Edward Kaloust couldn’t believe it when his named was called to receive Medi-Weightloss Clinics’ Brand Man Award.
Kaloust, the founder and CEO of the franchised weight-loss centers, shakes off the award as a bit of a joke the company’s president pulled at the annual conference, but it has deeper meaning.
“When you get up in front of an audience and it’s all your peers and all of your employees, and they name you the brand man, you have to feel like you’re doing the right thing as far as setting the vision for everybody,” he says.
Being able to clearly share the company plan plays a vital role in execution. But you first need to build the plan on a strong foundation and adjust where needed.
The process has helped Kaloust grow Medi-Weightloss Clinics even during the recession. The company had 73 locations at the end of 2009 and more than 500 employees work under the MWLC brand nationwide.
Smart Business spoke with Kaloust about how to build a plan and get employees to live it.
Create a plan. My advice to other CEOs on how to maintain growth — and even in a down economy maintain growth — is to follow a business plan that is written. It’s sort of like a goal.
I recall one of my sons wanting to become a lawyer when he was in high school. I challenged him and said, ‘Look, if you can get on the National Honor Society and you can finish high school on the honor roll, I will purchase an automobile for you for college up to a certain amount of money.’
We took a picture of that automobile. He looked at that every day. He not only made the National Honor Society, he made the honor roll at the high school. Then he became not only a lawyer, he went on to get a master’s degree in taxation.
That’s a really simple explanation, but that was all a goal-oriented thing. There was a plan there. The plan was ‘Look, if I do this, this and this, I’m going to achieve this.’
To me, if you’re a CEO, that’s the thing you should do. You should actually have a written plan, you should follow your plan, you should make adjustments when you need to. You need to have faith in the plan and, more importantly, the employees. And you have to lead them by example.
The business plan is made up pretty much by the sales organization submitting their budget and their thoughts … all of the department heads submitting their budgets and their thoughts. And besides thoughts, they have to tell us what new employee they will need during the year and why.
Then we take all of that information together, we meet with them separately and we build the plan for that particular year.
Every single department is involved mainly from the department head.
