You can take beer. It had all once been local beer. It was Anheuser-Busch and Miller. You can take coffee. It was also again once local coffee roasters that had morphed into um Folgers and and and Maxwell House. You can take um soft drinks. once had been local soft drink manufacturers that had become Coke and Pepsi and every action draws a reaction and that's the deeper trend and we began to see in different consumer categories people waking up and saying you know I don't want to be part of a mass market I want to feel special in a world in which I don't.

and you started to see the development of craft breweries and beer good friend of mine in Boston Jim uh Cook um did Samuel Adams uh you know it was an answer to what um had happened to the marketplace. We saw the same thing with coffee with the growth of specialty coffee. I mean back then if you came to my house for dinner on Friday night I'd serve you folders. Today if I don't use a you know an expensive espresso machine I'm or an espresso I'm somehow insulting you. That was the deeper trend. People wanted to feel special.

You saw the same thing with beverages. Coke and Pepsi morphed into Snapple into Al Waldo and now you walk into a convenience store, you're going to see a couple hundred different beverage brands. The point of it is we saw the same thing, the same opportunity happening in food. At one time, all food had been local and had been commoditized into fast food. And the powerful opportunity was for specialty food, for food that was done the way it had been done, for food that people respected with ingredients.

And we began to see the power of that and saw the same thing happening with bakery. One time bakery had all been local in the consolidation, the commodification that had become three lows for 99. And by the early '90s, some consumers were waking up and saying, "I want it done the way my grandparents did it. no chemicals, no preservatives, stone deck ovens. And we began to say, there's a powerful opportunity in, shall we say, specialty food, and there's no more powerful platform to compete with that than a specialty bakery. And putting those two together became our manifestation of what we could do as now called fast casual concept.

And so again, same thing. I saw it, I could see it, I could taste it. And it was the opportunity to go put that in place. We should come back to what the objective of all this is in a second. But that led to that second transformation. And the second transformation ultimately was to apply those principles of a specialty food to one of our concepts. And I began to apply it to this one concept we held called St. Louis Bread Company. And we literally completely rebuilt it. We took that unit that was doing about a million dollars a year. It was basically a a a sandwich place in which the bread was the differentiator. And we added a breakfast business rooted in sourdough bagels. And the business popped from a million to a million-250.

And then we came in and created a whole different environment for the store. A place that you wanted to sit. a wonderful wonderful designer named Terry Heckler who actually did our logo and did the original Starbucks logo out of out of Seattle who's since passed away but but he was instrumental in that and we created a kind of environment that welcomed you and invited you. I used to call it visual candy. Wherever you sat, you you saw something and we we we we softened the environment. We made it comfortable. We made it a place you wanted to be and we put that into place into our stores. Very quickly our volumes popped from a million-250 up to a million-750.

And we began to understand that we were actually playing in another business, a gathering place business offering an opportunity for a place people could go to to touch base, to see each other, to connect. Soccer moms, Bible groups, pharma reps, folks doing interviews, people doing their taxes. And we created these environments. And again, this is the manifestation of this understanding that people wanted to feel special in a world in which they didn't. And Panera became the poster child for that. And we built that out.

And that led to a third learning and transformation. By '98, '99, I was feeling some real frustration. I was running a big public company. We had four divisions at that time. Au Bon Pain, Au Bon Pain Manufacturing, Au Bon Pain International, and this fourth division, St. Louis Bread Company, that we had renamed Panera. That's a whole another story why we did it. But it was renamed Panera Bread.

And I'm on a beach down in the Caribbean with a friend. And I'm lamenting this friend. You know, everybody's fighting. Everybody's angry at me. The guys at Au Bon Pain are angry at me. Why am I trying to take their capital and shift it to this growth thing Panera? The guys in international didn't want to call home and the guys in manufacturer were trying to figure out why they were in a retail company. Any rate, we had professional managers and everyone and and I was I said this strange you know the real the real shame here this thing Panera even though it's the third biggest of our company it's not the largest. It's not the name on the door. The name of the door was Au Bon Pain that was the public company. I said, 'This thing has the potential to be a nationally dominant company. For every thousand people say it, one ever makes it. And it was pretty clear that we we had that opportunity.

