The Man Who Inspired From the Sidelines

My last tip on Level 5 Leadership featured an early client and mentor, Ray King, whom I recently caught up with. After he read it, Ray sent me a nice note with a wry comment: "Reading your article was a bit like reading my obituary, as people always speak well of the dead no matter what."

Unfortunately, a couple of weeks later I wrote a real obituary for another valued mentor, John Salomon. In this case, I also spoke well of John, but it was definitely for good reason.

The call that started it all

When people ask how I ended up running a global business in the psychology of franchising, I always say it began with a phone call from John Salomon. I was 28 years old, and working at Monash University’s Psychology Department assessing people who had suffered strokes to the right hemisphere of their brain.

John's call came at an opportune time because I was having a crisis of conscience about my work. I had just returned from a hospital visit where I had assessed a man who looked a bit like my grandfather. Increasingly, I realised that, rather than helping these patients, we were mainly doing this research so my ambitious supervisor could publish more academic papers.

John said he was considering buying some franchises in the Old Style Bread Centre, a chain of company-owned hot bread shops. He said he had heard I was a reasonable baker, having put myself through university working nights and managing some of their stores. He had also heard I was no longer enjoying academia. "Would you be interested in being my business partner?" he asked.

We knew each other through a mutual association with a Yoga Centre in Melbourne, where I was a student and he was a volunteer Yoga instructor. He was one of those straight forward, down-to-earth people you immediately feel comfortable with, and I remember feeling excited about the idea of going into my own business, especially with someone I trusted who was older and more experienced.

I ran the deal past my parents and, after meeting John, who had run successful small businesses, they agreed to guarantee a bank loan. So John and I became one of the early franchisees with the chain, which later changed its name to Brumby’s Bakery. I think we pioneered a model used in many franchise networks today where young, motivated people with a strong operational background, are provided with opportunities to become business owners by partnering with older, experienced franchisees.

The franchisee from hell

John and I made a great partnership, me operating the stores while he managed the finances and administration. Our stores flourished and we had a lot of fun. He taught me how to read a P&L, and encouraged my entrepreneurial spirit, while also, at times, softening my youthful brashness and providing a reality check on some of my more whacky ideas.

When I would get frustrated by restrictions the franchisor placed on us or complain about “the idiots at head office”, he would light-heartedly remind me that getting angry wasn’t going to help. At one stage I was pushing the compliance boundaries and started to experiment with the recipes. This resulted in an intense meeting with the company's CEO, who said my antics and constant criticism were causing undue stress on his team, and I needed to modify my behaviour as I was getting a reputation as being "the franchisee from hell".

John tended to leave me to run the operations of our stores and learn from my own mistakes, while he worked more on the business. So I phoned him about this encounter and asked for his opinion. He quietly said, "I think you have many wonderful ideas and I am grateful to have you as my partner, but this may be worth thinking about". He then left me to come to my own conclusions.

After this, I worked at being less dogmatic and more collaborative, and sometime later the CEO offered me a management position with the franchisor head office team.

A quiet rescue

A defining quality of a great mentor is their commitment to others' growth, even if it comes at their expense, and I’ll always be grateful to John for encouraging me to leave our business and take up this job offer. He joked that it would be a relief to get rid of me. 

John loyally continued as a franchisee with the group over the next 10 years, as the franchisor team led the company through a series of innovations - some successful and some disastrous. (I was now embarrassingly one of “the idiots at head office”).  I know that certain decisions caused his franchises to suffer, but he never complained and was always gracious and constructive with his feedback.

When the franchisor overextended itself financially and couldn't meet its obligations, leaving the network in a precarious position, John was instrumental in helping his fellow franchisees buy the company from the administrator. During this tumultuous period when egos and tempers on all sides were clashing, John was a voice of calm and reason. He was then invited onto the new Board where he helped to stablise things and lead the franchise network to a profitable sale in 2007 to a publicly listed company.

Doing it the right way

John was not a leader with grand visions and he never insisted on having things done his way. He was however a gentle and perceptive manager who allowed others to learn from their own mistakes, while being available on the sidelines to support their growth. A gentleman in the true sense of the word.

He was also an inspiring example of how a person can have one foot in the material world, actively contributing to business and society, while simultaneously practising timeless values such as tolerance, forgiveness and patience. Over the years, right up until his passing, John guided hundreds of people, quietly encouraging them to live better lives. I know I would never have created FRI with its people before profit philosophy, without the solid grounding he gave me in business.

My wife, Ann, who was also a good friend of John's, commented at his funeral that he was a man of little ego. She said she was pleased the song they chose for his farewell was not "I did it my way" because he was more a man who did it the right way! 

Vale John Salomon.

Until next time,