Creating a Story

The Challenge


This past week I was tasked with creating a presentation that centered on melding business principles and moral values.  To start the presentation I needed a great story. I had just eaten at Chick-fil-A, and was inspired by the small portion of the company history that was printed on the bag.

Research


I went on the internet to look for the Chick-fil-A company story and found a good bit of information but not a super story line.  I like to try and find books that the founder has authored and ran across It's Easy to Succeed Than To Fail.  I did not have enough time to buy it and ship it to my house so I kept looking.

I finally found what I was looking for on a website called Funding Universe. I grabbed some chunks of material that represented the broad storyline.

"On May 23, 1946, 25-year-old Truett Cathy and his younger brother Ben opened a restaurant called the Dwarf House at 461 South Central Avenue in Hapeville, Georgia, a small town south of Atlanta. The Cathy brothers had begun the enterprise with $4,000 they were able to raise, partly by selling Truett's car, combined with $6,600 on loan from a bank, and for their money they had a restaurant only 50 feet wide and 150 feet deep--including the kitchen. To further enhance the difficulties facing them, the recent shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy had created supply problems that affected companies much bigger than their own."

"Ben went to fight in Europe, but Truett had relatively easy duty as a clerk, and never went further from home than Fort Lewis, Washington. Truett was discharged in 1944, and once Ben came home, the two brothers began to plan their future. They decided they would start a restaurant, and after spending some time as employees of a woman who promised to set them up in business but never did, they opened the Dwarf House.

Besides problems with supply, the Cathys had to deal with bureaucracy and other foibles, and they ended their first day with sales of $58.20--a modest beginning, but a beginning still. Most of their patronage came from employees of the nearby Ford plant, as well as the emerging Atlanta airport next to Hapeville, and many of these seemed to be repeat customers. The fact of this steady repeat clientele engendered in Truett an awareness of what would become a key element of Chick-fil-A's success: as he stated it in his 1989 book It's Easier to Succeed Than to Fail, "Word of mouth in the food business is more important than any other source of advertising. It's better to maintain your present customers than to spend a lot of time and expense replacing them with new ones."

"Another key element of the Chick-fil-A corporate identity was forged in those early days: the policy of operating six days a week, but "never on Sunday." The Dwarf House, in fact, was open 24 hours a day, but closed from midnight on Saturday night to midnight on Sunday night; and in more than five decades, the policy has not changed. In the beginning, Cathy said in a 1997 speech to the Newcomen Society, "it wasn't that we were holy--we were just tired!" But in fact Cathy's religious beliefs as a devout Christian informed not only this aspect of his business, which is based on the fourth of the Ten Commandments from the Bible, but many others. Yet Cathy did not set out to proselytize so much as to set an example: "I never intended to make a big issue out of being closed on Sunday," he told the Newcomen Society. "In fact, it always amazes me that other people bring up the subject so often." On a professional level, he has said, the policy helps him and his employees to stay fresh in body and soul, and thus it ultimately redounds to the company's benefit."

"In 1949, Ben Cathy was killed in a plane crash along with a third brother, Horace. Now Truett had to run Dwarf House on his own, and in 1951 he opened a second restaurant in the nearby town of Forest Park. For the next nine years, Cathy prospered as he and his wife Jeannette raised their family; then in 1960, another tragedy came when fire destroyed the Forest Park restaurant. "Without adequate insurance to rebuild the restaurant," Cathy said in his 1997 speech, "I faced some tough questions. Do I take a giant step back to just one restaurant, which would mean having to lay off employees? Do I incur more debt and rebuild the restaurant as it was? Or is it time for something new? I was convinced it was time for something new."

"Chick-fil-A Inc.  -- Company History." Connecting Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. .

Narrow It Down


Here were the points I felt were important

• On May 23, 1946 a new restaurant called "The Dwarf House" opened in Hapeville, Georgia. It was 50X150.
• Hapeville is just North of the Atlanta-Hartsfield apart and very close to a Ford factory.
• The owners were two brothers named Truett and Ben.
• Business Principle - "Word of mouth in the food business is more important than any other source of advertising."
• First days receipts $58.20
• Moral Principle - "Being closed on Sunday helped them and their employees to stay fresh in body and soul."
• The brothers were not protected from death or fire
• Truett started franchising in 1967, and in 2009 his company, "Chick-fil-a" did over $3 Billion dollars in sales.
• 2 Brothers, 2 Values, 64 years of providing for their families and influencing their customers.

Rules for Storytelling

• Starting with the date and place allows the audience to check if they were alive, had ever been to the location and thus have some context for your story.  I had to look the town up, and call them to get the pronunciation of their town correct.  Once I did that I remember flying over the Ford Factory when I went in and out of Hartsfield.  If I remember that a couple of other people in the crowd will as well.
• Use the first names of the brothers.  Cathy is an unusual last night and might trigger "Chick-fil-A" before you build up the drama.
• Explain "The Dwarf House" as that is an interesting name, especially today.  
• I skipped the money the brothers gathered as you could lose your audience as they try and figure out if that was a lot of money, or a tiny bit of money in 1946.
• Don't mention Chicken anywhere yet
• Talk about the first business principle - that gets that crowd involved.  You could say something like, "they believed that word of mouth advertising about the cleanliness of their restaurant, the tastiness of the food, and how attentive the service was, would be the best possible advertising."  Anyone who has eaten out would agree
• $58.20 - No problem mentioning money here, we all know this isn't much for a days work, before expenses.
• Closed on Sunday - Bringing this in now creates some drama as the audience knows the brothers aren't making much and to shut down for 1/7th of the week would be a drain.
• Add in that being moral businessmen didn't get them a free pass, as Ben was killed a few years later and when Truett expanding to two restaurants, one burned down with little insurance.  
• Now the crowd feels like Truett is going to fail. No brother, no money, no second restaurant.
• Return to the business/moral principles, add hard work and "In 2009 Truett Cathy's restaurant, now called Chick-fil-A passed over $3 Billion dollars in sales." I had to find that number on their website.

The Conclusion


I used the "Narrow it Down" bullets to tell my story - I went over it about 20 times to get the story correct, the timing or pauses during the interesting parts of the story right, and to make sure I answered any questions that popped into my head as I heard the story out loud.

The story took about two minutes to tell and two hours to practice and create.  The payoff was that I had numerous people come up after the presentation with positive feedback.  Several wanted to let me know when they figured out it was Chick-fil-A.  Some wanted to let me know that they always love my stories, and some wanted to tell me how much they enjoyed the presentation.  I am looking to try and hold off the recognition for as long as possible, draw them into my presentation and have them walk away having learned something.