Jesse Johnstone of Fibrenew On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business
An Interview With Ken Babcock
Align your team and set milestones: every plan needs deadlines and key team members. After you’ve distilled your ideas down and got to the core of the challenge, now you have to plot out milestones on a calendar with all those who will help in the journey. This creates the path forward and clearly maps out the steps you need to take together.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jesse Johnstone, President at Fibrenew..
A technologist by trade, an entrepreneur by nature, an occasional drummer and an eternal optimist at heart, Jesse Johnstone is President of Fibrenew. Nothing sparks Johnstone more than seeing his 295+ Franchise Partners from the US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and Chile achieve their lifestyle and financial goals by running their own Fibrenew Leather, Plastic, and Vinyl restoration businesses.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Thank you for having me! My backstory: I’m a technologist by trade, an entrepreneur by nature, and an eternal optimist at heart. Today, I’m the President of Fibrenew. Nothing sparks me more than seeing our 300 Franchise Partners from around the world achieve personal and business success by running their own Fibrenew franchise.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
Before I started working with Fibrenew, was worked for various companies in the technology field and eventually started my own consulting firm. We created web software, built, and hosted websites, handled SEO and online marketing. We had built up a long list of clients and had good cash flow — it was fun, but I always felt that something was missing. It was beginning to feel like we just went from one project to the next. Fibrenew was our #1 client for many years. As the months rolled on, we were dedicating more and more time to their projects. It got to a point where Fibrenew’s CEO, Michael Wilson said to me “Mate, you gotta come work for us”. The chance to work for a great company like Fibrenew was very appealing. The opportunity to be part of building a lasting legacy with the brand and to help hundreds of franchisees in their own businesses was too great of a opportunity to pass up. So, I shut down the consultancy and moved over to Fibrenew with my employees. It was the intersection of timing and opportunity, and it turned out to be a great career move — one I’ll never regret.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
A few years ago, we started a program at Fibrenew called “Furniture for Friends”. The program has us repurpose our know-how of restoring furniture for those in need, and donating the refurbished pieces to women’s shelters, and other charitable organizations. We had our training staff start the initiative at Head Office and then encouraged all our franchisees to follow suit around the country. We had several franchisees get involved and now we encourage other owners to participate every fall, heading into the holiday season.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
It’s in my nature to move fast and push boundaries of what’s realistic with the timelines of projects. I’ve been caught many times overpromising delivery dates of new initiatives. We launched new technology, products, and programs before they were ready. Sometimes it’s worked out, sometimes it’s come back to bite us. I still struggle with this and have to remind myself to pull the reigns back to make sure that our teams aren’t too stretched. My lesson here and a new rule that I’m using is whatever timeline I first think a project will take to complete, I’ll add 50% to it. It takes the pressure off our teams, and we usually end up with a much more successful launch in the end.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
I have been blessed with having tremendous mentors over the years. From my first job out of college and having a boss who took me in under his wing, to now with Fibrenew’s board members and advisors. Surrounding yourself with smart people, successful people who you can receive guidance from is key to becoming the business leader you want to become. Conversely, I’ve found that observing not-so-good moves from other business leaders is important as well — only doing it from afar by staying up to speed with global business news. Being a student and observing both the good and the bad is so important. From there you can build your path for what works for you.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
Empathy plays a big role in how I make decisions. Putting yourself in the shoes of the other people you’re working with, negotiating with, or building something with is something that this world needs more of. If I had to break down my style and practice, it could be explained as thinking with a mix of my head, heart, and gut. Not to be confused with benevolence, I’m still running a business after all but I do not subscribe to a winner takes all mentality and management style. I like to sleep soundly at night and for me, leading with empathy helps with that. If your readers are interested in learning more about this management style, check out Dev Patnaik’s book “Wired to Care”. He explains how businesses can prosper when they operate from a place of empathy.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.
