1. Full Potential Show Episode 13:
Starting Small and Finishing Big
Hello everybody and welcome to the Full Potential Show. I’m James Rick and this is your
number one, non-boring source for personal development. Today, I‘ve got a special book that I
would like to review with you very quickly. There are 15 lessons in the book, “Start Small, Finish
Big” by Fred DeLuca. Now, this book, it’s obviously a little beat up. My
mom just got it from one of those book, you know, when everybody’s
done reading it, they turn it in and then you pick it up for a buck. So, this
was a really good investment. Anyhow, “Start Small, Finish Big” Fred
Deluca. He’s got 15 lessons for starting small and finishing big. And who
is this man, may you ask, Fred Deluca? Well, this is the founder of
Subway. He’s basically , he’s either a billionaire or hundreds and
hundreds of millionaire and the Subway franchise is one of the fastest
growing franchises around the world. 15 lessons from a billionaire - are
you ready? Let’s begin.
So, number one - Start Small. If you want to finish big, starting small is the best way to begin.
Now, personally, I started my first company when I was just out of high school and I had less
than a thousand dollars. Starting small is a really good way to start, because you learn the
principles of business. You clear out the naiveté. If you have a lot of money when you start,
you’re going to waste it. You’re going to use it all. I’ve been there too. I’ve had some
investment capital and whoop! I used it all up. I was still in the learning phase. So, if you don’t
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

2. have a lot of capital, and you want to get started on something and you’re afraid of starting
small, don’t. Starting small is the best way to begin and if you want to finish big, you’re in a
great spot. Many, many stories in this book about people starting small and finishing big,
including Fred himself.
Lesson 2 - Earn a few pennies. Now, this is part of starting small, right? You might want to
immediately jump in and make millions of dollars. No! Earning a few pennies, or pesos, or
whatever it is that you’re earning will allow you to start to learn the roles of finance, to see that
money can come in from ideas. It’s going to set the foundation for earning dollars, if you’re just
starting out earning pennies. So, do not worry if you’re starting out small.
Lesson number 3 – Begin with an idea. All great things begin with an idea - just a little
improvement. What can you make something a little better, a little faster, a little cheaper, or a
little more quality. What can you do to improve something just 5 or 10 percent. Start
with that idea, because you may have a business, or you may have something that you
can contribute to a company that will pay you back in big dividends.
Now, lesson number 4 - Think like a visionary. Thinking like a visionary means “think big”. Set
goals. Know where you want to go. In the book, “Start Small, Finish Big”, Fred talks about how,
when they started the first Subway, they immediately knew that they wanted to open 32 chains
in 10 years. They were thinking big. They were thinking like a visionary. The chains didn’t exist,
but they knew that they wanted to have 32 chains in 10 years, that’s thinking like a visionary.
Lesson number 5 – Keep the faith. They talk about how, in the first six months, they ran into
financial challenges. They could have easily closed the first store. But, instead of closing the first
store, what did they do? They opened another store to start comparing the results from one to
another. And, actually, that was one of the best decisions they ever made. Instead of quitting,
they kept the faith and they kept on going. So, as long as you can survive in business, keep the
faith and keep on keeping on.
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

3. Lesson number 6 – Ready, fire aim. Sometimes you think, business plans, business school. I
need to do all this research. I need to be an expert in my field. I need to go through all this
analysis. That’s the way to do the things that I want to do. Not necessarily. Ready, Fire, Aim is
obviously a play on words – Ready, Aim, Fire. That means, when you’re
ready, just fire and then later, refine it. Aim a little more carefully as you’re
doing it, as opposed to waiting until you’ve got it really perfect and then
trying to fire, because it may never happen or you could be 80 or 90 years
old before you can eventually get ready to fire. So, ready, fire aim. Action, it’s
all about action. That’s lesson number 6.
Lesson number 7- Profit or perish. That’s the fundamental of business, right? If you’re not
profiting, you’re going to perish. So, it’s about survival, and profit means survival. So you’ve got
to keep your costs low. Operate lean and mean until you’ve got the profitability. They talk
about, in this book, how in the beginning, yeah, it was a little messy. They spent a little more
than they thought. In fact, they were measuring themselves based on the number of sodas
sold, the number of sandwiches sold and whatever. They weren’t necessarily measuring
themselves on profitability. So, it’s profit or perish. It doesn’t matter what your revenues are, it
matters what your profitability is.
Lesson number 8 – Be positive. No matter what you’re going through, other people have either
gone through it, or they’ve gone through worse than you have. There’s people who’ve made it
through tremendous difficulty, and the only way they have is they were able to
re-frame a situation. They were able to look at it more positively. It doesn’t
mean be this Pollyanna, thinking positive and not looking at reality as it really is.
“There’s an elephant on my foot – get the freaking elephant off my foot!” I
don’t need to think positive about it. What it does mean though is that you look
at options. You don’t just say, “Oh, all is lost.” You look at options, you’re positive. And when
you’re positive, you’re going to come up with solutions.
Lesson number 9 – Continuously improve your business. This goes back to your idea of what
could you improve? What could you make better? Now that you’ve taken action, now that
you’ve fired, it’s time to start aiming a bit and refining it a bit more. He talks about how, in his
business, they started out they weren’t consistent on the way that they made their sandwiches.
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

