still my friend today. She put the call through but before she put the call through, I don’t know what she said because when Mr. Enrico got on the phone, he was so excited. That’s why I say I’m not trying to influence everyone, only the right ones; she was the right one, because she took the call and she got him excited.

Brian

So it’s influencing the right people and also a little bit of luck. The fact that it was Patti who answered the phone rather than somebody else may have changed the course of history, may have changed the course of your life for sure.

Richard

Absolutely. I didn’t know how corporate America worked so I didn’t know who I was getting, I just saw her name – it said executive assistant – and dialed the number.

Brian

I find that fascinating. You’re the janitor, life was going pretty well at Frito-Lay – I know you got involved with operations and efficiency of machine operations and that sort of thing. But for you to call the CEO of the company, Richard, you were the janitor, you weren’t in product development, you weren’t in R&D, at the time you weren’t in marketing, you were arguably as far away from an idea person as you could be in your position with Frito-Lay. And yet, that’s exactly what you were, you were an idea person, you submitted ideas. Like I said, making the equipment run more efficiently. You came up with ways to eliminate waste and eventually you developed a product idea that would revolutionize the snack business. I find that fascinating. I’m trying to understand your psyche as you were sharing your ideas. Looking back, as I was reading your book and preparing for this show, I just wondered, were you naive or courageous or rebellious? I know you grew up maybe with a little bit of a rebellion in you. But how would you characterize your behavior? What caused you to do something that most people in your position would never even think of doing and yet for you, you just sort of matter of fact picked up the phone and call the CEO, Roger Enrico?

Richard

Well, I think a lot of it was not knowing the rules, being ignorant to how corporate America worked. Had I known I don’t know if I would have done it, but I really didn’t know any better. I know that watching my father – my father was a brilliant man, self-educated – there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. I mean, if you wanted a house, he could build your house. You wanted a hot rod, he could build you a hot rod. I grew up changing transmissions at the age of 12 because my dad was a master mechanic. But he didn’t go very far. He died broke, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t creative. He was a brilliant man. I realized that I had his same creativity, but it was coming out in a different way. I had a fear…I saw my dad struggle his entire life, like I said, he died broke, and we were evicted. I saw them repossess our car several times. We didn’t have insurance as a kid and stuff like that. So it put a fear in me and I had no other way to explain it than I was fearful. But I had something that was greater than the fear – I was hungry. What were you hungry for? I was hungry for a different life. I was hungry to…I wanted to be like other people, they were enjoying life. I wanted a normal life and I wasn’t going to get it unless I did something that wasn’t normal. I knew that much. You want a normal life, but you’re not going to get it doing normal work, it’s not going to happen. I knew that I need to do something different. Then there was a CEO who sent out a video, he said, I’m giving you permission to act like an owner. I can’t fix this company, Frito-Lay is going down and I need your help, my executives can do it. And I believed him. That’s why, many times when I talk to…I’ve talked to a lot of CEOs, some of the top CEOs in the world and I always tell them, don’t tell your workforce something that you’re just kidding about. Don’t tell them that they are empowered if you don’t really feel that they’re empowered. And the last thing, don’t ever tell them that you care about them, when in reality you care more about your stock and the shareholders. It doesn’t say anywhere that you have to love your workers; you have to treat them good. But too many young CEOs make the mistake and say we love our workers, yet you’re taking away their benefits. It just gets you into trouble, it’s inconsistent. Well, this CEO, he was the real deal. The only bad thing at the time is that a lot of his leaders didn’t believe in it, as a lot of his leaders couldn’t understand what is this guy doing. He’s making more work for us. Now all of a sudden they’re the important ones? So it was very humbling for the managers at the time because there’s a CEO, it’s coming from Pepsi, and everybody’s like, what does he know about chips? He’s from Pepsi and he’s making me work more now because I have to help, I’m a resource now to my team. There’s no more forcing everything. So it was a whole wake up call for them. The interesting part is – and I don’t know if we can ever really capture that – you had this side that was empowered and you had this side their power was taken from them. You kind of understand what I’m saying there? It’s kind of like you’re the boss, but you’re no longer called the boss, you’re called the resource now. What is your job? To help me. Well, they were like, I can’t let this go, I can’t let this go. I’m in charge here. I went to college for that, now you’re telling me that I don’t have any…I’m going to let this janitor, I’m going to let this machine operator…it wasn’t like, hey, Richard, go do it, we’re behind you. Some of them grasped it right away. It was some of the younger ones [who] grasped it right away. They were like, this is pretty cool. But some of the older ones, the ones that had the knowledge, were like, this is my knowledge, I’m not going to let this go. So it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Some people think all he did was pick up the phone. No, man, when I picked up that phone and made that phone call it took about 20 minutes for me to find out exactly what I had done. Because the CEO’s office called the president’s office, the president’s office called the vice president, office of vice president called the director’s office, director’s office called the plant manager’s office and the whole conversation was the same: who let the janitor call the CEO? It had never been done before in all of corporate America. That’s the one thing that I’m proud of, is I started to change corporate America; it was yours truly, this janitor. I’m taking the credit for that. I don’t have a problem doing that because it’s true. That’s why I’m called the godfather of Hispanic branding because I was first. The Godfather in the Latino community is somebody who cares about everyone else. It’s not the mafia godfather, it’s the Padrino, the one that takes care of everyone, and that’s me. So I got chewed up. It wasn’t a good thing. I couldn’t understand, Brian. Why can’t anybody see that I’m just trying to help the company? Didn’t you guys see the video? You watched the same video I did. And I think that’s why Mr. Enrico – Roger, I call him Roger but he will always be Mr. Enrico – that’s why Roger and I became friends. Because when I told him, hey, I watched your video, he was like, you saw my video, you listened to me? And I said, yeah, I had always listened to him and I listened to leadership and people would say, well, what’s your strategy, Richard? What strategy? I’m just going to follow the CEO’s strategy, he said to go do this – and he loved that so we became friends and little by little we both began to change the organization’s mission. Then they started sending me outside the organization because other companies wanted to hear about this empowerment and other companies were saying, well, where’s my janitor. But a lot of it is you have to have the right leadership team or it ain’t going to happen. That’s why I say you’re just going to frustrate everybody if you tell me I’m empowered but you’re just kidding. Here I am down here, believing in you but you’re just really…it’s not going to work. Don’t do it because it sounds good, do it because you believe in it. Sure enough, everybody was trying to be empowered, everybody was trying to come up with a great idea. That wasn’t just me, there were other ideas…it just changed…Frito-Lay became one of the best companies in the world having gone from struggling to – recruiters will say get me a manager from Frito-Lay because they know how to lead. That’s why I said – when I saw the movie – it gave my pain a purpose; a purpose to inspire people but it was pretty rough in the beginning, Brian, it wasn’t well accepted. And here’s the other thing you have to think about, again, remember, I didn’t know all this stuff and if I did, maybe I would have done something different. But the main people that I offended, unintentionally, were all the scientists. At the time Frito-Lay had like, I don’t know, 300 plus PhDs, right?

