Tony Little, the pony-tailed fitness guru and infomercial celebrity, should be dead.
For more than two decades, he's been screaming on cable TV like a guy trying to induce his own cardiac arrest.
When he was a boy, his mom drove one of those "unsafe-at-any-speed" Corvair station wagons. Little was asleep in the back when she rolled it six times.
Then in 1983, when Little was training for the Mr. America Body Building Championship, a school bus broadsided his car and dragged it 100 yards.
A few years later, in Miami, a lobster truck slammed into Little's rear bumper at 50 mph.
Then there was the time he drove over one of Florida's few hills, swerved to avoid a car that had cut into his lane, slid off the road and hit a tree.
"It was on a Halloween night," he said. "A valet guy had given me a ticket with the number 666. I said, "Better give me another ticket.'"
Ever ask yourself why you've been in so many near-fatal automobile accidents? I asked Little.
"You could ask the same thing about the two times I was electrocuted," he continued.
As a boy, Little decided it would be fun to play with his erector set in the bathtub.
Years later while showering in his apartment: "I reached up to grab the shower head and it blew me right through the shower doors," he said.
A short in the air conditioner circuits somehow electrified the pipes.
"I think this is where I get my creativity," he said.
Driven by everything from attention deficit disorder and juvenile delinquency to an abusive father who eventually committed suicide, Little became Mr. St. Petersburg in 1978, Mr. Southern States in 1980, and Mr. Florida in 1981.
But auto accidents so battered his body, he had to give up bodybuilding. So he struggled with depression, alcohol, an addiction to painkillers, and junk-food binges that bloated him up to 230 pounds.
Then one day he discovered Jane Fonda videos and decided to make his own.
Today, Little boasts of selling more than $3 billion worth of merchandise to 45 million customers in 81 countries, always sporting his giant biceps and yelling "You can do it."
It's a formula that still works. Sales were down 8% at Home Shopping Network Inc. (HSNI) during its most recent quarter, but not for Little. He's come up with shoes for toning your butt.
"Tony Little's products had particularly strong sales, including his new Cheeks Exercise Sandals, which sold over 100,000 units in the quarter," HSN CEO Mindy Grossman said in a conference call last month.
Despite hard times, Little is also selling a lot of pricey bison meat.
"It's 30% less fat than chicken, and it's a hamburger," he says.
Rising unemployment leaves more people on the couch watching TV, suspecting they should do something to improve themselves, even if it's just buying butt-toning shoes or bison patties.
Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Want to stand out in the unemployment line? Get into the one-third that is not.
"If we were in World War II right now and everybody was being drafted, imagine the soldiers that would be standing in line," Little said.
"Executives want to hire people who are performance machines," Little said. "They want their bang for the buck."
That's where Little comes in with a full line of self-improvement products, like fitness videos, inversion massage chairs, and the ever-popular Gazelle exercise machine.
"My sales are always up in a bad economy," Little said. "As horrible a tragedy as 911 was, my sales zoomed right out there to the highest level because people were cocooning."
Little says he understands self-improvement because he's so often faced self-destruction.
He's working on a motivational book called "There's Always a Way." In it he describes how:
* He declined an offer to become professional hit-man.
* He was once knocked out, kidnapped by a man who stuck him with a syringe in a men's room.
* He had a friend, who he always had a bad feeling about, that turned out to be a murderer.
"I turn everything into a positive," Little said. "It's not what happens to you that matters, it's how you respond."
You know, like not getting killed.
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. The column is published each Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. ET. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)
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