Chick-fil-(mone) A *chickfilmoney*

Chick-fil-A makes more money than McDonald's Starbucks and Subway combined!

On their first day in business they made fifty dollars and today they make over five BILLION dollars.

I love Chick-fil-A, whats not to love?

Great sandwiches, desserts, milkshakes, waffle fries, sauces, tenders, etc. but what I love even more than that is their business because there are lessons that all of us can take in terms of how they do business not what they talk about socially but the actual business of running a business and how you go from $50 to $5 billion and I can promise you it's not by doing what everyone else does

and they did that without raising tons of debt.

They did it over 76 years and they did it after the founder died and have continued to grow, they have never had a down year in sales for 76 straight years!

Need more reasons to love them.

They sell one-quarter the number of items of any other franchise.

Subway has seven and a half percent net margins and their royalty alone

is 15% of "Top Line" meaning their stores are running 20-30% plus margins.

Here are 5 lessons that I take away from Chick-fil-A that you can apply to your business.

Number 1:

The company only sold chicken sandwiches for 76 straight years and I don't think they're going to stop.

Having a singular focus on the core products and not getting cute and not getting fancy and not having 49 menu items but just saying what are the things that most people want and how do I get better and better and better at doing those things because better gives you leverage it means the same input gets you more output rather than having lots of different things you have to put input in you just put more and more and more because you only have so much Juju.

REMEMBER SIMPLE SCALES, FANCY FAILS

For example, if you think about this like an Olympic runner, the difference between first place and fourth place in the Olympics is a tenth of a second but the difference between the first and fourth in a person's life is massively different.

They get these outsized returns by making these marginal improvements of being better rather than being new.

As entrepreneurs, we always desire to have not just a chicken sandwich but what if we added Tacos and Burgers?

How many times could Chick-fil-A?have done something like that but they did not.

Because they knew that they wanted to stick to the essential few and knew that focus is what was going to compound over the long term despite being publicly criticized for not taking on debt and not trying to grow faster.

Remember Boston Market, when they had their rotisserie chickens and the mac and cheese and all that stuff and they took on a ton of debt grew super fast, and then imploded?

Boston Market shot up and then shot down because he wasn't thinking of a five or a ten-year time rise.

Esther Cathy has literally sold chicken sandwiches from the time he was 25 until the day he died.

He was a missionary not a mercenary

He wasn't doing it to brag about it, he wasn't doing it for his ego, he was doing it because he believed that this way of doing business was what he wanted to represent.

So what if you build in a way that you are going to be here in 70 years and I believe if you do that, you will win by default?

He wanted to build an amazing Chicken Franchise his legacy has now outlasted his life and for me that's my dream.

I think that's powerful because so many people want to say their number 1.

My hope Is that whatever I can build can continue and not only just stay alive but grow beyond me and that you can only do this through a mission not through a mercenary cause because if you're just chasing the money people get deluded out because there's always a shiny easy win that distracts from the core items.

Number 2.

Not open on Sundays means that you have to say no to things that are obviously going to make you money but will detract from your values and so there are lots of opportunities for entrepreneurship and you probably have some on your plate right now that you're like, "I don't know if this is a little left of center but like it's such an easy win"

Imagine the new CEO comes into Chick-fil-A tomorrow and says, " you know what, I found a way to make us more sales! All we have to do is be open - also on Sundays!"

It would be such an easy play and imagine how hard it is to say no to this.

They say no because it means that they are appealing to a higher power, something above the money.

Values matter more than just about anything, in my opinion, and if they are true to the founder, true to the business, and they operate in that way.

I would say that Chick-fil-A is a great example of a type of company that believes in its values through and through and they practice what they preach (*pun intended)

I also believe that following something above the money over the long term makes you more money.

Don't jump over the pounds to get to the pennies.

One of the things that permeate any Chick-fil-A is that they have a culture of service.

Chick-fil-A actually studied the hospitality industry and even hired people from Ritz Carlton to help them create an exquisite experience at Chick-fil-A.

Kathy noted that he wanted everybody in his team and his company to start saying, "my pleasure" it didn't change until he changed how he spoke.

He trained everyone to always respond to thank you by saying, "my pleasure" so if somebody wants a refill, "my pleasure" was and always is the answer.

People will learn 10 times more from watching what you do than listening to what you say

So if you say, "hey, we're all about being on time here" but you the CEO are late it will never work.

You have to pick the very few values that you know you will never break, that you will always stick with, which is why values have to be true to you not nice words on the wall.

Chick-fil-A has a compounding vehicle of capital, within their business.

Whenever a store creates money, they have the cash and then they can pick the next location.

They then buy the land and they buy everything they need so they get high returns over time and they get some tax benefits too.

What can we learn from this, if there are ever areas in the business where we can get some kind of compounding effect where money compounds on itself that is something that we should always try and build in every business.

How can I get this money that I'm getting today to make me, even more, tomorrow, within the structure of the business not taking the money out and putting into stocks or putting it into a random fund but actually staying within our businesses?

Where we have active control and where we can get the highest returns based on our skills and have competitive advantages while getting those higher returns.

That's how these guys build crazy wealth that beats the market, ruthless prioritization of the essential few items.

The fact that they haven't changed their menu in decades should be a testament to the fact that we as entrepreneurs who want to change it all the time should not.

Number 3.

People value consistency.

People want to know that when they exchange money they're going to get the thing that they liked last time and if you make the same thing the same way over and over again it also gives you the opportunity to improve on it and if you have to improve a hundred things it's a hell of a lot harder than improving two or improving one thing.

And so you've heard me say the below, again and again.

One product - One Avatar - One channel

To your first 6 figures then add consistency to this and you have your 7 figures.

Each one of these stores, if you think about them, acts as a single business.

Compared to everyone else in the marketplace they have a quarter of the number of things on their menu compared to McDonald's and they make twice the money!

They have such a refined menu because it makes the order process easier and they have fewer mistakes in it and it makes the drive-through process happen faster too.

They're able to have less food go bad because they don't have to have all these extraneous options. They follow the 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. They know that 20% of their items create 80% of their sales, they have all of these efficiencies in there because they're not trying to be cute they're trying to be the best at a handful of things, and by doing that they've been able to sell way more than anyone else!

There's wisdom there, so I try to think about that, like okay even though I could do those things should I?

And most times the answer is no!

I should just get better at the thing that's in front of me and confront the problems that I have which are how can I sell more "chicken sandwiches".

Whatever your chicken sandwich is and to drive even further on your Focus.

NUMBER 4.

It takes discipline to say no.

NUMBER 5.

Increase the accuracy, that's the level of detail that the kingpins can do because they've been doing it for 70-plus years.

The biggest takeaway I see from the big companies, and that I AM NOW TRYING TO apply to my new business, is, what is a business that I could be in for a hundred years, that I believe that if I only try and solve the same problem for 100 years I will get pretty darn good at solving it?

I believe Kathy lived that.

He took one concept, a chicken sandwich, and thought how can I just do this one thing that everyone understands better than anyone else?

He built an empire and he built a mission behind it, one that I think millions of people are happy he did.

We can all learn a lot from this.

Don't you think?