David Salyers on the Leadership Principles Behind Remarkable Brands

speaker-0 (00:20.824)
David, thank you for joining us and welcome to Leadership Is Everything.

speaker-1 (01:16.82)
It’s a real joy to be with you, BJ. Of course.

speaker-0 (01:18.658)
Great. Looking forward to this. I think before we jump into the leadership piece, we’d love to hear a little bit about your background, kinda where you grew up and and maybe how you ended up at Chick fil A.

speaker-1 (01:28.738)
Yeah. Well, I I grew up in Atlanta and spent my whole life basically in Atlanta, Georgia, and ended up I I went to Wake Forest and at that time I thought I wanna be an attorney and then I got a summer internship in Six Flag at Six Flags in the marketing department. Okay. Very random how that happened. I won’t get into all that, but it changed my life. I fell in love with marketing. I said, This is really what I wanna do.

my dad was was a j a lawyer, then a federal judge. My older brother was studying to be a lawyer, so it’s kinda like, you know, you follow in their footsteps. but I realized marketing was really what I want to do. But that forced me to change schools. I was at Wake Forest at the time. They didn’t offer a marketing major, so I transferred to University of Georgia. And that became quite a divine appointment because when I went to Georgia, I met a guy named Woody Falk who introduced me to a gentleman named Truett Cathy.

my junior year in college and we struck up a relationship and ended up going to work for Chick-fil-A literally four hours after college graduation. I graduated on Saturday morning, started there Saturday afternoon and they were just starting a marketing department. And ironically, BJ, they had hired the director of marketing for Six Flags in January of my senior year in college. Wow. I had no idea. The last conversation I’d had with him, he wanted me to come back and work for Six Flags when I graduated.

And I had no idea he had hired they’d hired him. I showed up one day as a student guest at a meeting in February and who’s behind the registration desk but this Steve Robinson. I’m Steve, what are you doing here? He’s like, Dave, what are you doing here? And I said, Well I got invited as a student guest by Truett. So I became the the basically the second member of the marketing department and at that time Chick fil A was nothing like what you know of today.

it was our headquarters was in a converted air freight warehouse over by the original dwarf house in Hapeville, Georgia. Right. our office was in a mobile home attached to that warehouse. They’d run out of rooms, they cut a hole through the wall, pulled up a mobile home, and my first office was in a mobile home attached to an air freight warehouse. And what makes it really interesting is you’d be glad to know, BJ, that age 21, I had all of life figured out.

speaker-1 (03:45.378)
Please tell me, I’m not the only one on this podcast or listening to the podcast that had it all figured out at 21. But here’s how I had it figured out. At age 21, if you had met me, I thought the the plan for life was graduate from college, make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, to retire as early as you can. So early retirement was my goal for my career. Okay. I think a lot of people, that’s their goal. And it seemed like a great goal. but

What I discovered in going to work for Truett Cathy is something I’ll call a thousand times better than early retirement. Something that as a twenty one year old had would never have crossed my mind. I’m not even sure I would have believed you had you told me what I’m about to tell you. because I assume that work was a source of drudgery in our life. You know, it’s something we have to do in order to make money so we can really enjoy life. What I discovered in working for Chick fil A is that work could be a source of joy, satisfaction, enrichment, contentment, excitement, rewarding in our life. Yeah.

And the only reason I believed it was because it was lived out in Truett’s life and it played out in my life. Okay. And so instead of finding the job I could retire from early, I found the job I wouldn’t want to retire from. Which is something I never would have thought existed, you know. and wouldn’t have believed existed.

speaker-0 (05:01.996)
Well, and maybe to go a little deeper on that. So obviously you start at twenty one, you’ve got y the world figured out, but you changed. You had experience with people, maybe good books you read. I mean, what kind of caused that change? It evolved over time. What did that look like in your life? Yeah over those years?

speaker-1 (05:08.813)
Yes.

speaker-1 (05:20.93)
Well, I I think now instead of thank God it’s Friday, like most people experience, for me it was thank God it’s Monday. Okay. I realized that that work could be kind of our contribution while we’re on that. Instead of, you know, work being something we have to do, work was something we get to do. Right and we choose to do. And and work could be our contribution, not our career. ’cause a lot of people think in terms of a career which is kind of self enrichment, you it’s like I’m gonna

Climb the career ladder and all this kind of stuff. And it’s all about extracting value to the point of the book. and I realized work could be a source of creating value and it could be our contribution while we’re on the face of this earth. And if you view it that way, you start to enjoy it a lot more and you don’t want to retire from it. It’s like, why would I want to stop doing that? That gives me purpose. It gives me a mission. It gives, you know, the real rewards are in creating value for people, not extracting.