Here is the process that has worked in growing Fibrenew, and a template that we give all our franchise owners to follow in growing their businesses:
1) Articulate your purpose on paper: if you’re unable to articulate your business’s purpose on paper, your ideas need more work. It’s astonishing to me how many business owners don’t write down what they want to achieve. Not knowing why you do what you do or not knowing what specific goals you want to check off is the same as not committing to making anything happen. It’s the very definition of ‘floating’. You have to write it all down as a first step.
2) Beat it up and simplify: even though you’ve put pen to paper to sketch out your goals and plans, you have to stress test it for anomalies, outside market conditions, proper timing, etc. Have you slashed your plan down to only the essentials of what you actually want to accomplish? This is where trusted mentors and advisors can really help. Share your ideas and ask for constructive feedback. They’ll give you things you wouldn’t have thought about.
3) Align your team and set milestones: every plan needs deadlines and key team members. After you’ve distilled your ideas down and got to the core of the challenge, now you have to plot out milestones on a calendar with all those who will help in the journey. This creates the path forward and clearly maps out the steps you need to take together.
4) Review and revise constantly: as you get going in the steps of the plan, you’re going to need to review progress and no doubt revise as you go. Even with a roadmap in place, there’s going to be the last 10% of the plan that will have to stay dynamic as you proceed — that’s part of the plan itself.
5) Celebrate wins and keep your head down: I think it’s important to mark the moments of success in the steps of your plan. It shows progress and brings your team together. But here’s the trick — keep going and don’t let wins go to your head. The purpose, the people, the plan, and the progress all matter — your ego doesn’t!
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
Growth at all costs is dangerous. Growth without a plan is not sustainable. I think the biggest mistakes you can make in scaling a business are not having a well-thought-out plan, not having the right people in place, and failing to build the proper infrastructure needed to sustain the growth. Your best defense in avoiding these mistakes is to spend more time planning than doing. As the famous quote from Abraham Lincoln goes: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax”.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
If everyone knows the company’s purpose from the first day they begin with the organization, they’ll stay connected with the roots of the culture. This is another way of saying that a clear and truthful Mission and Vision for your company is important. Everyone in your organization should know your Mission and Vision. It should be talked about and revisited regularly or better yet on display on your intranet or office walls. It creates an anchor and acts as a simple business plan for day-to-day operations.
As you grow, keeping your ego out of the mix and maintaining humility is so important. Hubris around a company’s success and growth can kill its culture faster than anything and start the downward spiral into irrelevance. A great read on this subject is “How the Might Fall” by Jim Collins. It shows how companies that don’t stay grounded to their purpose as they achieve success inevitably fall from grace.
Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?
We’ve created a vast library of resources where we share team knowledge, ideas, lessons, and more. We’ve created dozens of videos, podcasts, and articles for everyone in our company to easily access. But even with all these media available, we have found that one-on-one conversations have worked best for us. We make a point of having weekly Zoom calls for anyone who needs to and wants to talk. That’s where relationships and trust are built and that sets the stage for success.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
I’m probably the worst person to ask for a recommendation of a particular platform because of my background in software development. We’ve built our own custom solution that guides new people into our company. It’s full of videos, articles, photos, and more that sets the stage for who we are, how things work, and how we can get to know new people as well. It’s worked well and has been instrumental in maintaining steady and consistent growth. Our old system of emailing PDFs and links was becoming way too convoluted, and it didn’t create the positive experience we wanted new people to have. Systematizing the procedure has been a tremendous step forward for us.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
If I had one wish from the Movement Genie, it would be to inspire and lead people in better planning and goal setting. Not just in their businesses — but in life as well. It saddens me to know how many people float through life and let life happen to them. Encouraging people to put themself in the driver’s seat and design a life they want to live is an idea I’d love to trigger en masse.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
We have a podcast called the Fibrenew Exchange on Apple and Spotify https://www.fibrenew.com/exchange/ We talk about business and life with our Franchisees and share some great ideas.
I would be happy to connect on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessejohnstone You can find some of my writing there as well.
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.
