Know What Matters: Lessons in Building Transformative Companies and Creating a Life You Can Respect

A Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller

Ron Shaich, founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, shares the lessons he learned from a lifetime of asking what really matters and then making the transformations necessary to bring what really matters to life.

Shaich is a business visionary who has been part of building three iconic restaurant brands: Au Bon Pain, Panera Bread, and now Cava. Along the way, he developed ＂fast casual,＂ a ＄100 billion-plus segment of the industry. Now he reveals what he learned about entrepreneurship, running large enterprises, business transformation, and life itself. He illustrates these lessons with his experiences turning a 400-square-foot cookie store into 2,400 restaurants with ＄5 billion in revenue, delivering annual investor returns of 25 percent over two decades, and outperforming both Starbucks and Chipotle. How did Shaich succeed repeatedly in such a notoriously tough industry? By discovering today what will matter tomorrow and never hesitating to undertake sweeping transformations in order to get the job done.

Shaich offers clear-headed lessons for the entire life cycle of an enterprise, from bootstrapping a startup to going public to managing large companies to selling a business. And the relevance of his message doesn’t end in the boardroom. He challenges readers to grapple with how the business impacts life, sharing his own struggles and setbacks with as much candor as he describes his successes.

Telling yourself the truth, knowing what really matters, and getting it done is the path to creating and sustaining a meaningful life, a market-leading business, and even a healthier society. Shaich’s reflections are sometimes practical (＂Make smart bets＂), sometimes philosophical (＂Conduct an annual pre-mortem＂), often challenging (＂You don’t own the business, the business owns you＂), and always incisive (＂You take the money, I’ll take control.＂). Know What Matters is a powerful guide to building transformative businesses while leading a life you respect and leaving a positive impact on the world.

Ron Shaich is the founder and former Chairman & CEO of Panera Bread and a pioneer in the restaurant industry who disrupted the industry paradigm, transforming Panera into a new class of restaurant at massive scale.

He has received the Legend in Leadership Award from the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management. He has also received the Nation’s Restaurant News Pioneer Award for being one of the most significant contributors to the history of the restaurant industry. Past winners have included Colonel Harland Sanders, Ray Kroc, Norman Brinker, and J. Willard Marriott Sr.

Shaich is the Managing Partner of Act III Holdings, a ＄300 million fund that invests in public and private restaurant and consumer companies. He sits on several boards and is a cofounder of No Labels, an organization that promotes bipartisan political problem-solving and the development of a long-term strategic plan for the country.

Connect with Ron Shaich at ronshaich.com.