Brian

So Mr. Enrico – Roger, as you call him – appears on this video and says to “act like an owner” and I’m sure people took it different ways, you sort of alluded to that, but you took that to heart, you took it very seriously, and came up with all kinds of ideas in the plant. And then at one point, you came up with an idea for a product and that product would end up revolutionizing the snack business. Tell us how you came up with the idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and then how you implemented that. What led up to the phone call to Mr. Enrico?

Richard

Well knowing that the CEO just challenged everyone to act like an owner and said these words, “I give you my permission to act like an owner” and it was already an anxious day, because they had shut the plant down. And if you know anything about operations, you never shut the plant down. They shut the plants down across the globe, whatever they had to do. And they brought us all in so it was a lot of anxiety, like what’s going on here, never happened before. Maybe it’s [that they are] going to lay us off. So they brought us in and put on the video and there he was, I had seen him before. And he said, I want you to act like an owner, I’m giving you my permission. Everybody did the typical thing; he’s not talking to you Richard, he’s not talking to us. He’s talking to them, no, no, that’s another corporate thing. But I’m always up to a challenge and I knew…like I said, I was hungry and I did something that I’ve been doing my whole life – I think some of our young people need to do it – I broke ranks. I looked at my peers and I said, well, you can stay where you’re at, I’m going to go do this. I’m going to act like an owner. I came home and I told Judy and Judy’s way ahead of the game. I said, hey, Judy, the CEO said act like an owner, and she said, well, act like an owner. I didn’t really know what that meant, so let me do some research. I found a salesman because the sales office was right next to the plant. I just walked in, I found a salesman, I said, hey, can I ride with you? I just want you to teach me the business and I’ll load the truck. I’ll do all your work. You don’t have to pay me, I’ll do it for free. The guy looked at me like, man, free labor, you can come on your vacation if you want. And he’s like, yeah, sure. Meet me at five in the morning. I said, okay. So on my day off I met him at five in the morning. The gentleman taught me how to write up an invoice, how to load the truck – and everything had a reason – load the truck this way because we’re going to maximize our space. He taught me how to run a route – it’s, run it this way because we’re going to minimize our fuel. Then when we got to the stores, merchandise it like this because we’re going to maximize our time, we want to get to the next store. So there I was thinking like, I want to learn my business and after like the, I don’t know, fourth, fifth store, I saw it. And here’s where I get the statement that all you need is one revelation to create a revolution. You look at what is a revelation? Revelation is something that was always there but it’s been revealed or unveiled to you. I’m going to give you a revelation right now. [Holds up bag] This bag was always here but I just revealed or unveiled it to you. So there we were, he was teaching me how to merchandise and there’s a system, it was like this: Lay’s, Ruffles, Fritos, Lay’s, Ruffles, Fritos. Then I looked and I saw it, saw what revelation there was to create a revolution. I looked at him, he couldn’t see it. Why couldn’t he see it? Because he was an expert. So I tell people don’t be such an expert that you can’t see things anymore. So I saw it and what did I see? I saw the spices. I saw people buying spices. I saw bags of spices, bags of chilies. Then I looked at our products – Lay’s, Ruffles, Fritos – maybe sour cream. What about the people that like spices? The spiciest thing we had at the time was barbecue. So I didn’t tell him, I just said [to myself] oh, this is my idea. I went and I told Judy – she is a wonderful cook – I said, Judy, we’re going to put your salsa, your chili, on a product. And she’s that person that wherever I want to go, she says let’s go, man. That’s my…full of courage this woman and she said, what product? I don’t know. I don’t know yet; Lay’s, Fritos? Then one day we went grocery shopping and there’s a street vendor selling this product, it is very, very famous now but