Taco Bell

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Around 2010, Taco Bell's same-store sales began to sag.

So they launched the Doritos Locos taco.

It was the biggest fast food product launch in history. By 19 months in, it cracked a billion dollars in sales.

By the middle of the decade, they were ten times the size of their nearest competitor, Del Taco. Nobody could hold a candle to them, and they were opening franchises like crazy.

This is the part where you expect them to take their foot off the gas.

They're on top of the world, after all. Why not coast?

But Taco Bell did the opposite.

The people in those seats just kept twisting the knife. More products. Publicity stunts. Whole new restaurant formats, like their upscale Cantina stores.

The business started in 1962.

They've been pushing hard for sixty-four years.

I'll be honest, keeping that fire stoked is the hard part. I know from my own businesses that grinding at full effort in years one through nine is one thing.

Doing it in years ten through twenty, after you've already won, is a completely different animal.

And the saying is true:

You're either growing or you're dying. You can only coast downhill.

The hardest time to remember that is right after you've won.

Everyone overestimates what they can do in five years, and badly underestimates what they can do in fifteen.

Now imagine running that math for 60+ years like Taco Bell.

One of the best books I've read on the long-game focus (and I've been recommending it for years) is called The Outsiders, by William Thorndike.

It looks at 8 CEOs who beat the S&P 500 by at least 20 times. All about not getting distracted from the game that really matters: creating value.

Plus, it's a favorite of Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Michael Dell, and a ton of other people way more successful than me.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

Michael

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