Jan Koum is a Ukrainian-American billionaire businessman and computer engineer. He’s the co-founder and former CEO of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app that was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for an absolutely mind boggling $19.3 billion.
Facebook paid $12 billion in stock and the rest in cash. What’s even more badass than the exit was the fact that Koum arranged for the $19 billion deal to be signed at the same welfare center he used to collect his welfare checks in his teens. Only this time, he drove there in his Porsche.
Jan moved to California from Ukraine when he was 16. As a young immigrant, Koum and his mother had to rely on food stamps. Koum became interested in programming and eventually landed a job at Yahoo! Where he worked for 9 years.
Then in January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry for app creators.
WhatsApp was initially unpopular, but it quickly became one of the fastest growing apps on the market. WhatsApp allows user to send messages, images, audio or video at a cost significantly less than texting.
The app gained a large user base. So large Facebook was monitoring the app for years obsessively. They were paranoid WhatsApp could eventually be a Facebook killer.
Hate networking but know you need to be doing more of it?
Here’s the only video you need to watch today. It’s one of the most watched videos on TedEx with over 2 million views on how to hack networking.
In his talk David Burkus, author of the book “Friend of a Friend“, examines the science of how networking actually works and reveals what the best networkers really do…
WATCH:
Who is David Burkus?
David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought after speaker, and business school professor. In 2015, he was named one of the emerging thought leaders most likely to shape the future of business by Thinkers50, the world’s premier ranking of management thinkers.
His book, Friend of a Friend, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not just canned networking advice.
David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in Fast Company, the Financial Times, Inc magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and CBS This Morning.
Worth mentioning, in addition to the 1,700 locations, Five Guys has an additional 1,500 restaurants currently in development. So if you haven’t been to one yet, just wait.
In just 2 decades, Five Guys has become one of the fastest growing, successful restaurant chains in the United States making them a brand worth knowing and a model to look into.
The Five Guys Origin Story:
In 1986 the founder, Jerry Murrel, along with his 4 sons started a single burger restaurant. As the story goes: Parents Jerry and Janie Murrell offered an ultimatum to their four sons: “Start a business or go to college.”
The business route won and the Murrell family opened a carry-out burger joint in Arlington Virginia with the following business plan:
“Sell a really good, juicy burger on a fresh bun. Make perfect French fries. Don’t cut corners.”
When they say they don’t cut corners, they mean it. Fun fact: there are no freezers at any Five Guys locations, just coolers. Because freezers aren’t necessary when you only serve fresh food.
By concentrating on quality, they scaled the business model built on high ingredient costs, a limited menu, and absolutely zero paid advertising. They also refuse to deliver. Five guys doesn’t deviate from what they’re good at. Cooking badass cheeseburgers.
Five Guys Opened Franchise Locations in 2003
Early in 2003, the “Five Guys,” began offering franchise opportunities. In just under 18 months, Five Guys Enterprises sold options for more than 300 units. The overwhelming success of franchising a local restaurant made national news and word spread to new markets.
In an episode of Company Man (with 1.2M views), they break down the full history and the unique way the Murrell family grew the Five Guys unbelievable growth story.
WATCH:
Getting hungry yet?
Three Key Lessons Driving the Success of Five Guys:
#1 Simplicity of menu – F#$% chicken sandwiches!
“When we first started, people asked for coffee. We thought, Why not? This was our first lesson in humility. We served coffee, but the problem was that the young kids working for us don’t know anything about coffee. It was terrible! We tried a chicken sandwich once, but that did not work, either. We do have hot dogs on our menu, and that works. But other than that, all you are going to get from Five Guys is hamburgers and fries.” – Jerry Murrell
#2 Obsession with old school quality control
“The magic to our hamburgers is quality control. We toast our buns on a grill – a bun toaster is faster, cheaper, and toasts more evenly, but it doesn’t give you that caramelized taste. Our beef is 80 percent lean, never frozen, and our plants are so clean, you could eat off the floor. The burgers are made to order. That’s why we can’t do drive-thru’s – it takes too long. We had a sign: “If you’re in a hurry, there are a lot of really good hamburger places within a short distance from here.” People thought I was nuts. But the customers appreciated it.” – Jerry Murrell
#3 No paid advertising. Word of mouth is still a thing?
