3 Key Business Lessons From My Unit Manager Phase
It took me a while to accept my District Manager's proposal, but when I finally said yes to becoming an Assistant Manager at Domino’s Pizza, my career took off. I must admit I said yes because I knew that becoming a Unit Manager would give me the key to pursue my dream of owning my own business, this time as a Franchisee.
I first joined Domino’s Pizza as a delivery driver for a temporary job (read all about it in this previous blog post). However, over the course of a year, I learned not only what a franchise was and how it operated like a well-oiled machine through systems, processes, and procedures, but also what it took to be successful as an owner.
I also realized that the brand allowed its best managers to acquire a Domino's Pizza franchise unit. That was a golden opportunity for me, because in my home country, Guatemala, the brand hadn't arrived yet, so I could be the one to open that new market. The challenge excited me. So, I said yes, and entered a management training program to become what the brand called an MIT (Manager in Training).
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It was the mid-nineties, and the company was experiencing explosive growth and needed a lot of managers, so they developed this management training program to produce them internally.
I began the program with a slight advantage because I'd done some training as a day driver in my free time, mainly out of boredom but also because of my curiosity and my desire to keep learning and to understand the reasons behind things. So I quickly worked my way through the training levels and became store-ready within four months. And sure enough, when a position opened up, I was promoted to Unit Manager at an existing store.
My First Store as a Unit Manager: The Low Sales Store
As part of my onboarding, on my first day as a Unit Manager, I sat down with my District Manager to review the profit & loss statement (P&L). I already knew how to read and understand it, but he taught me something I hadn't seen before: how to calculate a unit's break-even point.
He explained that I needed to know this because I had to be clear on what the sales, the labor, and the cost of goods needed to be, as well as all the other costs, for me to break even in the store.
This was especially important in this particular store because it was the lowest-volume store in Dallas and was losing money. But if I learned how to calculate the breakeven of that unit, I would be able to get clarity on what exactly I needed to do to turn things around.
After some research, I found that while controlling labor and cost of goods was important, the most critical thing we needed to focus on was to increase sales so we could cover expenses and break even. So, I created a strategic plan using all the tactics I had learned to increase sales and hammered it really hard with my team.
Thankfully, it worked, and we almost doubled the sales. What is more: not only did we break even, but within 60 days, that store was making $1,000 profit a month.
I realized, again, that when my business failed, I didn't know or have the clarity of any of this. But as a well-trained Unit Manager, I was able to put everything in place, implement it, and see the tangible results of the work and how it impacted the profitability of the store. It was just an amazing experience!
My Second Store: The People Problem Store
After a while, I got promoted to another store. It’s a normal thing in the industry: when a Unit Manager does well in one store, they are usually promoted to the next store when the opportunity opens up. That’s motivating because most of the time, managers receive bonuses based on their stores’ net profit. So, the better the store, the higher the profit, and the bigger the bonus!
The problem at this second store, located in Park City in Dallas, was employee retention. My DM told me almost everyone on the team was brand new because people kept coming and going, so I needed to figure out what was going on and how to improve the situation.
Looking back, I now see that at this second store I truly learned a lot about human behavior, including why people do what they do, why they come to work, why they stay, and why they leave.
One of the things we teach in our training programs is that people come to work at your business for the opportunity and the benefits, but they stay for the culture. That means that, if you foster a positive work environment where people feel a sense of belonging and being part of something meaningful and special, they are more likely to stay.
That is something I accidentally created in my first store while doing sales building, because I challenged my team to do it together, and we did all kinds of fun things to make that sales goal happen. So, without knowing it, I created that great culture.
Thanks to that experience, I was able to come up with initiatives like sales building and community involvement to create a positive culture where everyone felt truly valued, making our workplace a welcoming, special place to be. As a result, we had very little turnover while I was a manager there.
Another thing I learned there was that if you create a culture where people feel like they belong, they're going to do everything they can to stay. But if they decide to push back, not follow the rules, and go against them, and you tolerate that, you're going to get more of those behaviors.
I also understood that, for the business machine to work, every person was a key element of our processes and procedures. If one of them fell out of sync, the entire system could break. So my responsibility was to help them realign to build a healthy team, efficient operations, and a profitable unit.
My Third Store: The Highest-Volume Store
With time, I got promoted again. The next store was one of the highest-volume stores in Dallas. The challenge here was different and had many issues combined:
- It was a low-income area.
- The distances were very long, so delivery time was always a struggle.
- Staffing and hiring new people was very difficult.
- The whole community environment felt very different, so it needed a little bit extra care or sensitivity.
Not only did I learn how to manage high volume and a big team at that store, but I also was able to create a culture of belonging in that organization.
Three Stores, Three Key Lessons
Being able to oversee three very distinct stores, each with its own particular challenges and different teams, and not only overcome them but also thrive, made my journey as a Unit Manager really interesting.
It was also very enriching to understand how the franchise business machine works around different volumes, neighborhoods, situations, and even store layouts, and how the culture and the customers you serve play a critical role in your overall operations and profits.
These are three things I learned during my Franchise Unit Manager phase:
- Titles matter. Having the clarity that I was being trained to become a manager, not just an assistant manager, was critical for me. It changed how I approached my everyday job because I understood that if I moved up quickly, I could run one business by myself in the near future. That is different from just being second in command and supporting someone else at the top until they decide it is the right time for you to grow.
- It’s all about the numbers. Learning how to calculate my break-even helped me understand what I needed to do to achieve the financial goal in my unit, so this metric became my compass. I also learned that I couldn’t wait for marketing to take over; I needed to own my sales to have a healthy business. Another lesson was that having a culture of metrics helps you know when you're winning and when you're losing. But you have to instill these metrics in your team so that everybody can help you grow in the same direction.
- Success is also about the people. Being a manager taught me that managing a business successfully isn’t just about strategy, but also about how we manage and support our team. Creating a positive culture, leading with integrity, and inspiring everyone each day makes all the difference.
This phase of my journey, which lasted for about a year and a half, was critical because of how I approached the Unit Manager role. Yes, I was mostly driven by the fact that I had failed before, and it was so traumatic that I didn’t want to go through it again. But I was also moved by the exposure to all the information that helped me understand how businesses work. For me, that was fascinating!
That's what the American Franchise Academy is built on. It’s not theory. It is not fluff. It's literally what I experienced in a business that did well and a career that thrived.
If you think that you, your team members, or someone you know could benefit from this type of education and knowledge, please tell them about us!
We offer this education specifically for Unit Managers, District Managers, and growing Franchisees, and we work every day to provide these franchise owners and leaders with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to succeed.
By the way… if you were wondering, I wasn’t able to open the Guatemala franchise. While I was becoming a manager, someone else acquired the Domino's franchise in my country. But something much bigger was coming in my future: something that would make me travel around the world and open the brand in many other countries under Domino's Pizza International. But that is a story for the next blog post.
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