EntreLeadership - #334: How to Run a Be-Rich Business with David Salyers

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Chick-fil-A’s specialty may be chicken, but former Chief Marketing Officer David Salyers says the focus of the restaurant chain has never been the number of sandwiches sold. Instead, he likes to call Chick-fil-A a be-rich business, a venture all about enriching the lives of those you serve. Tune in as David explains the difference between running be-rich and get-rich businesses—and why one is much better for your bottom line than the other.   entreleadership.com/podcast David Salyers' website Good to Great by Jim Collins Leadership Growth Assessment Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The customers will never be a bigger fan of your brand than the employees are. The employees set the lid on the height to which the customers can go. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree Leadership. Now here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we got coming up for you.

Former Vice President of Marketing at Chick-fil-A, David Sawyers joins us. And David's a longtime friend, and this was a great treat, because having known him as the VP of Marketing at Chick-fil-A, and then hearing him share what he shared in this conversation, I've got to tell you, my page was full of notes. It's really good stuff. And our good friend and Entree Leadership Coach Alex Judd will join me in the studio. to share about a great leadership assessment we've got for you, a free resource that you've come to know and love. So let's get right to it.

David Sawyer's former VP of Marketing, Growth and Hospitality for Chick-fil-A. You'll hear him share his story. We get into the early part of the story. It all adds up to 37 years in the Chick-fil-A marketing department and a whole bucket full of amazing wisdom that he gave us, and you just get the feeling there was so much more. So here is our conversation with David Sawyers, formerly of Chick-fil-A. Well, David, this is fun.

It's fun to talk to a leader that I have observed and also gotten to know. This is really, really fun for me because I think that you have such an incredible journey and so much to share with our audience. So I thought the place to start would be your starting point at Chick-fil-A. I don't even know this story, actually. So I'm learning along with our audience. Well, you're going to love this one, Ken. I literally graduated from college on a Saturday morning.

I started with Chick-fil-A four hours later, four hours after college graduation. And I had met Truitt, Kathy, as a junior in college, and gone to work for Chick-fil-A right there. But what was interesting is Chick-fil-A was nothing like what you know of today. At that time, the entire headquarters was in a small, converted air freight warehouse, and they had filled up the warehouse, And so they cut a hole through the wall, pulled up a mobile home. And my first office was in a mobile home attached to a warehouse. And at that time, they had just started the marketing department at Chick-fil-A six months before I arrived.

And ironically, the guy they hired to start the marketing department, a guy named Steve Robinson. Steve had been the director of marketing at six flags four or five years prior to that. Guess where I had worked as a summer intern for the last four summers? Six flags. Six flags. Wow. So it was funny.

Truitt hired Steve. I had no idea. Steve had gone to work for Chick-fil-A. I was having a separate conversation with Truitt. We both showed up in February of my senior year in college at Chick-fil-A conference. They had an annual conference. And when I showed up, I showed up as a student guest and who was standing behind the registration table, but a guy named Steve Robinson. And I said, Steve, what are you doing here?

And he said, what are you doing here? And he told me he had just taken a job as direct marketing. And I told him I was coming as a student guest from Trubon. Truitt. And so I ended up being the first person that he hired and Truitt hired. So there were two of us in the marketing department when I started. And as you know, I took early retirement last summer. And when I left, there were almost 300 people in that same marketing department. Wow. You know, that used to be two people the day I started. So let me ask you this. I have the privilege, of course, to know Dan. And Dan's on a wonderful

job of the whole Kathy Klan has done a wonderful job of taking their dad's legacy and leading well. but you're one of the few people who knows what it was like to work under Truitt. And I think I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to just give our audience your observations as a young guy who entered the workforce right out of college and then led under him for a while. What kind of a leader was he? I don't even have the words to describe what kind of leader he was, but he was like a second father to me. I mean, I learned so much from Truitt, Kathy. And I think he was not only one of the finest businessmen ever know in my lifetime,

certainly one of the finest men as well. But let me tell you the big aha moment for me. When I graduated from college at age 21, what I thought a remarkable career looked like was to go out, make as much money as you could, as fast as you could, and retire early. And so my goal was to retire at age 35. And what I want to do is just go make a bunch of money, retire at age 35. And instead, by going to work for Truitt, he introduced me to a concept I never would have imagined even exist. But I couldn't have conceptualized that it was possible, but I got to see it

lived out. And instead of getting the job that I could retire from at age 35, I got something far more remarkable than that. I found the job I wouldn't want to retire from. See, that thought had never crossed my mind. What Truitt demonstrated what he role modeled, what he lived out every day, was that work, when done right, is designed to be enjoyable, satisfying, rewarding, reward, You know, that great joy can come from work. But I think work has gotten such a bad reputation because it feels like, thank God, it's Friday, it's something to be finished, you know, retire early from it.

