Raising Cane's: Todd Graves (2022)

23:55And that's the hardest part. They were right. So Craig's in his class and you say to him, let's do this as our business plan because there's a professional business school professor who can evaluate it. And by the way, I've seen an image of this business plan online. And there's some names on it that I thought they were made up names, but they're real names. They're like these two Swedish guys. Like, were they from Sweden? Like, Sweden, Swedish guys at LSU? Yeah, yeah. These guys were brilliant. It was three of them. It was Casper. Casper Oddquist, Frederick Norton, and Manns Holmgren. I thought they were made-up names.

24:29No, these are real. Were they, like, exchange students? Yeah, they were. So they were, like, NBA-level foreign exchange students or at LSU. They happened to get paired with Craig for this project. But I'm just wondering, was Casper or Frederick or Manns, were they like, wait, who's this guy pointing at you? Like, how is he in the picture? He's not even in the class. Exactly, right? You know, but I mean, that's the brilliance of like being a college student. You're just more accepting this stuff. They're like, okay, this is cool. Plus, they knew they had, you know, a guy that's so motivated about this.

25:04Plus, I knew the restaurant business. You know what I mean? I knew it. And I knew food. For example, I knew exactly what an apron would cost per shift for each crew member, right? And I knew that because I met with a sales rep. And so nobody had that level of detail in their business plan because it's more about ideas and what they want to do. We were going to start this thing, man. So I needed to know every detail for the business. So I basically took my time. And during the days when they're in classes, I met with sales reps. I called businesses and companies and got an idea of everything. So our business plan was really spot on.

25:34Plus, I'm a little mildly obsessive compulsive. You know, so the details were just really over the top. So you were, I mean, you were like literally going to like chicken suppliers and sort of working out those numbers, like sourcing the potatoes or were you going to use like flash frozen fry? Like did you figure all the details out around the food? Yeah. So around where we went, yeah, I got general numbers, right? I knew I wanted a crinkle cut fry, right? That's a really popular southern fry plus my mom cooked us all right, a crinkle cut fries. And so let's say I wanted to do Texas toast, right?

26:08You know, meeting with those vendors, I'm like, but I want a better Texas toast, right? You know, Raising Cane's has just amazing bread, right? But like other concepts out of Texas toast, they use sliced bread, right? And so it's take a loaf, it goes through a slicer. And then they, you know, either stick it through a toaster or they do, like we do, griddle. It's basically a fat piece of white bread. Right, right, exactly. But I'm like, I want it to be more moist. I want it to be more dense. and, you know, what are ways we could do that to where it's not a slice bread? Well, like, well, we can put dough balls together and put them together, small dough balls.

26:44It'll bake together as a loaf, but it's pull-apart bread versus slice, which means it stays more moist and it's more dense, right? That's how you work with your vendors. And so when I was getting information and getting these things, I started initial talks, right? And then it was like, okay, these are things that are in my head I can mull over. All right, so you build a business plan. And by the way, how many pages was it? Oh, man, I can't even remember. 40, 20? Pretty thick. Oh, no, probably 100. We had all kind of different financial scenarios, researching wages, and different things. All the information in the industry I could find about why we would be successful, right?

27:22Articles, like I can remember, we're becoming a nation of chicken eaters, and finding articles on boneless chicken popularity, and going to places and stealing menus so I could go back and copy them on the thing to show, look, Chili's is serving this, and things like that. I knew it would be very hard to talk bankers into a concept that was very foreign to South Louisiana, right? Yeah. Very foreign. What was the name of the restaurant in the plan? Well, we started off with a name called Follies Chicken Fingers. Follies. All right, so Follies Chicken Fingers. It's a great name. Yeah, Craig worked construction one summer.

27:59he had a guy he worked with called everybody Folly. He's like, hey, Folly, hey, Folly that. So we call each other Folly. And so that's what we thought the first name would be of the restaurant. What does Folly mean? That's a good question. He just called everybody Folly. Hey, Folly. He's a really nice guy, you know, funny guy, older guy, you know. All right. So you guys, so you helped them write this proposal. And your name is not on it because you're not in the class. But obviously, you're intimately part of this business plan. and they submit it to the professor. And what happens? Well, they went to present it.

28:32So we were up all night. We were, you know, finishing the details of the plan. You know, I'm a perfectionist. So it's like, wait, one more time. They're like, Todd, it's good. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And we're rehearsing it. And, you know, it finished the last pot of coffee, you know, early morning, whatever time it was, mid-morning. And they went to go present the class. And I waited. I literally waited. and they went and they did it and then we all met right afterwards. I said, how did it go? And they were a little bit discouraged. They're like, well, you know, I don't think he was that crazy about the concept.

29:08And I was like, what do you mean? What on earth? And he said, well, they said good business plan, incredible detail, but a concept serving just chicken fingers in South Louisiana. That's known for its Cajun and Creole foods, you know, plate lunches. It doesn't sound like something that's regionally what the tastes are of the people to start a restaurant. That was for one. You know, and I'm in my head going over all the reasons that's wrong, right? And they said secondarily, he said that, you know, that the quick service restaurant environment, you know, fast food restaurants, you know, they're going a different way than you're going.

29:48You want to do just one, basically one product, one meal. Yeah. and do just that. And look where McDonald's is going. Salads and apple slices. Yeah, I mean, look, it was two things. It was variety is what they were doing. They were saying variety. Get as much variety as you can on a quick service menu so you don't get a veto vote. Like, meaning somebody in the family says, I veto you. And then also just healthy items. Grilled items, salads, all those things were becoming, that was the major trend during that point. And we were basically bucking that. And then, you know, a couple days later, we got the grade back, and it was actually the worst grade in the class.

30:26But it was only a B minus. It was only a B minus. It's not bad. Legend goes, it was devastating to me. I mean, as far as, like, I was like, the worst grade in the class. We put all this into it. This is going to work. You know, you're just, like, you know, you're emotional in that. And, like I said, it just fired me up. But he was an easy grader, and I think he gave us a lot of credit because the plan was so comprehensive. He just had to ding it because the concept. And, you know, to be honest with you, you know, like we talk about faith, you know, it's like questioning that belief is good. Because I was like, you know, he brings up these good points, but I'm going to buck that trip.

