Outback Steakhouse Co-Founder Was ‘Flat Broke’ at 40 With $37 When He Ripped Up $1 Million Popeyes Check: ‘Make Your Money With Someone, Not for Someone’

Most people would grab a $1 million check with both hands, especially at 40 and broke.

Outback Steakhouse co-founder Tim Gannon tore his up. He says the reason behind it is the best advice he ever got.

“Make your money with someone,” Gannon said in a TikTok video posted by “The School of Hard Knocks” podcast in October. “Not for someone. That’s the key. That changed my life.”

Outback is now part of Bloomin’ Brands Inc. (NASDAQ:BLMN), a casual-dining company whose name is a nod to the Bloomin’ Onion, the appetizer Gannon created.

Broke, 40 And Holding A Fortune

Gannon said he was “flat broke” at 40. In a LinkedIn post, he wrote that he was more than $200,000 in debt at 18% interest, with two young children to support.

At the time, Gannon was running research and development at Copeland’s, the Cajun restaurant chain he spent five years helping Popeyes founder Al Copeland build in New Orleans.

“Then Al Copeland of Popeyes handed me a blank check up to a million dollars to stay,” Gannon wrote. “I tore it up.”

Popeyes is now owned by Restaurant Brands International Inc. (NYSE:QSR).

“I ripped the check up to go to start Outback,” Gannon said in the video. “Because of the equity share.”

A Saddle, A Gas Tank And $37

He said he sold a saddle for gas money to get to Tampa, Florida, and started Outback with $37.

“I had two great partners,” he said. “And they gave me an equity share. That was the important thing.”

Those partners included Chris Sullivan and Bob Basham. The stake didn’t come with a big paycheck either. Gannon worked three years at a $50,000 salary, according to his website.

Cold Calls And Fried Onions At Dawn

The early days weren’t glamorous.

“When we opened up our first Outback in 1987, we had to call people to come to our restaurant,” Gannon said in the video. “It was that empty.”

So the team took the Bloomin’ Onion on the road. Gannon said they cooked them for radio DJs at 7 a.m. so the stations would talk about it.

“We never gave up,” he said.

It worked. Guests now order more than 8 million Bloomin’ Onions a year, roughly one in every four appetizers sold at the chain, according to Outback. Gannon put the onion’s sales at $1.4 billion.

The brand he helped build is still being rebuilt. Bloomin’ Brands shares surged in August after the company beat second-quarter expectations and raised its full-year forecast as an Outback turnaround gained ground.

Gannon’s ownership-first message echoes other business leaders. UFC CEO Dana White told “The School of Hard Knocks” that success means proving yourself year after year, and billionaire Mark Cuban has said starting a company is how you “control your own destiny.”