The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Orfalea: Operating 24 hours a day doubles daytime retail business
“If you go 24 hours a day, your daytime business doubles, which is absolutely correct.”
Orfalea: Kinko's avoided franchising to prevent store partners from spinning off rivals
“The reason I didn't choose Franchise-een is If they viewed me as a parasite from the top, they would easily go across the street and do it. But I shared in the profits, and they got a good salary, they had a car, we had a pension plan for the partners.”
Orfalea: Local store equity motivates operators better than minimum-wage employee pay
“You can't rely on minimum wage people to have motivation, and so I always figured if I take in a partner, the fact that they have equity in that individual location would make a big difference in the outcome, which is true.”
Orfalea: Franchisors and franchisees are just people flipping each other off
“Franchisees and franchisors are two people flipping each other off all the time. In other words, if I told the franchisee to do something, they would say, well, he's not, his motivation isn't cure. He just wants more six percent from the top.”
Orfalea: Acquirers retaining founders is like cutting a tail off incrementally
“When I came back I think when you sell your business, they shouldn't keep the founder on. It's sort of like cut, cutting the tail off an inch at a time, and everybody who was unhappy came to me, and I didn't have any influence or power to do anything about it.”
Orfalea: True hard work is late-night worrying, not long hours
“Most people will brag about how hard they work, this, that, and the other. What I think hard work is what keeps you up all night long when you're worrying. That's hard work.”
Orfalea: Loving your business is absolute bullshit and destroys owner objectivity
“Is when a business person says, I love my business. That's absolute bullshit. You love your family. You can enjoy your business, but once that becomes a love affair, you lose your objectivity.”
Orfalea: Strong consonants make brand names like Kinko's and Xerox unforgettable
“You want strong consonants. Google, Xerox, Kodak. Coca-Cola. So I wanted a business with a strong consonant. Once you heard the name Kinkos, you'd never forget it.”
Orfalea: Kinko's photocopied Molotov cocktail guides for anti-war students in 1970
“I remember Xeroxing For students how to make Molotov cocktails because the anti-war movement was so strong.”
Paul Orfalea: Business consists of only three simple things
“You only do three things in business, and it's really simple. Motivate your workers, understand your customers, and balance your checkbook.”
Orfalea: Kinko's added a core value allowing managers to fire rude customers
“Our first sentence in the philosophy is we, our primary objective is to take care of the customer. But some of our customers are so outlandishly rude, we had to have a mechanism in our values to fire a customer. So we added in the second paragraph, the coworke…”
Orfalea: Founders Often Waste Time on Complex Businesses Instead of Easy Money
“I think sometimes we spend our time on the Hardest thing, which was the print shop, where the easy money, the low-hanging fruit was in the copy shops.”
Orfalea: Making himself inaccessible eliminated routine manager interruptions
“I shouldn't be available for those kinds of phone calls. So I became inaccessible and there better be a damn good reason for somebody to call me. And I noticed that the phone, I couldn't get anything accomplished by being so available for phone calls.”
Orfalea: Avoid perishable inventory; paper does not go obsolete like cucumbers
“And overnight, my inventory rotted, my cucumbers, my corn, and I looked at the Xerox machine, and I thought, man, that, that paper does not go obsolete. That inventory stays there for months and months at a time. And I thought, I don't want to be in a business…”
Orfalea: Original Kinko's store cash flowed in month one
“I actually cash flowed the very first month. I had more money in the bank account at the end of the month than I started with.”
Orfalea: Kinko's photocopied course packets captured 6% of Ohio State textbook sales
“Say at Ohio State, we were doing six percent of the textbook sales by photocopying.”
Paul Orfalea: Kinko's store partnerships were generally split 60-40
“I put up, generally, 60% of the money. They would put up 40% of the money.”
Orfalea: Disorganized Xerox billing provided a 90-day float to fund Kinko's
“Xerox was so screwed up in their invoicing, it gave me an enormous amount of float. I wouldn't get a bill from a Xerox machine for say, 60 days, 90 days after it was installed. And I didn't have to put up any money to get it.”