31:02We're going to make it work. That's why it's going to work. Why don't we come back in just a moment? How Todd sets out to fund his B-minus business plan by doing some of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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34:55Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1995, and Todd and Craig are mulling over the comments that Craig's business professor made about their business plan. You know, about how fast food restaurants need to offer healthy options like fruit slices and salad. And after carefully going over that critique, they decide basically to ignore it. I didn't want to lose focus, right? I could have easily said, hey, let's add a chicken finger salad, you know. But I knew customers didn't want that. If I make the best chicken finger meal, why would you get a salad? You know, go get a salad the next day somewhere else for some place's greatest salad, you know?

35:36And I do, you know? I'll eat my food one day. I hear you. I agree. I agree. You know? And, you know, hearing that from a smart professor, it made me think for a second. Then I was like, no, you know, we're going to stick with our menu. And if we add healthy items, people aren't going to order that anyway. And it's just going to complicate our system. meaning lettuce is produce. Produce goes bad quickly. That's going to complicate what we're trying to do, and it's not going to equate to sales. And I knew this. So now you were determined to make this happen. You've got a business plan, B minus business plan, but you got a plan.

36:12There's a slight obstacle that you've got to overcome, which is money, money to start a restaurant. So where did you go? What did you do? Well, we knew the next step was to take that business plan and go see the banks. Yeah. You know, we needed the money. We didn't have any. And you guys didn't have any family money or anything? No, no, we had no family money. I mean, our families both, you know, did pretty well. We're middle class and, you know, they did well. But, you know, we were raised with the belief that, you know, once you're done with college, you're on your own. And so, you know, back then we thought you could actually, this is being naive, you could actually go to a bank, bring a business plan, and they'd lend you money.

36:50here's my plan i need uh a hundred thousand dollars yeah and i thought they'd give it to you isn't this a great plan isn't this a great idea oh goodness gracious and did you do that yeah yeah yeah look we bought a couple of cheap suits and um and went to office depot true story and bought briefcases because you know we had seen businessmen and women with briefcases that looked official, right? So, you know, they had those cheesy, fake leather, boxy briefcases with the brass combination locks. You remember those? Yep. Oh man, they were iconic, you know? And so we went and we went and saw every bank in town.

37:28You know, we'd walk in and, you know, there'd be a loan officer there, you know, he or she, and they were nice enough, you know? And so we walked in with our suits and I had a briefcase, Craig had a briefcase and we would put it on their desk, sitting across from them in our chairs, and we would open the brass combination lock, like somebody was going to steal our chicken finger business plan. And look, they were all nice enough to us. You know, they were nice, we went through it. But the common answer was, you know, this is not something that our bank would lend towards, you know, the restaurant business is, you know, it's 90 % failure rate.

38:04And, you know, franchises are the things that work because they're proven systems. You both have college degrees. Why don't you go work in the industry and get some management experience and save some money and then come back and see if you really want to do this and really want to start your own business? In the meantime, were you like experimenting with chicken finger recipes in your apartment? Were you like frying up chicken for friends and trying out different spices? Because you had the idea for the sauce and the chicken and the fries are another thing that's critical. But the, I mean, were you doing that?

38:42No, not really. My focus was getting the money, get the money. And at that point, work with the vendors to tweak the recipes to get a better product and do that. For example, like doing the business plan, I asked about spices. I thought it'd be just simple, right? I need poultry seasoning. I thought it'd be simple. It's like, well, there's six grades of poultry seasonings and one costs, you know, a hundred bucks a box and one costs 500 bucks a box. And I was like, oh my goodness, you know, I didn't know this, you know, right. So I knew I'd have to come back later to be able to tweak with the vendors, which I did.

39:12So the idea was you would have this kind of recipe that you would come up with, or you would have a flavor that you liked. The third party vendor could make it and then deliver it frozen or something like that. And then you would fry it on site. No, no, no, no, no. I knew I wanted to do everything that I could from scratch in the restaurant. Yeah. A hundred percent, you know, a hundred 100%. So I wanted to get the raw chicken, right? But I needed my vendors to tell me why that chicken tenderloin was the absolute best part of the chicken, right? I needed my vendors. I knew I wanted to crinkle cut fry, but I need my vendors to tell me the difference between, you know, a grade AAA versus a grade A.

39:49Because I grew up cooking, but I didn't know the fundamentals outside of Cajun cooking, you know, as far as other restaurants. But no, but there was no point when you were building a business plan where you were just like frying up chicken fingers for friends to say, hey, you got to try my chicken fingers. They're amazing. So a friend, reminded me, you know, a couple of years ago is you remember when you were doing different sauces that came up, the cane sauce, and you had us all try the cane sauce. Because, yeah, you had a bunch of us in there, and we were trying the different ways of the cane sauce.

40:19And so what I remember going over was I wanted a flavorful sauce, but I didn't want a Cajun sauce, right? You know, I didn't want this to be a regional Cajun thing. Cajun sauce was going to have cayenne pepper, for sure, right? Exactly. We would have cayenne pepper in it. And everybody was like, you're going to put some cayenne in that. I'm like, no, no, no. Black pepper is, and that's no secret because you can see the black pepper fakes in there. And they said, you know, black pepper is going to be that base on that. I don't want this to be Cajun. This is a chicken finger restaurant. And they're like, well, man, but it's Cajun.

40:51I said, well, look, when you order your pepperoni pizza, it doesn't come with, you know, with cayenne pepper and, you know, and doing that, does it? Yeah, good point. Okay, so the banks are saying you're not going to get the loan from the banks. You don't have access to family money. So you have to come up with some money to make this happen. How much did you think you needed to raise? Ballpark was$100 ,000 to$150 ,000 was what, in my mind, I thought we could start it for. And that's without knowing the location. Craig still has one semester left in college. I'm bartending. We have a business plan, but we just got turned down by every bank in town.

41:29And so I'd put the word out there by my friend group, I have to raise a bunch of money to open my chicken finger restaurant. And y 'all know how to make some quick money fast. I'm willing to work hard and do anything. Luckily, through a friend of a friend, you know, I got to meet a guy named Kerry Travis, who was a foreman for Louisiana Cruise, doing turnaround shift work in refineries. And he said, Well, that's great. That's great. You go dream. Are you willing to do some hard work? Yes, sir. Are you willing to work 90 to 100 hour weeks? Absolutely. Seven days a week? Absolutely. Okay. You seem excited, seem like a hard worker.

