Since March 2014, I have been an Operations Manager for a Firehouse Subs located in southern Aurora, CO. My biggest achievements since our grand opening has been moving my location from weekly sales averaging $10,500 per week in 2014 ($1,500 daily average; ranked ~22 out of 25 in our market at that time) up to around $13,800 per week thus far in 2018 ($1,971 daily average; rank has now moved to around 16 our of 32 in our market). I was awarded highest sales increase and donation increase in our market in 2017.These numbers were made possible by the innumerable lessons learned about leadership since 2014. As much as it can be a cliché, focusing on people, the culture, of a team is far-and-away more important than leapfrogging that philosophy and heading straight into profitability. You must become profitable because of your culture; not in spite of it. If your people aren't emotionally charged and fired up to push your plow forward, profitability will become only short term luck rather than long term sustainability.