Founders - #383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Todd Graves is one of my favorite living entrepreneurs. He's a great example of Charlie Munger's maxim: Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Todd wanted to create a quick service restaurant that only focused on quality chicken finger meals and nothing else. Everyone told him that couldn't possibly work. The college paper that described the idea that would turn into Raising Canes got the lowest grade in the class. Banks wouldn't loan him any money —but nothing could stop Todd from living out his "chicken finger dream." He worked 95 hour weeks as a boilermaker, risked his life on a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, and scrounged up startup money from his bookie and a guy named Wild Bill. Todd made every mistake in the book, over leveraged himself, almost lost everything and yet he refused to give up or sell out. Today he has over 800 locations, 50,000 employees, and owns 90% of a business that's worth at least $10 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." Sources: Trading Secrets: Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves reveals his path to building the wildly popular restaurantTheo Von: Raising Cane’s Founder Todd Graves----Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more. ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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. In fact, he mentioned learning from his friend who runs a multi-billion dollar shipping company and how his friend would even pay attention to how much his business was spending on bottled water. And when I read that section, I thought it would 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 is that the fact that 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 the shipping company with the rampant spending on water. With Ramp, you can stop it before it happens. Matt Paulson, who is the founder of Marketbeat, recently switched to Ramp and this is what he said about it. Ramp is the best. The amount of

money that 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's a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography that says, cost control became nearly an obsession. All of history's greatest founders were the exact same way. Ramp helps you make it an obsession. All of history's greatest founders were the exact same way.

Ramp helps you make it an obsession. If Carnegie was alive today, I believe he'd be running 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.

One more tool that I need to tell you about is the AI assistant that I built for Founders Notes. So Founders Notes has this giant database that has all of the notes for every book that I read for the podcast, all the highlights for every book that I read for the podcast, and all the transcripts for every episode that I make for the podcast. And I built an AI assistant on top of it called Sage. And so what Sage does is it reads all of my notes and highlights for every book that I've read for the podcast and it reads all the transcripts for every episode. So when I asked Sage a question, it's able to pull up the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders immediately.

It's like having access to the super brain that has read all of these books on history's greatest founders. And then you can ask that super brain for advice on how to solve problems in your business. If you are running a successful business, I highly recommend going to foundersnotes.com and getting access today. I highly recommend using Sage to supplement the decisions that you're making in your work. And you can do that by going to foundersnotes.com.

The link will also be down below. Since I study dead entrepreneurs for a living, I get the question, like out of the living entrepreneurs, who do you most admire? And a lot of the people on the list would be familiar to you. But I found when I mentioned that one of the living entrepreneurs that I most admire is this guy named Todd Graves, people first of all haven't heard of him. And they're even more surprised when I said, well, Todd Graves founded this quick service restaurant that serves only chicken fingers over 30 years ago.

He owns over 90% of it and the business, his business is worth at least $10 billion. And I think Todd is a great example of one of my favorite ideas I heard from Charlie Munger of find a simple idea and take it seriously. And so I didn't know who Todd Graves was, because there's no books written about him, until I saw a clip a few years ago. And then I watched every interview I could find with him. And so for this episode, what I did

is there's two main interviews that he gave. I transcribed them, and then I went through the transcripts just like I do for the books. But my fascination with this person is sometimes you can find, you hear somebody say, express an idea or perspective or philosophy, and it could be like in a sentence or two. And you're immediately like, yes, I feel that way too. This happened with Pat Riley, the legendary coach and NBA executive.

And I was listening to an interview with him many years ago, and he was asked, why is winning insatiable? Pat is in his 70s and he's still pushing it every day. He's still working very hard. He's still determined to win. And he said, I hated to lose. I always thought that there'd be severe consequences if I lost.

It was personal to me. I'm gonna pause there. Remember that line, it was personal to me. Todd's gonna repeat that over and over and over again. I like how serious he takes his business. I feel the same way, just like I feel exactly, identify exactly with the way Todd is building Raising Canes with the way that Pat Riley's

still approaching his career, you know, five decades into it. And then the follow-up question in this interview with Pat Riley was, but how could you feel that way? And as soon as I heard this, this is how I know I'm eventually gonna do an episode on Pat too, because it's like, I felt, you feel that way? And as soon as I heard this, this is how I know I'm eventually going to do an episode on Pat too, because it's like, I felt I feel this way too. He goes, I just did. I felt that way since the day I came out of my mother's womb.

I felt that I wasn't going to let anybody take anything from me that I worked hard to get. You were going to see a lot of similarities between that short excerpt from an interview with Pat Riley for the what we're going to go through with Todd Graves. I'm going to start, I'm going to see a lot of similarities between that short excerpt from an interview with Pat Riley for what we're going to go through with Todd Grapes. I'm going to start, I'm going to go kind of in order Todd's career, but I do want to start with the one clip that I saw that made, that piqued my interest. As soon as I heard that, I sat up, I was like, wait, wait, wait. I've seen this before once. Todd has a lot in common, as we'll see, with a lot of history's greatest founders, but

also you see this idea over and over again where you can have a lot of success. Charlie Munger has this great line, something to the effect of, oftentimes in the winning, we find the winning system in business goes ridiculously far minimizing and or maximizing one or a few variables and he used Costco as an example. And so the clip that I saw was Todd saying,

he has this very simple menu, the same menu that he's had since day one. He had all these people tell him before he started the business and the earliest of the business to this day, what you're doing is not gonna work. Your menu is too simple. You need to follow the trends.

You need to do what your competitors are doing. And he's just so stubbornly believes in doing one thing and doing it the best you can. So he says, I've always believed in doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else. If you do what you do well and consistently do it great, your customers will come back. And so if I added different things, meaning to the menu, if I over complicated things, if I made things,

he believes in this, like this beautiful simplicity that I identify with. So if I add different things, I wouldn't be as quick in the drive-thru. If I added all these things, my quality would go down, my speed would go down and it wouldn't be our concept. Adding different things and losing focus would lose while we're special. And so it's not just, hey, if I narrow the focus, if I limit the amount of details that my business has and then perfect every single detail, I will create the greatest product in my category, which he has obviously done. But it's also, he understands how everything he does relates

to the entire system. So this idea is like, well, if I have a more simple menu, one that makes my product better, because I can really focus on that, right? But it means that people come through the drive-through or come into the store. And because you have four things, you go into raising canes, right?

You're like, do you want three chicken fingers? Do you want four or do you want six? It makes, you can order faster. And so why is that important? May not make a difference when you have one or two stores if you save 15, 30 seconds for each order, but it makes a hell of a difference, right? When you have 800 stores like he does today. And so he continues this and I didn't see this. That's where the clip ended. And then he continues adding to this he goes, so we

even try to limit distracting things where the clip ended. And then he continues adding to this. He goes, so we even try to limit distracting things in the drive thru. So he does a lot of like charity work. There's a lot of celebrities he has like, reason canes has a cult like following. It's very much like In-N-Out. And I'm going to draw the analogy of In-N-Out over and over again today. Because it's just like, oh, this is like Harry Snyder, the founder of In-N-Out. In-N-Out is reincarnated. And his name is Todd Graves. And so there's this

the show that he was doing that was helping restaurants with Snoop Dogg. And so he's like, oh, let's advertise the show. We'll put it on the drive-through. So there's a picture of me and Snoop Dogg. He's like, wait a minute. That the problem was even putting that poster, people sit there for like an extra five or 10 seconds and look at this. And he's like, wait, we got to rethink this because we got 20 cars behind that guy that is sitting there taking an extra 10 or 15 seconds and delaying his order because he's looking at this picture of Snoop Dogg.