42:09We can teach you that business. It takes a certain person that wants to work that hard in those conditions in the refinery. And luck would have it, I got work doing turnaround ship work. The title was Boilermaker in Refineries in Los Angeles. Wow. So what did you do? I mean, you had no idea what this meant. I mean, you grew up in Louisiana. It's an oil state, but it doesn't mean you know anything about oil. What did the job actually mean? What did you do? Yeah. So, you know, I had to learn all of it. I had no idea what being a bullard maker was. All I knew is you were going to make a bunch of money in a quick period of time and work my butt off.

42:43You know, that was it. And a little bit dangerous. So what happens is when, you know, when they shut down a certain section of their refinery to bring it up to date, right? You know, these things have been running for many years. And so there'll be to be safety upgrades, technology upgrades, just replacing and doing preventative maintenance. So they bring in boiler makers, which I love that term, boiler makers. I thought that was a cool, cool, cool term. You go in and do this work. And look, I learned great things like, you know, cutting things with a torch, you know, like you have this hot rod you're holding with basically battery cables going to a lot of juice and you even slice through metal like butter, you know, and we cut these things out in pieces and then bring them out the tower.

43:25It's hot, right? Hot as all get out because you're wearing these complete jumpsuits, right? You got your hard hat on, you got your goggles on. And if you were in there, like I picture if you lit the whole thing on fire and you're walking through, that's kind of what hell would look like. It's just, it's a pretty hard work environment, but at 90 hours a week, you get quite a bit of overtime. This is 1995. How long did you do work as a boilermaker? Yeah, it was probably about a four-month period of time. And presumably, while you were working in Southern California, this is when you first encountered In-N-Out Burger.

44:01Absolutely. You know, when I went to In-N-Out Burger for the first time, I'd never even heard of In-N-Out Burger because, you know, it's a West Coast thing. I'm a Louisiana boy. And when I went out, people talked about, you know, man, you got to go buy an in and out burger. Great. What do they have? Oh, burgers. Great. What else? Fries. Is that all? No, they got shakes. And I'm like, oh my goodness, that's, that's what I'm trying to do at Cain's. And man, and I saw the lines, the lines and taste that burger. And God, it was amazing. And they can serve it quickly. And then learn the company history since 1948, they've been doing this.

44:36So if you imagine as all the other burger competitors. They all opened around them, and they added everything and did everything. But since 1948, In-N-Out Burger's been doing the same thing and doing extremely well. Yeah. And it gave me just a lot more confidence on knowing that my concept would work. Yeah, and I wish I had it as an example. I wish I could have said, hey, look at In-N-Out Burger. Since 1948, and they're still doing great. So you spent about four or five months working in refineries. And do you remember how much money you earned over that five-month period? You know, I want to say going out working in the refineries as a boilermaker, I think I made around$25 ,000,$30 ,000 is what I made, which is big money for a 23-year-old kid.

45:20And so I guess after four or five months of doing this, from what I understand, there was a fellow boilermaker who said to you, hey, if you want to make big money, you should go to Alaska and go to a fishing boat. Is that the story? Yeah, you know, everybody, bowler makers give each other nicknames. It's actually, there's great camaraderie among the group. This was the first group of people that believed in my dream. They were encouraging. You would talk about it with everybody. Yeah, everybody. They all knew. All these bowler makers working in this finery knew I was out working these jobs with them because I had this chicken finger dream.

45:54And they were all encouraging. And everybody gives each other nicknames. And so the group said, hey, have you met Wild Bill Tolar yet? And like I said, everybody's got a nickname. And I'm like, no, which one's Wild Bill? And why should I talk to him? He said, well, he's the big guy over there. And he does Alaskan fishing. And you can make more money there anywhere else. And so I went and talked to Wild Bill and told him what I wanted to do. And he had heard my story. But he's like, look, this is real dangerous work. It's commercial fishing for sockeye salmon, gill netting, in Naknek, Alaska. So about the point when I was wrapping up my bowler-making career, where Craig was graduating from college.

46:34And I called him on the road. I said, hey, man, I met this guy, Wild Bill. He's like, wait, what? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you about him later. But he spends his summers commercial fishing in Alaska. And he says, we can make a bunch of money real quick, but it's going to be really hard work. And it's very dangerous. And Craig said, OK, let's do that. And so we flew into Anchorage, Alaska. Then we flew to King Salmon, Alaska in a little plane. we hitchhiked to Knackneck, Alaska and we went to Tent City where they had a little area where you could, it's on the tundra where you could put your tent and then proceeded to go and talk to every boat captain in the whole fishery to get a job as a greenhorn which is a rookie which is very hard to do.

47:19Yeah, but you guys both do wind up getting jobs to work on fishing boats at summer. I mean, I should mention This is super dangerous work, right? I mean, I actually looked this up because that summer that you were actually on a fishing boat in Alaska, there were six deaths, six deaths, you know, among salmon fishermen that summer of 1995. And it's like nonstop work, right? It's like you're all you're fishing all the time. Yeah. You know, this it's the salmon fishing trade at this point, too, was just incredibly lucrative. And what we were fishing for was sockeye salmon, which the Japanese bought, I want to say like 95 % of it because of the quality of the meat.

48:00So stakes are high and it's very competitive. So what captains, motivated captains would do is they play chicken. And I don't know if it's still okay to do that, but man, it was back then. And man. It would hit other boats? I saw other boats ram other boats. You saw other boats sink. Actually, the boat Craig was on, the captain rammed a boat and it did sink. Wow. And it's mostly dangerous because you're so tired. Yeah. You're so tired, so you get careless, right? So someone gets thrown out with a net, or someone doesn't get their footing when they're in seas and they break their arm. Or, you know, we're getting these reports.

48:36Someone gets scalped because the net thing broke off and went over. Or someone rammed your boat. Or, you know, I saw two boats get nets caught up, and someone threw a can of pork and beans and hit a guy on the boat. I mean, just crazy stuff. That's totally nuts. But clearly, you had a single track mind here. You knew that this is what you can do. That season ends, and you've got around, I guess, around$50 ,000, right, that you've saved. Yeah, yeah. A lot of money. And you go back to Baton Rouge, and presumably, it's still not enough to launch the business, though, right? No, we didn't have enough.

