Know What Matters

12

You Don’t Own the Business; the Business Owns You

If this were a business fairy tale, we’d be close to the end now. I’d tell you the story of how we rolled out our new concept and lived happily ever after. And eventually we did—though it certainly wasn’t a direct line between points.

But this isn’t a fairy tale, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to leave out another, darker chapter in my story. In fact, it’s not even another chapter; it’s the other side of the chapter I’ve just written—the one you just read.

All through those seemingly sunny, optimistic years in the mid-nineties when we were conceiving and creating Panera Bread, I was also confronting distrust, a flat stock price, and a fast-decelerating growth curve that I had known was coming ...