speaker-0 (06:13.854)
Yeah, that’s really good. When you think about Chick-fil-A, and I would argue it’s become one of the best brands in the country, did you when you started there, you know, at twenty one, day one on the job, did you all have a a purpose or a mission to create one of the world’s greatest brands, or was it more let’s be a values based organization, let’s run that playbook and then the brand kind of was a secondary output, if you will, maybe from what you were just trying to do every day.

speaker-1 (06:42.558)
Such a good question. And and when I first started B J I I need to give you some context. Everybody thinks of Chick fil A as this big successful brand. It was far from that when I started. We forty percent of our locations were unprofitable at the time. Okay. And at first that was very frustrating. but then I realized that’s actually what I call job what we call it, security job security. Right. ‘Cause that’s why they needed somebody to help grow and our operators get paid based on

speaker-0 (07:06.21)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (07:12.322)
half the net profit of the unit, forty percent of in any given month were unprofitable. So when I would show up, it would be kinda like I’m here from the government and I’m here to help. It’s like, no, you’re you’re the one that’s keeping me from being successful.

speaker-0 (07:24.92)
Break it, but yeah, the worst nine words in the the the world. Yeah.

speaker-1 (07:28.994)
But what I realized is that that we could e even in that context, that actually created us to look beyond kind of the day-to-day and the extracting value idea. And it was early in my career, I I started in nineteen eighty one at Chick-fil-A. Nineteen eighty two, the corporate purpose was created.

And the corporate purpose is what you were talking about. It is the kind of the central focus. And for Chick-fil-A, the corporate purpose is to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that’s entrusted to us and a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A. So that’s when we rose above kind of the day-to-day, just trying to extract value and make make money, and it became a much higher purpose. And interestingly, that purpose was born out of a really troubling time at Chick-fil-A.

Truett had gone an entire year and not taking a salary. We were in big trouble financially. And so the what year? that would have been nineteen eighty two. Okay. And so the executive team went to a a retreat just north of here up at Lake Lanier Islands. Okay. And thinking they were gonna come up with a plan to get us out of all this problem. And instead they started the with the question, why are we here? And and then decided to focus on the why.

Which a certain person named Caleb Stevens reminded me one time that if when you lose your why, you lose your way. Okay. And I thought we had lost our why, so we lost our way and and in creating a why, it created the way. And interestingly, the year after that was one of the best years Chick-fil-A has ever had. Right, okay. because we established something far more important than just making money and, you know, making a profit that year. But BJ, I went for ten years.

Ten years, my first 10 years at Chick-fil-A, 100% of the people I hired took a cut and pay to come. Wow. Imagine, you know, I don’t know, all of our listeners, imagine you had to hire people for 10 years and the the proposition was you got to take a cut and pay to come. But here’s the beauty of it. Truett grew up in poverty, not far from here, not far from where we’re recording right now in Techwood Homes. Techwood Homes was the very first government housing project in the United States. And that’s where he and his family lived. And they actually created

speaker-1 (09:44.96)
in in the context of a housing project that they were they had to create a boarding home to make a little extra money and that’s so trute grew up in very, very impoverished situation. Sure. But here’s what’s interesting. You know how he talked about his childhood? The gift of poverty. And the reason he called it the gift of poverty is though that was the context under which he learned a lot of the values, the character, the principles that would allow him to be successful later in life.

speaker-0 (09:54.369)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (10:15.34)
And so I feel like I joined Chick-fil-A in in some regards during the gift of poverty chapter of the organization. And it enabled me to learn some things I probably never would could have learned any other way. Like when you can’t offer a bigger paycheck to people to come work, what do you offer? Mm-hmm. And what I found was that the real riches in life never show up in your paycheck anyway.

The real riches in life are the richness of experiences. It’s the richness of relationships. It’s the richness of the sense of community we feel. It’s the richness of the mission we’re on. You know, and so what I had to do is kind of in technicolor determine the real riches and then offer those to people instead of a bigger paycheck. But what’s interesting, when you start focusing on the real riches, the financial riches show up as a result. Yeah. Because you’re not focused on them.

speaker-0 (11:04.647)
It’s almost like you have to invert the pyramid and and think about it a little differently.

speaker-1 (11:08.462)
Financial riches in the end are the fruit, not the object of what we do.

speaker-0 (11:13.16)
talk about Truitt. assuming you got to know him very well and just you know, as a person, as a leader. I think people have a tendency to want to be led by a an aspiring leader or somebody that they can look to and has a vision. what did you learn from him? What were the biggest lessons from from a truett in your life?

speaker-1 (11:31.47)
So much. I mean, he became like a second father bee in many ways. I mean, early on, you know, it was just a handful of us at Chick-fil-A. And so I actually I literally went on vacation with his family. I remember a trip to Cancun, Mexico. We went snowmobiling. And, you know, that may sound like a big deal now because he became so rich and famous later, but at the time it was no big deal. but I learned so much from him. But I’d say if I were to kind of come up with one big idea.