49:12And we knew we wouldn't have enough coming back, but we knew it would be a great start. And before we went to Alaska, we had located a great piece of property. I mean, absolutely perfect for our business at the North Gates of LSU, where I always wanted to open up. Actually, a good friend had told me this place came open. And we met with a realtor, a guy named Red Reynolds. Rest his soul. I mean, what a great guy. And he bought into our, more than anything, he bought into our passion. And so he said, hey, I know you boys will work as hard as you can to make this place work. And the place had turned over so many different times because these different college entrepreneurs would start something and then it wouldn't work.

49:56And then the last tenant was a bike shop that's actually still in business, but they moved next door. So we had the place. And so after I finished the commercial fishing in Alaska, Craig had went back and I got a job real quickly working as a sport fishing guide, which was just amazing work. It was Alaska. It was incredible. The salmon run, taking fishermen out and fishermen out. There was bears and eagles, and it was amazing. And actually, Craig called me and said, hey, Mr. Red says you need to get your ass home. And I was like, are you kidding me? He goes, yeah. I said, tell him I'm making money.

50:28He goes, no, you're not making the same money you did when we were commercial fishing. So he said, get on back and open this thing up. So I got on a plane that day and flew home. Wow. So this location becomes available. It's, I guess, presumably the fall of 95, right? Or early winter, maybe, when you're back in Baton Rouge. Absolutely. And I knew this site, we had it, but we didn't have the money to get it yet. And so what we did have, though, we had a year into this project. And I had originally talking to business people about it. Would you ever be interested in investing in this? And people started to listen now.

51:03It's been a year. It's been a whole year, and you've stayed with it. And now, you know, you went to bowler making refineries. Yeah. Craig went commercial fishing in Alaska. Like, I think maybe you'll make this thing work. Two of my investors were bowler makers that I had worked with, right? These are like$10 ,000 investors,$5 ,000 investors. One was Mr. Red Reynolds, our realtor. Another one was a high school friend that actually worked bowler making with me out there. He said, you're going to make this thing work. And then my bookie, of all things, my college bookie. He paid cash. So did they get equity?

51:39Yeah, absolutely. The preferred shareholders got equity into that first location. Actually, as we continued to grow, they wanted to be along for the ride. So we carried them over in a capacity and still have most of the original shareholders. A lot of them got out at different points of growth. But we still have a handful of the original investors. Wow. And then we were able to talk to an SBA lender. And I didn't know what that was originally when we went to the banks. And they're like, if you raise$90 ,000, we'll give you a$50 ,000 loan. And you remember that number I had, about$150 ,000 in my head.

52:14And I'd spent a bunch of the money to live on. I was like, bingo. Wow. All right. So you raise the money. You get the SBA loan. You've got the location. And I think it had been like a former bike shop. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, this location was ideal and cheap rent. I think it was like$1 ,500 a month. And I ended up getting like after options like 50 years on the deal. It even had a billboard on the location. It was just ideal. Wow. But it was a good deal for the landlords because the old building was dilapidated. The old parking lot was dilapidated. And look, we were going in and doing all these improvements.

52:50So you got a 50-year lease. With options, yeah, absolutely. All right, so you get a bike shop. How do you convert that into a chicken finger restaurant? We've got our fryers. You've got to have a counter. You've got to have a drive-thru window. You've got to have not that much stuff, but you still need a bunch of stuff. You've got to turn it into a restaurant. And you've got$140 ,000. Was that enough money to convert it into a restaurant and also, like, set up a drive-thru? Barely. Barely, barely, barely. But this was great. This is the best part about it because, you know, I didn't know anything about construction, but I could learn, right?

53:22And I could do it cheap. I think we originally got a contractor and got a bid, and it was, like, over$200 ,000. Like, well, we don't have that. And so I finally met a really nice man who said, look, I'll help you. You can do the work you can. I can pull in experts when you need it. I knew a little bit about, you know, industrial construction with working as a boiler maker. But nothing about regular carpentry, electric, you know, plumbing, all that good stuff. But I learned and I learned it. And so, you know, we got a jackhammer and jackhammered it off the bad concrete. We learned how to do plumbing.

53:54We learned how to help out electricians. We could save money and get actually a real electrician to do things, but we could be the helper putting the pipes in, doing this stuff. I mean, so you're completely gutting and trying to open this restaurant. And by the way, the name still at this moment was going to be Follies Chicken Restaurant? Well, so we kind of got off Follies, and we kicked around the idea of calling it Sockeyes Chicken Fingers because of the salmon that we fished for in Alaska. Luckily, we were telling a group of friends, and one of them told us, hey, we think that's a terrible name.

54:28Sockeyes Chicken Fingers? Yeah, they're like, it makes no sense. I'm thinking Salmon Chicken Fingers? Exactly, right? I don't know about that. I'm like, well, look, we got to get some signs made for this place. And so, you know, that's the best Kraken I got. You got a better idea. And I had a yellow lab then. It was Raising Cain the First. Your dog was called Raising Cain the First? Yeah, well, he was just Raising Cain. He was the first. Was he named after the Brian De Palma film Raising Cain? The horror film? No, my sister named him. I didn't know this until I did research, but Raising Cain is an expression that means to cause trouble.

55:03Yeah, you know, raising a little hell, having a little fun. And so she thought that was a good name and the name stuck. And, you know, anyway, so when we were doing construction, I would have Cain out there knocking around. People in the neighborhood knew the dog, you know, and I brought it around. But, you know, we also we have a we have a not only a good name, we got a good mascot for the restaurant and people in the neighborhood knew the dog. And so that stuck. All right. 1996, you finished the renovations. I mean, I'm just curious, you you were going to make everything in house. You were going to have the chicken, you know, marinating or buttermilk or tenderizing, and then you're going to hand batter it and fry it in the restaurant.

55:39No, we wanted to start with some raw products. So number one being chicken and knowing that the absolute best and most tender white meat part of the chicken is the chicken tenderloin. Yep. Under the breast, you can cut it off, right? Yeah. You literally cut it and it's a whole muscle product. And so it's perfect. And we knew what size we wanted. And then they'll talk about what size bird that comes from. And I always went for the highest quality. And that paid off because people will pay for quality. Now, I didn't price my menu accordingly, and I didn't make much money until I finally adjusted our pricing, but always went for the higher quality and what we could do in-house.

