T. Harv Eker recounts opening a second retail store six months after his first. The second store cost $50,000 to set up and initially operated under his first store’s manager; within a week sales fell by ~70% until Eker personally returned and sales recovered. He realized a core lesson: a business must be able to operate profitably at about 70% of peak sales so it can be duplicated and run by others. He also describes scaling implications (e.g., 10 stores requiring ~50 staff).
Questions this video answers
Six months to the day.
$50,000.
About 70% (sales were down ~70%).
About 50 people (approximately five per store).
Chapters
Six months to the day, I opened a second store again. I remember started the first store with no money. I started the second store with really none of my own money, but a full on store. It was cost $50,000. Okay. And I had the manager of my first store go and manage that second store. Great. Within the first week, we realized that sales were down like 70%. Is it the store? Is it the location? What's happening? So I went into that store and switched stores and sales went back up to 100%. Came out of the store. Put him in. And an assistant and our top salesperson in sales down. And they were only 70% of the door of the standard. The hell's going on? I go back in the store, back to 100%. Boom. You know what I realized? I learned one of the biggest business lessons of my life. Harv, you better make this freaking business work at 70% of the sales that you can do. 70% of everything you can do. Because if it don't work, then it ain't gonna work long term. It ain't gonna be able to duplicate. I'm sorry, the only way to duplicate is to have, in this case, this business was to have other people in the stores. I attend stores. So I literally had delegated the sales and the whole, the whole movement and the whole business in each of those stores to, you know, four or five people per store. Ten stores, that's 50 people. 50 people. Knowing now, knowing that the business needed to work at this new level, this new standard, and at 70% of sales, I still had to be able to make a lot of money.