And I said, you know what? We're going to screw it up. We're not going to give it the capital. We're not going to give it the human resources to get it where it needs to go. And my friend looked at me and said, "Ron, what would you do if the name of the company was Panera? Panera owned everything else. How would that change the way you thought?" And I looked at my friend, I said, 'Wow, I'd never thought of it that way. If I had any guts, if I had if it was really Panera, I would monetize every other asset, take the financial capital, and I'd also take the human capital, the best people, and I'd go down there and I'd make this happen because the greatest gem in this company was that division. And the greatest risk to to its possibility, its potential, was that we didn't give it what it needed to actually grow and become what it could be.

You know, I thought about I'm this kind of guy if I say I'm going to do it, I often go do it. I want to live with myself. And I went off and and and came back two months later and went to my board with a proposal to sell every other business and bet the whole thing on this Panera Bread division. you know, I didn't control the company at that point and that was a definitely a very tough situation, but ultimately um they gave me the room to do it. I did it. It led to the worst year and a half of my life. I sold every other division.

Um these aren't just businesses. These were, you know, the Au Bon Pain was my first child. My kids know that, you know, I mean, it was a part of me. These were people I had sweated with and bled with and I loved. The good news is most of them ultimately came back to work for us when their non-competes were over. But we sold the you know Au Bon Pain in Au Bon Pain International. We sold the manufacturing business and by 99 I ended up with Panera Bread and a whole bunch of cash and and a business that had extraordinary potential. And then I went to work to help make that happen. And we took it from what a couple of hundred stores up to 2,000 restaurants. We're very close to it by the end of that decade.

And that led again to the the the next transformation cuz they they come in waves. And by 2008 2009, I personally was feeling that I wanted transformation. I wanted to understand if I could take these powerful lessons I learned about long-term thinking and actually apply them in a a broader civic society. I had been involved with the Obama campaign and there had been some discussion of of joining the administration and I was unable to give him my commitment to Panera and I decided I wanted to go do this in some way and I also had a a desire to test out an idea I had been working on which was something called Panera Cares cafes of shared responsibility where there would be no set prices. It was a test of humanity. people come in and it's another whole story. But I wanted to test out these these cafes of shared responsibility.

And so in 2008 2009 I stepped down as CEO. I tried to take that opportunity as jumping off a high dive board to actually learn what it felt to go in the water and I spent about a year a year and a half um creating Panera Cares doing a bunch of political things. I was one of the eight or nine people that co-founded a group called No Labels here in the United States, which is meant to reduce the hyperpartisanship in DC, the polarization, and focus us on long-term thinking.

Again, you it's about seeing opportunity. I had the chance to to return um from the West Coast. I was still the executive chairman of Panera and the largest shareholder and I did a lot of the M&A work and some of the consumer work and I came back from a trip after a weekend and I essentially decided I wanted to write a a manifesto for how I would I would compete with Panera if I weren't part of Panera. I would say how I would screw with Panera, but but how would you take it on? How would you best it?

And I essentially at that time called for for complete digital access which didn't exist in the restaurant industry. We can talk more about that. I called for something called loyalty which again didn't exist. It's become prevalent in the industry. Uh it had actually been developed in the UK with a company called Tesco and came through Kroger in the United States where your best customers were treated different differently. I called for clean food, a different approach to eating and how you might eat. And I essentially called for omni channel and I I I handed in this vision um for a radical transformation of Panera to Bill Morton who'd become the CEO. And Bill was my very dear friend, 20-year colleague, and looked at me and said, "Wow." He said, "I don't have anybody to work on this. Would you go work on it?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll have some fun with it."

