Zoho Tools For Franchise Growth

Tom DuFore 0:00

The most successful franchises share one thing in common. They're never satisfied with where the business is today. They're always thinking about the road ahead. That ambition is the fuel that drives growth. And Zoho's business software is the engine that gets you there. With the right technology, your franchise won't just run better. It'll move faster. Candidates will progress through the development pipeline more quickly. New locations will open on schedule. Decisions will get made based on better data and better insights. Zoho gives every size and style of franchise the power to move faster without breaking what works. Whether you're a single location operator building a portfolio, a multi-unit operator scaling across brands, or a regional franchise or growing into a national network, Zoho grows with you every step of the way. Built over 30 years, Zoho's software ecosystem can be configured to match how your franchise actually works. CRM, operations, marketing, HR analytics, and more all designed to work together from the start. The more of your business that runs on Zoho, the more connected it gets. Head to zoho.com slash franchise to learn more about what Zoho has to offer. That's zoho.com slash franchise. And now, back to the show.

Why Projects Stall In Businesses

Tom DuFore 1:14

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And as we open today, I'm wondering if you have some projects or new offerings for your business that might have got lost along the way in their development. And how did that happen? Well, our guest today is Dre Baldwin, and he shares with us how many of our failures in business are actually a failure of execution. Now, Dre built work on your game to turn disciplined execution into dominance. He's a four-time TEDx speaker and a 43-time author. Dre also played professional basketball for nine years. Today he helps experts and entrepreneurs install mindset, systems, and strategy to scale from six to seven figures with presence and power. You're gonna love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Tom, thank you for having me on. I'm excited for the opportunity. My name is Dre Baldwin. My title is I'm the owner and founder of Work on Your Game Incorporated.

Defining High Performance As Identity

Tom DuFore 2:28

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, one of the things that I find so fascinating with the content and things that you share and talk through is talking about this idea of high performance and high performance operators, high performance mindset. And so I'm just curious as a starting point, and this might be a big question to start with, but what are some of the things that you find that separates high performers from average performers in a business setting? And in our world, we think maybe small businesses or even one franchisee in a franchise system that's an average performer versus a high performer.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Great question. So let's just start with first principles. To be high, you have to be better than average. So whatever the average is, if you're aiming to go above that and you're actually hitting it, then that by definition makes it high. And if we say high performer, then what we're saying is as an identity, right? As your entity or as you as an individual, which means you can't just high perform one time or now and then it's you are a high performer, which means you do it over and over and over again. So it's performing and hitting results above the average and then doing it on a consistent basis to where it becomes part of your identity, not just something that you do.

Tom DuFore 3:42

For this high performer kind of, I guess, mindset really that you're talking about, how is it

Building Consistent Results With Structure

Tom DuFore 3:49

that folks build this, develop this? I mean, is this one of those things that sometimes I think of kind of a leadership myth? Oh, someone's just born with this. How does that all happen?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

No, people are not born with it. Some people may have a natural amount of talent or inclination, and maybe time they can fall into a business or industry where the product is right, the timing is right, the customer is right, and they hit some success almost by default without really trying consciously or intentionally. But in order to do it consistently, at some point, there has to be some consciousness, some intentionality in it, and it has to be done over and over again, which is going to require structure, systems, and disciplined execution. So, no, it's not something that people are born with. It's something that can be acquired, it can be developed, it can be sharpened, and it can be perfected, so to speak, to where you can predict what's going to happen. And what happens is how I just defined it a moment ago, a high level of performance, which is above the average or maybe above your own standard. If you're just trying to push yourself or push your company forward. So it really starts with setting a certain target that would put you above, again, whatever the average expectation would be, or if you don't know what that is, then continually continually pushing yourself past whatever you've hit in the past.

