Reading Reflection 1.0

Grinding It Out by Raymond A. Kroc

DISCLAIMER: I HAD NO IDEA THE PICTURE WOULD DISPLAY THAT BIG FROM THE HOME PAGE. MY BAD!

    Thoughts On Ray Kroc
  1. Before reading Ray Kroc's autobiography, I had watched the movie The Founder, which tells the story of how Ray Kroc got to meet the McDonald brothers, and became their head of franchising, eventually over-powering them and buying them out, which enabled him to legally rename the company "The McDonald's Corporation", a company that had originally nothing to do with McDonald's (other than, well, opening McDonald's restaurants across the country).
    And after doing both, what surprised me the most was his drive to be successful. It was never ending. He was in a fairly stable position twice (paper cups, and then the "Multimixer") before he took the leap into McDonald's franchising. But I also admired this trait.
    Countless people are complacent nowadays. They get to a stable place in life, and just stay there for as long as possible. But Kroc, despite his age, kept shooting for bigger and better things.
    What I least admire about Ray Kroc was perhaps his obsession with work. Now, I'm not questioning it: to each their own. But his first marriage and his relationship with his daughter deteriorated because of how much he worked. Opening McDonald's only made things worse, but his personal life was deteriorating way before that.
    On his way to the top, his own contract agreement with the McDonald brothers was constantly in his way. He wasn't making a lot of money , which stalled expansion. And any changes he wanted to enact on the restaurants had to go through the brothers, who were always skeptical about any changes, and rarely allowed any changes to go through.


  2. Ray Kroc had many competencies. He was a someone willing to roll up his sleeve and put in the work. He never quit, despite all the obstacles he faced trying to expand McDonald's, he kept going. And he could sell. Salesman for a paper cup company, worked his way up, left and started his own company selling Multimixer, which ironically led him to discovering McDonald's, and then he pitched his idea to countless investors to grow the franchise.


  3. A confusing part in the reading was actually buying out the McDonald brothers. It is never really explained where he came up with $2.7M, but after doing research I found that it was all thanks to Harry Sonneborn, one of his associates who also helped him increase his income by owning the land of every McDonald's location. He talked to investors and eventually got the money to buy full rights to the name.


  4. I would have to ask Ray Kroc why he decided to franchise McDonald's after learning that the brothers had already tried, and somewhat failed. What made him believe it would work this time? I would also ask him what kept him going at such an advanced age (at least to start a new career). I know he thought he was "green as a Shamrock Shake on St. Patrick's day", but how was he that mentally strong to keep striving for bigger things when he was not in a bad position? I think everyone could learn something from that


  5. I think Ray Kroc's definition of hard work was, simply put, working A LOT: set time aside for eating and sleeping, and spend as much of the rest of that time working, the longer the better, but put your heart into it. While I would agree on actually making the effort, I have to disagree on the thought of working long hours. I actually think hard work really depends on the field. For example, I'm a programer, so "working hard" could mean literally anything, most of my job does require a whole lot of... sitting and typing. Ok, maybe more than that, it also involves sketching ideas, designing the program, and sometimes it also may involve working with the hardware side of things. But a programmer who just codes and debugs and tests for longer is not necessarily working harder than any other programmer. But one who is trying to make his code easier to read, or more efficient and optimized in older, slower devices, or is trying to learn other programming languages, now that I can call a hard working programmer. I think, if a definition was to be given to the term "hard worker", it would have to be, someone who tries to become a better version of themselves, whether it is in life, at their job, or something else. Like Ernest Hemingway said, "true nobility is being superior to your former self". And like Joshua Fox The Great once said (actually he said it Friday, June 14th) "there's always someone who knows a little more, is a little faster, has a little more experience. Worry about improving yourself, and you'll be just fine."


Side note: If anyone has read my previous posts, you'll know I love tech, and I'm an Apple fan. So why did I not read about Steve Jobs instead? Well, I wanted to save the best for last, so don't panic, I haven't gone completely insane.
Only a little bit
At least that's what my rubber duck thinks...
#RubberDuckDebugging

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