EntreLeadership - #405: Chick-fil-A’s Competitive Advantage with David Salyers

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Who would’ve thought a little fast-food restaurant serving chicken sandwiches would become a global, industry-leading powerhouse known for its customer service? That’s right, Chick-fil-A’s success isn’t just a result of their delicious food. David Salyers, creator of Spark and former vice president of marketing, growth and hospitality at Chick-fil-A, reveals the company’s competitive advantage: their culture. From hiring to team building to finding a mentor, David gives us a behind-the-scenes look—based on his 37 years of service—at the leadership principles that guide Chick-fil-A and made it a multibillion-dollar company that truly puts people first.   entreleadership.com/podcast David Salyers' website Roam's website Spark course from David Salyers Intentional Interview Checklist 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

You know, I've talked with thousands of business owners, and I like to ask this question, and that is simply, How's business? And many business owners will answer that with a response that sounds like this. Well, it's pretty good. Things are growing. But you've got to stop and ask, is growth really the focus of a business? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and the profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is David Salier. David's been a top leader for many years at the Chick-fil-A organization.

He's back today in the Entree Leadership Studio by popular demand. This guy's got so much firsthand boots on the ground knowledge about what it was really like to work at Chick-fil-A, not only recently in their incredible culture, but how it was shaped and developed early on. David jumped in right out of college with the mindset to cash out early, to retire quickly, to ride the wave. and he had a plan for his life that was kind of all about him. But all that changed when David met Truitt Cathy. Well, I first met Truett Kathy when I was a junior in college, and I got recruited out of college by Truett and literally started Daniel four hours after

college graduation. I graduated Saturday morning. I started Saturday afternoon. But what I had in my mind as a 21-year-old was this. I said, I want to make as much money as I can, as fast as I can, to retire as early as I can. I think this is every 21-year-old's dream, right? Well, that was, I could think of nothing more remarkable in life than if I could accomplish

that. And I'd set the goal of 35. By 35, I want to be retired. And I thought, if I can do that, life couldn't possibly get better than that. So I showed up to Chick-fil-A, which was nothing like what you know of today. It was a converted air freight warehouse. There were about 20, 25 people on the staff. They had run out of room in the warehouse.

So they cut a hole through the wall, pulled up a lot. pulled up a mobile home, and my first office was in a mobile home attached awareness. That was Chick-fil-A. Talk about humble beginnings. Yeah. Amazing. And they had just hired a guy to start the marketing department in January. I graduated in June.

So at that point, the two of us were the marketing department at Chick-fil-A. And ironically, this gentleman's name was Steve Robinson. Steve had been the director marking at Six Flags, where I had been a summer intern in the marketing department for the last three summers. Wow. But we both ended up at Chick-fil-A separate from each other. Trude had been talking to him, Trude had been talking to me. I didn't know, and I didn't know Steve was there until I showed up at our annual convention

as a student guest in my senior year. And there was Steve behind the registration table. It was one of these, what are you doing here? I said, what are you doing here? Wow. So anyway, I showed up thinking my goal was to retire early and, you know, but instead, I found something, Daniel. I would couch as a thousand times. better. Something that I couldn't have imagined existed when I was 21-year-old. In fact, something I wouldn't

have believed had I not experienced it, seen it, you know, and watched it play out in front of my very eyes. Instead of finding the job I could retire from early, I found the job I wouldn't want to retire from. See, the thought that there could be a job you wouldn't want to retire from was so foreign to what I've been taught. You know, I've been taught, thank God it's Friday, and, you know, that work with something to be endured, you know, and work with something to be retired from. And so in my mind, work was something to be dreaded. But what I found is work can be something endearing. Work can be something rewarding, satisfying, something you look forward to doing. And Truit, you say it this way, said, if you love what you do, you'll never work another day in your life.

So I feel like I spent 37 years at Chick-fil-A and never worked a day in my life, got paid anyway. Amazing. Pretty good gig, if you can get it. But more importantly, he just reframed what work is all about for me. And I remember going up to Truitt's office when he was in his 80s. I said, Truitt, man, what are you still doing here? You're 401K, fully funded. Dave Ramsey would be proud of you.

That's right. You know, you're 401k, fully funded. I said, why are you still here? He'd say, David, why would I stop doing something I love this much? See, that view of life is so much more important than just the job, and the money. He taught me so many things that the real riches in life are never found in a bank account. You know, the real riches are found in other places.

And so on and on and on it goes. But I got to see the story of Chick-fil-A unfold from a 21-year-old kid for 37 years. And it grew from, you know, it wasn't a startup when I joined, but it was awful close. You saw a whole lot of growth and change. And I want to talk about those. But I want to say real quick, I love how you said the job that you wouldn't want to retire from. Yes.

When did it click for you that that's what you had found? Yeah, that was probably several years in. But there wasn't probably a point in time. But what I noticed is for the first two years that I worked at Chick-fil-A, I was making so little money. This was the other thing. Chick-fil-A offered me the least amount of money of any company. I had done really well in college, both academically and extracurricular.

So I had a lot of great job offers coming out of school. I ended up going with Chick-fil-A, and it was the smallest offer I got. And that's a whole other story we can get into if you want, but I got some good advice from a mentor of mine to take the job with Chick-fil-A, not for the size of the paycheck, but for the size of the opportunity. That's good. But I'll just share that because this may help your listeners. Basically, I was struggling because I had some really good job offers coming out of college,

and Chick-fil-A, for whatever reason, seemed like the one I should take, but if you just looked at, I want to retire early, it looked like the one furthest from my goal. I mean, literally, Chick-Fleigh offer is 50% less than what I was getting from other people, the financial offers. But I had a mentor in my life that pulled me aside in the parking lot of the ATO house. I was an ATO fraternity at University of Georgia,

and he said this. He said, saliers, he said, the last thing you need to worry about coming out of college is how much money you're going to make. he said find a leader you believe in and that a leader you want to become more like because the leader you put yourself under is a picture of the future you and do you like that picture oh that's really good he said find a company that you would be proud to work for like you know at dinner conversation party everybody's going to ask where do you work and you want a company a brand you would be proud to work for and truitt lived his entire life uh with proverbs 21 is kind of

mantra, I guess we'd say, a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. And so basically, this guy was telling me, find a company with a good name, because that's rather to be chosen than great riches, and your name will be associated with that name. So that really, I was in the marketing department almost my entire career. I used to think about a brand. Like if you ask me, how do you define a brand? I'd say it's a good name. And that my job was to build a good name for chick-fil-A. And if you build a good name, everything else financially kind of takes care of itself. Well, it's really key here that I don't want to skip past the leadership principle. Yeah. And our stories are very similar. I started with Dave when I was 21.

And a very similar season of where do I really want to be? And I didn't have that great mentor that you had that made it that explicit. But I understood that Dave Ramsey was going somewhere. And what I came on for in terms of a paycheck was really small, but it was an opportunity. Yes. And I could tell he was taking this thing somewhere and he would cast the vision. He would say, this is where we're going and this is what you get to be a part of. You can help me build this thing. And if you do, you get to share in the fruit of all of our collective labor. And as leaders, business owners out there listening, you know, oftentimes you hear business owners go, I can't find good help.

And it sounds like the principle here is tell people where you're going. Give them something excited about. You don't have to wave a bunch of money in their face. You need to pay them a decent wage. But tell them what it could turn into and cast that vision for what this thing's going to be when you guys build it together. You're exactly. And there's kind of two mini lessons that come out of what. You just said, one is, what should you look for as employee?

