Trading Secrets - 165. From chicken fingers to one of the richest people in the world! Raising Cane’s founder and CEO Todd Graves reveals his path to building the wildly popular restaurant from the ground up

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

This week, Jason is joined by founder and CEO of Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, Todd Graves! Having come up with the idea for a chicken finger restaurant chain back in 1996, Todd took a true entrepreneurial path by funding the startup with an SBA loan and his own personal savings. 28 years later, Todd is now one of the 500 richest people in the world, being named to the Forbes and Bloomberg’s recent billionaire list. With over 800 locations in 40 states and five countries, 3.8 billion in revenue last year, Raising Canes is a name brand that on its own merit has become a pop culture icon to fans and customers everywhere.  Todd gives insight to the marketing strategy he has adapted over the years, the love of hanging out with inspiring people from all walks of life, how he was approached to be the lead for The Bachelor, how much of a hand he has in the company and what he wants to do long term with the business, his best advice for those who are expanding their business, working lease deals to open more restaurants for $100k, and coming together during crisis. Todd also reveals how they adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic, how staying privately owned makes a huge difference, the impact of Cane’s Love for the employees, how Post Malone got involved with Raising Canes, why he pushes someone with their own concept to open that, his thoughts on franchising, and what he think is next for Raising Cane’s. Does he pay people an appearance fee for events? Which reality show did he go on? What does the average unit volume at? Todd reveals all that and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!  Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guests:Todd Graves Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast!  Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast  Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial  Trading Secrets Steals & Deals! Kion Aminos: You cannot build muscle without EAAs and you must get them from protein or supplements like Kion Aminos. The contains more EAAs, is absorbed/utilized easier, and is better at building muscle than protein plus it helps you recover better so you can bounce back and get back to working out faster. Go to getkion.com/tradingsecrets to save 20% with a risk-free, 60-day, money-back guarantee BetterHelp: If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists any time for no additional charge. Get it off your chest, with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/tradingsecrets today to get 10% off your first month. Trading Secrets is sponsored by BetterHelp  ZocDoc:  Once you find the doc you want, you can book them immediately —no more waiting awkwardly on hold with a receptionist. These docs all have verified reviews from actual, real patients. Head to Zocdoc.com/TRADINGSECRETS and download the Zocdoc app for free and book a top-rated doctor today. Hims: Hims is changing men’s healthcare by providing access to affordable sexual health treatments, from the comfort of your couch. Hims provides access to doctor-trusted ED treatment options such as chewable Hard Mints, brand-name treatments like Viagra, or generic alternatives for up to 95% cheaper. The process is simple and 100% online. No uncomfortable doctor's visits. Start your free online visit today at Hims.com/TRADINGSECRETS

Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. I'm your host, Jason Tarik, and welcome to the pre-market trading segment. We're going to tell you a little bit about our guests. We're going to give you a money tip and give you a quick update from my personal life. This episode is one of our best yet. And here's why I'm telling you that. Because in the recap, for one of the first times ever, we're going to hear the curious Canadians say, top three episodes of all time at Trading Secrets. And we've done over 160. So you will be excited about this. We have the founder of Raising Cains, Todd Graves on. Now, Todd Graves owns Raising Cains. If you're not familiar, it is a chicken finger fast food restaurant. Now, go to my Instagram, Jason underscore Tardick. And tonight, I am going to have Raising Cains for

dinner, do a little food review, talk about the sauces and all the things. Now, here's what's fascinating about Todd Graves. First of all, he's the coolest CEO I've ever met in my life. I mean, when I say cool, I mean cool, so cool that when they told me to get ready for the interview, they said, don't dress up. Todd's going to be wearing shirt and shorts. I was like, oh my God, I love this guy. He's just an awesome guy, philanthropic, super humble. And you'll hear about it in this episode, extremely connected with all the big celebrities out there, Vince Vaugh. Leonardo DiCaprio, wait till you hear the list. Post Malone, and you'll see how he integrates them into the business naturally. You're going to be blown away. Now, the Forbes list of world

billionaires just came out. Found some information on this, which is fascinating. So Forbes is finding a record 2,781 billionaires around the globe, worth a total of $14.2 trillion. And with all the markets up, the surge in wealth has made 265 people billionaires over the past year, up from 150 newcomers in 2023. These fresh faces are including fashion legend of an NBA Hall of Famer, one very, very famous pop star you may have heard of by the name of Taylor Swift. And collectively, they command $510 billion in wealth or $1.9 billion on average in hell from 32 countries. That's all the fresh faces on the list. And this is interesting.

The United States leads the pack with 67 Americans joining the ranks. The wealthiest among them is the one, the only, Todd Graves, who is our guest today, the founder of the fast food chain Raising Cains, whose net worth stands at an estimated $9.1 billion, billion dollars. Now, the famous NBA player we were talking about was Magic Johnson, Christian. Louis Vuitton, of course, and Taylor Swift have joined the ranks this year. So, you heard it. The wealthiest American on that list, according to Forbes, is Todd Graves, and he is our guest today. Now, we've had one other billionaire on, if you guys remember, Mark Lorry, who is a business

partner with A-Rod, and they own an NBA franchise together. So if you haven't checked out the Mark Lurie episode, make sure you go and do that. What I love about Todd, too, is just his story. So Todd, growing up, wanted to always own a fast food spot. And being in Baton Rouge, he wanted to make it a chicken finger spot. Now, what's really interesting about Todd is that he grew up with a love of food and serving people, cooking in mom's kitchen. He grew up in South Louisiana where the culture is centered around good food. Now, this is what I love. This was his dream to own one restaurant that sold chicken fingers in his hometown.

Now, what happened was he ended up submitting a business plan to his partner's professor. So in 1995, a 22 years old, Todd really wanted to learn about business. So he started reading business books, went to score seminars, went to the Southern University small business development center seminars and spoke with business people. He wrote a plan with his business partner that started the franchise. Craig, you'll hear about Craig in this episode. This is his college buddy. So they wrote a plan as part of Craig's college business.

class. It was a management class at LSU. Now, what's interesting is you'll hear about Craig. This was Todd's original business partner. Interesting story with Craig is told in this podcast, but when they wrote it, the plan was called Folly's Fingers at LSU. They got a B-minus. It was the lowest grade in the class. The professor said a restaurant serving only chicken fingers in South Louisiana, known for its Cajun food, would not be a good concept. He pointed out that the quick service trend was for more of a variety, salad, and grilled options, and this would not work. Armed with their business plan in a leather briefcase with a combination of locks, they set out to every single bank to secure a loan.

And in this episode, you're going to hear how they did secure a loan. And you're going to be absolutely just blown away. We talk about Post Malone, shotgun and beers with Post Malone, everything from playing beer pong with Post Malone and his Super Bowl suite down to the nitty gritty of how much each restaurant makes on a gross basis and net income basis. I'm telling you, this was one of the most fun episodes I've ever had. And we were at the F1 Suite with Raising Cains. And there was such a great crew of people there. Theo Vaughn was there. Hulk Hogan was there. The one and only Young Gravy was there. Bobby, the famous podcaster was there. It was like the Stallone sisters were

there. It was just unbelievable. Joe Burrow, so many other famous athletes. And then they took us to Carbone Beach. I thought we were going to dinner at Carbone Beach. All of his son, LeBron James is there. Elon Musk is there. Kevin Love is there. Patrick Mahomes is there. Kevin Durant was there. I mean, it was just such a crazy, crazy, crazy week. But anyway, let's get into a couple money tips. The big money tip I have for you today, typically I'll give you analytics and really good ideas. Today is just a theme and it's around visibility. You cannot manage your money unless you have visibility. You cannot understand how to improve your inefficiencies unless you have visibility.

You need to know where the cash is coming in. You need to know where the cash is going out. And you need to know where it is and the snap your finger, be able to see it. I'm not asking you to get Excel files out and do equations and figure out all the crazy math. But visibility. You cannot improve something unless you can see the measurement of it. And when you can see the measurement of it, you can drive and see the inefficiency. to be efficient. So it is a very, very, very simple, simple one-on-one tip. But if you don't know

where every single dollar is under your name or your household's name, you need to change that today and you need to get visibility into all of the accounts. A little update from my personal life. You know what? Mother's Day was yesterday. So I want to just give a shout out to all the mothers out there who are with us, the mothers that are in our memories, and my mom specifically and Mama Kaluche, you have shaped me in every, every, every single way to be the person I am today. And without your guidance, without your love, without your ability to hold me accountable when I need to be held accountable, and especially your perspective, there's no way I'd be where I am today. So to all the mothers, you guys are truly the best. And not all superheroes

were capes. And that goes out to all our mothers. But enough of me, enough of the mother talk. Let's get into the episode that David's calling a top three of all time with probably the wealthiest, kindest, nicest person that's ever even been on the podcast. There's some big claims. Let's ring in the bell with the one and only, Todd Graves. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today, we are joined by founder and CEO of Raising Cain's Chicken Fingers, Todd Graves. Having coming up with the idea for a chicken finger restaurant chain, back in 1996, Todd took a true entrepreneurial path by funding the startup with an SBA loan.

