Chick-fil-A Chairman Reveals the Secret Recipe for Success!

if you just keep on walking beyond what people expect of you every step that you take beyond what people expect you build tremendous loyalty but it's also transforming for our life [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're now going to bring out a second extraordinary entrepreneur and this entrepreneur grew up in the business a little bit like you did indirectly I think at nine years old he was exposed and he is the chairman of a little company called Chick-fil-A Dan Catholic chairman of the board to Chick-fil-A oh yes have a seat so Dan I mean your family and what you've built as a family I think you're the third largest is that right fast food chain in the United States behind McDonald's and Starbucks but we may Eclipse Starbucks in the next 24 months so stay wow that's gonna happen that's amazing and your your individual units as I understand actually produce almost 50 more than McDonald's does it's more than that but we won't mention that exactly but our advantage our advantage is that we're only operating six days a week versus they're seven days a week so we think that's a tremendous competition remember giving up a day a week I love it so let's talk a little bit about the history I mean your father to it is an extraordinary human being obviously lived in 93. he opened that first uh location the dwarf it's called the dwarf Grill dwarf Grill what they call it the dwarf Grill it was like 1946. it was a tiny little place so he's called it a dwarf Grill you know but we were in South Atlanta he bought this little property but he bought the property without idea of building a restaurant on he and his brother but didn't know that she had to have it zoned for commercial use so that's important when you're trying to get building permits so he had to go back and kind of figure that out as he went along but we had 10 stools at the counter her had four tables of chairs had a cigarette machine on one end and a jukebox machine on the other so a jukebox machine is this thing that plays record kind of like an MP3 player let's explain that to people that's awesome but it was at this little family restaurant that my mother was a waitress there at the restaurant it's a family business I mean talking about Mom and Pop we it was my pop and my mom that were you know running this place and I saw my dad's you know commitment to this little business and a commitment to customers he was behind the counter flipping hamburgers and scrambling eggs this is before Chick-fil-A came along in the early 60s so tell us a little bit about the values that you learned and tell us a little about the invention of the chicken sandwich and how that changed to Chick-fil-A well one great uh value lesson life lesson is that for my mom and dad is so we don't have to be a victim of the circumstances that we grew up in my mom and dad came from very dysfunctional families my my mom's father abandoned her and her mother when she was just an infant on my father's side he had to live through the Great Depression 1928 1930s and he was so real estate insurance and he was very very discouraged because he couldn't provide for his family as the breadwinner of the family and so they moved to the first federally funded housing project in the nation known as the Techwood Home Apartments my grandfather was very discouraged and very embittered in fact my dad says he can never remember his father ever telling him that he loved him and and fortunately for my brother my sister that pendulum swung back the other way and they decided as they were married um and married for 68 years that they were going to have a very different model and I was the beneficiary of some really Godly mom and dad I mean it was a it was a Godly Christian beautiful really beautiful yeah my dad always said the most important decisions that you make in life and he taught Sunday school for 43 years to young teenage boys he said the three most important decisions you're like start with the letter M who your master in life is going to be who your mate in life is going to be and what your mission in life is going to be it's beautiful Master mate and Mission you make those three decisions right brother you got the rest of it it's going to be be made so I was so fortunate to be taught that but to also see it modeled out in the way in which dad operated that little family restaurant and the way they treated the staff it's beautiful now what was your second question second question was uh the invention of Chick-fil-A came because he created the first chicken sandwich boneless chicken sandwich yes so I think I'm about we were a diner operation short order breakfast lunch in there 24 hours a day six days a week and so the chicken sandwich came along because he wanted to serve chicken but when you serve chicken with bones in it it takes a lot longer cook it really doesn't it doesn't really fit in a food service fast food quick service restaurant environment but he remembered how his mother used to sometimes debone chicken breast and how she would season it she operated a boarding house and she would season it on Saturday night to be served for lunch on Sunday and when my dad in his is 25 years old he operated that little restaurant for about 10 years before he started working on this little little formulation and he originally called it a chicken steak sandwich we put it on our menu the customers loved it but realized you could not register the name chicken steak sandwich you had to misspell it or do something different yeah and so it had this idea why don't we call it chick fillet as in filet mignon and deboned chicken breasts are oftentimes referred to as the filet mignon of chicken uh interesting so check Phil and a was separated because it's it's grade A you know the best quality and we paid an artist 75 dollars to design that little C with the beak and it's the best 75 dollars