Lesson #2: Don’t Dream About Being Good, Dream About Being the Best!

When he was a young boy, struggling with the loss of his father and the difficulties of life in an orphanage, Monaghan spent his time reading biographies of great men who had come before him. Abraham Lincoln, a poor farm boy from Illinois, had used hard work and determination to become the President of the United States. Why couldn’t he do the same, Monaghan wondered? Or in reading Sears catalogues, Monaghan would dream about what it would be like to have a life where he could actually afford everything within its glorious pages.

In later years, when Monaghan was in the Marine Corps, he would also spend much of his time dreaming about the possibilities of what he might one day become. “I was aboard a ship in the Pacific doing something I’ve always done a lot of: day dreaming,” he recalls. “I was thinking about my future, the lifestyle I was going to have, all the cars and the beautiful home and the yachts and the airplanes. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen, but it wasn’t any fun doing this daydreaming if it wasn’t possible.”

Monaghan knew, however, that in order to have the best, he would need to be the best – at whatever he did. In the early days of Domino’s, it was easy for Monaghan to exercise quality control – he was personally in charge of the business as well as the entire pizza-making operation. As the company grew bigger, so too did it become increasingly difficult for Monaghan to control. In order to do so, he spent his time at the store in Ypsilanti, the busiest of his stores, which sold about 5,000 pizzas per week. “I was there from opening to close, and I made everyone else work hard,” says Monaghan. “I was fanatical about preparing for the rush, saving time and motion. I was constantly trying to improve the pizza.” Through conducting in-the-street interviews and even hiring blind people to taste-test his pizza, Monaghan was determined to make his pizza the best.

However, Monaghan was not just concerned with the taste of his pizza. He also wanted Domino’s to be the best at delivery – what he saw as the key to their success. Monaghan implemented a nation-wide “30-minutes-or-free guarantee”, which helped improve delivery times, and which would later become a benchmark within the industry. Today, Monaghan says this time guarantee was “a great management tool” and was “as responsible for our growth as anything.” Monaghan understood that delivering pizzas fast wasn’t about driving fast. Rather, it was a matter of making sure the pizzas got in and out of the oven as quickly as possible, and that is where Monaghan was determined to be unbeaten.

From his business to his luxury car and Frank Lloyd Wright collection, Monaghan would accept nothing less than the best for himself, and thus he could expect nothing less than the best from himself and from each and every member of the Domino’s team.



Lesson #2: Don’t Dream About Being Good, Dream About Being the Best!

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