But the other is, if you're the business leader, what's your role is to create what you just talked about? So the two, you know, the first two things were find a leader that you would want to be under, you know, you'd want your life to look a lot like them. Second, a good name. The third thing he said was find a job you'd be uniquely gifted to do. You know, one of the things that I've always been encouraged to do is be a student of myself and be a student of you know, what am I good at? What am I not good at? You know, you guys talk about personal. You're the

problem. Well, if you're the problem, then you've got to understand where are the problem areas, where are your strengths, where are your weaknesses. But I wanted to find something I would be uniquely gifted to do. And then fourth, find something you'd be passionate and energized by doing. Because I think the wrong question to ask many times when we go to work is, can I do something? you know if you're driven enough if you're smart enough if you're passionate you can do a lot you know most anything i think the better question the more instructive question the more profound question is what should you do given what you're good at given what you're not what can you do what should you do to maximize your potential and so those four things when he told me that

in a teal parking lot it's like the you know the the scales fell from my eyes it's like that's It's like, that's why I'm struggling with this. The other jobs would probably allow me to make more money and maybe retire. But this one gives me a better opportunity because I like the looks of who Truit was and put myself under his leadership, loved the brand, thought the nature of the work that they were offering me. I'd be super energized by I'd be really good at. So I ended up taking the job with Chick-fil-A and finding the job I wouldn't want to retire from. Well, you bet on the right horse.

And what we both know about taking those other jobs. jobs is, yes, you could mathematically run out. Maybe I could retire earlier. But often what happens is people get into a job where they're miserable or they grind it out and they become a workaholic and they hate it. Because they can do it. Or they lose their family because there's all this tension of performing and something that are just, they hate going in every day and now they're fighting with the spouse. And, you know, those places eat people's lunch. And I shouldn't say it's those places because it's the right place for someone else. But what you figured out is this is who David is and that's what aligns with what Chick-fil-A was about.

You know, you touched on something else, Daniel. I'd love to dig a little deeper on because I think it'd be helpful to those listening. I get asked all the time, as you might imagine, when you work for Chick-fil-A, where do you find those amazing people? Like, where do you find the amazing operators? Where do you find the amazing team members? That's probably the number one question I get asked nowadays. And I tell people, I think that's the wrong question.

It's not about finding the people you want. it's about becoming the organization that the people you're looking for are looking for. That's so good. Become the organization. When you were telling me your story earlier, Daniel, you know, Dave was creating the organization a guy like you was looking for. So I think that puts it back on us. It's not I got to go out and find these amazing people. No, I can create the organization that those people are looking for.

Now, what does that look like? So you talked about becoming that organization. would be the inverse of these four things. So you've got to be a good leader. You've got to have a good name. You've got to have a place that people uniquely qualify to fit in the right seats and they're going to be developed, passionate, energized.

I want to talk about passion and energy. Yes. Many times younger people in their career, I know I was here, there was a lot of things that I was passionate about, but I had not yet earned the right to request the dream job, if you will. I needed to earn my stripes.

How do you know when it's time to just do the work and maybe it's not something you're entirely passionate about. And when it's like, hey, this is a season of learning and developing and doing some things out of duty. Yeah. Effectively, it's this. I feel like the question I got a lot at work was, how does somebody get promoted around here? I used to tell people that's the wrong question. It's not about getting promoted. The right question is, how do I add more value? Because if you add more value, you will become promotable. And so the most promotable people never focused on getting promoted. They focused on adding more value. And so here's the way I would think about it. When I used to do performance reviews,

you know, early in my career, that was like the worst day of my year because I felt like I was judging other people. I was like the judge and the jury on the performance reviews. And I felt like it was not healthy for our relationship. And I didn't like that. I didn't like being in judgment of other people. So along the way, I figured out a little formula that allowed me to become more of a coach and developer than I judge. And now we're sitting on the same side of the table instead of I'm sitting on one side, you're sitting on the other. So here's what I used to, I call it CCCP. When I first hire somebody, what we focus on totally is competency in what we hired you to do. and a lot of your performance review would be around are you doing a plus work at what we hired you to do?

And we keep focusing on competency and making you an A plus player, even though, even if this is not your long-term place to be in that, we'll get to that in just a second. So then when I felt like they were an A-plus player at what we'd hired them to do, then the next performance review, whenever that would be, we'd start talking about capacity. How can we allow you to do that A plus work, and let's call it 80% of the time? So we'd work on, you know, there's a learning curve that would allow that to happen. There's delegation that would allow that to happen. There's technology platforms that would allow, they're all kind of ways to become more efficient and be able to do it 80% of the time when it used to take you 100% of the time. So what I'm talking about here is creating more capacity within your current time constraint,

not adding more hours. You know, there's a whole other story we can talk about that, but let's just say you work 40 hours a week. So we're talking about doing the same A-plus work in 32 hours that it used to take you 40 hours. That's what we would focus on, a season of capacity. So once we're there, now all of a sudden I freed up 20% of your time that we could almost do anything with. So what I would do with that 20% of your time is I'd start to look at what are you passionate about? What are you really gifted at? And let's give you an assignment using, let's call it that eight hours, that's nothing like your day job that's all about, you know, what you'd really be excited about doing and what you'd really be good at doing.

And we'll, so let's say that you're working in the county department, you always dream to be in a teacher or you wanted to work in HR or something. We could take that eight hours and give you a project or an assignment that would allow you to explore. Be part of a team or a workforce and learning. But here's what's really cool. If you find their area of passion energy where it intersects with their talents that have been developed into strengths, that eight hours looks more like 16 or 24. Because they're so good at what they're doing, all of a sudden they get so much more done. So let's say now you're contributing not 120% of what we pay you to do. Maybe it looks more like 140%.

So that would be, you know, so it's first competency, then capacity, then contribution. to this other area. Guess what happens, Daniel, to somebody contributing 140% of what we're paying them to do? That other area probably asks if they can stay full time. They get promoted. They get recruited. And guess what happens after we promote somebody? They go right back to the first C.

Now we've got to be competent in what we promote you. And then we've got to add capacity. Then we've got to add to contribution. Then we'll get promoted again. And then we go right. So I always found those four steps to be super. helpful to get people closer and closer with each job to their ultimate job. But you could start that process regardless of what you're doing.

Even if you're not in your dream job, you're not in an area that's super passionate. You still got to do A plus work because that's what we hired you to do. But now you can start to work beyond that. I love the way that you incorporate the passion component. And many leaders that I've seen end up working really, really hard in their skill and get promoted away from their passion. And there's a point when they just implode because they're like, I'm so, yeah, thanks for the paycheck, but I hate this, you know, but I happen to be good at it. And that, you know, so it's like I'm exchanging my talent for dollars, but I don't want to do this anymore. You know, it's interesting.

Just philosophically, Daniel, I never started with the job or the job description. I started with a person. And I think that's philosophically the difference. When you start with a job, then you can squeeze a square peg in a round hole just because they're smart enough, driven enough, and they can do this. the job, but when you start with a person as your starting point, and then say, okay, given their strengths, their passions, their value, what job makes sense for them to do? When you start with a person and find the job, it's very different than start with a job to find the person. There's a lot of small businesses that may listen to this and say, I would love if we had enough

seats to move people around like that, but there's just a few of us, and we all have to wear a lot of hats. And maybe someday when we have a few hundred employees and we've got the luxury of kind of shifting people around and trying different things, how do we do this when we're small? Great question. In fact, nowadays, I retired from Chick-fil-A about two years ago. So I've got a number of small businesses that I'm involved with right now, but one of them comes to mine. I give you an actual example. I'm involved with a business in Atlanta, Georgia, called Rome, R-O-A-M. We call it an innovative workplace, a collaborative workspace. Some people would compare it to We work, but we think we're as different from WeWork as McDonald's is from Chick-fil-A.

But that's a story for another day. But basically, it's a small business. We've got six locations in Atlanta. Each location has like four to five employees, so really small. So when COVID hit, all of a sudden, we had six locations. We had to shut down for about three months, no revenue. So we're a real small business, and now we've got real small revenue. Getting smaller. Getting smaller. But what we decided to do is we felt like, just based my Chick-fil-A experience, a lot of experiences I'd had through the years that we wanted to approach it not in a defensive posture where we immediately shut down and cut back on expenses, but how could we use the time to move forward? And so we took the entire organization and

did some brainstorming, came up with 12 projects that we wanted people to work on. And everybody got to self-select in to the project they were most interested in. And we worked on all those projects during the three months that we were closed down. And when we got to the other side of this, one of our managing partners said, I feel like we got three years worth of work done in three months. And that's exactly how it felt, because we were creating new revenue streams that we knew would benefit the business on the other side, but because we didn't have our day job to distract us, we could go really deep, really quick. And we had literally a dozen different new value streams that have been created. So now that we're on the other side of COVID, all of a sudden, all those are

starting to reap a harvest. And all these people got to work on things they were passionate about, you know, whereas with only four people, five people, you can't necessarily do it. But now this whole project team idea has really taken hold. So now people are volunteering to do, it's almost that 80-20 principle. We just talked about maybe 80% of their time is spent during their day job, but we use that other 20% to let them volunteer to work on things. They're much closer to their passion level. And a lot of them are really finding. That 20% is fuel for the other 80% if the other 80% is not, you know, ideally what they'd like to be doing. It just energizes them.

