Raising Cane'sを築いた——トッド・グレイブス

I was not expecting to start here, Todd. We were just talking before recording. I didn't expect to start on sleep, but what you just said is exactly how most of history's greatest entrepreneurs are. They just can't stop thinking about their business because I was asking I was asking you like, "How much caffeine do you take? How much sleep do you need?" And then your answer was what I have a really erratic sleep. So, I'll go, you know, some nights I'll go maybe three hours of sleep. The next night I need 3 to four hours. The next night I need 5 hours. And usually about that point is the next night I have to crash. So, I'll sleep 10 or 11 hours to catch up and then I'll actually wake up feeling great and feel like I don't have to muscle through a day keeping myself awake and then uh then I'll be caught up. I'll go another three hours that night, four hours and five five hours. But what really dictates it is what I have going on in business and what I have to be thinking about, what might give me a little bit of anxiety about things I got to decide on the teams, what I have to work through. So, my brain will be working as I'm sleeping and I think it's trying to figure out solutions. So then I'll just wake up and I'll actually wake up pretty refreshed thinking about, you know, that problem I had and then go jump on the computer in my in my underwear in the middle. I wake up and go first that and then start sending out emails to actually solve that problem, you know. But if I get caught up at work and and there's nothing like really pressing, then I can sleep like a baby. You know, I don't have a problem sleeping. Let's have a problem sleeping when I got real business on on my mind. This keeps reoccurring in all these biographies of history entrepreneurs that I read. And so I just did this episode on Jurro, the best sushi chef in Japan, right? The the documentary on him is Jirro dreams of sushi. Why? Because in his sleep he is thinking about his work, right? Then I did this episode on this guy named Michael Ferrero. It's another family held business. It's the Ferrero chocolate company, right? He would say that he dreamed up what he called comforts, which was new products, new chocolates to make in his sleep. Uh the Michelin brothers, same thing. They would dream up marketing ideas on how to market tires in their sleep. [laughter] Uh Leonardo dio Lxodica, one of the biggest businesses in the world. He just passed away very recently. He said he would literally wake up dreaming. He he would dream about ideas for his business and he'd have to either keep a tape recorder next to his bed or in your case in your underwear in your in a computer or he'd have like a notebook,

It's very fascinating how you see the same personality type appear throughout over and over again throughout history. So we are in the very first Raisin Canes. You were very kind enough to let us record in here.

What is the advice that these so-called the bad advice these so-called e experts gave you when you were trying to start the very first racing canes?

But you knew about Harry Snider.

So when I did the episode on you, this is where cuz I read Harry Snider's biography. He's one of my favorite founders. I mean, the guy was completely obsessed. There's a great line in one of his biographies where he would live across the street from the first In-N-Out and he'd work all day, right? And then he'd sit in his living room, watch TV, but he'd look out the window and as soon as the drive-thru, would would back up, he'd get out of his chair and run across the street. He was completely obsessed. And he just like you, he bucked the trend in his industry. They went to like when everybody I think McDonald's was like, "No, we're going to like freeze our beef or whatever the case is." He's like, "I'm going to have my own butchers." Like he's like, "I'm going to get the fresh tomatoes." was like, "No, no, I'm not going. I'm I'm all about quality." There's a line, they just gave me a tour of the kitchen. It says, "Never," you guys have a a mantra that says, "Uh, never sacrifice quality for speed." That's right. And he was like completely quality uh completely like quality obsessed. And then if you just sit there and you think about your business over and over again, like he's the one, a lot of people don't know this, he invented the drive-thru speaker.

Yeah. You have to focus on doing one thing and do it better than anybody else. And so since I have that singular product focus, right? And so people some people call it like a simple menu. I say, "Well, it's not simple. It's it's focus." And here's why it's not simple. Because our chicken has to be exactly right. Look, it comes from the weight of the bird that we want to get the size tender we want. It comes from the species of bird that gives the most tender and flavorful chicken. It comes off a lot of technical stuff. Rick motorus on the bone after the chicken soldered. Then it stays on the bone a certain amount of time. Then you get it fresh. Then you brine it for 24 hours. Like all those things are that like are our our fries, right? So we have crinkle cut fry but like like a thinner crinkle cut fry. You get fries from different times of the year, right? They do the they do the crop harvest than it sits in the warehouses. At certain times of the year, you get more sugar tips in the fries. Those sugar tips have to come out. So, we have to remind our crew, hey, when you see those black sugar tip ends, take those out. It's not visually pleasing. The our bread. We get bread made by bakeries all over the country. But that recipe has to be exactly right. And it's little dough balls put together, baked together. So, it's pull- apart bread. It's not sliced loaves. Sliced loaves end up being more stale. This is dense, moist, flavorful bread. Our coleslaw we secure all over the country. We got to make sure all those vendors have the right type of slaw that we want for the right type of growers grown in a certain amount of time. In that saw, you have cabbage, but you also have purple cabbage, you have carrots, all those things. And so you go down to your tea. Our tea gets brought from three different countries. The tea leaves, but we have to get at the right time of the year. We might pay more for that, but it's that in that focus on that. So my team can focus on those menu items and deliver it every time to where it tastes exactly the same around every across the country. So since we're focused, it's not a simple thing. We can focus on those things. We have a large culinary department. It's not R&D, it's culinary, right? So it's it's culinary making sure that all those products, those raw products we get are all perfect and make sense there. Same thing we opened in the Middle East. It took two years, two years to get the supply chain just right, to make sure it tastes just the same. two years to do that. Took two years to procure the chicken. Two years to get all the ingredients right because a lot of stuff you can't import in plus it's very expensive to do that for them to import it in from the United States where we get it currently. You have to spend the time to do that. So two years people would look at that and say man you know you should be open in a year. That extra year is going to cost you x amount of dollars. And I'm like no those x amount of dollars are going to make us more money because our sales are going to be higher because our food is in and quality ingredients create and in and a proper cook system creates cravable product. So, like in the food business, like, and I say this to all entrepreneurs that are in the food business, like whether they're wanting to open up or they they have restaurants open, it's like your food has to be cravable. Like, meaning like, "Oh my god, I love that chicken parm from Craigslist." So, I'll go when I go there, I'm like, I want to go back and get that chicken parm. Other stuff on the menu is pretty good or whatever. I I'll sample just to try different things cuz I like food, but I want to go back for that chicken parm. If they didn't have that cravable chicken parm at Craigslist, I wouldn't make it a point to go there. There's so many good restaurants. There's so many great place you can choose from in LA. There's so many great places that you can have good vibe and good atmosphere and good people, but that cravable product is what brings it back. And if you cut that quality, and I've had CFOs over time, not not current CFO, [laughter] but over time that have been like, hey, you know, if we just cut this just a little bit, you know how much money because it's a pennies business, right? We're doing well if we make 10 cents on a dollar. But like if you start cutting a little bit here to save a penny and you start cutting a little bit here and a little bit here, it's death by a thousand cuts. Then your food one day is not cravable. That's what's happened to so many quick service chains over the years. They they mess with their quality so much. Then they lost the cravability. So then it comes down to just a cheap calorie option versus a cravable meal that I'm dying to go get.