I think most people view business as what I would call a get rich scheme. They start a business because they want to get rich. And getting rich and a get rich scheme is kinda inherently a self enrichment and it feels selfish to people. It’s why politicians can comment on capitalists as the evil empire, you know, because they view it as a get rich scheme where someone is getting rich at the expense of other people. Right.

So a business owner would get rich at the expense of their employees, get rich at the expense of their customers, get rich at the expense of suppliers, get rich at the expense of the community. And I think what Truitt modeled for me and what he really believed that was so different that just changed everything about my life was to view business as a be rich scheme, not a get rich scheme. Now, those two things sound almost identical. Aren’t being rich, getting rich the same thing? Polar opposites. Business is

Be rich scheme is using our platform of business to be rich toward people, not get rich from them. So we be rich toward our employees. We’re how can we use our platform business to be rich toward our employees? How can we use our platform business to be rich toward our customers? How can we use our platform business to be rich toward our suppliers? Yeah. Which is where a lot of people miss it. And how can we use our platform business to be rich toward the communities we serve?

speaker-0 (13:16.716)
So what would you say to the entrepreneur out there? And I meet people like this every day. They have an idea, they want to start a business, but at the end of the day, and I believe this, that they they want to do good things, but they’re really starting that business because they want to build a company and they wanna exit and then make a ton of money and go to the beach and retire. And I think based on everything you’ve said, it’s interesting to me because you’re kind of throwing that a little bit on its head to say don’t think of that as your motivation.

Build something great of value of substance that you can have an impact on your community and your families and customers. So what what what would your advice be to a a person that’s starting day one today or tomorrow with a here’s a business and we’re gonna kinda build this?

speaker-1 (13:58.914)
Yeah. Well, I mean, just what you just said, if they’re building a business to sell it and retire, that’s the early retirement scheme that I started with. Right. So I wouldn’t cast dispersions. That’s literally what I thought at age twenty one. I’ve just progressed beyond that. Because if you end up building it’s interesting, w one of the things I’m doing now is I’ve got a podcast called Wrong on Paper. And the whole premise of the podcast is to study the great brands, the ones who are the really great ones. We’ve done

Airbnb, we’ve done Patagonia, we’ve done Bucky’s, we’ve done Trader Joe’s, Liquid Death, all these different things. But my belief now is that the really great brands have a purpose beyond just making money. Right. Which is what makes them so great. And there’s eighty percent of what they do that’s identical to every you know, all their competitors, but there’s this twenty percent that’s very different. And in almost every case where we study the founders

One of made a very interesting comment, but I think all the other founders of these great brands would agree. You know what their exit strategy is? Death. It’s like I’m building something I hope lives on well beyond me. It’s like I it’s such I’m I’m building something the world needs that I’m gonna provide. And it’s not about exiting from it. It’s about creating something the world needs and making sure it lives beyond you. Okay.

speaker-0 (15:18.402)
How do you keep purpose? And there are consulting firms have been involved with these where it’s having a purpose driven organization is is a little bit of a buzzword today. How do you get that sentence from gene a sentence on a page to ingrained and embedded at every kind of level of an organization?

speaker-1 (15:38.294)
Such a good question. So when you think about purpose, you have to kind of the Syme or what we call it, the Siamese twin, I guess, to purpose would be values. Okay. And values are something that are valuable to you. But values aren’t valuable until you have to sacrifice something. Okay. In other words, anything that that’s truly valuable to us, we’re willing to sacrifice for.

And so when I think about like people being passionate about something, you know, they’re they value it, so are willing to sacrifice for it. Well, I’m amazed how many people have a list of values that require no sacrifice. Right. Or they’ve not made any sacrifice. And I remember a professor I had one time, probably the world’s greatest authority on strategy. And he he said that strategy always involves trade-offs.

And he said, if there is no trade off, there is no strategy. And if there is no need for a trade off, there is no need for a strategy. And I think about how many times have you and I been in business meetings where someone has a strategy, but it’s not really involving a trade off. It’s a good statement, but it’s not a strategy. Right. And so every time somebody talks about strategy to me, I want to think in terms, well, tell me what the trade off is. Tell me what you have traded off. Because if there is no trade off, there is no strategy.

speaker-0 (17:02.56)
So in our in our business and we talk about long term relationships and we say we believe and invest in those. But to your point, sometimes that means the near term opportunity or the loan tomorrow isn’t the not the win, but y you know, you’ve got to be thinking more a year or two out. And sometimes the best answer for the client or the prospect is not the loan you’re trying to sell tomorrow. It’s being a thoughtful steward and helping them with their strategic goals and objectives. And it may be

you know, not winning that piece of business today, but over time. So to me, that’s a long term strategy that will pay dividends, but you need to be patient and thoughtful about

speaker-1 (17:42.218)
And that is the trade-off because most people don’t think in the long term. They think in terms of the next ninety days. Right. And give me give me things that will pay off in the next ninety days. Yeah. Well, my experience has been there are very few things, if any, that are really that really have long term value that pay off in the next ninety days. I mean, think about investing. If I gave you a million dollars to invest on my behalf and I said, BJ, ninety days from now, I need a guaranteed return. I need you to guarantee me

