“The ceiling is the roof”
– Michael Jordan
HOW HIGH IS YOUR ROOF?
When Michael Jordan announced that his alma mater UNC’s football team was going to wear the Jordan brand he announced, “The ceiling is the roof.” The media went crazy assuming he had bumbled his words under pressure. However, when you understand that UNC’s Kenan Stadium is open-air and has no roof, you realize he knew exactly what he was saying.
DO YOU HAVE UNLIMITED POTENTIAL OR A LOW, CONCRETE CEILING?
Taking the roof off of your business is the key to determining what kind of future potential you can realize. Personally, I can only get involved with businesses and industries with unlimited scale. Like an open-air stadium, people were not designed to get or feel stuck in a box. Eventually you’ll get claustrophobia and wonder if you’ve done enough in the one life you’ve been given.
WHAT’S YOUR “CAPACITY?”
Having been involved in ownership or management of multiple industries I’ve discovered you always end up confronting “capacity.” If capacity is limited, it works to pace a low ceiling on the amount of people you can see, systems or employees you can manage, and as a result; how much service, business, product, or revenue you can produce in a given day, week, or month.
Once you hit your capacity ceiling; roadblocks inherent in the structure, function, people, and flow of your business halt any more growth. These roadblocks are also called “capacity blocks.” This is seen when a business invests time and dollars into marketing, funnels in new customers in a particular month, much greater than the norm, but despite the influx of more people – overall production ends up the same. In fact, because of the additional stress on the system, sometimes the numbers even end up lower as parts and people break down.
In the movie The Founder, we learn that the McDonald brothers believed that you could only maintain quality at lower volume and despite how much everyone loved their junk food, there was only so much you could squeeze out of the business. Ray Kroc saw that the ceiling was the roof and created the open-air stadium out of this business that is not even good for people.
RAISE THE ROOF
Nearly every business that believes it has a low ceiling has someone who has or will innovate to create a superior model with unlimited scalability. The core of this innovation is to address structure, flow, and technology (Leadership).
STRUCTURE:
Structure is the combination of process and execution. If the people aren’t of the right caliber or poorly trained and processes aren’t effective and scalable, the bones of the operation are faulty and unstable.
Every business and all the units within should have a strategic playbook that outlines the steps and scripts. The best companies and teams in the world with the highest employee satisfaction have an on-boarding, training, and support system, a very specific manual with clear roles and goals. It allows for people and divisions to train like they are preparing for the Super Bowl
Don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong. – Nick Saban, National Championship Winning Football coach.
FLOW
Flow is the invisible capacity blocker. Imagine you are running a busy kitchen like you see on one of those behind-the-scenes restaurant cooking shows. Your kitchen has all the latest technology, appliances, cutlery, pots and pans, and cooking experts necessary to deliver the finest quality cuisine. There is only one challenge: the refrigerators are in the basement, the pots and pans are in the bathroom, the non-perishable foods are outside in storage, the cutlery is upstairs in the guest bedroom…you get the picture? You can have the best materials, equipment, and team members, but if they are not in an orderly flow, you won’t function no matter how good your playbook is.
I built one of the largest clinics of any kind in the world. As we made the climb from Zero to a Million and then millions, flow was the consistent challenge. At one point, we were busting at the seams seeing 600 people each week, but once we learned how to maximize flow, we were seeing over 2,000 people each week—and often seemed slow. We then reproduced this system in 5 clinics locally and eventually over 100 nationally (The ceiling became the roof).
TECHNOLOGY
I’m a shareholder and advisor for an explosive tech company. We look at technology as a way to solve every problem – with most problems relating to business inefficiencies that lower the ceiling. We make concrete ceilings and turn them into glass ceilings, or remove the roof altogether. Communication, education, marketing, case management, business innovation, low-cost products added to the offering, etc., etc. can be met by tech.
While some services like chiropractic, dentistry, or massage require brick and mortar; every company needs to add tech solutions to their product and services offerings. Tech has unlimited scalability – it’s open air.
BETTER LEADERSHIP SKILLS
A Harvard study showed that health care facilities that see the most people provided the highest quality of care and service and the lowest number of critical mistakes. It sounds counter-intuitive unless you understand flow. By removing capacity blocks and allowing specialized personnel to focus on the work they’ve been trained to do, you do more volume more effectively. While this sounds impossible to lower volume producers, it comes through proper training, delegation, and sound strategic planning – with mastery of structure and flow.
Our vision has always been that people would drive by dozens of similar, smaller businesses or scroll down the page on Google past others who offer the same service who are cheaper and more convenient than us. Why would they? Because we’re more competent, we execute better, and we love them and care more about our community.
So, they make the trip to get us – driving past all of the closed roof, indoor stadiums.
Have fun saving the world
Dr. Ben