Lust over. So, you nailed the cravable cuz I told you I brought my 13-year-old daughter with me today and she's obsessed with raising canes and she door dashes it to our house constantly. She's definitely craving the quality chicken finger meals. Todd Graves is obsessed about staying in the details of his business. He says the most successful people he knows stay in the details of their business. He mentioned learning from a friend who runs a multi-billion dollar shipping company and how that friend would pay attention to even how much his company was spending on bottled water. When I heard that, I thought it'd be a lot easier to do this if that shipping company was running on ramp, something a lot of history's greatest founders have in common. They know their business from A to Z and their costs down to the penny. Ramp makes doing this effortless. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, and cost control. These corporate cards are fully programmable. You can set limits so the spending of your team never gets out of hand. Most companies only find out about excessive spending after the fact. Like that shipping company with the rampant spending on water. With RAMP, you stop it before it happens. Matt Pollson is the founder of Market Beat and he recently switched to RAMP. And this is what he said about it. Ramp is the best. The amount of money you will save from unwanted renewals and employees who think company credit card equals buy whatever you want will far exceed the best credit card rewards program. Matt is talking about the importance of cost control. There is a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography that says cost control became nearly an obsession. If Carnegie was alive today, he'd run his business on ramp. Take the time and set up a demo of the product and you will see why many of the world's top founders are running their company on ramp. Go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp.com. So go back to these people are giving you this advice like you don't know what you're doing. I know the answer to this, but I I want to get it on record. It's just like your kind of personality type. these like history are all the same. If you tell them that you can't do [laughter] something, you get the opposite reaction that you think you're going to get, which is like it's just going to make you want to do it more.

I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you can do that. People haven't done that before. Why do you think you can do that? Because entrepreneurs have something to prove. They have a vision. They have an idea. They have a passion. If you're an entrepreneur, you're passionate about what you want to start. You're like, I know this is going to work. And you're so passionate about it when someone tells you, you know, do that facial expression. I just I don't think that's a good idea. Your first thought immediately is, you know what, I'm going to prove it to you that is a great idea. And all those nos that you get, you just use that as fuel. It's like entrepreneurial fuel. It's putting gasoline on a fire because you have something to prove. you know, later in life now is, you know, I can take, you know, now that we're established and good, I can take u I can take those things and not let they'll let it fire me up. We still get at times, you know, like going into, you know, going into different countries, they're like, you know, um, you know, like this mayonnaise type sauce, it's it's much more popular as a as a as a dipping sauce. You're not going to be used for sauce. You need to add that. If I would have heard that in the early days, I said, you wait till cane sauce all that day. [laughter] You know, now I can say, "Hey, you know, actually we've had the same thing all over the United States. You ranch was popular out west and different things like that." You know, and we went into Texas, they said, "You had to have cream gravy. You got to have barbecue sauce." You know, things like that. And like, but through through tried and true over time, customers love the cane sauce. And so, we want people to have cane sauce with our meal, not with ranch because it's not nearly as good with ranch. And so, then they can understand that. So, you kind of call them later after you've proven yourself. But, like, but when you're getting started out, man, it is

but I can feel your intensity over the table. So, I I I'm very curious about this, like the the hours that you're working now, 30 years in compared to the beginning. So, um I just flew to Austin. I got to spend five hours with Michael Dell. And Michael Dell is hilarious. He's been running his business for 41 years. He's one of the most impressive people I've ever met. Very calm and measured, but underneath just a super, you know, relentless person, as you can imagine. And uh I was talking to him. I was like, "Hey, I heard you on a podcast one time. You said one of the funniest things because somebody asked him like, you know, when you were starting Dell in your University of Texas dorm room with $1,000 and you're going to take on the biggest company in the world at the time, which is IBM, like that's so crazy. And they're like, how many hours uh did you work when you started your company? And Dell's face was like all of them. [laughter] He's like literally all of them.

and so he was just like, you know, at the beginning it's I'm intensity, but you know, the value is the consistency and the compounding over decade after decade after decade. He's like, listen, I love my business. Cuz I asked him like

little bit hot.

then if you want to grow, then you're not going to have quality of life then because going from one to two is is your hardest step you'll ever have. Then two to six and six to 12 and all those growth phases are there. And so, but I just wish people wouldn't stop when they go because like my hours in the beginning, you know, when we started this restaurant, we were open every day of the week. We were open until 3:30 a.m. And except for Sundays, we closed at 3 a.m. And look, when we were closing up, it took us two hours to close down. When we opened up in the morning at at 10:30, we had to be here at 8 in the morning. And so getting about 3 hours of sleep at night. I had my apartment right back here uh that would go up and then during the day we'd be like, "Hey, go take a nap. You know, you go get a nap. I'll go get a nap for like 2 hours and then wake up and come back to work." The hours were just all the time. It was just non-stop. And I was young enough to have that stamina just to roll. And plus this environment, I love this environment cooking in this restaurant. Why it was very important for me to be in this restaurant so you could feel the vibe here. You could feel the soul right there.

You're not separated from your customers.

You constructed what with your own hands?

I pray that one of the things I don't even want you to tell me if it's true or not. We I want to talk about how you finance the business because it's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. But I just pray that today there is a boiler maker named Wild Bill that owns a couple hundred million dollars [laughter] of equity and raise a case because he bet on your chicken finger dream when you were like in your 20s.

Bought the briefcase.

Did you Did you But then you feel like a businessman. You're like

I don't even remember what it was. Yeah. Something like you

But this is super intense work.

You're so exhausted that then you stop being careful. So people were thrown out with nets. They would not hold on the boat when you're getting a bad wave and they crack their head open, their skull open. So imagine this. You're out there fishing. You're getting rammed by boats. You're picking fish. You hear on the radio somebody somebody just got scalped. I heard that distinctly scouted. I don't know how they got scouted for the boat. Some medical helicopters are going in. National Geographic's coming over filming the boat action. And I'm out there for this chicken finger dream. Nothing was going to stop me from doing it. and sure enough made good money doing both bowler making and doing the Alaskan fishing trade. Came back I lived off credit cards because I had no other income.

trying to convince captains of boats that you could die on to hire you and then to do that and then to work 20 hours and the entire time. What I love about your story is it's like I'm not thinking about Sakai salmon. I'm thinking about my chicken finger dream.

Tell me, wait, run. I love this idea. Run that back to me. I just did this episode on Elon Musk and he has a great mantra. He's like, "Retreat is not an

We are going to succeed or I'm going to." He's like, "You will know when I give up cuz I will be dead." [laughter]

He went on this camping trip to do an oath.

athletes,

That was awesome. These were all the good things we did. But you know what too is these are some of the things we can get better at. We can actually get two seconds faster, you know, and this is how we're going to do this. Look, we needed to staff more. We messed up here. We didn't give enough support because we wore out of crew. We should have had more crew members on staff. You can always learn. So I see that with people and I see it with the best athletes. I see it with the best actors. It's like that film was good, but man, I could have done this better. I could have done that better. And then like if you don't wrestling rules, then you're always going to keep striving to get better and better and better. It's like competition. I love competitors because they make you get up even earlier in the morning cuz it's like we got other people that are gunning after us. You said the funniest thing. So one, I think one of your most important messages is like we need more founders that refuse to sell their businesses like this. There's this huge entrepreneurial industry that didn't exist, especially when you were starting your companies. It's like, and the entrepreneur industry is influenced by investors, not entrepreneurs. It's like start, scale, sell.

right?