in marketing that's awesome I wish the people in McCann uh our agency in New York would send a 75 invoices but uh that's long ago but we began we opened up in a little family restaurant it worked really well Dad also began to license other mom and pop restaurants to serve the product in the early 60s but the real growth of our business I really started in 1967 as we started opening up in shopping shopping malls Greenbrier shopping mall in 1960s we like the shopping mall food courts is that right well they weren't any food courses they weren't in fact there's very little food in the malls because the food was messy and owning them but developers soon learned if you don't provide for food service in a shopping mall people are going to leave and they might not come back right so food was really kind of a secondary kind of thing at most but it became such a big part of the mall operation that began to design food courts back in the 70s and 80s and then it was about 18 years later if I remember correctly that you opened the first real restaurant not in a mall yeah freestanding restaurant uh the the demauling of America was beginning to yes I saw that coming yeah yeah what lessons did your father instill in terms of the customer um I don't know if I'm sorry I didn't know if it was you or if I remember reading it was your father that when someone says thank you for example you say my pleasure yes and you know what that whole focus of this level of a relationship you both have that in common like really creating a relationship with the customer what tell me what some of the values are that he instills in you and the rest of the family around how you serve people one of the most uh memorable experience I had as a teenager uh was going on the roof of our little Dwarf House Restaurant as my dad had to deal with our night manager who was drinking beer and alcohol during the middle of the night and throwing his beer cans up on the roof of our restaurant now you ask about customer service the customer service in front of the counter is a reflection of how you're dealing with people behind the counter if you want to improve external service quality then you got to up your game on internal service yes we walked up from the top of that roof and my dad was heartbroken to see beer cans all over the top of that roof for a Charlie celock our net manager receiving those cans up I'd known Charlie all my life he was like an uncle to me and I just knew that's going to be it for Charlie celock I mean drinking on the job I mean if you had to come up with a reason to terminate somebody he fully qualified for that but as we're coming down the steps of that ladder to see my dad in the weeks to come to have conversations with Charlie and rather than fire Charlie he helped him get into an Alcoholics Anonymous program that's wonderful and he had compassion any extended Grace and as I think about the attributes of leadership because you you asked the question was about customer service but the Genesis of all this uh in my view is that once we as individuals have experienced forgiveness in our own life it becomes a lot easier to extend Grace toward other people yes and say if I can help this person get through this crisis in their life there's tremendous loyalty that can come from that they'll never leave you once you've extended Grace or something like that but it's also the Ripple of all the other folks that got they knew Charlie was drinking on the job as well they knew dad had every reason to fire him and so these kinds of the ways of dealing with people behind the counter with Grace and kindness and consistency based on how I think our heavenly father has dealt with us and we've experienced that personal relationship begins to dramatically affect how other people are being treated it ripples throughout the whole organization now so we're we're more known for our customer service oh based on some of those principles we also did an extreme service makeover 20 years ago where we wanted to dramatically distinguish ourselves with our customers and we built it on a scripture verse Matthew chapter 5 verse 41.

Jesus said if one of those stinky Roman soldiers ask you to carry something for one mile and you get to the one mile marker I want you to keep on walking and if you'll just keep on walking but beyond what people expect of you every step that you take beyond what people expect you build tremendous loyalty but it's also transforming for our life to your own character he refreshes others will themselves be refreshed so I could go on and on about that I have a I wear these crazy little hats sometimes on the side of that it says be a blessing underneath it says and you will be blessed because I think that's really the formula to life that's business to me is a spiritual game it's how do I do more for others than anybody else in the industry and that's what every great religion I'm personally Christian as well but every great religion has some theme Like Love Thy Neighbor like thyself it's like it's the essence of what Humanity needs that's what our spirit needs and so when you practice that in your business your business grows how you got a hundred thousand hundred thirty thousand employees I think is that what I read it's about twice then actually you're kind of wearing this Chick-fil-A name tag you have two you have a quarter of a million employees yes but but it's it's a lot of teenagers we print a lot of W-2s you know we have um we have a very high retention rate however our retention rate is 3x better than our competition and because they stay with us we're able to teach them uh Civility and kindness and graciousness I like to think tell you if any of the folks that are watching today if you've got any you know Sons or daughters and you want us to teach them how to be respectful and say yes ma'am and no ma'am and it's my pleasure then you need to send them to Chick-fil-A we're like a