I used to actually work in SBA lending. We'll talk about it. And his own personal savings. Some of which came from working jobs as a boilmaker and a commercial fisherman, which we will touch on, 28 years later. Todd is now one of the 500 richest people in the world, being named to the Forbes and Bloomberg's recent billionaire list. He leads the restaurant chain with over 800 locations

in 40 states in five countries, 3.8 billion in revenue last year. Raising Keynes is a name brand that, on its own merit, has become a pop culture icon to fans and customers everywhere. Today we are going to learn about the entrepreneur path that turned a kid from Baton Rouge into the leader of a worldwide chicken finger empire. Oh, my God. Todd, thank you so much for being here on Trading Secrets. What an amazing intro. I mean, that was incredible. And what a mouthful, man. You did great.

I mean, I'll be honest. I was reading your resume. I'm like, where do I cut this intro? Because it's so deep, it's so long. Now, typically, Todd, what I do is go chronologically. I want to hear where you were and how you got to where you are. But today's got to be different. We just had F1 weekend here. I was at Kentucky Derby last year with you. And then I looked at your Super Bowl list. You had Jelly Roll. Russell Westbrook. You had Leonardo DiCaprio. You had Wiz Khalifa. You had Toby McGuire, Vince Vaughn, Wayne Gretzky. I look at the list from this week. You got George Kittle. We had Miles Garrett there. Kamara was there. Jalen Ramsey. Caleb Presley, of course, from Barstool, DeAndre Hopkins. This list goes on. And it's something no one in your space is

doing. Absolutely no one. So talk to me just about like the marketing strategy, the business case for something even like this past weekend at F1. Yeah, you know, so being an entrepreneur and you know what that's like and starting out without a budget, you know, you have to be crafty at marketing your business, right? And so that started for me back in 1996, like, you know, open the doors, the restaurant, you know, all times I would go put out flyers on people's windshield, you know, come try this new place, raising canes. And back then, we didn't have social media. And so for me, always being a student in my business, learning, constantly learning, right? And so I want to stay up on the edge and I want to keep getting better and better. You know, you can't do this.

You either doing this or this. I choose to go that way, right? And so when social media came out, look, I'm older guy, 52 now, right? And so I didn't naturally, you know, gravitate towards Facebook and Instagram and things like that. But I watched the marketing value behind it. And so, like, traditional marketing, let's say cost per impressions, about a penny. That billboard, when someone sees it costs me a penny, that television ad would cost me by a penny, radio about a penny. So that's literally a penny. So I think all those pennies going out there. Social media, if you do it, right, it's a fraction of a penny, right? A tenth of a penny. Then you can get it even lower and lower because of the virality of it, but you have to give people good content. And what people like

to look at the internet, they love to see exciting events and celebrities, right? People of interest. And so, you know, I love being around great people. I love having fun. I love going to sporting events. I love to go to any kind of great event. But then bringing in these celebrity friends to come in, fans of Cains, friends of mine, and come in and have a great weekend. This stuff goes, we get hundreds of millions impressions off of it.

And for fractions of penny, you know, I can get great marketing. People are more loyal. Look, they love their celebs. So we had, you know, you were there yesterday. We had, you know, 50 different celebs in there. And, you know, everybody has different fan base. And for us, it's just great market. Is that intentional?

Because I was looking around, I'm seeing there's reality stars, MBA stars, NFL stars, all sudden, Hulk Hogan's coming in. I mean, you literally hit like every space of entertainment. Is that intentional? Like, talk to me about just the base case of that. Obviously, everyone there is a fan of the brand. They're a fan of you. But tell me about, like, the thought process.

Are you looking at the demographics of each follower, of each person? Yeah, yeah, yeah, two things. So one, I'd like to spread out to a lot of different things. A famous skateboarder was in there yesterday. right that's a whole other crowd right and then you know for me it's it's two things one it's people that i want to be around like said a lot of them are friends but then those friends will suggest hey you ought to invite so and so and so and so for me to get to hang out i like hanging out with inspiring people from all walks of life right so i'm a i'm a restaurant yeah you know

i'm a i'm a CEO founder of a chicken finger restaurant but like being around my friend joe burrow who's an amazing quarterback and he's just as fanatical about being a good quarterback as i about being a good restaurateur, right? Inspires me, right? Theo Vaughn, you know, being with him and how a passion he is about being creative and what he wants to do to continue to grow and get better, right? That inspires me.

So all these different people, down to skateboarders, down to look streamers, you know, like phase banks. And like people would probably put us together and go, that's interesting, but we're good friends, right? Like, he inspires me. So all these people I meet and do and grow with, I get better, right? But so then we're looking at actually like looking at demographics,

you know, spreading out as much as we can, male, female, like maybe have models and you saw the good mix in there, young, older, OG, young and up-and-comer and those things. But our, like, from social media, obviously we like it when they have a lot of followers and even more important and a lot of engagement. So we can get that cost per impression and then my marketing investments in these events. I get a better return. I love it. Okay, we talk dollars and cents here, right? And I'm thinking, Hulk Hogan comes in. He does the shout out to the camera. It's already on Raising Keynes. I own a talent management company. I know the value of that for a brand. is at minimum, minimum 50K.

I see these people posted left, right, center. I know what they get paid per post. Some of them are over six figures. Some of them are even seven figures for posting stories. So my question is, I'm thinking about yesterday. When people come to your events like this, Super Bowl or yesterday, do you pay people an appearance fee, or just can you talk a little bit about that? No, no, never have.

And so the idea of the suite is Friends of Todd's, right? Fans of Kings, Friends of Todd's, and I'm fans of them. I'm a fan of yours, right? And so it's, so when you keep it pure like that, you know, then it makes for a good atmosphere because people aren't coming to be paid. Now, we do paid influencers out in the market, go see restaurants, restaurant openings and help do the brand, which I think is great. It's, you know, it's basically, it's a talent fee like anything else when you have celebs on, but never paid and people think that's cool, right? And so when people come in and they, people will request, I want to go to the Cane Suite. And so, you know, manager's call. And my only rule is it just have to be cool, you know, just like it'd be cool people, good people.

And so you see the vibe that goes on there. It's just cool people. We had dinner last night. A group of us were in the suite, and I asked everyone a high and low from yesterday. And then I said, who was the most impressive person you met? And the last question I said,

is there anyone you met you didn't like? Who are they? Every single person was thinking long and hard. And they're like, there wasn't one person I met at that suite. I didn't like. I think that's a testament to what you guys are doing, how you're doing it.

You talked about our show. We have a lot of Bachelor listeners that watch this show. something you guys might not know about Todd, there's a rumor out there that once upon a time you were approached to be the lead, to be the bachelor. Can you confirm or deny this? Confirmed, confirmed. When did that happen? Give me a time frame. Forever ago, this is, I don't know this show might have been out a couple of years. So, you know, this is, you know, I was around when the start of reality TV came out. And I did a story for Entrepreneur Magazine that was entitled

young millionaires, right? And so it was 20 of men there, but it was a cover story. So I think when people started Googling, you know, for reality shows, who's a young millionaire? They got me. So they asked this show Gilligan's Island. Do you remember that one? They wanted me to be, well, they're the reality show. They wanted me to be Thurston Howe, whatever, the millionaire, you know, and his wife. And I was like, that really wouldn't match it with my values. And then, and then they called on The Bachelor and said, well, you know, I don't think my wife would be okay with that. They didn't check out if I was married. Isn't that hilarious? That's hilarious. All right. Well, they looked at the young millionaires list, and if you were single, would you have done it?

Hell yeah. All right. Well, missed opportunity, but obviously everything worked out. But I did end up doing one. It was called Secret Millionaire, which was a super cheesy name. So this all goes through my publicist and all that and said, hey, you're going to be interested in this one because it's going to help people. And I said, how? And they said, you get to go in a market that you love. And they said, they said it can be Louisiana. And you get to showcase, you being a secret millionaire, you get to showcase heroes in the community

for what they're doing for their community. And then you get to donate to their causes, right? So this was after Hurricane Katrina, our state was devastated. And I went down there, and my wife and I did it together. And we went in and just met some amazing people doing amazing things for the community.

And they were able to donate to them. So that show to me was about making those people showing the heroes they are and inspire people to help people more. So that made sense. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. And we'll stay tuned to the recap, guys. I'm going to talk to you about the dollars and cents behind everything you guys do to give back.

Your philanthropic work is amazing. We're talking millions and millions and dollars. And so many lives you guys are impacting from the success of your business. So we'll get in the details of that in the recap. But let's get back to how you got there, right? I think it's wild that you write this plan with your friend Craig in college about a chicken finger restaurant. idea, right? The basis that I saw is like chicken fingers only, and the professor and everyone gives you a bad grade, shoot you down, tells you how are you going to have one product like

this in a state that literally thrives on this type of product and do it well. But you end up doing it. Before you actually do it, how much money did you have to save working your jobs as a fisherman, boilmaker, etc.? Yeah, this number is about 40, 50 grand? That's what I saved up working both as a bullermaker and refineries, and then commercial fishing. Okay, and both of those jobs, commercial fishing, boilermaker, what does an annual salary at this time look like? I mean, so it's like turnaround shift work in the refinery, right? So these people get called out for five weeks at a time, six weeks of time.

Back then it was $17 an hour. I remember this. And in California refineries, you know, you get obviously time and a half, then there's some crazy double time you got and then money on top of that. And you work, I don't know, 95-hour weeks. So if you add all that up, that was good money back then. But, like, you literally worked for, like, six weeks straight. Interesting.

Just hustle. Hustle. And then I had a night off and went down to the Viper Room. You were back with Johnny Depp and River Phoenix owned it. Yeah. That Drew Barrymore that night. Oh, yeah. No, wow.