I just saw you at uh the UFC. Are you a UFC fan or

it's the same personality type. So, the reason I bring that up is because you were earlier in the conversation, you were breaking down on like the species of bird and like when it's and like the amount of detail you just explained to us. The thought I had in my mind was not about chicken fing. This is an important point you're making. It's like the same personality type just pointed at a different uh endeavor. Jon Jones, you know, probably the greatest UFC fighter. UFC is the only sport like I'm obsessed with and I I watch all the time because I don't have time to watch anything else, but I can watch one pay-per-view a month and have an understanding what's going on. And I heard him, he said the same thing that you said in that interview was like, "Oh, you want to come compete with me? This is how I feed my family." And he was fighting surreal gain. He's just like, you know, and he was studying him just like you and understanding the detail. And he's like, I know what he does when he wants to go left and when he goes right and everything else. He goes,

Absolutely, man. If I got somebody to come in and compete like you're competing with me, my livelihood of my managers, my crew members depend on this restaurant, right? You're coming, you're coming, you're gonna open up across the street here. These people feed their families off this. We're going to go at it. you better be strong because we're not going to give up, man. And look, I've done this I've done this for 30 years and I'm just as fired up as I was the first day. And like it never leaves you. You know, it's it's a blessing that entrepreneurs have because when it's so hard to start your business, you gain this great sense of appreciation. Appreciation for your crew that are working so hard beside you, great appreciation for customers coming in, paying their hard-earned money to do this, appreciation for communities that embrace you. So that sense of appreciation, which is what our culture is all built off of. 100% off appreciation is it never leaves you. You always feel appreciative. So you always want to take care of people. It's like comes in, people are like, "Oh man, you just sell the business worth all these billions. You can just not worry da da." I'm like, "Yeah, well then then what happens? What happens to my management who supporting their families?" What happens with the crew members that come up? Because if I sold the business, you think they might have the same values? I mean, really hard to find find so, you know, a buyer that would have the same values that I do and that I believe and have that deep sense of appreciation. They bought it for this, they want it to be worth this cuz they're probably going to sell it themselves. They're looking as an investment, not a vehicle to help people. And so I think when entrepreneurs go and then you get successful and then then you grow the business and then you're successful at growth and you create something it goes to a level it goes from fanaticism and passion and a dream then you get purpose. And so my purpose of of raising canes is God made me good at chicken fingers to help people. And what I mean by that is I have 75,000 crew members. We have so many part-time people that work. I love part-time quick service uh crew members that come in. We have an opportunity. It's most people's first jobs are restaurant retail. They to come in, learn values, man. One of those values. Hey, look, we're going to work hard. We're going to have fun. We're going to deliver great customer service. We're going to deliver that cravable chicken finger box. Why? Because people are spending their hard-earned money here. That's why we're going to do that. And what we're going to do with the money that we make, we're going to help out our communities. We're going to give that to to people. And as we scale this business and it grows, this thing's getting into values of billions of dollars. And someday when I clear debt, we're like $3 billion in debt now. Eventually with our growth, you know, as we go, God willing, we'll go and then we'll be able to pay down debt and we'll have a when I have this free cash flow coming out and doing we're going to be able to help people in a big way. I can't wait for that phase of our business. But that's purpose, man. So you start realizing it's not what you make, it's what you give. That's a better way to keep score. So when you have that purpose and what I would want people to do is to keep that purpose because too many great restaurant entrepreneurs and founders of the business especially in the restaurant business they sell they sell and look they're so passionate about it and they talk about it like man I have the passion and I love what I do da da da da and then all of a sudden they sell a majority stake of their business because private equity is so good at putting that package together. It's generally the numbers are five or 10 million because entrepreneurs put everything back to the business growing it. They prove in a successful model either regional or they prove it out in different regions of the country which then make it a national multiples go up and they're like hey we'll come in we'll give you we'll give you five million or we we'll give you 10 million but they take controlling the business and and these entrepreneurs are like oh my god we've struggled so long we're still living by means I got debt I got all this stuff they they will sell and then they lose control of the business and if you're private equity and private equity serves a lot of good purposes they also serve some bad purposes they take founders out of the deal. And so decisions get made differently. So a founder is powerful because a founder is their baby. It's personal to them. It's personal. So for me to today, I read customer comments and look, we don't deliver every time. We we'll screw up. We'll have somebody that was rude. We'll have something that, you know, messed up their order or something like that. I take it personal. My family, I take it personal. I'm like, you spent your money here and we didn't deliver on that promise. I don't know private equity really cares because it doesn't affect our overhaul sales. It's a small percentage of what we're doing is but you're personal on that. Your crew is personal because they're working their ass off to fulfill your dream. And you're sitting there and you're in a good financial position, but they're busting their butt. Management's busting their butt. Crew members are busting their butt. I know when I'm working at 3:00 a.m. and [snorts] I'm like, "Oh man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed." I know those crew members still closing up somewhere around the country, right? Somewhere around the world. Somebody's closing up that that way. And it's that appreciation. And so when you lose that founder personal that this is their baby, you start making the wrong decisions right now. You you really do. And so so private equity, they have their shareholders and they have to make a certain amount of money. They're not getting the returns on their dollar. They'll make other decisions that will go. Maybe they price maybe they they raise their prices and maybe it's not the right time to raise their prices. Maybe they cut their quality. Maybe they cut wages for crew. Maybe they do maybe they don't do the bonus plug programs aren't as good as the year before. All those things start to make the business not not special, you know. And so I just I just encourage people don't don't let money be one of your your major goals because if if it is if it is, you end up leaving a shallow life. You know, you end up you end up you end up saying, "I need that $10 million." But you lost control of your baby and then it's not special anymore. It's not worth the dollars. Stay with it. Grow. Learn. Bring in other people to help you business. The things you need help with. Learn it and do it. Prophet can come in and say, "Hey, look at the staffs we have in finance, accounting, IT, and all these things that you think are too hard for you to figure out. It's not too hard for you to figure out. They had to figure it out, too." At one point, I mean, you can figure that out. Bring in some great people. Stretch yourself. Hire those people. Bring them in. Learn the details yourself. I'm not good at it, but I know enough to work with great people to still add value, if that makes sense. So, I just wish founders would hold on. Hold on. Don't get rid of it, man. Like, and why would you? If it's something you're so passionate about, find that purpose. part of that purpose.

I sold my baby. And then it ends the last page. He's like, I have to tell you something. Uh, I was not true to my own self. I regret selling. Thank you for listening, Joe Columbo. Okay, that's the last page. The book is published. He dies the same week.

Think about that. Yeah.

I should I wish I had the courage. I wish I wasn't so scared. I wish like a good man. What a good man to just just just be honest, right, to everybody and I wish I didn't do it because he wants to inspire people not to make the same mistake.