That actually is not serving my goal, which is to get the best food, the highest quality meals, unbelievably fast. There's a couple things that immediately, you know, popped my mind because anytime I'm reading about anybody, as you already know, it's like I'm not thinking about just what Todd Graves is telling us or what he's trying to teach you and I. I'm thinking, like, who else, who else does this relate to? And so this is great exchange that happens in this biography of Rockefeller called Titan, which is the most famous biography of Rockefeller, right? And it's a perfect example of this.

And so Rockefeller was obsessed with the efficiency of every single aspect of his business, just like Todd Graves is. And so he's going, walking around at this refinery, and he's seeing that one of his employees, they're soldering the, like closing these cans of one of the byproducts that they're selling from refining oil. And so he goes up to him, Rockefeller goes up to him, he goes, hey, how many drops of solder do you use on each can and the guy says 40 and Rockefeller goes have you ever tried 38 and the guy said no he goes would you mind having some sealed with 38 and let me know when 38 drops were applied a small percentage of cans leaked so they try again they tried

39 at 39 drops of solder none link Hence 39 drops of solder became the new standard instituted at all standard oil refineries. Now, this is what Rockefeller Rockefeller smiling. He's talking about this in his retirement. He's telling a story after he retired. That one drop of solder saved $2,500 in the first year. But the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled and quadrupled and became immensely greater than it was. And that savings has gone steadily along one drop on each can and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings. I feel the same way about Todd Gray's. If he's clipping 15, 30 seconds off of each order when he has one store. That's not as important, but it's very important.

Think about the time saved when he has 800 stores. This guy's gonna have thousands of stores. I do the same thing. So I'm one of the very few podcasters because I go out and talk to all these other podcasters that still insist on editing his own podcast. And the idea and the reason I think it's important because I'm completely obsessed about save,

not wasting a second of your time. So I will go back through and I will literally clip a second and people think this is a bit ridiculous. My point is like, let's say a million people listen to that episode over the life of that episode, okay? I didn't, that means I didn't take out a second. I did the math the other day. I think it's like, I took, for every second I'm able cut. That's a waste of time. I saved 244 hours. It's the same

exact thinking that Todd Graves is applying to the speed of his drive through that Rockefeller is applying to how many drops of solder on an individual can in one of the like a thousand byproducts that he was selling. And then the second thing that came to my mind, when he talks about, you know, this isn't our concept, I'm just going to do one thing, I'm going to do a great, I'm going to do that, that same thing forever. And the guys had the same menu for 30 years. If you go look at In-N-Out's menu, it's barely changed. In-N-Out was founded like 1948. And so I think of what David Olguby said, because he noticed this, not the people, they're so

it's called it's in human nature to like constantly want to jump around and be distracted and in David Olgevey's case he's watching all of these businesses have like these great ads that they pull and so he noticed he's like the people had the most success is they'd find a winning promise for their product right and they would run that same ad and build ads around that same promise for their product, right? And they would run that same ad and build ads around that same promise for decades. And this is what David Ogilvy said about this, which I feel, you know, David died. He didn't know what Raising Gains was, but I feel like he would describe exactly what Todd is doing with his

business. This is what David Ogilvy said, what guts it takes, what obstinate determination to stick to one coherent creative policy year after year in the face of all the pressure to come up with something new every six months. That is David Ogilvy talking about a winning idea could work for decades. So that's what really drew my attention to him. I've been studying this guy for a few years and I realized the reason I needed this episode for you, because it comes up in conversation like every week. And I realized the reason I needed this episode for you because it comes up in conversation like every week. And I was like, now I just want to be like,

hey, you want to know what this guy's about? Go listen to you know, Episode 383 or whatever episode number that's going to be. So I'm going to go through I organized all my notes and highlights. And I try to put in a chronological order as much as I can. So he's going to talk about the fact that this early experience he had before he started raising canes. He says I grew up working in restaurants and bars in high school and college. And before that, I was the kid that did the lemonade stand in the neighborhood. I was always entrepreneurial. Another thing that I identify and I love about Todd Graves, he loves founders.

He talks about over and over again, we need more founders. Stop selling your goddamn business. We need more founders to retain control of their business and to actually give a damn about what they're doing I absolutely love this he says Raising Cane's was a college business plan and so for business planning class me and my partner wrote a paper and they wrote a paper about starting a Quick service restaurant that only sells chicken fingers and he was doing this at LSU The first Raising Cane's is actually opened

Around as I think the northern gates of LSU. Writes the paper. What happens? We get the worst grade in the class. Okay, we've seen this over and over again. It's amazing. There is a rather big indictment, right? Where you get a bad grade for this idea that winds up being worth, you know, $10 billion.

This is not the first time we saw this. Fred Smith. I don't know how much FedEx is worth today, but it's a lot, right? He writes a paper that he's going to start FedEx. He wrote the paper in college. His business professor gave him a C. Phil Knight, founder of Nike, same thing. He talks about this in his great autobiography in Shoe Dog. He says, being a business buff, I knew that Japanese cameras had made deep cuts into the

camera market, which had once been dominated by the Germans at the time that that Phil Knight starts Nike, the Germans are dominating running shoes. So he takes that idea that one idea that happened in another industry, it's like I wonder if that will work in this industry. So I argued in this paper that I made that Japanese running shoes might do the same thing. That idea interested me and it inspired me and then it captivated me. It seems so obvious to me, so simple, so potentially huge. And so he gives this presentation he talks about they greeted my passion and intensity with labored size and vacant stairs. So again, Graves and Canes, FedEx, Nike, I would not be discouraged at all if you're telling people other people

are you're writing your own business school and you're writing papers about this business you want to start and people like this sucks. This idea is terrible. Just like, well, that's what they said to Todd Graves. They said it to Fred Smith and they said to Phil Knight and they were wrong. Now, this is what I also absolutely love about Todd Graves is everybody saw him this stupid idea. And he goes, if you tell me I can't do something, his immediate reaction is let me show you I'm going to do it. And so he took he he hinted there, the fact that when he started raising canes, he had a co-founder, he had a partner.

And this partner is going to actually leave after the second store. And that's one thing that Todd repeats a bunch. The fact that, you know, he's just, you should set up your business to actually the activity of your business. You actually love to do the co-founder did not love the business like Todd. He did not have a chicken finger dream. This is, again, I think some people would even think, you know, this is a bit ridiculous.

You're saying you're living a chicken finger dream. This guy's completely obsessed with chicken fingers. It's not ridiculous to me. Because it makes, I see it over and over and over again. Because I went through this, like when I said, I want to sort of podcast on the books I read. You know, I had some of my closest friends saying, this is a stupidest idea.

Like, no one's going to listen. This isn't going to work. And so the partner sells out after a second one. Okay. And Todd explains this. It makes perfect sense to Todd why his partner quit and he didn't. He goes, he wasn't a fry cook cashier. So to this day, that's the way Todd describes himself. He says his business card says founder CEO, fry cook cashier. He likes working drive-thrus. He likes making chicken fingers. He likes working the fry linerus. He likes making chicken fingers. He likes working the fry line.