Tom DuFore 5:05

I've seen the high achievers and these high performers that do what you say, where they kind of have this vision and then they go out and get it. And I've also been around, I'm old enough to have been around folks where they set big goals, but then they talk a lot about it, but nothing necessarily comes from it. I don't see the behaviors or the activity or whatever that might be. So how do you help establishing that kind of goal or target to starting to execute on

Execution Drift And Why Goals Fail

Tom DuFore 5:34

it, I guess?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well, having a structure in place is the first piece, whether that's something you built yourself. Some people who are ambitious and able to do so can do that. And or the other thing is you plug into a structure that already exists. I mean, you work in the franchise space, so you know exactly how that works. It's a franchise, you have to have a structure that is proven that works, or at least you think it works. So then other people can copy that structure. They follow the same thing, and they should have some idea within a certain range of what type of results they should expect to get if they follow the system that has been laid out for them. So the biggest thing that stops the person with ambitious goals or let's say big talk from actually achieving is usually a failure in execution. Whether that means the structure or system just isn't right, or what often happens in my experience, time is that the structure or system is right, quote unquote, in that if you follow it, you'll get a certain result that we can expect. But what happens is a lot of people just experience execution drift. So these are things that are supposed to happen, but over time, slowly, people start drifting off of the right path of how the execution is supposed to go. And when that execution drift is large enough, a big enough company, or it happens persistently enough over a longer period of time, then the results start to drift as well. And that's when leaders, operators go looking at the now that they can see the results are drifting, they're wondering, where did this break? And it looks like everybody's still following the system. But what happens is people are not following it to a T. And if there's no mechanism for catching that, when it's small, it can get big almost to the point that it's you almost have to kind of tear everything down and start from scratch by the time you figure it out, depending on how long it takes to find it.

Tom DuFore 7:13

Part of what you said in your business is work on your game. And so this idea of working on it, building discipline, these kinds of ideas. How do you work with others or people you help or clients you serve? And kind of this idea of discipline, improving on this, identifying some of this, what you're talking about. What does that look like?

The Four Pillars For Scaling

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Okay. So let's say working with an owner and I'm helping the owner not only with themselves, what they're doing, but also with how they're operating with their team. But I'm mostly talking just to the owner. Then the number one thing is first thing is I come and work with anyone. First thing I want to know two things. What's the problem or what's the goal and what's the problem? Because usually somebody's talking to me, there's something they want to achieve, and some for some reason they're not doing it. Because if they had something they wanted to achieve and they were hitting it, they wouldn't be talking to me. So I want to find out what the problem is or what they think the problem is. And often what they think is the problem is not actually the problem. So that's is my job to kind of deconstruct and find out what's really going on. So once I have those two data points and I can start asking questions, when it comes to just working on your game in general, we focus on four specific covers mindset, strategy, the systems, and the execution. So we talked about the execution a little bit already. The mindset is the way of thinking of the leaders or leader in an organization. What are they thinking? What are they seeing? Where are they trying to go? Because the way you think leads to everything that comes downstream. Next part is the strategy. Strategy is simply a plan of action. What are we going to do? How do we want to do it? And a strategy can be two steps, strategy can be 2,000 steps. It can be something that can be said to everybody and walk past in a hallway and they get it. It can be something that goes into a hundred-page manual for them to know what the strategy is, what the process is. So that's making sure everyone is clear on what exactly are we doing and how are we going to go about it? Next part is the system. How do we take that strategy once we have tailored the strategy to make sure that it produces the desired outcome? How do we systematize this such that everyone can follow this and achieve a certain outcome that does not require any individual's personal brilliance or personal talent? Because you can't build the system on talent because there's not enough of it for everybody to be able to do the same thing. So you have to systematize it to where anybody can do it. Best example I use of this is you look at somewhere like Starbucks or McDonald's. They don't have to hire geniuses, not saying the people work there are dumb, but you don't have to be a genius to work there. All you have to do is be able to follow instructions. And instructions are the system. And that's why the coffee, where where are you located, Tom? I'm in the Atlanta area. Okay, so the coffee in Atlanta is the same as the coffee that I would get from Starbucks down here in Miami. Same thing with the Big Mac at McDonald's. And then the last thing is the execution. The execution is making sure that the system is actually being followed. Here's where a lot of leaders and operators drop the ball because they have no mechanism for making sure that the people on their team are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing within the system. It may look like they're operating the system, but they may not be. They may be drifting just on a couple steps in that system that are a little bit more convenient for them, but is not the right way the system should be run. And the results don't show up immediately. They only show up later. And again, now you have to backtrack and fix everything if it's not done properly. So those are the four steps from the mindset, the strategy, the systems, and the execution.