Absolutely. If you do things for the right reasons in business, money will come. Yes. 100% money will come. You know, so it's like sales driven. You going to be do you want to be profit driven or do you be sales driven? Sales cures all woes. You can raise your sales. We're we're uh number two on average unit volumes in uh quick service restaurants. Chick-fil-A than us. I think McDonald's might be a million behind us per per unit per restaurant all the way down to a lot of our competitors are like a third of what we do saleswise. But you if you're sales driven, you're going to do exceptional customer service. You're going to have more people on shift, right? And then cutting it shorter to try to save labor. You're going to uh you highest quality products to do cravable. All those things that you do that do that, then you end up making more profit because you have more sales, you have more happy customers, you have more repeat business volumes, and you get the volumes, then you get flow through dollars, and you make more money. This is where the finance industry gets it wrong. And I think Bezos said this perfectly. He's just like, "No, no, over the long term, if you put the interest of customers first, it is the interest of the shareholders. It just takes longer." But that that's where you actually create the value. It's like serve the customers and then the your your shareholders make plenty of money.

It's proven time and time again and I'm example of that. You talk about entrepreneurs going to a certain point and they get they get scared at certain times. Great example is Tony Tan Shikong who had Jollibee, right? So Jollibee's um is a Filipino concept and he was a uh like engineering student. He explained to me he said look if you were smart Filipino kid your parents were like you're going to be an engineer. He's like I hate an engineer. He goes like but one time he went and looked at a dairy to see the engineering behind doing a dairy or whatnot but they had a little ice cream shop up front. He goes that's what I was interested in. I was watching them do the ice cream and run the register. So he started an ice cream shop. Then he added a burger. Then he had a spaghetti. Crazy crazy menu and became this this like success. He opened that one little ice cream shop, turns it into a restaurant, and then he starts growing it. So he's like, "My my goal, I want to be the largest restaurant tour in the Philippines." He set on his goal. He has this fanaticism. All of a sudden, McDonald's announces we're going we're going to the Philippines. They saw success that he was selling all these burgers. And his accountant and his like financial people were like, "You got to sell. You got to sell this. This concept's amazing. McDonald's started in the US. They're just going to blow us away. Sell now. You're going to make all kind of money. You can live the rest of your life and and be happy." He's like, "No, I won't be happy. I like what I do." And he said, "What do I do?" He said, "Made me nervous as hell, right?" And and and be counters will do that. They're like, and they were showing him what what could happen if McDonald's put him out of business. Could be a millionaire or, you know, or he could be worth nothing. They put him out of business completely. He said, "You know what? I'm going to put the goal. I'm going to beat McDonald's. I will be still be the largest restaurant in all the Philippines." Well, he did that. McDonald's came in. He blew them away. He grew all out through the Philippines. Get the largest restaurant in all the all the Philippines. Said his next goal, right? Fanaticism, right? Am I stopping there? I want to be the largest restaurant tour in all of Asia. Think of all in Asia. He did that. He did acquisitions of other restaurants and did his largest restaurant tour in Asia. Tony, what's the next goal? I want to be top five largest restaurant tour in the world is what I want to do. And this is the big boys. This is McDonald's. This is all the big ones. That's his next goal. But that fanaticism keeps him going versus getting scared. It's okay to be scared. It's actually a good thing. But then say, I'm fanatical. I'm going to beat it. I'm going to see it. And so I wish just more entrepreneurs would do that because so many things can be out there that can scare you. So many people going to tell you believe in yourself like you always did. And don't give up. Don't give up. You're if you if you didn't give up when you started, that's the hardest part. You didn't give up when you're growing in that idea. That's the hardest part. Don't give up now. Go. And you don't need those other things because if you lose your baby, you lose purpose. Then you lose purpose in life. There's other things to do, but it's not your passion. Let's go back to how you're financing this one and then I want to go to how you financed the the next 28 and that insane story. So, you got the wild bill, you got the refinery money, you got the sckeye salmon money, now you're playing credit card roulette.

So these were called like angel investors today.

Yeah. you know, he was, "Can you take this $10,000 investment in cash?" I'm like, [laughter] "Sure." And if I get to the bank, I'm like, "Came from my investor." But I was able to raise that and I was able to get u I was able to get a um a $90,000 SBA loan

How impactful were those words of encouragement cuz you're you're young,

Do you do you buy the real estate now for the new stores?

Won't sell you this one though.

That's a damn good idea. Maybe some in pajamas too, right? But uh but but it means something, right? And keeping this like this like like this, I can bring in management to here and show them this place. We have big pretty buildings, all functional, everything. They come here and go, "This is our soul. Just remember this is this is where we started and we got to keep that spirit going here."

