An Interview With Ken Babcock
The expectation that owning a business is a nine-to-five job has to go out the window. Your business is yours, and there’s nobody to call outside of you. You have to accept that sometimes there is no separate personal and business life, and it all merges together. And once you understand that you’re the primary person for your business, that’s a huge component of it.
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 Nora Farhat.
Highly accomplished professional with a proven track record in creating excellent working relationships with internal and external customers, significant profit improvements, business process development, and achievements in management.
- Experienced with working with organizations with multi-facility, multi-location accountability.
- Professionally regarded as an excellent communicator, organized, and strategic with a clear focus on meeting the organizations short and long term strategies.
- Developed and implemented national agreements, including the management and reporting on the status of those agreements.
- Responsible for developing organizational strategy, contract negotiations, supplier collaborations, cost compression and control, and project identification and development.
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?
I am a family of first-generation Lebanese immigrants. I grew up in the U.S. multilingual, and I spent years having a very straightforward corporate career. Then I had the chance to work overseas for eight years, and I took that opportunity and was in the Abu Dhabi and Dubai areas.
Then, when we were looking to transition back to the states, my husband and I thought it was a great time to look into doing our own business. It seemed to be the right time for it, and I always wanted a business; I just didn’t know where to start. So I thought franchising was a great way to do that. You can explore many different ideas where the models are already proven, giving you a chance to make something what you want it to be and operate it how you see fit. We found British Swim School, and then I was able to open my first franchise in 2015. A few years later, we opened a Mathnasium franchise, our second franchise, and then this year, we were able to open our Pool Scouts franchise.
I realized early on that I’m an operator; I like to roll up my sleeves and get to work. I love being able to bring products and services to the communities that we serve.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a critical decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
Taking that leap of faith to run a business was the most significant step. I had consistently recognized that I wanted to, and when I was in a transition period, it was the best time for me to take that opportunity. I decided to pursue franchising and go from talking about it to acting on it, which was a giant leap.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
I made a shift in my mindset that has been very impactful. For years, I used to carry a lot of guilt, being at work instead of home with my kids. But I took a step back and realized what I am doing has excellent value. We employ over 65 people, and being small business owners is incredible. I get to show my kids that lesson, that they can roll up their sleeves and accomplish something, and that hard work is what it takes to build certain things. I love the messaging that it sends. I now stand firmly behind the message I’m sending to my kids, that I work hard, and that is how you become successful. That perspective for me was critical, and it was what allowed me to keep moving forward.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
I had to pull my ego out of operations a little bit. I would focus on the problem if an employee called off or a customer was upset. But that’s looking at it wrong. The issue is always the solution, so it’s best to be solutions-oriented. I don’t worry about the problem; I’m finding ways to fix it. I don’t see problems, and I don’t see failure; I only see ways to correct your actions.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
I would not be where I am in my career if it wasn’t for having mentors, even indirectly. When I started my first corporate job, the owner of that company was a woman by the name of Julie Brown. She was the founder and CEO of a privately held company valued at $2 billion, and I was in awe of her and loved everything she did and what she stood for.
Mentorship is critical and doesn’t even have to be direct mentorship. I believe in asking questions, connecting with people and networking. That has always served me well; I’ve also become that for others. When people want to reach out and ask how to start a business, I’m the first to step in because I recognize that network and connection and that being able to speak to somebody and share those experiences is valuable. I’m open to always being able to provide support for somebody else if that’s what they were looking for.
Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then a 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.
The very first one is that you have to know all aspects of your business. Nobody knows the systems and fully understands the program better than I know them. You can hire people to support the business, but if you don’t fully understand it, you’ll never be able to provide the proper support, and you’ll never be able to answer questions correctly.
The expectation that owning a business is a nine-to-five job has to go out the window. Your business is yours, and there’s nobody to call outside of you. You have to accept that sometimes there is no separate personal and business life, and it all merges together. And once you understand that you’re the primary person for your business, that’s a huge component of it.
You don’t have to have your business thoroughly planned out and laid out to succeed. You don’t have to have a strategic plan because sometimes the business plan develops as your business expands. You have to allow yourself and allow the business to go where it needs to go. Your vision might be short or not be a good reflection of where the business actually needs to go. So you have to allow yourself enough flow to be able to move with the market and don’t set things in stone. Your business needs to be able to shift and move, and if something comes up, you need to be able to change with it.
When you don’t know what to do, just take the next step. It’s lots of small steps that just add up without realizing it, and then suddenly you’ve built something great. So I think it’s just about hitting one small step a day.
I honestly believe that the biggest determinant of success will come down to grit. Being able to roll up your sleeves, get to work, and feel fully accountable for what you’re building and doing goes so far in helping one be successful and grow that success.
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?
One of the biggest mistakes is when business owners try to grow too fast, right? We’ve made this mistake, too, having one location doing well and being anxious to get another one. You need to wait until you are ready. You don’t have to go big right away. There are growing phases. Nothing becomes a success overnight; it’s a lot of small steps, so allow yourself the time to grow it and learn the lessons on a smaller scale before you keep growing. Nothing will be a quicker failure than overextending way before you were ready or taking on too much.
I have three brands. I could not have opened them simultaneously; I would have failed. You have to stabilize one before the next comes in. I think foresight is important.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
Employee engagement is so crucial for any company, whether large or small. As long as you keep your employees engaged in ongoing communications and team building and give them enough authority to make decisions, you can keep that dynamic. As soon as you get disengaged employees, you’re already failing because they’re showing up and just checking a box. I think you’ve already lost something when that happens.
The first thing I’ll say to anybody in every interview is that nobody is more important than our staff. The only reason I can be successful is that there’s an employee behind me that’s keeping watch or doing their job really well. You have to understand that what they’re bringing to the table is super valuable and give them enough engagement and opportunities to do their job the best they can. Without recognizing the importance of the staff, you’re going to fail. It’s ongoing engagement that’s going to make the difference.
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?
Have the right level of management in place, but don’t overstep or overmanage. There are ways to have proper staff without 20 different titles in a company. I think if you’re able to have less of a hierarchy and more of a flat organization, it does well. It’s easy to create too many layers and lose touch. I think also recognizing people’s capabilities and not asking too much of them is critical.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
For years, we would manually do our scheduling, but then I discovered When I Work and the app has saved us so much time. I use a great local accounting firm that helps me out with our regular bookkeeping skills. I also love Vonage or RingCentral and love that we can have the phone systems in place and see which ones are calling in.
We have so many more options than we used to. It’s probably the strongest time for small business owners to have access. There’s Legal Zoom and different sites, like Squarespace, to build your own web page or manage your content. We are in such a great position compared to 10 or 15 years ago; we didn’t have as many great resources.
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.
I love social responsibility and think that we are all ultimately only as good as we bring to the world. Having a great attitude or great energy is so important. Everybody’s always trying to do their best; nobody goes out to do their worst, and everybody has their own situation. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and if we all did that, people would recognize that nobody purposely tries to make an experience bad.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They can check out my Instagram — @nora.farhat. I always link the different businesses I have, which is a great way to follow me and see what I’m working on.
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.
Nora Farhat Of Pool Scouts On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.