Don’t let age deter you from taking big swings or acting on opportunities, as Ray Kroc built an empire past the age when most people stop.
Develop ambition that never quits, persistence bordering on obsession, and a willingness to be ruthless when necessary, as these traits were key to Kroc’s success.
Continuously strive for growth and learning (‘staying green’), as becoming ‘ripe’ (complacent or stagnant) inevitably leads to decline.
Actively guard against complacency and the tendency for success to recede, constantly reminding yourself and your team to stay vigilant and driven.
Spend time observing how businesses work and, more importantly, how they fail, paying attention to common pitfalls like cutting corners or sloppy execution.
Define your business by the problems you solve for customers rather than just the products you sell, which opens up new opportunities and prevents limiting your vision.
Approach new observations not just as isolated events, but as potential answers to long-standing questions or problems you’ve been contemplating.
Don’t just daydream; translate your ideas into action promptly, as Ray Kroc would quickly build what he dreamed about.
Cultivate a strong sense of pride in cleanliness and attention to detail, as this obsession can become a foundational element for building a successful enterprise.
View work as a source of pleasure and play, integrating it into your life with the same enthusiasm you have for hobbies you love.
Identify and eliminate activities, even beloved ones that bring in money, if they are distractions from your primary focus and long-term goal.
In businesses with low margins per unit, actively seek leverage points that allow you to sell high volumes with less individual effort.
Look beyond obvious problems like crowds and impatience to identify underlying opportunities for new services or products that can convert frustrated customers into happy ones.
Instead of arguing, offer a free trial of your solution, allowing the customer to test its value with minimal risk and gather their own data.
Prioritize landing large accounts that offer significant growth potential and automatic future sales, rather than chasing numerous small, individual vendors.
Don’t passively accept what’s given; actively negotiate by creating your own position, especially when it seems you have no inherent leverage.
Build strong customer relationships by acting in their best interest, even if it means sacrificing short-term company profits or incurring the wrath of superiors, as trust fosters long-term loyalty.
Cultivate strong relationships by consistently choosing to act unselfishly in small moments, demonstrating that you are on the customer’s side.
Consider using a slightly higher, non-round price point for new or special products to signal higher value and differentiate them from ordinary offerings.
To fall asleep, visualize your mind as a blackboard full of urgent messages and practice imagining an eraser wiping it clean, immediately erasing any new thoughts that try to form.
Don’t be afraid to close down a successful business temporarily to fundamentally redesign its operations for greater efficiency and future growth.
Design and optimize physical workflows by simulating them with employees in a mock setup, making adjustments until movements are seamless and efficient.
Drastically reduce menu items and standardize product offerings to remove variables, improve efficiency, and ensure consistent quality, even if it means limiting customer choice.
Implement extreme standardization in processes and tools (e.g., custom dispensers, specific equipment) to remove variables, reduce complexity, and ensure consistent output.
Simplify your offerings to a few core items, allowing you to concentrate all your efforts on perfecting the quality of each one.
Pay close attention to the detailed steps of successful processes, even seemingly minor ones, to understand and replicate the elements that contribute to superior quality.
Investigate the underlying scientific principles or natural processes that contribute to the quality of your product, even if they were discovered by accident.
If a natural process (like potato curing) is key to product quality but not replicable in your environment, devise an artificial system to achieve the same effect.
Identify the specific, often unexpected, product or service that truly differentiates your business and drives sales, and protect that secret advantage.
Identify and control the core assets or infrastructure that underpin your business model (e.g., real estate for restaurants) to create stable, predictable income streams beyond direct product sales.
Take on the difficult or complex tasks that your customers or partners (like franchisees) prefer to avoid, making your offering more valuable and creating a win-win situation.
Design a business structure that inherently aligns the interests of all stakeholders—company, franchisees, suppliers, and customers—to enable widespread replication and growth.
Recognize that a successful business often requires a dynamic tension and balance between strong financial engineering and an obsessive focus on product quality and customer experience.
Maintain an unwavering, ambitious long-term vision, even during difficult times, as it can inspire loyalty and commitment from employees who believe in the future you are building.
Instead of resorting to government intervention or price wars, focus on outcompeting rivals by offering a superior product, better merchandising, faster service, and a cleaner environment.
Obsessively perfect every fundamental aspect of your business, no matter how small, as this meticulous attention to detail is crucial for overall performance.
Literally or figuratively examine your competitor’s waste (e.g., garbage, inefficiencies) to gain insights into their operations, product usage, and potential weaknesses.
Set and rigorously enforce precise quality standards for all inputs, even developing specialized tools for on-the-spot verification, to ensure suppliers consistently meet expectations.
Design systems where the quantities of different components are balanced against each other, allowing managers to immediately detect waste or theft if numbers don’t align.
Avoid the temptation to profit by marking up supplies sold to franchisees, as this creates a conflict of interest and can be perceived as a betrayal of their success.
Work closely with suppliers to help them lower their costs through innovations in packaging, delivery, and products, ensuring savings are passed on to your partners (franchisees) and fostering mutual growth.
Resist the temptation of side income streams (e.g., vending machines) if they create unproductive traffic, encourage loitering, or detract from the desired customer experience and brand image.
Be willing to accept an ‘intelligent loss of sales’ by not carrying every possible product variant, as this simplifies operations, reduces complexity, and leads to faster service and lower costs, ultimately increasing volume.
Recognize that consciously deciding not to do certain things can be just as, if not more, impactful than the actions you choose to take.
Create dedicated training programs (like Hamburger University) that combine theoretical instruction with hands-on practice to drill operators until every detail of the system becomes second nature.
Encourage and empower local operators to identify and solve specific regional problems or market needs, as they are often the source of the best product innovations.
If you strongly believe in an idea, persist in advocating for it, even in the face of strong initial resistance from leadership, demonstrating your conviction.
Be demanding and push your team members to their limits, as this can transform them into highly driven, detail-obsessed, and relentless individuals who achieve great success.
Understand that your role as a leader is to provide the systems, structures, and opportunities (the ‘means’) for others to achieve their own success, rather than doing it for them.
When selling, highlight how your product offers speed and simplicity, demonstrating how it reduces labor, saves time, and solves practical problems for customers.
Avoid pushing products on those who don’t need them and ensure you feel you’ve earned your salary, aligning with a belief in meritocracy.