And $25 million later in another year, the the the executive chairman is working 80 hours a week on this vision for how to have integrated technology changed the guest experience. Changed the the whole deal. I was loving it. I had none of the ceremonial duties of being a CEO. I didn't have to tell people what I just did. I don't have to tell them what I was going to do. I just was dealing with the product.

And um Bill came to me and said he personally had a problem. He couldn't travel. something had happened in his family and he said maybe we should make you CEO again and I should step down and we debated it because it wasn't what I wanted necessarily but it seemed to be necessary at a certain point and maybe nine months or a year later we we executed that we just swapped positions he became executive vice chairman and I became a CEO again.

and I put this in place and again it it all sounds lovely but it led to the worst three years I can ever imagine. I had activist investors attack me. I spent $150 million on technology. I used to refer to technology as a social security of an era. It was only a matter of time till it was 100% of our revenue. I that was we were really investing in it and you didn't know where it would end and we ended up having to transform everything. We transformed not just technology but we transformed how we how we dealt with the guest what our our our concept essence was. Um we transformed much of the senior management team this company had had grown and its needs and its requirements.

Ultimately this became one of the largest transformations in the industry and it took on a life of its own. And again, straight up, I could see the opportunity for a better Panera that was not competing the way it had competed for the prior 20 years, but was competing against what the possibility was of what the consumer wanted. And then came the hard work of actually putting that into existence. And by 2017, it was working. Our EBITDA was up 35%. Our comparable store sales were were pushing double digits. And we had a European money manager uh JAB who came along and fell in love with Panera and they wanted to buy it. And though I was never selling it, it wasn't my intention. Uh you know, when somebody falls in love, who is it for me to deny them what they wanted if they were willing to pay for it?

And they they paid for it. And what at that time was the largest or second largest US restaurant deal ever done, $7.8 billion. at among the highest multiples. And you know, again, it seemed like an opportunity to harvest everything that we had worked on for a lot of people that had believed in us. And we we took that opportunity.

And then what are the major clicks to get us to Cava? Now, you know, it's interesting. So, I I I left Panera. I had always had interest in a number of other little businesses and I was doing after I left I was doing a lot of speaking on the pervasive short-termism in the US capital markets and how not just our our body politic but our capital markets and how that was essentially making us less competitive. It was it was not helping our GDP growth. If we're not thinking long term we're not going to have innovation. If all we want is is to pop the stock, it's short-term cost cutting that drives it.

One of my my associates, a guy named Kee Pasco. Oh, I had worked with me at Panera said, "Why don't you take your own money and put your money where your mouth is?" And I ultimately took roughly $200 million of my own money. No LPs, no external folks, just my own money and a bit of money from some of my partners. um some of the people that chose to join us and took some of the people I had worked with and decided to go do it and essentially I created a investment vehicle because it's not a firm it's called act three you can figure out where that comes from Au Bon Pain Panera and now Act III Holdings.

and within eight weeks of of of leaving Panera had gotten involved in our first really real deal which was Cava I had been an investor in Cava uh uh when it was two restaurants, just a little something. And after I left Panera, they asked me if I joined their board. Another company called Zoës had asked me if I joined their board. Uh they were a public company and you know, and it was very clear to me again, I could see and taste that opportunity. Mediterranean had power. It was the number one diet in America. It was bold flavors. It was different but accessible. And you could tell this was a a powerful channel with lots of winds at its back the channel.

And I began to say who has the potential to dominate? Is it Zoe's or Cava? And again, these folks at Zoës were were five times the size of Cava, but Cava was doing higher volumes and was a better concept. I started to think to myself, you know what? What I should do is buy the Zoës. I think it was a three or 400 million dollar public company at that point from a billion dollars, you know, instead of figuring out for them buy it and then merge it in with Cava.

And the one problem is I had to tell that to Cava who wanted me to join their board. And I I broke the news to Brett Schulman, who is the this wonderful CEO down at Cava. And Brett said, "Wow, okay, that's an interesting idea." And he said, "Before you join the board, maybe you want to tell them about this." And I I went and basically pitched their board on this idea. And in their wisdom, I must be be straight, they understood it and they understood the power of building a a dominant brand in the Mediterranean category.

