The Twenty One Clear Podcast

For 25 years, Tony Simmons sold construction cranes. Then a phone call brought him home to Avery Island, Louisiana, and into McIlhenny Company, his family's company and the maker of Tabasco, where he became the seventh family CEO.

In part one of our three-part conversation, Tony walks me through the basics of a 158-year-old family company, from Edmund McIlhenny's start as a destitute banker after the Civil War to a family home kept for 208 years.

Then we turn to his own path: being told not to plan his life on joining the business, a board seat he never asked for, 12 years as his cousin Paul's understudy, and why he thought about the job the way a physician does: First, do no harm.

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Chapter Timestamps
(00:00) Cold Open: One Red Thing, a Million Red Things
(00:15) Welcome and Introduction: Meet Tony Simmons
(02:44) McIlhenny Company by the Numbers
(04:34) Edmund McIlhenny, From Destitute Banker to Founder
(06:35) Avery Island, McIlhenny Company and Tabasco
(10:15) "Don't Plan Your Life On It"
(12:16) Twenty-Five Years in Cranes
(15:16) A Surprise Board Seat and 12 Years as an Understudy
(17:29) What an Outside Career Teaches
(19:10) The Seventh Family CEO: First, Do No Harm
(21:15) The Burlesque Opera of Tabasco
(25:34) Drift and the Long Horizon
(26:31) Coming Up in Parts Two and Three

Creators and Guests

Host
Adam Hatcher
Family Business Consultant

What is The Twenty One Clear Podcast?

The benefits of working with family include mutual trust, a shared long-term outlook, and quick decision making. However, your inner family business relationships can also cause chaos for the company and family.

What can you do?

Join us as we explore chaos proofing your family business so you can build a great company with a strong family around it.

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Tony Simmons: Because I had been selling
one red thing that cost about a million

dollars and turned over to selling about a
million red things that cost about a buck.

' Cause Manitowoc painted
all their cranes red too.

Adam Hatcher: That color's
followed your career.

Tony Simmons: Yeah it does.

Red seems to followed me all the through.

Hey there.

Welcome to the 21 Clear Podcast.

I'm your host, Adam Hatcher,
the founder of 21 Clear, a

family business consulting firm.

And with this and all of our other
podcasts, we want to provide resources

to you that help you think about
your inner family business, the

unique way your family works in and
owns your family company together.

The voice you just heard is Tony Simmons,
and the red things he was talking about

were both cranes and bottles of Tabasco.

For 25 years, Tony sold construction
cranes, and he's gonna tell

you the story in this episode.

But then a phone call changed his
career, and he ended up working in his

family's company, which is McIlhenny
Company, the makers of Tabasco.

This is episode one of three, and
I'll outline the three episodes

and how we'll do it at the end.

But for here, Tony's
gonna start the episode…

He and I had a long conversation,
and we began by talking about some

of the basics of McIlhenny Company.

What they make, roughly how much
they make, some of the history,

how the company is structured.

And then we get into Tony's career.

How he started, and then how he made
a pivot into the family company.

And as you listen, you may notice
that Tony is pretty candid, and he

may be more candid than you and your
family are at this point, or than

you've heard a lot of other people
be about their family companies.

Tony has a deep affection for family
businesses, and as a result, he will

tell a lot of stories and give a lot of
insights to hopefully benefit the way you

work in and own your business together.

Not as a prescription, but again,
getting ideas in your head that

you can then adapt and mold and
bring into your family company.

So I hope you enjoy episode one
with Tony Simmons, and then at the

end, I'll tell you what we'll do
with the next couple of episodes.

And with that, here's Tony explaining
Tabasco and McIlhenny Company.

Adam Hatcher: All right,
so here are my numbers.

Tell me if I, tell me if I'm right.

The McIlhenny Company, 158 years old?

Yes.

195-plus companies.

Countries, sorry, 195-

Tony Simmons: We ship
to 197 countries now.

Adam Hatcher: And that is
22 languages and dialects.

Tony Simmons: That we bottle in
all at Avery Island, Louisiana.

Adam Hatcher: So they are grown around…

They can be grown around the world, but
they're all bottled in Avery Island.

Tony Simmons: Yes.

Once, once we grow the pepper, it's
all shipped back to Avery Island to

be aged for three years, up to three
years, before we bottle it and sell it.