junior Cotillion you know for food service because there's a there's a lot of heathen barbaric teenagers out there that need to hear he's been Barbarian teenagers well tell me though so shocking to customers though to hear you know a teenager be respectful they've never seen that and it's an attentive and connection oh yeah yeah it makes the food taste but Ben Franklin said that handshake of the host affects the taste of the roast and it works with chicken sandwiches too well with a quarter of a million employees and you have another 2 700 locations or three thousand dollars you got some oh that's about three thousand now three thousand okay good there's one just opened around the corner from the Olympus last week on Lantana down here and I I couldn't believe how fast it was built but then the very first day there were lines all around so I want to ask you two questions first tell me how you recruit those people because to have that kind of culture yes you got to train it but but that's all that I read that you guys work hard at making sure you get the right kind of person to come join you in the first place and you have a very unique setup in terms of let's take it one at a time how you recruit the people and then secondly you have a different philosophy this is not something like McDonald's where people might buy five of them as an investment you really work to select people and you still own the real estate so tell me two things first how do you recruit how do you train how do you know somebody's right especially when you have an organization as big as it is how have you leveraged that what's the process or what are some of the thoughts or questions and then two tell us about how you're different in your setup of the leader of that organization as opposed to most of your franchises well thank for all of us as Peter Drcker said it's not about the what it's all about the who that's right and when we can make good decisions about the who that represents our values that's an extension of our own personality whatever that may be is so very important when we select our restaurant operators we typically think of uh what we call the three C's we think about their competence they're business Acumen their competence and their character and the chemistry uh their their passion their enthusiasm and in order to go through that process we spend a lot of time with people this past year we had 120 27 127 000 people that made application to be on our corporate staff or to be a restaurant operator and out of that we selected about 110 to be restaurant operators and another 200 to be on our corporate staff wow so you have to spend a lot of time with people to to to get to know that we can cut that down to about seven thousand uh and then it it the cost per interviewee and going through that um so it's it's really hard to become a part of Chick-fil-A someone said that it's easier to get a job at the CIA than it is with CFA and uh and we we try to live up to that and we we check things we check grade point averages and all these other kinds of things you know we even politicians are finding that it's important to be truthful on your resumes and so forth and we do that I believe they're learning but well he checked that kind of thing and if people are dishonest on simple things like grade point averages and that sort of thing then there's a character issue there and we'll just go into the next person because we don't want to bring that into the organization you ask about the um what we call the operator relationship we have with our operators and as we think about uh what's our Hedgehog Jim Collins asked us you know what's the one thing you do better than anybody else well we could say it's the chicken sandwich but we know internally that it's the relationship we have our restaurant operators of Entrepreneurship um being business by themselves but uh for themselves but not by themselves and so our deal is the same today as it was we opened our first mall location 1967. so um Dad would would build a location as we do today we'll buy the land sometimes we do a ground lease we'll build the location out and then we'll sign up operating agreement for an individual to operate that location and of course they have to operate it to our operating standards uh they don't we only require a ten thousand dollar deposit if you will it's like a deposit on a apartment or something if you leave Chick-fil-A after three years that's completely refundable bacteria that's all they need to start ten thousand dollars now we're the Capital Partner I get it so by the time we buy the land build the building we've got about four thousand about four million dollars uh in that investment to begin with but our average restaurant sales volume is 9. 2 million dollars annually in sales wow our average operator income is right at six hundred thousand dollars a year that's net to them wow about 25 percent of our operators have a second location so you do the math and if you do that math you'll understand why we have a 98 retention rate I'm going out restaurant operations man that's beautiful that's really awesome yeah the only way you can leave is you can die or retire that's the only way you're going to want to leave Chick-fil-A well tell me the the process that you developing an innovation you know Peter Drcker always said business is really two things Innovation and marketing finding a better way to serve the customer and the marketing getting the one two business with you your Innovation and the way you process people both emotionally the connection that's created so it's not some squeaky little box but also the volume like I drove by the one the other day it's on my way here it was closed today because it's Sunday but literally there were like three lanes of cars wrapped around but they were going through so fast what did you innovate in that area that's allowed you to process Because by the way if you