And um it helped that I agreed to essentially finance um a large part of the acquisition and to to help lead it. But what it amounted to was instead of me buying Zoe's, we decided to have Cava buy Zoe's and then we would help them make that transformation. And here was the bet that by buying a company five times larger, we could apply our discipline, our skills, our culinary skills um to end up with the dominant player in this category.

And the the thesis um step back, but the thesis behind act three is we bet on categories that have tailwinds and then we endeavor to build the dominant player in that category. Um my industry is an industry of winner take all. Think McDonald's and Burger King. Think Panera and Corner Bakery, Chipotle, Quidoba. All of the the value creation tends to um happen for those that are building something of large scale. and and and if you have that that dominant position and you're a better competitive alternative, you win.

And so we saw that opportunity in Cava. And that's what led us to to make that acquisition. And at that point, Cava went almost overnight. So it took us 6 months to do the deal, but from 50 restaurants to 300. And it led to a very, very tough 2019 because the company wasn't prepared or ready for it.

And one of the things about ACT III Holdings, we're we're able I have um seven or eight partners. Not one of them is a financial guy. There's only one financial guy in the mix who was actually the activist who attacked me. I couldn't tell anybody at the time that I actually thought he was smart and liked him. But at any rate, I did. And um he joined us as our CFO.

And you know I have one partner that was the has been with me for 20 odd years who does all our deepest research and strategic thinking. He was the guy who was really helped me develop fast casual and that ideology. I used to say from from his brain to my lips I speak it but he was the guy who really pushed me hard on on thinking he's with us. I have another partner who's opened 5,000 retail locations. I have another partner who came up through Darden was president of Dairy Queen, the president of um Bruegger's Bagels, uh was my COO is a guy who really understands discipline scaling and how you build these companies.

We took out a number of people from Panera's technology function. The number three guy who built all that technology joined us and he brought a team with him. We have the capability of really doing technology. I have an another partner who's a a serial entrepreneur, great at food, great at design, great with ideas. We get into a smaller business. I mean, he's superb in helping bring it all together.

So, the model for us in act three was one to to bet on on a category and then have the ability to go in and help them build the dominant player in that category. And so at Cava, we were able to that that first year to really provide a lot of technology skills that were needed, help out in in many ways as there wasn't a an effective CFO till we brought that in and to actually help in in multiple different ways to help that business grow.

And it was a very tough year. I can remember Brett, our CEO, we used to go to breakfast every other week, walking back from breakfast in downtown DC, and he looked at me wistfully and said, "Ron, I just wish we still had just our 50 stores, not these 300 that we bought." And I looked at him and I go, "Brett, you know, we don't have that choice anymore. What we need to build is load-bearing people and organization around you that can take on this opportunity. But if we can pull this off, Katie bar the door, we're going to build an amazing company in a powerful category. And ultimately, Cava has been probably the the single best IPO in the last half decade in the restaurant industry.

Let's go back to the Au Bon Pain IPO just for a second because I remember you talking about how it changed everything for you and you didn't anticipate having all these new constituents or people breathing down your neck and the the short termism that sort of comes with some partners I guess some capital partners.

I'd say differently. I did a book called Know It Matters and I did a chapter on the IPO. I'll warn you, Shane. I've counseled dozens of people on going public who are going public. And I typically start by telling people 90% of the entrepreneurs that go public live to regret it because it's a very different enterprise. Now, for me, it was phenomenal. I've done it multiple times and you know, it's created great blessings in my life in many ways, but there are also difficulties that go with it.

And I can remember the day we went public, my partner at that time, Lu King, was was on cloud nine and um I had him stop the the car we were in uh the limousine and I got out and I walked through Central Park down here in New York and I started thinking to myself just the sense of responsibility I felt to all of these folks that were investing tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in this company. And the reality is when you're running an enterprise, you have a responsibility. The people that believe in you and you want to deliver. I want to deliver for the people who are buying the stock, not the ones that are shorting the stock.

