00:00:00
you know when barack obama left the white house to go pick up five guys we're gonna go get some burgers 41.
00:00:06
that's what makes five guys a treat and special john eckford the ceo of five guys europe
00:00:12
five guys has a global cult following five guys burgers are fries it was banging covent garden was the very first
00:00:19
five guys outside of the us we knew that we weren't gonna be advertising we're entirely relying on someone tasting a
00:00:26
great burger and crying and telling their neighbors or their friends it has to be that's [ __ ] fantastic that
00:00:32
covent garden location sold more than any in the world it did yeah by far i'm responsible for 225 restaurants now how
00:00:39
do you stop getting a little bit sloppy and complacent we've actually gotten better the key to that is
00:00:45
[Music] as the ceo of a business that's gone through such chaos when was your hardest
00:00:50
time so i had two young children the fact is that there were moments where they woke
00:00:57
up and needed both their parents and i wasn't there you'll hurt the people you care about
00:01:04
in ways that you don't intend in ways that you don't understand
00:01:10
so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are
00:01:17
then please keep this yourself [Music]
00:01:26
john i've i've read quite extensively through your story and um i guess my first question is when you
00:01:33
when you think back to your pre-twenties right what is that what are the most important
00:01:39
things from that era of your life that shaped your perspective and approach
00:01:44
to the world and to business today wow well first i grew up in a very
00:01:51
counter-cultural isolationist family so we didn't we didn't watch tv we
00:01:57
didn't celebrate birthdays or holidays and um i kind of got up at five a.m to practice
00:02:03
violin for an hour before school and had music lessons after school every
00:02:08
day and so it was very different
00:02:14
and i think i always i think i grew up feeling different with this kind of
00:02:19
[Music] longing to have a sense of belonging um and that was always something that
00:02:25
i was looking for in my professional life i think as well
00:02:31
i would have been a fourth generation doctor if i had gone into medicine
00:02:36
and my father told me that the profession was changing and it wasn't so much about patients and
00:02:43
um and doctors and kind of the relationship that can develop in terms
00:02:48
of health and bringing your you know your health to your doctor and getting advice and it was changing in america
00:02:54
dramatically and so he he said you know don't uh don't do that you know i'm not encouraging you to do medicine so i knew
00:03:00
i had to kind of find a different role in life and i read um anne rand in high school
00:03:09
um and not suggesting that uh that she's gotten everything right but one one interesting thing that she did
00:03:16
propose was that there's there could be something noble in business be you know being a
00:03:22
successful entrepreneur could be a noble thing and
00:03:27
my so the the kind of orientation from my family was make sure that you do something
00:03:34
important or in your life and that meant you know taking care of other people or doing
00:03:40
something that was had some greater purpose to it than kind of just
00:03:45
making money but that seed of a thought that
00:03:51
being in business could actually be a noble profession and you actually
00:03:56
could do something important to make people's lives better um and take care of people in a different way in business
00:04:02
was kind of i think an important penny to drop for me um when i was when i was 18. um but yeah it was a it was a it was
00:04:10
a definitely a different upbringing than than most and that that sense of belonging is something i've
00:04:16
been searching for my whole life do you think you've been searching for that sense of belonging more so than the average person
00:04:22
um i think so you know i i think if you have something in abundance you take it for granted maybe um and it was
00:04:29
something that i definitely didn't have and and that i um and i very much felt
00:04:36
um you know an outsider looking in um and i i saw this you know other other
00:04:42
people had community other kids had community and and kind of broad-based friendships and
00:04:48
and a sense of really kind of relaxed belonging and i kind of always had this
00:04:54
kind of anxious drive that you know looking for that um
00:04:59
and you know i think business was um you know certainly lived that out in the
00:05:05
business world um as well you you had a um
00:05:11
quite a journey through banking and being a being what we'd call like a a regional
00:05:17
councillor and all these things and eventually you you came back to the uk kind of where i wanted to to start this
00:05:22
this story off um in 2010 i believe that's right um your good friend sir charles dunstan who was the founder of
00:05:29
carphone warehouse um and you went into business originally and then you went went on in search of
00:05:35
um a new business to sort of partner with him on and that's kind of where the five guys
00:05:41