Seed to table, actually, 'cause it takes
us a year to grow the pepper for seed.

We then send the seed to our growers.

It takes them another year to grow it,
harvest it, grind it, and ship it back to

us, and then we put it in oak barrels and
age it for up to three years before we

open the barrels to make Tabasco with it.

So seed to table is five years.

Adam Hatcher: How close are these numbers?

So 200,000 two ounces
bottles a day right now.

Tony Simmons: So what we normally will say
that we have the capability to bottle up

to about 720,000 bottles of Tabasco a day.

Now, we don't necessarily
bottle that much, and we do

that in two ounce equivalents.

So if we're running five ounce or 12
ounce, you know, we're still measuring

the output in terms of what would that
have been in two ounce equivalents.

So we have the capability right now
to run about 720,000 bottles a day.

Adam Hatcher: I've
heard you say it before.

Is it now the company could
produce more in a day than Edmund

McIlhenny produced in his lifetime?

What's the statistic you use?

Tony Simmons: So Edmund McIlhenny
actually was a banker from New Orleans.

He was born in Hagerstown,
Maryland in 1815.

We don't know a whole lot about his
young life, but we do know that he

ended up in New Orleans, by the 1840s.

Sometime in the 1840s, he
ended up in New Orleans.

He ended up, buying five branches
from Bank of Louisiana and

becoming an independent banker.

And he traveled around to his various
banks, and that's how he met Daniel

Avery, whose family was at Avery
Island and had been there since 1818.

And Edmund got to know Daniel Avery, and
he eventually married into the family.

But at the end of the Civil War, Edmund
was destitute because a Southern banker,

Confederate currency was worth nothing.

So Edmund was destitute, and he was
forced to live at Avery Island in

his father-in-law's house 'cause
he couldn't support his family.

And they encouraged him to take
his Tabasco pepper sauce, bottle

it, and take it to New Orleans
and try to sell it, which he did.

And it, by 1868, he decided
it was enough of a commercial

success to start the company.

So he started McIlhenny Company in 1868.

Basically, it was a cottage
industry, and he died in 1890.

He kept meticulous records, and we
know from his ledgers and his records

that during his lifetime, he produced
about 367,000 bottles of Tabasco.

And we currently have the capability
to produce about twice that every day.

Adam Hatcher: And quickly, can you
describe: there is Avery Island, the

McIlhenny Company, and then Tabasco.

Which for the longest time I thought
Tabasco was the name of the company.

I bet a lot of people do that.

Can you talk about where those
three names have significance,

but they're very distinct?

Can you explain that for
people who just don't know?

Tony Simmons: So

Avery Island is our family home
that we've had for 208 years.

And about 450 cousins that are able
to be part of our family there.

McIlhenny Company was started at
Avery Island by Edmund McIlhenny

to produce Tabasco after the war.

And has remained there.

And it's still owned and operated
by members of the McIlhenny family.

We employ a full-time historian,
PhD in history, as our

historian and archivist, Dr.

Shane Bernard, who does a very
good job of trying to separate

the truth from family stories.

And he has done an enormous amount of
research trying to determine why Edmund

McIlhenny named the product Tabasco.

And he can't.

He has anecdotal evidence.

He has stories, he has things that
have been said by some of my ancestors

about why they believed he did it.

But as a historian, unless he can find
first, you know, person evidence, he

refuses to say, "we know this is exact."

So we don't know exactly why
Edmund used the term Tabasco.

We do know that what he originally
proposed, before the island

was called Avery Island, it
was called Petit Toss Island.

Petit Toss, little goose
or little bay, in French.

And he had proposed originally
to call it Petit Toss sauce.

And his father-in-law said, "No,
you're not gonna name your sauce,

your p- your commercial product
after my home, so you can't use it."

So he came up with Tabasco,
but we don't know why.

And it's always been a mystery
that we've been trying to solve.

Now having been at the same place for
208 years, and as my wife will tell

you, my family tend to be pack rats.

We have an enormous
amount of stuff, and Dr.

Bernard has an entire building
full of archives, records,

artifacts, things from the family.

And even with help from the local
university, University of Lafayette,

Louisiana, with interns, we have
entire collections that haven't been

archived yet, that are just sitting
there waiting to be included, you

know, and documented and then, you
know, put in the right places and cross

indexed so we can find them again.