56:14Like our sauce, I knew we could make that in-house. Our garlic butter, I knew we could make that in-house. And that freshness of making your sauce in-house, we evaluated that versus having a place make it for us and putting it in a little packet that's vacuum sealed that you have a peel off was night and day to us. Hmm. And by the way, I think right around this time, you also started to date the woman who would become your wife, Gwen. And what I love about the story is that from what I read, she was actually a McDonald's franchisee. Is that right? Yeah, she sure was. I met Gwen, although we went to high school together.

56:54We didn't really know each other. But I met Gwen, and I told her the story about, I'm going to open this chicken finger restaurant. And she lived by LSU, too. She goes, oh, you're the guy that's doing that. She's like, good luck. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she was playing with me. She goes, look, I've grown up. My parents have been McDonald's franchisee my whole life. She goes, I'm going to franchise McDonald's. I mean, she grew up flipping burgers, right? And I go with the sure thing. McDonald's franchise. She goes, you're crazy. You're totally different than me. You're an entrepreneur with this crazy idea, but good luck to you.

57:23And so I asked her out that night. But I said, I don't know when I can actually take you out on a date. Because you're busy. You're working all the time. Exactly. And so anyway, I eventually was able to take her out one night. And we really hit it off. And it was fun, because I tell you this, because we got to talk about things like, how do you salt your fries? How do you motivate your crew members? And we also, she understood the business. and appreciated how hard it was, you know? And so there was never a, why are you working so much or things like that. I mean, look, she would open up for breakfast and we would cross paths because I closed down for late night.

57:59You know, there'd be weeks we wouldn't see each other. But yeah, she eventually opened her franchise in Brulee, Louisiana, across the river here in Baton Rouge and was a really successful franchisee for McDonald's. All right, so you got this restaurant, you've got the name, you've got all the things in place. It's 1996. 1996, you built it out, you're ready to open. Do you remember what was the date that you opened? Yeah, August 28, 1996. All right, so hot day in a hot summer in a hot, sticky, humid Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Cut it with a knife. And you're serving hot chicken fingers and hot French fries with cold drinks, and you open the door, and I'm sure friends and family know, and was it crazy?

58:42Was it a mad rush? Oh, actually quite the opposite because we had all our friends and family come, you know, the days before opening because we needed to practice, right? We needed to practice, come in and do tweaking final recipes. Okay, try this sauce. Now dip your chicken fingers in this sauce, you know, that sort of thing. And so they've already tried it. They're actually, they've had their chicken finger fill for a while. And I couldn't tell, you know, the LSU community when we're going to open because I didn't know when we were going to get the registers programmed. So literally I'm like, all day they're working on these things.

59:13And I know, hey, I got the fryers ready. Drive-through's working. You know, when are we going to open? And so finally, sometime at night, it might have been 10 o 'clock, whatever. It was like we opened. You opened at 10 at night? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One day, you were just like, let's open. Because we finally got the registers working. No flyers, no, like, advertisements, nothing. No, like, hey, grand opening. No ribbon-cutting ceremony. Nothing. And you know how we got people? Nothing. I walked out front, and, you know, it's a bustling college area, and started waving customers in. Hey, we're open.

59:46We're open. So a few customers started kind of trickling in. But when the bar crowd got done at 2 o 'clock, then people started coming. They're hungry. Yeah, they're hungry. So you had to be open late because they want fried chicken. Yeah, so they started coming. And, you know, mostly dine-in because there's people walking from bars and they wanted to continue their night. But a couple of people in drive-through. And then word started spreading. And then we started picking up. And I couldn't physically get out of the restaurant because I had to be frying chicken. You know, we were open every night.

1:00:21You were the guy frying chicken, and Craig was at the register? Yeah, and vice versa. We would just kind of, you know, work wherever we worked. And we were open from 1030 in the morning until 330 at night, you know, seven days a week. And so we had hired only, you know, about a dozen crew members. We were really understaffed. We didn't really know what we were doing. And they were all working just crazy loads. and we had a nap schedule. I actually got an apartment right behind the original Canes upstairs. Luckily, it came open right before we opened. And we would just take different breaks and go nap.

1:00:52And, you know, by the time you close the restaurant at 3.30 and you clean everything up, you'd be about 5.30. And they need to get there back about 8.30 in the morning to open up again. And so I couldn't get out there and do advertising and things like that. But luckily, it spread around LSU, and our story got out about who we were and what we were trying to do. All right, you achieved your dream. You got your restaurant. You got your college hangout, late night, post-partying restaurant. This was your dream. You're like 24. You've achieved it. You're done. But of course, that was not the end of the story.

1:01:31There was going to be a second store. And when did you come to the realization that actually this was not a one-off, one-location business? You know, seeing the popularity with the students didn't surprise me. I knew they'd love the concept. I knew they'd love it. I was excited and actually surprised on how quickly that first semester we were open of our volumes. You know, we really did well. I mean, look, our first month we made 30 bucks. In profit. 30 bucks in profit. And when I told people, they were like, oh, I'm sorry, that's all. I'm like, that's all? I mean, that means I'm positive. I could pay my crew.

1:02:10I could pay my rent. I could pay my vendors. That's amazing. Y 'all don't understand. This doesn't happen in startups. You know what I mean? And from there, the next month, we made more money. We made more money. And this went on for me. It was that first semester. And I just really got the bug. I all of a sudden started realizing how to be a better leader, a better manager. And I started hiring more people. And I'm like, wow, we can do one on the other side of campus. It's a different traffic flow, and it's there. And I started thinking of that that second semester. It is now 1997. Early in that year, we had been open three, four months, and then I started thinking about growth.

1:02:50Now, here's a question I have about the quick service restaurant business. From what I understand, if you open up one location, so-called fast food restaurant, mom and pop kind of place, it's really hard to make significant money from just one location. You actually have to have more and multiple locations to really begin to create an economy of scale and make money. Is that right? That is so right. Yes, absolutely. You know, I mean, quick service restaurants make tiny margins on large volumes. It's just what it is. And look, you can have a whole family working in a restaurant. And I know a lot of great family restaurants that do that.