stories begins yes well i i had been a student here a long time ago and lived in a
00:05:49
tiny basement one room flat much smaller than this studio is um and uh charles lived
00:05:56
upstairs with his his sister and girlfriend and they invited me up for drinks one day and they pretty much
00:06:02
adopted me for my year abroad um and we went to their parents home in cambridge and to
00:06:09
norfolk for for a holiday and um they so they really made england feel like a
00:06:15
home uh and i always was always my ambition to return with a
00:06:21
non-student's budget to england and so the chance came in 2010
00:06:28
and moved back here and charles had just spun talk talk out
00:06:33
from carphone warehouse and so i guess you can't be ceo of two publicly traded businesses so he became
00:06:39
chairman of both and ceo of neither and began thinking a bit more as an
00:06:45
investor and we got to talking and thinking what's the next
00:06:50
big business that opportunity that we we could leverage his experience in reputation in retail
00:06:57
but we wanted something that amazon wasn't so much a threat to as electronics
00:07:03
online felt like a real threat to that industry segment and we thought food and beverage has got to be
00:07:10
a segment that's a bit more protected from the online world you kind of have to show this is before
00:07:16
delivery kind of blew up you kind of have to show up and and and eat your food where it's prepared more um so we
00:07:23
thought that that would protect uh you from the online competitive world and but we
00:07:29
didn't know anything about food and beverage neither of us did um and so we went looking for a great
00:07:36
concept that wasn't in the uk that we thought could bring that expertise we could bring the
00:07:41
kind of operational uk property knowledge and hiring practices and
00:07:47
market knowledge and partner with someone who would bring that food and beverage experience into the into the
00:07:53
proposition we talked to so many u.s concepts that weren't here and eventually kind of collided with the
00:08:00
morel family there actually are five brothers and their mom and dad so there's seven
00:08:06
in the family but five brothers who are the five guys who founded the business
00:08:12
and they were looking to go global having pretty much allocated the
00:08:17
u.s amongst their franchisees how many so how many other concepts do you think you looked at and was there
00:08:23
any near misses was there any that you thought you know what maybe any other concepts that you nearly committed your your life to yeah so um we talked with a
00:08:30
lot of different concepts and um still in contact with a lot of those uh those concepts um and some of them have been
00:08:37
really helpful in terms of um building the five guys business here so you know
00:08:42
if you can use insight from another concept that maybe isn't a competitor isn't here um that
00:08:47
can be really helpful and some of those still may may come to play um then why five guys
00:08:54
well i think it starts with the product um you know it's it's such a simple
00:09:00
fantastic product you know it's just burgers you know the menu is like shockingly stark i mean it is burgers
00:09:08
and fries and that's it um and but it you know when you when you take a bite of a five guys burger when
00:09:13
you when you when you have fries that are cooked exactly right it is it's magical i mean it's and it's
00:09:19
fantastic it's a world world-beating product and that was that was i think you know
00:09:25
there's so many concepts have had gone like broad you know like um you know there's so many concepts in america like
00:09:31
you can get everything in the in the menus like a bible and you know you kind of flip through the section you're like how can they possibly be preparing
00:09:38
repairing all this stuff at the top of the game and um and five guys was going you know completely against that which
00:09:44
was you know everybody told the morel family you know you have to have a salad if you're gonna you know be successful
00:09:49
you have to have you know chicken you know you can't just have a burger on your menu and they're like
00:09:55
when we add other stuff to our menu it just like blows our mind we don't we lose focus on
00:10:01
making a great burger and so i think part of their genius has been focus you know we're going to do just
00:10:08
one thing and do it really well i mean that was the thesis for the founding of the business was if you're
00:10:15
going to have your mom over and and make make burgers you know what would you do you would buy the highest quality
00:10:20
ingredients you possibly can you'd make everything fresh um that was i think the morels were so far
00:10:27
ahead of their time when they founded the business in 1986 because there's
00:10:32
literally not a freezer in the five guys equipment infrastructure
00:10:38
everything is obsessively fresh and right before the we we signed the joint venture to bring them here there
00:10:45
was a study done that said the number one criteria that anyone across the uk
00:10:51
looked for in determining where you were going to eat was was the freshness of the food