Not only can you return my million dollars, but you’re gonna get me some kind of return on it. What kind of investment options would that give you?

speaker-0 (18:20.61)
Very few. Very few. Yeah. Treasure treasury bills or something.

speaker-1 (18:24.276)
Treasury bills. Yeah. You could do it, but in over ten years, if if you invested in those things, you get the worst return. Well, that’s kind of the problem with business. They keep going after the C D’s and the you know, the safe returns in ninety days and they miss the ones that pay off over long term.

speaker-0 (18:44.718)
Talk about you’ve mentioned culture. there’s a quip that I think is misattributed to Peter Drucker, but it’s culture eat strategy for breakfast. Yes. So strategy is very important, but you know, culture is hugely important in organizations. So getting the right people that are leaning in, pulling the oars in the right direction. maybe talk about that at Chick-fil-A or even what you’re doing now, but the importance of culture, how you drive that and build that within a a company and what that looks like.

speaker-1 (19:13.506)
Man, I wish we could spend the rest of the podcast on this one, but let me just give you a few little tidbits. Truett used to talk a lot about the fact that businesses don’t succeed or fail. People do. Okay. And that’s been my experience. Is it’s really true. If you want to have a great business, you’ve got start by staffing it with great people. And then you’ve got well, you gotta select those people and recruit.

speaker-0 (19:33.907)
Yeah, let’s t and maybe when you’re done with this, talk about the selection process on the culture piece.

speaker-1 (19:38.912)
And then you’ve got to create the environment for them to succeed. And then you’ve got to create the environment where they share in the success. And there’s so much to that. But it’s interesting. One of the first things that crossed my mind when you started asking about culture, there was a point in my career when I would have told you, you know, I would have agreed with that statement. I’d say culture is the ultimate competitive advantage is what I would have said. I would not say that today. Okay. Now I would say culture can be the ultimate competitive advantage if you’re intentional about creating it.

Because every business is gonna have a culture. It’s either gonna be, you know, by default or you’re gonna define it and develop it and all the rest. But every business is gonna have one, but they’re not all gonna be great cultures. And they’re not all gonna be cultures that create this competitive advantage. And I think that’s actually the minority of cultures out there are the cultures that create the competitive advantage, but it definitely can be the ultimate competitive advantage. I just think in most cases it’s not because it’s not intentional.

speaker-0 (20:36.716)
Yeah. Well, and you also have like in the Good to Great book, the author talks a lot about level five leadership. So somebody that leads with passion, goals, and vision, but they do it with extreme humility and they’re kind of grooming that person for the next and so arguably that company sustains itself over a longer period of time. Whereas a more command and control CEO, that person may set the tone, but they’re really not setting it up for long term success ’cause it’s all

driven by their kind of force of will as opposed to a collaborative environment.

speaker-1 (21:11.48)
Hundred percent.

speaker-0 (21:13.352)
maybe to follow up on the culture piece too. So when you look for people when you’re recruiting, how do you find the right people that are gonna fit into the culture and what kinds of questions do you ask when you’re when you’re talking?

speaker-1 (21:24.532)
Such a great question. I’m gonna I wanna answer that two ways. Okay. I’m gonna start with Chick-fil-A operators because one of the most common questions I get out there, BJ, is when I’m out in public, where do you find those amazing people at Chick-fil-A? You know, and they’re thinking of the 16 year old or or the you know, the people running the register, the people running the drive-through, they’re they’re thinking of all those kinds of things. And I say it’s the wrong question. You don’t magically find

people out there. The real issue is how do you become the organization the people you’re looking for are looking for? So how because if I gotta find those people, it’s like a needle in a haystack. I don’t, you know, it’s like magically I’m gonna go out and find them. But I think the more productive way to think about it is and the the the aspect I can control is creating the organization. It’s gonna be a magnet to attract those people. And so I’ve I would focus on

speaker-0 (22:02.534)
that’s great.

speaker-1 (22:23.81)
How do you become the organization that people you’re hoping would come to work for you would want to work for? Now that’s all under my control at that point.

speaker-0 (22:32.448)
Yeah, and I and I think you’re able to create a little bit of a flywheel because as you attract people that are talented and culturally fit, they tell their friends or when you’re in the market, everybody starts to realize, okay, you’ve got something interesting that you’re building and people want to be that’s really good.

speaker-1 (22:46.934)
Number one recruiters should be the ones already working for if you do but kind of back to the operators for just a minute. I think one of the most important decisions true had ever made, when he started the company, franchising was in vogue. All of our competitors were franchising. And basically the thinking behind franchising is I’m gonna use OPM, other people’s money, to grow my business. That’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for people with a lot of money. I’m gonna use their money to grow my business. Right.

