The Inspiring Story of Richard Montanez : Janitor to Millionaire

Every person in this person's world has their own stories to share about how they went through obstacles to achieve something meaningful in life. Not everyone has it the easy way at the start and this can also be said the same for Richard Montanez.

Some of you might have not heard the name Richard Montanez but most of you probably have heard of Cheetos, your favorite daily snack. Not just that but he is also the vice president for marketing and promotion in North America. He didn't even have an outstanding academic status to even have that position.

But one thing that is special about Richard Montanez is that he had the vision and ideas of creating a product with a whole new system.

Biography

Montanez came from a poor family and he and his family migrated from Mexico to a small town in Ontario, California. He and his siblings as many as 10 people were forced to live in a tight space of a house that only has one room before they moved to a slightly bigger house of 800 feet/square inch.

When Montanez went to school in the US, he did not have a lot of friends simply because he was not good at English. There was one time when he wanted to eat his burrito during lunch and all the kids were staring at him. This is because burritos were not that famous in the 60s and it can be said that the Americans weren't that familiar with outsider food.

Montanez felt so embarrassed at the time that he kept his lunches away and went to another place to eat. Later when he went home, he asked his mom to make sandwiches and cupcakes for his lunch since that's the normal food that the kids in America eat.

However, his mum still made him the same burritos and told him to make new friends instead. Montanez suddenly got the idea of selling his burritos to his friends for the price of 25 cents each.

From that moment of time, Montanez finally realized that it was ok to be different since that's what makes him unique from the rest of them. Montanez finally knew his identity and never forgot where he comes from.

As time goes by, Montanez was definitely having difficulties in his learning at school due to not being fluent in English and he decided to drop out of school. He started to do different types of jobs, for instance, he became a gardener as well as working for a chicken slaughterhouse before he became a janitor at Frito Lay's factory.

One day, one of the machines to make the chips broke down in the flavor will not coat the Cheetos. Montanez then decided to bring home the chips to do a little bit of the experiment.

At home, he prepared chili, cheese, and lime as an ingredient for the Cheetos. The recipe was inspired by a street vendor selling corn. His family and friends actually loved the new flavor of Cheetos made by Montanez himself.

Montanez then contacted the CEO of the company at the time, Roger Enrico. At that time, he didn't know that what he did was totally wrong. I mean who would believe that a janitor will be able to pull something like this. Despite him being a janitor, Enrico's assistant still put him through to talk to Enrico.

However, things went pretty well as the CEO was interested in what Montanez had to say and Enrico gave Montanez two weeks to prepare the presentation. Montanez who happens to not have a tie at the time immediately bought one for $3 USD.

Not just that, but he also went to the library to borrow some books relating to marketing in a preparation for the presentation.

To cut things short, Enrico actually loved the idea brought up by Montanez's new recipes. Therefore, a new type of product was launched with the given name of Flaming. From that moment onwards, Montanez's life started to change.

He went from being a janitor and moved up his way toward becoming one of the executive vice presidents for PepsiCo. It was definitely a breathtaking experience in the field of marketing which qualified him to share his knowledge by becoming a lecturer at a university.

This, of course, will not happen if he did not have the courage to contact the CEO of the company. That's why in business, we should never be afraid of failure and take some risks.

We can also see the role of the top management of the company since if Montanez was not given the opportunity to share his ideas, then the brand Flaming Hot will not have existed today and has become one of America's favorites.

If you have any bright ideas in mind then you should not put them to waste and try with any means to make them into a reality. Never give up and always believe in yourself.

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