You read that correctly. Five Guys doesn’t do advertising. Jerry believes that the customer is the biggest salesperson:
“Treat that person right, he’ll walk out the door and sell for you. From the beginning, I wanted people to know that we put all our money into the food. That’s why the décor is so simple – red and white tiles. We don’t spend our money on décor. Or on guys in chicken suits. But we’ll go overboard on food.” – Jerry Murrell
Pepsi is a brand that everyone knows, because as their website states, their products are sold in 200 countries. Which is pretty freaking crazy considering Google says there are only 195 countries on earth…So it’s safe to assume they have officially saturated their target market.
But as big as they are, they’re even bigger than you might think.
Pepsi is no longer a beverage brand. They are now Pepsi Co, a conglomerate that consists of 23 brands that generate of $70B in annual revenue. Pepsi is one of the biggest companies on the planet.
A Brief History of Pepsi:
Pepsi was originally promoted as “Brad’s Drink” in New Bern, North Carolina in 1893 by Caleb Bradham, who crafted it at his drugstore. It was later renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898, “Pepsi” because it was advertised to relieve dyspepsia (indigestion) and “Cola” referring to the cola flavor.
You read that right, Pepsi was originally marketed as a cure to an upset stomach.
As product sales increased, the company pivoted overtime to appeal to a larger audience and diversify its products.
Fast forward to 1950 Alfred N. Steele, a former VP of Coca-Cola Company, became the CEO. He focused on creating giant advertising campaigns to increase sales. His efforts increased Pepsi’s earnings 11-fold during the 50s and made it the instant competitor of Coca Cola.
In 1965 Pepsi-Cola merged with Frito-Lay, Inc. They then diversified further with the purchase of three restaurant chains:
Looking to add even more diversification PepsiCo acquired both the Tropicana and Dole juice brands from the Seagram Company in 1998, and in 2001 it then merged with Quaker Oats company.
Here is the massive list of brands Pepsi Co owns today.
Pizza Hut was a national pizza chain before there were national pizza chains. They were at one time, the largest pizza franchise in the world.
After 40 years of being America’s dominant pizza brand, Pizza Hut officially lost the lead to Dominos in 2018. In 2019 Pizza Hut announced it was shutting down 500 of their 7,500 locations.
In July 2020 their largest US franchisee, MPC International, filed for bankruptcy. This franchise alone was responsible for 20% of Pizza Hut’s operations.
The entire history of the rise and fall of Pizza Hut is documented in this video of Company Man:
WATCH:
Sad, but true. According to Restaurant Business, Pizza Hut’s overall year-over-year sales fell 2.2% in 2020. Meanwhile, its biggest competitors, Domino’s and Papa John’s, had net gains of 17.6% and 15.9%, respectively.
Pizza Hut’s declining sales were due in large part to the pandemic, which closed hundreds of locations across the country. The chain’s largest franchisee also declared bankruptcy, which caused the company to lock the doors, shutter 300 locations, and offer up another 927 locations for sale.
Pizza Hut was once known as a fast-casual dine-in pizza place with white and red checkerboard tablecloths. Fast-forward to 2021, and consumers don’t want dine-in pizza, they want to take it home…
It goes without saying, Netflix has been dominated streaming videos like BlockBuster dominated movie rentals. However new players are catching up and giving the iconic brand a real run for their money.
In a shocking reveal, instead of achieving the target of adding 2 million new subscribers in Q1 2022 that it set for itself three months earlier, they ended up losing 200,000 subscribers…Ouch
This is the first time the company has net loss of subscribers.
This could just be the tip of the ice burg as Netflix is expecting to lose an additional 2 million more subscribers in the ongoing quarter. The market response was brutal. Netflix lost ¼ of its value as the stock price tanked 25% in 1 day.