He goes, it didn't make my partner happy, but I love working drive-thrus. I like working fry lines. It's what I love, which is important. I tell all these young entrepreneurs, I tell these students now, whatever you get into, make sure it's something you like to do. Make sure it's something you're passionate about,

because if not, you won't be successful at it. Work comes down to a grind, but if you love it, then you'll always be happy doing it and more importantly what he doesn't say but is implied you'll do it for a long time. Okay so raising canes is growing faster now 30 years into the business than it has ever grown before and I've seen this over and over again because it's in all these biographies over and over again. In fact there's a great line in Peter Teal's book Zero to One, where he talks about this. And he mentioned this phenomenon, the fact that, you know, you can, if a

concept's working, they actually will grow faster many decades into the future than it will at the beginning, which is surprising to a lot of people. Peter mentions this that, you know, with respect to technology companies, but I've seen it in all kinds of businesses. And so Peter said the vast majority of a tech company's value will come from profits it will generate in the future, 10, 20 or 30 years out. That is also true with raising canes. And that's why, again, I think the implication there is like, if you'd love to do it, like

you're never going to stop doing it. Therefore you'll never interrupt the compounding. Steve Jobs had a great line about this. He says, you know, people say you have a lot of passion for what you're doing and it's totally true. And the reason is because it's so hard that if you don't love it, any rational person would give up because they're sane. That is exactly what Todd Graves expressed the exact same opinion of Steve Jobs in this interview. And this is something that Todd repeats over and

over again. That giving up was never an option. Selling was never an option. This guy has turned down billions and billions of dollars and says later on that he never even thought about taking the money for a second. So I wanna get into, he writes this paper, okay? So how do you go from writing the paper to getting the money? He's a 23 year old kid when he has this idea.

It's like, I'm actually gonna do this for real. This is really important because you're gonna see a lot of parallels between him and Harry Snyder, which I'll get to the founder of In-N-Out. So he's like, okay, I need money to open up my first spot. I thought, you know, I was turning into a businessman. So I go in and buy some cheap suit. I go to Office Depot, I buy a briefcase, okay.

I put the business plan that I got a bad grade on in the briefcase and I come down brought the business plan that I got a bad grade on in the in the briefcase And I come down and I talked to these bankers because I'm gonna get it Obviously I'm gonna get alone about this chicken finger dream. I had he repeats that line over and over again I'm living a chicken finger dream Since the banks were nice enough, but every one of them was like hey, man You might want to work in the industry for 10 years. You might want to do this You might want to do that. You're not in a position for us to lend you money.

Once again, I'm hearing no, no, no. And that made me want to do it even more. And so one thing that Todd shares in common with a lot of the great founders that you and I studied is they know their business from A to Z. They know their business cold. And he was telling them, listen, I knew how much, I knew down to how like each apron was going to cost me.

I had done my research. And the problem is he had all these people saying that he hadn't done his research because you just came up with a chicken finger only concept. And they said, you didn't do your research because McDonald's is adding all this variety and all these different things and you're doing the opposite. But I knew doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else would always pay off. And so it might be a little ridiculous, but I was kind of induced into a state of rage when I'm hearing this because first of all, I hate other people going around telling young

entrepreneurs that your idea won't work. Like you don't know. You have no idea. How the hell could you even think that you would be able to predict what would work? Right. But they're like, oh, you know, you didn't do your research. Obviously you don't know anything about this industry industry you're going to want to work in. We're not going to lend you money because look what McDonald's is doing.

Okay? So there's a historical equivalent. At the time that Todd Graves is trying to raise money for raising cams, there's already a historical equivalent on the West Coast dominating, creating a cult-like following. The exact approach that Todd Graves was using is the one that Harry Snyder started back in the 40s with In-N-Out.

So I pulled all this. I have an AI assistant that reads all of my notes, highlights, and transcripts. And I use it constantly to remind myself of the stuff that we're learning on this podcast, because I'm eight years in. I'm going to be 400 biographies written or read by the end of the year.

It's possible to remember all this. And so I just pulled, I was like, give me all the best ideas from Harry Snyder in and out, cause I know I've seen this before. And so I'm just going to pull out some chunks that I'm reading to you about Harry Snyder. This is not about Harry Snyder. It is about Todd Graves and, and implied in that it could also be about me and you. And so it says, while other chains constantly expanded their menus, Harry maintained a famously limited menu.

This menu has been barely changed since the company's founding in 1948. That is exactly that. This sounds like Todd Grace. Harry was fanatical about quality. Todd is the same way refusing to follow industry trends is exactly what the bankers are getting wrong. They didn't even understand that Todd was right. And you could just point in and out.

It's like, well, I don't know, this guy did the same thing. Why would that work? Harry was fanatical about quality, refusing to follow industry trends towards cheaper ingredients and mass production techniques. When competitors switched to frozen beef patties, right? That the trend in Harry's industry, Harry hired In-N-Out's first butcher

to maintain control over product quality. While other chains adopted frozen French fries, In-N-Out continued making theirs by hand from fresh potatoes that were often picked in the morning and delivered in the same evening. Harry's leadership was hands-on to the extreme degree. Dude. I'm like, I got tears in my eye, sorry.

Later on, because I hear the same thing. Remember this later on when Todd, everybody tells him, he's like, you need to delegate. And Todd is one of my favorite parts of any interviews I've ever done. He goes, delegate? What kind of word is that? He is so obsessed with details. I feel the same way. So it says, Harry's leadership was hands-on to an extreme degree.

He was described as a micromanager before the term existed, keeping scrupulous records of daily operation. His work ethic was relentless. Every single one of these lines I went through and made sure that if I'm talking to you about Harry Snyder, that it's also true for Todd Graves. He was always the first person in the shop in the morning, inspecting ingredients and ensuring everything ran to his exacting specifications. Even when at home he would watch the restaurant through his living room window

and sprint across the street to pitch in when needed. Todd lived in an apartment behind the first Raising Canes. Harry also believed in treating employees well. This is something Todd's going to repeat over and over again. Me and you are going to talk about this a bunch today. When California's minimum wage was $0.65 an hour, Harry paid a dollar an hour plus a free hamburger per shift. This approach fostered remarkable loyalty. Many employees who started as potato peelers stayed at the company for decades. It was pretty incredible. All of this sounds exactly

like Todd Graves' approach to building Raising Cane. So again, if you want to learn more about Harry Snyder, the episode I did on him is episode 244. It's one of my favorite stories because again, it's like finding a simple idea and take it very seriously. So this is where I get it. This is what kind of made me upset. I'm glad, I don't think you can stop Todd. Todd is like the Terminator anyways.

This guy has superhuman levels of determination, but this just like arrogance of these older bankers telling this kid, like, oh yeah, obviously, it can't work because McDonald's isn't doing this. It just really pisses me off. And so good thing is Todd talks about, he's like, you know, he was born determined. He's like, that determination was always there. Determination he always had. It was there since he was a kid. And he says, and it really paid off later in a big way when I wanted to start this dream.

So think about where we are in the story. People telling them your plan sucks. We're not going to lend you money. Your menu is wrong. And then shortly after, you know, he gets going, his co-founder quits on him. So he's like, all right, they're not going to lend me money. I I'm on a dream. I'm determined.

How am I going to raise money? So he hears the job about two different jobs. The first job is a boiler maker. And so these refineries will pay you insane amount of money. Because let's say one of the refineries go down, they need maintenance work or repair work. They need that back every day that that refinery's not up. You know, they're losing a ton of money.

So these boiler makers go and they travel around. And then they just do shift work. And he says, you know, you're working 95 hours a week. You work for five or six weeks straight, but you make so much money because they want that job done fast. And he's around like a bunch of roughnecks, you know, imagine who are boilermakers and his they noticed his work ethic.

He was, he wouldn't shut up about the chicken finger dream. And so his fellow boilermakers, a guy named Wild Bill told him, he's like, Hey, in the summer you can make money commercial fishing in Alaskan. So like, you know, probably a decade and a half ago, I used to, I watched a few episodes of this show called, I think it's called Deadliest Catch. So I didn't know that this is what Todd Graves was doing. And so they're like, go up to Alaska and you know, you work on a boat for 30 days, for 60 days, and you can just make $25,000 or $50,000.

