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

Ron Shaich, founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, built a life creating mega-successful restaurant chains, inventing a whole new category of restaurant—fast casual—in the process. Now he shares his principles for success in work and life by discovering what will matter tomorrow and building toward it today.

How did Ron Shaich, the visionary founder of Panera Bread, build a little bakery in St. Louis into 2,400 restaurants with $6 billion in revenue and annual returns of 25%, outperforming Starbucks, Chipotle, and all others? By seeing the future and clearing a path to it, leading and innovating from the future back.

Now, Shaich shares his story, starting with its humble entrepreneurial beginnings: the college-campus convenience store he opened to compete with one he was ejected from when the clerk wrongly assumed he and his scruffy friends were shoplifting. He takes us through his successful turnaround of Au Bon Pain and how that led to his creation