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like literally the deal. I love that location. Yeah. Yeah. No. So they didn't sign the lease said I'm going to hold it for you, right? So but but this location was available and I knew it was going to be awesome. It took two years. Two years from the business plan to where I actually opened up the restaurant to me. Two years. And so literally from writing the business plan from class, going to the banks, getting turned down, working in refineries, then working in um in Alaska for the summer, then coming back that fall. And we opened in '96. So it' be the fall of 95 when I got back then. So I had had some money on the deal. I went and got that S SBA loan and got got the investors. And from there then we started the construction process. We started getting the used equipment and look at the equipment I went I got from from I went to Houston and Dallas restaurant supply houses cuz you know restaurant business go out nine out of 10 go out of business. I could go buy stuff and I'm like I need a fryer that'll work 60 days. Like give me your cheapest fryers. And they had to be 85 lb fryers. And they're like well this one's I'm like, "Yeah, it's 10 times as much." I need something to last because I know as soon as I prove this will work, I know I can get another loan, you know? Okay. Thank goodness we made money. And so we we when we opened up, like I was I was so excited. We reconstructed. We're ready to open up. We got registers back to Office Depot. There these little registers. And once they figured out how to program them, I went and started waving people in the restaurant. And people came and people liked it. And man, we made $30 the first month. That's what we made. People like, "That's all you made?" I'm like, "No, dude. That means I could pay my crew. I could pay rent. I could pay, you know, literally payroll's taken care of. I can pay the vendors. We're working. And steadily off of that, we started making more and more money. I could replace equipment as we went. Just basically dumped everything back into the restaurant. And sure enough, I was like, like, this is working great. We can go to the other side of campus and we can go in and do that. I brought the business plan to the SBA lenders that did us. And I got to that one literally 18 months later, I was able to buy the piece of property, construct a new building, and open up 18 months after the first one. It took two years to start the this first one on a shoestring budget. The second one I have a piece of property and I got a brand new building that we opened up and it showed efficiencies there. And what was really amazing with that location is that it was on the other side of campus. It also had traffic flow from neighborhoods, office buildings, things like that. So we had not just students coming in. All of a sudden we had, you know, businessmen and women coming in for lunch. We had moms and dads picking up food on the way home. We had T-ball teams on Saturday. We had church groups on Sunday. And that's when I got the vision. I was like, "This isn't just a college concept. It's what I thought it was if I just worked for college kids." I'm like, "This works for everybody." And that's when I got that fire, man, to grow at that point. That's when I got the vision, man. And the vision at that point was, and it wasn't it wasn't articulated this way, but what I wanted was locations all over the world. And I'm like, I want to be known as the brand for cravable chicken finger meals, great crew, cool culture, and active community involvement. Like, those were the things that turned me on with that deal, right? Means everything. Absolutely, man. And it's teamwork and it's good. And also too is why I like why I love operators is it's like when I was on the football team. It's constant coaching. Oh yeah, it's good pass. Oh man, you screwed that up, man. Like make sure your arm goes back and you know, hey, block hard or do this. You know, like you're getting constantly coached and nobody takes it bad. No one takes criticism bad because it's all about doing better, winning the game. It's all the same thing in the kitchen. You're like, hey man, toast toast needs to hurry up. D, hey, great. That's great toast. Like you can mix those things in in a corporate environment. And this is how you get weeded out of Kane's corporate is the people that can't take constant constant coaching. And it's coaching, right? You know, it's like, well, no, we should we should meet every six months on a eval and how we're doing and blah blah blah and all that stuff. It's like, no, every day is an eval. Like, every day we want to get better. And a lot of corporate people, one, if you make mistakes, like I encourage make mistakes. We're not making mistakes. We're not pushing ourselves. We're not trying new things. We're not doing things. But let's learn from them, but let's admit our mistakes. I see corporate people come in and it's like like you don't don't address an issue. You just say, "Oh, we're doing D." It's just like, "Hey, man. We screwed up on this. We learned this. We're going to do this differently. Let's move on." Like it takes all of 30 seconds. And when you create that kind of environment, like in a coaching situation or in operations, that's that's that's that's a challenge for me on growing the business because we're bringing in some really experienced people from other organizations, right? Yeah. Right. Now, as we do that, a lot of the culture is you don't admit mistakes. uh you don't you don't want to you don't one you don't want to admit mistakes and two you don't want you don't want to be you don't want to be coached it's this academia type of of things like that like look man I'm learning every day and I'm the first one always to say man I screwed up on that that was a bad decision then the team knows hey well once it's validation too he doesn't think he knows everything and two it's okay for me to make mistakes you know we we but we do need to learn from them like Todd's not going to make that same mistake over and over like we know that and and I won't either right and so that's some of the uh the challenge in growth and in in in restaurant growth, we get the operators and and if you're an operator, man, you just have that culture and we have to get as people that are intrinsically motivated, right? And so we can pay people really well because we do we do good, but the but pay doesn't matter, man. It's like to the people they want to make a good living. Of course, title doesn't matter, right? You know, it's like this VP, executive, all these like titles and stuff like that. People are like title crunching up. I can literally interview somebody and and I can see the things that's like it's like they're going after title, they're going after pay, they're going after these things versus intrinsic motivation. Like I like to lead people. I like to be part of good teams. I like to be part of high performing teams because it gets the most out of me. I like to be excited by what I'm doing at work. Those are the things when you hear that you're like you're intrinsically motivated. I like what y'all do back in the community. Hey, have you ever thought about supporting this? I think this is a great organization. When you hear that kind of stuff because there's plenty of brilliant people there. There's so many brilliant people who do the same job or that have it that have the experience but that will learn that right they have the intelligence to do it but it's heart it's 100% heart man if you're intrinsically motivated to do really well. Okay. Separated from the customer and separated from the crew. corporate environments like like when I started off I I was the first guy to wear a can's t-shirt to like conferences right everybody else is in a suit and tie but there are crew members in the restaurant are wearing like you know jeans and t-shirts like you know it was it was this business mentality from here you're separated from the customer because you're not in your restaurant seeing who's who's being served and you're also not with your crew to see what gets it you're in the suit so immediately when you go in with your suit into a restaurant they're immediately like there's a separation there's a divide when I walk in a restaurant I'm dressed exactly like them and I speak their language. And I talk to customers, they're like, there's no separation. Like, oh, that's the boss. They're like, oh, that's the founder, right? That's a different different title. you know, old school guy. He's cursing all the other boys like, "God damn it," and he's just like, "I always tell the goddamn people in the office, like the only reason they have a job is cuz the people in the store selling tires." And then he would talk about this. He's like, "If you if you're out, you're you're going to love this guy. I already know this for a fact. I'll send it to you." Uh he's like, "If you spend 30 days outside of a store, you forgot half of what you know." He's like, "You have to be." He's like, "Every single thing." He's like, "We exist to serve the people that are serving our customers." yeah literally it is like it means if it mean if it means no no sleep that week it's it is what it is it means I can take off a day and go go climb a mountain I'm going to do that you know what whatever whatever call for the business then you answer that. So there there is no schedule. There is no that. And so the discipline comes from the focus and the fanaticism. You're always going to be there. You're going to do it. But there are there are the things you have to structure and do it. And so like for me is to scale. I created the Kane's love department in our business. Respect, recognition, and rewards, man. Like so, you know, when you have crew members that are working hard, right? One, things of respect are things that you should just do. You shouldn't get credit for them. So like we're closed on every major holiday. That's not a reward. That's not recognition. It's just it's just respect, man. It's like, do I want to work on July 4th? No, I don't. I want to be my family and friends. I want to enjoy the holiday. I want to take off Christmas Eve. I want to not work on uh on Christmas Day. I I want to be, you know, holidays and things like that. I want to be there. So, if I respect for my crew members, if I'm not going to work, you're not going to work. I work nights. I work weekends. I work all that. But we don't want