1:03:29So you lower your labor cost and everybody kind of lives out of it and you expense things out of it. But it's not the way to garner wealth. When you open multiple locations, you actually get buying power, right? You're ordering more products, so your prices go down, your margins get better. It's a really tight margin business. All right, so you decide to start a second location. And how were you able to do that? I mean, did you have to get another loan to open that up, or did you have enough cash flow to take that money and open the next location? Well, you know, I knew I wanted to design a building and do it.

1:04:03And so I went back to those original SBA lenders that lent us that$50 ,000. And I told them, hey, I want to do another location on the other side of campus. The numbers were good. And we were able to actually go in, get an SBA loan for the same lenders, and actually buy the piece of property, build a building from a ground up, and open up just 18 months, just 18 months after we opened the first location. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine just in short order. I mean, I opened the first restaurant when I was 24 years old, and now here I am out to open it up before I turned 26 years old. Wow. And look, brand spanking new equipment and brand spanking new furniture and nice landscaping and everything.

1:04:49I mean, you talk about feel like the Taj Mahal to me. Well, here's the thing that I did not know until I started doing this show seven years ago, which is, it sounds amazing when you go from one location to the second in the food business, but actually oftentimes that's the death knell. That's what kills businesses when they open the second restaurant because they get in over their heads and then it takes the entire enterprise down. Man, it's so true. There has never been a harder growth period at Raising Cane's over the past 25 years. Than going from one to two. Going to one to two. Never been a harder growth period at Raising Cane's and going from one to two.

1:05:24What was so hard about it? Well, you know, you get excited about it and you're like, wow, we're going to grow. And then you grow and then you realize, wait a minute, you know, I can't be at two places at once. And so I lived at that first restaurant. Now I got a second location and I have to split my time. I literally was like, holy cow. Now I got people and I got new managers. They're not trained well enough. Then all of a sudden I have double the workload. And when I opened that second restaurant, man, it was really busy. Like, you know, it got frantic. It got really frantic because, you know, a manager would quit.

1:05:58That means, wait a minute, I don't really have any more time in my day, but I have to cover all those shifts until we can, you know, hire a new manager or train a new manager. And I want to say I learned my lesson then, but it took me years to really learn it, to not stretch myself through growth. But I think that's what happens when people grow one to two. Yeah. You know, it's not like their problems double. It, like, it multiplies, you know. So, exponentially. When we come back in just a moment, how Todd deals with yet another blow, just as he's adding that second restaurant, he loses one of his most important assets, his partner Craig.

1:06:37Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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1:08:29Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 18 months after the first Raising Cane's has opened, and Todd is dealing with the growing pains from doubling the business. He now has two restaurants located at opposite ends of the LSU campus. We were very busy at the second restaurant, and the first restaurant was busy. So sales were there. Profitability was there. It was just in the understaffing, and with people quitting and not showing up, I would burn out more crew members who would quit, and it was a cycle of what was going on. And that's when Craig came to me and said, hey, man, whenever you can, I want you to buy me out of the business, which was, it hit me as a shock.

1:09:15And I'm like, Craig, what are you doing? Yeah, this is working. Like we work so hard. I mean, you fished in Alaska for this. From one to two, you put in all this work and effort and it's actually working. We're cash flowing. And he said, no, no, I know that. I'm very proud of that. But he says, the restaurant business isn't my dream. He was burned out. It's not my deal. He's burned out. And he says, look, it's just, it's not what makes me happy. He said, I love the starting of the business and all the business side of that. And he said, like, for example, Todd, if I get a night off, I'll go home and read like the Wall Street Journal.

1:09:49Yeah. He goes, you'll go home and work on better ways to train crew members or better ways to do the schedule. And he says, you're, this is what you love. And Craig's just one of those people that doesn't measure his success by the thickness of his wallet. You know what I mean? He's like, I want to go do something else. And he stayed with me because he said, I know I'm going to be here a while because we're so understaffed and we got to get it right. But I mean, for months, for months. And then when I got staffed, but he went back and got his MBA. I was actually able to hire Craig back years later to help us be like CFO and technology and all kinds of other parts of the business he liked.

1:10:24In 1999, about two and a half years in, he steps up, he steps away, you buy him out, and you're on your own without your partner and friend to run this thing. I think at that point you had at least two locations and were looking to open a few more in and around Baton Rouge. When Craig left the business, I went through a period, and I don't know if it was depression, or if it's a fog, or how to really describe it. It felt like I had a bucket over my head full of water. It was just this, wait a minute, it's just me now. And this might have lasted a couple of months, and it was like a fog. And I go to work, but I was just not really there.

1:11:06And all of a sudden, I popped out of it. It was a couple of months in, and then I popped out of it, And I was like, you know what? I love this business and I want to grow it. And the reason I wanted to grow outside of just, you know, seeing me grow teams and what we could do in the community. It was the fact that the south gates of LSU location, it wasn't just students that were coming in. I mean, they come in, you know, late night, late lunch and things like that. I was having business women and men come in during lunch. I had like T-ball teams on Saturdays. I had churchgoers on Sundays. I mean, I was like, wait a minute, this concept I thought was just a college concept.

1:11:47Everybody's liking it. I mean, this thing can grow. I can be on different corners. You know, I can be like McDonald's, you know, and as luck would have it, again, there was a man, Dr. Hill in Baton Rouge, one of my good mentors. And he has started like a double drive-thru burger chain, like rallies and checkers. Double drive-thru, meaning you pull up and they come out. Yeah, no dine-in. And it's no dining. It's just like two lanes of drive-through going different directions, either side. These little tiny buildings. And then they had like four locations left with their best and with their best crews.

1:12:19And they said, hey, look, we want to be in the rental business. We want to be mailbox money. We're not restaurant operators. You got a great concept. You want to take over these four locations. And at first I was like, wait a minute. Like that looks to me like it's like if you did a movie making fun of fast food, you know, it'd be these little buildings, right? You know, it's like, that's not my crew. That's not our culture. But then I was like, wait a minute. Like, it absolutely is a great way to grow. So I talked to my team and we did it. And we opened four restaurants in four months. We'd gone from two restaurants, four restaurants in four months.

1:12:54And then the next month, on the fifth month, we opened a mall food court in Baton Rouge, the mall of Louisiana, because I wanted to prove that we could work in mall food courts as well. So that was five restaurants in five months. so once you're in and around you're all over baton rouge now at some point you know within that that sort of first three four year period did you get people coming up to you saying hey i'd like to can i franchise this thing can i start a location yeah like crazy right because we could see the lines the restaurants they love the product so people love the concept and they wanted to franchise they wanted to bring it back to different areas but look this is my baby you It was absolutely my baby.

