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In 1930, two young brothers named Dick and Maurice moved from New Hampshire to California in search of the American Dream. They had just gotten out of high school, and they saw few opportunities back home. So they headed straight for Hollywood where they eventually found jobs on a movie audio set.


After a while, their entrepreneurial spirit and interest in the entertainment industry prompted them to open a theater in Glendale, a town about five miles northeast of Hollywood. But despite all their efforts, the brothers just couldn’t make the business profitable, so they looked for a better business opportunity.


A New Opportunity


In 1937, the brothers opened a small drive-in restaurant in Pasadena, located just east of Glendale. As people in southern California became more dependent on their cars in the thirties, drive-in restaurants sprang up everywhere. Customers would drive into a parking lot around a small restaurant, place their orders with carhops, and receive their food on trays right in their cars. The food was served on china plates complete with glassware and metal utensils.


Dick and Maurice’s tiny drive-in restaurant was a great success, and in 1940, they moved the operation to San Bernardino, a working-class boomtown fifty miles east of Los Angeles. They built a larger facility and expanded their menu from hot dogs, fries, and shakes to include barbecued beef and pork sandwiches, hamburgers, and other items. Their business exploded. Annual sales reached $200,000, and the brothers found themselves splitting $50,000 in profits every year – a sum that put them in the town’s financial elite.


By 1948, their intuition told them that times were changing, so they made modifications to their restaurant business. They eliminated the carhops and started serving only walk-in customers. They reduced their menu and focused on selling hamburgers. They eliminated plates, glassware, and metal utensils, switching to paper products instead. They reduced their costs and prices they charged customers. They also created what they called the Speedy Service System. Their kitchen became like an assembly line, where each person focused on service with speed. Their goal was to fill each customer’s order in thirty seconds or less. And they succeeded. By the mid-1950s, annual revenue hit $350,000, and by then Dick and Maurice split net profits of about $100,000 each year.


Who were these brothers? On the front of their small restaurant hung a neon sign that said simply McDONALD’S HAMBURGERS. Dick and Maurice McDonald had hit the great American jackpot, and the rest, as they say, is history, right? Wrong. The McDonalds never went any farther because their weak leadership put a lid on their ability to succeed.


The Story Behind The Story


It’s true that the McDonald brothers were financially secure. Theirs was one of the most profitable restaurant enterprises in the country, and their genius was in customer service and kitchen organization, which led to a new system of food and beverage service. In fact, their talent was so widely known in food service circles that people from all over the country wanted to learn more about their methods. At one point, they received as many as three hundred calls and letters every month. That led them to the idea of marketing the McDonald’s concept.


The idea of franchising restaurants had been around for several decades. To the McDonald brothers, it looked like a way to make money without having to open another restaurant themselves. In 1952, they tried it, but their effort was a dismal failure. The reason was simple. They lacked the leadership necessary to make it effective.


Dick and Maurice were good restaurant owners. They understood how to run a business, make their systems efficient, cut costs, and increase profits. They were efficient managers. But they were not leaders. Their thinking patterns clamped a lid down on what they could do and become. [/b]At the height of their success, Dick and Maurice found themselves smack-dab against the Law of the Lid.


[b]The Brothers Partner With a Leader


In 1954, the brothers hooked up with a man named Ray Kroc who was a leader. Kroc had been running a small company he founded, which sold machines for making milk shakes. McDonald’s was one of his best customers, and as soon as he visited the store, he had a vision for its potential. In his mind he could see the restaurant going nationwide in hundreds of markets. He soon struck a deal with Dick and Maurice, and in 1955, he formed McDonald’s System, Inc. (later called the McDonald’s Corporation).


Kroc immediately bought the rights to a franchise so that he could use it as a model and prototype to sell other franchises. Then he began to assemble a team and build an organization to make McDonald’s a nationwide entity.


In the early years, Kroc sacrificed a lot. Though he was in his midfifties, he worked long hours just as he had when he first got started in business thirty years earlier. He eliminated many frills at home, including his country club membership, which he later said added ten strokes to his golf game. During his first eight years with McDonald’s, he took no salary. He also personally borrowed money from the bank and against his life insurance to help cover the salaries of a few key leaders he wanted on the team. His sacrifice and his leadership paid off. In 1961 for the sum of $2.7 million, Kroc bought the exclusive rights to McDonald’s from the brothers, and he proceeded to turn it into an American institution and global entity. The “lid” in the life and leadership of Ray Kroc was obviously much higher than that of his predecessors.


In the years that Dick and Maurice McDonald had attempted to franchise their food service system, they managed to sell the concept to just fifteen buyers, only ten of whom actually opened restaurants. On the other hand, the leadership lid in Ray Kroc’s life was sky high. Between 1955 and 1959, Kroc succeeded in opening 100 restaurants. Four years after that, there were 500 McDonald’s. Today the company has opened more than 21,000 restaurants in no fewer than 100 countries. Leadership ability – or more specifically the lack of leadership ability – was the lid on the McDonald brothers’ effectiveness.


(Excerpt from “Leadership 101” by John Maxwell)



MOMENT OF YOUR TRANSFORMATION


You can now see that your leadership ability has a huge impact on your level of success in life and business. Wouldn’t you say yes to developing your leadership ability? I’m assuming you’ve said “yes” and I’m going ahead to offer you a beautiful and brilliant suggestion for you to raise the lid on your leadership ability so you can achieve the optimum success you were meant to create in your life and live the life of your dream. And this irresistible offer comes with several other benefits.


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