00:10:56
and whether it was white tablecloth or at a fast food place it didn't matter that was the most important criteria and
00:11:03
that was like the morales thesis they you know not everything had to be freshly prepared that day or it went um
00:11:09
it's interesting because conceivably it seems to me like they were very much
00:11:14
at the right place at the right time there was this macro change in public perception and awareness around food and
00:11:20
what's going into food organic and vegan all these kinds of these conversations around food started
00:11:25
to emerge which seems to have hurt a lot of big brands um in a very uh
00:11:31
fatal way whether it's in the sugar based fizzy drink industry or whether it's in the fast food industry
00:11:38
um it's conceivable that the world could have gone another way maybe we could have doubled down on liking
00:11:44
even faster food that was has more crap in it right yes um so i just i just wonder how important you think timing
00:11:51
was in in their thesis catching public that sort of public wave coming into shore no i think that's i think that's
00:11:56
very i think you're very right about that you know the the our fries have three ingredients in it potatoes the
00:12:02
peanut oil we cook it in and a dash of salt some of our competitors you know have
00:12:07
like 16 19 ingredients in their fries like what do you what else could there be in in fries you
00:12:14
know so from our perspective our you know our fries start as potatoes in the beginning of the day they're hand washed
00:12:20
hand-cut and then twice cooked to a very specific standard
00:12:25
and you know just keeping it again just keeping it simple um and i think i think it's very much
00:12:31
um i think they they position themselves in front of a tidal wave without without knowing it um
00:12:37
and that that trend of freshness um i think was a huge um a huge win for the
00:12:42
family i think the other thing that they did which was very early on trend even early from when we found it here in the uk was
00:12:49
customization and having something exactly the way that you want it
00:12:55
we have 15 free toppings which means that you can have every burger 250 000
00:13:01
ways just by the combinations of those those toppings and everything is made by hand just for
00:13:08
you we don't cook anything until stephen walks in and says you know this is the burger that i want um now the
00:13:14
challenging thing is is that as soon as you've placed your order there's 249 999 wrong ways to make your
00:13:21
burger um so the customer one of the one aspect of customer service is getting that right the first time um but
00:13:28
customization was new i think i mean in america you know it goes back to harry met sally and the way she ordered her
00:13:34
salad in the you know in the restaurant um you know is um you know an example of how americans want things
00:13:41
just the way they want them um but i think that's been a newer thing to europe you know they like the chef
00:13:46
should know you know chef tell me how i should order this um and saying no no it should be exactly the way you want it
00:13:53
um and i think that trend is the certainly the millennials are very much onto that you know i want it exactly the
00:13:59
way that i want it and five guys is really ready for that the whole machine is like um uh
00:14:04
i liken it to putting a a ferrari engine on top of an ox cart and then racing it
00:14:10
around a track so we're very old school very analog in our product in our production it's very
00:14:17
manual um everything's handmade and yet we can do you know a 4 000 pound hour
00:14:24
out of uh you know of oxford circus making you know burgers and fries um you'll see
00:14:29
kind of 25 30 people running around madly behind an open kitchen making your food i think that was the
00:14:35
other secret because five guys doesn't advertise so there literally is no way for us to tell
00:14:42
someone who doesn't know five guys what we're about or you know what makes us different or special um we're entirely
00:14:48
relying on someone walking into the restaurant seeing how the food is prepared tasting
00:14:54
a great burger and fry and then telling their their neighbors or their friends you know hey look you've gotta you gotta try this um so having an open kitchen
00:15:01
where you can see that freshness and the customization i think has been part of the um success of
00:15:08
the business it's almost like there's a set of really strong values underpinning the business and the business has been reverse engineered maybe not even
00:15:14
reverse engineered because when it's the case of a founding family still running it i'm sure it all comes sort of
00:15:20
intuitively to them but and so in hindsight we look at it and go that's the point of genius that's the point of genius but it all comes from these
00:15:26
underlying values one of those is about the freshness of the ingredients and all being very real so of course the kitchen
00:15:31
would be open right because you've got nothing to hide yes but in hindsight you go well you know that's that's genius
00:15:37
well no it would be strange to hide away the kitchen in such a context but um that