Like a Southern boy from Louisiana and going there. I was like, wow, it's amazing. But so commercial fishing. So you spend the summer fishing, but two weeks is the peak of the season when you make your most of your money. Greenhorn like me back then could make, I don't know, maybe, $25,000, you know, but I mean, that's real money. So if I could save up 40, 50 grand, and I was able to go into, go get some preferred shareholders in the beginning, okay? And these people were, people that were always encouraged by me doing Raising Cains. They were the encouraging ones

to me. It was like, Buller makers. Some of the guys worked with, my bookie, paid in cash, you know. And it was originally just for investment in the first restaurant, and I rolled them in a small percentage into the overall company when we start to grow because they want to be a part of it. And they're all doing really well. That makes me feel good. Huge return on that. All right. So you save the 50K. I want to give one tip, though, because there's people out there right now that are hustling and whatever job it is, and they're trying to save those monies to do what they want to do and build something like you've built. One piece of advice for someone that has a job in which income is relatively tight, yet they have to be able to save this money.

Was there any tactics or tricks or anything you did? Because saving 50s, 50K with a 25K income. That's tough. I mean, that's tough. Any type of financial tricks or tips you'd give them? Well, I mean, you got to take it in context. I was doing this when I was 23 years old, right? And so I could live very cheaply. So literally before I got my job in Alaska, I spent a month in a tent on the tundra, right? Eating pork and beans and ramen noodles every day, right? And just spending as little as I can and saving all that. This is something I wouldn't recommend, but I was young and dumb. Back then you could get a credit card. It didn't matter. It was 18%. And get as many. I got as many as I could. I lived off the credit card. So yeah, but I was young and I had nothing to lose. So I don't think that's a great strategy. And I can talk a little bit later

about some of the things I learned. Biggest lessons is how to not leverage over leverage your company, you know, but in that way. So I would just say to live as cheaply as you can and save what, you know, and save what you can. And then there's great resources out there, right? SBA, small business development center, service corps of retired executives. I used these people and these services that are set up by our government to learn. And, man, they taught me a lot and the books taught me a lot. I talked to everybody that I thought was smart in business to get advice and how do I raise money for this?

So, look, I'd raise my own money. I had that preferred shareholder money. Then I got a $50,000 SBA loan, you know? So then that was the seed capital needed to start the first restaurant. Okay, so that's a good segue to. We've had Mark Randolph from Netflix, co-founder on. His whole messaging was OPM, OPM, OPM, OPM. other people's money, that's how you grow. We added multi-billionaire Mark Lurion. Mark said,

absolutely not. I put every single penny I have into my businesses. I had no choice but to succeed, and that's how I succeeded. So with those two strategies, and then based on what you've done, what would you tell entrepreneurs, OPM, or go put all your money in and go full speed? I mean, I'm the latter. I'm put all my money in and go full speed. So, you know, I own over 90% of my business, right? It's a multi-billion dollar business, and we're, to grow over 30% and discontinue to grow. So I own the business and I have some crew members of my business, key people, they have stock. It was what I gifted people, my mother, people like that. And then some of a little bit of the little preferred shareholders. It's very rare that

I meet someone that owns that percentage of their business when you talk about the multi-billions of business. And I think what happens to a lot of good entrepreneurs as they go along, and all of a sudden they're successful and they're growing, then it gets real tough, right? and you've got this stuff going and you've lived off nothing because everything, you know, you put into your business and everything you make goes into the growth and things you're doing. And I think some of these private equity people come in and they say, hey, this is what you need to do. You need to do this. And look, you can take this off the table now because you never know if someone's going to stop coming and buying your product, right? And they 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 out making money for people that just put cash in. And that's the easy part. You making your brand successful is hard, man. You live it every day. You do this stuff. And so then people get bewildered. They eventually just sell out of their brands. And we have a lack of founders and big businesses, especially in the restaurant business. Look, when I was a kid, it was run by founders, right? But that private equities took over my space. And ultimately, that's not good. Keeping founders out of it. Because what founders care about their people, they care about their customers, they care, care, care. Not the private equity people are jerks or

anything but look they have a financial return that is the that is the mission you know and so things get changed quality changes crew members change you know all this buying and selling companies there's people that depend on this man it's like for me as people say hey man when's your what's your exit strategy I'm like it'll have one of this is a multi-generational business man it's like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be in Keynes and these people believe in me and their lives are just as important as mine their families are just as important in mine running these restaurants working their butt off and then one day say hey you know what I'm cashing in and I'm selling, now so-and-so's.

You have to hope that they're going to be good. I wouldn't do it. So just back to that, I think people need to have a higher risk tolerance because if you're an entrepreneur, that's just what you do. Mine was very, very high. But try to keep as much equity as you can because it's yours. I think the perfect depiction of what you're saying now into action is for everyone back home.

We've had an unbelievable weekend, long nights, like unbelievable networking. We are all drained. And before Todd came into this interview, he was reviewing, reviewing the reel that's going on Raising Cains. And in my head, I'm thinking, Todd, your top 350 richest people in the world running this company, and you're checking the reels to make sure that everything aligns with the brand. I think that's the definition of everything you just said right there.

Private equity guys, they're not checking the reels to see who's in there and what the brand means, right? That's a huge difference. I'm going off the beating path here, but I have to ask, I'm sure you've been approached with big dollar amounts, big checks, private equity, other investors. What was the most enticing time or dollar amount you were approached to do exactly what you suggested founders shouldn't do? Yeah, it was never enticing at all. And the reason why is, look, look, I believe God made me good at chicken fingers to help people. You know, so it's an interesting way to say it, right? And so, I mean, I mean, God, I think God may just, like, all good at what we're doing to ultimately help people.

And so I try to teach a lot of my friends that are celebs and things about their influence and what they can do on this planet. But with that meaning is how I can help people. I got 55,000 crew members, you know, most people's first jobs in restaurant or retail. They can learn values, working hard, but truly having fun with a company that gives back. They carry that to other jobs. Most people leave and go do something else, right? But, like, people talk about it in their other businesses.

Are they teaching teachers? They talked about their students. that's a good platform for me to make a difference, right? And then the money we're making and look, you know, you haven't offered multi-billions of dollars, you know, and the business is worth a great deal, but that money's going to go back to help people. That's what my purpose is, right? And so, like right now, cash flow, we make a ton of money, goes right, you know what I mean? We've had two and a half billion dollar credit facilities, right, to grow, and then the money we make is going back in there. I'll peel a little bit off, but the money's going to growth because

why? The bigger we get, the more we're going to be able to help. people. So my mission's going to be once we become more liquid, then pay down debt. At that point, I can start, I mean, God willing to be around, I can start literally start doing real big things charity. And I think that's going to be a really golden period of my life, you know, to be able to do that and see it firsthand. We can do things now, but it's not what I'm able to do later. And so why I want my kids in the business, right? I want my kids in the business to be able to carry that values on after their mom and I gone, right? And because they can turn this into a worldwide business and continue to go, imagine what we can do for people

and communities around the world. It's just, it's a purpose, right? It's incredible, because in business school, we are taught, like, founders, have your exit plan, right? Think five years, think 10 years, think 20 years. And what's wild to me is even with that question that you answered, you've been offered hundreds of millions or even billions to take the business,

and you're like not even phased by that because you have, to me, what I'm taking away, you don't have a 10-year plan, you don't have a 20-year plan. You have a 50-100-year plan, right? It's legacy, it's greater. than just exiting for a dollar amount. And I would assume that that's probably leads to some of the strengths that have gotten you to where you are.

Because you're not focused on that exit dollar. You're focused on your mission. God made me good to make chicken fingers to make an impact. All right, let's get into the idea of scaling, though. So many people can see the big dollars. We see it on every headline. We see the top 500 richest people. And it's like, wow, look what they've done.

But it's hard to understand how they did it. You had to do it by scaling and scaling appropriately. Most business owners, when they attempt to scale, fail miserably. What do you think you did? And maybe you could talk us through the first restaurant or second restaurant or third restaurant. What did you do to differentiate in the scaling process? And what type of advice would you give to someone that's like they have their first thing? They just have no idea how to get to the second or third or fourth.

The one, I'd encourage them to make a lot of mistakes because you are and be okay with that, right? You know, as far as growth, I mean, the hardest growth is from one to two, you know, 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 management in my business, right? And so I lived at the restaurant, you know, the first restaurant, you know, we were open, you know, seven days a week, most nights till 3 a.m. After the bars close, I gather at 5, turn right around again, and they're 8 o'clock up next morning and do it again. And so I didn't really know how to develop other leaders, a bunch of college students, right? Making them managers, didn't set them up for success. And then college students, too,

you know, they're going to be hung over some mornings, not show up, and I'm stretched. So I go from one to two and really just got my house kicked, you know, and did. And it's interesting, too, I had that partner back then, and Craig Sylvie, dear friend of mine. And during that time, you know, it was like, he was recently married and like, you can't have life. You don't have a life, you know, and he's like being called in because, like, three people didn't show up and, like, he just didn't have a life. He got out of the business at that second restaurant and said, you know, Todd, I just don't like, I like the business side of it. I just didn't like the restaurant business. It's not my thing, right? So, yeah. Second one, man, and no, no, no, no, no, no. But look, I give to some stocks.