But what Truit showed me was that if you love what you do, you'll never work another day in your life. And so I saw a guy who loved what he did. And Ken, I remember when Truit was in his 80s, I'd go up to his office and I'd ask him, I'd say, True, man, your 401K is fully funded. What are you doing? in here. You know what he'd say? Why would I stop doing something? I love this much. Yeah. See, he just, I think he

understood the world of work so differently than most of us do, and that it could be so enjoyable and rewarding, satisfying. And so I feel like I spent 37 years at Chick-fil-A and never worked a day in my life and got paid anyway. Yes. And that's a pretty good deal. I think you understand this. You love what you do. You know, you're enjoying every minute. I love what I do. I do. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I do every day is help people figure that out because you and I both know that we were created for a purpose to fill a role and that we're needed. And that's what I love about Chick-fil-A. And you and I were talking moments ago before we started recording. You know, we got a mutual friend Don Miller who's been on this program multiple times and been on our Ramsey stages and talked about Chick-fil-A as a great example of a true story brand.

And I want to focus on because you have such a unique vantage point being the second. person ever hired for marketing and eventually leading the company's marketing efforts and hiring the current people who are marketing. And there's something special about that dining experience. You know, anybody that's ever had it, certainly if you have kids. I mean, it's just something remarkable. I'm curious, what were the conversations like in those early days when you started out as it related to what we now know and what we kind of experience almost, you know, just don't even think about how we get treated, how clean it is, how good the food is, how safe we feel there with our kids, whatever it is, whatever your image folks, as you're listening in here, think of

what you feel, what you experience when you go to Chick-Fleigh. David, just curious how much of that that we now experienced was discussed and how intentional it was. Well, it's amazing, really, how much it has changed over time. When I first started at Chick-fil-A and for the first 15, 20 years in my career there, at any point in time, time, about a third of our operators were on what Truitt would have called bread and water money. They were barely making enough money to survive. And some of them, we had to really help from year to year. We'd have to forgive their losses at the end of the year. And nowadays, a chick-fil-I, I mean, that's unthinkable in today's turn. But back then, almost everybody

who came to Chick-fil-A, including myself, had to start by making a sacrifice to be there. I had done really well in college. I had a lot of great offers coming out of school. And the lowest offer I got by about 50% was the offer I got from Chick-fil-A. And so I didn't go there for how much money I could make. I went there for the opportunity I felt like it represented. But the same was true for almost everybody who started at that point, including our operators. A lot of them would, they might run that business for four or five, six years and never make a dime of profit.

So they'd have to live off what true called the bread and water money. We had kind of a minimal salary that he guaranteed everybody, but the real benefit to Chick-fil-A was recognized when you became profitable and shared in those profits. But nowadays, boy, I mean, you go into Chick-fil-A. If you become an operator, it's instant overnight success almost, you know, that was only 37 years in the making. Yeah, right, yeah, that's right. But again, I want to go back to what I, you know, how, even in those early days,

I understand it was bootstrapping and all that, but there's, as it evolved over time, take us through the evolution of what we experience in the restaurants today. Yeah. Well, I think at the very beginning, First of all, that one of the uniquenesses is for the first 20 years of Chick-fil-A's existence, we were exclusively in shopping malls. 100% of the locations were in shopping malls. And one of the ways I found that you grow a business is to find the cultural waves and ride them.

And one of the cultural waves at that time, this would have been the 80s to let's call it the year 2000, was what they called the mauling of America. You know, all these regional shopping malls were being built in cities across the country. And so all of our locations were kind of following that trend, and we were making multiple deals in shopping malls to kind of get established across the country. And so we were limited to the amount of business we could do in a shopping mall. And at that time, the main focus was on the food. You know, there was a presidential candidate that said it's the economy stupid.

Well, for us, it was the food stupid. You know, so we really focused on the food and getting the food right, getting the quality of the food right. Even our marketing was all about sampling. and what we called be our guest cards, where we invite people in for free, everything was related to the food. And that's how we kind of got to the,

it's kind of the first tier of our success. But along the way, and interestingly, the timing of this, was about the year 2007, and if you'll remember in the year 2007, 2008, that's when we had a great economic crash in the United States. And in the midst of that, Truitt and Dan got the crazy idea where we really need to go next was service. And, you know, interestingly, we look back on it now. It looks like a brilliant idea, but at the time it looked like the stupidest idea you can imagine.