1:13:33So I'm like, man, I absolutely don't want to franchise to people that aren't operators. If you're not an operator, if you're not in this business, you don't realize how hard it is. But I did see franchising as a great way to expand the concept with experienced operators. Yeah. When did that happen? I mean, we've done many interviews with different industries in the past. Five guys who did five guys on the show a few years ago. So that model, the franchising model, really is the sort of clearest way to scale a business rather than try to own and operate every single business, every single location.

1:14:10Yeah, I mean, that's what I thought. I thought that, too. That was my original plan. And a couple things happened, and these were some hard lessons to learn when I started all this. So my first expansion out of the state of Louisiana was around 2004, 2005. To Dallas. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Dallas and Houston. And this is eight, nine years into it. And we got our butt kicked. You got your butt kicked in Texas? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because, look, I just thought, and this was being cocky, that, you know, we'll just open a location like we do in Louisiana and everybody will come. Yeah, of course.

1:14:46And not the case. Not the case. Louisiana had that original LSU start. And so people around the state are all fans. They knew about it, right? Well, you open in Dallas and Houston, and I'm not open by the campuses there. I'm open up in Louisville and off of Westheimer and expensive leases. And also putting inexperienced managers. They never opened in new markets. And I put them there. I didn't support them. I didn't have a conference marketing plan. And man, we lost some money. I mean, we really lost some money. Yeah, absolutely. Because people just didn't know what it was. It was just another thing and cars would drive by.

1:15:18People would pass it. They had no idea what this was. Yeah, they saw a big fancy building. I mean, we're building nice facilities now with this sign that says Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. And they're like, huh? And those were some hard lessons learned at that point because, you know, I basically got too confident. And then we had to restart over and I had to go into those communities, help the management better, actually replace some management because they're different skill sets, bring them back to our other restaurants, build comprehensive marketing plans, and really go after getting those restaurants to where they actually could cash flow and stop losing us a lot of money.

1:15:51Once you started to franchise, to pursue the franchise model, and you've got people paying you franchise fee and then they open a Raising Cane's shop, there's a risk there where you do start to potentially lose control over how they're going to operate the business. I mean, there must have been some tension early on with operators, owners of some of the locations who weren't doing it to your specifications. Yeah, you know, franchisees, it's tough because, look, they're putting their money into it, their belief. This is their business that you're franchising to them. And, you know, they have a lot of say.

1:16:33And, you know, if you talk about the entrepreneur that built this from the ground up, who wants to be done perfect. I mean, I'm a perfectionist. On the deal, there's going to be tension. But, yeah, we had some knockdown drag outs, right? And they saw some things different ways. Now, not on standards, not on quality of food or taking care of our crew and giving back communities. But, look, no, we don't need to do it that way. We don't need to be open those hours. And you only have so much say if you say we recommend this price for your meal. But they're like, no, I like this price better. You can't make them do that.

1:17:04And that's actually good laws in place, you know, to protect franchisees. but it didn't bode well with me. I loved all our franchisees. We've since bought most of them out. But anyway, I had a lot of challenges with not being able to maintain the control that I like and not being able to go fix their problems for them. And so it didn't take that long for me to realize that franchising was not the way that I personally wanted to grow. Who I wanted to grow with, I realized at that point was I wanted to grow with our internal, which we call general managers. And I'm like, those are the people I want to partner with.

1:17:42And those are the people I want to grow with. Just out of curiosity, what percentage of your restaurants today are owned by the Raising Cane's corporate? Yeah, by me, I'm at like 90, I would say 95%. Wow. So you really are, it's not, this is not a traditional franchise model at all. No, no, this is a company-owned model. It started off because of all the obvious reasons to do franchising. It just didn't fit with my personality. So as you kind of transitioned from, you know, these few restaurants in Baton Rouge and then to Dallas and further out, I have to assume it wasn't banks that were financing this anymore.

1:18:15You had to become, you had to go raise capital. You had to go kind of look for investors, bigger investors. Yeah. You know, I had to get clever, right? Yeah. So, you know, this is a long time ago and banks were different. And so this is when Craig was CFO of the business. And I was like, Craig, how about this concept? We had some angel investors, you know, namely this guy, Dr. Hill became a mentor of mine that had those original fast tracks. But I went to Dr. Hill. I'm like, look, Doc, for this location we're going to do, I don't want any other owners in the business. I don't want to give equity, but I'll give you a 15 % guaranteed interest rate, simple loan, one pager that's going to be subordinated to the bank.

1:19:02So if you lend me$250 ,000 and subordinate to the bank, I'll personally sign a note to you, subordinated loan at 50%, and I'll sign it, you know, and you'll have everything I have. And it worked great for Doc. He thought it was a great investment. Now, what I would do with that$250 ,000 with that subordinated note, Craig would then take it to the bank and we go to these community banks. And basically that subordinated debt was considered equity. So I would do a location. We'd start off this way and we'd have immediate cashflow because why? Sales were in, but I didn't have to pay my rent for 30 days.

1:19:41I didn't have to pay my food vendors for two weeks, my crew for two weeks. So we got into rapid growth. I was creating cash and generating cash to put in the locations. And I keep going back to these angel investors, subordinated loans, and using, we had a network of so many different community banks all over that we were doing. They wanted that business. Now, that is not the proper way to leverage your company, but I was in my 20s and I was stupid. You were stupid. You were stupid, but the flip side is you maintained your equity stake. You didn't have to give up too much of your ownership. I didn't give up any, yeah, absolutely.

1:20:16Wow. But I got the ultimate lesson on financial security when Hurricane Katrina hit. And we had 21 of 28 locations go down in the area. And that cash flow stopped. And you owned them all. And we owned them all. And that cash flow I was doing that came, all the expenses came and we had zero sales. Now, luckily, we formed as a team and we were able to reopen quickly. And we got out of that crisis. But if I couldn't have, I could have really, really hurt our company. Right. Because you basically took out all these different loans. And so you owed lots of people lots of money. I owed banks and I owed angel investors, that subordinated subordinated loan.