4. They weren’t consistent in the way they baked their breads. They weren’t consistent in where
their franchises got their bread. So, there were a lot of things that they needed to look at and
they needed to improve.
There is another thing that he talks about, he doesn’t say it specifically, but he was following
the 80/20 principle, which is, you could probably come up with a 1000 improvements for your
business, but it may be 2 or 3 that represent the greatest change for your business that’s
necessary. When you follow the 80/20 principle – you look at the 20 percent of changes that
are going to make 80 percent of the difference in your business, in your profitability, in your
quality to your clients. Try to look at things with an 80/20 filter and say, “What are the 20
percent that is going to make 80 percent of the results in my life and in my business?”
Lesson number 10 – Believe in your people. One of the traps that
entrepreneurs fall into is that they don’t trust their people, or even
managers. They don’t trust their people to do their job. They feel like
they have to do it themselves. They burn themselves out working so
many hours, because they’re not believing in their people and they’re
not delegating it effectively. Fred talks about how, in Subway at first,
they didn’t trust some of their franchisees. They didn’t trust some of
their employees. They were really deep in the business, but eventually they learned that, by
surrounding himself with smart people, with reliable people, with people with track records or
with people who had acquired a track record, he was able to step back. He was able to give
them their space. And I tell you what, giving them that autonomy also makes them feel more
responsible. They’re going to take more of an effort – if they’re good people, and you’ve got to
observe and obviously they’ve got to build a track record. But, once they do, step back. Let
them do it their own way. They’re not going to do it exactly the way you would, but they’re
going to do it the way they would and it might even be better than the way you would do it.
Lesson number 11 – Never run out of money. It doesn’t matter what your cash flow is. Even
your profitability on paper could look great. But if you don’t have the cash flow to support the
expenses that are coming up, you could fail. You can actually go under.
In many stories of successful business owners, he uses the points and
then he supports them with the stories that go behind the points. In
one of the stories, he talks about a man that was making millions and
millions of dollars a year who didn’t look at his cash flow. The way his
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

5. business operated was they didn’t get paid until 30 or even 60 days after an invoice. And so,
they ran out of money and there was no getting loans from banks. So, you can’t run out of
money. Let’s say you have some cash on hand and you can get a loan. Get the loan first to pay
expenses and everything, because if you use your cash first, you’re not going to be able to get
the loan. If that makes sense. They’ll loan you money when you’ve got cash on hand. Again,
careful with this. You don’t want to just borrow money if you don’t have some kind of value or
some kind of profitability coming in. On the loan side, they’ll loan you money, if you’ve got the
cash on hand, Because you’re in a healthier position. If you get in an unhealthy position,
because you’ve spent all your cash, you can forget the loan. So the key is, if it’s about survival,
never run out of money. Do what you need to so you don’t run out of money.
Lesson number 12 - Attract new customers every day. Now, he’s got a
great formula for this called Awareness – Trial - Usage. In three steps, this
is how Subway will attract new customers every day.
o 1. They’ve got to be aware that you exist. That’s probably
the most important point – being aware. Letting them be
aware that you exist is going to allow you to be visible and bring in customers.
Obviously if they’re not aware you exist, they can’t do business with you, they
can’t give you money. So awareness is number one.
o 2. Trial is about letting them try out your services, trying out Fred’s sandwiches
was really key. They‘d never been to the store before, let them try out our
offers. Offer extreme discounts to get them in the door so they can trial us and
once they do…
o 3. They’ll start using us and they’ll keep coming back as repeat business.
So remember that formula for attracting new customers. Awareness – Trial - Usage.
Lesson number 13 – Be persistent. Never give up. This goes along with having that positive
frame of mind, because you are going to have challenges. Really, business is about survival. If
you quit, you’re out of the game. It could be hard. You could be having a hell of a time dealing
with your business, but if you quit, you’re out. If you persist and you survive and you hang on by
dear life, even if by a thread, you’re still going to be in the game. So, be persistent. Don’t ever
give up.
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