So he does have some, but yeah, but he went to an MBA and really successful in business because it's what he likes to do. And I always tell these entrepreneurs, I'm like, you have to be passionate about what you do or you will not be successful in it. And the second thing, you just won't be happy, right? So anyway, so me growing from one to two. So that really kicked my butt and understaffed, you know, didn't have my systems, didn't have, I mean, we had some checklist, but I had no training procedures. I had no recruiting procedures. So I got a little better to the two. And then at that point, you know, growth, you know, it's like, you know, I probably wasn't ready to grow again. But so I had these opportunity to go in. Remember these old, you know,

like rallies, like a bunch of these things had closed down. And so I did five restaurants in five months, literally. And I had two. And I opened five and five months or four double drive-thru locations and a mall food court. And so, you know, just running on the adrenaline. and going. But at this point, I realize I can't be at every restaurant, you know, every day, you know, before I go back and forth, back and forth, right? Well, you know, it sounds simple, but it's like I didn't take into fact that my allowance of time. So we had management issues, but we grew and we did it. And so I just figured it out. And so I'd be better, I would, if I started over, I'd do it better prepared and have your people better prepared,

build your systems earlier on. I mean, I was building a plane while I was flying it. You know what I mean? Totally. So I'd be better skilled of that, too, is if we need some finance, stuff later. I'll tell you how I finance this stuff. It's pretty bizarre. I was just going to ask you, because you go from two to five. The biggest challenge is like, I don't know if you could share it, but at that time, what does each space call? Like, what does it cost to open the rest of this? It was interesting. So I didn't want to go into those double drawthroughs because to me it just didn't symbol us the culture, you know, of what we were. Oh, double drive-thrues, no dying in and just, yeah, a double drive-through where you drive-through the two lanes

and come through. And so for me is we had the drive-throughs be part of our business, but people came in and got the culture of Keynes, right? I got, like, I was the first one, like, never heard anywhere else. We had music going loud and cool stuff that college kids wanted to hear, you know what I mean? Like, it was just fun, right? So I didn't think people could get the culture, but I did want, I did want them to see my crew, you know, hear, you know, hear the voices and drive through and see their friendly faces, but they're not inside the restaurant having it. But I said, this is a good way to prove the concept, not just a college concept. These were all around in Baton Rouge, where I'm from. And going in then, I could convert

them for about $100,000. So they had equipment that I could utilize, you know, I had to do signage, paint, and do it. So I did it the cheapest way I could get open, but to where it did look clean and neat, but utilizing their equipment and, you know, the things before. So. What did you take their equipment? Were you buying out a facility that already was at the utilize? Leasing it. So these, these like double drive-through burger joints just went out of business. So the landlords, landlords are sitting there, hey, I had this thing going. So I approached them and said, hey, we can get in, but I want to lease. And I want to utilize the equipment I could use. I want the whole package, right? And work a lease deal, turn them around

for about 100 grand. Now I got four of those going, then open a mall food court, and I'm starting cash flow. Okay, mall food court. What does a space like that cost? So I would just a lease deal, about a hundred conversion on that whole thing too. Okay. And so at this point, though, where are you getting the capital? Where are you getting 500K with only two restaurants open, where you do manage cash tight? Did you have the liquidity? Was it bank that? Yeah, yeah. So very interesting. So banks back then were a lot looser, right, on what they would do. And so, you know, this was not just those five restaurants. It was right after that I continued to grow in all these little communities in Louisiana. And look, we're doing, we're doing millions of dollars of property right at that

point in doing it. This is how I finance it. And I do not recommend this. But what I do is get an angel investor and say, hey, invest $250,000, subordinated debt note. I'll give you a 15% return and I'll personally sign it. And I'm like, I want a one pageer and go. We had a proven concept and we were cash flowing, but I was personally signed on it. So I'd take that and I'd bring that to the local community bank. They look at this $200 or $250,000, consider it equity that I could go, you know, borrow a million to off that deal. And we did this. And so, but then we open the restaurant, right? So and then crew members get paid two weeks later, right? So I'm, I'm baking that cash flow. Food I pay a month later. Rent, I pay a month later, right? All those things are going. So I'm

creating cash events opening up right so stacked up we're growing i did this up to 28 restaurants man and we're just rolling and rolling and rolling i'm leveraging myself horribly oh my god hurricane katrina hits oh wow 21 of 28 restaurants go dark right my cash flow stops i'm gonna cash flow i'm gonna buy you've signed everything personal oh signed everything personal oh for anyone back home that's not fine i mean your life is in the hands of banks and investors right now. Every single thing to the shoes you're wearing. Yep. Yep. The banks have it 100%. And so I'm like, well, then now that the cash has stopped. And I got to still pay rent. I still got to pay banknotes. I still got to pay everything else. So I rallied the team together. I said,

hey, we need to get open as quickly as possible. I have two reasons. One, we need a place our crew to come back to come to work. And we need our communities need food. And the second reason, if we don't, we're out of the business. We're done. And you talk about rally. When you got that, dude, we were the first restaurant open in all these communities. I went in and did Bullwater Acts with the city, one of the first people back down there. We opened up. Some places, other restaurants didn't open for 90 days after we were. I mean, no other restaurant, like the whole West Bank for 90 days after we opened, we crushed it.

Absolutely crushed it. We're the only restaurant to go to. We fed first responders, obviously, and that. But, like, it literally kept our prices, which were reasonable prices in Krauskudge. But we came back, and then we cashed like crazy, right? We were making all kind of money. fuel growth and it really united our team. But the lesson of all that is, is what I tell entrepreneurs, don't do that, because my dream almost just went away. You know what I mean?

Over leverage. It was stupid. So now we're leverage ratios less than three times. You know what I mean? So I learn from that. I keep it. What do you think your leverage ratio at that time was? Oh, Jesus. I mean, yeah, I mean, 100%. I mean, it was just incredible. Incredible. What's interesting, like when I hear you tell this story, the Hurricane Katrina, should have or could have knocked you out, but I actually propelled you forward. It also reminds me of the pandemic. What you did during the pandemic for giving your salary, but I also was looking at the numbers, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but 2020, I think you guys did one to one point five billion in revenue. You're looking at 2024. You have projections of $4.5 billion and the amount that

you're growing in a time that actually most businesses retracted. I feel like the pandemic, Hurricane Katrina, most people are getting killed, and this actually becomes an opportunity for you. Do you see that? Is that actually something that you've seen when you look at the timeline of raising canes? A hundred percent. And talk me through that because most people are getting wiped out. Most people are getting cleaned out. You're using this complete detriment as actually an opportunity to not only stay in the game, but grow at speeds that no one else is. Talk to me about it. Yeah, I mean, look, I think at times a crisis, people come together, teams are formed and you can see leadership emerge and great things happen, right? And so, you know, just like anything else,

I mean, when Katrina went through and then the levee broke, you know, we never seen that in a lifetime. You know, we grew up with hurricanes. But when it said it, I looked at it. It hurt me because the people that were going to be hurt in my community. But this entrepreneurial thing kicks on like, we ain't going to stop, man. Like, like we're going to get open. We're going to make this work. You know, so same thing with the pandemic, you know, this crazy thing.

And I'm like huge on food safety. So now you've got this new virus. And I want my people to be, okay, working close quarters. I want my customers to. Okay, so Hurricane Katrina is a huge, huge event that knocks out almost all the real estate, all the businesses, and for you, it becomes an opportunity to propel yourself. And the first thing I think about is when I was doing my research, I saw in 2020, you guys did $1.5 billion in revenue.

2024, you guys are projected to do $4.5. And so I see this, I'm like, wait a second, every single restaurant in the game was either wiped out or had massive pullback. Hurricane Katrina knocked out almost every. single business in the area. And so I'm trying to connect the dots here. Is it fair to say that in circumstances which people were almost completely knocked out, wiped out when bankrupt, these are actually opportunities that you use to propel you forward? Is that true? And if so, like, how did you actually do that? Yeah, very perceptive of you. You know, I think in times of

crisis, teams form, leaders emerging, you see great things happen, right? So like when Hurricane Katrina almost wiped out my whole business, you know, immediately, when it happened when when the levees broke and you know i've had hurricanes my whole life but seeing this i'm like this is a whole new ground you mean it's this feeling of my community and the people are going to be hurt and what do i do you've leadership right it's like you're an entrepreneur and how we can do is get open as quickly as you can give everybody's jobs back right get people back in the city and sense a normalcy with food but then on top of that it's like we got to save the company yeah i was like this is going to this is going to go away and so the pandemic is extremely similar right

as soon as this pandemic hits, when we start hearing about this, you know, and in the beginning when it came out, they talked about the virus could live on stainless steel for two weeks. And I'm like, I'm a food safety, like, maniac. And I'm like, if you have a virus that can live on this, and I was thinking public transportation, I'm like, change world. That ended up not being true, right? But this thing that's coming, that's scary. And all the initial rumors are going the first day, like, you know, the military is coming in,

they're going to lock people down. You're going to be stuck in your houses and do this stuff. So when I hear this, right, they're going to shut down your businesses, everything is not going to be open. It's that immediate, like, 30 seconds of, oh, shit. You know, you're like, it gets your gut. And then 30 seconds later, how are we going to beat this? How are we going to beat this? So immediately, I'm like, look, we're, we're a restaurant. People need to eat. And we also had, which we were blessed with, a great format, right? People can get food in the drive-thru. So what I'm thinking is, okay, so my main concern is, then how do we keep our people safe, right? And so

literally, we wrote this stuff up ourselves. It's just like me doing the Bull Water Act and New Orleans when I went down there. Like we worked with state government to create what it was to make sure the water was safe, right? Same thing with this. We originally went in. We were just taping six feet things away, showing the food departments, you know, the health boards in all of our communities, hey, this is how we're going to keep people safe.

