Ray Kroc

But I was just like a lot of show business personalities who work away quietly at their craft for years and then suddenly they get the right break and make it big.

He paused.

I was an overnight success, all right, but 30 years is a long night.

In 1965, McDonald's went public at $22.50 a share.

By the end of the first day, it was trading at $30.

By the end of the first month, it was trading at $50.

Ray Kroc was wealthier than he'd ever dreamed, but he still wasn't satisfied like every other outlier he never would be.

There's always another store to open, another system to perfect, another problem to solve.

When he saw a light out of a McDonald's sign at dusk, he got furious.

When he saw litter in a parking lot, he screamed at the manager.

Perfection is very difficult to achieve, he wrote, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's.

Everything else was secondary.

There's something else important about how McDonald's kept growing.

The best ideas didn't always come from headquarters.

In Cincinnati, an operator named Lou Groen was getting destroyed on Fridays.

His competition, Big Boy, had a fish sandwich.

And in Catholic neighborhoods were the church-ordained meatless Fridays that mattered.

McDonald's had nothing for those customers.

Lou went to Kroc with an idea.

Sell a fish sandwich.