to work on those days. I mean, the first July 4th I was open at this restaurant, I saw the crew was dragging. I was here working with them, right? But they were like, uh cuz all their friends were doing something fun, their family doing something fun. I was like, you know what? That's not worth it. So that's respect. Recognition is something you should res you should recognize achievement. You should recognize tenure. You should recognize all these things. There seems to recognize all the it starts from the simple things like, "Hey, that's great toast. Thanks for being so friendly in the drive-thru, man. They loved you today." It's things like that that like you work a year raising canes, you get a hard hat. It symbolizes the first year I was there. All the crew members signs it. It's fun, right? Five years you're getting the the salmon. Those are the rec recognizing things. Recognizing that deal then rewarding. So, it's like whether it's a, you know, a $5 gift card to go get a coffee at the local coffee shop onto other bigger and better things that you get. There's rewards that you get and and I want to build that better and better. But like if I just think of these ideas and they come and go, it's like no, create a department around that. Like like literally department that thinks of nothing but respect, recognizing, rewarding crew members every day and put a bunch of brilliant people. Most of them came from from operations in the restaurant and they know this stuff, but build systems. So, our next thing with that is versus saying here's the gift card or here's here's a new Kane's hat or things like that. It's like build a point system, right? It's kind of fun, right? You'd be like, you know, you come in, you get it for every year you work, every month you work, you build shifts, right? Like, hey, so and so was sick. Do you mind coming in and working? They come in, you get points and I want to build it up a really exclusive type merch and stuff you could build up to and do. But like constantly getting better at that, raising the bar, but have people around that, not just the field. You have to put programs and things around these great thoughts. One of the best pieces of advice that I've ever read in a book is came from Mary Kay who built that massive remember the Mary Kay cosmetics and they would they would people with like the pink Cadillacs and everything dick. Just being clear. It's like I'm I'm, you know, kind of obsessed." And that just knowing that is like actually helped me interact with other people better and to kind of like modulate my behavior. It's just like they just want that person wants to feel special just like you do. Just like the person that helped you secure this. Like man, Grace, Henry Ford, no one knows who he is. He's not successful. I think he's already failed. He had two or three fa two failed uh car companies before he finally succeeded was the third too. Again, just I'm coming no matter what. Thomas Edison is the most famous person, one of the most famous people in the country. He has a hard time hearing. They're at dinner like a huge dinner and Henry, but Henry Ford's an engineer. And so he gets up a minute with his hero Thomas Edison and he's having to like yell in his good ear about this and I think it's like seven words or something like that but Edison obviously brilliant he just gets it right away and he go he hits the table and he goes that's it young man you have it keep at it and then Henry Ford says his autobiography which he's writing 40 years later he's like those seven or eight words of encouragement there was a hell of a lot of pain between him telling me that and me succeeding at this idea but I heard heard that in my mind and it kept me. I was going to keep going, but a little boost was very freaking helpful. And I heard Edison, my hero, saying, "You're good at this. You have a good idea. Don't give up." Absolutely is. But it's earned encouragement. Edison knew he had it, right? You know, and so uh some of that's tough love. I had to learn that on um Shark Tank. Tough love is also when you get different entrepreneurs and things like that and sometimes the ideas aren't good. I I wasn't good at it. Like it was always encouraging and you'll find a way and do but like on Shark Tank they're like hey man you're going to have to learn tough love like like Cuban knew me right and then then being around Mr. Wonderful then they're like No disrespect to Shark Tank but … that. Like I cannot stand. I said this in the episode I did about you. It's just like the future is unpredictable. Like if you read history as much as any like I think I read history more than almost anybody else. It's like all it is is humans failing to predict the future accurately. Why would you sit there and think that you sit on a stage with in a suit and a bunch of makeup on and tell say this kid's not going to succeed. … you. How about that? Like let's see how a guy actually going to go. I hate people that do that. And so my idea is like I obviously there's a hu millions of founders listen to founders and I get emails and all this kind of stuff and we have conversations like what do you think? What I think doesn't matter. I was like I don't know. I have no way to predict the future. All I know is like when I started my podcast people are like there's too many podcasts out there. It's like 2000 there's 10 years ago there's no podcast out there. They're like no one's going to listen to a solo podcast. No one's going to listen to a podcast where you can't make a living reading books for like that's ridiculous. It's like it doesn't matter. I just I actually hate that show. No offense to them, but it's just like the idea of I'm I'm all knowing. I'm an expert. There is no such thing as an expert in entrepreneurship. You know what? You're going to be an expert in raising canes. You're an expert in raising canes. And I'm sure you have a ton of ideas which are obviously transferable to other businesses, but there's you don't we don't have predictive ability. I just did this episode on Elon Musk. Let me give you example. There's a guy named Michael Morris who might be the most successful venture capitalist of all time. He's at Sequoa. He in invested in PayPal which is a successful exit. Okay? Okay, they sold it to uh eBay for I don't know $1.8 billion or something like that if you want exits. So, they sell that. Then he he already knew who Elon was. He invested in PayPal, which it was Elon's company. Then Elon goes to start Tesla and he pitches Michael and Michael's like, "Uh" he's like, "Invest in my new company. You just made money with me." Michael's like, "You're trying to compete with Toyota. That's impossible. I'm passing." Okay, that's a multi-billion dollar mistake on Michael's part. Okay, the funny part is and and I'm not doing this to to shame Michael because in the book later on he goes that was he's saying years he goes that was a mistake because I severely underestimated the level of Elon's determination. That's why I don't like shows like that. You don't know what's inside that person's heart, inside that soul. It might take him five years, might take him 10 years. There's a book next to me that I just showed you uh before we started. Okay. The reason that I've read 400 biographies of of history's greatest entrepreneur. Endure the pain. It is. It is 100% is. It really is. In my conversation with Daniel Ek on this podcast, he said one of the most important ideas I've ever heard. He said, "I'm not obsessed about time. I'm obsessed about energy management. If you have time, but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything." Anyways, I signed up for Function long before they were a sponsor of this podcast. And when you sign up, they ask you what your health goals are. And my response in all caps was maximum energy. All of the founders, CEOs, and extreme winners I have studied have excessively high energy levels. If you're going to be the best at what you do, you need to maximize your energy and output. And that is why I've partnered with Function. Function provides access to comprehensive blood tests and other lab testing to help you improve your health so you can perform at your highest level. Function has made it easy for me to monitor and improve my internal health markers so that I feel at my absolute strongest. As a member of Function, you get access to test over 100 plus biomarkers from hormones to toxins to markers of heart health, inflammation, and stress. Function gives you a straightforward analysis of all your results along with advice from expert doctors on how to improve things like your testosterone, your stress hormones, how to reduce toxins in your bodies, and much more. The platform is absolutely beautiful and provides an easy to understand picture of your overall health. Once you try Function, you'll immediately understand why it's the fastest growing health platform in the country. To learn more about Function and join, go to functionhealth.com/enra. Right now, Function is offering a $100 credit to the first thousand people who sign up for a Function membership. To get this $100 credit, just visit functionhealth.com/enra and then get the data you need to maximize your energy. Again, that's functionhealth.comra. For me, you know, when I was growing and and seeking advice and I got a lot of really good advice, I also got a lot of bad advice that I was able to like see through it, you know what I mean, and learn from. You learn from good and bad. Good examples, bad examples. Like people started saying stuff like, "Hey, look, you know, Todd, you're just you're you're so much in the details. You just need to delegate. Delegate." God, I hated hearing that word delegate. I'm like, and and you also refer people to products that can help consolidate the information to write quicker, efficient, more decisions like that. You get better at that, but stay in the things that stick to what you know. Second on the concept, man, I'm fully believe be good at one thing and do better than anybody else. be relentless. I do it better than anybody else. right and you said something I was like I know him like He's kindred spirits, man. It's not just the principle of doing one thing, doing better than everything else. It's like how it applies to every single thing. And you talked about on that podcast where it's just like well a simple menu has all these other positive effects that you know you can really focus all the details good you can make it better