There were any number of those investors. They all came from very different places. Some were with us and building something for the long term. Others were were trading the stock for the short term. And you had all of these pressures. And it all played out in a very public way. you had very limited ability to protect whatever was going on in your company and develop it and you needed to be ready for prime time.

And so I I'll I'll tell you a story. When when we decided to take Cava public, I think people would consider it a very successful IPO. Today, three and a half times from the IPO price, but considered very successful. What did we do? We helped Brett and the team get ready for an IPO for a year and a half before we went public. We did quarterly earnings calls in the company simulated with our investors. You know, they had to do press releases. They had to take questions. We we we worked with great diligence in getting their narrative down.

so that when they went out they knew what they were selling and they were selling to the street the possibility of participating in the growth of what would be the the dominant player in Mediterranean. I think we really prepared this company uh when we actually went to market. We didn't let the investment bankers control the distribution. We did. We brought in cornerstone investors like T. Rowe Price who I had a long-standing relationship with and make had helped make billions of dollars for them. We brought in um Capital Group which again I had been part of helping make billions of dollars for them. We brought them in as early investors. We limited the distribution. None of us were selling stock on the IPO. This wasn't an opportunity for any of the existing investors or the or the largest ones like me to get money out. It was an opportunity to support and fuel the company.

And essentially, we only allowed the investment banker 9% of the shares in distribution, which essentially went to their clients and the hedge funds. We protected 91% of it of that distribution so that it ended up in the right hands. And I think that we serve that company very well. Um, in taking a long-term view of the IPO, the end was to me, an IPO is a little like a wedding celebration. It's the beginning of the marriage. It's not the end. And, you know, having been married, I I would say to you, you want to really contemplate that on your on your wedding day. What What is it you're going to have to do to have a successful wedding? and um that celebration will will will fall by the wayside. Um if you don't.

Do you think about control differently now with all your experiences? I'd answer it differently. You asked me if I think about control. Look it one of the lessons I've learned is to believe in yourself. When I was growing up and coming of age professionally, if you're smart, you're always going to say that guy's leaning on me about this or that. What am I not getting? What should I do? And one of the lessons I learned as I look back is to trust myself that I actually know what I'm doing.

and I have to believe in it and I have to have the faith to get through the long march. I have to have the faith to go through the pain of transformation. One of the really interesting retrospective lessons for me is to actually trust myself. And that has led to um to a a decision that generally when we we we like to be in a control situation in a company. By that I mean that we're willing to bet our own money. We're willing to bet on ourselves. Myself and the act three partners, but we don't want to be at the effect of somebody else who has a different idea.

And and straight up when you have investment partners, the best way I can I can express it to you, it's a little like having a baby with someone. You take their money. You know, they have they they have legitimate rights. And if you're the kind of person I am, you want to listen and you want to be responsive. And so I like generally being in a control position because it allows us to take a long-term approach to do the things that that don't drive profitability in the short term. but actually build a far better company.

You know, there's there's one principle here that we haven't talked about. And then I want to talk about act three with you. Everything I believe in about business starts with three words, better competitive alternative. The the world doesn't need another business. It certainly doesn't need another restaurant. The whole objective of everything we do is to build something that for some target customer, this is the best alternative they can find.

And what I mean by that, it sounds like fancy MBA talk. It isn't. All it means is that your target consumer is going to walk past all of your competitors, all the people doing something similar to you, and choose to come to you because you do it better than anybody else. If you're able to do that, you can win.

And so I I I I tell it by way of a story. I was in um Vegas speaking I don't know a couple of years ago and I walk through the casino at 11:30 and I see folks dumping chips into these slot machines and I think to myself, Ron, the only way I'd ever be in a casino at 11 p.m. is if I own the casino and had the house advantage. It's the same exact thing for me when I think about business. If I don't have a better competitive alternative, if I don't have the house advantage, this is an ugly business and I don't want to be in it.