It's the jet fuel they need. I get the sense that you have really figured out how to coach people and develop people through this process. And it sounds fantastic. And a lot of what we have found is that that intersection between skill and passion also says something about that individual's purpose in life. and we also talk about the purpose in our business and needing to have a purpose that's bigger than just your bottom line. Bingo. How in that process do you connect, this is who we are as an organization, this is our purpose, and tease out some of the, who did God make this person, and how do we connect their purpose to our purpose? Because, I mean, when you get that connection, it's magic.

Well, I really feel like, like I'll continue with Rome since we already talked about that a little bit. As we started to build Rome when it was only one location, we said, we're going to be. to build a business based on culture because I feel like culture is the ultimate competitive advantage. If there's anything I learned at Chick-fil-A, it's the power of culture to do a lot of things. In fact, we had an outside board of directors that was created right after Truitt died and existed for the last couple years of my time there. And we had some major CEOs from major organizations that were on the board. And I'll never forget, I had dinner one night with a guy who had a storied background

and been the CEO of lots of different organizations. And I said, okay, I think the best learning is in the extremes. I said, tell me what you're most impressed with at Chick-Fillet, what you're most concerned about. The thing he was most impressed with was Chick-fil-A's ability to scale culture, is what he said. He said, I've never seen an organization with a better ability to scale culture. He said, the fact your culture is so thick you can feel it at the support center. But he said, when I go to a location in California or Texas, or Tennessee, it feels exactly the same.

How do you guys scale culture? And so I was steeped in this scaling of culture idea and the importance of it. But if you can create a powerful culture, it becomes the magnet that attracts the talent that you're looking for. Remember a minute ago we talked about, you got to become the organization, the people you're looking for are looking for. Well, one of the most significant ways you do that is to create the culture they're looking for.

and be very clear in all cultures to me, at least the powerful cultures, are built around this sense of purpose. You know, there's some central organizing idea that helps create that purpose. And so the most simplified way I can think of to explain it for your audience is I feel like most businesses are started as what I would call a get-rich scheme. They start their business because they want to get rich. and if that's the central organizing idea behind your business, then your whole thought process is around how do I enrich my life at the expense of others? And so you're going to enrich your

life at the expense of your employees, at the expense of your customers, at the expense of your suppliers, at the expense of your community that you serve. And it's this win-lose mindset when a get-rich business is created. What I've discovered at Chick-Fillard, and what I'm trying to replicate in all the businesses I work with now is the exact opposite of a get-rich scheme. It's what I call a be-rich scheme. How do you use your business as a platform to be-rich toward people, not get-rich from them? And this whole be-rich idea is about using the platform of business as an opportunity to enrich the lives of our employees. use it as an opportunity to enrich the lives of our customers.

How do we enrich even the lives of our suppliers? That's a whole other thing I saw at Chick-fil-A. Every supplier that was for Chick-fil-A said, you are my favorite customer. Their eyes would say, you treat me so different because we're looking to create win-win, not win-lose with our suppliers. And then the communities that we serve,

we always wanted it to be a point when a Chick-fil-A opens in your community, the community is celebrating because I know the community just got better as a result of that be-rich business showing up. I don't think they celebrate when a get-rich business shows up. Yeah. So I think that central organizing idea, going back to your original question, that the purpose of the business is not about getting rich, it's about being rich. Well, what you're saying is it's so much less about consumption and more about contribution. Yes.

Right? And so, you know, a lot of business owners do start out with, I just got to pay the bills. Like, that's my purpose. I have to make enough income for my family. And I think it's almost like a Mazel's hierarchy. bit of like survival is our purpose. Yes. And so you and I have the privilege of being a part of organizations that were started with a purpose. I mean, Dave Ramsey had his crash, bankruptcy, and so he started this organization with that very clear sense of a, we're going to be a

be rich organization. You left Chick-fil-A, you're starting companies with that. But for business owners who, they maybe started in survival, they started in a get-rich, and they want to stay with that organization, but start to shift their purpose to a broader, how can we be-rich organization? How do you do that mid-flight? Are you thinking? Because I've been asked this question from a corporate standpoint. Like I have a department within a bigger entity, and how do I do it if I'm one department in a much larger entity, or are they the owner of the business, or I could actually speak

to both? Well, I mean, more often than not, we're working with small business owners who do have the autonomy and the ability to do some unilateral decision-making for their entire organization. And so if I'm a small business owner listening to this and I'm going, oh, crap, I got a get-rich organization, but I want to have a be rich organization. How do I start to make that shift? I mean, my bills are maybe paid now. We'll get some profit coming in, but I sense that we're missing that central theme of purpose. And it's showing up in our recruiting, showing up in the fact

that people are burned out and they don't really love coming into work every day. If that's the secret sauce, how do I get from this purpose that's kind of about me and my family paying the bills to this broader sense of contribution? Yes. Well, what I found, and maybe I'll go back to One of the ways in which this kind of was cultivated and developed at Chick-fil-A is when I would bring somebody on to Chick-fil-A, part of my thought process was that they've got to see things beyond a paycheck that they're excited about. So in a sense, if you're a small business owner, if you couldn't give people a paycheck, would they work here? Because a lot of the greatest organizations I'm aware of, they would. I remember a conversation with like Andy Stanley one time

where early on at North Point Church, the organization he started, they were struggling financially. And he said, but I felt like if we ever got to the point that we were about to shut down, they'd go out and get a part-time job to keep the dream alive. So they'd go get a part-time job somewhere to keep their day job. Well, at Rome, I think if you talk to the employees at Rome, I'll keep using that as the exam.

I think they would tell you, a lot of them took a cut and pay to come to work for Rome. at Chick-fil-A for the first 20 years of money people took a cut in pay because they saw something bigger that they wanted to be part of. And I think the job of this entrepreneur, if they've only got enough money to pay the bills right now,

is you've got to create a picture of a brighter future that people want to be part of. And ultimately, you've got to get beyond paychecks. I used to tell people the final interview that I would do at Chick-fil-A, said, I want you to be able to look me in the eye, at the end of your career and tell me this, the least important thing I ever got from Chick-fil-A was my paycheck. And then we'd have a discussion around what would it take to be true of your future

at Chick-fil-A? So the least important thing you ever got from Chick-Fillet was a paycheck, and I had a whole series of questions that I'd ask them, and I would take copious notes. And I'd usually end up with two or three pages of notes from every individual that I worked with. And you know what that three pages and notes was about the remarkable future they want to create for themselves beyond the paycheck so that the paycheck would be the least important thing? That was my job description as a leader, was to use our platform of business to help them accomplish what they dreamed of. And they weren't dreaming of just a paycheck. If they were dreaming of a paycheck, they were going to use that paycheck to accomplish a dream, right? Yes.

Nobody really just needs the money. the money is a tool to a much bigger picture in their mind. Yeah, where they're going in their life. So let's just start with those. And therefore it mitigates and minimizes the importance of the paycheck. Now, I know everybody's got to have a paycheck. Everybody's got to pay the bills. But I think we use this higher pay, you know, we fuel, use the platform business to help

them accomplish their dreams, not just to get a paycheck every two weeks. and what are these dreams all about. So I'll give you an example. Again, I hate to keep using Rome, but it'd be better than starting on all these other businesses. It's our working model. Yeah, it's our working model. So at Rome, we struggle with that.

We, you know, small business startup, three or four people, you know, we went through a number of months where it wasn't a matter how much money we're going to make this month, is how much money are we going to lose, and can we stay in business? So we went through that whole season. But what really fueled us during that season was the vision and the mission of Rome, which was to renew and inspire the way the world does business

as partners in the story of accomplished dreams. So every word on that has significance, but we want to renew and inspire the way the world does business. That's all about creating be rich businesses, not get rich businesses, and businesses that viewed their platform as an opportunity to enrich the lives of others. And then the partners in the story of accomplished dreams is we knew that not, Not only did each of our team members have dreams that we could partner with them to accomplish, but every one of our members at Rome has a small business or as part of it. And they're all under the four walls of Rome inside, and they are working on accomplishing their dreams.

And how can we become their partner in accomplishing those dreams, not just a desk or a chair or a cup of coffee? You know, we wanted to partner with them to help them accomplish those dreams. And when you get into that area, people get fired up and they're willing to endure a lot. financially when they see the payoff coming down the road. And I feel like that's what great leaders do is, to your point about Dave and what you guys have done, Truitt, Kathy, and Dan Cah, all the people at Chiquet, they're always talking about the bright future that we're headed to. Well, and you know, another thing they do, I know this is true for Truitt, and I experienced

it with Dave. In that season when you're building something, if the owner or the founder is getting rich, while he's telling everybody else we're here to be rich and he's jacking up his lifestyle and he's harvesting out of the organization instead of reinvesting back into fueling that purpose it starts to feel disingenuous

and people are going to go, I'm going to volunteer for this guy but when they effectively are sacrificing with you and of course as percentages I mean even early on Dave was enjoying nicer things and Truit was too but Truit lived in that same 2,500 square foot ranch house

his entire life. His entire life And of course, eventually he had the plane and all that. But as a percentage of the organization, it was actually still very modest. And Dave's, I know what he makes and I know his lifestyle. His percentage of the organization is still very modest in his lifestyle relative to what it could be. Well, just building on that, too, Daniel, early in my career, we were in big trouble at Chick-fil-A. Sales were down. We'd gone over budget by a million dollars in a small organization.

We were in big trouble. And Truit did not take a paycheck for a year during that time. So to your point, it was so authentic and so genuine. Here's the other thing I think we shouldn't miss. You know, we're talking about passion and energy. And I always used to think about passion historically as what are the things that energize us in life? Like, what are the things that charge our battery? And I was always looking to put people in roles that charged their battery didn't drain their battery.

And there's a lot to be said for a job that charges your battery, that you go home energized by what you did all day versus drain. by what you did all day. But there's another dimension to passion that I didn't discover until probably 20 years into my career. I realized that passion is also the things in life were happy to sacrifice for.

There are things, Daniel, in your life, you are happy to sacrifice for. There are things in my life. I am happy to sacrifice for it. It's always amazed me like on a Sunday. I go to North Point Community Church with Annie Stanley. We'll have like a thousand people volunteer to work on Sunday. And they're happy to do it.

But that same person shows up on Monday morning. I know of one guy in particular, I'm thinking about it that work for Coca-Cola, seven-figure income at Coca-Cola. They had to pay him seven-figure for something he would do for free on Sunday. That always struck me that there's more to life than just a paycheck, because you can get the same guy that has a seven-figure paycheck on annual basis to work for free on another day. What's the difference?

Well, over here, you know, he's really passionate. He's a passion. And he's willing to sacrifice because it's a cause he believes in. I'm curious from your experience, he started 21. You're with Chick-fil-A 37 years. Yep. Certainly the organization changed and transformed many times over. What was the biggest transformation for David?

Well, I'm going to copy what one of my mentors and leaders said on that answer, I'm going to shamelessly steal his answer. Somebody asked Jimmy Collins, who was the president of Chick-fil-A. He retired in 2001, I believe it was, something like that. He said, what changed most about Chick-fil-A during your time? Because he saw the organization grow to a billion dollars. And he started working when they had like one restaurant with Trude. Saw it grow to a billion dollars.

And they asked what changed most at Chick-fil-A. You know what his answer was? Me. And that, I think, was part of the key to the whole thing is Truitt tried to hire people who could grow with the business. Because if he wanted to have a growing business, he used to say it this way. Businesses don't succeed or fail. People do.

So if you want to have a successful business, you've got to hire successful business, and then you've got to grow and develop them. I love to think that a lot of businesses use the people to grow the business. but very few people see the business as an opportunity to grow the people. And that's a huge difference because if you see the business as an opportunity to grow the people, your business will grow as a result. As a byproduct, yes. It's a byproduct.

But a lot of times they see the object of the business to grow it instead of growth as the byproduct. And so I think even now about all the businesses as an opportunity to help people grow into all they can be. And that's what the platform business is all about for me. And if you'll grow people, like during Rome, during COVID, the three months we were shut down, not only do we put everybody on project teams, you know what else we did? Intense training. Because they're available now. Normally they're not very available.

So we did a lot of training during that time because we knew if we grew our people, they would grow our business. You're putting seeds in the ground. Exactly. Yeah, that's really good. And so I think viewing your business as a platform to grow people, people versus the people as a platform to grow your business is a huge, you know, change maker and differentiated. Well, it's a significant mindset for a leader to understand we have a responsibility to

invest in our people. And it's one of the best things we can do. I mean, we're going to have a lot of customers. We're going to make a lot of money. We're going to learn a lot of things. But at the end of your career as a leader, what you're really going to remember and still have at the end are these relationships that you've invested in these people. You've built them. And then they have blossomed, and then the people that they lead have blossomed. And you get to see the fruit in the form of lives changed and not just that many more customers. And, you know, I know Truitt had this mindset also about growth, not just growing people, but a lot of business owners talk about how do we grow? How do we grow? How do we get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger?

Truea had a different take on this. Yeah. Yeah, let's dig into that. This is one of my favorite stories. If you asked me for the top three or four stories that marked my life at Chick-fil-A, this was one of them. So in the early 90s, there was a company called Boston Chicken that had 13 locations up in the Northeast. And then suddenly, they attracted a lot of venture capital, and the venture capital turned into loans, and then they did an IPO. And almost overnight, over like two years, they went from 13 locations in the Northeast to as big as Chick-fil-A in what seemed like overnight. And a lot of people at Chick-fil-A were getting nervous because not only was Boston, it changed its name from Boston Chicken to Boston Market.

Oh, I remember Boston Market, yeah. Yeah. Well, that same company. They just changed their name when they did the IPO and along the way. And not only were they on the cover of every restaurant magazine, they were on the cover of every business magazine. I mean, they were on the cover of Forbes and, you know, fortune and all the rest. And they seem like they are the next big thing. And here we are, little Chick-fil-A, and now we have a genuine competitor, good high-quality chicken in the fast food market, you know, and we're going head-to-head with them. And there was a lot of nervousness at Chick-fil-A. So because of that, they had declared they were going to be a billion-dollar business by the year 2000. This

would have been in 92, 93, sometime in the early 90s. So Dan Kathy went to New York on an exploration to see what could we do to grow bigger, faster? And so we looked at all kinds of things. We looked at venture capital, big loans, you know, IPOs, all that kind of stuff. And Dan came back to report back to the executive committee. And there was a group of people sitting around the table. And Dan is, man, he is fired up. You know, you could see the fire in his eyes. And he is selling it.

And he's excited. And we got all these opportunities because we were pretty much almost debt-free at the time. And the whole time he's reporting back on his trip to New York, I was sitting down near Truitt. And Truitt would have been sitting right over here. And I could tell Truitt was not excited about what Dan was all excited about. So at one point in the conversation, very uncharacteristic for Truit, he kind of banged his fist on the table and said, ladies and gentlemen, I am sick and tired of hearing you talk about getting bigger. He said, we need to get better because if we'll get better, customers will demand we get bigger.

So as you might imagine, the entire conversation about drop. Bingo. Everything changed to that point. And the whole conversation went from getting bigger to getting better. So let me tell you the rest of the story, you know, as they say. So Boston Market continued to get bigger. And they were just flushed with cash. But in the year 2000, when Boston Market was going to be a billion-dollar business,

guess what was happening at Boston Market? Bankruptcy. In the year 2000, guess what happened at Chick-Therty? fillet. Billion dollars for the first time. Wow. We accomplished the very objective that they were talking about. But here's, there's so many lessons we could unpack out of this, Daniel, but let me just

unpack a couple of them that really stood out in my mind. What happened was, because they had so much money and because their focus was getting bigger, they would go to a market, let's call it Dallas, and they'd say, okay, we're going to open 60 locations in the next two years and then declare victory. So they'd go out there and they had the money to do it. So they would quickly run out if you know anything about the real estate business. If you've got to find 60 A plus locations in two years, you will quickly run out of A plus locations. And then you move to B and C and D.

So they compromise, but they got their 60 open. And then they got to staff all 60 locations. And maybe they start with a few A plus players, but they quickly move to B, C, and D in warm bodies. So now you've got B, C, and D locations being run by B, C, and D people. and yes, you got your 60 open, but play it out a little further, and it implodes on itself. So here's the other thing I learned. You know, I was taught in business school. Literally the definition I was given the purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value or to maximize profitability. Literally, that was how it was defined for me.

But I realized through this chapter that ultimately, shareholders don't fund your business, customers do. Because I don't care how much money shareholders throw to business. If customers don't throw more

money of that business, you will be out of business. And so much of, particularly now that I'm working a little bit more in the publicly traded business sector,

so many of them focus on shareholders and they feel like that's who they got to make happy. But the best way to make the shareholders happy is to make

the team members happy, make the customers happy, make the suppliers happy, make the communities happy. I guarantee you. If your customers are happy, your employees are happy, communities you're serving are happy, and your suppliers are happy, guarantee your shareholders are going to be happy. But a lot of times, they totally ignore. Exactly. In fact, they try and, you know, back to our get rich, they try and enrich

the shareholders at the expense of all those parties. And while it works in the short run, it won't withstand the long run. It's got to be a win, win, win, win, win, not a win, lose. Well, doing that is the expense of culture, legacy values A plus players as the state. standard. I'm curious to hear from you in this idea of better over bigger. Yes. We saw what happened to Boston Market. Yes. What was Chick-fil-A doing different? What were the behaviors in action, the choices that you made to say, here's how we're going to prioritize better over bigger. Yes. Well, constantly, what Chick-Fleigh thinks about every day in every meeting I was in is every customer wants a great value. And value equals what you get divided by what you pay.

And so what every customer wants is a value imbalance in their favor. And this is the fundamental paradox of business, is how does a business create a value imbalance in the favor of the customer but stay profitable for themselves? But what most people try and do is I say, okay, I'm going to create that value, get the instant reaction from the customer by reducing the price. So they go after the what you pay side of the equation in order to create the value in balance. Why is that? Is it easier to control that? It's easier.

It's instant. You know, if I wanted today to sell a $0.9.9 sandwich, I could do it. And what do you think the reaction would be? Instant reaction. And I could prove to the CEO and the CFO what I did made an impact because I could go count way and measure the results from that $9.000. $0.99 a sandwich. But the problem is, I can't do that profitably. And ultimately, if you do that too often, people will not be happy to pay full price. Once they, you know, start getting in the habit or buying it at $0.99, they're not going to go back to buying it $2.99. And so you get in this,

you get caught up and having a repeat. And then if I did a $9.9.0.9 sandwich this month, next year I got to go against those numbers. Am I going to go to $0.50? 25? So it's kind of, there's a limit to the value you can create. What Chick-fil-A always did was not focused on the what-you-pay side. We always wanted to have a fair price, a price that was fair to the customer, fair to us. But we did want the value imbalance, but we created it on the what you get, not what you pay. So I wish I could take you, and if sometime you want to come down to Atlanta, Daniel, I'd be glad to host you. At Chick-Fleigh, we have an 80,000 square-foot innovation center.

80,000 square feet of innovation going on at any point in time. And what I would love to do is walk you through the Innovation Center, Daniel, and point out one thing. 80,000 square feet of innovation and not one project that we're working on is designed to get you to spend one more dime with Chick-fil-A. It's all designed to create more value for the hard-earned money that you're already spending with us. So we're constantly working on increasing the value that you get for the same price that you're paying. Not, like I've seen in most businesses, how do we get you to spend 30 cents more? They'd be in rooms like this talking about how do we get you spend 30 cents more? You know, how are we going to get you spend more with us versus how are we going to create more value for the hard-earned money you're already spending?

Say more about some of those things that the value, obviously, the quality of a chicken sandwich is a plus of Chick-fil-A. And I can imagine there's only so much you can just keep going up in the way that the chicken taste. Yeah. But there's all these value ads that business owners can do in the form of service and surprising and delighting guests. And, you know, what are some of those things that are value ads we maybe don't think of that are tertiary to the product itself? Yeah. Gosh, there are so many examples. And this is what Chick-Fle was really good at. It's just thinking about these all the time. But I'll give you a good example. the last time we're in a situation like the current pandemic that we find ourselves in,

I would say is 2007-8 in the banking crisis. I don't know what your experience was like, but man, we were in a heap of trouble in the fast food business during 2007-8 during the banking crisis. Most of the competitors, they were focused on laying people off like you see now, furlowing people, cutting back on hours. And they were like, how can we squeeze, you know, a little more money out of the system? to stay in business. During that time, Truitt and Dan, you know, saw it very differently. I like to think that how we view things drives how we do things. The way we see something has an amazing impact on the way we respond to it. So while the rest of the world was seeing this as a time to cut back, guess what Truitt and Dan were seeing it as? A time to go on the offense. And I'll never forget this,

if I were to give you my top four or five, you know, stories from Chick-Bolet, like we were talking about, before with Boston Market, this one would also be one. So during that time, Trude and Dan decided that we needed to create a new service initiative. And at that time, it was called Second Mile Service. Now, here's what was crazy about that idea. You know, honestly, if I'm just a very few people at Chick-fil-A thought this was a good idea. And my brother's an attorney.

My dad was an attorney at one point, so I love to make the argument for something. So let me make the argument about why this was a terrible idea. And this was the argument that was being made at the time. It was no one comes to fast food for service. By definition, if they wanted service in the restaurant business, they go to a white tablecloth restaurant, right? They go to Fast Casual, where you pay for that same breasted chicken instead of $3, you're going to pay $15 or $20.

So you pay for that service. And you have a little thing called a tip to insure prompt service. So there's all this money built in to create the atmosphere and the service. And by definition, you know, at that time, fast food was like the last place you would look for service. In fact, literally, they just want their food fast. And there was a presidential canon a number of years ago known for the expression, it's the economy stupid. Well, the equivalent to that expression was it's the food stupid.

The people who were arguing against the service initiative said, it's the food stupid. They're coming for the food. the reason they're coming is for the food. So commodity, transactional, this is the game we're in, let's play this game. And it's in a tough time. Remember, everyone else is cutting back.

So they're proposing to spend millions of dollars in a time just like this that we're all experiencing now. Imagine if Dave came in and, well, you guys probably had a good year. But for most people right now, the idea of spending millions of dollars on a new initiative during a time like this, oh my goodness. But because they're the owners of the company, we pursued. And here's the cool thing about Chick-Fillet culture. As opposed to everybody was, before we made the decision to spend this millions of dollars, is as supportive as they were afterwards. You know, everybody, a lot of people didn't want us to do it, but once the decision was made,

everybody jumped on board, and we did, in fact, create what's now known as the Second Mile Service initiative at Chick-fil-A. I love that notion. You know, there's times you have to disagree and then commit. Yes. My friend Clay Scroggen said, another North Point guy. Yeah, I know, like. He talks about this a lot. how to lead when you're not in charge. And there's times a leader will make a decision. And it's fair to argue and push back prior to that decision being made if you're wrestling and you've got good trust and healthy conflict. But when you make a decision, if you can't commit and get 100% behind it as if you were the originator of this idea, you got to check yourself. No question about it.

Because the ship's going that direction. We used to say you either got to make good decisions or you have to make your decision good. Kind of that same thing. That's good. But here's what happened. We spent the millions of dollars. We spent the money on creating the initiative, creating training for the initiative, flying people to Atlanta, Georgia from all over the country to be trained on it.

All the operators, their team leaders, all that kind of stuff. This is a big investment. Huge investment. But here's what's interesting. If you look at our customer feedback today at Chick-fil-A, we get more comments on the service than the food. People say they come more for the service. than the food. We used to be kind of a one trick pony. The food's stupid. Now they come more for the

service, and here's what's really cool about it. A subset of the second mile service initiative was to reinvent the drive-through experience. The drive-thru experience had not been reinvented for 50 years. We said, we're going to reinvent that experience. So we started working on that like 10 years ago. Well, guess what? During the pandemic right now, I just went through a drive-thru at Chick-fil-A, not far from you guys. They've got people with iPads, you know, multiple lanes, all this stuff. 100% of Chick-fil-A business for a period of time. In fact, I think most of the local Chick-fil-A's is going through the drive-thru now.

And people are amazed at how many people we can get through the drive-to. Well, all that started. Oh, it's like a NASCAR pit crew. It's like a NASCAR pit crew. All that started during the Second Mall Service Initiative in 2007 and 8. Who knew that we would have another, you know, this time worldwide crisis, It's not just national, that it would pay off during that. But literally for a lot of this year, Daniel,

most Chick-fil-A is the only business that was open was the drive-through, you know, pickup, delivery. And we had been building toward that for years now. And so what we did in the last pandemic, or the last crisis, I should say, is now paying off in the current one. But it was all because we didn't go on defense, we went on offense.

I love the idea of going on offense. when things are being disrupted. And this is classic Dave Ramsey. This is classic Druid Kathy. Yes. There's a founder mindset. We teach this in a disruption lesson, that you're either going to cause the disruption

or disruption is going to happen, and you'll ride the wave of disruption, or you'll sit there and get crushed underneath that wave. And only the founder, only the guy at the top can really be the one that says, hey, we're going to go forward, we're going to play offense. Because I think the default of a team is always going to be, how do we protect, how do we hold on?

And how do you think you muster up that? Is it just a mindset? Is it the psyche of a founder? Is that something we can instill in the culture for everybody? Where does that come from? Yeah. I think a couple places. One is track record.

You know, a lot of times the reason we believed in Truitt, he had a pretty good track record to be right when everyone else was wrong, you know. And he had made a lot of counterintuitive. I feel like here's another little principle that might be super helpful to your group. in almost any business, 80% of what we do is exactly the same as what our competitors do. You know, like Chick-fil-A, we buy land, we build buildings, we have restrooms, we have dining rooms, we have drive-thrus, we have cash registers, we serve food, you know, and paper bags. 80% of what we do exactly the same is what our competitors do.

But 20% of what we do is dramatically different. And that 20% is what makes up almost 100% of the difference in results that we get. And I think what the founders are really good at is not worrying so much about the 80%, because the 80% will make us competitive. But the 20% will create competitive advantages. And what founders and the people you're talking about, they're always focused on creating competitive advantages. What a lot of the rest of the team, because it's 80% of what we do,

they're all focused on keeping us competitive. But do you want to be competitive or do you want a competitive advantage? Yeah, that's great. And you'll never get a competitive advantage. in the 80% world where you just need to be competitive and do it the same way as everyone else. You know, there are certain things that chick-play. We've got to follow the health codes. You know, we got a lot of the stuff where we need to be competitive, you know, we should be.

But the 20% is where the magic happens. That's your differentiator. And that's what founders are focused on. So oftentimes the founder brings that. I mean, true it. And many times it's counterintuitive. Yes. It's the opposite of what everyone else.

It's kind of this quirky brilliance, you know. But Truitt, as the guy who fried the first piece of chicken, I mean, you get all this credibility and authority that comes with being a founder to go against the grain. Truitt passed several years ago, and now Chick-fil-A is continuing to thrive. How did you, because that's still there. So how did you see Truitt instill this mindset into the next generation of leadership? Great question. And this is where culture comes in handy because cultures are generally built around a purpose, but also a lot of, values and how to. I think sometimes a good way to define a culture. It's the Chick-fil-A way of doing

things. It's the, you know, Dave Ramsey way of doing things. It's what is your company's way of doing things? And usually the Chick-fil-A way is that 20 percent, because 80 percent of what we do is the exact same as everyone else. So I think they understand the importance of culture, but they also understand the importance of retooling a culture. Like, let me give you an example. Number of years ago, Truitt and Dan, this is probably more Dan than Truitt really, decided we wanted to be an innovative company and not just have an innovation department. We wanted innovation to be in the DNA of Chick-fil-A. And so we went on a big journey to create an innovation center that I told you about before and create innovation training and all these things. But really, really,

what we're trying to do is not have a couple of smart people that were the innovators. It's how do we make innovation part of the entire DNA of the organization? How do we make it a foundational value in the organization? And I can tell you, if you'd come to the Chick-Fillade years ago, you know, you would have seen a sleepy southern fried chicken company. But if you came today, which we have like students all the time, they're like, I expected a southern fast food company, this looks like Apple or Google to me. Literally, I think if you came on our campus, I think you may have been to our campus, but particularly the innovation, you'd say this doesn't seem like a fast food company.

This seems like a high-tech innovation company like Apple or Google or, you know, you'd fill in the blank. And it does. But it didn't happen by default. In fact, 20 years ago, you would not have felt that way. But it was designed into the DNA and it became part of the culture and became part of the culture and became part of what we're all about. And now it's part of how we attract great people because great people want to be part of great things going on. So we know that Chick-fil-A

is an amazing organization. If you watch the highlight reel, you go a multi-billion dollar company, one generation in, they're succeeding at levels that most people never even dream about. Yet we know that it hasn't always been up into the right. There's been mistakes. There's been setbacks challenges. What were some of the inflection points when things were really tense? And it wasn't all my pleasure, and this is going great. But the executive team is nervous and maybe not even aligned about the future. Yeah. Well, I can give you a couple of examples, but I want to make a comment about your question generically. Here was one of the interesting things. You know, when I went to work for Chick-fil-A, I told you, I didn't take a cut-and-pay, but I was being offered half of what I

could have made other places. For probably the first 15 years, maybe 20 years in my career at Chick-fil-A, almost everyone who came took a cut and pay to come. There was a whole season when almost everybody, because other people had more money, they were more well-heeled, and the people who came to Chick-fil-A would have to take a cut and pay. For the first probably 10 or 15 years of my career at Chick-fil-A, you know, our operators get paid based on their bottom line. We share 50-50, the bottom line. for the first, probably 15, maybe 20 years in my career at Chick-fil-A, at any point in time, about a third of our operators were not profitable, and they were having to live off what Truitt called bread and water money.

And we were having a hard time attracting people to that. But I'll tell you, that became the foundation for the success today. Because you had people that were more motivated by the mission than the money. And we easily screened out people who it was all about the money. money because we didn't have any to offer. That's a great filter. But they were really attracted to the mission. And I say this because you mentioned a lot of your listeners are smaller business.

That's almost a great time. At Rome, my small business, almost everybody there took a cut and pay to come because they saw something there they wanted to be part of. I worry now for Chick-fil-A kind of fast-forwarding. Now it's so attractive financially, I worry the other end that instead of attracting people willing to sacrifice and people, you know, coming for the mission, there's so much money involved now, they could easily come for the money. A 23-year-old kid could graduate from college, become a chick-fay operator to make half a million dollars their first year, where that never would

happen. I feel the same tension here. You know, when I started at Ramsey, I mean, we were making that bread and water money, you know, and our parking lot had cars because everybody's on the Dave Ramsey plan and paying off their debt and driving used cars. I mean, our parking lot was full of oil stains, you know, beat up, used, you know, cars that you would be, you know, embarrassed to drive, but we didn't care because, man, we were doing something that mattered. And we were on this crusade and this mission. And now, man, we've got this beautiful building and we've got all this talent and technology. And we're sitting, you and I are right now in this, you know, million dollar studio that I never dream. Our first studio was a closet that we stole from another

team because they were using it for storage. And we went back in there and we set up a microphone and we turned on the computer. And it was just like, okay, this is going to be our podcast. And day we've got all this luxury. And David, when people get hired in today, they don't understand what we had to sacrifice to get here. And it's really, you can tell the story, but it's difficult, you know, to get them to feel, you know, this is a platform that has been built through blood and sweat and tears. And, you know, they're standing on the shoulders of giants. And I don't know exactly how you prevent that, that it's a paradox, right? Because all the fruit of the work, it is now something everybody can enjoy, but they miss the less.

of the pain and the sacrifice that took to get there. Well, part of what you got to do is early on, you don't really have to screen for the mission mode, because they're not going to come if they're all about money and you don't have it to offer. Exactly. But I think where a lot of people trip up is later on, you do have to set new things in motion when you do have a lot to offer. But let me share with you a little analogy that somebody shared with me one day that has been super helpful to me and I hope to you and a lot of your listeners. They said the founder of any organization builds a fire. And, you know, when they're first building the fire, they got little kindlin in the Flint and, you know, just a little grass there.

And they got a, you know, and they're sweating over just creating a little fire. And then you start to add some sticks. And then you start to add some logs. And before you know it, you have this blazing fire. But the founder loves the fire. Well, the next generation comes in. And they love the benefits of the fire. They love the fact that it will heat your water and, you know, cook your food and heat the house.

And they fall in love with the benefits of the fire. Well, the next generation comes in. I'm thinking of an organization. And they fall in love with the benefits of the benefits. And like at Chick-fil-A, they fall in love with the fact we have daycare, we have a health club, we have free lunches every day and, you know, free parking and all this stuff. And they fall in love with the benefit or the benefit. And the problem with that is sometimes when you get to that third generation that fell in

love with the benefit of the benefit, they actually don't like the fire anymore. So let me give you an actual example. where I saw this play out at Chick-fil-A. We now open a lot of college campuses. And when we open on college campuses, we typically do it through a third-party vendor, somebody like a Marriott or an ARA that owns the rights. But we'll invite alumni of that college from Chick-Fillet

that work on Chick-Fillet to come to the opening. So we had an opening out in Texas, and we invited some of our home office staff to this opening. And one of our operators went up to these young people and they're super sharp, amazing, talented, gifted leaders. And he went up to him and he said, gosh, you're exactly what I'm looking for to work in my restaurant, to be leaders in my restaurant,

to groom as the next opera of my restaurant. He said, what would it take for you guys to come work for me and be a leader? He said, help me understand what it would take to get people like you. You know what their reaction was? Ooh, I don't want to be around chicken all day, and I don't want to smell like chicken, and I don't want to bread the food.

You know, it's almost like they were repulsed by the idea of working in the restaurant. And they've lost a love for the fire. They've lost sight of. That's the fire. And you lose all the benefits of the benefits. They got real excited about the beautiful building and all the benefits. They're the ivory tower. But ultimately, you've got to have a culture that everyone loves the fire because if you get too many people who love the benefits of the benefit

and too few people who love the fire, guess what happens is the fire? The fire goes out. Bingo. So third generation, and this isn't necessarily just... I'm not talking about necessarily the family. It's just generations of employees over time. How do you get them? I mean, obviously you have to hire for that.

The best you can filter and screen for that. But even just in their day-to-day in ensuring that, I remember in our case back in the day we would do these live events and we still do live events, lots of them. But we didn't have a big shipping department. And so when we were loading up the truck to go out all the merch and everything, they'll go in the box truck to send out to a live event, there'd be a call over the intercom. Everybody go to shipping. And Dave Ramsey himself and all of us are down there doing the train of boxes loading up the truck.

And it'd be hot and we'd be sweaty. We'd be in our work clothes. And we'd come back to our desk drenched. You get on a sales call and you're okay. Yeah, we're just loading the truck, you know. And there was a day we had enough money to outsource to a fulfillment organization. They loaded the truck, and it was more efficient. It was the right decision. But I'm going, how do we get people that are being hired today to have the equivalent of loading the truck? Yes. What's the solution? How do you get them plugged into some of those early shaping, forming stories that really made you care about the fire?

Well, I think, you know, it's interesting. Chick-fil-A has an incredibly high engagement rate. You know, a lot of people nowadays talk about this is very popular in business. I want highly engaged employees. I think high and and they're saying mine are not very engaged, how do I do that? Well, I actually think you need to hire for engagement. You want hire H-I-G-H-E-R engagement. You got to hire for engagement. So I think it all begins in the hiring process that the people you bring in are people who love to serve other people. People who that's what they're passionate about. That's what they're energized by.

And so you've got people, if they can't go load the truck, you've got to give them other avenues to be able to serve others. I remember an ad I saw one time for a hotel chain, and it said, we don't teach our people to be nice. Big letters. You know, three quarters of a page, we don't teach our people to be nice. And in the bottom, small letters, we just hire nice people. And so I think a lot of that starts in the hiring process. And if you don't have what you what you want now, the next hire better be what you want. The next hire better be what you want. The next hire better. You know, you can start to hire all that in, and then you give them opportunities to exhibit that.

And if it's not loading the truck, there's always other things where people need help. And mentoring, you know, the more senior people, mentor the more junior people, that there's always this spirit of service. And we do a lot of community service activities, you know, in all the organizations. That's another venue for that to come out. But if you, it's almost like leaders have to leave. You know, every leader I know has to lead. It's like they just can't help it. They can't help it.

It's who they are. Well, I think people who have a servant's heart have to serve. Yeah. They can't help it. That's good. But it's hard to train for that. You got to hire for that. I like that.

You mentioned that you've been taking what you've learned over about four decades at Chick-fil-A and that secret sauce and culture values, the lessons we've been talking about today. And now you're taking that to other businesses. Yes. What are you excited about going forward? What's the vision for David Saliers? Yeah. And what's the win? at this point. Well, I feel like to those whom much is given, much is required. And when I look back

on my life, I've been given an incredible gift in terms of the opportunity to watch the story of Chick-fil-A unfold and to understand all the principles and the values and everything that led to that. And so I feel like that part of my life was about being given something amazing. I feel like this season of life is about recreating for other people what I was foretrial. enough to get as a result of Chick-fil-A and Truett-Cat-Cathy and the Kathy family. And so where I take great joy and really what I'm dedicated to, and I've got literally a dozen different things I'm working on right now, but the common thread between all 12, if you were trying to extract the common thread, I'm trying to recreate for other people,

the amazing journey and the amazing adventure and experience that I got to have as part of my time at Chick-fil-A. And it would have been easy to sit at Chick-fil-A and just enjoy the benefits of it, but I don't think it would be as exciting, challenging, or joyful. And I'm having the time in my life. As much as I enjoyed every day when I was at Chick-fil-A, there was never a day. I didn't love what I was doing at Chick-fil-A. But if my career every day was a 10 at Chick-fil-A, it's like a 15 now. I can tell those of you that are digesting this just via audio,

you need to know that this entire time, David has not stopped smiling. His smile is beaming ear-to-ear, has not stopped this entire time. You just exude joy, you exude passion. I can tell everything you're saying is coming from a place that's deep in your heart. And I'm inspired, and I'm so grateful to get to hear your journey. And just being with you today, I feel like you're making a contribution to me and to our audience. And it's just really apparent that that's your core. And it's a special thing that you have.

So thank you. Well, it's, you know, you've been given a lot through your opportunity work here. I've been given a lot through, you know, and to those who much is given, much is required. but there's a lot of joy in what's required. You know, Truit used to say that he always found more joy in giving when he did not expect anything in return. You know, and I think that's part of the problem of business

is many times business thought about it as return on investment. The whole focus is on the return. But joy comes through not expecting anything in return. And I feel like a profitable business is the fruit of doing business well, not the object. Yeah. Yeah. So good. So talk about Spark. You've got a great course. And if people want to get a sample of this, this is really cool. You're offering a free text in to kind of taste a little bit behind the paywall. You just text the word Spark to 55444. That's SPARK 55444 to check this out. But give people a little bit of a vision for what this is going to do for them.

Yeah, there are so many things that I learned along the way. And what I did is I created a digital course. There are six sessions on brand building. I think about it as almost branding 101, and six sessions on culture. Which brand building, we should say, we didn't mention this, but like, you're the guy behind the Chick-fil-A cow. Like, this is basically your brainchild. It's always a team, Daniel, but I was certainly on the team. Well, I know, but I mean, we didn't even get into, like, your brilliance around branding. And so don't miss this, guys. This guy is one of the foremost branding thought leaders in the country.

And so when David's Allier says there's something on branding, he's going to teach you. You better tune in, I'm telling you. I certainly hung around a lot of people. They knew a lot about it. That's for sure. So, but yeah, six sessions was actually five sessions, then a Q&A around branding, and then five sessions on culture, Q&A around culture. Here was the interesting thing, too.

Technically, I was never in charge of culture at Chick-fil-A. My job was in the marketing department. You know, when I started, there were two of us in the marketing department. When I left, there were like 300 people in the marketing. You know, it just grew. But my love was always culture. And it's interesting. Now that I'm two years out, I get called back a lot of times to Chick-fil-A,

But almost every time I get called back, it's not about marketing. It's about culture. And I was thinking, why is that? And what I realized is there's a guy not far from here named Donald Miller here in Nashville. He's been on this podcast many times. Yeah, story brand. And he talks about the fact that every brand is a story. And I totally get, you know, I believe that.

But the story is kind of, there's two portals to the story. The customer portal. to the story is the brand. But the employee portal to the story is the culture. And it's two sides of the same coin. I've never seen a great brand be born out of a terrible culture.

And very rarely, do you see a great brand with a terrible culture? You know, those two are like Siamese twins. They're connected at the hip. It's just a different portal. And so I think the reason I'm so fascinated by culture,

the reason I get motivated by culture, is it's the same thing. story. It's just the customer side versus the employee side. We talked a lot at Chick-fil-A about we weren't in the sales building business. We were in the raving fan business. We never talked about growing sales as much as we did about creating raving fans. And if you want to create raving fans of your business, the passion enthusiasm of the employees will always dictate the level to which customers passion and enthusiasm. So if you want to increase people's excitement about your brand, start by increasing the assignment of the employees.

Yeah, I mean, another way to say that is your customers are never going to be more wowed than to the degree that your employees are passionate about what you're doing. And I see a lot of companies that focus on wanting to create these amazing experience for their customers, but they don't think about creating the amazing experience for their employees. Well, when it doesn't start with the employees, it feels gimmicky. It feels like a campaign and not like it's an extension of this is what our team is about. And sometimes if you advertise it to your customers and your employees don't, deliver it? The audio doesn't match the video. Bingo. So those two are just so connected,

and I think it's why I've got, you know, six course on both, because I'm just as passionate, excited about culture, because that's the building block of a great brand. A lot of fun. So Spark is, of course, that you put together and covers all this stuff. And again, just text the word Spark to 55444 to check that out and get more information. You can also follow them at Spark course on Facebook, Instagram, etc. David, you know, it's been a hard year for a lot of business owners. Many business owners that I've talked to, you've talked to, they're making it, they're scrappy. There's some really cool stories of people thriving, but there's also a lot of people hurting.

A lot of people have had to make layoffs or furloughs or things they've just really not wanted to do. Many business owners right now are exhausted. Yes. They've been running so hard. As we wrap up today, how would you encourage them about the path forward? Well, you know, we've talked a lot today, Daniel, about creating value. and in my mind, the purpose of a business is not increased shareholder value so much as it is is to increase value for a customer and for employees and communities, et cetera.

And if you think about how do we create value, one of the, you know, there are a lot of different ways you can innovate, you can do it, but one of the greatest places to increase value for anyone is what are the pain points that they have in their life? You know, the pain, we used to be great students of doing business with Chick-fil-A and we'd say, What are the pain points of people doing business with Chick-fil-A? Whatever those pain points were, if we could resolve them, we just created a lot of value for that person. So the drive-thru kind of grew out of that.

There was a lot of pain waiting in line at the drive-thru, and now we sped that up, etc. So right now there's a lot of pain out there. To the degree, businesses can find a way to use their platform of business to solve the pain points of customers or communities or their employees. not only will you create a lot of value for them, there's a lot of joy in doing that. You know, it's funny, I know a lot of people have had a terrible experience this year. I'm almost embarrassed when people ask me about my year. I say, it's been amazing because I feel like there was so much opportunity to create value.

It's like in the midst of all, when people have everything they want, it's a lot harder to create value. But when they're in pain, when they don't have everything they want, a lot more opportunity to create value for them. So to me, it just feels like, wow, it's kind of like to stop me. market going down. If you had a lot of money in it, it's bad. But if you don't, now's the time to put it in it. Well, that's where we are right now for businesses. It's a lot of opportunity to plant seeds now to create value now that'll reap a harvest going forward. David, your enthusiasm is contagious. Your wisdom and knowledge about all things marketing business is just spot on. And thank you for just sharing your story. It's so fun to hear somebody talk about, you know, when they started really early

in their career and they stayed with something. They were part of building something that has changed and blessed so many lives. And I'm so excited that, you know, we were talking before we jumped on the microphone, you could totally be on the golf course right now. I mean, you've put all the mantles on your wall, and there's plenty of justification to say, I'm going to hang it up. But you're continuing to double down and being generous with what you know, like you said, too much is given, much as required and expected.

And you're being just such a good steward of your giftings and your wisdom. So thank you for showing up today. Thank you for offering that contribution to our audience. I know they're going to be better for it. Well, it's pure joy to be with you, and it's certainly, as we would say, a chick-flay, been my pleasure. But more so, this is an organization I have such respect and admiration for. I know Truitt had such respect and admiration for Dave.

And Dave spoke a couple times at our national convention seminar. I know they had a good personal relationship. So it's really exciting to be partnering with you today, Daniel, to help these people that you love so much and your customers and people that are depending on you. It's an honor and a privilege to go shoulder to shoulder and partner with you to help them in any way that we can. Oh, that's fun to work with you guys. Let's do it again. All right, guys, what a fantastic conversation.

Talk about so many nuggets that we can take away on how we shape our culture, how we develop ourselves as leaders, how we develop our people. One of my favorite things about this discussion is the story that David tells about focusing on getting better. If we focus on getting better, we're going to get bigger. If we improve our leadership, if we improve the quality of the customer experience, if we improve how we build and develop our people, guys, that's what it's all about. And to do that, it takes intentionality. It takes focus. It takes deciding we're going to be committed to getting better.

But it doesn't just happen because we decide that. You intentionally have to create the space and have a plan and have a process that supports developing those habits. and we know this at Andre Leadership. That's why our coaching team has put together another great free resource for you guys, the intentional interview checklist. How are you going to focus on getting better people? You've got to be intentional. You can't just bring somebody on just because they can fog a mirror.

You've got to make sure you've got the right people on the bus. So in collaboration with Ken Coleman and our coaching team, we've put together an incredible intentional interview checklist that's going to help guys when you get started on the path to conducting interviews and doing it the right way. It's going to help you get the information you need to make the perfect choice and hire the right people. Here's the key. The first time. We all hire the right person eventually, but waiting to do it after several people come through, you hire the wrong person. It costs you thousands of dollars, lots of strife, lots of heartache, and a lot of time. Don't do it that way. To get this free guide,

text the word intentional to 33444. Again, text intentional. to 33444 or you can just click on the link in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership Podcast. Hey, do you know somebody that would enjoy this episode? Well, we'd love it if you'd share the episode. Send them a link. Thank you for doing that. You guys do that so much.

That's how this podcast grows. It's how we all together help more business owners win. So thanks for helping us get the word out. Also, if you didn't know this, you can now watch interviews and highlights from the Entry Leadership podcast on YouTube. Search Entree Leadership on YouTube. Check those out.

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and you can also follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. And for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rudder.

I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.