Drive through small-town America and you'll pass a lot of boarded-up Dairy Queens. They’ve shut down hundreds of them.
Now, most struggling fast food chains are victim to the usual suspects. The comments basically write themselves.
Private equity buys it > Raises prices > Guts quality > Screws the franchisees > Death spiral.
We've seen that movie a dozen times, from Panera on down.
Except that's not what happened to Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen has been owned by Berkshire Hathaway for decades — pretty much the most patient owner possible.
So the menu didn't get wrecked. The franchise contracts, messy as they were, didn't sink it either. By most measures, the place has been run well.
What’s actually killing Dairy Queen in America: the map.
In the 1940s, Dairy Queen bet its entire early identity on winning small-town, rural America.
Back then, 50% of Americans lived on farms and in ranchland across the country.
But year after year, small-town America moved to the city and didn’t come back.
Here's the part I love:
A few decades ago, Dairy Queen saw this coming. So they looked overseas and found that the brand is thriving in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and China. It’s cool American food, it’s aspirational.
So they pivoted to focus on international growth. And it's working great.
It’s the inverse of the private equity death spiral story.
A pivot like this is almost impossible when PE is on a five-year clock to squeeze out maximum cash. The quarterly math doesn't allow it.
The patient owner wins the slow game because they're the only one still playing it.
"Building a holdco was the worst thing I ever did."
That's how Walker Deibel opened his conference talk in Sundance a few years back. Then he told the story: losing his star GM, then 40% of the company walking out too. A business owner’s nightmare.
You don't get that talk at a normal business conference. You get a case study with the ugly parts sanded off.
It’s what makes Compound Conference different. Three days at Sundance, Feb 8–11, 2027, with 150 folks running real businesses, with real scars, and real insight. All-inclusive — sessions, meals, lodging, ski pass. The best conversations happen on the chairlift anyway.
Grab your spot for Compound 2027.
One thing to steal
Most of us plan in quarters and years. That's fine for fast problems.
But it's useless for slow ones. Demographic shifts, markets drying up, the 8, 15, 20-year bets.
So try this: set one goal for your business ten years out.
Not a revenue target you back into. But a real and audacious picture of where the whole thing is going.
Then back into it: what do you have to start this year to get there?
This is the core of the EOS framework. It’s the operating system a lot of small businesses (including multiple of mine) run on. It forces you to zoom out to a decade before you zoom back to the ninety-day plan.
Start with the book Traction by Gino Wickman. It gives you all the EOS basics. I recommend this book a lot. If you’re starting a business, I guarantee it’s the best $12 you’ll ever spend.
Thanks.
Michael
—
Let me help you...
The Low-Risk Business → 30 years of building, turned into one playbook
Hire With Near → Build high-performing remote teams for 70% less
Bedrock → Validate the numbers before you buy a business
Compound Conference → where business owners figure out their next move