but also you even had the concept that it's going to allow you in the future to serve more people because it's a it's a shorter order time when did you figure that out? Did you know that at the beginning? their food? How clean is our is our restaurant right now? What's the general vibe here? Oh, wait. The music's a little lower. Someone knocked it down. Where's those things? So, our management can focus on that. The crew member and customer experience and make sure that goes because there's not these LTOs they have to learn, go through training modules and do that. You focus on what you do good. And so like you go back to that business plan they talked about not having all these different menu items. No veto vo don't happen. They're like you're not going to get the frequency because you need frequency gets driven by different menu items because you get that all that stuff is our frequency is just as high as any other quick service restaurant. Meaning how many times somebody comes back in a month period of time. But then you come back right you come back. So so so it's it's anti what they say is what drives this stuff. It's like there there's no veto vote. There's no there's no uh variety drives more sales. It's actually frequency. Our frequency is high as anybody else is serving the exact same thing people have day in day out because it's good. Because it's good. Our competitors can run chicken finger, chicken strip, whatever type sales. It doesn't affect our sales. It doesn't affect it because people say they might try it, but two days later they're they're coming back getting their chicken finger meal from us because it's the best. You know, it's actually actually I love it when they run all these specials. They do all this stuff because it adds more it adds more advertising out there for chicken fingers and we're known for the chicken fingers, man. It's like when I when I want people talk about chicken fingers, chicken strips, whatever they're talking about, boneless chicken being dipped, I want them to say grazing canes in their mind. Like Xerox, you know, it's not a cop anymore. Go give me a Xerox of that. That's what you want to be known for. Do what you're good at. Yeah. We went to we landed went directly to one last night and just greeting every single person that went to the door. Todd's just going to have chicken fingers. I'm going to have chicken fingers and nine other things. The problem with that is the distracted do not beat the focus. The distracted don't beat the focus. People go back and get their same sauce. They might come try it one time, and then it's also slowing down their order process. It's slowing down turnover time and all that stuff, and then they go back to the same sauce. So, how much time did you spend on all those different sauces that when it comes down to you might have narrow down to three sauces, what are the what are the most popular? Narrow down your menu items. You're seeing more and more by dininging restaurants narrowing their menu. It's happening now. I'm not saying I I was I was a part of that, but maybe they looked at Canes and said, "Wait a minute. I bring my kids here. We come here all the time. Maybe I don't need 50 different menu items on this." Maybe you can get me in. yeah cheesecake factory I don't go there it's like I don't want homework like I got other … in my head I don't want to think about it this is what we love is like last night we were like okay what do you want you want three chicken fingers four chicken fingers or six like that's all you have to you already know like that's all you have to think so another way that you buck so you have this limited menu Right. And then most people in your industry will they they're the franchise model. Why did you not choose to go down that path? why do they do that? wages went up, everything went up and it actually improved out better. So look, I I I think it works for some organizations. I for me personally, especially in the restaurant business, I think the company model just rules. I really I'm drinking too much. [laughter] But that's the key. That's the key to success. That's common in everybody that's successful. I believe and how the franchising. uh Yeah. Yeah, probably three years I started talking about it because when I got the No, no, no, no. So, so second restaurant was was second restaurant was 18 months after the first restaurant. Then from there I had an opportunity when I really knew I wanted to grow and that's when my partner got out which was really interesting. You said it has to be natural to you. My partner Craig who was great. He loved the finance part of he loved the IT. He loved the business administration stuff. He wanted a fry cook like me. And he's like Todd when when I get a night off when I get a night off I go read the Wall Street Journal. He goes, "You know what you do? You get a night off. You're you're writing new schedules that would be better on the deal list." He's like, "I just doesn't make me happy." Yeah. And so, but the end of getting, we didn't have much money to buy out then, but he he ended up getting a scholarship to wait for business. He did all the things he did. He actually came back Canes for several years doing the things he likes to do. Uh has his own business now. He does he does really well. Still one of my dear friends, but it wasn't happening to him. He had the courage to say, "I don't I don't like this." Like, this is all we're doing is is is is being fry cooks. Doesn't turn me on. You know, it doesn't do it. And so like I encourage people like do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life, right? It's just a part of your DNA. Like there's no work. There's no I'm I'm working, I'm not working now. I mean like I'll be at the beach and it's like, you know, checking in and we got calls and I'm being well rollheads on the beach. You know, you're talking doing and then you get back to hey, let's have a margarita. You know, it's like it's a part of what you do. So you have to do what you love, right? You have to and if you do, you'll never you'll never work. There won't work. Words like career. It's not a career. It's a passion. It's just what you do. It's the same thing as I get up and I go take a walk and I love my dogs. I love my business. Love my kids. Things like that is what makes makes the difference in being whole, I believe. So, one of the disadvantages of having other partners in your business is that they might have different goals in mind that you have in your business. Right? So, an entrepreneur and a founder brings on an equity partner, whether it's an individual or whether it's a professional group, private equity. I would be very careful on what their motives are. And if their motives is is about a financial return, you're generally going to end up bad because you have a you have a fiduciary responsibility to the other owners of your business to meet their their goals, right? And if those goals are financial on that deal is it can change your thinking. You can change your thinking on quality in my in my business. You could change vision on quality food. You could try to lower food to make more profitability, which is a short-term game. You could you could cut wages, right? And so your crew members aren't as happy. they're not as appreciated on on the deal. You could try to do different avenues of sales just to raise sales. That's going to lose your focus. There's all kind of bad things that go with that. Only way I do a partner if they believe 100% in what you believe in. And then you also believe that they're not going to sell that stock to somebody else that doesn't in the future. And rarely does that work out. If it's special to you, hold on to your equity. Take the risk. get more financing, but keep it yours because you'll always be able to protect your baby. You know what makes it worth work worth better than anybody else. And he was the most wealthy man in the world. He drove the old pickup truck and went to work every day. It's not about the money. And so, you have to love it. It has to be, you have to be irrationally obsessed with it. And then what happens? It goes back to the anti-b businessiness billionaires. The people that are rationally obsessed with it, they make better products. And then customers, this person, no one keeps it to themselves. That just humans don't do that. They're just like you got to have this chicken. This is just crazy. It's incredible. And so that all this stuff, the love, the staying in being hyperfocused, staying in something for a long time. Mildly obsessive, compulsive. What do you mean what they have in common? Like, it's obvious like what they have in common to him. Yeah. Being Molly obsessive compulsive is actually a good thing. Um it's the same personalities like whether you're playing basketball or you're building raising and canes. So, wait. So, how many years of doing the franchise, you're like, "Shit, this is not the right move." Okay. Okay. So, let's go from two for how did you finance when you got up to 28? boopping around to restaurants and then like putting out fires basically is all I was doing. I did that and then from there so I was able to get into those there I was like okay I'm gonna come up with a prototype like what is Raisin Kane's ultimate location the prototype I want to do and I want to do it out of town and so out of Baton Rouge And we created that. And so, but I got that on another commercial loan. Now, I'm like, you know, with the money coming in and doing this thing is I'm bankable, but I'm not bankable to where I want to grow, which ended up being the 28. And so, back then, bank regulations were a lot uh more lenient, man. And so what I said was why don't we go in to all these comm community to go to these community banks. So let's say we want to open up in Homa home Louisiana. Go to the community bank in Homa and let me go to angel investor and this was Dr. Hill had those fasttracks. He wanted to be landlord. He also liked to do deals and he said hey let me buy equity in the company. I don't want to have equity partners but I'll give you a subt deal. So Dr. Hill, let's say I borrow $200,000 from you. I'll give you a 15% interest rate subordinated debt. I mean, this a one-page deal. Subordinated debt means subordinated to the banks. I know I can take that that that subordinated debt at $200,000 and the bank will look at that as equity, right? So, it's 200 $200,000 a million dollar deal. So, I could go into the to to to the