And those are called franchisees. And basically the first question you would ask yourself when you’re looking for your next franchisee, do they have access to three or four million dollars to buy the land, build the building, stock the shelves, put money in the cash registers? So they would start with a monetary question. I think Truett, very wisely, in my opinion, said, Nope, money is the easy part. There’s stacks of it in banks. said, Money’s the easy part.

I want to find the right talent. So what he did is he made a trade-off, a strategy, a trade-off. He said, I’m not I’m not going to worry about the money. I’ll provide the money because that’s the easy part to find. I want the right talent. So he created the operator model where someone who would like to own their own business but didn’t have three or four million dollars could come in and he would put up the money, they would put up the talent, and they’d split the profits fifty-fifty. And we would call them the owner, even though they don’t technically own it, but they’re the owner operator.

But they would have an ownership mentality because they’re in it for half the profits. And that’s how they make their money. And so that’s how we were able to attract the operator. And that operator who wanted to have a family business basically. They want to create a business they want their own family members to work in is able to attract those sixteen year olds. And they’re limited to one restaurant. So they got to focus all their attention. And true you say a restaurant runs better when the owner’s on site. So we’re going to have a system

of owners on site at every restaurant and they have an ownership mentality. They’d so so that was kind of the whole difference. We’re not looking for people a lot of money. We’re looking for people a lot of talent that want to own their own business and are very entrepreneurial and want to create a culture that they’d want their own family working in.

speaker-0 (25:02.54)
That dynamic is fascinating to me because it seems kind of simple on the outset, but it’s a hugely different mindset. And as a customer of QSR, you know, whether you go into a and I won’t mention some of the different brand names, but a Chick-fil-A stands out. Yes. The people in there, the way they they look you in the eye, they say my pleasure, they hustle. I mean, it is a very different customer experience.

speaker-1 (25:27.63)
It’s a very different team member experience too. Okay. Yeah. That that’s kind of the precursor to the customer. That’s I think where a lot of businesses miss it. Every business I know wants a great customer experience, but very few have the same passion to create a great team member experience.

speaker-0 (25:46.692)
before we went on air, quote unquote, you all were talking about kind of this eighty twenty yeah principle where most businesses, banks, QSRs, they they do eighty percent of it the same way. Yeah. But it’s that twenty percent or where the magic happens. So talk about that a little bit.

speaker-1 (26:03.874)
Yeah, it’s interesting. they say that life has to be lived forward, but is best understood in reverse. So I’m now eight years out of my time at Chick-fil-A and I’ve had time to look back on my time at Chick-fil-A, and I’ve come to an interesting conclusion. It’s it’s relative to the Pareto principle, which is eighty twenty principle, engineering principle that basically says twenty percent of the input into any system process, organization, et cetera, generates eighty percent of the output. So in other words, it’s always a minority of input.

That creates the majority of output. So as an example at Chick-fil-A, 20% of our products, 80% of the revenue. Okay. And this is true in science, it’s true in nature. It’s true. It’s just a a principle science principle that holds true across many things, but included in that I would put business. So what I realized in looking back on my time at Chick-fil-A is the flip side of that, kind of the inverse of that, is that eighty percent of what Chick-fil-A does.

speaker-0 (26:44.984)
Right.

speaker-1 (27:02.314)
Is identical to what every other fast food does. If we literally made a list of what Chick-fil-A does, we we buy land, we build buildings, we have drive-throughs, we serve food in paper bags, you know, we s clean restrooms, we clean table. If you made a list of everything Chick-fil-A does, 80% would be identical to what all our competitors do. But 20% would be dramatically different. And that 20% is what generates almost a hundred percent of the difference in results that Chick-fil-A enjoys. The problem, I think, for most businesses.

Is they spend a hundred percent of their time on the eighty percent. And I call it the parity principle. They study what everyone else is doing. Frankly, I’ve seen it in the banking bit. You study what everyone else is doing, you imitate it. Where the greatest brands out there, the brands like Chick fil A and a lot of other great brands, in my mind, they study what everyone else is doing and they innovate a certain aspect of it. And they do they innovate in ways their competitors can’t fathom or wouldn’t believe. you know, Chick fil A.

speaker-0 (27:37.518)
Okay.

speaker-1 (28:00.92)
Chick-fil-A’s closed on Sunday. Every other competitor has the opportunity to do that. None of them do it. None of them. Because they don’t see the importance of it. Chick-fil-A shares half the profit of the restaurant with the person running the restaurant. I don’t know anyone else doing that. So there are certain decisions that Chick-fil-A has made that where we see things differently, so we do it differently. And that’s the 20% at Chick-fil-A that makes 100% of the difference in results.

