Missionary To Global Entrepreneur

This week's guest started as a missionary and soon became a global entrepreneur...

Dave Munson is the founder of the Saddleback Leather Company. A company he started after not being able to find the product he was looking for. The business exploded...

However, as he explains in this week's video when he fixed his poor leadership, his profits soared.

Dave Munson, from Portland, Oregon, owns

Saddleback Leather Co. based out of Fort Worth,

Texas. He first started selling the leather bags he

designed off the tailgate of his old Toyota Land Cruiser

with his Black Lab, Blue. He has since opened a factory

in Mexico, married the girl of his dreams and has a

daughter and son.

In 1999, Dave was a volunteer English teacher in

Southern Mexico and sketched out a leather bag to be

made to carry his books. Back in the US, 4 or 5 times a

day people would stop him to ask where they could buy

a bag like his. In 2003, he finally moved to Juarez

Mexico with his dog just across the border from El

Paso, Texas. He had a father and son send bags up to

the Juarez bus station and he would pick them up there

and take them to El Paso to sell on eBay. He and Blue

slept on the floor of his $100/mo. apartment for 3 years

with no hot water, A/C, or heat, for all of the money he

saved on living expenses, he reinvested into buying

more leather bags.

In 2006, he met his wife on Myspace and moved to San

Antonio, Texas. In 2008, they started their factory, Old

Mexico Manufacturing in Leon, Guanajuato to make

their own leather goods. He found that nobody cares

about your stuff as much as you do. It has been

humming ever since. But not without some very

difficult situations and learning 1000 ways to get

cheated.

Instagram: @saddlebackbags

Facebook: Saddleback Leather Co.

Website: saddlebackleather.com

YouTube: @saddlebackleather