Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from “Catch the White Tiger: How I Achieved the American Dream with $28,” a memoir by Tony Assali with Michael Ashley. Assali is the owner of Fountain Valley-based EscrowQuick Inc.
It’s 1969 and I am dreaming of a white tiger when a car backfires. More explosions rock my neighborhood and I realized it’s not a car. I knew those noises. Everyone in Beirut did. It’s gunfire.
My father had called our family to discuss an urgent matter. I studied the faces of the five people at the dinner table. My mom kept her head lowered, her eyes refusing to meet mine.
“There is going to be a war,” my father got straight to the point. “We must leave Beirut.”
We can only get one visa.
“Tony, you’ll be the first to go … You speak the best English. You are the oldest son. You’re strong and smart and can live on your own. Once you’re settled, you will send for the rest of us.”
I think, “What kind of jobs can a 17-year-old Middle Eastern immigrant get in America?”
I leave with $28 in my pocket. I had saved a lot more from a job as a teenager—$5,000 that could have made my first weeks in America very comfortable, but I left it all with my father.
When I’m at the Beirut airport terminal, my mother wept, her body shook.
In my first year, I stayed in Boston at the home of a friend I had met in Beirut. I slept on his couch for my first year. He helped me get a job in a doughnut shop.
I’d been reading about Tupperware parties. On the side, I start selling wigs to women at house parties. At the first event, we sold 12 wigs and I cleared $100 for one night’s work. That was more money than I made in the doughnut shop in two weeks. I love America.
I then worked as a sommelier in a hotel restaurant; I was only 17 years old strutting about in some comic-opera soldier’s uniform passing myself off as a wine sophisticate. Yet somehow it worked. By the end of my first evening, I had sold 10 bottles.
I eventually brought my family to America. A few years later, my father died and I went to a clothing store to buy a suit for the funeral. Louie the owner asks me, “Tell me, have you ever sold men’s suits before?”
I replied, “When I was a teenager in Beirut, I worked at a store selling men’s European fashions.” Louie paid me $100 a week plus 15% commission on each sale. Louie could tell I’m a natural salesman just by looking at me.
After I aced a 100-question test to become an American citizen, I went into a large room with 50 other immigrants, people of all kinds. After the judge swore us in and told a group of us that we were American citizens, someone started singing The Star Spangled Banner. By the end of the first verse, we all sung our hearts out. I have never felt prouder.
One day, a friend complained there were no Lebanese restaurants. This gave me an idea to start a Lebanese food company selling exotic food like hummus. Business boomed.
I received an invitation to visit Southern California. Do you believe in love at first sight? I do. I was smitten.
I sold my company, making a small fortune and I arrived in Orange County in 1984. Was I crazy for starting over in a place I’ve only visited once?
I started Coco’s Mediterranean Foods. After one month in business, I’m selling 2,000 units per week. My growth curve here was far steeper than Boston’s.
One day, I pulled into a parking lot to grab a cup of coffee. As I stepped out of my truck, a sign above a grocery store caught my eye: Trader Joe’s. They agreed to carry my products in 37 stores.
I went to a Mexican restaurant for the first time and after tasting salsa, I decided to make Corona Salsa, selling it in a bottle that looked similar to a beer mug.
It’s 1992 when my distribution broker said, “I’m going to make an offer you can’t refuse.” I’ve seen the Godfather. Does this mean that if I don’t sell, he’s going to put a horse head in my bed? He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and slid it over. My eyes pop out of my head. I had been getting tired of working. I sold Cocos.
Now I’m 41, single and again a millionaire. I think of taking a year off to do tourist things I’d never had time for. After three months, I got bored. It’s time to start hunting white tigers again.
Being a business owner has its downsides. I could lose everything it’s taken me my entire life to accumulate. I was getting too old to take big chances. I took a job selling steaks door to door. I exceeded my quotas, earning $15,000 a week in commissions.
After the company made me a manager, I hired 10 people. The most important quality in a salesperson is personality. Either you got it or you don’t. I’m talking about drive, optimism and the ability to improvise. We’re looking for people who won’t take no for an answer. I don’t believe a salesperson can thrive without these attributes.
My son Scott asked me to join his mortgage company. Several days into this venture, I noticed we paid $900 on each application for something called “escrow.” I didn’t understand what it was or why it’s so expensive. After Scott explained it to me, I suggested we open our own. EscrowQuick became very profitable very fast.
The 2008 financial crisis hit us hard. A year later, I filed Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy. Just six months later, I paid off all our creditors. We didn’t lay off a single employee; it’s one of the proudest achievements of my life.
What I learned from being in this great country is that you can do what you like here. There’s freedom in America. Freedom to reach the unreachable.
