Think Big – Think Expansion
Robert Kiyosaki begins by talking about Donald Trump’s trademark talk on “Thinking Big.†He mentions how he learned about thinking big utilizing different terms as his version is “leverage†and “expansion.†Kiyosaki explains how he was taught about this through McDonald’s business model. Apparently, back when Ray Kroc purchased McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers, he leveraged himself by turning it into a franchise. As a result, the business kept expanding and he could make money out of it even though he was not there. He then showed this picture that was taught to him in regards to the eight categories that make up a business:
His example was how the outside sections such as “Mission†are rather large whereas inside categories such as “Products†are rather small. Basically, if someone had an idea to say create a search engine and when asked what their mission was in creating it they said to simply make money, chances are their business will fail. Now if they said that their mission was to become the best and most relevant search engine that is a whole different story.
Kiyosaki then used McDonald’s an example again and talked about how great of a system it had. The gist of it is that most business systems are dependant on having the right people whereas with McDonald’s system it is more reliant in the system itself. The fact that McDonald’s system can run with even people with only a high school education is a testament to how good its business system is. Develop the right system and thinking big to expand your business is basically the message.
Donald Trump talks about expansion and how many times it is just common sense as you see a possible opportunity and then you make it happen. People more commonly refer to things like this as innovation or being innovative. His example was how he has a ballroom in a club that was able to seat less than 300 people which prevented certain events to function there such as a wedding. The original advice from his management team was to simply make the building bigger which would cost a lot of time and money. One day, he noticed a woman who was getting up from a chair in the ballroom and she was having difficulty in moving it away from the table to stand up as it was a very large chair which the room was filled with.
Knowing that, he decided to buy smaller chairs. Not only was he now able to fit over 440 people in the ballroom, but he actually made money from selling the old chairs. He then says how being able to see a situation and knowing how to make it better is the first step to becoming a visionary and that one should try to learn lessons from as many sources as possible.
Lot’s of interesting examples on how to expand a company in this chapter. I am definitely one of those guys who has worked at a McDonalds when I was a teenager and while I know most people would stereotype its employees as lower class citizens since you can work there with only a high school education, I thought the business system was actually very good. Although, I was a bit surprised back then on how my teacher’s would say that most employers actually highly value candidates who have worked at a McDonalds due to its training system. It wasn’t until I got older and became more business minded that I started to see that view as well.
Donald Trump’s example was also interesting and so true as well. There are so many times where whenever I talk to people about expanding something the answer is simply to spend more money whereas if you actually sit down and look at the whole situation in perspective you’d be surprised on how many alternative solutions you can come up with which will benefit you in more ways than one.