Unlock Entrepreneurial GROWTH | 5 Lessons from Harley-Davidson’s RISE

Hello and welcome to Modeling the Masters, a new series dedicated to helping entrepreneurs find a shortcut to business success by modeling the strategies and ideas of other famous successful entrepreneurs, you can learn valuable strategies to implement into your business today to achieve success for your company. Modeling the masters and their strategies quite simply is the fastest way to go from credit card debt to business success. My name is Evan Carmichael, and today we're going to be talking about the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. And what may be an American icon today, when it was first started, was founded by two young entrepreneurs with an idea of a big dream and the willingness to make it happen. We're going to learn a little bit about their story, how they got started, what factors led to their success, and what take-home lessons you can implement into your business today to achieve success on your own. The first lesson from Harley-Davidson is: Build a great team. It's extremely difficult to build a great company as a one-person operation, which a lot of entrepreneurs unfortunately are. When Harley-Davidson started, it was started by two young entrepreneurs, William Harley and Arthur Davidson, when they were 20 and 21 years old. They started the business. Unfortunately, they didn't know a lot about actually building motorcycles. They took bicycles, tried to put an engine on top of it, and it wasn't working out for them. They needed somebody with a little bit more experience. So they brought in Walter Davidson, who was an older brother from Kansas. They promised him a chance to ride on the motorcycle, and he only later found out that he had to actually build the cycle for them. But he stayed on. Later on, as the company grew, they also brought in William Davidson to be the first official the president of the organization. So it's important to really surround yourself with the people who can help your business get to that next step. Realize what you're really good at and find people who are really good at the other areas that you don't want to touch, or that you can't be bothered with, or you're not really going to be passionate about. If you focus on your core strengths like the Harley-Davidson team did, everybody focuses in on what they're really good at, then you have a much greater chance of achieving success. Lesson number 2 is build slowly. When the company was first started and they made their first motorcycles in 1903, they only made 3. The next year they made another 3, the next year they made only 7 more, and finally the next year they expanded and were able to make 50. When they started, there were no employees, it was just the founders. They were working on sweat equity alone. They didn't spend the money to go out and get more employees and dig themselves into debt. And when they started, their first The center of operation was a little shed that they had built in their backyard, and their sister, Hannah, wrote Harley-Davidson Motor Company on the outside of the door. It wasn't until their fourth year that they were able to expand to a full-out factory and build those 50 motorcycles. Too many entrepreneurs, when they get started, take on too much debt. They borrow money from all sorts of different sources, and then they blow their brains out trying to accomplish rapid growth. Don't overextend yourself, build slowly, make sure that you have a product that people are willing to pay money for, and then be able to build your company and grow through the profits being reinvested into your company. Lesson number 3 is sell to big companies. One of the major reasons for the success of Harley-Davidson was their ability to secure the big contract. Some of the big deals that they landed were with the United States Postal Service, the police departments, and the Allies during World War I and World War II. It's a lot easier to find a big company and sell them 1,000 copies or units of whatever you're selling than try to go out and sell 1,000 different people 1 copy or 1 unit of whatever you're selling. Go out and try to find those big customers. When the recession hit, the Great Depression in the United States and around the world, before that hit, there were 300 different manufacturers of motorcycles in the United States. After it hit, there were 2. And the main reason why they were able to get through it so well was their ability to keep with those big contracts. Find the big contracts, find 1 or 2 major customers, keep them happy, and they'll keep coming back for more. Lesson number 4 is leverage big brands. One of the best marketing decisions that Harley-Davidson ever made was to sponsor a team of racers called the Wrecking Crew. These were guys who went out and raced motorcycles, they won all the races, and they were known for their dangerous stunts and their style. By being able to associate with this group, they passed on a lot of brand value to Harley-Davidson. Suddenly everybody knew who Harley-Davidson was. It's not, not unlike what Nike does now by sponsoring some of the top athletes. So for your own business, think about who you can partner up with who is already a known entity. People know about them, they have a respected brand, and by latching onto them and partnering with them, you gain instant credibility. It's hard to go from nothing, from people don't know who you are, to becoming that rising star. And an easy way to do it is by leveraging the brand that others have already built. Harley-Davidson continued to do this as they grew their company when they partnered with the police departments and with the Allies during World War I and World War II. Because people look up to the police and to the Allies, when they saw that the police and Allies were using Harley-Davidsons then they must be a good product and everybody else wanted to get them as well. So think about who you can leverage, a brand that's in your industry or related to your industry. You tag on to them and they can help take you to that next level of success. Our final lesson, lesson number 5, is innovate. Harley-Davidson was always on the cutting edge of innovation for their motorcycles and they were known for always having high-quality new technologies coming through to make their motorcycles more reliable, and faster. They were the first ones to have the step starter, so you didn't have to ride the bike for a certain amount of time before the engine would kick in. They were the first with the V-twin engine, and they were the first ones to break all sorts of different land speed records with their motorcycles. Especially in tough economic times, it's important to invest in your research and development and have the best product possible. If your product is similar to everybody else's, and the price is the same as everybody else's, it's going to be hard to stand out. Give customers a reason to buy from you by making the product as good as it possibly can be. Invest in making it the best technology out there on the market, so the customers have no choice but to buy from you. Today Harley-Davidson has almost 10,000 employees and almost $6 billion in revenue. It seems like a really big company now, but remember when it first got started, it was two young entrepreneurs with an idea, a big dream, willingness to make it happen, and by following those five lessons that we talked about today, you can also achieve success and build a great company for yourself. I hope you enjoyed the session today. I wanted to thank Phantom Media, who are the sponsors of this event. You can learn more about them by clicking on the links provided. And as well, you can learn more about Harley-Davidson and their stories and the stories of other famous entrepreneurs on our website at evancarmichael.com. I hope you enjoyed the session and look forward to the next Modeling the Masters Series with you.