Because look, they have to eat, and we're an essential business. So government did a good thing by saying, hey, you have to have restaurants open, right? And then they're shutting up things down. And so we started these ways that we would show and work with health officials. is how we're going to keep people safe. In the restaurants, this is how we're going to keep people safe. This is how we're working totally different shifts with different people and then backup shifts. Because if one person got COVID back then, the whole shift had to take off, was it like five days or something crazy? You start up two weeks, then five days. You imagine sending

a whole crew of people to go home, but you still got to pay them. All this stuff that's going on and we're not, you know, and so, but luck would have it. We have that drive-through. And, man, we killed it. Like sales were insane. And so we learned to get better and quicker. So we turned our parking lots into multi-lane drive-thrus, bringing food out to everybody. And what was great is, man, we got to bonus our managers and our crew members and everybody, man. It was an incredible thing. And like when it first happened, like no one was going out and leaving their house, right? And our crew members would, like, sacrifice hours to let their other crew members, you know, have hours at the restaurant.

And I was like, no, no, no, thank you. But look, we're going to pay you. Everybody's getting paid and be on standby. So what's interesting, too, is when people were scared to come out of their house, you know, I'm going everywhere, seeing my teams all over the country because I want to say is, you're working, I'm working, and we're here. And I literally have to wave to them outside the restaurant because you couldn't cross people in case I had COVID, right?

So I would be outside. They just knew I was there, right? But taking those things, those things that could be detrimental to your company really hard and already put you out of business and looking at the opportunities. But the thing is, you have to have that drive. and then you have to have that drive, and then you build your teams, you'll figure it out. Yeah, and you forgave your entire salary during the pandemic, didn't you?

Yeah, of course, man, of course. And so, I don't know if that's publicly. How much money are you forgiving at that point or putting back into the company? A lot, you know. All right, let me ask you this. I think about your resilience. That's a big word. I think about during the pandemic and then during Hurricane Katrina.

And you think about some of the publicly traded companies that you're competing against, right? And just, it's my personal opinion. I'm sure there's a lot of bureaucracy within those companies. and it's probably harder to get things done. You declined millions, tens, hundreds, maybe even billions of dollars to stay private so that you can own the company. Do you think that's a massive differentiator

for when you're in these situations like the pandemic? You're on the ground. You're able to go talk to the people. You're able to literally put the six feet tape and be like, we'll do it this way. You're hearing it from me. I own it. Do you think that was a huge differentiator?

Absolutely, man. Like I said, once again, so perceptive. I don't have to answer to anybody to put my crew members and my customers, I can make a decision. And I look, I have an amazing team. And we make decisions together and we grow, but like immediately we can do this stuff. I didn't have to go through shareholders or 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, you know, another two weeks? And what are the other competitors doing? And what are they? 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 so you would you say that's like when you look at the other customers, were you up before all your biggest competitors? Absolutely. That's huge. I mean, literally, up and then figuring it out, and then literally opening multi-lanes and being faster and quicker in the whole bit. I love it. All right. Let's transition to a fun.

I would say it's for your employees. It's like a little bit of a, I don't know if it's a marketing player or not, but I read it. I was like, this is really cool. 2022, you bought 50,000 lottery tickets to share with your employees, and you said, as soon as you found out, it was an $810 million prize pool, you couldn't miss the chance or the opportunity to possibly win it and share it with the crew. The total cost of those tickets in the article. said $100,000. Tell me a little bit about this thought process as a business leader when you're

thinking about your team as a whole and what made you do it? Well, so I love my crew and I created the apartment and the business actually called Keynes Luff. So it'd be like, you know, it's like taking, respecting, rewarding, recognizing crew members, you know. So things as simple as you come in and cover a shift and then you went out and clean the dumpster pad. You're like, here's a gift card, man. Thank you so much for doing this, you know, and these men and women work so hard. So they all know it's Cain's Love. And like, literally, I have a department, Cain's Love department. And so this was just a Keynes Love Act. It was $816 million or whatever it was.

I knew we'd go over a billion. Everybody's talking about it. The crew members are talking about it. So I'm like, hey, you know what? Let's go buy everybody in the company a ticket. And let's have fun. And so we pulled them all together. So it's like people have my Canes Love team going out all these different convenience stores.

They just rack up 50,000 tickets. That's a lot to do. But it was more about that fun for the crew, right? So everybody gets a ticket in the whole company. But if we win, anybody wins me included we're going to split it up with everybody so just a really fun deal but then it went viral right so i'm always a marketing deal but for me it has to be organic or you're going to be lame right so if i bought this to say oh it's a marketing thing and i do this deal is people can see through

that so like when they talk to the crew and interviewing them they're like Todd always does this fun stuff for us and you know and it was all being a part of a team so but but it did go viral it was a great uh great marketing return on too but more is about the fun it was a great recruiting tool because people are like, I want to go work company, that literally has a founder that wants to do this stuff, so it's really fun. And then the haters were like, you know, you should be doing this and like tuition assistance and all them. I'm like, we do that too. This was fun. It's $2 per crew member, you know, so I know it was $100,000, but I have 50,000 crew members at this point. Yeah. And well, it's a fun thing. It recruits people. And also you got to, I mean, you did

get a business case. There was a big return. $100,000 for those type of impressions and the ability people come. It's incredible. You have 55,000 crew, 800 of them have been. internally promoted. A lot of action there. You mentioned the word virality. And when I think about Raising Cains is probably the number one word. You don't see any one of your competitors doing what you're doing. We talked about it earlier when we opened this up. But, you know, Arionautomatics gets dumped. She's the number one trending person in the entire country. Boom. She's at Raising Cains the next day. Post Malone's relevancy is unbelievable. He's a great guy, great human. You guys do work with them. Snoop Dog. I mean, I'll tell you all the celebrities in the recap that Raising

Keynes has connected with. Let's talk about the Post Malone partnership just a little bit. Because when I think of you, I think of the commercials you've done with him. I'm a huge post fan, huge post fan. But of course my business wheels are turning. I'm like, you know, does he have equity in it? Like, how does it play? Is it just a fee? Like, just tell me a little bit about the Post Malone partnership or some of these individuals you work with at a high level and what it looks like because no one else in your space is doing this. So in my chicken finger adventures in life, meet some really amazing people. And because they're fans of Cains, right?

Whether they grew up with it or they had it later as I opened up in their community. And so they hear the story. This guy, look, he went in commercial fish in Alaska and named the restaurant after his dog, right? So they're like, I want to meet this guy. And so someone like Post, you know, his people reached out and my people

and said, hey, Post would love to meet Todd. He wants to bring his daughter to a concert, you know, come meet us. And so I went to Rolling Loud in Miami. This might be eight years ago. I can't even remember. And so I liked his music. I like all kinds of genres of music. I like this music.

I'm great. And my daughter's like, oh, yeah, we get to meet Post. Let's go, you know. And so we go to the show. It's obviously I get to meet backstage for a minute. And then after the show, we went to the bus, right? And then he was like, hey, we all come back to the house, right? And so my daughter's 14 them.

She knows her old man, likes to drink, likes to party. Obviously she wasn't, you know. And I was like, Post is it cool that, you know, for her age. Oh, yeah, we're a light crowd. It's not some crazy, you know, rock stars after party. So we go back to the house, you know, we're shotguning beers and become fast friends. And for me, I get inspired by interesting people, right? And so his creativity, then became a real huge fan because then I love this guy, all right?

And which interesting, too, is you'll see when you get older. Like me being 52 now, like, like, posting to me is like my buddy. Like, I don't look at them younger. I don't look at anything. And so I kind of go through, funny story. He and I were talking drinking beer at his house. And we like to collect things. And so he was talking about he almost bit on the Kirk Cobain guitar that he played on MTV.

And I was like, man, I remember exactly where. I was when that went on and told him, I said, where were you? He's like, Todd, I wasn't born yet. I'm like, oh, yeah, I think I'm the old man. But just through friendship and then hanging out, and then it's legit friendship, then you help each other. I'm like, hey, post anything you need, you know, let me know, and then he'd go into Keynes. He'd wear a cane's hat, doing a, you know, something that goes viral, you know, I'm just like, thanks, buddy. And what Post wanted to do was he wanted to own a Keynes. He's like, man, I want to own a can's, you know, can you at least put one by my house, and I did. I put one in Midville, Utah, as close as I could to his house

where he lives. And he said, I just want to own one. I said, well, mostly, you know, you own in the canes, you know, one is not our model, open company restaurants. So I want to keep the quality. I want to keep the, you know, the good staff and the whole bit. But I said, it's a hard business and you got to love it and do it. It's kind of like, you know, me going into right now starting to start music career. You know what I mean? It's just not what I'm gifted at. He's like, well, let's figure out something, some way to do it. So I was like, okay, let me think. And I was like, you know what we can do? And I had this restaurant over in Midville. I said, how about you turn in a postage restaurant, you know, whatever you want to do,

it's posties case, you design it, however you want to design it. Like, there's no budget. Let's just, let's just have a blast, make something super special. Then what's just share the profits? And I said, because that's a partnership. And I said, you don't want to have the legal ramifications, you know, all the things with stock and all that. I said, we'll just run it through.

