Owner mindset
“Alright, so who here do you think is the owner?”
Growing up, my parents would often pose this challenge when we’d go out to eat. At first I was convinced this little game was as good as a random guess, but my parents could guess who the restaurant owner was with near perfect accuracy, so maybe it wasn’t all luck.
No one walks around with a shirt that says “I’m the owner!” so what “tells” were mom & dad picking up on that I just wasn’t seeing?
What do you think those are? I had a few false starts.
First, I thought the restaurant owner must be the richest out of anyone working there, so I should look for someone wearing nice clothes, sporting a fancy watch, driving to work in a cool car.
Dead wrong.
Okay…Owning a restaurant probably means you’re charismatic & sociable. I’ll look for the worker who is most chatty with customers.
No, that had a pretty low hit rate, too.
The “boss” is supposed to tell his employees what to do, right? So how about that guy with a clipboard who’s assertively directing the staff?
Nope, that’s the manager, not the owner.
Over years of playing this game, I finally learned what flags to look for, to see and evaluate the scene as my parents would.
The restaurant owner is there at odd hours or over the holidays, when most of her workers are taking time off.
During slow hours, she’s picking up the mop and cleaning the washroom.
She’s the first to apologise to unsatisfied customers who are obnoxiously airing their grievances.
Underneath the friendly face with which she greeted you, you’ll see layers of stress accumulated over years of worrying about employees quitting, suppliers raising prices, customers leaving negative reviews online.
As I got older, I realised mom & dad could so readily spot the owner because they themselves were business owners. I’ve greatly appreciated the owner mindset and sought to cultivate in myself ever since. Of course you feel it most viscerally once you actually own a business, but even before then, it’s worth applying it in your personal, school, and work lives.
When choosing somewhere to work, optimise for the greatest concentration of people with an owner mindset. Once you’re working there, apply the WWTFD test (“What would the founder do?”) to every decision and the answer is highly likely to be the correct decision.
In his autobiography, Made in America, Sam Walton reminisces the founding of Walmart and perfectly captures the owner mindset:
I don’t know that anybody else has ever done it quite like me. Started out as a pure neophyte, learned his trade, swept the floor, kept the books, trimmed the windows, weighed the candy, rung the cash register, installed the fixtures, remodelled the stores, built an organisation of this size and quality, and kept on doing it right up until the end because they enjoyed it so much. No one that I know of has done it that way.
Look for the person doing all the thankless tasks, without ever being asked to—They’re the real owners.