In 9 August 2017, YEC held a CEO talk with the CEO of Domino Pizza Indonesia, Patrick McMichael. Graduated from Santa Barbara City College in 1990, Patrick McMichael specializes in franchise consulting, strategic planning and new business development. With over than 25 years of experience under his belt with international Domina Pizza Enterprise, he’s now the CEO of Domino Pizza Indonesia.

97% of Domino Pizzas are franchise owned, and in the US alone, Domino’s has nearly 800 independent franchise owners. In a day, Domino’s delivers more than 1 million pizzas, with more than 260,000 employees worldwide. They had 93 consecutive quarters (24 years) of positive same store sales growth.They’re the fastest growing F&B in recent years and its stock price growth actually surpasses most of Fortune 500 companies in the past year. In Indonesia alone, Domino’s has 129 outlets and is opening at a pace of at least 1-2 stores per month.

In August 2010, Mr. McMichael took on the role of Chief Development and Franchising Officer following his time as Australia & New Zealand Franchise Development Manager for the Company. He is responsible for the continued development of new franchisees in Australia and New Zealand in both new and existing stores and overseeing the Company’s store development projects. Since joining the Company in 1990 he has held a variety of roles across the business including Store Manager, Area Manager, Franchise Consultant, National Property Manager, Multi Unit Franchisee Market Manager, New Concept Development Manager, and International Business Consultant.

In this opportunity, we learned about his view on enterpreneurship and his journey. One of the key experience that gives a good point on what Patrick is like as a person is his recovery from his accident. He was in an accident once and it severely impaired his movement capabilities, he wasn’t able to run, move, as freely as he could before. After he got out of the hospital, he went back to his daily life, and he could’ve just stayed out of harms way, he could’ve just played safe, but no. He was determined. Determined to be even better. One of his goal after that was to run a marathon, which some might say reckless at the time. “You were in an accident!”, “What if something happen to you?”, and more and more “What if”s. But with determination, and the support of his family, he managed to gradually train himself back to shape. And finally, he ran a marathon, accompanied by his son.

From his experience, 2 key takeaways for me is:
1. Be determined to get what you want, and don’t be bogged down by what other people said
2. Have a safety net. In his run, even if he already trained, he’s confident he can make it, he still has his son to accompany him and to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

He’s a classic example of someone who worked from the ground up, someone who started in the field. He started as a delivery driver! After he became a store manager, the first step in building sales is being determined to grow the business. You have to want to grow and you must inspire your team to help you grow. The second part of growing sales is getting out from behind the front counter and becoming a local star in your community. You must get involved and make your store an important part of the community.

The community perspective is invaluable. A business needs to make a good impact to the community, otherwise, there might be repercussions in the future. Listening to the community also helps a business thrive, after all, what good is a product that is developed without community input? It will just become a product that the managers “think” the community wants, but not what the community “asks”.

In his journey, there are 3 key principles to managing a great store that will lead to sales growth:

• Product
• Service
• Image

It’s a good reminder not to be fixated in just one aspect. Focusing too much on our product, but lacking to improve our service and image can be disastrous in the long run. Unhappy customers won’t return to us, and they might be telling their friends/acquaintance not to come to us. For Dominos, he said that “Domino is an IT company that delivers pizzas“. That is the image they want to convey, that is how they provide their service (sophisticated IT), and that’s the product they’re selling (pizzas).

He also ran the business like a close-knit community, a family. Encouraging partnership and people to work together, and not hiring from external for manager level. A good saying that he shared is “None of us is as strong as all of us”. There’s strength in the collective knowledge, the sheer amount of collaboration in the organization, and the community.

One of the slide is full of his nugget of wisdom, which is not rocket science, but a great reminder to all of us:

• Treat people the way you want to be treated
• Build a plan and refer to it. It is a live document
• Never stop learning
• Innovate
• The answer is in the numbers
• Ask for help when needed! You don’t have a mortgage on being right
• Balance in life and work
• Exercise
• Incentivize what you want to change
• Grow yourself rich, don’t save yourself rich
• Celebrate the wins
• Have fun!

The final key takeaway that I got was the technology perspective. One of the key part of the road on becoming the number one, the numero uno pizza company in Indonesia is investing in technology to build a superior customer experience. They did this through the sophisticated digital marketing strategy, through mapping customers, through pizza tracking, through their website and applications. Some insight that he gave was:

1. The top most impactful marketing campaign is in Facebook and Line
2. Promotion oriented advertising and campaign is the most shareable and most impactful
3. Go for video and rich content, you can only go so far with videos
4. 8% of their sales comes from Gofood sales
5. Track what customers are doing as the best you can
6. Have a 360 view of the customer. No matter what channel a customer contacted, or which Dominos they visit, they should have the same experience, and the sales should have the same information about the customer.

“Excellence. Strongly linked to the intensity of your motivation and the level of your commitment to attain the highest in everything you attempt!” – Patrick’s Mantra from his dad