don't know a Chick-fil-A has been selected what eight years in a row is the most loved restaurant by Americans it's pretty a wild may happen that's pretty extraordinary right but but they also you're delivering this fresh good food but you're also doing it at a speed and with a connection so what did you reinvent in that area that made this possible yes we do a lot of simulations we do a lot of uh testing modeling and on and on so we take a very engineering approach to how we do Innovation both for our equipment recipes and other things that are going on so the drive through this is a really good good example covet hit we were about 60 percent dine in 40 percent going through the drive-through now today uh we're approaching about 90 percent drive through only 10 people change that much still 10 business coming in come in that dining room that dining room is a big footprint you know and we've got a lot of investors in that footprint yes um but being able to do the digitization of all businesses have to be very conscious of the curb appeal which is primarily the website all the digital interface that goes on we've invested very heavily in that thankfully before we had to and if there's anything I can encourage people that are listening to this program uh you've got to stay ahead of the curve you got to anticipate where things are heads that Wayne Gretzky and just you know anticipate where the [ __ ] is headed my favorite quote on that is comes from General Electric comes from Jack Welch the legendary CEO and he said this he said when the rate of external change exceeds the rate of internal change disaster is imminent disastrous in other words we can we can be changing the wallpaper and got new colors on this that another you know we're making change but when the rate of that change is not in and consistent with how much the external change that's going on that little Delta difference played out over time means that you're going to be the next Kodak it means you're going to be the next Blackberry that means you're going to be the next Sears department store you've changed stuff but you're oblivious to how Sam Walton was dramatically changing Mass merchandising in the area of department stores and Service uh so we've had to really anticipate whether it's going I I for me I'm a champion of change I'm a champion of innovation I'm a champion personally trying to do new things that's why I've got in training on my name tag I didn't see that I'm still I'm still trying and Kathy 50 years of service in training that's awesome give me a hand for that that's awesome so I'm still in the classroom I'm still a trainee and I find that if you're a trainee generally people are more patient with you when you're when you're I thought that's going to work at home with my wife Rhonda she said uh you don't get away with that you know you're here at home one of the one of the conversations I had with Bernie Marcus who's the co-founder of Home Depot so I'm standing in a Home Depot with him and he's telling me about all these you know displays he's got and so forth he says you know I used to start up my management meetings on Monday morning talking about all the mistakes I've made the previous week um I was I was stunned by that he said I'd start my Monday meetings talking about all the mistakes I've made the previous week and I never heard Jack Welch talk about that a lot of other businesses talk about you know how to be transparent about mistakes that you're making but it's brilliant because we're all making mistakes that's right and if we can just give us permission from our mistakes and we get smarter over time we get a lot of value for those mistakes if other people can profit from it so I'm just a real proponent for us to be very transparent and very honest about mistakes and shortcomings that we've got in life knowing that people know that we're really trying to get better we want to learn we have an insatiable appetite of curiosity yes and in my view curiosity is the most essential uh principle I just finished reading Michael Dale's new book he's got a kind of a second book they just read I just finished it last weekend and at the very end of it I mean the I think it's the last sentence last paragraph he talks about how essential it is for leaders to have an insatiable sense of curiosity of that thing it drives us to travel to ask questions to to interview people and to be on this quest to be on a search and business have to stay on that search stay on that Quest especially if you're a 76 year old family business that's never had a year of sales less than the previous year you start being on that Quest that's pretty wild never had sales less than the previous year in 76 years that's a ordinary but you got to stay with it and and keep it that way that's constant never-ending Improvement and you don't manage from Atlanta I've talked to several people they said this guy lives on the road he's like at every opening he's meeting customers tell us a little about your philosophy of why you do that yeah well I like the hospitality industry by its very nature it's a very Hands-On engaged being involved being involved with the with the team members knowing about their issues that have got going own going to funerals going to Big Life events and things that are going on and just being real and open and transparent honest and accessible to people yes and and that personality begins to get throughout the whole organization many businesses and Food Service as they get older the founders long gone we've forgot the founders mentality we get into a financial accounting you know kind of mindset that's just the death of any business from any time the CFO takes over the food service business sell your stock if you're working with those employees the companies update your resume because the end is near when the accountants take over I don't know if we have any accountants here but food service