location, get that financed, boom. And I was creating cash when I did that because basically I could open up. I didn't have to pay my my rent for 30 days. I had to pay my vendors for 30 days, you know, all those things came. So, I opened up, got this cash flow in and do it, boom, do the next one. Subordinated debt, no equity. And it it was really stupid way to finance a business, man. But I was I was young. I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof. We're going to work. I mean, I had zero fear of any kind of risk on debt, right? And so, I was going in creating cash, doing this stuff. I get up to 28 restaurants and all of a sudden we have a we have a storm coming in named Katrina. It's coming into Louisiana. We're used to used to hurricanes. We knew what to do. We put crew to safety, shut down the restaurants, buckled everything down. Hurricanes would come through. We open up the next day. We'd have some power outage, whatever. But Katrina was different cuz it came up, went over New Orleans, and it hovered and then the levies broke, right? And we're watching on TV from our second location across here where we could all go, we got this whatever cranks up this power to where we could actually watch television. And when the levies broke, we're like, we've never seen this before. What is this flooding, terrible, awful bit? And I thought I said, "Man, you just screwed up bad. You screwed up bad. You just put this company in such bad financial condition because now there ain't no sales coming in." And we knew it was going to take a while to open up. 21 out of the 21 out of the 28 were down from either power to damage to flooding to whatever it was. And so no cash is coming in. I got the companies levered to the hilt, right? I owe everybody. And in times like that, you think that, you know, you think that the the banks still want their money. Landlords still want their money. And I gathered I gathered people together. We had teams that help people that actually had damage at houses and do all these things. We had to keep up through like SMS texting to make sure everybody we actually set that up pretty good before. And I'm like, "Look, we need to rally." And when I tell you we need to rally, they said, "We need to rally to save this business." And I explained to them how we had financed everything. and they understood and I said we need to open up because one we need to save the business two we need a place for our crew to come back to work because they have bills too we got managers and things like that displaced they're coming back they don't have a job and we don't have money now like we have vendors and things like that to to pay for their livelihood and and then three people are going to start coming back to New Orleans and they they need a place to eat and we symbolize as a team and we have that same fanatical view of we're going to do it We figured out I figured out how to get into New Orleans right away talking to the governor's office. They got us passes to go in. They weren't letting anybody in. We we worked with the state on doing bull water acts because we didn't have formalized bull water acts. You have to bull the water because I mean like some of the the rivers and all these things that hit everything. You had to boil the water. But we came up with with working with them on like how do you boil the water? How do you test it to where it's safe? Those sort of things. And we reopened, man. We reopened like we started off on the northshore, you know, slide those areas on the west bank like some areas we open up like like in me which is just a mass population of people. We're the only restaurant open. We opened up 30 days after the storm. Other restaurants didn't open like 90 days. We opened up in the West Bank. The whole market opened up in in in like the West Bank. We opened up in Harvey and like it was in like 120 days or whatever for the next restaurant open. We fed first responders first and when people came back, they just came in and we were the only place to eat. They come in and eat. More come in and eat, right? Because it was like you can come in. We got power. He's all generator power. We got generation all the country. Got him in set it up and we galvanized that point like the team and the community and like us being open and then sales were nuts. Like it was nuts. So now we had cash flow coming in. We could do these massive crew bonuses. We could give back to the community organizations. And I mean I was just really really proud of the team. And at the same time proud I was I was disappointed in myself and I was disappointed myself because I put all that in jeopardy. You know what I mean? I put all that in jeopardy for financing from that day when I watched the levies break. I said I'll never ever ever put the position the company in a position that we're financially strapped. Like I'll never do that again. And from that day we got our metrics and we worked towards it took us a couple years to get there but we work towards those right you know it's like three times debt equity you know sales all that stuff is we'll never cross that. like I have a capacity to get all kind of you know lending but but we won't but we won't go past the our metrics right we won't go past that so we learned that one the hard way a lot of the same things with co you know when co happened we're like but we had to learn everything it was like literally hey guys we We talked to the restaurant industries, all the the authorities were like, "We're going to tape off every six feet for people to be. We're going to put uh shields between people." It's like symbolizing the team like that. And then we took parking lots and we had three drive-through lanes. When I tell you when like we were the like the first that figured that out, could you imagine people now have a place to go get some food and not just eat at their house what they get from the grocery store, man? It's like our sales went crazy. were able to do huge crew bonuses, uh, customer bonuses, but it's that fanaticism to figure it out right now. And it's like me leading with the people and I have so many people are better at it than me, but like in the weeds with them in the restaurants. I flew to all of our markets and saw everybody. But you could, that's one, too. I couldn't even go in the restaurant because it'd be crosscontamination like if I had it and went in. So I just waved everybody outside, I love what you said. It's like I watch the levies break and there's no way I'm ever going to jeopardize like this is my life's work. This is a part of me. I cannot let this die. One of my great favorite um quotes about this is Steve Jobs says victory in our industry is spelled survival. You see this over and over again in biography. He's like just stay in the game long enough to get lucky. You took two one of two gigantic, you know, tragedies that were outside of your control, which of course you're going to run into things that are outside of your control, and you turn them in to not a li you flipped it from a liability to an asset. And it goes back to what have we been talking about? The fact that you're a fanatic, the fact that you're trying to create the world's best product in the category that you're in, the fact that you limit, you know, the amount of details, you perfect every single detail. Now these people they they've maybe never would have tried raising canes if that didn't happen because you now but you're the only game in town and then you're like oh this is pretty good and then think about how many customers that one person has got has has given you the one one thing that comes to mind about this like this sounds crazy but one of my favorite entrepreneurs I've ever come across I found this biography autobiography of Estee Lauder published in 1980s okay she at the time Esteer was not the public company it was still very successful but was a family-owned business and she would get a lot of … from people cuz they're like her main distribution channel was like she wants your like Bloomingdales or Neiman Marcus to take care to to as a distribution center. So she goes okay if you're willing to sell my products that I love that I gave my life to I'm going to show up when you do that. And so she would go she oh big Neiman Marcus open in Houston that makes a lot of sense. You're going to have a thousand customers. Why estate? Why are you going down to Corpus Christie? There's going to be 20 people there. And she's like, "Every single customer matters." And so what she would do is on these trips, she wasn't she didn't have any money to fly. So she'd have to take trains and buses. And let's say you're sitting across from Estee just like me and you're sitting across from she sees a woman. She hi I'm Estee Lauder. Would you mind 20 give me 20 minutes of your time? I'll give you a free makeup. I make beauty products or makeover rather. She like, "Oh, I guess we're just in her. Let's do this." And then she does it one-on-one attention. People like, "Oh, that doesn't scale. You can't do that." … It's going to scale because you're going to do this for the rest of your life. And so she says 30 years later, Exactly. I've been a customer of yours for I don't know four years and then they make a podcast that's been listened to by like half a million people. [laughter] in purpose, right? And so what what excites me about talking to you today is is that the people that listen if they get a little nugget from this, a little nugget that changed their life that helps people like that fires me up. The reason why you're doing this and you're so fanatical about having I mean the questions you sent me before, right? I had those questions. I was able to to wrap my mind around it because you want it to be good for the listeners. But that's purpose, man. And if if it was just slapping something out to say this is success and do it, it's what people learn and what people will benefit out of this conversation is what matters. It's just like I my favorite entrepreneurs like sometimes I've got to speak to entrepreneurs. I just had dinner with uh one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's 76 years old. He's been working the family business since he was six. Do you understand what's in that guy's head? Absolutely. Oh, well, I appreciate what you do. I appreciate you having me on. I love the conversation. We could actually talk for another five hours. All right, let's do it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.