And there's also a funny thing in that he never raised outside equity after this. And some of the boiler makers, like Wild Bill, one of the few angel investors that would put in money to raising canes, and then he also said that he raised money from his bookie. And he goes, because his bookie could pay him in cash. And it was just originally for, he says, it this bookie could pay him in cash. And it was just originally

for, he says it was just originally for the investment in the first restaurant. But then I rolled them into a small percentage into the overall company. So he doesn't talk about the percentages that wild bill has or his bookie has, but I just brought a smile to my face. I just love the idea. Like what if, what if like his bookie or wild bill, this boiler maker somehow had 5% of raising canes, which would be worth a couple hundred million. I just love the idea that this boiler maker or his book, Artas Buky could have $100 million of Raising Canes stock just because he believed in his chicken finger dream.

So he saves up a bunch of money from boiler making. He's like, okay, I'm going to listen to Wild Bill. I'm going to go up to Alaska. And he says, I was doing this when I was 23 years old so I could live very cheaply. So literally, before I got my job in Alaska, I spent a month living in a tent on the tundra because you got to talk your way into getting on a boat. And so I'd be eating pork and beans and ramen noodles every day and just spending as little as you can. This is a great example of this thing that you and I see over and over again in these biographies

of these great entrepreneurs. How bad do you want it? They will do, just to get their dream going, they will go to great lengths to do that. The idea that you're willing to work 95 hour weeks in a very tough environment as a boilermaker. Now you're literally risking your life on a boat off the coast of Alaska. So he spends the summer commercial fishing in Alaska

and he says, people are dying out there. You're working 20 hour days. You're sleeping an hour here or there. So imagine a kid on a chicken finger dream on the back of this boat, National Geographic's going out here to film this madness. Medical helicopters are taking people out. You're hearing so and so boat just had a death and you're filling up the boat with fish. Waves are crashing over the side. You're scared. But I was there for that chicken finger dream. So he saved up I think about $50,000.

I loved how honest he was. He's like, I did a lot of things that were really stupid and really risky. And just because it worked out for me, I would not recommend you do it. You do it. And so he says, this is something I would not recommend, but I was young and dumb. And back then you could get a bunch of credit cards. I got as many credit cards as I could. They were like 18, 23%. And I lived off credit cards. I was young and I had nothing to lose, but I don't think that's a great strategy. So he's got credit cards backing him up. He's got the money he saved. Then he goes and gets an SBA loan. He says, I use all these people and these services that are set up by our government, SBA, small business development center, service core, retired executives.

I talked to everybody that I thought was smart in business to get advice on how to raise money for this. So I raised my own money. I got the preferred shareholder money. That's what he's talking about. The money Wild Bill gave him, the money that his bookie gave him. And then he got a $50,000 SBA loan. And that was the seed capital that I needed to start the first restaurant.

So while he's telling the story, one of the people interviewing him, I asked him, you know, we have a lot of different entrepreneurs in the show. Some say you should use, you should always do OPM, which is other people's money. Some founders say, no, no, no, use as much of your own money as possible. And so it was like, how do you think about this? And I think by now you're going to know how Todd thinks about it. And he goes, I'm the latter. I put all of my own money in and go full speed.

So I own over 90% of my business. It is a multi-billion dollar business and we're continuing to grow over 30%. It is very rare that I meet someone that owns that larger percentage of a business when you talk about businesses that are worth multi-billions of dollars. And I think some of these private equity people come in and they tell these entrepreneurs, this is what you need to do. You could take money off the table now because you never know if someone's going to stop coming and buying your product. And then these entrepreneurs get whittled down so low, they get diluted so much. And for me, that takes a lot of your own spirit out

because you're making money for people that just put cash in. But that's the easy part. You making your brand successful is hard, man. You live it every day. You do this stuff. And then these people get bewildered. You're talking about these entrepreneurs. They eventually just sell out. We have a lack of founders in big businesses, especially in the restaurant business. When I was a kid, these businesses were run by their founders. Founders care about their people. They care about their customers. They care, they care, they care.

And then I also think this is why if you just look at the product he's putting out, the marketing he does, the financial performance he has, he's smoking everybody because he's competing against non-founders. They're just, and he'll talk about like, you know, later on he's asked like, what is the biggest threat to your business? Like who are you worried about? And I promise you his answer when we get there is not, oh, I'm worried about McDonald's, where the founder has been dead for decades. He's just not worried about that.

And so that's another thing he preaches. He's like, we need more founders. Founder-led businesses are just better businesses. And so this leads to the idea, something I always talk about. It's like, if you truly love what you do and you're working on your best ideas, your extra strategy should be death. That is your extra strategy. Steve Jobs worked until he died. Charlie Munger worked until he died.

Coco Chanel until she died. And so Ferrari. All these people over and over again. The extra strategy was death. And so his whole thing was people always ask me, hey, man, what's your extra strategy? I don't have one. This is a multi generation business. I wouldn't sell.

People need to have a higher risk tolerance because if you're an entrepreneur, that's just what you do. My risk tolerance was very, very high. But try to keep as much equity as you can because this is yours. So when I get to that section, mind me of Dietrich Mastrasz, founder of Red Bull. Minds me of James Dyson, founder of Dyson, still owns 100% of his business. Minds me of Michael Bloomberg, still owns 100% of Bloomberg. If you think of the founder of Red Bull who just passed away recently, that's one of my favorite episodes I've ever done.

Episode 333, there was no biographies in English about Dietrich Mastrasz. So we had to translate one from German to do that episode. But he owned him and his partner, so he owned 49% and his partner owned 49%. They were paying themselves like five, the dividends every year were between 500 and 800 million a year. And then they were turning down offers. His 49% would be worth at least $20 billion he could have taken off the table if he sold. And he just absolutely refused.

He's like, I don't want to take the company public. I'm never selling it. And now, um, just like Todd, Todd wants to pass the business onto his, his kids. It's exactly what Dietrich did. Dietrich passed his part of the business onto his son. Go, let's go back to he's got the money. The first one takes a while to get it up, but it's starting to cashflow. A lot of the businesses think it's right next to a college.

You're going on on a Friday or a Thursday or a Saturday, having a little drink. So the main business for Raising Canes at the very beginning was that late night business. I think they'd stay open till like three in the morning and Todd wouldn't get out of there till like five in the morning. But he was talking about the hardest part of growing the business is not going from you know 700 to 800. It was going from one to two because he didn't know what he was doing about the hardest part of growing the business is not going from, you know, 700 to 800. It was going from one to two because he didn't know what he was doing and he didn't have any help.

The hardest growth for me was from one store to two, the first restaurant to the second restaurant. I didn't do it the right way because I didn't have a lot of bench strength or management in my business. I lived at that restaurant. We were open seven days a week, most nights until 3 a.m. after we had to stay open until after the bars closed. I would get out of there at 5 a.m.

Then I would turn right around the next morning and do it all over again. I didn't really know how to develop other leaders. And so this is the time when they opened the second restaurant, that's when his partner's like, hey, I gotta get out of here. And so the way that Todd describes this part, he's making a lot of mistakes.

He's like, I was trying to build a plane while I was flying it. And his whole point, the advice that he gives to other entrepreneurs, like you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You've got to go in with the mindset that you're going to make a lot of mistakes and be okay with it. You want to make mistakes fast, but fix them even faster. And so, you know, this guy's, he says he has a very high risk tolerance. I think it's been obvious so far for what you and I've talked about.

