The Chick-fil-A Portfolio

Gentlemen, welcome to Mr. Stillman's opus starts along with Mr. Stillman and on Mr. Stillman's opus today. John's going walk on one topic for another and more all the rights supremacy was also yellow and what are we doing well, let's talk about your boy what you say, always down for that thought about trickling a lot lately because Charles matriculate kickoff classic right coming up soon against the Georgia Bulldogs ring but trickling itself.

What can we learn about retirement from Chick-fil-A.

Well, you certainly want to have enough build into your retirement income plan to be sure you can needed to collaborate with absolute how often would you say you frequent Chick-fil-A. How often type or another. Well, probably once every couple months. To be honest with you, but it's about to get more often than that all is right because you're about to have an office right next to W since filled moving to see University place where you go. I'm sure I'll be once there a lot yeah Sammy runs that one person. Interestingly, Truett Cathy's grandson. Most people know this Truett Cathy's grandson Lizzie in the area with in Chapel Hill and he owns or runs.

How are they phrase it Chick-fil-A on 54 near 55 the corner, 54, 55, and then at Renaissance Parkway over next to target yourself point he runs both of those that yeah I was at a little.

Where were on the a list. The Chick-fil-A a list he'll eat there a lot you eat more to dress up like a cow. I don't know exactly, Molly, of course, takes care of all that. So we were at this A-list dinner and John White is true.

Cathy's grandson did know that the time he was talking about. To claim history the company and kept referencing granddad granddad to this agreement and that calling out to each other was okay. He is true Cathy's grandsons. That article also really cool.

Sorry for the tangible to the point and is used to that. So the thing I really like about the way Chick-fil-A handles that the family business aspect of things is you don't get to just say, alright, well, I'm a cousin or grandson or whatever. Give me restaurant but work that way. And John actually and his cousins were kind of thinking as they were growing up that what will go to college. We finished college and will have our own Chick-fil-A to manage well they instituted a new rule in the Kathy family, while those guys are still in college or maybe while you're in high school. And remember, but in any event, the new rule was you can't just come straight out of college and get your own store. You have to go work somewhere else for two years gives real life experience, and then you can apply to manager Chick-fil-A. Just like anybody else would. So course until John grew up in Atlanta went to school at Auburn and then you know he always thought he'd end up running the Chick-fil-A in Georgia or Alabama or somewhere like that. Turns out they said but we got a store opening in Chapel Hill like he went through the application process like everybody else. He said were about the open one in the Durham Chapel Hill area. Would you like it and so here is something that's cool that you don't get is granted a story just because you're in the family story, but it still doesn't get to the heart of matter what we learn about retirement from Chick-fil-A, Mr. Stillman, well in order to tell you that I'll need to tell you another story. We haven't gotten to the opus yet so rewind with me back to the 80s rewind with you. Remember the 80s very well little fuzzy for you is getting away so there was another company called Boston chicken.

Oh yeah, we know today as Boston market. They were sort of new on the scene.

They were the first real competitor for Chick-fil-A in the chicken world I guess. And so Boston chicken as they were known at the time had some pretty lofty goals that they wanted to do $1 billion in sales by the year 2000, so this was. I don't know what your sometime in the 80s, late 80s I guess and so everybody Chick-fil-A was really nervous about all this because here's his big competitor with these big ambitious goals.

So we got compete with. We gotta figure out how we can increase our sales. How are we going to grow how we going to be on this billion dollar case like there trying to get to and so for months. It Chick-fil-A all the marketing folks and all the vice president's were all trying to figure out what we do to get bigger, faster, how do we grow faster, and so it also came to a head in this board meeting where all the vice presidents and all the marketing people had all their presentations to talk about how do we get bigger, faster, and Truett Cathy sat there and he listened to as much as he could take and then finally started to banging on the table which was out of character for him is a pretty mild-mannered fellow very grandfatherly takes in all these orphan kids, just like a very generous individual nice low-key guy starts banging on the table and everybody you can look like okay what's this all about.

He said gentlemen I guess in the 80s. It was only gentlemen in the boardroom he said gentlemen I'm sick and tired of you talking about how we can get bigger. What we need to be talking about is how we get better and our customers will demand that we get bigger good good boss, brilliant waited just re-shape the conversation but also assorted gives us a look into what good leaders how good leaders process things. So from that point forward be shifted from, how do we get bigger, to how to get better and once I started focusing on how to get better if they got better by leaps and bounds. There the company who was doing $1 billion in sales by the year 2000, Boston chicken they went bankrupt. Of course, Boston market is still around, but they went bankrupt in the process, and Boston market used to be the skate. It's not there anymore. Yeah. So how does this all relate to retirement plan. I was wondering if at some point in your investing life and it's a different point for everybody. You need to cross the threshold of what I do to get better instead of what I do to get bigger. The way that a lot of clients might phrase that to me is at this point in our life.

We don't care that much about making more.

We just don't want to lose what we have. That's the proper train of thought to be having as you're in retirement are getting close to it now as it is different for everybody because for some people that might be in their mid-50s maybe they're looking to retire around the early 60s they really can't afford another 2008 type of stock market crash and so at that stage in your life.

That's where you need to focus on getting better instead of bigger what might better look like well better could be safer, less volatile, it could be better optimized to give you income instead of growth. It could be a more tax efficient, better could mean a lot of different things, but it's a different mission from how we grow this portfolio as big as possible. Now for some people.

They might be in their 60s and getting bigger might be the thing that still makes sense for them. Maybe there 62. They're going to work till her 70 and when they retire. They're going to have a massive pension and maybe some rental income in all their income needs are going to be taking care of all that money we have invested in the stock market for them.

They don't need it for 20 years maybe so their case. Maybe we can still focus on getting bigger. That's why say the threshold is different for everybody. The point where you cross from artless focus on getting better is not like a magic age and it's not even a certain number of years from retirement. It's just that at some point you need to cross the threshold how to get better instead of how to get bigger alright well I feel as if I've learned a lot from this conversation and thank you very much for your hungry Mr. Stillman. You may be really hungry. That's the number one thing to accomplish. Learn about retirement and what you can learn from Chick-fil-A, but you also may be very hungry so let's go get some chicken wings see their