Competition is cut throat with the emergence of Disney, Hulu, HBO, Paramount, Peacock, Apple and Amazon. This has presented a serious challenge now as people are ditching Netflix for those streaming services that are available at much more competitive prices (Netflix premium is up to $19.99/month which is almost double the competition).
Pricing be damned, the other problem plaguing Netflix is their competitors are reducing the pool size of originalHollywood content they got to pick from over the last decade.
TV and film companies have more options of providers to negotiate with.
Hate networking but know you need to be doing more of it?
Here’s the only video you need to watch today. It’s one of the most watched videos on TedEx with over 2 million views on how to hack networking.
In his talk David Burkus, author of the book “Friend of a Friend“, examines the science of how networking actually works and reveals what the best networkers really do…
WATCH:
Who is David Burkus?
David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought after speaker, and business school professor. In 2015, he was named one of the emerging thought leaders most likely to shape the future of business by Thinkers50, the world’s premier ranking of management thinkers.
His book, Friend of a Friend, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not just canned networking advice.
David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in Fast Company, the Financial Times, Inc magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and CBS This Morning.
It goes without saying, Netflix has been dominated streaming videos like BlockBuster dominated movie rentals. However new players are catching up and giving the iconic brand a real run for their money.
In a shocking reveal, instead of achieving the target of adding 2 million new subscribers in Q1 2022 that it set for itself three months earlier, they ended up losing 200,000 subscribers…Ouch
This is the first time the company has net loss of subscribers.
This could just be the tip of the ice burg as Netflix is expecting to lose an additional 2 million more subscribers in the ongoing quarter. The market response was brutal. Netflix lost ¼ of its value as the stock price tanked 25% in 1 day.
Competition is cut throat with the emergence of Disney, Hulu, HBO, Paramount, Peacock, Apple and Amazon. This has presented a serious challenge now as people are ditching Netflix for those streaming services that are available at much more competitive prices (Netflix premium is up to $19.99/month which is almost double the competition).
Pricing be damned, the other problem plaguing Netflix is their competitors are reducing the pool size of originalHollywood content they got to pick from over the last decade.
TV and film companies have more options of providers to negotiate with.
By Brian Searcy
Active Shooter – Are You Prepared?
May 28, 2022
I am sure that most if not all of you are aware of what happened in Uvalde TX on Tuesday. 19 Young Students and 2 Teachers Killed in a horrific School Shooting at Robb Elementary School. Our prayers go out to the entire Uvalde Community.
We are starting to get a report that the door that the shooter entered through was unlocked. That is consistent with what I saw from the video of him entering the school. With most of our clients, prior to participating in our Situational Awareness Programs, it was not an unusual occurrence for doors to be unlocked, to be propped open, for people to be able to “hitch hike” into the building.
And this didn’t just apply to businesses, schools and churches. It applies to you in your home as well. The number of examples we have of people being victims because they do not lock their home, turn outside lights on, leave their cars unlocked are way too many to count.
What we do know. After going through our program, Situational Awareness Habits, Behaviors, and Mindset were learned and developed through the continuous practice of their process. They now keep the doors closed and locked and have a continuous awareness of what is going on around them.
An active shooting event like this, unfortunately today, can happen anywhere, not just at schools.
Details are still coming in. Could this event have been prevented if there had been different training, if the people in the school and community had learned and developed Situational Awareness? As mentioned above about the unlocked door, perhaps it could have been prevented, or a locked door could have added some additional “time and space” to all the emergency responders to arrive.
But we may never know. What we do know is that you, your family, your schools & churches, your businesses & your communities are more safe when this skill is part of your safety, security, mental health and leadership learning programs.
You are able to identify the changes in behavior, the indicators of potential problems, AND be empowered to do something about it.
Many people today do notice behaviors, even indicators, but then they do not ACT on it.
Remember, the World is Not a Safe Place today.
HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY!
