Starting a business as a teenager was actually a blessing for me. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t succeed, and people didn’t discourage me because, after all, I was young. There was always time for me to rebound. Consequently, on those bleak days that come with every business venture, I might have been disappointed, or emotionally down, but it never occurred to me to give up faith in what we were doing and what we could accomplish.
Lesson Six: Ready, Fire, Aim! I learned this lesson by opening the first restaurant without any experience. In other words, I learned it by doing it and not just thinking about it. With clarity about the idea for Subway, and at least a glimpse of the vision, I went to work the next day! Someone else might have taken time to plot out the job requirements and to write a business plan, but doing those things may have prevented me from actually starting. There’s a good chance the planning process would have consumed my energy. Or I would have decided that what I thought was a good idea wasn’t such a good idea after all.
As I’ve discovered on many occasions since starting Subway, it’s better to fire in the general direction of where you want to end up and then adjust your aim, than never fire at all. Get started. Move in the general direction of where you want to go. Make course adjustments along the way.
Lesson Seven: Profit or Perish. Early in Subway’s development I found out that it’s easy to make a lot of sales and still not make a profit! That’s when I learned about profit or perish. One day my accountant congratulated me for generating annual sales in excess of $1 million for the first time. But in the next breath he also explained that unfortunately I had lost $100,000 that year! How could that happen? It didn’t take me long to figure out there are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs. Believe me, this is a lesson worth learning as soon as possible. It’s a lesson that we teach our franchisees at Subway.
Lesson Eight: Be Positive. I learned this lesson in the midst of building the first few Subway shops. From an economic point of view, those first shops were disastrous. In the process of locating and building those shops, I made many mistakes, as might be expected of someone who was inexperienced and had no real plan. The early failures could have boxed me into a negative mind-set where it might have been nearly impossible to solve problems and make real progress. Fortunately, that’s not the path I chose. I’m sure it helped that I was young, and I also had a business partner who set a positive example. Where there were challenges, we sought solutions. And even when one solution didn’t work, we sought another and another until we worked through the challenge. It’s a lesson that I continue to practice every day that I’m involved in business.
When you’re faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, it doesn’t help to be negative. Keep a positive mind-set.
Lesson Nine: Continuously Improve Your Business. This is a lesson that may not become apparent until you’re faced with competition. Businesses do not stand still. They may fall behind some times, but those that succeed do so by continuously improving their operation. Progress requires that they introduce new products, new ways to serve their customers, new ways to market, new ways to get ahead of everyone else. This is not a once-and-done experience. It’s continuous.
Even today, when we introduce new ideas at Subway, our competition won’t be far behind. The only way to stay in business is to continuously make these improvements.
Lesson Ten: Believe In Your People. One of the greatest assets in any business is people. That’s been reinforced for me over the years, but even so, I learned this lesson the hard way. You’ll enjoy the story that follows if you’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way, too.
One night I walked into a Subway shop and found a mess behind the counter. There was food everywhere. I read the riot act to the employee who was working alone. “You’ve got to keep this place clean,” I demanded of him. I helped him clean up and then sternly said, “Don’t let this happen again.” And I left the store.
The next day, much to my surprise, I discovered that store had set a new sales record for the most sandwiches sold in the shortest period of time. That’s when I realized the place was a mess because our single employee was working hard to serve our customers. As I looked further into the matter, I discovered he had experienced a rush of business just before my appearance at the store. He never had a chance to clean up the mess, and I never gave him a chance to explain.
That night I went back to the store to apologize to our employee. But he told me not to worry about it. He said it was okay. Intuition told me it wasn’t okay, so I coaxed him to open up. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I feel bad about what happened.”
He then admitted that he was angry with me, and he wasn’t able to get his work done because he was thinking about how badly he had been treated. An hour or two later, he said he was still angry! That’s when he decided he had to do something to work out his aggression. “After you left the store,” he said, “I went in the back room and poured a gallon of oil down the drain.” That’s when I learned that you better believe in people...or some of them might get even with you.
Lesson Eleven: Never Run Out of Money. I learned this lesson as a kid, and I bet you did, too. Almost all of us have played the game of Monopoly. On a cold winter’s night, or a rainy afternoon, mom or dad would pull down the Monopoly box, spread open the board, count out the money, and set us up to play the game for several hours. It was a lot of fun...so long as you didn’t run out of money. As long as you had money, you remained in the game with everyone else. But if you ran out of money, your game was over. You’d have to watch television while everyone else continued having fun playing the game!
Consequently, since then I’ve realized that you must never run out of money. You can make mistakes, you can have a bad day, a bad week, even a bad year. You can get low on money, but you must never run out of money!
Lesson Twelve: Attract New Customers Every Day. As I was preparing to open our first Subway shop I learned the importance of attracting customers every day. That first shop, as well as every additional shop we opened, was surrounded by potential customers. However, that fact didn’t guarantee us a successful business. One day it occurred to me that we couldn’t grow unless we could continue to attract new people to our location. That’s when I began to understand the theory of Awareness, Trial, and Usage. It became important to me to make people aware of our shop and then invite them to try our product. Then, we had to turn them into regular users or customers. Once I understood this lesson, it became my job to attract new customers every day.
Lesson Thirteen: Be Persistent: Don’t Give Up. Many days it would have been easy to throw up my hands and walk away from Subway. I often remember thinking, “How will we make it? We don’t have enough money.” But in the back of my mind there was this almost self-evident lesson that said: If you quit, you fail. If you give up, you’re out. If you stop playing, you can’t play anymore.
Not giving up requires something more than keeping the faith and maintaining a positive attitude. It’s all about persistence. If you don’t have faith in what you’re doing, or faith in yourself, and if you can’t think positively about your situation, it’s nearly impossible to be persistent. Some days you’re going to feel like your business is rejecting you, or you may feel like separating yourself from the business. On those “blue Mondays”—which surely will occur—you must always find a way to persevere. It’s perseverance that enables people to keep going so that they can become successful. I think we can all look back on something in our lives that we gave up on too soon. Had we remained committed to a plan, a goal, or a vision, had we persevered in spite of the obstacles, things may have turned out differently. In business, it’s important to work through the issues, no matter how difficult. Otherwise you could find yourself giving up and never finishing big. People who give up ultimately have to go back and start all over again. Never give up!
Lesson Fourteen: Build a Brand Name. Like most adults, I learned this lesson at the supermarket. Let’s say you want to