And so he's got two, you know, they're starting to cash flow. But they have a lot of mistakes. It doesn't have a lot of talent. But there's a bunch of these like double drive through burger joints in Louisiana, they go out of business. And he's like, I got to take an opportunity because I can expand from two, I think he adds another five stores really rapidly. So from two to seven, by taking over these double drive-through burger joints. So you can't even walk inside. There is no walking inside, right? And what he realized is like I could convert them for about $100,000.

And the way he could do that rather cheaply is because they had a bunch of equipment that he could utilize. And he's like, I had to do this the cheapest way I could, and I need to open up as fast as possible because he's got to get to the cashflow as possible. He'll talk about how he finances all this growth in a minute. And so the way you do that is like, okay, just repurpose, use their equipment instead of making burgers or making chicken fingers.

And so the landlords were just sitting on these because all these double drive-through burger joints had just went out of business. And so he goes to the landlord, he says, hey, I can get in really fast, I wanna lease this from you, but I wanna utilize all the equipment, can we do like a package deal? And so they goes to the landlord, he says, Hey, I can get in really fast. I want to lease this from you, but I want to utilize all the equipment. Can we do like a package deal? And so they could turn them around fast. And they could turn each round for a hundred thousand dollars.

And so he does four of these. I think he does one in, um, he does one in like a food court in a mall. He comes up with a very unique way to finance all this. Okay. Cause remember it's really not investible or really no venture capital at the time. He's got to figure out a way to make him somebody that the banks would want to loan to. And he goes, this is how I finance this, and I do not recommend this.

But what I would go, I would go to an angel investor and I'd say, hey, invest $250,000 in a subordinated debt note. I will give you a 50, this is what he said on the angel investor. I will give you a, I will guarantee you a 15% return and I will personally sign. I will personally obligate myself to this. We, he goes, I want it on a one page contract, nothing bigger than one page.

We have a proven concept where cash flowing, but I personally signed for this. Then I would take this and bring it down to the local community bank. They would look at this and say, oh, you have $250,000. They've considered this equity. And I could borrow up to a million dollars off that deal. And so this is how we did it. And he goes, he's operating on a nice edge when he's doing this, okay?

So he has to open up as fast as possible, okay? If he opens up day one, people are gonna come in, he's gonna have some amount of revenue coming in day one. Okay? And what he realized is like, okay, opens up day one, people are going to come in, they're going to, he's going to have some amount of revenue coming in day one. Okay. And what he realized is that we open a restaurant, so we got some revenue day one. The crew members, we have two weeks to pay them. The food, my suppliers, I don't have to pay for 30 days. The rent, I can pay 30 days later. So I'm making cash flow and he has to make sure that he is making enough that he can make his payroll in two weeks. And then two weeks after that, that he could start paying for the food that he sold 30 days earlier. Now, this winds up working and he goes, I did this, this,

this is how he finance growth up to his first 28 restaurants. And he said, we were just rolling and rolling and rolling, but I was leveraging myself horribly. And, and this is when he almost goes out of business. I'm gonna stop there though, because these creative ways to finance things, when you're starting out, you don't have a lot of money. One of my favorite biographies

that I've ever read for the podcast I discovered, it's a guy named Daniel Ludwig, it's episode 292. The name of the biography is called The Invisible Billionaire. And the reason it's called that is because in the 80s, I think, Daniel Ludwig was the richest American, and no one knew who he was. And he started out, I mean, he had a, he runs a building that's huge conglomerate that he owned a hundred, that he owned completely.

He had no partners, he had 200 companies in 50 countries. But he started out by shipping, by transporting oil for standard oil because the government had broken them up. And he came up, but he had no money, but not enough money to do what he wanted to do. So he came up with this idea called the two-name paper arrangement, which is the foundation of his incredible wealth. And the genius of Ludwig's financing method worked like this. He would approach an oil company, secure a long-term charter agreement to ship their

petroleum. Then using that charter as collateral, he'd go to a bank and obtain a loan to either build or renovate a ship specifically to fulfill that charter. The oil company would then make payments directly to the bank, and then the bank would deduct the loan payment and deposit any remainder into Ludwig's account. So the financing innovation was particularly brilliant because number one, it used other people's credit, which is the oil companies, which had obviously better credit ratings at the time than Ludwig did.

Two, it required minimum personal investment on Ludwig's part. And three, it resulted in Ludwig owning valuable assets free and clear after the contracts inspired. So I thought that was very interesting for some reason that popped in my mind when I was thinking about, you know, him doing the subordinated debt loan.

So he's like, I'm rolling. We're adding restaurant after restaurant. We have 20 restaurants. But I'm leveraged horribly, very nervous. And then he's in Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina hits. And 21 out of his 28 restaurants go dark. He says, my cash flow stops.

I'm in a bind. And so there's several examples, especially if you have a better product than all your competitors, how he turns Hurricane Katrina into a tragedy, into an asset, and he does the same thing in the pandemic. And I'll explain both of these to you right now. So Hurricane Katrina hits, everything's flooded.

He rallies his team together, he's like, listen, we need to get open as quickly as possible for two reasons. One, our crew needs to come back, they need to make money, and our communities need food. And two, if we don't, we're out of business, we're done. So he was the very first restaurant to open back up in these communities. They got destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Now, why does that matter? Because he had a 90 day window when he was the only restaurant open in the area. And he says, we crushed it, we absolutely crushed it. And so think about all the new customers who may have never tried raising canes before they try it because there's literally nothing else open and like, oh, this is really good. And they're state customers for life, they recommend to all these other people. But that's not the lesson that he wanted us

to learn from this, he says, but the lesson of all this is what I tell entrepreneurs, don't do that because my dream almost died. My dream almost went away. I was over leveraged and stupid. And so Hurricane Katrina wind up being an opportunity, unintended. The pandemic actually turned into an opportunity as well. So in 2020, the Raising Canes was doing 1.5 billion in revenue. Four years later, that four and a half billion. And Todd's reaction to both crisis was that he says this entrepreneurial thing just kicks in on you. And he says, we ain't going to stop, man.

We're going to get open, and we're going to make this work. And the pandemic wound up being a blessing in disguise because we had a great format because we could do all the drive, if you remember, during the pandemic, drive-thrus were open. But you couldn't go and sit inside of a restaurant and the government said that you know you have to stay open because people would need to eat and so this is he was labeled an essential business and

same thing it's like one of the few areas that had all these drive-thrus open and they stayed open through the entire pandemic he says sales were insane and as a result that that huge growth from 1.5 billion to 4.5 billion in three years, like we had to learn to get better and we had to learn to get better and quicker. And very fascinating, he talks about both examples, whereas the fact that he's the ultimate decision maker. Like he doesn't have partners, he doesn't have board directors, he doesn't have shareholders. So he can just say, hey, we're going to do this and it's going to happen.

And so he says, I don't have to answer to anybody but my crew members and my customers. I can make decisions, and immediately we can do all this stuff. I didn't have to go through shareholders. I didn't have to go through a board that might say, hey, I don't know if it's safe to do that. Should we wait another two weeks?

What are our competitors doing? I don't have to answer to anybody but my crew and my customers. So I can get out there and make things happen right away. And there's a line that Michael Bloomberg says in his autobiography, which I covered all the way back on episode 228, that I think Todd Grays would agree with. And Michael Bloomberg said, answering to no one is the ultimate situation.

So in the middle of this interview, I want to pull something out because he's constantly talking about the fact that like he cares, he cares, he cares, founders care. We need more founder led businesses. And this is when he has 800 locations, it's worth all this money, it's growing like crazy. And he's doing this interview, and right before the interview started, Todd's crew comes in and they're literally showing him

the reel, the Instagram reel, the video that they're about to post. And the guy interviewing was like, in my head I'm thinking, Todd, you're one of the 350 richest people in the world running this giant company, and you're checking the wheels to make sure that everything aligns with the brand. Again, I don't think of Todd Graves in that situation.