And at some point we may uncover letters
or documents or things that allow

us to say, "this is why he did it."

But at this point, we're not sure.

Adam Hatcher: So we've wound into some
of the company and how it's structured,

talked a little bit about what it's
like today, but I find your story

interesting for people who either are
thinking of hiring family members or

working with their family, or who may
look at you and say, you know, "He got

to be part of-- He's been part of a
great multi-hundred-year family story."

But that wasn't, that's never
your, that was never your

intention setting out, right?

Can you talk, like, for people who
don't know you or maybe all they've

read about you is some of the articles
that you can find online, the journey

of Tony Simmons to running McIlhenny
Company, my impression is both is not

inevitable and there was no straight
line that you were always marching on.

So can you talk about you, like, where
you grow up, just quickly, school, and

then where your career went before it
took the t- the family business turn?

Sure.

Tony Simmons: Sure.

So as a young person

you were told,

"Don't plan your life on being involved
in your family business because

you're probably not going to be."

Our history is to have two to four family
members actively involved in the business,

and we just don't hire a lot of family.

Adam Hatcher: And for anyone who may
imagine, 'cause I used to, I imagined

Tabasco being this, putting 10,000
people to work across the globe

because everybody knows the brand.

But roughly how many people work there?

Tony Simmons: I think we're at
around 240 or 260 right now.

Adam Hatcher: So if anyone who thinks
your number of four is really low, it's

not four people in the middle of 2,500.

We're not even over 275 employees
in the Cor McElhany company.

Okay.

All right.

So you're told young-

Tony Simmons: Yeah, don't plan on
it 'cause you're probably not gonna.

But if you're interested, let us know, and
if we're interested, we'll let you know.

Adam Hatcher: And let us, let one
of us four who work here know?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Tony Simmons: So, I got out of college in
1974 and married as soon as I graduated,

and my wife and I moved to Houston.

I went to work in the heavy equipment
business for a company that was

actually the distributor for
Manitowoc Crane Products, which were

produced in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

And for folks that don't know,
Manitowoc is probably the premier

heavy crane manufacturer in the world.

And they're equivalent to how
people think, say, about Caterpillar

in that part of the industry,
in the big crane business.

Adam Hatcher: And publicly traded?

Tony Simmons: Publicly traded.

Publicly traded.

Mm-hmm.

And I worked for the distributor,
which was a private company,

and in Houston for nine years.

Then they sent me to Singapore for
three years and I lived in Singapore

for three years as a sales and marketing
rep for Southeast Asia, and traveled

all over Southeast Asia for three years.

When I came back into United
States at the end of 1985,

Manitowoc hired me away from the
distributor and made me the brand manager

of the products we were making in McAllen.

And we were there for three years.

And in the end of 1989, Manitowoc
came to me and said, "We wanna

open a new distribution facility to
handle Virginia and the Carolinas,

and we want you to go do that."

So at the start of 1990, I
moved to Charlotte and started

a new distribution facility for
Manitowoc, that Manitowoc owned.

And in 1993, they called me and
they said, "We've made a corporate

decision not to own our own
distribution facilities anymore.

We're gonna sell them.

Do you wanna buy it?"

And I ended up buying the rights to be
Manitowoc's distributor for their crane

products for Virginia, the Carolinas,
Georgia, Florida, and the Caribbean.

And I had an office in
Charlotte where I was living.

I had an office in Atlanta, and I
had an office in Fort Lauderdale.

And in 1997, I got a call from my uncle,
who was running McIlhenny Company.

And he said that the board had met
and the board had decided to add three

Gen 5 board members, of which I was
one, if I would accept the position.

Which I did.

Adam Hatcher: And that
was not something you…

Did you all have a process where
you had to put your name in and say,

Tony Simmons: No I hadn't done anything.

It a complete surprise to me.

Adam Hatcher: You're in crane, you're
nowhere near consumer packaged goods at

Tony Simmons: No.

No.

Anyway, so, in the spring of 1997, I
joined McIlhenny's board, still running

my heavy equipment distributorship
business on the East Coast.

And in 1999

My Uncle Ned had retired as president
and CEO, and my cousin Paul McIlhenny had

taken over and was running the company.