speaker-0 (28:17.688)
To make

speaker-0 (28:27.47)
And so when you read like Michael Porter, his his big theme and kind of business insight is you don’t compete to be the best because if you do that, people can copy you and just imitate. Yes. You compete to be unique. Yes. So figure out all right, what’s what’s the lane that’s unique, whether it’s you know, maybe you’re a high cost, high service provider. So that twenty percent like at a Chick-fil-A or in a banking, what w how do you

figure out what that twenty percent is and then how do you make sure organizationally you’re leaning in and developing that and not just copying what the other banks or the other QSRs are doing.

speaker-1 (29:04.726)
Well that is the key to the whole thing because my experience has been most businesses never think about what you just said. Okay. They just study all the other businesses and they do what everyone else does and when everyone else starts changing what they do, they change too. And then they just th they just imitate because they imitate and then they just say we just gotta we’ve just gotta execute better than the next guy. Right. Well that’ll that’ll get you a little ways, but that won’t ever get you. So I think the most innovative companies say what are some things

That all of our competitors would say, that’s just wrong. It’s wrong on paper. That’s where this podcast came from. Is to study great brands that are doing things their competitors think look wrong on paper and end up being fantastic ideas. I mean, every single brand we’ve studied has a dimension of that. Bucky’s, you know, Buckys. You know, what an amaz you they they took a convenience store footprint of 3,000 square feet and now they got like 60, 80,000 square foot convenience stores. They fired

The number one customer, they’re all on interstates. Forty percent of the fuel business on an interstate is trucks. Okay. Like eighteen wheelers. Wheelers. No eighteen wheelers allowed at Bucky’s. So they fired forty percent of their customers right up front. And so there are just things like that where they see the world differently and they create this compelling competitive advantage that all of their competitors miss because they just think that looks wrong on paper.

speaker-0 (30:06.208)
Right.

speaker-0 (30:11.648)
Okay.

speaker-0 (30:30.254)
But that to me is the genius of business, which is Bucky’s created a a new lane that nobody else, so huge footprint, you know, fifty different fueling stations, clean bathrooms. I mean huge bathrooms.

speaker-1 (30:42.806)
And huge bathrooms. All their competitors see bathrooms as an expense. So why would you want a big one? Right. They’ve got people that clean those things twenty four seven. Most of their competitors would say, There’s no way I could afford to have somebody clean the bathroom twenty four seven. That’d be too big an expense. They saw it as a marketing opportunity. It’s like people are gonna brag about our big bathrooms and how clean they are and and that becomes the magnet that gets people to stop there.

speaker-0 (31:07.214)
Yeah, well and you pull into a Bucky’s, there are a hundred and thirty cars in the parking lot. So they’re they they’ve cracked the code.

speaker-1 (31:13.048)
What’s interesting, we could have the same conversation if you wanted to about Airbnb. Okay. We could have the same conversation about Patagonia. We could have the same conversation about our next podcast will be on Ritz Carlton. Yeah. And we’re gonna look at the 20% of what they do differently. You know, on and on and on it goes. But I think the greatest brands have the greatest clarity around the trade-offs they’re willing to make that their competitors are not willing to make.

speaker-0 (31:35.808)
So how do you I think this is great as I think about banking where it’s a commoditized very much business. So that twenty percent in a commodity business, I I’m saying it’s really harder, right? It’s much harder and more difficult because you’re fighting for the innovation in that piece of it, which is just really tough when it’s almost perfectly commoditized.

speaker-1 (31:59.822)
But the advantage is in the banking business, because it’s so commoditized, it doesn’t have to be such a huge differentiation. It’s you know, it because any differentiation, you know, might really work well because the bar is so much lower. Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-0 (32:13.752)
That’s a good point. maybe bigger picture, just where do you think leaders fail? You’ve been around folks, I’m sure, that have tried to lead or build things and they haven’t done that well. what would you say as you’ve observed, people that have struggled and maybe the counterpoint of that, what do you think people have done that you’ve you’ve just been amazed by how they’ve led? Yep.

speaker-1 (32:39.406)
Probably, you know, there’s so many dimensions to this, but a dimension that’s very common is I think most leaders feel like they need to have high control because they’re the smartest person in the room. Right. You know, and that’s why they’re the leader. That’s why they got put in position. They’re the smartest person in the room, so they need to have high control and they need to control what goes on. in order to enable success because that’s what enabled their own personal success. Yep. But I think the the greatest leaders I’ve seen

Get beyond that. They they may even have a season of their life where that’s the case. And that’s what gets them in a position. But ultimately leadership is about unleashing all those people they lead to be their very best. You know what a great leader generates? Leaders. Other leaders. Yeah. And if they see their job as to create other leaders, they do it totally different.