I think of how it relates to every single other person you and I talk about. Because if you have this idea that you're used by, all these people that didn't know each other, were alive at different times, worked in different industries, obvious, what is it telling you? It's a good idea you should use in your business.

I did this episode called, How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple. It's episode 349. Said Steve, I pulled a line from the transcript when I got to this section. Steve did not believe in delegating marketing and advertising decisions at all. This is not an exaggeration. He approved every single image that was used in an ad. He would approve every single word. He would deliberate over the copy. He is calling Ken who's running his ads the guy writing the book. He's calling Ken at midnight to talk about a single word Another idea that Todd repeats over and over again. You have to make your people feel appreciated He says he has this great line

He says communicate the appreciation you have with your people and with them constantly so he actually has an entire department dedicated to this and he talks about this later, but He learned the right way to do something by seeing it done the wrong way first So he says in high school and college I worked in all these restaurants and they would yell at you and say you're doing it wrong Negative reinforcement doesn't work in my business If you go through a raisin canes, you're going to see a bunch of happy smiling people But they're going to crank out food of happy smiling people, but they're

going to crank out food as quickly and as high quality as they can. Good quality comes from positive motivational management. I go through all my kitchens and see all my crews all over the country. I go through the kitchen. I'll say, hey man, nice toast. Hey, thanks for the hard work. I appreciate it. Positive, positive, positive. They know I care about them and they work even harder. And so he has this thing called the Cane's Love Department.

I created a department in the business actually called Cane's Love. And it talks about respecting, rewarding, and recognizing crew members. So some things as simple as you come in and cover a shift and you went out and you cleaned the dumpster. You're like, hey, here's a gift card, man. Thank you so much for doing this. And these men and women work so hard. So they know it's all about Kane's love and he'll do like fun things for them too.

He's really great at marketing. And so there was, I guess there was like this huge lottery is like 800 worth, like 800 million or something. I think this might've been in Louisiana. And he's like, well, we have 50,000 crew members at the time. Let's buy lottery tickets. You know, just be fun. Each ticket is like two bucks, cost us 100 grand. And we'll agree that if any one of the 50,000 people win this $810 million prize, we're gonna we're gonna share the winnings. And the reason he said this because he's like, the crew members were all talking about the lottery. They were like fascinated by it. He's like, okay, well, you know, let's just everybody buy in the company a ticket. We'll have some fun. And we pulled this all together. And the point was, you know, this is really just a fun deal. But then it went viral. And he didn't do this to go viral. But he's like, okay, he does a lot of these things out of his marketing budget. He's got a big marketing budget. And his whole point was just

like, well, you know, I got millions and millions of impressions. It's on like the Today show. It's on the news. It's in like local media. And it costs $100,000. And so it wind up being a great recruiting tool because people are like, hey, I want to go work at a company that literally has a founder that wants to do fun stuff. So great for recruiting, great for marketing, and then wind up being a great return on $100,000 marketing spent. And there's a lot of similarities between Todd Graves and Sam Walton, where Todd just really focuses on a simple idea, taking very seriously, but also in the way he thinks about the people

that work inside of his company. Sam Walton said that if you're not serving the customer or supporting the folks who do, that we don't need you inside of Walmart. And Todd Graves' version is, my crew is my number one focus. The company's leadership should serve our crew members who are serving our customers. Again, I would go after this and compare the marketing of fast food, other fast food competitors,

compare what Raising Cane's is doing and compare them to his competitors. They're just a lot better at this. And so he talks about learning social media as a grown man. So he says, being an entrepreneur and starting out with a budget, you have to be really crafty at marketing your business. This started for me all the way back in 1996. I would go and hand out flyers and say,

come try this new place, Raising Canes. Back then we didn't have social media, but for me, I'm always a student of my business. I'm learning constantly. I wanna stay on the edge and I wanna keep getting better and better. And so when social media came out, he says, look, I'm an older guy, I'm 52, okay?

So I didn't naturally gravitate towards Facebook and Instagram and the things like that, but I watched the marketing value behind it. And one of the most interesting things is launching collaborations. So there's, like I said before, a lot of like huge celebrities that are obsessed with raising canes, they kind of grew up on it over time. Todd graves is we come friends with, with this musician named post Malone.

And when he starts becoming friends with Todd, he's like, man, how can I own a canes like I want to own a canes Todd's telling me, he's like, well, you know, that's not our model. We don't do franchises. I like to do open company restaurants because, you know, I want control. I'm obsessed with with keeping control and keeping the quality. And Post Malone's like, come on, man, we got to figure something out. I want to I want to own a Keynes. I want to own a Keynes.

And so Todd goes, Okay, let me let me think about this for a little bit. And so he turned a couple days later, he's like, Hey, what if we do like a Post Malone version of racing Keynes? You know, you design we're gonna call like posty canes or something like that. Same menu, but like you design like you can design what it looks like. And I think the first one's like bright pink and it's like kind of crazy. And I think some of the decor is like tattoos that Post Malone has just go have fun, like make something super special. And then what we'll do is we'll just share in the profits. And what was fascinating is the way that Todd thought about this. I'm not setting up another entity. This is not a separate company. We're operating on a corporate level. The Post Malone Raising Canes, this is just part of our marketing budget.

So I think there's like two of them now. And they get ton of coverage outside of Raising Canes posting about it or marketing about it because people are so weird. And so they're covered by other people. And so they're like, like oh this is just a marketing expense and then we'll just say hey these two stores this is how much revenue they brought in this how much expenses and we'll just share the

profits and those profits that they they send to Post Malone they just consider that a marketing expense now he there's something that he said to Post Malone where he's like hey you know I don't this isn't our model I don't do franchises and so this is why he does a franchise and this is why he wants corporate owned stores. He says most quick service restaurants are franchise models. You lose a lot of control when you do that. I would rather open company restaurants because I can control them. I want these things run exceptionally well.

It's personal to me. Remember what I said about Pat Riley using it's personal to me. Remember what I said about Pat Riley using it's personal to me. He says it's easier to compete against these big corporate non-founder led companies because they just don't care. And so he says in big corporate America it's not a personal decision. It's a financial decision that they're doing. It's different for people that care. He repeats over and over again. You know the fact that it's a that Raising Canes is a founder-led company, that everything is personal to him.

And he's got a great way to describe this. He says, I believe God made me good at this for a reason. Todd Graves is a missionary. And just like Jeff Bezos says, missionaries make better products. And so he'll push that idea, he'll preach that idea, the fact that we need more founder companies.

It's the exact, when a young founder comes to him and asks him for advice about what he should do, it's the exact opposite of what the guys in the bank did when he was young. He says, when I talk to entrepreneurs and they have an idea, I encourage them, if you have your own concept, to start that, open that. And the reason is, by having entrepreneurs open more stuff, it gets diversity of thought, diversity of ideas, diversity of different ways to do things, and as a result, everybody gets better from more founders trying new things. And so the follow up question to that was you've been approached with these big dollar

amounts, these big checks. What was the most enticing time or dollar amount that you were approached with? Keep in mind, he's been offered billions of dollars. He goes, it was never enticing at all. And the reason why is I believe God made me good at chicken fingers to help people. I think God makes us all good at what we're doing ultimately to help people. And one of the other things that he says for like for entrepreneurs, it's like, there's actually two, essentially the way the note I left myself on this was what assets do you have that you're

not currently using? Okay, so on my computer monitor, on my desk, I have two posts that notes that are reminders to myself that I think are both exactly how Todd Graves thinks. Number one, do one thing. It says do one thing relentlessly. And the second one says, what assets do I have that I'm not currently using? And, you know, that doesn't mean financial assets necessarily. And so Todd's point is like, yeah, okay. well, maybe you're young and you're starting out, you have no money, but you have assets that older, richer people don't have.