And the reason it looks stupid is think about the restaurant business. If you just want great service, what kind of restaurant would you choose? You know, you would choose a white tablecloth. You would choose a fast couch somewhere where they've got, where it's designed for service, and you pay for service. You know, that same $3 chicken breast at Chick-fil-A cost you $15 or $20. dollars in a fine dining restaurant, and so you pay for that service. So almost by definition, when people came to fast food, they weren't looking for service. They were looking for food fast,

you know. But Truitt and Dan decided we were going to move forward on a service initiative. We called it second mile service. And we spent millions of dollars over the next two or three years bringing in operators from all of the country, their team members for all the country, did a major training initiative around service that a lot of people thought was crazy. And it was particularly crazy at that time because what most of our competitors were doing were cutting back on hours, cutting back on training. Anything related to do with people, those were the things we were cutting back on. And we were fast-forwarding on that.

So now, fast forward to, you know, 10, 15 years later, we're more known for our service than we are our food. Literally, when we look at the surveys and we look at what is creating value for people, more people feel like our service is creating value than our food. So we've gone from it's the food stupid to more it's the service stupid and actually the combination of the two. And then layered on top of that, because I think one of the Chick-Fillates philosophies is we're in this business to create value for customers. I think a lot of businesses are started as what I would call a get-rich scheme. People get in business because they want to get rich. And if they're going to get rich, they're going to get rich off of other people, right?

They're going to get rich off of customers, off of employees, off of suppliers, off of communities. And so if you're in the get rich business, your mindset is always, how are we going to extract more value from people? What I saw a model at Chick-fil-A and by the Kathy family is the polar opposite of that. If most people are in the get-rich business, I would tell you that Chick-fil-A has been in the be-rich business. See, getting rich and being rich are polar opposites. Getting rich is about enriching your life at the expense of others. Being rich is about using what you've been given to enrich the lives of those you serve. And so what I saw modeled at Chick-fil-A was a be-rich business.

And this be-rich business would kind of ask the question, what can we do to be rich toward our employees? What can we do to be rich toward our customers? What can we do to be rich toward our suppliers? What can we do to be rich toward our communities? And in the end, what happens is if you can be rich toward our communities, is if you can be rich toward all those groups, your getting rich will never be a problem.

But if you focus on getting rich, being rich may never happen. Boy, I'll tell you something, folks. I do this from time to time in the middle of an interview. You better pause, go back, rewind that, write that down, tweet it, you'll get a bunch of likes. That's really, really, really good business advice. That leads me to a twist on something we hear a lot.

We all know this idea of raving fan, create raving fans. And you basically just gave a real nice, succinct synopsis of how Chick-fil-A created raving fans. But you also talk about raving fan employees and how there's a connection between the raving fans as customers and then your actual team members. And again, I've had this unique position, folks, to have been in the world headquarters there in Atlanta. I know people personally that are operators. I know a lot of people that have worked there for a long time. you really have created raving fans as your team members as well. Talk about the connection between the two, and I'll just let you teach for a minute for leaders to learn.

How do we create this culture that Chick-Fillet has created? Yes. Let me start this way. First of all, the raving fan strategy is an important foundational idea that undergirds the entire success of Chick-Fillade. You know, most businesses think they're in business to create sales. So they have sales meetings. In big company meetings, they'll be talking about generating sales and it's, you know, sales this. And I think that's fine.

But what I would call remarkable businesses, which is what I feel like Chick-fil-A was, they don't focus on creating sales. They focus on creating fans. And there's a huge difference between creating sales and fans. So let me illustrate it this way. If we had a group of people in front of us, Ken, we took half of the group and said, you guys go out and think of ways to get people to spend things. 30 cents more when they come to Chick-fil-A. You got an hour. Go brainstorm. So that group goes and

brainstorms ways to get people spend 30 cents more. By contrast, we had a different group of people. We said, you go out and you brainstorm ways to create fans for Chick-fil-A. You got an hour, come back. My guess would be those two groups come back after an hour. There's not one idea on those two lists that are the same. Yep. And fundamentally, the way we view things drives how we do things. So if we view our job as to create sales, that's what we'll focus on. Those the ideas will come up with. But if we view our job as to create fans, those are the ideas will come up with. And that's what it will look like. And so I always felt like, you know, we always thought about creating fans, not sales. And again, if you create enough fans,

sales will never be your problem. And so our fundamental idea behind the raving fan strategy was that the customers will never be a bigger fan of your brand than the employees are. The employees, in a sense, set the bar, they set the lid on the height to which the customers can go. So in order to create fans with our customers, we had to start with our employees. And so the whole concept was, how do we make our employees fans, and that that will be contagious and flow over the counter and kind of be contagious to our customers. So let me give an example of the way this works. One of my favorite things to do, Ken, would be to go out and visit with our operators.

You mentioned that you know some of them. There are no finer people on the faces Earth than Chick-fil-A operators. I mean, everywhere I went, just solid as they could be. Fantastic human beings, fantastic business people. I just want to be around them because I want to become more like them. But I would always ask them this question. I'd ask them the question, what, business are you in? And I don't know how many operators have been with a couple thousand

probably over time. You know the answer I never got one time when I asked a chick-fley opera what business they're in? Fast food business, chicken business. Never got that answer. You know what my favorite answer was? This was fantastic. A guy up in Virginia. He told me, he said, David, I feel like I'm a leadership development academy masquerading as a fast food restaurant. That's good. Isn't that awesome? It is awesome.