And we'll just do it as long as it's fun for both of us and do that. And man, he designed, he got so fired up. And he was like, you cool, something crazy? the all pink restaurant, wrapped, you know, inside ping pong balls, pneumatic. You know he loves to pay beer pong. And I almost beat him one night. Almost. But it's like, we got a new match.

Did you beat him in the shack? What's that? Did you beat him in the shotgun? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got out shotgun on him, but by a little bit, but not beer pong him. But he, so anyway, so he creates this just fantastic, you know, look and feel. And then we're like, let's do cups. You know, and him working with people, he says he has amazing, creative people.

And I think this was key from me and my team. We've got a really creative team. I run our marketing. We let them design. It's like we don't want to, we don't, we don't want to, because we'll, we'll do it one way. You do it with your team. And so we worked with them on just getting their ideas and how we're going to practically do it, right?

And so then it's like, let's do some cool cups, you know, because that's cool. We get some cool images of you on it. And, you know, his people know how to do his brand immacantly. It's just, it's so seamless and so cool. And I'm like, you know, of course, let's do some commercials and have fun with that together. Right. So they're like, yeah, we're going to go hire messy. and then they came up with this, you know, Scarface, you know, like play off that deal or Posty and I are, like, doing the restaurant.

And then it was National Chicken Finger Day. So it's like, they set up like a little sleep over in the restaurant because I let Post come in and sleep in the restaurant. So Austin's is so funny. So we're like, but we're like literally, it's unscripted stuff we're talking about. He's like, you tell me, I can't sleep. And I'm like, it's National Chicken Finger Day, buddy. You know, we have to get some sleep. And I'll let you sleep in the restaurant.

But he just, it was all just us messing with each other, right? And then he just came up with this hilarious. stuff and anyway so it goes great and so all of it goes great we make good money but what's even more important about it is it's just people love post yeah they know post loves canes he knows there's people know that's real friendship there and the loyalty goes crazy right and so he loved it so much we did another one in dallas because he loves the cowboys and did a second one in Dallas and he came up another other crazy design you know all like LED inside with cowboys blue and it's all this cool stuff. It's tough to connect, like, friendship and, like, just pure admiration to return an

investment, but, like, in this case, it is so crystal clear that it's there. Like, there's the passion, there's the admiration, there's the friendship, naturally becomes the products, and then the returns insane, especially with what Posty can do with his impressions and everything like that. A couple, just a quick question on, like, the structure with that, you said, you know, I have my business owners and operators. Do you then just create a separate, like, actual LLC for just these restaurants? No, no, no. We can. structure? Well, we can just basically do it through like a just, you begin to basically think of like a marketing return, you know, which is a, so, so basically marketing dollars going out. Interesting.

Of the deal. Okay. That's also an expense. I see. So just you take what it'd be and then we just cut it that way. Just use it that way. Okay. A couple, last couple of questions I have for someone back home that's like super inspired about what you've done, they have an idea or they want to invest in like a franchise. I know you guys don't do that. But what are your thoughts on just the overall franchise? model like is it is it highly profitable is it extremely tough would you tell someone if they're interested to get in the business talk to me just about that well so first off you know when when i talk to an entrepreneur and it's not just in restaurants but mainly restaurants and they have an idea i encourage them if they have their own concept to start that open that and the reason why is

by having entrepreneurs open stuff it gives diversity of thought yeah diversity of ideas diversity of different ways to do things. And so, and then everybody gets better from that, right? That I think is good, but the things that are great about franchising, the obvious things is you already have a brand that's successful. You can see that. Systems, processes, you're buying into a winning concept, hopefully, right? And then, and then the proven rate on franchises versus people starting their own concept, I mean, it's just night and day, right? I mean, I think one out of 10 restaurants actually make it, you know what I mean? Like, like, and these are mom and pops that are going in and doing this deal. I only wanted to actually make it, you know. And so the franchise model,

that's very successful, right? But you've got to pay six or seven percent off the top. Like, it ain't cheap that way. But the profitability has to be there if they're going to keep selling franchises, right? So there's a lot of pros to that. So you can work hard and you don't have to come up with everything that you might not be gifted at, right? Just like me starting off, I didn't have any of those things. So I got my butt kick. But look, I was 23. That opened up when I was 24. I could just outwork everybody, right? I didn't have to sleep much, you know, as a young man. some people can't do that. So I think franchising is an excellent way for people to do that. But if you're passionate about your own concept and you want to do your own concept,

man, go and do it. Franchises, though, you have to look at them because some of them might be doing well at some point, right? And, you know, you've got to look at the trends. So look at how many closed, you know, I'm talking about restaurants. How many have closed? Because they talk about how many of their opening and how many territories. How many have closed, right? How many have closed on that? what is the founders intention on this this this this this franchising if it's a small deal because are they going to sell out in three or four years and then you lose the passion right so a lot of these all these people go out they're charismatic they sign up all these franchisees then private equity talks them into to selling out right

so then the passion goes from the business you know it's not the same thing so who's a leadership who's you know that going a lot of times it is set up by private equity or the founders long gone he or she is long gone so then it's what is the staff what are their values what are their non-negotiables what's their vision, you know, and to see that because, you know, I'd be a little suspect if if I look deeper and found out the plan is to sell this thing in three years after we sell these territories, right? And it happens, right? So anyway, it's just some things to get educated and do before you jump in because people will see it and say, man, this is great. I just really want to own this and do a franchise. That's a masterclass right there in franchising from someone

who knows very well. So take notes on that. And I think the other two, like you said, risk return, right? You go to a franchise. Obviously, your returns will be limited. You own it on. yourself, you might be over levered, you might have subordinate that uses equity with the banks if they'll structure like this, but obviously the return is massive. So think about what you're doing, how you're doing it. Last thing I got for you is, I don't know how much

of this you can share, but economics of, and obviously it's going to vary based on, is it post Malone's restaurant, is it the Times Square restaurant, but you take like an average raising canes location, just as like a base case model. Do you have an idea in your head? I'm sure you do, but I'm

just curious, like, okay, in a raising Cains, we want to make sure we're doing at least 2 million in revenue and a gross profit of like 10% or something like that. Do you have economics for like one store that you think through? And is there anything regarding those numbers you can share? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, when we look at it, our average unit volumes, I think are six, six and a half million now and they continue to grow. Yeah, per restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're at the top. We're on top two of all quick service. Yeah, I used to underwrite a lot of these deals and six and a half million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's us and then Chick-fil-A on top of that. And then, I mean, look, then the other ones, other big ones are billion less down to just a fraction of it. Yeah, some of these really popular restaurants. So huge volumes. But the restaurant business is tough, and the margins are skinny, right? And so for us is we do 10% net income, that's good. That's very good, right?

And so we're pushing with that 10% net income on every one. That makes the returns there, right? And so that's what we want to do. And then so like cash flow, you know, just at Ibedo would be, you know, about 20%. And so that's what we want to go in and always do. So, I mean, we want to return on investing capital. You want all those metrics to me, why I like to look at net income. And more than, you know, look at cash flow, obviously, but I want that net income line.

So I'd like to take it all the way down as taxes because that's really what long term you're making and you're keeping that help. Exactly. Exactly. Fascinating. You'll continue to use that cash flow to pay down that debt. You guys are obviously in an unbelievable position. 4.5 billion is what you're projected to do this year.

The restaurant, I see over 800 locations, attempting to get up to 850 this year, 40 states, five countries. The last thing I got to ask you before you get your train secret, what's next? What does it look like? Five, ten years from now, if we're sitting down, interviewing, and I'm rattling off those stats, what do you think it looks like? Stores, international, what's the raising Keynes brand? Well, so right now, you know, we've got a hundred restaurants that will be opening in like a 12-month period. And so, and that's going to be U.S. and some, some international. So with us, that's a good pace domestically to open restaurants with quality, right? And so then we'll build off that, 110, 120, 130. You know, like, as we can continue to grow, the team's getting seasoned in all these new markets we have across the country, right? So the white space is huge and the thousands of restaurants. Over 2,000 restaurants we can do in the U.S. internationally, like, and the reason why I want to go international is because I love bringing in

great people to share my dream in different communities, right? And so growing all over the world, probably next we'll go into Mexico and we'll go in there. We got a great group down there. I'll say a group that we're talking, knowing them for a long time, exceptional operators. We can't navigate down. A lot of places you can't, you want to franchise internationally because whatever it is, politics, whatever they're doing there. I think we're going to go into potentially London next. I think that's a good gateway going. into Europe for us. I'm actually going to look at some real estate in a couple of weeks. I think that's a really good gateway. In Asia, we're talking to some great, great restaurant operators in the

Philippines, and we're going to stage these with growth coming up in the future and they're taking advantage of opportunities. But for me, what I've always had to do is keep our team extremely focused and disciplined, right? Because so many people, when you have these opportunities, and we get opportunities everywhere. Bring games, bring this, incredible real estate, like, and like just a plus sites in these different countries, like, and you want to jump on that, like immediately, because you're just excited to go do it, but you can grow your business so quick that you burn out your teams, you don't have quality, your people, you don't go do right with your people, and you wash out your brand. Then it doesn't come special.

