Todd Graves, founder of Raising Cane’s chicken finger franchise, never took no for an answer, even when it seemed like the odds were stacked against him. When he set out to start a “chicken fingers only” restaurant franchise, competing with such big guys as Wendy’s, KFC and In-N-Out Burger, there was no reason his restaurant should have succeeded.
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The banks, at first, did not support his vision. He told Entrepreneur magazine he was “turned down by every bank in town” because a chicken-fingers only restaurant was “a weird idea back then.”
Yet Graves brought persistence, dedication and grit to fueling his vision and went from running on mere hours of sleep manning shifts at his first restaurant to building a $7 billion brand. Here are the key methods he applied.
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Believe in Your Vision — Even When Others Don’t
“If you can serve a ‘craveable’ meal consistently, over and over and over, it’s going to be a success.” Todd Graves said.
While the banks’ rejection of his vision was tough, Graves set about earning the money he needed to launch his business by working as a boilermaker in oil refineries and in commercial fishing in Alaska. There, the kindness of fellow fishermen who saw how hard he was working gave him the confidence to proceed.
“The fishermen in Alaska could see me working so hard for this chicken-finger dream, and they’d tell me, ‘You’re going to make it,’” Graves said.
At the end of the day, Graves said, “I just believed in myself.” He put around $50,000 of his own money together with an eventual Small Business Administration loan of another $100,000 into starting the first restaurant, which opened in 1996.
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Hustle To Fund Your Dreams
Graves couldn’t count on a handout or a loan at first, so he took often grueling jobs that came with high pay to finance his own dream. According to the Raising Cane’s site, it was a fellow boilermaker who told Graves he could earn more money working in commercial fishing. Thus, he traveled to Alaska, camping out for a month before landing a job fishing sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay, “working 20-hour days in harsh conditions.”
While hustle looks different for everyone, many great businesses start with a good idea and a lot of elbow grease.
Accept the Grind — Early Success Requires Sacrifice
Few businesses are overnight successes without a whole lot of sweat equity. Raising Cane’s is no exception. Graves said he put in everything he had, slept fewer than four hours per night and relied on friends and family to help fill shifts until he had reliable employees.
“There is not a balance of life at a startup. You have to put 100% into it.”
He admitted that it helped to start a business when he was young — only 24 — because he had the energy to devote to it.
He also put paying everyone else first as a priority, because he trusted that his own payday would one day arrive. “I profited $30 my first month, and I was thrilled. Because it meant I could pay my people, I could pay my vendors, I could pay rent. That’s when I knew this was going to be a success.”
Graves had the financial discipline to put his business first, and it paid off in spades.
Learn To Build and Lead Teams
Graves would not have gotten where he is today without solid leadership skills, much of which he learned from other mentors. When he made the transition from one restaurant to two, he acknowledged making a lot of mistakes “through trial and error,” and even “burned through people” because he didn’t know what he was doing.
Now, Raising Cane’s has 75,000 crew members, and it’s often people’s first job. He loves that he’s able to use his business “as a platform to teach them” how to work hard, have fun and deliver a quality product.
Focus on Progress, Not Perfection
With so much at stake in his early ventures, Graves had to learn the hard way that “[m]istakes don’t mean you’re bad.” He has fostered a work culture where it’s OK to make mistakes, so long as people learn from them. Most importantly, he wants people to “[c]oncentrate on progress rather than perfection.”
When he was working on releasing his first training manual, he kept holding it off because he felt it had to be better. Good advice taught him to let go and just release a “version one” with the knowledge that it could be improved on.
Purpose Over Payout
As Raising Cane’s has expanded to more than 800 locations (and growing), and with a net worth of over $17.2 billion as of April, according to Forbes, it’s clear that Graves did all the right things. With around 90% equity in his own company, Graves has no plans to take it public, happy to represent fully the company he started with his own grit.
Graves’ journey shows that a billion-dollar mindset requires vision, hustle and a purpose bigger than profit.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How To Cultivate a ‘Billion-Dollar’ Mindset, According to This Fast-Food CEO