I'm a leadership development academy masquerading as a fast food restaurant. So let me unpack why that's so significant. In his mind, he was simply selling chicken sandwiches, fries, and drinks to fund his more important mission of a leadership development academy. In his mind, the business he was in was 70% of our workforce in most Chick-fil-A's are teenagers. And in his mind, I'm going to take the teenagers from my community. I'm going to bring them to my leadership development academy. I'm going to develop them as leaders and citizens

and help grow them into people that can go productively serve this world. And I'm going to fund it by selling those sandwiches, fries, and drinks. But my real mission, my real output is these amazing young people that I'm going to send into the world to make their mark on the world. And when you think about that, think about how he would do his business if that's how he viewed his business. So true. And then contrast that with the people he's competing against

that maybe view their employees as minimum wage workers and all I'm there is to cut their hours and maximize my profitability. And then think about where you would want to work. Think about where you'd want your kids to work. Well, you make a key point here. I'm going to stay here. I'm actually so excited about asking you this

because we get this question a lot at our events. That idea of teenagers being a huge portion of the workforce and contrast, you just gave us a great contrast. If you're not thinking that way about these young people, then you're just thinking about them as shiftless, you know, a bunch of kids who I have to kind of build this business on. Your attitude is terrible towards them. And there's also a lot of cynicism about young people. Here's the question we get, David, a lot.

Now, this is in labor-intensive businesses, so they're relying on younger people, hourly wage jobs. You know what we're talking about here. And we get this question all the time. well, I can't find good people. These young millennials or these young mosaics, I can't find good people. They're just so hard to find. And I remember getting that question at an Entree Master Series event,

and I said to the guy, well, welcome to leadership. You know, you can't control what the kid's home life is like, so maybe they don't have good habits. Maybe they do struggle to show up on time. But the man that you talked about in Virginia, that operator, he saw it as his role to lead and develop these young people, will you preach David Sawyers? Can you build a business on young people?

I think you can, but also kind of baked into that answer. He was releasing them out into the world. So he was having constant turnover. But I guess if it was football, he's the college football coach that's sending people to NFL. But here's what I would challenge somebody says they can't find the people they want. I think that's the wrong focus.

You're not there to find them. how do you become the business that the people you're looking for are looking for. That's it. That's it. And I think the focus should be, how do I become the business that the people I'm looking for are looking for? Okay, so let's stop there and let's stay there, but I'm interrupting you. So when I walk into the two Chick-fil-A's that our family frequents, one is on Columbia Avenue and Franklin, the other's right off Cool Springs Boulevard or Mallory Lane. Thank you, guys. booth, appreciate that. But you guys know what I'm talking about. There's always, and I don't care where you go. I can fly tonight from Nashville to Dallas, Texas. And then I could fly from Dallas the next day to Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm just making cities, you know, just picking it. And every chickfly I went into would have the same caliber of young person talking to me. So how do you

attract those kids? Well, I can tell you the answer to that, but then I didn't have to kill you, so I wouldn't want to do that. Oh, it's trade secrets. I got to be careful. I got to be careful. No, here's the way I would answer that. You're a man at this point in your life who gets paid for asking good questions. Yes. And, you know, asking better questions produces better answers. Asking fantastic questions produces fantastic answers. And I think it actually goes back to the question that you asked.

So let me take you all the way back to the beginning. You were asking about Truitt earlier. Tickfil-A started about the same time as chains like McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's and all that. back in the 1960s is when Truitt started the first Chick-fil-A in 1967, and all those other chains started roughly about the same time. Now, there was a fundamentally different question that Truist asked himself that I think really speaks to the question you just asked. What most of our competitors did at that time is they assumed

that the building block for business was capital, that you had to have a lot of capital. And so they looked for people with lots of capital, because at this point it probably takes about three to three and a half million dollars to open a chick filet. So kind of retrofitting it back to then, our competitors were looking for people that had access to $3 million in capital to buy the land, build the building, you know, put food on the shelves, stop the registers, all that stuff. So the first question they asked themselves was, does this person have access to $3 million worth of capital? If they didn't, they move on to the next candidate. it. Truitt, by contrast, felt like capital was relatively easy to find. You know, banks have it,

you know, stacks of it. He felt like the bigger issue was talent and motivation, that what he was looking for was talent and motivation. And so his first question was not, do they have access to $3 million? You want to take a guess at what his first question and what the same question is, Fast forward to the year 2019, still the same question. First question we ask ourselves when we're looking for our next franchisee. You know what that question is? No. Would I want my kids working for this person?

