4 Powerful Lessons from Famous Amos Founder Wally Amos

From the first batch ever baked with Grandma, chocolate chip cookies are a sugar fix we indulge in, both to celebrate and to console us. Since the invention of the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s, the baked goodie has maintained its hold over our hearts and waistlines, making cookie icons like Wally Amos, founder of Famous Amos cookies, true purveyors of joy. Amos, who recently passed away at age 88, leaves behind several life lessons that can inspire future entrepreneurs to concoct their own successful creations. 

Recipe tip 1: Start with a transferable skill set

Early in his career, Amos worked at the William Morris Agency, eventually becoming the company’s first Black talent agent. While struggling to build his own personal talent management company, he sought solace in chocolate chip cookies—specifically, baking them, using a modified version of a family recipe. Amos used the cookies as calling cards, giving them away when meeting with potential clients.

“You couldn’t believe the response I got,” he told The New York Times in 1975. “Everybody, I found out, loves chocolate chip cookies.”

Clocking their growing popularity, Amos began to envision his baking hobby as a way to exit the talent industry business and open a freestanding cookie store. The first Famous Amos opened in Los Angeles in 1975. Within months, Amos expanded to two more locations. Even famed NYC department store Bloomingdale’s began selling the cookies.

While building a cookie empire may seem a far cry from his days of discovering acts like Simon & Garfunkel, Amos’ prior experiences helped set the foundation for Famous Amos. 

“What I’m doing really,” he told The New York Times, “is combining everything I’ve ever learned in life—my business college training, my show business background, my promotion experience—and applying it to selling these cookies.”

Amos exemplifies how to think outside the box … err, cookie jar. First outline your skills and strengths. Then brainstorm how you might merge and apply those aptitudes beyond your current role.

Amos was the consummate showman, promoting his cookies with his trademark enthusiasm and a signature style of dressing. He so successfully made a splash that his Panama hat and colorful, gauzy shirt are permanently displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. 

Coupled with other marketing initiatives, like large-scale events with celebrities and appearances on TV shows including Taxi and The Office, Amos created experiences that further drove sales, elevated the cookies above the competition and turned the brand—and its founder—into household names. 

What attributes do you personally bring that will help your company make its mark and establish credibility? Consider how you want people to perceive you, and survey the competition to better understand the need you can uniquely fill in the market.

Recipe tip 3: Determine what might make your cookie crumble

With Amos at the helm, Famous Amos enjoyed incredible success, with nearly $300,000 in revenue in its first year. By 1981, it became a $12 million company (comparable to $42 million today). But with declining sales, which he attributed to his own mismanagement, Amos began to sell off his equity stakes beginning in 1985. He eventually lost complete control.

“I’d lost the company really because I didn’t use to listen to people a lot because I was Famous Amos,” he told The New York Times in 1999.

Amos also shared with the Los Angeles Times that he thought his chief responsibility was heightening the company’s visibility. “The thing that got us in trouble is when I tried to actually run the business. That’s not what I want to do. I’m a promoter,” he said.

This illustrates the importance of self-awareness. Take inventory of what skills you need to further develop—like business acumen—or what personal constraints might be holding you back. And surround yourself with a good team who can shore up your weaknesses and address your blind spots.

Recipe tip 4: Burn a batch? Bake another

In the years following his separation from Famous Amos, Amos went on to launch additional cookie companies, even into his 80s. He also became a motivational speaker, wrote 10 books and served as the national spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers of America for more than 20 years. 

“I am fortunate that, through all the tribulations, all the ups and downs that I’ve experienced, I still make a cookie that tastes good,” he told Honolulu magazine in 2014.

Cultivating resiliency enables you to keep going when you encounter adversity. But what’s the secret ingredient to success? According to Amos, love.

“I think it’s important to love what you do because that love is transferred to what you do, and it turns into something absolutely fantastic,” Amos told NPR in 2008.

Photo by ZUMA/Alamy