Joe bought a small mobile burger bar and rented a roadside pitch. His philosophy of high quality food matched with exceptional service and a ‘cheery smile’ proved popular with his customers.
Soon Joe had people queuing to sample his burgers, and word spread. Joe decided he needed to build a burger restaurant on the site of his mobile pitch.
In order to attract more custom, he put a big neon sign over the door, “Joe’s Quality Burgers”. People flooded in from miles around, so Joe decided to erect a big neon sign down the road, “Joe’s Quality Burgers” 1 mile ahead. Although these were expensive to build and run, business took another leap forward.
Pretty soon Joe erected another sign and built an extension on his restaurant. Business was booming and Joe was doing nicely.
Whilst all this was happening, Joe married the girl of his dreams and had two gorgeous children, Zak and Ellie. Ellie, in her late teens trained as a dancer and was starring in productions on Broadway. Zak wanted to take over the family business so went to Harvard.
Life was perfect for Joe and when Zak came back from Harvard, Joe immediately installed him into the business.
As the business continued to grow, Joe wanted to put up some more signs and extend the restaurant further. But Zak warned against this and educated Joe about the recession that the country was in and rather than erect more signs and extend, they should consider reducing costs. Indeed, Zak suggested they should take down the biggest signs and rather than expand, maybe lay a couple of people off to save some cost.
Although this was against Joe’s natural intuition, he conceded that Zak had enjoyed the best education possible at Harvard and therefore must know what he was talking about.
So, against his own judgement, Joe let Zak take down the biggest sign and lay off a couple of “non-productives”. Business began to decline and Zak spoke to Joe about more cost cutting. “We should take down some more signs and stop wasting our money training people. We pay them, they should know what to do!”
Once again, against Joe’s own judgement, Zak took down some more signs, cut the training cost and sub-let some of the back office.
Business continued to decline and Zak continued to cut costs. Eventually business became so bad that “Joe’s Quality Burgers” closed and Joe and Zak lost everything.
After the bankruptcy hearing, Joe turned to Zak and said “well, you were right about that recession Zak!”
- Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right.
- You get more of what you focus on.
- The biggest cost savings you can make are to switch all the lights out, close the doors and go home.
