Jerry Murrell, a financial planner, convinced his five sons to skip college and use their tuition money to start a burger restaurant instead. They opened Five Guys in a cheap location with broken equipment and no restaurant experience, got rejected by banks, and grew it into a $2.3 billion business.
The Five Guys burger chain exists because of a last-ditch effort from this failing entrepreneur. Here's what happened. As you expect, the name Five Guys comes from a family of 5 people, and that's Jerry Murrell and his 5 sons. So Jerry's a financial planner, always searching for business opportunities. And throughout the 1970s, he tries just about everything. But even with these failed business attempts, Jerry's been financially planning for his children's future. Jerry wants to test one last idea. So he sits down with his children and he says, you can either use this money to go to college or we'll pool it together to start a restaurant. Without hesitation, each child sacrifices their college education to go all in. But it's a business? Well, they have no experience. And the lesson is that common wisdom is that entrepreneurs should stay away from industries where they know nothing. But many entrepreneurs, they don't let that stop them. So this tiny restaurant seems destined for failure. The bank denies their loan request, so they spend all of their money on a cheap, out-of-the-way location, buying broken equipment to get started, and they slowly expand. And today they generate over $2.3 billion in sales each and every year.