Tracking Compliance With Execution Reliability

Tom DuFore 10:26

That final piece that you said is really interesting to me because it makes me think of franchising. And you referenced McDonald's and in our business, we work primarily with entrepreneurs and help them turn their business into a franchise to go and launch. But now you have, as you start selling franchises and franchisees open, you have these people that are oftentimes out of market and new areas that are operating. And sometimes for new folks and even established franchisors, those checkups aren't happening or they're not measuring what's most important for the business. So I guess how do you help your multi-unit or multi-site clients and customers help kind of identify, I guess, either KPIs or a strategy to make sure that they're not strained too far from the system at hand?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Great question. So that's what we work on, what we work with companies with. So we created this thing called the ERI, which stands for execution reliability index. And the whole point, the big idea of the ERI is to make sure that the steps that need to be executed are being followed consistently to where they are tracked. And we can take consistency, what the companies want everybody to be consistent. You want people to be disciplined, and you want people to follow the process, right? Every company wants that. Now, how do we take those ideas and turn them into a measurable data point that a manager can look at, a staff member can see their own, and a leader can look at and see, okay, here's where everybody is pretty much on point 95%, but here's where we're drifting, we're at 60%. All right, this is something that needs to be addressed. So that what that does is it does not replace the system that a company already has. What it adds is a correctionslash enforcement layer of the system to make sure the system is actually being used. Because one thing that I notice in businesses, and Tom, you probably notice this working with franchises is that a company usually, by the time they're at the franchise level, they have a system. That's almost guaranteed. The issue is people in the company don't always follow the system. And who is going to be looking over their shoulders, so to speak, to make sure the system is being followed? You may not have the resources for that. What the ERI is designed to do is to be that entity, so to speak, that's looking over their shoulders in a way that, again, they don't feel like they're being micromanaged, but they know that the reliability of the execution is being charted and counted and measured in a way that now the company knows, okay, at least we know we're running the system. So if there's a problem, it's not this. It has to be something else.

Tom DuFore 13:01

Oh, that's fantastic. Well, for someone who says, Dre, this ERI sounds fantastic, or they're interested in learning more about what you're doing. How can they connect? How can they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Sure. You can just go to workonyourgame.com. Workonyourgame.com, there's a big button right there on the page that says uh check the execution reliability and we'll take you to a quick little quiz. You can grade yourself and then we'll tell you what that means and where our next steps are. So that's workonyourgame.com.

Tom DuFore 13:29

Excellent. Well, and we'll make sure we include that

Lessons From Sports And Business Wins

Tom DuFore 13:31

in the show notes. Well, Dre, this is a great time in the show, and we make a transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we like to ask every guest is Have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

SPEAKER_00 13:44

A miss or two, only two? I've had 200. So I've had plenty of misses and my background is in sports. So even just trying to get in to playing a pro sport coming out of a division three college, a lot of misses just trying to get my first opportunity. And even once I got in, it was hard to stay in. Then on top of that, transitioning from being an athlete to being an entrepreneur, one of the first many misses that occur, I guess you can call them micro misses, is that when you're trying to get established as, hey, I am a business person, not just an athlete playing businessman. I'm a professional speaker. I can do coaching, I can consult, I can help a company. They're looking at you like, okay, it's cool that you played the sport, but what do you know about what we're doing over here? How can you help us over here? Your experiences on the court, what can you do in a boardroom? So it's just getting yourself established. And there's not even so much any one big thing, but it's getting turned down, ignored, you know, blown off because you haven't established yourself in that spot yet. Good thing about being an athlete is that we're used to missing shots. So that you just keep going and go for the next one. So I've had plenty of big misses, but a lot more than two of them.

Tom DuFore 14:48

Thank you for sharing that. And let's look on the other side, let's look at a make or a highlight or two.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Sure. Well, okay, we can say making it as an athlete, getting that chance. But then also on the flip side of what I said in business is that the good thing about athletes, and the reason a lot of companies like to hire former athletes is because we're used to shooting and missing. We're used to coming to practice every day, and we're used to the grind of the game, knowing that the opportunities to have success may be few and far between relative to number of practices, so to speak, metaphorically speaking. So in business, just going through those turndowns, blow-offs, getting told no, but continuing to go, showing up, proving myself, okay, this person actually might be okay. And every time you prove yourself, it opens the door for another opportunity, another, and another. So again, it's not even one big thing. It's not like I can tell you, hey, there was this one big deal. I you know, lost an IPO and made a billion dollars. I haven't had that. But it's been a bunch of small wins over time that build up into one day you look back and say, okay, actually, I've done something here. So that's really what it's been for me.