over 30 years ago you would only find it in Latino communities. But now it’s famous – street fairs, Disneyland, everywhere – it’s corn, corn on a stick, corn on the cob – for a buck they put butter, lemon, chili, cheese, whatever you want on it. I brought groceries in and I had bought two of them; one for me, one for my son. We were sitting down and we took a bite. I took another bite and I got another revelation. What’s the revelation, something that was always there? I looked at it, I go, that looks like a Cheeto. What if I put chili on a Cheeto? I ran inside and told Judy that’s how the corn looked. So I told Judy, hey, I got it. We’re going to put your chili on a Cheeto. She said, okay, go to the plant and bring some Cheetos with no cheese on it because this is a slurry. It’s not a powder, it’s a slurry. And so I got some, they’re yellow, if you look inside, it’ll be yellow. After a few days, we were mixing it and I finally got it. She took some to her work, I took some to my work. Everybody loved it. And she said, you need to call the CEO. Well, this is during when corporate America is command and control. What is the command and control: I didn’t hire you to think, I hired you to do what I tell you to do. I command and I control. They hadn’t heard the word empowerment yet so we were ahead of the process. You don’t do that, protocol is everything. Again, I didn’t know the rules. I’m excited, I gotta go for it. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen but if it doesn’t it’s not going to be there because I didn’t do anything, it’s because they didn’t want to do anything. So I called up and he picked up the phone; he goes, I’ll be there in two weeks, hung up the phone, 20 minutes later and I get chewed out because everybody’s coming…again, now keep in mind also during this command and control [period] is that CEOs never went to plants, a CEO would never visit a plant. They would go to sales meetings, marketing, they’d meet with customers; they never walk into a plant, ever. So he kind of broke that and started a new trend where CEOs went into plants, visiting plants; it never been done before so everybody was worried. Every vice president that was in a thousand-mile radius was worried; what the heck is he coming down to see him for? My plant manager said, you realize what you’ve done? I really didn’t. He said, well, you’re doing a presentation. I thought, I’m doing a presentation…I’ve never even done homework. So I go home and I tell Judy. Judy sees me and she says, what’s wrong? I’m going to get fired. She says, why? It is because you told me to call the CEO. Typical leadership of a woman she says, calm down, it’s not that bad. We’re going to go to the library, check out a book on how to develop a marketing strategy. There was no Google, there was none of that. We went to library and picked up a couple of books. I literally copied a couple paragraphs from a book, put them on my transparencies. We made it, we made a hundred bags – the CEO’s coming in two weeks – I got two weeks to prepare. We made a couple hundred bags, put the product in there. I’m a little bit of an artist so I drew graphics on clear bags, sealed it so when you got the bag, it actually looked like it was going to the market. I tell people it wasn’t just my idea, I didn’t write it on a piece of paper here, I didn’t tell somebody. I did the product, I did the presentation, I showed everybody what they were – physical bags, they ate it, they loved it. They came into town – everybody – their chief marketing officer, chief financial officer, because remember why were they all there, because he’d never visited a plant. It just wasn’t…the vice president of operation, that was his job so he was worried oh, somebody’s going to get fired all because of me. Instead of looking at it like wow, man, this is history. This is history, let’s celebrate this. He’s coming to see one of our workers, it’s a team win. But they never received it like that until later. So he came in, I got up there, did my presentation – bought my first tie for $3.50, my neighbor put it in a knot the night before so that way in the morning I just kind of put it on and pulled it up – as scared as I was and as ridiculous as I looked, I got up there and did my thing. Like I said, I’m not trying to influence everyone, only the right ones and he was the right one because he saw it. He was like, this is incredible, we’ve got to do this. And the rest is history.