1:20:56I mean, debt to equity, you should have proper balances in your business. And that helps you get through tough times like a major hurricane, right? But I levered everything. Now, interestingly enough, I didn't have to go get any capital per se. I didn't have to get any partners, right? Right. Luckily, I lived through that. But that's when I really learned to balance risk. All right. So about 10 years in 2006, you've got about, I think, roughly 150 locations in the U.S., mainly, I think, in the South and Midwest at that point. I want to ask you about chicken for a moment here, because you had seen 10 years earlier that chicken was going to be this thing that was going to explode, that people were going to kind of move away from burgers to chicken.

1:21:41That didn't entirely happen. You get the Five Guys phenomenon, there are burger places all over. But I wonder, did the sort of Chick-fil-A, Popeyes phenomenon that really began in the 2000s also have that same impact on your business? Yeah, I think so. You know, it rises all ship. So when Popeyes, when it crazy, the chicken sandwich wars, right? We're not known for our chicken sandwich, but our sales went up 10 and 15 percent because people were talking about chicken sandwiches and they were coming and buying our chicken tenders. It made people think more about chicken. And the chicken sandwich wars, that was really like KFC Popeyes, right?

1:22:15It was Chick-fil-A and Popeyes when it started and then everybody jumped in. That's what I'm wondering. I mean, 10 years in, you know, you are 150 locations in 10 years. It's amazing, right? But at the same time, you're watching all these other competitors introduce new products on their menus. I'm sure people are saying, hey, just do a Cajun chicken version. Just roll it in Cajun spices and offer that or offer, you know, Cajun fries like Five Guys does. I mean, I'm sure people said that to you all the time. And how are you able to resist doing those things? Golly, if I could have a dollar for every time.

1:22:51Someone said add ranch, add barbecue, add spicy. Yeah. Everything, grilled, everything else. And, you know, these companies keep adding and changing and different ideas. They lose their identity. They lose who they are. And, you know, I like to say if you try to be all things to all people, you're nothing to none. You know, it's just you spread yourself thin. And so, you know, one thing, too, that's sad in my industry, it's not – it used to be founder-driven. You know, it used to be, you know, all the founders. It was, you know, of their businesses. And there's very few now. Yeah. You know, and so when you're a founder, you know, and this is a family business and you care about your crew, like, it's a lot of integrity.

1:23:31And so many of these people in the restaurant industry in general, founders get bought up by private equity. Right. And then it becomes a business transaction and CEOs come and go and CFOs come and go and marketing comes and goes. And everybody's got new ideas and new things and sales this quarter and this, you know, I mean, and all those things. And it's not really built for longevity. It's built for profits and five-year turnarounds and selling and all that stuff is. And so the reason why I never gave in was I knew it was the right thing for us. You know, it's our one love. It makes us successful and we're going to stick to it.

1:24:05And it holds true. We have, we're the second highest average unit volume in all of quick service. Wow. It's like, I read something like three and a half million dollars per restaurant. Yeah. We're over four million average unit volumes. And I guess to put that into context, I think number one is Chick-fil-A. Number one is Chick-fil-A. And by comparison, McDonald's is like two and a half to three million dollars per location. Right. Right. I know that you've got something like, at the time of this recording, something like 565, 70 locations, maybe more. Yeah, I think we're at 613. We actually just opened seven restaurants yesterday.

1:24:42And growing quickly. In an average year, how many restaurants do you plan to open now? Yeah, we plan to open 100 to 110 restaurants in the next 12 months and then increase that number. And now when you open them, people know what they are. Absolutely. They're lines. Yeah, it's nice having that. You know, we've been in business now for 25 years. So you have people that have actually been to Cane somewhere. You know, we're in like 33 states and they're just fanatical about it. Yeah. Well, when you think about this journey, I mean, I know you were so motivated and you were confident this was going to work.

1:25:14But when you now see what you built, I mean, how much of that do you attribute to luck and how much to the work you put into it? So one, you got to have a great concept. And then two, you got to work your butt off to do it. But you need help along the way and you need luck. So you need people that help you. These angels come about and help you. And a lot of things come along that's luck and you take advantage of it, right? I mean, naming the dog, right? That was luck. You know, our logo comes off a mural I uncovered in the first location renovating it. That was luck to see that. And these are rich things in Cain's history and lore.

1:25:48I mean, looking back at your story, I'm not surprised at your tenacity and, you know, all the things that you did and your commitment and all the people said, don't do this. And you were just committed to this. But on the other hand, it is quite amazing. I mean, it is a very straightforward, simple concept, chicken fingers, fries, toast, coleslaw into a billion dollar business is quite an amazing thing. I mean, do you ever sort of step back and just think, wow how did that happen how did that uh yeah pretty much every morning when i wake up you know i'm so blessed that the restaurant was so hard to start so when you have that you don't take anything for granted our projections this year we'll do about three billion dollars in sales right and opening another hundred hundred restaurants and these are all great things but it still gives me that little bit in my gut that little scared feeling in your gut that little feeling that keeps me waking up and working late and working hard and doing this.

1:26:49So I'm always blown away by it. I mean, I think the day this doesn't cease to amaze me would be the day I'd have to get out of it, you know, and that day will never come. What's a great quote when you think you've arrived, it's time to show you the door. Like, I feel like we're just getting warmed up. That's Todd Graves, founder and CEO of Raising Cane's. The Graves family still owns a majority of the company and Todd's wife and kids are all involved in the business. And the family still has a pet yellow Labrador retriever. The current dog is raising Cain III. And every year for Mardi Gras, Cain III, like her predecessor Cain II, serves as Grand Marshal of the Crew of Mutts Parade in Baton Rouge.

1:27:37Todd, I'm going to give you my secret ingredient for my fried chicken. I'm going going to tell you. I don't think I've ever told anybody. I'm going to tell you right now. I can't wait to hear it. My secret ingredient for my fried chicken, ground fenugreek. No kidding. So now that I've told you my secret ingredient, what's in the cane sauce? I knew this was coming. Well, you know, the old adage, I could tell you, but then, you know, then you know what happens, what I'd have to do. Fair enough. Only me and the dog actually know everything that goes into it. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.

1:28:14Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for our newsletter at GuyRoz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Ramtin Erablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Devin Schwartz, J.C. Howard, Kerry Thompson, John Izabellop, Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, and Catherine Seifer.

1:28:47I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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