What I've come to know and what I'm trying to to make sure your listeners hear loud and clear is that what matters more than anything else is genuinely having a concept, a vehicle, a business that in whatever your mini market is, the physical one mile or the nation if it's real estate, whatever it might be, that you're the best alternative. When you have that, then you have the possibility of growing and building something. A scale.

Is that what you were trying to do with the concept essence document is like hash that out? Totally. Concept essence was what we started every business and every business we're in today. And we should talk about the the multiple businesses we're in today. Every business that we're in starts with a concept of essence document. What is a concept of essence document? It's essentially a script for regional theater.

Think of it this way. If you're in a multi-unit business, I'm running thousands of of of regional theater shows that are performing 18 hours a day. And so, what is that script? What is the aesthetic of the environment? What is the food and the food attitude? Um, what is the humanity? What are the people like? How do you experience it from a consumer's perspective when you walk in? and we try to really go deep and use words that mean something in writing that script or that vision for how we're going to compete and that becomes an organizing tool. I mean just imagine at Panera we had 125,000 people. How do you get them all aligned with what we're trying to create if you can't put it into words?

But you obsessed over this. So you spent nine months working on this document before you started and you were obsessed about all the details and walk me through that a little bit because a lot of other people there's there's sort of wisdom which is like go fast and fail fast and this is sort of the opposite of that. you took your time, you were methodical, you were in the weeds, you were watching people.

but you know, go fast and and fail makes sense in technology where it's very much um there there's no fixed cost and you can repair completely. Um I'm in a business I call it fashion with fixed assets. It you know, you build a restaurant, you're going to spend a million, a million and a half, $2 million, maybe more. You don't want to mess it up because fixing it is really difficult. So you want to get very clear what you're doing. What do you do first, second, third, and make sure you get it in the right order. So I am much more concerned about getting it right in a really serious way and understanding it and then taking the right steps from that than I am about getting out there and getting market share first.

because the cost of failure is so high because the cost of failure is extraordinary and often times once you you bounce you can't come back and remember we're talking about fixed assets we're talking about you know building restaurants. If I don't understand what I'm doing, I'm going to build it wrong. I'm going to fail.

How often do restaurants turn around once they start losing sales? Rarely. It's really hard because organizations by their nature don't like to change. In fact, I I'll share with you something I've I've I've written about. I call it the life cycle of a business. It starts with discovery and ends with delivery.

And think of it this way. When a business starts out, it's so hard to get off the ground and win. So hard. Probabilities are very low. Um, you have no capital, no scale, um, no competitive advantage. You have the highest cost you're ever going to have. And, and it requires something that really is powerful to break through with the consumer to deal with all those forces working against you. But some people do and people discover a better way to approach the customer that touch the customer, a better experience and they get off the ground and they start to scale and it works and it's doing well and it's getting bigger.

Along comes Outside Capital and Outside Capital says, you know, we can help you grow even further. And pretty soon you have a board meeting of people saying, you know, this business is doing great, but but but you know what? It could do even better if we bring in some of these, I'll call them delivery people. Delivery people are, you know, financial planning and purchasing and a range of different disciplines. And the truth of the matter is, you bring in the delivery people, it makes the place better. The margins get better. The business gets more disciplined. It gets tightened.

But here's what begins to happen. And not over six months, but over years and and half a decade, the delivery people and the discovery people find they're talking different languages. The language of discovery is the language of poetry. It's the language of imagine if if only we could do this. The language of of of discovery, of delivery, is the language of prove it to me. Show me the numbers. Let me see the spreadsheet. I don't believe you. And quite frankly, these these forces challenge each other.

But the language of uh but but delivery because it does add value starts to push out discovery because discovery doesn't have oxygen if if if you got delivery pushing down on it. And over time what happens in so many food companies is that that discovery is pushed out by delivery. delivery gets stronger and stronger and stronger and it becomes the dominant force in the company.

