1: In 2017, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich sold the company for $7.5 billion, one of the largest deals in restaurant history.

What does Ron believe is the “the singular element” that created this enormous amount of value?

The “Concept Essence” document that he and his team created twenty-one years earlier.

What exactly is a Concept Essence? 

It “isn’t a business plan,” Ron writes in his book … continue reading

1: Let’s start by defining what not to do.

Says Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich: “So many times, I’ve seen smart, talented people jump to action without truly understanding what it is that they are trying to create.”

What’s the result?  “They fail,” he observes in his book Know What Matters.  “The outcome is clichéd or irrelevant.”

There is a better way. We start by asking the question: … continue reading

1: To answer this question, we must step back in time.

“Imagine a world in which our only reliable options for a quick lunch across much of the country were fast-food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King,” Panera Bread Company founder  Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters.

If we were born after the year 1990, this reality is likely hard to comprehend.

Because now there’s … continue reading

1: It was 6 AM, and more than fifty people were standing in line outside the Au Bon Pain bakery cafe in Boston’s Copley Place mall.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Ron Shaich writes in his terrific book Know What Matters.  “I’d spent months desperately trying to figure out how to get people to stop walking past our door.

“And now, here they were, waiting in line,” he recounts. … continue reading

1: “Excuse me, sir, would you like to try a cookie?”

The year was 1980. Future Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich, then 26 years old, was standing on the sidewalk of a busy street in downtown Boston.

“I held out a tray of chocolate-chip cookies to a square-jawed gentleman,” Ron recalls in his excellent book  Know What Matters.

The man hesitated, then he took a cookie. 

“We’re testing … continue reading

1: It was 1968, and the executives at NASA had a problem.   

“The space agency had a lot of smart people on staff, but smart and creative were different things,” Steven Kotler writes in his brilliant book The Art of Impossible.

“NASA’s lifeblood was innovation.    They desperately needed their most creative engineers working their most difficult challenges,” Steven notes.    ”  Yet telling the Picassos from the … continue reading

1: Yesterday, we looked at the stunning increase in prosperity over the past 200 years. 

“The story of the growth of prosperity in human history is close to: nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . . (repeat for a few thousand years) . . . boom!” writes Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. 

Imagine a standard nine-inch pie … continue reading

Much of the discussion around poverty centers on who is to blame.

“Few people believe that accidents or diseases have perpetrators,” writes Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.”  

Yet “discussions of poverty consist mostly of arguments about whom to blame for it.” 

Wrong question, Steven believes.

Poverty “needs no explanation. In a world governed by entropy and evolution, it is the default … continue reading

1: Yesterday we launched a brand new offering called Running Is Life. 

We’ve been working on it for seven months.  In my experience, doing something brand new is a bit of emotional roller coaster.  There are definitely highs, moments when it feels like we are destined for success.  Other times, it seems like nothing is working.

Overall, the word I would use to describe the process is humbling. … continue reading