hospitality you want to keep the accountants at Bay stay closed on Sunday keep that fresh grease lemonade out there be personal stay engaged I enjoy camping out with our customers I camped out 150 nights with a sleeping bag and a tent for about for about how does the wife feel about that and I'm still married he's clearly still in training with his marriage if I can make it to August it'd be 50 years wow congratulations that's amazing that's beautiful did you know that only only six percent of the marriages make it to 50 years wow only six percent but if we can hang in there to nasty commitment you know get to the hard parts and Own It On and On it's invincibles that make a successful in business but it sets up your children you know to have success at least you've done your part to model it and part of that modeling is all so that you can get the next second third generation perhaps can't be John Maxwell who's one of our common friends I'm sure says that success is all about succession and family businesses if if the ownership is is a uh not an option I mean if you're going to go from one generation to the next their ownership responsibilities that they don't have a choice on that now if they want to work in the business they have a choice about that I love what Steve Harvey said recently I've quoted many times he said your career is what you're paid for but your calling is What You're Made for that's right and so our next Generation kids you know have to deal with you know is this a calling in your life do you feel that this is something that God is leading you to do because if you don't feel called to do this then you just be a shareholder but don't don't try to run the business or to influence the business but we have 12 in generation three uh they're married most of them they're making babies and there's 38 generation four so we're having to stay really Forward Thinking on how we the governance of a geometrically growing family that's also dealing with a geometrically growing business and keep connecting I want to tell you there's a lot of train wrecks that happen in family businesses only a third of the family-owned businesses make it to one generation at the next so and my role now is Chairman I'm spending as much time dealing with the governance and the cohesiveness and the mentoring and The Grooming of the third and fourth generation as I do in serving of the board of of the restaurant business itself what's been for you I like to ask all entrepreneurs what have been one or two of the most challenging times in the business and how'd you turn it around during those times um back in 1982 was a one of the real traumatic experiences of our life as a business 1982 we were dealing with inflation but much more bigger inflation and my dad had borrowed 10 million dollars to continue to expand the businesses shopping malls were growing rapidly at the time in 1980 and we moved into a brand new corporate office building that had about a hundred thousand square feet of space in it interest rates went up over 20 percent we're talking about interest rates now being five six seven and getting all you know flustered because of that but uh inflation was and it was a real financial crisis that we had going on my dad was the only one that could put all the pieces together to understand you know what a dramatic crisis that we had that was going on uh but we we persevered through that we got through it my dad had my brother and sister and I uh at our home he would he would this is a real great thing for everybody that's here I just encourage all of you you're all many of your mom and dads and you think what is my six seven or eight year old got to do with our family business but that's when you need to let them honor them by telling them what's going on with the business the good and the bad including the challenging times including the challenges and how it's real let's see how you work through that those issues in business that transparency begins to build a business Acumen and a business vocab vocabulary in their mind might be able to bring home sacks of cash we'd had no credit cards and we'd dump all that cash and I was six or seven years old I had to turn all the Lincoln faces the same way and he'd strap all this money together a whole week's worth of sales Loadout on on Mom and Dad's bed and would he would count all that up and put straps around he'd deposit on Monday morning and the invoices come through carbon copies carbon copies was these invoices that had these little things here and so I was like I put them on a clipboard I thought it was so cool for my buddies came over see these invoices you know on my in my bedroom you know from bread company and so forth but you be intentional about sharing and building a business Acumen yes you know by engaging our families and then then they have a model not a model that's phony and fake that everything goes perfectly all the time nothing's a straight line I always say there's no straight lines in nature if there's a straight line a human drew it right that's not how things grow in real life that's beautiful um one couple more questions do you came up your team I don't know somebody came I love to know the history of eat more chicken where you got you've got cows telling everybody eat more chicken crazy very much like what you've done here with using the humor right to make that happen and it's been an incredible campaign how did that come to be and how's that affected your business well it's pretty strange I sometimes get letters from school teachers that talk to me about the disservice to literacy in America by having these cows that are misspelling you know things tell me that's how cows spell it so I I have a nice little letter that I sent back and I said you know thank you for reminding of this and I'm sure if these cows have been and your son's school or your classroom they would have known how to do better and then