Money is Everywhere

I believe making money comes down to three things.

1) The demand for what you do has to be great.

2) You have to be exceptionally good at it.

3) And you have to be difficult to replace, otherwise you have no negotiating power.

This applies to every single scenario.

Even McDonald's.

Let's say you start flipping burgers at 18.

But instead of just doing the job like everyone else, you pay attention to everything.

How the kitchen functions.

How orders are managed.

How the staff asks every single customer who orders a burger "want some fries with that?"

You think to yourself, "that's an upsell, okay."

Every single morning before your shift, you sit down for 30 minutes in complete silence with a piece of paper and you write down every idea you can think of.

How to make more money.

How to provide more value.

Creative ways to make yourself seen in the company.

You come up with 8 to 10 ideas each morning and maybe one of them is truly good.

One good idea per day.

365 good ideas per year.

You build a genuine relationship with your manager.

You show up on time, every time.

You do your job better than anyone else on the floor.

Six months in you ask for a raise, and your manager says no. You look him in the eye and tell him you are going to spend the next 90 days doing your job better than you have ever done it, and if he doesn't see it, you will start looking elsewhere.

90 days later you get 50 cents more per hour.

Not much, but it's more than before.

Every few months you come up with new ideas.

How to sell upsells.

How to improve efficiency.

How to offer faster service.

And your boss sees your extreme ambition.

A year in you become team leader.

Two years in you are the manager.

You start sending reports to the regional manager with ideas on how to increase revenue.

You test things in your own restaurant and document the results.

The regional manager starts paying attention to you.

By 25 you are managing multiple locations.

By 27 you are a regional manager overseeing an entire area.

By the time you are 27 you have generated over 2,000 good ideas through your daily 30-minute practice, and at least 100 of them have been exceptional, each one getting you to the next level.

Now you have something most people will never have.

Remember the three things I mentioned earlier.

The DEMAND for what you do is enormous because McDonald's has tons of customers.

You are exceptionally GOOD at it because you have spent nearly a decade mastering every single aspect of the business.

And you are almost impossible to REPLACE because you have the relationships, the track record, and the knowledge that took years to build.

That is when your negotiating power becomes real.

You start having serious conversations with franchising companies and potential investors.

You don't have the 1.5 to 2 million dollars needed to open a McDonald's on your own, but you don't need to. 

Your track record speaks for itself.

You find a partner willing to put up the capital in exchange for your operational expertise.

McDonald's approves you because you are exactly the kind of person they want running their restaurants.

A single McDonald's franchise can generate hundreds of thousands in annual profit. 

After a year or two, you invest in another restaurant with the same or another investor.

By 35 you are a multi-unit franchise owner. 

By 35 you are worth several million dollars.

And it all started with flipping a burger.

You can get rich doing anything.

Money is everywhere.