And then these companies wake up after 15 or 20 years. They're billion-dollar companies and they're really powerful about delivering what was wanted and needed by the consumer 5 years ago, 10 years ago and 20 and really terrible about discovering what's going to be needed and wanted for tomorrow. And so one of the things that I've always focused on is actually protecting discovery and in fact as a CEO viewing my role as discoverer and chief innovator and chief because that will by the very nature of centrifugal force um and size and scale you will end up decapitating discovery in these companies.

the difficulties of running a business, the costs of running a business, the family cost, the social costs, the talk to me about that with Au Bon Pain in particular and Panera and when you're doing anything that's takes powerful commitment that commitment owns you. You don't own it. I I I've never owned a business. The business is on me. It's with me in the shower. It's with me on vacation. Um, it's it's it's it's there with me. And in fact, some of my best work is done when I'm I'm I'm I'm on vacation. I'm not actually thinking about it in a conscious sense. And I have the ability to extract and and understand.

But but listen, doing anything in the world, whether it's working out every morning, whether it's being in a relationship, requires commitment. And it requires a commitment to the long term and it requires responsibility. I would simply say I've been committed to these businesses. I've been committed to the people that have believed in me. I've been committed to my team members, to my investors, and I want to give them something worthy. I want to I want to build something of quality.

And there's a very real personal price. I've been married twice. Um it's not something I'm proud of. I feel like uh it it it it's a failure. Is that a failure because I was committed to my business? I don't know. But I but I sometimes I think about that. The biggest fallacy of life is that you can have everything and that all there are are choices and that you you want to make your choices with a clear head and and your open eyes as to what you value, what you respect and then you want to build your life around that.

Just as I try to build a business around what it is we try to what kinds of essence and what we expect, I try to build my life around what is it I'm going to respect. And that's why I really try to think through on a regular basis what is it I need to do um for my own self-respect in the context of my relationship with my my body my relationship with my family and and and my my my spouse um my friends um my relationship with my work and what does it mean to do that well and ultimately a relationship with my own spirituality and my own um personal integrity.

You take all of that and you try to put that together and you try to build a life understanding there is no balance. You can't have it all. You've got to you make choices and their trade-offs and you try to do that as well as you can. I just encourage your listeners to be clear what it is that they want and what it is that they're going to respect. What you don't want to do is wake up one day and say, "I wish I had and miss it."

How important do you think that focus was in your success? I'm pretty focused. And you know, I work hard. I always have. I love it. I enjoy it. I love when we figure things out. I I like to think that I protected the people around me and that I'm but I I like to think I'm willing to pay the price. And by that I mean I'm willing to do what it takes to do the hard work. Most people aren't willing to pay that price and they don't understand you're not going to get the byproduct if you don't if you don't build something that's a better alternative and that's hard work.

What is success for you? Self-respect. Ironically to me success is looking at myself and knowing I have built the best life that I know how to build. Whether it be my role as a father, my relationship with my kids, my role as a a spouse and and in in relationships, whether it be the kind of boss I've been in the difference I've made in the lives of people. Um very important to me the lives I I've I've touched all over this country and many parts of this world. Guests who've come up to me and said, "Thank you, you know, for what you did. I I love being in your places, you know, and and and and knowing I was the best version of myself I could be.

You know, I'll say something to you. People always say to me, "What's your legacy?" Or somebody said to me yesterday at this Tony Robbins event, you know, "What do you want your legacy to be?" And I I think about it and I realize there is no legacy. You know, you know, things go on, they change. I don't think 50 years from now people will be talking about me. I I I think what my legacy is, frankly, what matters most is my kids and the things I show them that live on in their lives and and in their hearts and in their their souls and in their kids. And those are the kinds of things that matter. And as I look back at this my 71 years on this earth, uh I just feel so blessed to have had the chance to do work that I've loved, to love, um to touch people, and I hope in some small way I've done this in a way that is worthy of all those blessings.