00:15:42
that particular point about the kitchen being open at five guys is very different from all the other fast food
00:15:48
restaurants that came before five guys that dominated the high street where you'd order the burger and then
00:15:55
something would go on in the back and then you'd get this thing wrapped up given to you yes i've also seen this trend with all these
00:16:02
fast salad outlets where they put all of the vegetables the carrots and the
00:16:08
the cucumbers on show in front of you as if to say these are the carrots that are going to go into your salad yes and it's
00:16:14
small you don't really you don't think about it as a customer that much but somewhere subconsciously it really
00:16:20
really matters right yeah no i mean i think you know part of the the original founding of the business um jerry
00:16:26
morrell picked a very obscure location and said look if we can make this location work we know we have something
00:16:32
it almost was like a speakeasy um you know we're like you know knock three times and you know someone will open the
00:16:39
slide window and you know you give the secret word and then you come in and so five guys kind of had a little bit of
00:16:44
that kind of coolness factor of like hey let me tell you about five guys it's amazing and you
00:16:50
know maybe you haven't heard of it certainly haven't seen it on tv or on the radio but it's amazing and if you
00:16:55
you know come find out so you know when barack obama left the white house in his limo to go pick up five guys and for his
00:17:02
office you know that was you know a great example of how of course you know
00:17:08
everybody knows who he is and that's kind of like a megaphone but that's how five guys was discovered that's how five
00:17:14
guys built its business was one recommendation at a time and i can remember covent garden was the
00:17:21
very first five guys outside of the u.s and we'd spent a lot of money
00:17:28
paying for the bar that was there to leave and then building the first five guys
00:17:33
and uh the we were quite nervous we were well into
00:17:39
five figures seven figures for you know for the new for the first store and um
00:17:44
the night before opening we were like what happens if nobody comes and jerry morell laughed and said you know look
00:17:50
you've picked a good location someone's going to walk by here and they'll walk in we'll make them a great
00:17:56
burger and they'll tell their neighbors and it'll be fine and of course there was a queue at 4 00 a.m in the morning
00:18:01
and there was a queue around the building for you know the first two years that the business was open until
00:18:07
we opened up more five guys around there because people had tried it in america including me i tried it and i think i
00:18:13
tried it in america before i tried it here i'm 99 sure that i tried on my way to coachella one year or something but
00:18:18
and then when it came here i was like oh that's that amazing burger place from america is that why there was a key around the corner when you were working
00:18:25
there actually is a burger blogger community right this global okay and everybody talks about burgers and you
00:18:32
know it's one of those very um articulate communities that and
00:18:37
there's a lot of debate about who has the best burger and why it's the best burger and five guys is in that debate in that mix and so we're really
00:18:43
fortunate for that um and and actually when charles and i were were thinking about who to do business with
00:18:50
it really was when you know when charles flew over and went to five guys in manhattan was like this is fanta the
00:18:56
product's fantastic one thing that we did really differently in the uk
00:19:01
was the property approach we thought the product was
00:19:06
it was a category winner it was the best that we had that we could find but it was positioned from a property
00:19:12
perspective and you know mostly in strip centers and in kind of b locations in america and we thought let's give it the
00:19:19
property presence that it deserves and i think that positioning was a really important
00:19:25
distinction that we made richard collier who runs our property has done a fantastic job of picking the flagship
00:19:30
locations to say there isn't a better premium burger than five guys and we're gonna make sure that
00:19:36
you discover us partly because of where we are so you chose aspirational
00:19:41
locations because you wanted to make the brand aspirational essentially
00:19:46
well we knew that we weren't going to be advertising so you know if you can't tell people about
00:19:53
who you are you have to rely upon the footfall and that which essentially becomes a word of
00:19:59
mouth accelerator so if you have a lot of people walking by your store some will make the
00:20:05
decision to come in and then that larger group who comes in then kind of tells everybody else and and that's really the
00:20:12
way the business grew and worked you know you have this you have this rule where you don't do advertising has there ever been a time where you
00:20:18
