Want to realize your full potential? Break ranks.

It’s a point Richard Montañez emphasized repeatedly during an inspiring keynote that kicked off the 2021 ASI Power Summit on Wednesday, Oct. 13. The event is being held virtually.

For sure, it’s by breaking ranks – by stepping outside the unfair restrictions and constrictive low expectations that others placed on him – that Montañez authored an incredible rags-to-riches story that saw the Southern California native from an impoverished background rise from janitor to millionaire corporate executive.

Richard Montañez

Sometimes, Montañez said, you have break ranks with the people and things that are holding you back so you can “get what belongs to you…You will never fit in. You were created to stand out.”

Montañez, who’s life story is the subject of a forthcoming Hollywood movie, is the creator of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos – a product he invented, along with help from his wife Judy, while working as a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant in Southern California.

The bold creation laid the foundation for the Flamin’ Hot line of snacks, which has become a multibillion-dollar business and helped inspire a cultural revolution that’s seen the incorporation of so-called “ethnic flavors” into everyday treats.

To create the bold-flavored Cheetos, Montañez had to break ranks with naysayers and doubters.

Amid sluggish sales and declining market share in the late 1970s, the then top executive at Frito-Lay invited employees at all levels to act as owners and come up with ideas for how to improve the business.

At the time, Montañez was a janitor at a SoCal plant. Peers in comparable positions and superiors didn’t much heed the executive’s call. And when Montañez showed interest, some tried to discourage him, saying the executive wasn’t really talking to the blue-collar workers.

But Montañez wasn’t dissuaded. He saw a big opportunity – and he decided to take it.

Inspired by his Latinx heritage and the Mexican food and culture he grew up with, Montañez, along with the help and inspiration of his wife Judy, developed the concept of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. While intimidated, he nonetheless persevered and called the executive to tell of his idea. The executive took the call, was impressed, and then decided that he and other executives would come to the California plant for Montañez to make a presentation on the product.

With guidance from marketing books he borrowed from the local library, Montañez developed his pitch. Wearing a $3 tie that a neighbor had to knot for him, he went to the presentation with bags of what would become Flamin’ Hot Cheetos that he, his wife and kids had packaged. There were detractors – “Someone in the room is always going to try to steal your destiny and you have to be prepared for that,” he said – but that didn’t knock Montañez off the ball.

Ultimately, Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo got behind the product and the concept was a massive success in the marketplace. In the years and decades following the fateful presentation, Montañez continued to forge more barrier-breaking success and became one of the most influential Latinos in corporate America through his executive role at PepsiCo.

The success was rooted in a willingness to break ranks – to take strategic risks to gain something better – that goes back to his childhood when he was one of eight Latinx children integrated into what had been an all-white school.

One day, kids were lining up at trailers, with Spanish-speaking children going to one and English-speaking children going to the other. Montañez noticed that in the English-speaking trailer they were giving out cookies. He was hungry. He wanted cookies. He decided to go get some. Friends thought he was crazy to leave the assigned line, but he did it…and had his pockets filled with cookies by kind staffers. It was one of the formative experiences that would inspire him to go big later in life.

“To find your future, you need to revisit your past,” he said. “Good or bad, it’s there to help you.”

As importantly, Montañez encouraged business leaders to be “deliverers” not “pharaohs.”

“Pharaoh leaders take people captive and have them build everything in their image,” he said. “Deliverers lead you to be everything you’re intended to be. Throughout my life, deliverers have set my game into action.”

One of those was of course the executive who was receptive to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “When everyone saw what I was, he saw what I could be,” said Montañez. “Be that kind of leader.”

And, as you go about pursuing your dreams, remember to proceed with heart. “Measure your value,” Montañez said “according to how you serve humanity.”