And if they see their job is to create followers. If they see their job is to create followers, I gotta be the smartest person in the room. I gotta control what everybody in the room is doing, et cetera, et cetera. But if they see their job is to unleash leaders, it’s a it’s no c it’s not I just gotta create boundaries, you know, but I wanna have maximum flexibility within, you know, we call it freedom within a framework many times. Yeah. You gotta create a framework, but you gotta give maximum freedom instead of minimum freedom to people.

speaker-0 (34:04.942)
I was reading a book and I can’t remember or I would attribute it to it, but it was talking about the the goal of a leader should be to kind of, you know, be in the organization, lead it, but at some point lead it to the point where you don’t need to be in the room where the decisions are made. Yeah. ‘Cause you’ve you know, you’ve helped foster and create a culture where other people are able to lead and kind of carry on the vision and and that kind of thing.

speaker-1 (34:27.982)
Well, they need to create an organization that doesn’t require their presence. Yeah. To the degree that it requires their presence, you’ve created a police state where you’re policing something into existence. Yeah. And that police state only works as long as the policeman’s there. Yep. What you want is self ownership of everybody in the room where they don’t need you to be there.

speaker-0 (34:46.782)
there’s a quip that says, readers lead and leaders read. Are there books that you’ve read in your life? I mean you’ve written a book so you’re on the other side of it, but anything that’s had a huge impact of you outside of just the you know, the battlefield experience of building something.

speaker-1 (35:03.874)
Yeah, well I yes. And I think nowadays, just due to the nature of things, pop podcasts are more the way I learn. Okay now just because it fits my lifestyle more than reading. Listen to a podcast while I’m working out in the car, that kind of so I think podcasts have a big impact on me. but I have read a lot of books over time. I love to read books when I have time, but it I don’t have as much time to do that. But you you’ve alluded to one of them good to great, I think is one of the all time great books.

speaker-0 (35:14.572)
I can end the case.

speaker-0 (35:31.17)
Me too.

speaker-1 (35:33.118)
Just the principals in there. In fact, Jim Collins was a a good friend of Chick fil A and he invited a a group of us to come spend a few days with him out in his office in Colorado. So I got to spend a few days with Jim Collins and huge Jim Collins fan yeah after all that. But good to great if if if I could say just one book, that’d probably be the

speaker-0 (35:53.142)
I think agree with that. I think that’s the my top business book in that kind of principle getting the right people on the bus on the right seats. I mean, yeah, there’s just some some wisdom in that. what do you do for fun? What do you do to take a break and sharpen the saw? Well

speaker-1 (36:07.96)
It’s interesting. while my kids were growing up, it was whatever they were doing. But now all my kids are adults. And so nowadays we’ve got a little place up at Lake Lanier. I love a day on the lake. Any any day on the lake, on water, on a boat, on jet skis, that’s a that’s been a good day. And interestingly, I’ve become a big sports fan. Okay. There’s something about following sport and just sure. So the Braves are big for me right now. I love to follow the Braves. I went to University of Georgia, so the Georgia Bulldogs are big, the Falcons.

That kind of thing. But there’s something about the world of sports where you’ve got these great coaches and you’ve got teams that that have immediate score scorecard and score board. And I think business needs to learn a lot from that is how can we turn business into something as exciting as sports? You know, there’s an analogy someone shared with me one time that kind of captured my imagination as it relates to sports. If I were to take you to a bowling alley and I blindfolded you and I put

Earmuffs on so you couldn’t hear anything and just ask you to roll the ball, you would quickly get bored because you can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything, you’re just rolling the ball as boring. But if I take the blindfold off, if I take the the earplugs off and that kind of thing, and now and all of a sudden you have lights, you have a score, you have music, and now you’re rolling the ball. You’ll pay me to come. You’ll pay me for that experience. Yeah. Where you’ll quit the other one. And I think most businesses have the blindfolded, earmuffed.

experience for the they don’t see the progress they’re making, they don’t see the excitement of what’s going on. So some of the greatest businesses take the aspect of sports, which is seeing progress being made, seeing the score go up, hearing the crowd cheer, you know, that kind of thing. And you can do that in business.

speaker-0 (37:49.462)
Who doesn’t like a pat on the back or if you’ve gone and had success and when you play a sport, the coach will, you know, slap you and say, Great job, you know, great play or whatever. Well, in business, I’m not sure we do you take a minute at four o’clock and go across the street and just celebrate a win and high five everybody or recognize folks in a public environment to say, you know, great job, good win. you know, we need more of that.

speaker-1 (38:11.33)
You know, which is another thing. I I think one of my worst days at Chick-fil-A consistently for for many years were performance reviews. Because I feel like most performance reviews at that time are structured where you’re the judge and they’re the ju they’re the victim of the judge, so to speak. And so you’re judging people and they walk away feeling de degraded, demoted, demoralized, that kind of thing. Because it’s set up that way. And so

I got frustrated with that and then we decided to change it at one point in my career. I said, you know what? Where where is it you kind of accomplish the same thing, but it’s viewed differently? And I thought, coaches. Coaches are there to help you get better. Now they they gotta point out what you’re doing wrong, but it really hit me when the Braves won the World Series a few years ago. Okay. All the players got a ring for the World Series. Guess who else got a ring? The coaches. Okay.