Imagine sitting across the table and as you're interviewing your next franchisee, number one question on your mind, would I want my kids working for that person? Doesn't that answer a thousand other questions? Isn't that really clarifying? Yes, it is. It's not, do they have $3 million? in the bank, it's, is that the kind of person who has the talent to attract people and the motivation to want to develop them?

Because if he does, he'll become the business that the people he's looking for are looking for. And so that's the common denominator, is that's the first question we start with when we're looking for the next Chick-fil-A operator. And interestingly, I don't know what the statistics would be at our competitors, but I've got to imagine if you went to the headquarters of most of our competitors, thinking of one in particular up in Chicago and ask the question, how many of their kids are working in their restaurants? My guess would be it's a really low percentage in the fast food places. If you ask that same question

at the Chick-fil-A support center, which is our headquarters, we don't call it headquarters anymore, we call it the Chick-Fillet Support Center, the last figure I saw for the percentage of our kids that work for Chick-fil-A, 85%. So we've created the environment. We literally do want our own kids to work in. That's exactly right. And then the offshoot of that is you've created an environment where good people want to go. Bingo.

And good people get further along in life that we help them get further faster in their careers. Because a lot of those people aren't going to end up at Chick-fil-A, but that's okay with us. We just want them to go out and make their mark on the world. And we just want to use their time at Chick-fil-A to help them make their mark on the world. I'm curious, David. How many of those, do you have an idea? And if you don't, that's fine. But I'm curious what the percentages of kids who come in and this is their first job and they stay with the company for a long time and they move up on.

Great question. I can't answer it exactly as you asked you. I don't know how many of them started as their first job and ended up as operators. But I can't tell you this. Last figure I saw was about 65 to 70 percent of our operators are grown from within. Wow. They worked in a Chick-fil-A and then became. a Chick-fil-A operator. So it's close to 70% of our operators come from within the system.

Wow. Now, that's sustainability. Here's another stat that will blow your mind. I just chat with our HR folks a couple weeks ago. Last year, we had a little over 100 opportunities for new operators, for new locations, for operators to fill. Take a guess how many people applied for that hundred and changed locations? I'm going to say, an absurd. third number, I'm going to say 50,000 people. How about 80,000? 80,000. Okay, I wasn't as far off as I thought. I thought you were going to laugh at me. 80,000 people applied for 100 operator positions. That's the figure I was given a few weeks ago. Yeah. Without giving it all away, because I don't want to go too far in the weeds, I want to cover some other things. But how long does it take you to sift through that?

Or is there just such a high standard that that 80,000 gets whittled down really quick? Well, we've become more and more sophisticated at whittling it down. But I'll also tell you, Ken, back to the early days, there were times there was no one applying for a certain location. You know, we had to go out and recruit people because it wasn't a very attractive opportunity at the time. And especially as we got into further and further away from Atlanta where we started, it got harder and harder to find people. So it hadn't always been that way. I want to encourage your audience that, You know, that sounds like a wild number, but that was a number of 40 years in the making. You know, it's not an overnight thing.

You know, 37 years ago, there were times we had to beg people, you know, to join us and join the mission that we were on. It wasn't going to be very financially attractive, but man, were we going to make our mark on this world? And that's what they signed up for. Wow. Okay. Now, for fun, because I got the marketing guru on here and we got a bunch of business people. So I got to get some fun marketing questions and some practical stuff as well. Sure.

I think the cows thing is brilliant. I'm just curious. Have you been able to measure? I'm certain that the answer is yes, because you stayed with it for so long. Was that a major game changer in helping build the brand just from a pure marketing perspective, the dairy cows? Oh, yeah. There's no question. Huge, huge difference maker in the life of the chain.

But what you might find interesting is there's so many stories behind it. But let me just share with you one of the stories that precipitated that. I'll never forget. I was in Birmingham, Alabama, at a focus group. And a focus group is one of these things where you sit behind the mirror and you've got customers on the other side and you've got a moderator. That would be so fun for me. Oh, it's great.

But it's so enlightening. Because when you're surrounded by Chick-fil-A or whatever business you're in all the time, you have blind spots. You know, and a lot of times these focus groups, not only do your blind spots get revealed, but sometimes they get revealed in a super powerful way. And that's what happened. at this particular focus group, we were sitting behind the glass.