thought [ __ ] i just want to just run a little facebook ad you know the pandemic comes around things start changing in
00:20:24
the world you think [ __ ] i just wanna you know i know you joined some of the delivery um services which was a which
00:20:30
was a big big decision for the uk yes because the us hadn't done that previously that's right but in those
00:20:35
moments do you not think [ __ ] i just want to run a little it's real tempting isn't it i mean you know when you think about the dashboard
00:20:41
that most food and beverage executives have you know you have an advertising dial that
00:20:48
you can crank you know you can choose the quality of your messaging and the budget that you put in and the way that
00:20:54
you spend it and all those dials are gone and off the off the table so you know it does focus you on the things
00:21:02
that you can do which is making great burgers and fries hiring
00:21:07
people who are passionate about it you know kind of back to the whole people thing the people who are in the store make
00:21:14
such a difference um you know food fundamentally is about passion we all have you know you you're you remember
00:21:22
the great food experiences that you've had you talk about them and it becomes part of your if you're on holiday having
00:21:29
great food is part of that experience and um having a passion about food is so
00:21:36
important and and having you know i'm responsible for 225 restaurants now um and 8 600 people a
00:21:44
day get up and put on a red shirt and go into work into five guys and whether those people who are actually
00:21:50
shaking fries and grilling burgers care about the product that they're making
00:21:56
the food that they're that they're cooking that's all the difference because all we have is the customer eating a great
00:22:02
product it can't be good right if a customer takes a bite of a burger and goes huh that's really good
00:22:08
that doesn't move the dial nothing happens it has to be that's [ __ ] fantastic you know i'm going to go tell
00:22:15
somebody who else who do i know who likes good food i'm going to tell them about a burger or a fries you know the
00:22:22
fries at five guys it has to be that level good and you only get that level good with people who pour their passion
00:22:28
and their care into the food that they're preparing and having that many people care about about
00:22:35
burgers and fries is the you know i think the what makes us successful you know that that sort of psychological
00:22:41
device that's making people want to tell their friends do you spend much time thinking about exactly why that is like
00:22:47
what is the why would i care if i've had a great burger why would i care psychologically to tell my best mate
00:22:54
about that burger what is it doing for me that's next level thinking stephen
00:23:00
and and actually is the i one thing we have been able to do is to
00:23:06
encourage the morels to widen their thinking a bit um and
00:23:11
delivery was a great example of that where um they opened up a store near the pentagon and a general called up jerry
00:23:18
and said like a thousand burgers at you know noon and uh you know jerry bought a big sign and hung it up no delivery and
00:23:26
put it on the side of the building um and you know the thesis was right which is that our burgers and fries taste best
00:23:32
right off the grill you know it's the best food experience you can get but we convinced him that
00:23:37
actually it wasn't just your cheap local you know guy who was delivering food it was
00:23:44
actually really high quality food and more and more people were actually looking for really good food delivered if you could
00:23:50
come and try it here yeah yeah from delivery yeah yeah absolutely before it
00:23:55
went before it went to america for sure um but we convinced them that all of the better restaurant concepts were were
00:24:02
actually heading towards delivery and so gosh five six years ago now we we
00:24:07
started we launched delivery in the in the uk and it really worked it kind of became about 20 of our sales
00:24:14
and they saw that of course it's not as good as right off the grill but it
00:24:19
actually is a good product and people like it and it and it can work and if you work with your delivery and you have
00:24:24
a commitment from your delivery partner to take care of the food as it's transported to the customer it can
00:24:30
really work and we did a lot of stuff like you know telling people to you know turn your oven on 200 pop the fries in
00:24:37
for about you know just a couple minutes it'll really you know liven them up before you eat them so
00:24:42
they saw that it worked here and they picked it up and of course during the pandemic it was our lifeblood um you
00:24:47
know it would have been a very different journey um if there hadn't been delivery um in the system but we've been able to
00:24:54
convince the morels that some of those things that were were rules of the brand
00:24:59
before can actually be good for the brand and can work and delivery was a good example
00:25:05
of that i guess that's important because the world is changing so like stubborn values are really good to some extent
00:25:10