Tom DuFore 15:50

Oh, fantastic.

Collapsing Your Identity Into One Thing

Tom DuFore 15:52

Fantastic. Well, the name of the show is multiply your success. And we ask every guest have you used a multiplier to help you grow personally, professionally, or any organization you've run?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

No, absolutely. Number one multiplier, I would say for me, there are a lot of different answers I could give to this, but I think the number one that I give for other entrepreneurs and even for myself is collapsing your identity, condensing what you're doing down from what happens a lot of times in the world today, times a lot of entrepreneurs, especially, because we have a ton of ideas, we tend to get all these slashes in our bios and our names, what we do. I do this and this and this and this. And when you do so many things, you may be good at all of them. The problem is you can't own any one of them. And more importantly, you confuse the marketplace because they don't know, okay, you're the person for what? It's like the common idea is if your back is hurting, do you want the cop the general practitioner doctor, or you want the chiropractor? You want the person who focuses on that thing or the person who can do it, but they do a hundred other things as well. So helping entrepreneurs collapse their identity and companies collapse. What are what's the main thing we're going to own? I'm sure you heard a book Goods and Great by Jim Collins. Now he talks about the hedgehog concept. What's the one thing you want to own? Own that. And then other things, you still make the concentric circles that go outside of that. You may still get opportunities for that. But everybody needs to know where you live so they know what address to mail the package to. Again, people can keep up that mixed metaphor.

Tom DuFore 17:14

I really appreciate that. That's fantastic. And Dre, we ask every guest before they go here, what does success mean to

Success As Pursuit Of A Worthy Ideal

Tom DuFore 17:23

you?

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Earl Nightingale said in The Strangest Secret that success is pursuit of a worthy ideal. And that's the way I define it. The success is you have a goal, something that you want to achieve, and you are in the process of going after it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you've achieved it, because once you've achieved it, you're not pursuing anything. It was actually technically you're a failure at that point because you're not pursuing anything. So success is something that you want and you are actively going at it. The act of going forward is the success. The achievement at that point, now you need to find the next thing you're going to go after and the next thing. So success means you have something you want and you are actively taking steps to get towards it.

Tom DuFore 18:01

Andre, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you are hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

I would say the last thing is that we talked about here execution, that it starts with principles, and that's with an individual person or with a company. Company usually may call this the mission statement or something like that. What are we about or what am I about? That's etch this zone that will never change, that that allows no negotiation and no exceptions. Everything starts with the principle, what we're really about. Then from there, you get to things like strategizing. Strategy leads to the or the system structure leads to the discipline, discipline to the confidence, confidence to performance, performance to results, and results to rewards, which is the main thing that most people want at the end of the day. And if you follow that process, you'll get to your outcome. We start with the principles. Once I'm clear on the principles, then we know what can't change, and then everything else builds around it.

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

Tom DuFore 18:55

Dre, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is when he talked about what separates high performers from average or others. And he said, number one, the high performer needs to be above average and needs to be consistently above average. And I just like that as a nice little description or definition there. Takeaway number two is when he talked about how you establish your target and to improve it. And he said a lot of people drift on execution. He calls that the execution drift. And if there's no mechanism for catching it, it keeps getting bigger, this gap that starts to create. Takeaway number three are the four pillars that he talks about mindset, strategy, systems, and execution. Those are the four pillars he's built his program on. But I thought that was great. He said mindset. What's your mindset? Strategy. Do you have a plan of action? What are you going to do? Three is systems and certainly in franchising. I love systems. How do we take the strategy and systematize it so that everyone can follow it? And then execution. You've got to execute on that. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win came from when he talked about you might be good at a lot of things, but you need to make sure you have that one thing that you own. What's the one thing that you own? The one main product, the one main service. What's that one thing that you're known for that everything else builds off of? So I thought that was a great reminder. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the quote he mentioned by Earl Nightingale that he said, success is the pursuit of a worthy ideal. Success is the pursuit of a worthy ideal. I thought that was a great quote. So I've got to tie that into the win-win. I know I mixed in a couple there, but I just thought that was a great quote to close with. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free, no obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.