6. Lesson number 14 – Build a brand name. Brands are really like reputation. They’re credibility in
the market place. Fred talks about a brand will actually have more value than it can sell. It
basically can charge more, even if it’s the same quality as an unbranded product, you can
actually charge more. You look at Starbucks - that’s a brand. They’re able to charge 3 dollars for
a cup of coffee, or $4 or $5 now vs. say a coffee shop down the road that can only charge 50
cents or a dollar, even if it has better quality, because it’s not a brand. He talks about how,
through franchising, somebody can go to a Subway in Egypt and then they could come to a
Subway in America. They want to go to the Subway even if they’ve never been to one in
America, because they’ve built a brand of consistency in Egypt. “Boy, I like Subway in Egypt, so I
must like it here in America. Or, I like Subway in Florida, I’m probably going to like this Subway
in California.” I know that’s how it was. I had travelled to India and all the food was terrible. I
saw a Subway in India and I said, “I am going to Subway in India and it’s going to be better than
some of the places that I’ve eaten here.” So, that brand carried over even though I was 6000
miles away.
Lesson 15 – Opportunity waits for no one. If you’ve got some ideas kicking around. If you’ve
been saying, “Someday I’m going to do this, or I’m going to do that”, maybe today is the day.
Make today the day, because opportunity waits for no one. He talks about how, and this is an
interesting story, in getting started, he was just getting out of high school and he wanted to go
on to college and he needed some tuition. So, he met with his father’s friend, Pete, who was
also a very smart man. Some scientist of some kind, who wasn’t really in a business, but he’d
just read an article about a successful sandwich shop that had opened 32 stores in the last 10
years. And he said, “Boy, we could do that. Let’s do a sandwich shop. We should be able to
make money with it.” You know, they had no clue what they were doing. Never worked with
sandwiches, but they wanted to do it. And Fred said, “Yes, it sounds
interesting. If you’re willing to capitalize the business, then I’ll be
willing to run it. Let’s make it happen.” That one seed of an idea has
created thousands, tens of thousands of chains around the world
doing billions of dollars in business. That one idea, if he had turned it down, if he had said, “No,
I need to wait. I need to finish college”, or whatever, it wouldn’t have happened. So, that seed
of an idea may be resting with you right now. Somewhere in your life, some seed of an idea is
just waiting for you to nurture it and grow it into something big. And you’ve got to start small.
You’ve got to start with that seed in order to turn it into something big.
This is the Full Potential Show. I’m James Rick. This is your number one, non-boring source for
personal development. This was about “Starting Small, Finishing Big”, a great little book by Fred
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com

7. Deluca. If you can, pick it up at one of those used bookstores for a buck or two - one of the best
investments that you can make. I know that’s how I got it, and I was very happy to have read it.
Even though it’s a little older and a little out-dated, I think Subway has become even more
successful. So it’s still going to be very relevant to whatever it is that you want to do in your life.
Learn the life lessons of a billionaire. Again, I’m James Rick. This is the Full Potential Show. I’ll
see you on the next episode. Before you go, make sure to subscribe to these videos, so that you
can keep getting positive programming on a regular basis for your mind. See you in the next
episode.
About Full Potential:
The Full Potential philosophy is meant to help people operate at the best perspective in any given
situation. It is about options. It is about empowerment. Empowerment feels good. So does investing life
resources in what we truly value. If everyone was living at this level – life would be bliss. To find out
more, visit: www.fullpotential.com.
About James Rick:
James Rick, also known as “Mr. Full Potential,” is host of the Full Potential Show, Founder of Full
Potential Academy, and author of “Unleash Your Full Potential”. James Rick started his first business at
the age of 17, currently employs more than 150 staff around the world, and his businesses have
generated more than $5 million in revenues over the last 36 months.
Full Potential Show Episode 13 Transcript
Starting Small and Finishing Big
www.fullpotential.com