but in a changing world um it's almost a bit like the bible you have to be able to look at the thing
00:25:15
again and go huh yes maybe you know so indeed indeed
00:25:20
and actually in the morels defense you know they've they've become successful who they are
00:25:26
is saying no to change you know when everybody told them they should do a chicken sandwich everybody told them they should do a salad they were like no
00:25:32
no it's too complicated we take our eye off the ball and the kind of core of what we do um and helping them to just
00:25:38
to discern that delivery actually is okay you can be the best burger being delivered because it
00:25:45
doesn't compromise on their on their values those core values of serving food that your mother would love basically exactly
00:25:52
right so they're willing to innovate but with i guess they're not compromising on their values then because those core values are still there but now it's just
00:25:58
about distributions changing a little bit well you mean you have a customer who wants a great burger and they happen
00:26:04
to be watching the football match and they're like i am not leaving my chair right i'm watching the football match
00:26:10
and but i want the best burger i can possibly get so that customer you can still reach and
00:26:16
and you can give them a really good product when you think about the incumbents then those we'll talk about just the burger
00:26:22
incumbents that were there in the let's say in the european market before five guys arrived why do you think now from everything
00:26:29
you've learned that incumbents often fall what is it
00:26:35
gosh well you know i i i all i can say is that i think part of it
00:26:41
is the the most enduring concepts will survive um and i think if
00:26:48
you look at five guys you know we five guys wasn't successful because we put a slice of avocado you know on a burger so
00:26:55
it wasn't there was nothing trendy about five guys you know the the kind of the 15 toppings that you know you can put on
00:27:01
a burger whether it's you know grilled onions or mushrooms or cheese and you know lettuce tomatoes
00:27:07
fresh is trendy uh yeah it it it is trendy but i can't imagine
00:27:13
it ever going out of trend i mean you you know yes i know there are restaurant concepts
00:27:19
where you walk into their kitchen and there's little like a bank of of microwaves and they like kind of pull
00:27:25
this stuff out and you pop them in the microwaves and i mean you know i can't imagine that anyone would ever go let's
00:27:30
go back to that you know i mean i think i think fresh is is now
00:27:35
a an enduring expectation across price points i mean if you can have you know a
00:27:42
you know a five guys that's incredibly obsessively fresh you know why would you
00:27:47
not if you could one of the things that i sometimes think about why incumbents fall is that um
00:27:54
quality and attention to detail declines as growth increases so the more
00:27:59
locations we have quality i can see from your face but this is but obviously i think about you know i
00:28:06
won't name names mcdonald's but i um i just think you know the more locations you have
00:28:12
especially this underlying franchise model will really ultimately hurt the quality of the product and if it hurts
00:28:19
my quality going back to what you said if i have a bad burger in milton keynes i'm less likely to go into mcdonald's in
00:28:24
thailand yes so i mean you know it's funny i mean mcdonald's i would say is actually a really strong competitor i mean
00:28:31
they they they give you what they say on the 10. is it declining i don't know the numbers
00:28:37
but is that i know you're not you're not trying to slag anyone off here but is my thesis is those those businesses are
00:28:42
in decline because there's been this new wave of like fresh and you know
00:28:48
almost all of our customers also go to mcdonald's um and you know if you if you look at the frequency of
00:28:55
five guys you know mcdonald's has a huge frequency you know eight times or more a year which actually ends up being you
00:29:01
know people go there a lot um and five guys frequency is much lower than that
00:29:07
and and you know it's five guys is a treat you know it's not something um you know like a competitor of mine that i
00:29:13
think very highly of you know prett's done an amazing job uh with who they are you can go to pret pretty much every day
00:29:19
right and you know the subscription coffee stuff you know all that kind of you know stuff works on a routine basis
00:29:24
you can't go to five guys every day i mean i i go to five guys you know you're pretty close to it but um you eat a
00:29:30
burger that you know that kind of frequently but um you know most of the customers are are going you know a couple times a year um so
00:29:38
it from a frequency perspective i think um you know that's what makes five guys
00:29:43
a treat and special so on that point about um the incumbents and what makes them fall
00:29:48
and scale being one of those key factors how do you how do you guard against that you know you've got 250 225 locations
00:29:55
you said in europe that you're managing yes um how do you stop the 226th location