The moderator was asking some questions. And here's the way one customer commented about Chick-fil-A that really led, in some ways, to the need for the Cal campaign. They said this. They said, I feel like Chick-fil-A is this wholesome, all-American, clean-cut company. They do everything right, but I wouldn't want to spend a weekend with them because they're boring. And so we had this image that we were doing a lot of things.

right, but we were boring. And coming out of that, we said, you know what, we need to do have something, and our marketing seemed like the right place to introduce it, that makes us unexpectedly fun. It's almost like the straight-A student that you find out is at a comedy club. You never would have expected. You couldn't have seen that one coming. And that's what we needed is something that would take us out of the realm of boring and make us a little more interesting, a little more approachable, and a little more fun.

to be around. So what came first? The dairy cow idea or the eat more chicken misspelled? Well, it's a little bit of both. We, gosh, it's such a long story. Let me make it as short as I can, but we had decided about 1995 or so that we wanted to do 3D billboards as our medium of choice because at that time, we were still a pretty small restaurant chain. We wouldn't be able to out television McDonald's or Wendy's or all the rest. We said they're dominating all those mediums. Let's pick a medium that's not being dominated and let's try and dominate it. And that was outdoor billboards.

And so as we looked around, we got some inspiration from L.A. and Orlando that in L.A. or Orlando, 3D billboards were very commonplace, but beyond that, not so much. And so we said, let's do 3D billboards as our weapon of choice to build a brand, which at that time, billboards were used almost exclusively as directional. You know, next exit, take a right. And we said, we're not going to use them as directional, we're going to use them to build a brand. And so one of the first billboards that the Richards group is the one that we collaborated with out of Dallas, Texas, one of the first billboards they came up with was a picture of a sandwich.

Picture a giant billboard with a sandwich and over the top of the sandwich was the expression in white letters, don't have a cow. And we love that idea. I was such a popular slogan. So that was kind of the beginning of the campaign. Soon thereafter, and we told them, he said, can we get a 3D version of that? And they said, no, we don't think that's a 3D billboard, but, you know, we'll keep that in mind.

So a couple months later, they did a giant rubber chicken out in Dallas, a 48-foot rubber chicken on a billboard on the main expressway that said, if it's not Chick-fil-A, it's a joke. And people love this billboard. it became so iconic that it became the place when they had the, like the traffic helicopters. Oh, yeah. That's a traffic is backing up at the rubber chicken, you know, the Chick-Fleigh rubber chicken, where it became that iconic in the city of Dallas. Then the third billboard that kind of these three come together in a minute,

the third billboard was one, picture a billboard of a giant Chick-fil-A sandwich, and about halfway across, somebody has started to paint this sandwich. About halfway across is just a white billboard where they haven't finished painting yet, and there's a ladder and some buckets, and then a message on the white part of the billboard, boss, got hungry, be back soon. One day there was a creative name David Ring that worked for the Richards group. Those three ideas kind of collided in his mind, and the don't have a cow became eat more chicken. The painting on the billboard with the ladder came from that billboard and the rubber chicken became cows and those three ideas came into someone's mind

collided and he came up with a little scratch on the back of a napkin idea what about if we had this billboard eat more chicken yeah and it's brilliant it's absolutely brilliant because the cow I've got three kids 13 11 and 10 and the youngest one finally came up with it we've passed one of those billboards recently you're like it's not a dairy the actual cows we eat or not and I was like that's the whole point they picked the most like iconic looking cow, which is the dairy cow with the spot. I'm guessing that's why it was picked. That's exactly right. It was picked because it was the cutest. Yeah. You know, and the irony is dairy cows aren't really used for meat. A few people would pick up on it. But it was the cutest cow.

So it was, it was done not because it's how we would get meat from, but because it's cute. It's just brilliant. You mentioned a concept earlier as related to the history of the company and that second mile service. But I want you to talk about something to leaders right now. leaders of organizations are trying to grow it. We've talked a lot about the culture. Talk about second mile service that organizations can and should be offering their team, their employees, because that's what Chick-Filley does. Let me start with second-mile service this way. We actually have what we call first-mile service and then second-mile service. And I want to distinguish between the two because it applies to both employees and customers. So the first

mile is the service that people would expect from you. And you've got to do that with excellence. So there are all kind of things in the first mile that we feel like are service that we need to do with excellence because that's what people expect. And then second mile is kind of designed to be service people wouldn't expect from us. And so second mile is always about going to a level of service that wouldn't be expected. Where first mile, but in order to get to the second mile, we've got do the first mile well. The same thing with employees. There are certain things that you just have to do with excellence to be competitive.

And if you don't do those, you won't be competitive. But then there are other things where we take it to the next level. And that next level is what creates a competitive advantage. And so I think that's an important nuance, but it's, you know, it is a nuance, but it's a super important nuance is probably a better way to say it. Yeah. And so here is the thing I would tell an employee whenever I would hire them at Chick-Fillade and realize, can we have a 97% retention rate at our corporate support center and with our operators in an industry known for turnover? That's what I love about it.