Have you thought about what you would do in this type of situation? Do you know what you are capable of doing? Are you looking for the indicators so that you can potentially stop these types of events from happening?
If you have not developed your Situational Awareness Habits, Behaviors and Mindset and to not practice a process, give the Paratus Group a call.
E.A. Coe’s bestselling book ‘The Other Side of Good’ is one of those books that grabs you, and keeps you enthralled from beginning to end, making it a must-read. Coe is a brilliant writer, who creates compelling plotlines, and intriguing characters who venture into the gray of life while taking readers on an adventure that no doubt will leave them wanting more.
In ‘The Other Side of Good’ Theo Jackson proposes a donation to the city for a new youth center, the mayor sends Theo’s childhood friend, police officer Denton Jones, to negotiate the terms. Denton’s efforts inexplicably make him a target for a corrupt city official, but a dishonest bureaucrat is the least of the city’s problems. Theo uncovers evidence of an international criminal organization facilitating human trafficking in the city. Repulsed by the crime, Theo enlists an unlikely coalition of clergy, law enforcement, and criminals to try to stop it.
If you want to find out what happens, and you know you do, pick up a copy of this rather brilliant read. Recently Coe took some time out of his very busy schedule to talk about his work, and what’s coming next.
Congratulations, your book ‘The Other Side of Good’ recently became a bestseller. What was that success like for you on both a professional and personal level?
The achievement was gratifying but also inspirational. To reach a bestselling level on Amazon validates the possibility and provides an incentive to work hard to make the experience happen more frequently.
There are many aspects to the writing process and for some people having fun is also part of the mix. What is the most fun or joyful part of writing for you?
I enjoy writing fiction for the exhilarating control it gives me over my characters and the situations they encounter between the front and back cover of a book. Real-life can be unfair, but fiction doesn’t have to be. I have the power to freely reward the good guys and punish the bad ones. If this sometimes doesn’t present life as it is, it at least provides a glimpse to how it could be.
You have had a very diverse work-life. You are a former United States Naval aviator and career businessman, both of which were very successful. Did either or both of those careers help you when you started writing?
Positive communications skills, whether they be in speaking or writing, are an important tool in just about any professional. I “started writing” well before beginning any careers and honed the tool through practice during them. Transitioning from executive correspondence to fiction was a shorter leap than if I had begun writing from scratch in retirement.
Theo Jackson and Denton Jones are both very intriguing in their own ways. What or who was the inspiration for these characters which take readers deep into the adventure you have created?They, like nearly all the characters in my stories, are amalgamations of diverse people I have met in life. Part of the enjoyment of writing fiction is dissecting the different personalities and characteristics of those you have known to create new characters you invent. Denton Jones came to The Other Side of Good from out of my first novel, Full Count. In that book, he had a supporting role as a colorful character on a college baseball team, and readers loved him. The history I created for Denton in Full Count, as a youth who grew up in the tenements of Cincinnati, established the necessary time and location for The Other Side of Good. It would be natural for someone associated with such an inner-city environment, like Denton, to have childhood friends who made more nefarious career choices, like Theo. I am sure your fans are dying to know. Can you tell us about the new book you are working on, and when readers can expect it to be released?While I was waiting for TOSOG to go through the publishing process, I started writing a novel tentatively titled, “Pedaling West.” It’s a COVID-19 era story about a young woman who loses her job and her fiancé all in the same week during the opening months of the pandemic. To “reset” her life, she decides to embark on a cross-country biking journey from Virginia Beach to Mendocino.She is unaware she has information relating to her former boss’s plan to embezzle awarded COVID relief funds that could incriminate him … which makes her a target. The story cycles between a drama involving the bad guys chasing her and a travelogue of an idyllic trip across America.
My wife and I took the same trip as the fictional biker in November … only in a nice car and staying in good hotels. We traveled on no interstates using only rural roads … and we had a blast. The trip changed the story, too. I hope to complete the story this summer.
To find out more about E. A. Coe and ‘The Other Side of Good’ head on over to Amazon.