You're not going to have these huge volumes. You're not going to have when you open up in Times Square a constant line since day one opening, you know, I mean, you're not going to have those things. We're going to do $22 million out of the first year, out of time square. You know what I mean? And then next year, our team says, like, we're going to try to do $25 million, you know, just like keep this thing rolling. But we have that stuff. So, like, I think it's real important for businesses to have a very firm vision, right? And the vision of Raising Cain's is someday have locations all over the world and BD brand for cravable chicken finger meals, great crew, cool culture, and active community involvement, right? Those things guide it.

And so if I grow too quickly, great crew, you know, we didn't do the right things to bring in great crew and that have that culture of what it's supposed to be there because we didn't put the right people in there and have them set up for success, right? You know, or we didn't do the right thing. Look, when I went open up the Middle East, it took me two years to find the right chicken. Two years, right? Because I was the first international sourcing. But if I didn't take that two years to find that quality chicken, then we wouldn't have the craveability, then it wouldn't be special over there. You know what I mean? So, so anyway, you have to stay disciplined because if you are successful, opportunities are like crazy and you can grow it to

where it's something not special at all. Unbelievable. $25 million, hopefully here soon in Times Square, six and a half million per store, 10% margins. You guys are growing 100 units, such a short period of time in a year, going international, south of the border, across the pond. It's unbelievable to see what you've done,

how you've done it, and how you've done it differently. Thought I could talk to you for hours more, but I know your time is limited here, so we've got to wrap with a trading secret. So it could be a life trading secret, finance, business, any type of trading secret that our listeners can't get from their professors in their classroom,

or from a TikTok tutorial or YouTube tutorial, only through your experience. What is one trading secret you can leave? You know, I always tell this aspiring entrepreneurs. First, I got to tell them, you know, you got to do something that you love because you won't be successful at it and you won't be happy if not. Look, you can have, you know, you can have this great concept in mind that can work,

but if you're not, if you're not passionate about it, there's not a purpose behind it, you're not going to be happy. So don't do it. So one, you've got a good concept, right? But then I tell them, look, starting your own business, imagine how hard it's going to be, then multiply that by infinity. Like, it is that hard. And people talk about quality of life with it.

There is no quality of life. You mean, you're just doing the business to make it successful. So then if you're committed, you're really committed on that, then tell yourself you're never going to give up. Because I've seen so many aspiring entrepreneurs give up because it's so hard to get at finance. It's so hard to get a location. It's so hard to do these things.

So they give up. And so what the world could have seen if just people didn't give up. So never, ever give up. But more importantly than that, you've got to be fanatical, man. You've got to be fanatical about doing it, fanatical about everything. That's why I look at details. You know, you and I were talking earlier, I'm looking at the reel that goes out, man, I'm into the details because it means something, fanatical. So for me, it's like the best quote, and I actually came up with this, right? But it's nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically. right right so the fanaticism to what you do and if you do that you'll always make it happen and i think anybody who's achieved any form of outlying success it's a word that's probably never been using on this podcast but fanatical that is so true it is such it's a vision and attention to detail that is so fanatical that probably no one else could do it right that's why i'm literally walking in the room saying how is todd looking at the real that's fanatical this has been an unbelievable episode so much to take away

whether you're looking to get into franchise and curious about the restaurant business, how to finance it, how to treat your employees, stay true to your mission and do it in almost a 30-year time frame and grow at the rate you have. Todd, where can everyone find this real? Where can they find you? Where can they find everything Raising Cains and Todd Graves? No, just you know, add Raising Cains, add Todd Graves. So, yeah, it's just fun to keep up. We can live an interesting life, so I love to share it. It's been one hell of a weekend.

I tell you what, I'm going to need a chiropractors. My neck was just moving every which way with all the celebrities that were in your soul. sweet. It's always a pleasure. Looking forward to continuing to keep in touch. And thank you for being on training secret. Oh, man, it was a blast. I love it. Ding, ding, ding. We are closing in the bell to the Todd Graves episode, the founder of Raising Cains, a great guy, a brilliant businessman, who was turned down with his business plan in college. His professor told him he stood no chance, and here he is all these years later, turning this into an empire that's literally not only taking over United States, but on its way to the world. David, I know you're a big raising

Keynes fan. I know you had to love this episode. Curious Canadian is with me. How are we doing? What are we thinking? Yeah. I mean, this was, and I told you before we started recording, this is probably top three favorite episodes that we've had on, period. It's an episode that I've already texted more of my close friends and family about to put it on the radar that they must listen to. This was like all of the goodness that we get to create trading secrets for to get this type of information, this type of knowledge, this type of

storytelling from a guy who's so relatable. And Jay, I think he's relatable, not because of who he is necessarily, but he's a billionaire off of chicken fingers. It's not tech. It's not dot com. It's not something. It's unrelatable. He's

literally a billionaire off chicken fingers and I don't blame his college professor for failing one of the project because if you came to me and told you were opening a chicken finger joint, I think you were nuts. But sometimes you just got to follow through and stick to it, like he said, and I'll quit. Unbelievable story. I could talk about it for days. But Jay, just an incredible.

And I thought you did an amazing job connecting with them and relating to them and getting them excited to talk about this. Oh, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for that. And it's so perfectly said, like I actually couldn't think of a better way to put it in perspective, not only a billionaire, but a billionaire off chicken tenders. because David, when I was in the suite and I'm seeing all these people come in from Hulk, Kogan, all the way down, everybody in between, I'm just thinking, it's pretty wild

that you create a product that universally, like, everyone in here at all ages consumes and enjoys. That's pretty cool. Like, that's a hard thing to do to have a cool product that, like, everyone loves. That's, like, almost impossible. I loved this episode because A to Z, whether you're in a 9 to 5, whether you're an entrepreneur or whether you're a billionaire listening to this, every. has a take home from this. Everybody better have a takeaway from this. He's redefining the CEO game in terms of how he treats his brand, how he treats his marketing, how he invests in his brand, and using social media and leveraging that social media and that type of advertising and marketing in such a genuine way. You know, one thing that you touched on, they said we'll talk about in the recap is the celebrities that he's partnered with. You touched on a few of them in the Raisin Cain Suite. Just talk about some of those people that he has involved. with this company on a marketing side to just show how he's made these genuine connections

that are saving you know him so much marketing dollars but getting 10x the returns yeah i mean david i listed some of those people off in the podcast in front of them you heard those names but here's a list that's greater than that um chevi chase snoop dog rob schneider ice tea angela reese tony uh breedinger uh jaden daniels liby dunn parker mccullum bailey zimmerman um i mean i'm still going here. Pretty much every single person from Barstool is repping, Raising Canes, Jerusky, Arianna Maddox

from Vanderpump Rules, Donna Kelsey, Juju Smith-Schuster, Jack Eichel, former Buffalo Sabre, Michael Block, Stetson Bennett, C.J. Stroud. I mean, it literally just continues to go and go. I could read this list all day long,

but the range is extensive and the impact is just unbelievable. He's just so smart, too. talked about how he wanted on purpose like, you know, strategy of his is getting diverse people. He talked about the professional skateboarder that he gone on to get in that crowd. He has LSU gymnast, Lovie Dunn, LSU quarterback, and his home roots of Louisiana. And at the end of the day, he's got Jason Tartick. He's got Jason Tartick.

And now he's tapping into the 80% following. We talked about it on last week's episode and the Bachelor following. What I love about this episode is he got offered the lead for the Bachelor. I'm not even going near that because we have so much other stuff to talk about that it relates to our podcast. just shows a little bit of the genius of them. And one of the things that I do want to touch on Jay is, is you must have been in your element. He's talking about margins.

He's talking about adjusted EBITA. He's talking about profits. He's talking about left, right, and center. I'm going back to my roots. I got a couple questions that I need to ask you for the people at home because some things flew over my head, but I knew that I could ask you to clear them up. With trading secrets, I always try to keep it like 101, 201, 201.

If the mics were down and I could have got into like the weeds, oh my God, I would have been in there. But I loved the I love the verbiage. And David, this is what you do best. Your financial curiosities, create consistency and understanding for everyone out there that's asking for it. So fire away. What do you got?

All right. Really quick. We talked about SPA loans before. It's probably been a full season. Really quick. Hit me with an SPA loan because I know that's a strategy he used to fund his business and a startup at the start. Yeah. I used to do underwriting for SBA loans.

and then I used to work with the bankers who actually were committed to doing SBA loans. In quick summary, it is a small business loan. It's offered by banks and online lenders. And the whole thing about SBA loans is that they're taking higher risk and therefore the government is backing them up. So if the bank lends money, they take on risk. If they're lending money in a high risk situation, the bank won't do the deal. Well, the United States government says we need small businesses. for the right people with the right experience,

the federal government will back it up, even if it goes default. So it's more of a higher risk loan for a bank, but it's fully secured by the government, which makes it less of a risk. Okay, which brings me my next one, talking about borrowing money. He talked about angel investor,

which is obviously someone, a primary investor in his business. He said he would take a subordinated debt note with a guaranteed, I think, a 15% return. He said he would personally sign it, then take that to the bank and borrow one to two million off that. So I think the term that I need clarification on

is a subordinated debt note. Okay, so if you get investors to invest in your money or lend money to your company, there's going to be different classes of what their debt is, okay? When you go to get bank debt from a banking institution, that is known as senior debt. And by senior debt, that means it's the number one debt.

like if you stack rank it, they're the ones who get paid back first. Bank debt is usually the cheapest and the hardest to get. So they're like, if we're lending it to you, we get paid back first. We get preferential treatment. Now subordinated debt is just what it sounds like. It's subordinated. It's under the senior debt. So they would get paid back second before the bank.