It's not like it's the industry. The industry is known for turnover. It's our unique position within the industry that creates that retention percentage. but every time I would interview a candidate toward the end of the interview, I'd have a conversation that would go something like this. And Ken, if you don't mind, you'll be my interviewee. Great. And Ken, we would have, we probably would have spent, you know, 12 months, you know,

or more interviewing you. It's a very thorough process to get you to this point. You would have interviewed with everybody that you're going to work with. And so then Ken, after all of that had gone on, here's the conversation you and I have. I say, Ken, we have come to the conclusion, Ken, we cannot imagine another day without you in this organization. You know, Trut Kathy used to teach me that we become like those we surround ourselves with for better or for worse. And Ken, when I'm around you, I feel like I'm getting better by the day. And I want that positive influence in my life.

And, Ken, we want to be a positive influence in your life. And Ken, it's not just me. Everybody you've interviewed with sees their life getting better. as a result of you joining this team. And Ken, we want you to make paychecks here that are going to blow your mind. You know, we want you to make paychecks that will be bigger than you ever thought possible

because collectively we're going to work together to create kind of value to allow that to happen. And Ken, at the end of your career at Chick-fil-A, I want you to be able to look me in the eye in no uncertain terms, tell me this. I want you to be able to look me in and say, David, the least important thing I ever got from Chick-fil-A was my paycheck. Now, for most people, Ken, the only thing they get for their employer is a paycheck.

In fact, they try to compete based on paychecks. I want your paycheck to be the least important thing you ever get. So at this point, Ken, what I would do is I would have a pad and paper, and I would begin to ask you a series of questions. And I'd say, Ken, for your paycheck to be the least important thing you ever get from Chick-fil-A, I want to understand what your remarkable future and what your remarkable career in life would need to look like for that to be true. And so I would then begin to ask you a series of questions. And those questions would include things like, tell me about your bucket list items.

Tell me about who you want to become in life as a result of this. What will be important for your family? You know, on and on and on it goes. A whole list of questions. and the whole time you're answering all those questions, I'd be writing down, taking copious notes. And typically, I wouldn't stop till I had about three pages of notes about what your remarkable future needs to look like.

And at the end of that exercise, typically the candidate would look me and I and say, David, I feel like you know me better than my own family does. And I said precisely, you know, if I'm going to be your leader, I need to be the world's greatest student of you. And I need to be the world's greatest student of who you're trying to become and what you're trying to accomplish in life

so I can partner with you to help that happen. So at the end of that exercise, I got my three pages of notes. You know what that three pages of notes represented to me? My job description as it relates to you. See, typically a company is more than happy to give you a three-page job description and basically say, if you just do all this with excellence,

we'll give you a paycheck every couple weeks. If I'm going to give you a three-page job description, I felt like I needed to have one as well. And so I wanted you to do yours with excellence, but I wanted to do mine with excellence. And what the net net of me doing mine with excellence is you would look me in the eye at the end of your career and say, the least important thing I ever got from Chick-fil-A was in fact my paycheck. Wow. Wow.

That is fantastic. That's a game change right there, folks. That's a master's degree in leadership. I'm not kidding. I'm not, listen, I've known David over a decade. I'm not blowing hot air up your skirt. That is absolutely phenomenal. And there's a reason why it worked and it works so well. Okay, I'm going to do one more serious question. Then we've got to have just a little bit of fun because of the iconic brand. So this is normally the last question I asked guests. But then we'll have some fun here, a little quick round about chick flight. I want you, David, if you were going to sit down and have lunch with every one of our listeners, men and women that are that want to lead, their personal growth junkies, they want to make the most of their lives, they want to live their calling. They're just getting after it. You've had a tremendous career. You're not even done. You're in a whole new chapter doing so many things that made my head spin,

as we talked earlier. If you were going to sit and have lunch with our listeners and just share one piece of advice with them, what would you share? You know, almost going back, Ken, to my first day at Chick-Fleys, a 21-year-old where my goal was to make as much money as I could and retire early. I see that is so flawed now. I almost feel like, gosh, if my goal was to just stop doing what I was doing as quickly as possible, what does that tell me about how much I'm enjoying what I'm doing? And by contrast, I contrast that with a little line out of good to great,

one of my favorite books by Jim Collins, I'm sure you've read it. There's a line in that book that he says, true greatness comes in direct proportion to passionate pursuit of a purpose beyond money. When I read that line, it took me a few times through to really grasp the profoundness of that idea. Here's the way I would interpret. Every business exists to make money, no exceptions.