Brian

There’s a recurring theme throughout your life and throughout your career – it’s push-back and negativity and resistance and attempts to sabotage you and to sabotage your ideas. I have to ask you about an article that I saw in doing research for the show, I think it came out a couple years ago, it was an LA Times article, disputing the validity of your claim as creator of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And I know, PepsiCo came out very quickly and released a statement crediting you with the impact you had on not only on the success of the Flamin’ Hot brand, but other product ideas, too. Richard, that article must have felt like yet another punch to the gut. Was that just another attempt to sabotage and discredit you, like you experienced at various times throughout your career?

Richard

That was one of the big ones because it came after I retired and it came as a complete shock. It took me a long time to understand what took place. I still couldn’t figure out why, it could have been as simple – because I know the system – as when somebody asks the question, it’s always a “no comment.” He did work here, as simple as that, move on. Companies don’t sit there and open up the books about an employee, in some cases, it’s illegal. So I couldn’t…wait a minute, who’s telling the truth and who’s lying, how did this begin, is this a conspiracy to bring…it was definitely a conspiracy but who started the conspiracy? I don’t know. If you look at the article – you did see the article – they didn’t talk to anybody who knew me, didn’t even talk about the foundation that I have, the thousands, hundreds of thousands of families that me and my wife have fed over the last 20 years. Thousands – 50,000 – brand new shoes that we give to kids that can’t afford them, backpacks, school supplies, none of that stuff, and then saying something about a $50,000 speaking fee. That’s incredible. I’ve never been paid $50,000. I’m still waiting for that day, I’m going to start charging $50,000.

Brian

You’d like to be paid that, wouldn’t you?

Richard

I’ve never even heard about the other person and I’m the type the individual, Brian, I’m not going to fight you through social media and stuff like that. It’s not what I do, certainly not going to fight a lie or give it any type of life. And the other person, I didn’t attack them, never even heard of them, it’s like, what the heck. So the system itself began to defend me. People were writing that were there: I was there with Richard when he did that, the people at Cucamonga were saying no, the retired executive, the Chief Financial Officer, the CEO himself said if there was no Richard, there’d be no Hot Cheetos. Roger Enrico’s secretary said, I set up the meeting. It was all confirmation, but that was pretty much left out. I spent 42 years there. And without trying to hurt the other person – I won’t even mention the name because none of my business – if that was true, that person was only there for three years. Think about this, somebody with an MBA creates Hot Cheetos, you are going to be president, you’re going to be chief marketing officer. I won every award after 42 years and I became a marketing executive, a sales executive with two companies, the Frito side of the business and then 20 years on the beverage side with Pepsi and Gatorade. So it was a big shock for us. And to this day, I still haven’t been able to figure it out. I just have to move on and just continue to go forward. But it did shake me up because I love my company a lot, PepsiCo. Like I said before, I was their greatest ambassador and for them to hurt me like that, I don’t know if it was intentional, was it a mistake? Because what’s crazy about this is I didn’t have any discussions with anybody. I didn’t get a lawyer. I didn’t get a publicist. I didn’t get PR, I didn’t do anything. I’m just like, what can I do? You’re telling me the person that I was married to for 42 years was cheating on me? That’s what it felt like. I don’t really know what that would feel like, but it was pretty devastating. It took me a little while but so many people came out to my defense, Eva was one of them, my producer, Al Carey, who was a former CEO of Frito-Lay and he was a big part of everything that had happened. He came out and yet none of that stuff was reprinted. People in this country love drama and they’d rather see something bad than something good. And I know that because I watch people, it’s been part of my journey to understand people. I just knew better than to…let’s just keep our mouth shut and continue to do what we do best: inspire people and do other things, and then we’ve got the movie coming out, I wrote my second book and I’m working on my third book. I had so many offers for a television show and even a Broadway play, my speaking engagements are incredible. So just, it’s who I am. I’m always ready to take a blow.

