What I Learned from the Movie, The Founder
Ever see the movie, “The Founder“, starring Michael Keaton? He plays Ray Kroc, “Founder” and franchisor of McDonald’s Corp.
I thought it was very good and recommend going to see it, especially if you are of the entrepreneurial spirit. There are 3 scenes in the movie which are my favorite parts:
1. When Ray Kroc was informed by his new “finance guy” that he was not in the hamburger business at all, but rather the “real estate” business. The realization of which changed his business and mind-frame about it completely.
2. The discussion Ray Kroc had with Dick McDonald in the men’s room after buying the McDonald brothers out. (Go see the movie)
3. The end of the movie where he reveals the secret of his success.
What is that secret? PERSISTENCE!
Keaton’s character reveals that it was persistence that allowed a middle-aged milkshake-multi-mixer salesman to go from nothing to creating a multi-billion dollar empire we know today as McDonald’s Corporation.
When you think about this, he had to be persistent in the right business model though.
It does no good to be persistent in the wrong business model as the McDonald brothers found out. The brothers did well, but no where near as well as they could have.
Go back and re-read item #1 of my favorite movie scenes:
This realization changed which business model Mr. Kroc focused on from simply sub-leasing franchises, without any control from the McDonald’s bros, for a tiny commission to sub-leasing franchises and then also owning and renting out the real-estate underneath each franchise store.
This gave Ray Kroc complete control and ALL the income from the real-estate rentals passed directly to Mr. Kroc rather than the McDonald brothers.
Franchises, as Ray Kroc mentioned in the movie, is how he built the McDonald’s empire.
Affiliate Marketing with recurring commissions is a good business model to be in because you can piggy bank off of someone else’s franchise, and if we have no franchise, we have no products to sell either.
We’d have to create our own products and the systems to sell them and I don’t want to do that, personally. I’d rather have someone else do that for me.
They do that at McDonald’s, who already has the products and the systems to sell them in place…
Whenever I make an affiliate sale, through products I did not create, I am glad to accept a 50% or even 75% commission, and pay them the rest, because its a win-win situation.
My job has now gone from product/infrastructure creator and maintainer, a very hard and time-consuming job, to lead generator, a much simpler job – to bring leads into my system.
If a sale results out of this, I get a big fat commission. Nice, huh?
Hamburgers, the product in Ray Kroc’s case, didn’t much matter when he owned the systems which sold those products – the franchises – and then sold them to other potential partners , or franchisees.
Ray Kroc did not create the hamburger business, but he did perfect the way hamburgers are sold world-wide.
Mike J Anthony
Read the book, Grinding It Out, by Ray Kroc, 1977
Buy The Founder movie, starring Michael Keaton, 2017