we send them copies of our ads let the kids Circle the missile work so we can make you know lemonade out of lemons and so forth but it was developed by an agency in Dallas Texas the Richards Group about 21 years ago and these cows still don't know how to spell but it's very refreshing all these swimsuit things that they come up with so Tony I have to tell you people ask me how I'm going to keep this up I tell them we're going to continue to milk it so the cows come home so oh that's awesome how did your I understand you're an extraordinary wrestler in high school and college and you're in the Hall of Fame of wrestling from I understand yeah so I have a cauliflower here over here on the cauliflower here well you're like you're talking to the right lady right beside you here right um how did that discipline affect you in business did it uh did it shape you well I'm so thankful for that you know I think academics are very important high school and college and so forth but also the character developing things that we get through Athletics and I was so fortunate outside my dad in my teenage years my wrestling coach Johnny Stallings had more of an influence on my life than anybody else in order to get his praise man you had to do something really heroic and I learned a lot of personal discipline about physically taking care of myself that I still do today I was running earlier today before I came over here to visit visit with you and so I there are four areas in life that I think are essential mentally staying a student the teachable attitude that Quest that Curiosity emotionally is to stay well balanced a sense of hope and optimism you know the baby the Bible says I've got great plans for you you know says the Lord I know what I've made you to be and that idea of hope not to thoroughly take care of yourself physically you know we our emotions are very tied to how much sleep that we get and how many Krispy Kreme Donuts that we eat you know all those all those sorts of things so so so be a champion athletically so that you can be a champion you know mentally and so forth and then fourthly is we've got to take care of ourselves spiritually we have all faiths that are represented in Chick-fil-A and we're always respectful of all that but we say you know there needs to be a sense of Serenity there needs a sense of humility there needs to be a sensitive inadequacy in our life so that we know there's room to grow so we're humble yes a sense of inadequacy that seems strange to to acknowledge that as a leader but when we're transparent and we acknowledge that and for people that are working with us we say well you know God promises us if we'll just acknowledge Him in all our ways he'll direct our paths so where it's closed on Sunday or whatever way any of us can acknowledge our inadequacy and address the spiritual components of our life how did that seventh day being free happen where you guys made that decision I'm sure you've had tremendous number of people fortunately you're not a public company you're private pushing on you to change that but you've outdone everybody have seven days you started at the top of our conversation with that how much of a role does that play why is that important to you and to your employees yeah well the Genesis of it had nothing to do with any spirituality per se my dad grew up in a boarding house with his mom and on Sunday he had to wash dirty dishes shuck corn shell peas and so forth and that little boarding house that he operated and he hated to wash dirty dishes on Sunday it's okay other days of the week but Sunday afternoon everybody's out having a good time and so forth and he made a commitment that is a kid that if he ever got in the restaurant business he was going to be closed on Sunday because he didn't like washing dirty dishes and he figured nobody else enjoyed it doing it either so when he opened up and I 1946 and the 23rd of May it was on a Tuesday so he and his brother were there that brother another brother would later tragically killed two years later on the airplane accident so Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday they start looking at each other we're going to open up on Sunday or not Sunday was not a big trading day you know in in the 1940s and so they decided to be closed on that that first Sunday and we've been closed ever since that wasn't a big deal until we got into the shopping malls and even shop Regional shopping malls were closed on Sunday back in the 60s and 70s but in the 80s they began to have extended hours for holiday shopping began to opened up on Sunday by then we already had it in our lease that we were going to be closed on Sunday and we were challenged by a lot of developers that said you know we really want you to open up on Sunday and on and on and on but we made the commitment but it's so remarkable that as we mentioned earlier our volumes that we do are just extraordinary but there is a practical application and that when you're closed on Sunday it makes your food taste better on Monday you know one people had to go an entire 24 hours without eating your food so they had to go scarcity hits the scarcity yeah you know wow that's a food tastes really good on Monday morning but it gives our people a chance to rest uh you know the the the grind of retail the grind of 160 cars an hour coming through your drive throne and tell you there's a lot of grind and burn and energy that takes to keep that going on typical operators got you know uh over 120 employees per restaurant uh any one time they got 25 they're they're there somebody's not showing up somebody's got issues and all kind of things that are going on so there's a lot of requires a tremendous amount of energy to operate at Peak Performance what our customers expect and so to be able to relax on Sunday and not have to worry about somebody not showing up not having to worry about equipment breaking down not have to worry about I.