My company is currently in the midst of growing another brick and mortar family entertainment business. As all businesses begin, we started with one location. You never quite know if a concept is going to work until you try it. Once we proved people would pay for our product, we began ramping up production to open more locations across the country. 

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Since this was not our first rodeo, we were able to apply what we had learned from past failures and successes. Here are a few lessons we’ve learned. 

• ‍We execute quickly. One of our primary guiding principles, as a company, is that we don’t wait to have all the answers before we execute. We don’t have a detailed five year plan. We don’t even have a detailed one year plan. We know the general direction we want to go and we get to work. Most companies don’t make it because they waste too much time bogged down with details that don’t matter, especially in the beginning. 
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• ‍We embrace failure without blame. No, not ultimate failure. We are ultimately trying to succeed. However, the only way to expand a business is to expect and welcome failure along the way. In fact, if we aren’t failing then we aren’t trying hard enough. When we do fail, we learn from our mistakes without worrying about who was at fault. We don’t waste valuable time and energy arguing about who to blame. We win and lose as a team. When we lose, we all work to solve the problem. In the end, it doesn’t matter who’s fault it was, it matters if we can correct and make it better.
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• ‍We move fast. We are able to move fast because we aren’t top heavy. The less involved in decision making the better. We stay as lean as possible until the need for more help is obviously necessary. We save a lot of money by hiring the minimal amount of people needed to get the job done. This means we are also committed to getting our hands dirty and doing a lot of the initial work ourselves. When we are ready to start hiring, in order to achieve a lean labor model, and move at a fast pace, we hire for attitude over skill. You absolutely need a team of doers who have an intensity about them. We bet on people who are eager to work hard but might lack experience, and we teach them along the way. 

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I hope these principles are helpful for your business. I plan to continue exploring our growth mindset in future posts.

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