#293: Ray Kroc (The Making of McDonald's)

What I learned from rereading Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! [2:00] I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems. [4:00] I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night.Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort. [5:00] When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me. [6:00] It’s not what you do it’s how you do it: Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292) [8:00] I never considered my dreams wasted energy. They were invariably linked to some form of action. [10:00] For me, work was play. [13:00] I vowed that this was going to be my only job. I was going to make my living at it and to hell with moonlighting of any kind. I intended to devote every ounce of my energy to selling, and that's exactly what I did. [14:00] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242) [20:00] This was the first phase of grinding it out—building my personal monument to capitalism. I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had la