Now that's higher risk. As a result, you have to pay more fees and you have to pay a higher interest rate for subordinated debt, but they're second or lower on the list of getting repaid. So in summary, what he was saying in layman's terms were, I got people to lend me money. And then the bank looked at that money they lent me as equity. So it was a really interesting lending structure that in 2024 would not happen or likely would not happen. And then speaking of debt, he talked about his growth. He talked about how he's putting the cash flow that he has from all these restaurants back into the growth of the company. He talked about having building off of some of the debt for

his future investments. A guy is the 500th richest person in the world. He's got 3.8 billion in revenue. Is this guy still in debt? Is he still carrying debt? Like that to me is in the simple man's world. I think of the 500 richest people in the world that they are debt free. But does this guy still have debt? Yes, he absolutely has debt. And for any business, you have to have debt to grow. You think about a working line of credit. Essentially, you take the money from the bank and you're able to pay your vendors and pay your people. And then once you convert your product to sales, the cash inflow comes out to pay that down. So almost every large corporation in the world has debt that they work the business off of in some capacity.

So what his entire balance sheet looks like, I don't know, especially because it's privately held. But it sounds like they are much less levered, when he talked about the leverage ratio, much less levered than they have been in the past, which is a good thing. But every company out there needs debt to grow, every single one for the most part.

So you already hit my last question, which was he said, a leverage ratio less than three times. You kind of touched on that. So between that and then you said privately owned, he talked about preferred shareholders. He's not a publicly traded company. So there are any necessarily shares out there. So touch on that really quick. And then we can move on to the juicy stuff, the meat, the stories, the takeaways between a leverage of a ratio less than three times and being a preferred shareholder, even though it's not a publicly traded company. So leverage ratio is essentially saying like what, how much debt are you carrying relative to

some type of metric out there. So if he talked about adjusted EBIDA, that would be a metric a bank would use. Like how much debt does he have comparatively to his adjusted EBDA, right? And so when he says three or four times, that's a multiple of debt he has compared to his adjusted EBITA. So that's a leverage ratio. Now the preferred stock in common stock, what you're looking at is prefer shareholders and common shareholders, probably what it sounds like. Preferer shareholders are above common shareholders. As a result of that, there's different rights with preferred shareholding stock. So it's a type of class of stock that grants different type of rights like, you know, they might get a portion of the net income or dividend payments or a higher claimed assets if the company liquidated.

Like think about it like the senior debt, but stock. It's at the top with the most amount of rights associated where common stock is going to be lower and you're going to get less, less essentially writes to it in value, if that makes sense. It does make sense. And one of the things that I loved about the episode was I could feel how genuine this guy was through the microphone. And he talked about preferred shareholders and how

happy he was to make these people a boatload of money. One of those people, Jay, was his bookie, which I know for us is just hilarious. I love it. So relatable. Yeah, so relatable. Getting your bookie paid out. And that kind of takes me to the next thing that I want to talk about is just you know, from your biggest takeaway from this episode and just you walked out of that,

you couldn't, you weren't expecting maybe to get that out of them. You know, I can start if you need to think about it a little bit, but there were so many of them from a business or personal or just a hilarious story that you heard. Is there anything that you want to make sure in your head, you're like that you didn't get a chance to maybe react to in the episode? You're like, oh my God, I can't believe I got this out of him or he told this or et cetera, et cetera. You know, I wasn't sure going into it, like how open he would be with numbers.

And I thought maybe after the episode, there were a couple numbers he wouldn't share. But he was great. I mean, he shared numbers left and right. I was surprised. You could even see the way. I always try to be respectful of the person's position they have and what they can give away that would negatively impact their business, right? Like, I'm always looking for financial transparency, but that's productive and educational.

I wanted to know information. I thought, like, I wasn't sure if he'd share. But, like, when he talked about the six and a half million per unit and then the, you know, 10% net income associated with each of those, to me, that blew me away. And then one of the things I just loved is when he's talking about shotgun and beers with post-belone and like how, you know, it's tough to beat him in beer pong. He's never beat him in beer pong, but he could out shoot him. I'm like, this guy is why he is where he is. He has the respect of his employees, but the relatability to everybody. I don't, like, I'm going to go on record saying he's like the coolest

CEO in the world. You know how many stiff-ass, boring, unrelatable, completely arrogant CEOs there are at that level? This guy is down to earth, humble. Let me tell you a little behind the scenes, David. His chief of staff texted me before I got ready, hey, just so you know, like I don't know what you were planning to wear, but keep it casual. Like Todd's just going to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I'm like, I just love this guy. It's everything you want. It is. And you talk about the six and a half million. You talk about 800 plus stories. You talk about him he owns 90% of his business that was a jaw-dropping number to me one thing i locked about is how he talked about the canes love department this is an unreal idea that he has built within

his business giveaway gift cards for people who cover shifts buy the lotto tickets just to build morale it sounds like an amazing place to work i mean the the post malone story about him shotguning beers hilarious but look what it parlayed into it parlayed into him sharing profits in a posties cane and his own brand, his own design, you know, the amount of money that he's getting back in commercials that he's probably doing for free. Like that was incredible. My biggest, one of my biggest things, and I love Keynes. You said it. I love Keynes. I get it every time I can. There's not one in Rochester. If you listen to this Todd, get one in Rochester. I'll be there every freaking day is when he talked about expansion, he talked about expanding in the Middle East,

he said it took two years to find the right chicken, not the right manager, not the right operate not the right location, but the fact that it's found two years to get the right chicken shows how much he cares about the quality is why every time now I want to go to Keynes Moore knowing that that's the care and attention that it puts into the chicken because my God, is it good in that sauce I could bathe in it. You could just drown me in it. I could shower in it. It is so, so good. He talked about it, just the sense of perfection and in detail. And, you know, when you truly care about your product and who you are, it doesn't matter how much wealth you've accumulated. You never forget that. And when you hear someone like that,

talking about, you know, all the, the diligence he goes through, whether it's the Middle East or not with his food product, even when he talked about, like, food safety being the number one priority during COVID. Like, and then it's the same guy that I walk in and he's, you know, give me a couple minutes. I got to check this real before we put it on social media. I mean, there are companies that literally do $100,000 in sales and they have someone running their full social media and don't look at one thing. Now you have a guy here who's top 500 on the Forbes richest business. leaders and he's making sure the caption and social media look good. It's that attention to detail that's gotten to him where he is. And David, you kind of alluded to it already, but some of the

philanthropy they do is amazing. And I know before you and I pre-called to make sure I had this available, because you did say it in the episode, I said, make sure you ask me about it. You recognize that I want to make sure I do do that. Since the early days at Keynes, the key focus has always been a support of the local communities. So they operate an active community involvement fund. And through ACI, Keynes has supported over 45,000 community partners and has donated over $129 million to date. Over the last two years alone, Keynes has donated $40 million in ACI. It's unbelievable. But David, when I think about the impact, I always think about that he donated his whole salary in 2020. If you ask me one number, I wish he would have given that I fully respect

that he didn't give, especially as a business leader, I get it, but I would have loved how much is, I know how much his salary lies. A hundred percent. He, he could tell he's so generous. You can tell that's why these celebrities gravitate towards him and why he builds genuine connections with them. I, two, my two final takeaways, because I know we got a rap soon. One, he's the first one to give a trading secret with a quote, that's his own quote, which I just thought was hilarious. He says nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically, talk about the reels, talk about everything that he did to make it work. And I just got to say, boy, do I feel bad for Craig, for Craig, left the business after the

second restaurant open. He couldn't pursue it fanatically. You know, Todd talked a lot about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, quality of life, throw it out the window, think about how hard it'll be in times it by a million. Poor Craig, he has some stock. He kind of chuckled. I don't think it's enough stock to make him feel good about it. but what an episode from Todd what an episode if you haven't had raising canes go get it dunk it in the sauce it's got three menu items so you don't get shocked when you look at it chicken fingers french fries and Texas toast it's got the sauce on the side I'm drooling I want it so bad unbelievable episode tonight and I really hope our listeners take something away from it I love it next week David when this comes out on Monday I'm going to be at the drive-through of raising canes we'll do a little story I'll try all your suggestions I'll

rate him one through 10. Todd Graves, what an episode. If you're listening to this still, Todd, please make sure to invite me back to one of your events. My God, do you throw a party? And you know what? Maybe we can give Curious Canadian a plus one. But that was unbelievable. Yeah, David, let's go. You'll come to the next one. What do you say? I'm in, Todd. I'm in. He's in. All right. Well, thank you guys for tuning into another episode of Trading Secrets. Please remember to subscribe, follow us on YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. Follow us on Instagram. And we will see you for an episode of more than money this Thursday. This one is so much fun.

We have Evan Sarr and Betty Sarr. Evan is the co-founder of ReWired Talent with me and also an owner in Trading Secrets and like family to me. And he just had a baby. So we have them coming on talking about their process. And we also have their OB, GYN, who delivered the baby coming on talking about things you need to know about women's health and all. So, of course, some of the things you need to know as it relates to career and money with the whole industry. We talk about the difference in profitability with C-sections versus natural birth, the whole list. It's an episode you can't afford to miss.

That is more than money this Thursday. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Trading Secrets. One, hopefully you couldn't afford to miss. Making that money, money, pay on me. Making that money and living that dream.