And it's the fact that, you know, you have a ton of energy. And he says, Todd didn't have a lot of money or experience when he started, but he had useful energy and determination. I was 23 when I opened up. I was 24. I could just outwork everybody. I didn't have to sleep much. I was a young man.

And so it's like, you know, I might not have a lot of money, but you know how it was when you're 23 or 24. I could sleep for a few hours, get up the next day and feel fine. You can't do that when you're, it's very much harder to do that when you're much older. And I think one of the most important things about like, I give a lot of these talks or these interviews or whatever and something I repeat is I'm just not really interested in your first business, I'm interested in your last business. I'm interested in the business that to me,

a large part of life is like understanding yourself and then having all these experiences. In many cases, it's gonna require you to start many multiple businesses. It's very rare for Todd, for a person like Todd Graves to start his first business, that's going to be his last business. But I'm always obsessed like, and I asked this question to the founders I meet, it's like, is this your last business? Like, is this the end for you? Like, I'm about to quote Sam Walton in a minute. Same thing. It's like once Sam Walton found Walmart, he wasn't going to do anything else. He was going to keep

doing that. One of the reasons I think that is important is because things grow over time in mysterious ways that you could have never possibly predicted. And I see this over and over again in the books. And he's talking about, I had this idea, it was like, oh, actually, like location matters. So the average Raising Canes does about 6.5 million a year in sales. Yeah, that puts him on an average store basis in his industry. He's in second behind Chick-fil-A for QSRs. And so the average Raising Cane's will do 6.5 million, but they opened up one in Times Square and that one did 22 million its first year.

So if you pause and actually think about that, it's like, okay, where can you go that what you offer is the exact same product, but you actually sell like 4x more. That's an interesting thought to sit and think about. And then I was also thinking, I was like, I am positive that when Todd had that first store, he wasn't thinking, you know, outside the North Gates of LSU, that one day, I'm going to have a Raising Canes that has 22 million in sales. It took them 30 years to get to that point. And that's the important part is it's like you should be in a rush to get to your last business because the longer that goes on, things grow in mysterious and unpredictable

ways and you see that over and over again. Now I also thought it was interesting. There's an idea that really popped in my mind. I've read every single thing I could find about Sam Walton. He's one of the founders I most admire. I think it was on like the fourth podcast I made about him before I really really clicked. This idea of like, go slow now, so you can go faster later on. In one of the interviews, he's saying, hey, we're pushing over 600 locations after almost 25 years of business. And I think that interview was three years ago. And so now they have over 800 years, or 800 stores rather. And he goes, it blows me away. We're about to

start cranking about 100 years. So it seems like he's right on that trajectory that he said a few years ago. He talks about another thing I need to before I get to the same Walton part. Todd says, I approve every site, every location, everyone. Remember Walt Disney, the advice that he gave to you and I, from the grave. If we lose the details, we lose everything. I bet you Todd, if I asked him, and if you know Todd Graves, please send him this episode, because I'd love to meet him.

I bet you if I asked him, did you agree with what Walt Disney's advice? If we lose the details, we lose everything. If we lose the details, we lose everything. So what's fascinating to me is, okay, took him 25 years to get to 600 locations. And in two years, three years, he had another 200. There's this book called Sam Walton,

Richest Man in America, it's episode 354. This is when it clicked for me after reading about him multiple, multiple times. And again, I think it was the fourth episode I'd done on him. It's like, wait a minute, back up. Sam Walton, when he started a retail career, the first five years of his retail career, he had one store. So in the beginning of his career, he could only able to make, he was still learning, he could make five years, he can make one store in five years. Then you get to, what is this? I think 30 years into his career,

he opens the same club. He goes from zero to 1 billion in sales in three years. He goes from zero stores on day one to seven years in having a hundred and five stores. So if you think about that, that's a slightly longer timeframe. The first five years career, he has one store. Three decades into his career, he goes from zero to a hundred and five in seven years. I pulled this quote from the transcript of this episode. Extreme patience coupled with an extreme intolerance for slowness. That is the career of Sam Walton. Something else that appears over and over again when you hear Todd Graves speak. Again, people are like, I love what you do. Why don't you change the thing? And he is so relentlessly

stubborn about this that I love. And he says, our number one strategy for growth is staying true to who we are. That means staying true to our one love. And that's quality chicken finger meals, never losing that focus. That's our concept, doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else. It is important for leaders to retain a singular focus. I would encourage anybody in business to find your one true love. My one love is chicken fingers and I strive to be the best at that. Lock in on what you do exceptionally well and then execute it every day, day in and day out. That is how you win.

Not trying to be all things to all people is so important because if you try to be all things to all people, you're not anything to anybody. Goes back to this founder mentality that he has. He says, every box that goes out to every customer matters to me. This is a personal business to him. This is a family business to him. He was asked what lessons that he learned from his father. And he says, my father taught me about hard work.

He taught me about the importance of being polite to people. He was teaching me values. I do the same thing with my kids now. I tell them the most important thing you could ever do is to be kind, to be kind, be kind, be kind to people, man. And so while he's giving this interview, some of these interviews, his kids are like sitting,

he brings his kids with him. It's very similar to like what you and I have been talking about over and over and over again about these wildly successful businesses. And what they all do is they bring their kids into the business, they expose them to the business really early. I'm talking about the Wallenbergs, we talked about them, Hedy Green, Jerry Jones, Leon Hess.

Just go back and listen to like last like six or seven episodes, this thing comes up over and over again. And so he and Todd Grace talks about this. I like to bring my son with me when I'm doing business and be exposed to it. He's just 17, but it's good to get that stuff into his head. He involves his daughter as well. Why?

Because he wants to give, he wants to pass this down to his kids. I want my kids in the business to be able to carry on the values after their mom and I are gone. They can turn this business into a worldwide business and continue to grow it. And then he's constantly repeating the importance of like, you know, experts, what experts?

Like don't listen to the experts, listen to your gut, listen to your intuition. In fact, one time I loved it because when he said the word experts, I was watching the podcast too and he like put it in quotation marks. He's like experts, sure. It really reminds me of Henry Ford.

And like the way Todd thinks about experts and how big of a detriment they can be to an entrepreneur is the exact same way that Henry Ford thought about it 120 years ago. And so he says the experts are always like, hey, you guys really need to add a chicken finger salad. You need to jump on the health trends. And when I was younger, I listened a little more

because I'm like, wait, maybe these people are smarter than me. Maybe they know more than me, but my gut said, no, staying true to what I've done, not listening, I know who I am and I'm not trying to be all things to all people. So there's a great line in Henry Ford's, uh, autobiography where he's talking about, you know, and it sounds crazy if you, if you have never studied this part of, of entrepreneurial history, when Henry Ford starts making automobiles, he was a big believer in the internal combustion engine.

At the time, there wasn't many cars on the road, but the ones that were on the road, they were all either steam-powered or electric cars. And you have this young, mechanically-inclined, gifted, mechanically-inclined kid saying, actually, you know what? I'm going to try to build in a different way. I'm going to try to you. The power source is going to stay with the car. And I think this internal combustion engine actually has a future.