Brian

So what’s the lesson for our listeners and viewers about overcoming adversity? You’ve been overcoming adversity because of the color of your skin and language barriers and not being able to read and write early on and then push-back on ideas, sabotaging of ideas, and even – as we just talked about – as recently as a couple years ago. You’ve been doing this your entire life, overcoming adversity after adversity, after adversity and yet, I’m envisioning that cartoon where everything is sort of exploding and this character just walks through everything and emerges on the other side. What’s the big lesson in that?

Richard

I’ve always said that your prosperity is on the other side of adversity. If there’s no adversity, there’s no prosperity and I found that to be true. I’ll say this – because people ask me – my producer, when he was writing the movie, why did you stay there so long? Why did you put up with all that? And I realized earlier that it was never about my career, it was always about my calling. Young people say, well, I want to be like you, Mr. Montanez. I said, no, no, no, no you don’t want to be like me, because I have a calling. If you want a career, I’m not the guy to follow. If you want a calling I’m the guy to follow. So there’s a difference. You have to understand for your own life, what you’re going to do; are you going to follow your career, are you going to follow your calling? I follow my calling, and as much pain as I had, Brian, I look at all the joy that I have. We’re able to feed thousands of kids, thousands of families, we put dozens and dozens of young people through college. We did – me and my wife – because I endured. But it’s like this – and I know you’ve heard this story, but I’ll close with this story – in that little town that I lived in, we were bused during the desegregation, and I went to this English-speaking school after coming from a bilingual school because everybody spoke Spanish. My mom had made me my lunch and we went onto the field at lunch time and I pulled out my lunch and it was a burrito. I was so embarrassed because everybody was staring. Remember, this was 1960 something, the world hadn’t seen a burrito yet. I was embarrassed and everybody was just staring at me like, what is that? And I went home and I told my mom in Spanish to make me a bologna sandwich and a cupcake because I don’t want to be different, I want to be like the other kids. I want to be like, Bobby, I want to be like Johnny, but my mom – I always say women leadership award, women are just so incredible, my mom, she was a marketing genius – she said no, this is who you are. So the next day she made me two burritos. She said, here’s one for you and here’s one to share with a friend. So Wednesday was my burrito nightmare. Thursday, I shared a burrito with a friend. Friday, I was selling burritos for 25 cents apiece. I realized that my diversity was a benefit. I realized at a young age this is why I am who I am. As much as I wanted to fit in, I was never created to fit in. I was created to stand out. So no matter how I try, I will never fit in. To your young listeners I’ll tell them no matter how hard they try, they will never fit in. Why? Because they never were created to fit in. They were always created to stand out. So you fall in love with yourself and live your life because when you love yourself there’s a freedom to be yourself. I’m not worried about fame. I’m not worried about money because that is who I am. I will never fit in. I will never be like that executive, I will never be like that marketer, I will never be like that book author, because I was created to be me. I think that’s what we have to do is allow people to be themselves because there’s so much creativity and so much to learn from diversity. I’ve always said the innovation, ingenuity can come from anyplace, anytime, anywhere.

Brian

That’s so powerful, Richard, thank you so much for being on the show today. You’re an inspiration and your story provides hope for our listeners and viewers that their present circumstances don’t have to dictate their future. I hope your movie “Flamin’ Hot” is a big hit and best wishes for your continued success.

Richard

Thank you. I’ll have Steven keep you posted in case there’s a premiere near you and you can come and see it on the big screen.

Brian

I would love to do that. Thanks again, Richard.

Richard

A pleasure, talk to you soon.

Brian

Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Richard Montanez on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.