How to Lead, Build a Culture, and Prioritize like S. Truett Cathy (Billionaire restaurateur) by Evan Carmichael

"I realized I could do anything if I wanted it badly enough." - S. Truett Cathy

Samuel Truett Cathy (born March 14, 1921) is the founder of Chick-fil-A, a quick service restaurant chain based in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, USA. When his parents couldn't pay their bills from his father's job they began renting out rooms in their house, providing a bed and two meals to guests for a dollar a day. At any given time, there would be as many as 8 guests in the Cathy house. That, on top of Cathy’s two brothers, four sisters, and parents. According to Cathy: “Growing up in a boarding house introduced me to hard work and taught me the value of diligent labor."

By the time he was eight years old, Cathy was already an entrepreneur, chipping in where he could to help support his family. He began buying six-packs of Coca Cola for 25 cents and selling the individual bottles door to door for five cents each. In high school he read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill which had a profound impact on his life: “I wasn’t all that bright. I had difficulty keeping up in class and I had always carried with me a bit of an inferiority complex. But I enjoyed my work and I enjoyed the rewards of working. As I read Mr. Hill’s book, I realized I could do anything if I wanted it badly enough. His words motivated me and showed me that I live in a do-it-yourself world.”

With just over $10,000 of his own and the bank's money, Cathy opened up his first restaurant in 1946. Today, his Chick-fil-A restaurant chain has over 1,500 locations and Cathy's net worth is over $1.5 billion making him one the richest people in North America.

Action Item #1: Lead from the Front

Your business will only be as strong as the people you have helping you. If you want them to perform and be motivated then you need to be a source of inspiration and lead them.

After a particularly rough year in 1974 where inflation rates rose unexpectedly, Chick-fil-A was hit hard in the pocketbook. They had to spend more money on advertising to attract people into the restaurants. Not wanting his operators to lose their shirts, Cathy decided that he would cover the unexpected increase in costs. He took the hit so they wouldn't have to.

According to Cathy: “I didn’t take a salary that year because I didn’t want our employees to take pay cuts. I struggled with this but I was determined not to lose sleep over it...Too many CEOs are leaving sinking ships. They should be the last ones to leave the company. If some people are losing money, everyone should lose money, not just the stockholders.”

Action Item #2: Build a Culture

If you're really clear about the type of company that you want to build and the type of people you want to hire then it'll be much easier to attract people to you who believe in your vision. There is no right or wrong culture but it's important that you build one that people can rally behind if you want to really accelerate your business growth.

Cathy doesn't believe that businesses should be open seven days per week. He built a culture around working hard for six days and then having a day off to spend with your family and for your spiritual well-being. As a result he attracts people who believe in that culture and strengthen it.

According to Cathy: “Why do we close on Sunday? Well, it started back in 1946 when I opened my first restaurant... After the first week, I determined that if it took seven days a week to make a living, I should be in some other business... We find closing on Sunday attracts those people who give attention to spiritual growth and are family oriented... The fact that we have Sunday closing helps attract quality employees."

Action Item #3: Keep Your Priorities in Order

As entrepreneurs we often don't do a great job of managing our lives. We work too hard, eat bad food, don't look after bodies, neglect those around us... all in the name of building our businesses. If that's you, it might be time to reconsider where your priorities are.

When Cathy was 38 years old, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He thought his life as he knew it was over. It wasn't, but the experience did force Cathy to re-examine his principles.

According to Cathy: "I think I’d like to be remembered as one who kept my priorities in the right order. We live in a changing world, but we need to be reminded that the important things will not change if we keep our priorities in proper order."

3 Ways to Prevent Your Employees From Losing Interest In Your Company - Issy Sharp (Four Seasons Hotel) by Evan Carmichael

"Whatever you do, don’t ever use a crutch, and don’t ever think of having an excuse for not having said, ‘Yeah, I did my best.’ - Issy Sharp

Isadore "Issy" Sharp, (born October 8, 1931) is a Canadian businessman and founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Sharp didn't have much stability in his youth and moved 15 times in 16 years. He also didn't care much for school. According to Sharp: “My life in high school revolved around sports. Partying became my priority.”

That all changed when Sharp was accepted into the architecture program at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. He began to earn high marks for his creations and worked for his father building houses and small apartment buildings.

Yearning for more, at age 29 he founded the Four Seasons Hotel in 1960 and opened his first hotel on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto in 1961. He built a reputation for luxury and sweating the details which allowed his business to flourish. In 2006, Bill Gates and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bought control of the company for $3.4 bllion. Sharp's current net worth is $540 million.

Action Item #1: Inspire Your Employees

If you ever want to build a successful business beyond yourself you're going to have to have a team of people working with you who are inspired to give their best every day.

Sharp didn’t become the leading luxury hotelier in the world all by himself. In the over fifty years he has been in the industry, Sharp has developed a unique leadership style that has encouraged his employees to devote 110 percent of themselves to the company. By creating a working environment that is built on trust, credibility, and integrity, Sharp has inspired his team to work to realize their best efforts. In the end, he understood that this was the secret ingredient to helping the company realize its best results.

According to Sharp: "We do that, first of all, by establishing a meaningful goal, an overriding purpose that most people can relate to. If the goal is clear and the focus is sharp and constantly reinforced, we unify and energize through a sense of common purpose that inspires employees to ardent effort.”

Action Item #2: Really Service Your Customers

The best companies are based on happy customers and repeat business. You want to strive to create an experience where your customers love buying from you and tell their friends as well.

In each and every one of its worldwide locations, the Four Seasons tends to set the top hotel price for the area - it is usually about 20 percent higher than its closest competitor. How can Sharp risk such a pricing policy? He does it by guaranteeing that his “guests get a fail-safe experience so that a company is eager to pay the extra $50 to ensure a hassle-free trip for an executive who might be working on a $50 million deal.”

According to Sharp: “Our competitors interpreted luxury chiefly as dazzling architecture and décor, but how important is that to our customers? They are mostly executives, often under pressure, fighting jet lag, stress and the clock. We decided to redefine luxury as service.”

Action Item #3: Live By The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is to treat people as you would like to be treated. It's not only a great way to achieve happiness as an entrepreneur, it's also a highly profitable strategy.

The driving force behind Sharp's success has been his desire to treat Four Seasons employees with the same level of respect that they in turn are expected to give their guests. The success of this policy has shown itself not only in terms of customer happiness but also employee engagement and satisfaction. For years, the Four Seasons has been the only Canadian company to land on Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S.

According to Sharp: "We aimed to treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves. Enforcing our credo was the hardest part, and senior managers who couldn’t or wouldn’t live by it were weeded out within a few years... We hire for attitude. We want people who like other people and are, therefore, more motivated to serve them. Competence we can teach. Attitude is ingrained."

True Story

In 1967, one Four Seasons employee went to the extreme in demonstrating the kind of service Sharp was trying to encourage. A bellboy for the hotel, Roy Dyment discovered that a dignitary guest had left his briefcase behind after checking out. The guest soon called from Washington stating that the contents of the briefcase were essential for an upcoming meeting. Feeling responsible, Dyment bought a plane ticket at his own expense and personally delivered the briefcase to the former guest.