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Ray Kroc Podcast: How McDonald's Scaled From 1 to 8,000 Stores

What Happened Farnam Street has released a new Outliers podcast episode analyzing Ray Kroc’s business strategy in building the McDonald’s empire. The episode draws from Kroc’s autobiography “Grinding it Out” and breaks down the specific methods he used to scale the business from its first franchise location in 1955. The podcast identifies four key pillars of Kroc’s success: standardized systems, flawless execution, strategic franchising, and real estate investment. Rather than focusing on food innovation, Kroc treated McDonald’s as a system-building exercise, creating replicable processes that could work anywhere.

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James Clear Shares Atomic Habits Insights on Farnam Street

What Happened Farnam Street’s Knowledge Project podcast featured James Clear, the bestselling author of ‘Atomic Habits,’ in a comprehensive discussion about habit formation and behavioral change. The interview includes featured clips covering key concepts like the role of identity in habits, with the full conversation exploring Clear’s systematic approach to building positive habits and eliminating negative ones. Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ has become a global phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide and fundamentally changing how people think about personal development and behavior modification.

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