And the players were celebrating coach because the players felt like the coaches enabled me to win that. I wonder in business, how many business leaders would get a ring? Good point. Because the in business, most leaders are viewed not as the coach. Guess who they’re viewed as? The ref. The umpire. They’re calling balls and strikes on people and they’re striking ya out. You’re out of here. And that’s the way a lot of people view the way they lead their people. Yeah. You’re out of here. They call balls and strikes instead of coach them.

None of the refs by the way at the World Series got a

speaker-0 (39:41.038)
But they were the peak of their game and doing things that were pretty outstanding.

speaker-1 (39:45.678)
Yeah. But that that coach versus ref or umpire for performance reviews was powerful for me.

speaker-0 (39:51.224)
Well, what do you think about this? So we’re gonna do this this year for the first time in Atlanta. And if you don’t like this idea, we’ll cut it out of the podcast. But we’re gonna do self-reviews. So we’re asking each employee to s to and we’ve got five categories. what are you most proud of for the year? What do you need to work on? What are your three and five year goals? those types of questions. So it’s really the

The employee is going to do a self-review and then sit down with us or whoever the coach or the manager is and just listen and then try to guide and say, okay, yeah, I agree with you that you did these things really well. These are certainly areas of improvement. I think most people are self-aware. They know what they’re good at and what they need to work on. And my hope is it creates an environment for a conversation that can enable growth as opposed to the A B relationships that you outlined.

speaker-1 (40:44.718)
I I love that BJ. I think that’s a real l let me share with you one thing that that would supplement that your thinking on this. So my older brother is one of the most smart human beings on the face of the earth. And unfortunately I had to live in his shadow all throughout school. You know, he would have a teacher and then I would have him and he would set this bar so high that I couldn’t keep up ’cause I was a very mediocre student. He was like he could make A’s without even trying. Yeah. Kind of thing. And so he is now an attorney.

Okay. And I asked him one time, I said, his his name is Doug. I said, Doug, if you ever needed an attorney, would you just represent yourself? Is I said, I don’t know a smarter person than you. I don’t know a better attorney than you. Wouldn’t you just represent yourself? And he said something that really showed the wisdom that he has. He said, David, no attorney worth their salt would ever represent themselves. Okay. Because you could never be totally objective.

Yeah. About your own situation. Right. It takes a third party to see it. So what I love about what you’re talking about is they can kind of bring their case, but now you have a third party to see it more clearly. They kind of bring the issues to the table, but now you have a coach and an attorney that’s the third party that can see their situation more clearly and therefore help them create a plan to accomplish what they want to

speaker-0 (41:59.822)
Really good. I like that. That’s a that’s a good idea. any final thoughts from you before we wrap up? Really appreciate you being here today and being a part of the podcast.

speaker-1 (42:09.686)
y you know, for for me probably the the biggest idea that we talked about that I would want to emphasize as we leave is thinking of business as a be rich scheme, not a get rich scheme, because everything changes when you view it that way. Everything changes. It’s why you wouldn’t want to sell the company at the end. Right. If our company is being rich toward everybody, I don’t want to sell it to get rich. I want to like ensure that it lasts beyond my lifetime.

So it can be rich to people in the future. It can be rich toward the employees that work there. It can be rich toward the customers that I’m serving. It can be rich toward my suppliers. And so I just think this whole idea of a be rich business versus a get rich business is a central organizing idea that changes everything.

speaker-0 (42:51.852)
I I mean look, you read all the time about people that started when they were twenty five, they built something, sold it when they were fifty five or sixty, thinking that that sale and going to the beach was where they wanted to end up. And I w I don’t know if regrets the right word, but I do think that in certain cases they’d trade all that money to just be going into the office every day with their team and building something.

speaker-1 (43:13.526)
You it’s interesting. That is a very common story. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a story, you know, different than that. But interestingly, one of the s brands that we studied for wrong on pay Trader Joe’s. Okay. Trader Joe has a story, has a book that he read excuse me, the Joe that created Trader Joe’s has a book that he wrote. And at the very last page, he said the biggest mistake he ever made was selling his company. He he goes through all the rationale why he did it, and it made sense at the time. But

Looking back on his life and he died right after he wrote that book. right. But he said the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life was selling his company.

speaker-0 (43:50.402)
Yeah, that that’ll tell you right there. Yeah. look, I could go on and on all day. I think you could too. I can’t thank you enough for being a part of this. Leadership is everything podcast. I think David, you’ve got it such a unique experience and perspective on business. and really just appreciate your wisdom and taking the time to be with us today. So

speaker-1 (44:10.006)
It’s been pure joy. And best of luck to you and all the your listeners. Thank you.