in people...or some of them might get even with you.
Lesson Eleven: Never Run Out of Money. I learned this lesson as a kid, and I bet you did, too. Almost all of us have played the game of Monopoly. On a cold winter’s night, or a rainy afternoon, mom or dad would pull down the Monopoly box, spread open the board, count out the money, and set us up to play the game for several hours. It was a lot of fun...so long as you didn’t run out of money. As long as you had money, you remained in the game with everyone else. But if you ran out of money, your game was over. You’d have to watch television while everyone else continued having fun playing the game!
Consequently, since then I’ve realized that you must never run out of money. You can make mistakes, you can have a bad day, a bad week, even a bad year. You can get low on money, but you must never run out of money!
Lesson Twelve: Attract New Customers Every Day. As I was preparing to open our first Subway shop I learned the importance of attracting customers every day. That first shop, as well as every additional shop we opened, was surrounded by potential customers. However, that fact didn’t guarantee us a successful business. One day it occurred to me that we couldn’t grow unless we could continue to attract new people to our location. That’s when I began to understand the theory of Awareness, Trial, and Usage. It became important to me to make people aware of our shop and then invite them to try our product. Then, we had to turn them into regular users or customers. Once I understood this lesson, it became my job to attract new customers every day.
Lesson Thirteen: Be Persistent: Don’t Give Up. Many days it would have been easy to throw up my hands and walk away from Subway. I often remember thinking, “How will we make it? We don’t have enough money.” But in the back of my mind there was this almost self-evident lesson that said: If you quit, you fail. If you give up, you’re out. If you stop playing, you can’t play anymore.
Not giving up requires something more than keeping the faith and maintaining a positive attitude. It’s all about persistence. If you don’t have faith in what you’re doing, or faith in yourself, and if you can’t think positively about your situation, it’s nearly impossible to be persistent. Some days you’re going to feel like your business is rejecting you, or you may feel like separating yourself from the business. On those “blue Mondays”—which surely will occur—you must always find a way to persevere. It’s perseverance that enables people to keep going so that they can become successful. I think we can all look back on something in our lives that we gave up on too soon. Had we remained committed to a plan, a goal, or a vision, had we persevered in spite of the obstacles, things may have turned out differently. In business, it’s important to work through the issues, no matter how difficult. Otherwise you could find yourself giving up and never finishing big. People who give up ultimately have to go back and start all over again. Never give up!
Lesson Fourteen: Build a Brand Name. Like most adults, I learned this lesson at the supermarket. Let’s say you want to buy a carton of cereal. At the supermarket, you’ll find an entire aisle with many brands to select from. There’s cold and warm cereal. Sugar-free cereal, protein-enriched cereal, and high-fiber cereal. There’s cereal with fruit, cereal that’s crunchy, and cereal with famous sports figures on the box. And look, there’s generic cereal, too!
If we compare the labels of these various cereals we’ll find that the brand name products are pretty similar to the generic products. In fact, the only real difference appears to be the price. The generic cereal costs less. So what are we going to do? More often than not, people will spend a little more and buy the brand name.
The fact is, branded products sell, and they sell for more than unbranded products.
Lesson Fifteen: Opportunity Waits for No One. When my business partner, Pete Buck, who you’ll soon read more about, invited me to go into business with him, I had the choice of saying yes or no. If I had said no I don’t know what I’d be doing today, and there’s a chance Pete would have offered the same opportunity to someone else. Of course, it was easy for me to say yes because of the circumstances. First, I had nothing better to do, and second, Pete was investing the money. Nonetheless, when you’re faced with opportunity it’s important to be prepared to say yes before the opportunity goes elsewhere.
This is not to say that I believe in taking every opportunity that comes along. But you’ve got to say yes to something if you want to start and build a business.
* * *
There you have them. Now that it’s clear how I learned these Fifteen Key Lessons, and what they mean, let’s move on. I’m going to tell you my story in the next chapter, and then, through the resourceful research and writing of my co-author, John Hayes, I’ll tell you the stories of other microentrepreneurs who collectively have implemented all of the lessons in their businesses. You’ll find these stories in Chapters 4 through 18. Finally, I’ll conclude the book with some ideas and information about how you can apply the lessons that I’m sharing with you. You’ll also find more information in the Appendixes about microenterprise, microlenders, and how you can start a Micro Investment Lending Enterprise in your city.
Besides the help these Fifteen Key Lessons gave me, I truly believe they can help most people who start small. Thirty-five years ago, just out of high school, I planned to be a medical doctor. One day Pete Buck, a family friend, suggested that I open a tiny sandwich shop to earn my college tuition money. What I didn’t know—what no one knew—was that Pete’s idea would lead to the creation of Subway, the world’s largest chain of sandwich shops, and for many years, the world’s fastest-growing franchise company. Even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined how this opportunity would change my life, or how the resulting business would impact the lives of thousands of people worldwide. Now, with more than 36,000 restaurants in more than ninety eight countries, and annual sales in excess of $16billion, even I admit it’s an incredible story.
But beyond the importance of the Fifteen Key Lessons, there’s a valuable take-away message that I want to be sure you understand before we go any further. You can adapt these lessons to your business, either one that already exists, or one that you plan to start. You can use these lessons to build an exciting and rewarding business. You can use these lessons to start small and finish big. I’ve done it, others have done it, and you can do it, too!
chapter three
My Story
How a seventeen-year-old kid from “The Projects” started Subway Restaurants with a microloan of $1,000.
This story could have happened to almost anyone, anywhere. Carmela Ombres and Salvatore DeLuca just so happened to live in Brooklyn in the 1940s. One day they met, and not long thereafter they were married. In 1947 they had a son, and that was me.
For the first several years of my life we lived in the basement apartment of a two-family house. It was a humble, low-rent apartment, something that newlyweds could afford. When I was five, we moved to the Bronx to a new development, which everyone called “The Projects.” It was public housing, one of many similar developments built after World War II. For the DeLuca family, it was a step up!
When I was ten, my dad’s employer, Empire Devices, moved its manufacturing facility 120 miles upstate to Amsterdam, New York. Since my mother had just given birth to my sister, Suzanne, and since my father’s job was fairly secure—he was the foreman of a small production line—we left the Bronx for a small apartment in Schenectady, near Amsterdam. And that’s where we met Pete Buck and his wife, Haydee, who soon became close friends.
It was an unlikely friendship in my estimation. Pete was a brilliant scientist who had earned a doctoral degree from Columbia University.
