Less Is More: What Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out and Jeff Watson Can Teach You About Business

What do self-directed IRAs, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, Burger King and a law practice have in common?

More than you might think.

During my latest E-Heroes conversation with attorney and real estate investor Jeff Watson, we somehow went from politics and FinCEN to fast food, customer service, employee training, business processes and eventually back to investing.

That’s how conversations with Jeff work.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, we landed on a business principle that entrepreneurs love to ignore:

Less is more.

Why Can One Company Do It While Another Can’t?

Jeff and I have an ongoing Chick-fil-A joke. We occasionally send each other pictures when we’re eating there.

During our conversation, Jeff brought up In-N-Out Burger.

He described it as essentially the burger version of Chick-fil-A: privately held, focused on employees, committed to cleanliness and customer experience, and operating with a relatively simple menu built around doing a few things well.

That led me to tell him about a recent visit my wife and I made to Burger King.

The parking lot was practically empty.

There was one car ahead of us.

We wanted two burgers.

That’s it.

And somehow the experience took about 20 minutes.

Then the order was wrong.

Think about that.

Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A can have two drive-through lanes packed 15 or 20 cars deep and somehow keep the entire thing moving.

Same basic industry.

Completely different experience.

Why?

Systems Matter

Great customer service isn’t simply about hiring nice people.

You need systems that allow those people to succeed.

Jeff pointed out how companies such as Chick-fil-A have designed their operations around how customers actually buy.

If drive-through volume is increasing, they build for drive-through volume.

They put employees outside with tablets.

They organize traffic.

They simplify ordering.

They create capacity.

They don’t wait until there’s a half-mile backup and then act surprised that customers are irritated.

That’s not accidental.

Customer experience is engineered.

Too many businesses make customers adapt to their broken processes.

Great companies build processes around the customer.

Your Staffing Problem Might Be a Management Problem

We also talked about the constant excuse businesses use today:

“We’re short staffed.”

Jeff reduced the problem to three things.

Businesses often don’t pay well enough.

They don’t train well enough.

And they don’t promote the right people.

That doesn’t mean every staffing problem can be solved overnight.

But putting a “short staffed” sign on the door doesn’t magically absolve a company from delivering the experience customers are paying for.

Customers don’t work there.

They didn’t create the scheduling problem.

They didn’t establish the compensation plan.

They didn’t fail to train employees.

Yet somehow they’re frequently expected to absorb the consequences.

That’s backwards.

Simplicity Makes Service Easier

This is where Jeff said something that applies to almost every entrepreneur.

The simpler your business processes are, the easier they become to execute consistently.

And consistency improves customer experience.

Jeff has applied that philosophy to his own law practice.

He’s become increasingly willing to say no to work outside his core area of expertise.

If it involves self-directed IRAs, he’ll consider it.

If it doesn’t?

He’s probably not interested.

And his practice is better because of it.

That’s difficult for entrepreneurs.

We hate saying no.

Someone asks whether we can do something and we think:

“Sure. There’s money attached.”

So we add another service.

Then another.

Then another.

Pretty soon our website has 47 services, our employees don’t know what the hell we’re selling, our customers don’t understand what we actually specialize in, and we’re exhausted trying to deliver everything.

I Simplified My Own Business

I’ve gone through this process myself.

I brought what I do under three principles:

Learn. Build. Experience.

Learn is about knowledge.

Build is about creating the business, brand, strategy and legacy.

Experience is what happens as a result.

Three words.

That’s much easier to understand than an endless menu of disconnected services.

Jeff immediately understood the philosophy because he has done essentially the same thing with his law practice.

Less is more.

Not because you’re capable of less.

Because focus allows you to deliver more value around the things that matter.

The Same Rule Applies to Investing

Later in our conversation, we returned to the topic most people associate with Jeff: self-directed IRAs.

And interestingly, the same philosophy showed up again.

Jeff is a huge believer in self-directed IRAs.

But he said something you don’t always hear from someone who works extensively in that world:

They’re not for everybody.

He doesn’t believe everyone should have one.

He doesn’t believe anyone should necessarily put everything into one.

Why?

Risk.

For years, rising real estate values made a lot of people look like brilliant investors.

Jeff’s point was that the environment changed.

Higher returns don’t magically appear without corresponding risks.

That means education matters.

You need to understand the rules.

You need to understand the investment.

You need to understand the risks you can mitigate and the ones you can’t.

And if you don’t understand them?

Don’t do the deal.

That’s refreshingly simple advice.

Learn. Build. Experience.

At one point Jeff unintentionally handed my own philosophy back to me.

You have to learn correctly before you can build correctly.

And you have to build correctly before you can expect the right experience.

People want to skip steps.

They want the result without the education.

They want the return without understanding the risk.

They want customers without building the systems.

They want great employees without training them.

They want a great customer experience without designing one.

Business doesn’t work that way.

Neither does investing.

Stop Adding. Start Improving.

Entrepreneurs are constantly told to do more.

Add another service.

Add another product.

Add another funnel.

Add another piece of software.

Add another employee.

Add another revenue stream.

Sometimes the answer isn’t adding anything.

Sometimes you need to ask:

What can I eliminate?

What can I simplify?

What can I become exceptionally good at?

Chick-fil-A doesn’t need a 14-page menu.

In-N-Out doesn’t need 73 different burgers.

Jeff doesn’t need to practice every area of law.

And your business doesn’t need to serve everybody.

The businesses that create remarkable experiences often aren’t doing more.

They’re doing fewer things exceptionally well.

That’s a lesson worth stealing.