And in 1999, a Caterpillar tractor
dealer from Florida, wanted to be the

Manitowoc crane dealer way more than
I did, and so I sold him my business.

And my cousin Paul McIlhenny
called me and he said, "Tony,

did you sell your company?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And he said, "Well, if you wanna
work, why don't you come down to Avery

Island and work for your family?"

And I said, "well, what would I do, Paul?"

And he said, "well, you'd be two things."

He said, "you'd be
executive vice president.

Number two," he said, "I'm president,
you'd be executive vice president."

And he said, "You'd also be my understudy,
and I'll teach you the food business."

So I spent the next 12 years as Paul's
understudy learning the food business,

because I had been selling one red thing
that cost about a million dollars and

turned over to selling about a million
red things that cost about a buck.

'Cause Manitowoc painted
all their cranes red too.

Adam Hatcher: That color's
followed your career.

Tony Simmons: Yeah it does.

Red seems to followed me all the through.

And then in 2012 the board
made me the president.

Paul died unexpectedly
in February of 2013.

And then I ran the company until 2019,
June of 2019, when I retired at age 68.

So I've been retired, what is that?

Seven now.

Seven years.

Yeah.

Adam Hatcher: Looking
back on that career now.

Working somewhere else with no intention
of coming in, what benefits did that

give you once you finally got there?

And it could be skill benefits.

I'm assuming you were dealing
with international logistics and

international business was not new
to you when you joined McIlhenny.

But I'm sure there were also just
perspective and approach that you had.

So what were some of the benefits
from working outside the business for

as long as you did before joining?

Tony Simmons: Well, I think one of the
biggest benefits I got from it is I got

a very good education in what a good
manager looks like and what a bad manager

looks like and how to tell a difference.

And I think that was a very
important learning for anyone.

And recognized that

the higher you get up in an organization,
the more important it is to make sure

that you pick good people, the right
people to be around you, because if

you cannot pick the right people to put
around yourself, you're going to fail.

There's just no doubt about it.

And that ability to pick people,
the right people, is huge.

It is a huge skill that you've
gotta have, and the higher you

rise in an organization, the more
important that skill becomes.

Adam Hatcher: All right, so
1997, you joined the board,

then you joined the business.

How long were you CEO?

Tony Simmons: Seven years.

Adam Hatcher: In the succession
of CEOs, what number were you?

Tony Simmons: Let's see.

Edmund, John, EA, Walter, Ned.

Oh, it's

the Seventh.

Adam Hatcher: Remember Jim Collins
teaching this idea that in family

companies resonates, you need to
preserve the core and stimulate progress.

That's the tension of any business.

I'm curious, when you think about
those, that idea, so you have a line

of six CEOs and there's a, there are
ideas and a core there I'm guessing

you felt were wise or a responsibility
to preserve, but the company you

ran was not the same company Edmond
founded and not the same environment.

How did you wrestle with that
tension of preserving something

while also pushing forward?

Tony Simmons: My personal way of doing it

Adam Hatcher: Yeah

Tony Simmons: Was to think
about what I did for my family

like a physician thinks about.

First, do no harm.

Adam Hatcher: Mm-hmm

Tony Simmons: Then once you've made
sure you're not running the thing off

a cliff, then let's figure out how we
can grow it as best we can grow it.

But grow it recognizing that as the
seventh family CEO of 150-year-old

business, you're really a steward who
is in charge for some period of time,

and you wanna pass it to the next
CEO in better shape than you got it.

And meet the family's expectations
for what they believe the family

and the business should do.

Adam Hatcher: Is there something that
you can think of in your tenure that you

did that was uniquely Tony Simmons that
none of your predecessors would've done?

Maybe you had to do it, or a decision
you made, or something you chose

to take on and wrestle with that
none of them had to deal with.

And it was distinctly you?

Tony Simmons: I can't think of anything
other than the challenge that I was

in charge of the company when it
celebrated its 150 years in business.

So this was a big deal for us, you
know, 150-year-old family business.

Adam Hatcher: Yeah, the statistics
on family companies that make

it that far is pretty small.

Tony Simmons: 2-4% make it
to the fourth generation.

Yeah.

Adam Hatcher: 150 years.

Tony Simmons: Long time.

Adam Hatcher: Long time.

