Adolescence: Getting Some Help

Every adolescent business reaches a point where it pushes beyond its owner’s Comfort Zone – the boundary within which he feels secure in his ability to control his environment, and outside of which he begins to lose that control.

When this happens, many technician-turned-business-owners “ge...

• Your Strategic Objective is a very clear statement of what your business has to ultimately do for you to achieve your Primary Aim.
• Your business is a means rather than an end, a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains the life you have.
• When creating standards...

The owner and the business are one and the same thing. Without you, the business would not exist.

Infancy ends when the owner realizes that the business cannot continue to operate if you do it all yourself. At this point, you either close the doors or move on to adolescence.

R...

• Must provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect.
• It will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.
• It will stand out as a place of impeccable order.
• All work will be documented in Operati...

When is your Prototype going to be completed? In two years? Three? Ten?

Where are you going to be in business? Locally? Regionally? Nationally? Internationally?

How are you going to be in business? Retail? Wholesale? A combination of the two?

What standards are you going to insi...

• Entrepreneur asks “How must the business work?”
• The entrepreneur sees the business as a system for producing outside results – for the customer – resulting in a profit.
• He starts with a picture of a well-defined future, and then comes back to the present with the intention of...

• The work we do is a reflection of who we are.
• There is no such thing as undesirable work. There are only some people who look upon their work as a punishment for who they are and where they stand in the world, rather than as an opportunity to see themselves as they really are.

Fatal Assumption: If you understand the technical work of a business, then you understand a business that does technical work. This is simply NOT true.

A technician who tries to start a business will take the work he loves to do and turn it into a job.

• A Management System is designed into your Prototype to produce a marketing result.
• You want it to be as automatic as possible.
• It must be effective at finding and keeping customers.
• An operations manual is a series of checklists.

Innovation continually poses the question: What is standing in the way of my customers getting what he wants from my business?

Innovation is the mechanism through which your business identifies itself in the mind of your customer and establishes its individuality.

• You cannot organize a company around personalities. You must organize around accountabilities and responsibilities.
• Start with the org chart.
• Separate shareholders from employees. Remove yourself from the business.
• Imagine all of the positions that your company will n...

• How we do it here
• How we recruit, hire and train people to do it here
• How we manage it here
• How we change it here

• You can build systems for hard systems, soft systems, and information systems.
• Hard systems might be the colors, letterhead, and tools that everyone uses.
• Soft systems include the way you do things and how you communicate.
• Information systems are the data that is reco...

We are all three people at the same time:

• The Entrepreneur is the visionary. The dreamer. The catalyst for change. To the Entrepreneur, most people are problems that get in the way of the dream.
• The Manager is pragmatic. He plans, organizes,...

Your business is not your life. They are separate things.

Pretend that the business you own – or want to own – is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 more just like it. Perfect replicas.

Great businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary peo...

Has less to do with what’s done in ta business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important – the way it’s delivered is.

It understands that without a clear picture of that customer, no business can succeed.

The business is the product.

The customer is...

Building the prototype of your business is a continuous process:

• Innovation
• Quantification
• Orchestration

The franchisor aims his innovative energies at the way in which his business does business.

The entire process by which the business does business ...

You have to prepare yourself and your business for growth. To educate yourself sufficiently so that, as your business grows, the businesses foundation and structure can carry the additional weight.

The key is to plan, envision, and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and...

• Never figure out what you want your people to do and then try to create a game out of it.
• Never create a game for the people you’re unwilling to play yourself.
• Make sure there are specific ways of winning the game without ending it.
• Change the game from time-to-time –...

• Orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of your business.
• Orchestration is the pursuit of producing a consistent, predictable result in the world of business.
• If you haven’t orchestrated it, you don’t own it.
• A franchise is si...

• What your customer wants is all that matters. And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants.
• Demographics and psychographics are the two essential pillars supporting a successful marketing program. If you know who your customer is – dem...

• McDonald’s calls itself the “most successful small business in the world” because that’s exactly what it is.
• The Business Format Franchise proves the franchisee with an entire system of doing business.
• The true product of a business is the business itself.
• Ray Kroc, t...

• What do I wish my life to look like?
• How do I wish my life to be on a day-to-day basis?
• What would I like to be able to say I truly know in my life, about my life?
• How would I like to be with other people in my life – my family, my friends, my business associates, my ...

What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it?

If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read?

Create an intentional life.

As with Mature...

The Franchise Prototype is the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.

It is the answer to the perpetual questions, “How do I give my customer what he wants while maintaining control of the business that’s giving...