And so 100% of the businesses need to make money out there. Chick-fil-A needs to make money. Whatever your listeners' businesses, all of us need to make money. So 100% of business exists to make money. But not every business has a purpose beyond making money for which they exist. And in Jim Collins' research, 100% of the great companies, you know, the ones that really take it to the next level, all had a purpose beyond money for which they existed. And as a 21-year-old kid, when my whole goal was just to make a lot of money and retire, that was my entire mission in life,

was just make money and retire. But what I discovered at Chick-fil-A and what I think separates the great companies from the good ones is a purpose beyond money for which they exist. And if you'll pursue that purpose, the money side of the equation won't be the problem. I found that to be the case personally, and I think it's true professionally as a business, that we need a purpose beyond money to take it to a whole other level and get a whole different level of results out of our business. That is so good. What a great answer. All right, just for fun, David. I never know what I'm going to get when I ask executives that have been with a company so long because you're so in love with the brand. but we'll see if David gives, so I'm going to do multiple choice, folks. He does not know what these questions are. We'll see if I can get him to choose. Okay, here we go, David. You're going to choose from two options. These are all menu items, okay? And I've never asked you these questions. I'm dying to know. And this is fun for you listeners because you all have answers. Here we go. David, you got to choose one of the other. Is it the classic chicken sandwich or the spicy chicken sandwich? Classic. Okay. Classic chicken.

nuggets or grilled nuggets. Oh, folks. I got him. He's thinking about it. I'm going to just barely nod to the classic. Okay. All right. All right.

Very good. This is an absurd question, but I'm going to go ahead and ask it. Waffle fries or side salad? Waffle fries. All right. Good man. Now I know you're truly an American. And then finally, sweet tea or the Chick-fil-A lemonade.

Chick-fil-A lemonade. See, that's me. I'm Chick-fil-A lemonade, grilled nuggets, and the spicy chicken. There is. So we're slightly different. But I got to tell you, if you had one meal, this is the final, you don't have to choose. You got one meal you're picking off the menu. It's your go-to menu.

What's David Sawyers having? You know, I actually like breakfast. Oh, I love your breakfast. And the new burrito bowls, kind of my go-to now. Really? I've got to tell you, have never had it. Yeah, oh, it's fantastic. A burrito bowl.

A burrito bowl. Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, good stuff. Hey, David, we are big fans of Chick-fil-A. We're thrilled to have Dan with us at our Entree Leadership Summit last year, 2018, and just big fans of everything you all do. Of course, Dave goes on and on about what it was like to get to know Truitt in the times that he did get to know Truitt.

And this has been a master class in leadership. Thank you, David, for hanging out with us. We're better for it. Pure joy, my friend. Big thanks to David Solis for hanging out with us. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I've enjoyed the fun part at the end because sometimes these executives of these companies, they won't give you like their real opinion on the product.

I remember at Entree Leadership Summit, I was interviewing Alan Malawi, former CEO of Ford. And I said, what's your favorite Ford vehicle? And he listed off the entire product line. It was a nice answer. It was funny. I was like, oh, come on, you've got to have one car at Ford. that you like. And so David told us his favorite menu items. That was big fun. Great stuff. All right. Alex Judd joins me in studio. Alex, how are you, sir? I'm doing Golden. How are you,

Ken? I'm having a blast. How are you doing with all these coaching clients? You're talking to these great entree leadership folks every day. Man, it's been awesome, especially lately. We've been talking about a lot of the stuff that David just talked to you about. That whole interview is gold, but specifically that line that he almost breeze past where he said, the way you view things impacts the way you do things. That's good because it rhymes, but it's also good for many reasons other than that. It's so funny how people's perspective

has a massive effect on the way they act and do the things that matter most. The perspective that matters most is the one that you have of the person that's looking at you in the mirror. And that's why our team created a leadership growth assessment because we wanted the people on our team, but also we wanted the people we serve

to be able to honestly get the perspective they need of themselves, the person that they can control. So if you want that leadership assessment tool, you can text leader growth, no spaces, all one word, leader growth to 33444. Again, it's leader growth to 33444 or you can click the link in the show notes. Alex, thanks, man. And Alex is doing a fantastic job, not only as one of our entree leadership coaches, but as host of the Entry Leadership Summit and Entry Leadership Master's

series. So if you come to one of those events in their future, make sure you say hi to Alex and give him a big high five. Thanks for hanging out with us, bud. Thanks so much, Ken. All right, we care about what you think. We've told you that over and over over the years, and we really do mean what we say. And so I want to ask you, if you are consuming this podcast and you enjoy it, it's giving you value, we would ask for your highest value for us. And that is your opinion. Would you consider rating and reviewing this podcast wherever you listen to the Entree Leadership podcast, and Then maybe share one of the episodes to your friends. And if you haven't subscribed, hit the subscribe button.

That helps us grow. If you would consider doing that, we know that you have a lot going on, a lot of distractions. Taking those just few seconds would be so valuable to us. And we want to say thank you in advance. Now, if you want to review this episode and help us to continue to deliver top-rated high-quality content for you, please click the link to review this particular episode in this episode's show notes. We really value what you think and feel. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Well, that looks like it's going to do it. So on behalf of Alex Judd and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you.

Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman. in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.