Tony Simmons: In 1894

a playwright in Boston, Massachusetts,
wrote a play called The Burlesque

Opera of Tabasco for the Boston Corps
Cadets to put on to raise money.

Now, in 1894, a burlesque
opera was not a girly show.

A burlesque opera was operatic
singing with lowbrow comedy.

It was so popular it went to Broadway.

And then they decided they wanted
to put it on the road and with a

traveling group and tour the US.

And at that point, they reached
out to us and said, "would you…

This thing is very positive about
your product, and it talks about using

it in food and doing all this stuff.

Would you help sponsor it
to go around the country?

Because it'll give you much
higher brand recognition."

And John McIlhenny was running
the company at the time, and he

said, "Yes, with one proviso.

At the end of the performance,
you have to have someone stand at

the back of the room and hand out
samples to all of the patrons."

And that's where the
eight-ounce mini came out.

But as we were approaching the 150th
anniversary or birthday, and I was

trying to find something special to do,
a composer approached me and told me he

actually had all of the music and the
records of the Tabasco opera, and would

I be interested in trying to produce it?

And we did.

And for our 150th anniversary we redid
the Burlesque Opera of Tabasco and

put on, I think it was five or seven
performances at the Little Theater

in New Orleans with a full cast.

It was very well received,
and it was a lot of fun.

It was actually pretty funny.

And, you know, it's something Tony did
that none of the other CEOs had done.

Yeah.

I recreated the Burlesque
Opera of Tabasco, and we've

actually got it on disks to use.

And, you know, every now and then
I'll hear from one of the family

that's only just seen it and call
to tell me how much they think it's

fun and what a good thing it is.

Adam Hatcher: Oh, that's
something that you…

Just so uniquely family company.

And when you think about all it
takes to get as far as you all have

gotten, are the fun things you can
go pull back from the past and-

Tony Simmons: So the samples-
that they gave out in in 1895

the eighth ounce mini bottle.

We did 37 million of them last year.

We're still doing it, you know, all
of these many years later, we're still

doing, we're still using that a- as one of
our, you know, one of our best products.

Adam Hatcher: And somewhere someone
probably thought that the mini

bottle was a brilliant stroke of
marketing or product innovation.

It's just in the back of a theater
being given out at an opera.

Tony Simmons: Yeah, as a sample.

Adam Hatcher: One of the
dangerous words to me in family

business is the word drift.

So family members drift into the business.

Long time people who may not be developing
at the pace the business is growing

just drift along in their careers.

And then one day people wake up
and realize they're in a seat

that they're not supposed to be
in, that they're overwhelmed by,

the business is starting to drag.

You didn't have that luxury
in a publicly traded company.

Tony Simmons: Well, you can get it,
but it usually doesn't last long.

Adam Hatcher: Right.

… Tony Simmons: Quarterly earnings
start to be affected, and normally

things get pretty testy pretty quick.

In a family business, as you know,
family businesses have the advantage of

being able to look at a longer horizon.

As long as the family is comfortable
with how the family business is doing.

Which is a huge asset
for a family business.

But at the same time, it can
lead to a complacency that can

cause problems down the road.

Adam Hatcher: I hope you heard
the shift in the conversation

with Tony right there at the end.

While we'd been talking about his career
and the basics of the company, right

at the end, Tony started to get into
insights, his stories about how they run

the inner family business of McIlhenny
Company, between the business, the board,

and his thoughts on family councils
and how they're working with that.

That's where the conversation
was starting to go, and that

is going to be episode two.

So listen for that when it comes
out, where we start to get into

some of Tony's experience with
running the inner family business.

And then episode three, we're gonna
put out as a video episode because Tony

takes me on a tasting of some of their
products, and needless to say, they are

both more delicious than I expected,
and they have a few I was unaware of

that are way hotter than I thought.

So I hope you enjoy those as they come
out over the next couple of months.

Everything we do with 21 Clear is meant
to either provide supportive consulting or

resources to family companies to help you
think about your inner family business.

You can follow our newsletter
and learn more about us.

There are links in the show
notes that you can click on.

I hope you've enjoyed this
episode and part one of the

conversation with Tony Simmons.

I hope you'll join us next time
in the next episode, and as my

grandfather would've said, thank you
so very, very much for listening.