And everybody told Henry Ford, no, you cannot do that. Just like I told Todd Graves, you cannot, you cannot build a $10 billion business doing one thing relentlessly and just serving chicken fingers. I love there's another thing I always say. Oh my God. So people told, I forgot to say this, this is too funny. And this, like I've recruited so many people to go to Raising Canes, they haven't had it

because I just love his approach to what he does. And so people were telling Todd Graves, okay, you sell chicken fingers, but you need a chicken sandwich. He goes, oh, you want a chicken sandwich? I'm gonna take three of my chicken fingers and put them in between two slices of bread. There's your freaking chicken chicken sandwich. And that's literally if you order a chicken sandwich at Raising Gains, it's just three of the chicken fingers between two slices of bread. It's hilarious. But I want to go

back to Henry Ford. Okay. He says, I do not recall anyone who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All these wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people. They are so wise and practical that they know they always know down to a dot just why something cannot be done. They always know the limitations. That's why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If I ever wanted to kill opposition, my opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure that they would do little work.

And so he goes back to this idea, Hey, my guts said no, staying true to what I've done, not listening, knowing who I am and not trying to be all things to all people is very important. He says, I've stuck with that one love brother, same menu since day one. That has been a big key to my success. Stay focused. Everything on my menu has to be exceptional. So one of the things they offer is you can get freshly brewed tea. He goes, I sourced that tea. I know the tea leaves the quality of tea leaves that are coming in for our freshly squeezed tea. I can, this is

the important part, the idea of really powerful idea of limiting the amount of details to perfect and then making every detail perfect. Limit the amount of details to perfect and then making every detail perfect Limit the amount of details to perfect and then make every detail perfect he goes I can laser focus on all these items being great and Then this is where one of my favorite parts. I just burst it out laughing and he talks about You know bring in people that are smarter than you in their own respective ways That does not mean when you do that, that you stop being detail oriented. It doesn't mean that you're not into the details. People will just say delegate.

And he says, delegate, what kind of word is that? That's what I bust out laughing. It's one of my favorite things he said. People will say just delegate. Delegate, what kind of word is that? Work with great leaders, but still be in the details. You should be in the details. People used to tell me, the experts again,

you won't always know that these things are going on in your business. You can't do these things when you get big. Well, I'm bigger than all of them now. And then he brings up the fact that this is not unique to him. This is a business I didn't even know. I'm constantly discovering all these family run businesses I absolutely love.

A lot of these people listen to the podcast and that's how I meet them. But he goes, he was asking the person everyone who's he goes, you know, Edison, Edison quest, I think saying quest, so I couldn't, I had to Google and I finally found this guy. It's it's C H O U E S T. You know, Edison quest, he built a huge company, multi billion dollar company. He, they build like ships and it's funny, you go to the website, it looks like it was made in 1997, but they have this wildly successful business.

So he's a huge ship builder, massive company. He goes, he built a huge company, multi-billion dollar company. He even got down to the details in his business to know how much they were spending on bottled waters, because there was this rampant spending and waste on bottled waters. No one was looking at it and he said look this is what Edison said he said look it's not just about bottle waters our company makes billions of

dollars this carries over to everything else. It was him staying in the details the most successful people I know stay in the details and it is easier to stay in the details if you truly Love it like last night, you know, it was funny because you know, I mean a lot of people give me the same advice Like you shouldn't edit your podcast. You shouldn't do it I don't maybe you don't know this maybe doing this like, you know I know a bunch of other partners with founders is literally the only podcast that is made by one a single person a Single person I do all the reading the the research, the recording, the editing, social media posts, everything. And it's just like, it's what I want to do. You don't work your entire life

to get to be able to do what you love to not do it. And so like I was chuckling to myself last night because I was going over and what I've been doing is like after I'm done with all my reading, I feel there's been like a lot of value spending a day or two with the material and keep rereading it and most mostly just like eliminating things that that I don't think I need to talk about anymore. And really like focusing. And so I was laughing like last night Saturday, I just happened to Saturday night, I happened to

glance at at the clock was 905 905pm on a Saturday night, what I'm doing. I'm working on the podcast, because it's fun to me is what I want to do. And so all the advice that Todd is giving us is a lot easier to do if you love what you do, because he says, like, this is my chicken finger chain. My business card says founder, chairman, CEO, fry cook cashier.

I like working fry lines. I like working drive-thru. I love the pace of the business. I like cooking. And guess what? Say you wanted to jump in and you're like, I'm going to make a chicken finger QSR chain too. Good luck competing with someone like cooking. And guess what? Say you wanted to jump in and you're like, I'm gonna make a chicken finger QSR chain too. Good luck competing with someone like that.

The guy likes to work the line. Good luck. And so this leads to another question I loved. Who do you fear most in the chicken game? You know by now, there's no way he's gonna answer, you know, some giant non-founder led, you know, corporate chain. And he says, the thing that gets me, that worries me the most, is the young person that

has the fire of Todd Graves going, that wants to come and compete directly. They say, hey, I'm going to go head to head with Keynes. I'm going to do the same thing they do. And this is what I love. I love his response. Because remember, there's a reason why I started our conversation with that pilot Riley quote, that it's personal to me. And so he says, I'm'm gonna do the same thing they do he goes. This is Todd grace It's so personal to me and he's like if you want to compete with me, that's fine

You better get up early in the morning and you better work late at night man, because this is what we do This is part of my DNA. This is a representation of my family So you better come with all your guns if you're going to compete with Raising Canes because this is my world. And so if he's speaking about his business like that, you know, the question, he gets this question over and over again. Sometimes it's from people interviewing, sometimes people calling in. It's like, why did you never sell off part of the business after being offered billions?

He goes, I didn't want private equity partners. I wanted to own and control it. I wanted to work hard for that vision because I know this is my purpose. This is one of my favorite lines too. When you create and do, you're never going to stop creating and doing because it's part of what you are. It's part of your DNA. And then again, he's always asked, like, what is your advice? You know, you're one of the most successful people on the planet. You've done it your way. You know, you're still doing the most successful people on the planet. You've done it your way. You know, you're still doing it. What is your advice to other entrepreneurs? And he says, why are you here? What is your purpose? You need to answer that honestly. I think sometimes it

can be scary, even to hear what the answer is. It can be a little scary, because when you lock into something and you do it, it becomes your life's work. I'm so glad he said that because one of my favorite things, you remind me of what Kobe Bryant said. Kobe Bryant was giving a talk in front of a bunch of young people shortly before he died. And remember what Todd Graves just said, you gotta like, you gotta answer honestly, man. Like you can't lie to yourself. Really ask yourself, what is your purpose? Why are you here? And it's gonna be a little scary because that means you're gonna have to lock into that. That means you're foreclosing all the other opportunities and you're making that your life's work. Very few humans ever

do that. And so Kobe says the greatest fear we face is ourselves. It's not anything that's external. It's not anything that's superficial. I think the greatest fear you face is yourself because we all have dreams and it's very scary sometimes to accept that dream that you have And it's scarier still to say okay. I want that It's scary because you're afraid that if you put your heart and soul into it and you fail Then how are you gonna feel about yourself? So being fearless means putting yourself out there and going for it. No matter what go for it. Not for anybody else But for yourself and I think it's a perfect lead-in to the final question the final piece of advice that Todd Grace has for you

And I he's asked what is one secret you could leave us with if you're committed if you're really committed Then tell yourself you're not gonna give up because I've seen so many entrepreneurs give up because it's so hard It's so hard to get finance. It's so hard to get a location. It's so hard to do these things So they give up so never ever give up and be fanatical You've got to be fanatical you've got to be fanatical about what you're doing nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically and That is where I'll leave it Nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically.