The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 109 - How to Overcome & Push Through Your Hardest Times: John Eckbert

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

In this moment John Eckbert discusses how he was able to make it through the darkest and most difficult period of his life and the lessons that he learned that made him a better person and CEO. This period challenged every identity that John gave to himself: a husband, a partner, and a father. However, what remained stable during this time was his position as a business leader and the trust that things will improve, you just have to keep showing up. Looking back, John believes it is important to remember that we end up being grateful for the worst periods in our life, as they end up making us into the people we are. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/2aX2AjoQIzb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. When was your hardest time? My hardest time? In your Five Guys journey. Yeah.

Well, I went through a very painful divorce and went through something called leave to remove, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Essentially, it's the right to have your children taken out of the country. So I had two young children who the court system approved leave to remove, which allowed my ex to take my kids back to America, which was incredibly painful. And my whole view of myself, my definition of who I was changed.

I thought of myself as a great partner, good husband, good father, devoted father. I was in politics back in America, was involved in my community and a church leader and businessman. And I thought all these things are who I am. And essentially, all of that was, you know, quite a large bonfire of vanities. And that was a real dark, dark moment for me. And there were days when Five Guys was the one thing in my life that was stable and that I could hold on to. And that really pulled me through a very difficult, dark time personally. How long did that process last?

That's part of the UK challenge. It took years. Better part of two years were in that process. And then trying to rebuild those relationships. Thankfully, I'm in an amazing place with my kids now and have accepted that we have had a more adult relationship prematurely. But now that they're both at university,

it feels more normal now. And those are hard-fought,, hard won, recast relationships, which, you know, were really important, are important to me. But it was, I was, the thought that they were at risk was, caused just enormous anxiety. And living with that kind of anxiety on the personal side, having a place where things were more predictable was, and being able to work in that way and provide for them was a real, yeah, it really helped me through. When your kids are essentially taken away to another country and you've got this huge responsibility

of running this big business, how does that impact your ability to show up every day professionally? Yeah, well, I mean, it was really complex for me because I had a non-compete back in the US for the business that I had sold. So I couldn't just relocate back to America and do my job. So it felt like a huge catch-22 because I had these court-ordered

financial obligations. And the only way that I could really fulfill them was to keep doing my job here. So- Court-ordered financial obligations as in the separation costs and stuff that you have to pay to apply. Yeah, exactly. So it felt like a catch-22. They were allowed to leave, but I had to provide for them, so I had to stay. So it felt like a kind of indentured servitude for a bit. But being able to focus on the important job that I had actually was enormously relieving because Cause I knew that for,

you know, 10 hours a day, you know, 12 hours a day, whatever, whatever it ended up being that I could actually do something productive that I knew I was good at, um, that made a difference for them. Um, and that, um, was it, the, the, the anxiety of anxiety of being separated. I could set aside for a few, you know, for those hours in a day. And that was really helpful. It could have just kind of overwhelmed me. But work was able to, it was a place where I could escape from that. Did you see your motivation fluctuate?

Often when we have these like pretty substantial life events, there's an initial period where getting out of bed in the morning is a little bit more difficult. It's almost like someone has messed with your why, your reason to get out of bed and your sense of purpose. Yeah. So you always have to, I've learned from my own experiences that you have to spend a little bit of time. You're almost faking it to get the drive back, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, of course. No, well, you know, I told you I got up at 5 a.m. when I was a kid and practiced violin for an hour before school. And I was never a great musician, but what I did find was that if you did something every day, you actually could get better at it, maybe even more than competent.

And I think it was something like that, that just in me, you know, said, you know, get out of bed, do the next, do the next thing. And something, things will change. You will, I called a friend of mine who'd been through a similar situation. And he said, you know, just keep showing up, you know, you up, texting my son every day, calling every day, being as present as I possibly could. And obviously it's imperfect and it's deeply upsetting, I'm sure to them as well as to me, but doing as much as you possibly can

to be available and in touch. And then you just have to trust. Trust something that it'll be okay. Trust something? As in just trust life that it will? No, I mean, you know, now we're getting very personal, Stephen. But, you know, I believe in a higher power. I don't pretend to understand it.

But I think there's something much more powerful than I am in a higher power. I don't pretend to understand it, but I think there's something much more powerful than I am in the world. And what I will say is that it helped me to see the world in two camps. One are things that I can control and some things that I absolutely can't control. And if you spend, if you allocate your mental health and your time

on the things that you can't control, you can drive yourself to distraction and eventually madness. So being able to focus on the things that you can control and realizing that that's your job. Your job as a human is to do the things that you can control. And it's just arrogance and ignorance to focus on the things that you can control. And if you, you know, it's just arrogance and ignorance to focus on the things that you can't control. And so identify those, identifying those two camps

and being at peace with that, accepting that you can't, some things you can't control, that's really hard, but it's hugely important. Yeah, I was at this festival this weekend and there was a, I did one-on-one meetings with lots of people that were in the audience for three hours. And I found myself being asked over and over again, how to deal with exactly that, which is when chaos arrives in our lives, what to do on that day. And people had me recording these voice notes for them for that day.

So when that day comes, they just want it to be able to play it. And what you said there is exactly what I said, which is there are a small list of things you can control and on that tough day make a promise to me that you'll spend a hundred percent of your mental energy focusing only on those things because you can't because obviously yesterday focusing too much on that tends to lead to depression as i think the lucao the philosopher says focusing too much on tomorrow and the things that are yet to be in your control will also cause a lot of anxiety. So really focusing in on today, I think is just phenomenal advice in terms of, um, a, it's the thing that's most conducive with a successful outcome, but B it's also the thing that's most conducive with having a healthy mental state in total chaos. No, I think that's

absolutely right. I mean, I think the other thing is that realizing that I believe our purpose in life is human connection. I think that's why we're here. I think we're made to connect. And sometimes it's, you know, we're colliding, you know, and more than connecting, but figuring out how to connect with other human beings. And I will say, you know, that was the making of me as in being able to, you know, when someone comes into my office and says, you know, I've lost my partner.

You know, they passed away, you know, way before their time. You know, being able to connect with that person in that moment of loss is hugely valuable as a company, but hugely meaningful to me as a human being. And I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't been through the loss that I had experienced. So, you know, it's one of those things where you end up being grateful for the most upsetting things that happen in your life, because I think they're the making of you in many ways. Because of what you said at the start of this conversation about that importance of feeling like you belonged, and it's so evident that that is much of the reason you've also been successful. Even from the short conversation we've had, you strike me as a very

empathetic person who is able to connect with others, that moment must have been presumably even more difficult because your sense of belonging in that moment was taken from you to some degree. The family unit, right? No, for sure. That was a defining moment. But now, the thing about Five Guys is that we have these 8,600 people

who get up every morning and have this shared vision mission to make great burgers and fries for hungry customers. And I get to be a part of that. And, you know, I get to be a part of this larger community that has this, and that, you know, winning in business feels fantastic, right? I mean, it's a real high. It's a drug and it's an addiction. And being a part of a community that's accomplishing this thing. You know, we were the eighth fastest growing business

in 2016, I think in the UK and the fastest growing food and beverage business. And even with that, we never met a budget that I had made. So, you know, we were, you know, we were fastest, but, you know, still behind by, by, by my mind. And, um, being a, being a part of this community that shares our, our values and that are all working towards this is, is enormously satisfying. And, um, and yeah, fill something that, that, you know, something that has always been empty. Some days as CEOs, maybe we're tired or we're in a bad mood or something's off. We can sometimes not show up as our best selves. And sometimes when that happens with me, I regret it. So

I'll go home and think, I just wish I'd handled that situation differently. Does that happen to you a lot where you think, fuck, I wish I'd been in a better mood or I'd slept more today or something? Yeah, Julie tells me. Who's Julie? Julie, my head of ops.

She comes in and says, yeah, you really fucked up that meeting. Oh, really? But actually having somebody who, to me, one of the worst things that can happen are these, you know, emperor has no clothes, where the most important, powerful person in a business has blind spots that, you know, everybody knows about

and somehow, you know, you work around. And that's just hugely dangerous as a business. And having people who can come into your office and go, John, that comment was just way out of line or really unhelpful. You now have people thinking like this. Is that what you wanted? So people who can confront power with truth. And to me, that kind of culture is hugely important to a company because you can go so wrong with the emperor has no clothes

and people thinking, God, we know this, we just can't tell him to that person. How do you cultivate that? Because I imagine a lot of CEOs and a lot of team members that work for a CEO think, oh, there's no way I could go to my CEO and tell him that was wrong

or he shouldn't have said that or she shouldn't have said that. I think publicly owning your shit is really helpful in that way. So showing up at the next meeting and go, hey, you know what? I said this to the last meeting and that was just really wrong.

It was off and I was off my game or I didn't think it through and it should be the opposite of that. And showing that you can respond to that kind of challenge, I think is important as a leader. And then you give everybody else permission to do the same thing. I mean, you can change your mind.

You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to be wrong as a fallible human being too. And confessing that, it's powerful.