00:30:01
you know getting a little bit sloppy and complacent and then serving bad burgers yeah gosh david that you know the the
00:30:06
that was my primary concern when i you know i was charles and i structured the joint
00:30:12
venture together we you know we hired the first employees you know and opened the first restaurant and you know it had
00:30:18
such amazing momentum you know it's kind of this explosion of five guys and it was
00:30:24
you know really you know fun to be a part of it in my the the kind of thing that keeps you up is okay we're gonna
00:30:30
grow this business you know as fast as we can because we know we have something
00:30:37
how are we going to keep the intensity and the energy and the in the passion
00:30:43
that we see in the store in come and garden how do we make sure that every one of these restaurants has
00:30:49
that kind of that was the the most that covent garden location sold more than any in the world
00:30:55
when it launched it did yeah by far i mean we underwrote it for like a five and a half year payback it paid back in two
00:31:01
years i mean it was just a phenomenal uh success um
00:31:07
but yeah i mean the thing that kept me up at night was you know how can we make sure that you know we open up in milton
00:31:14
keynes we open up in um you know um the smallest you know we're we're gonna open
00:31:20
up a store in st andrews you know how do we make sure that that those stores have people who are absolutely passionate
00:31:27
about burgers and fries and taking care of hungry customers um and that i will say
00:31:33
has been one of the biggest surprises of my uh tenure is in this business is that
00:31:39
it's we've actually gotten better and the key to that is
00:31:44
hiring very talented professionals and trusting them um and you know
00:31:52
my personal style is a very hands-off style of management i mean if you expect
00:31:58
me to micromanage you i've we've gotten off in is the wrong place is the wrong fit you know
00:32:04
we hire professionals who are really good at what they do and let them do their job
00:32:10
and finding those people who are absolutely operators i i'd say the other bit is
00:32:16
that we are very operations led um i was a banker before it before this but i'm
00:32:21
fully qualified in a five guys kitchen so i can do every task that you see in
00:32:27
you know making a making burgers and fries i'm certified to do that and people who are much better at it
00:32:33
than i am could do it much faster than i can but if you have any credibility in the business you have to be operationally
00:32:39
capable and hiring operationally capable people who are
00:32:45
really good at identifying and qualifying those people who can run a store and bring that passion into a
00:32:51
store that's been the the secret of the of the the growth of the business um
00:32:56
because having that kind of commitment from the person who's showing up and running a
00:33:02
shift that's what that's what makes this restaurant successful going back to that point about values i
00:33:08
i would imagine that you know from speaking to actually sports teams and speaking to the players in those successful sports teams whether it's the
00:33:14
manchester united players that were under sir alex ferguson for 20 odd years and they they said something to me which
00:33:19
is really interesting and i never forgot ria ferdinand said to me he said how many times do you think sir alex ferguson came into the training ground
00:33:25
changing room i said i don't know you tell me he goes twice in 26 years
00:33:31
and i go why and he goes well the culture was in there so he didn't need to come in and it spoke and then he told me about
00:33:36
when he moved to another football club and in that same training ground changing room they're all bickering and
00:33:41
talking about how much they're being paid and like slagging things off whereas sir alex ferguson never needed
00:33:46
to walk into that room because the culture was already in there and it made me think about how you know to keep the specialness of what
00:33:52
made you successful at one location when you have 225 those values and that culture must be so strong so if i'm if
00:34:00
i'm starting at five guys in a management position today what are you saying to me to turn me into a five guys
00:34:06
disciple well i mean i guess the we do actually have values that we identify with inside the business and
00:34:12
hiring right is essential i mean there's so many talented food and beverage professionals
00:34:18
who are really good at their job but who are a terrible fit for us and so being able to find those human
00:34:23
beings who work in a five guys so a general manager
00:34:29
works in the restaurant with customers with crew making burgers and fries taking resolving problems and issues
00:34:35
there's not a laptop job and a five guys um so someone who's looking for kind of
00:34:41
you know kind of ice skate above things and you know not really getting your hands dirty that's not the right fit for
00:34:46
us so i guess the first thing we did was when we opened up nobody knew who five guys were so we had to beg people to
00:34:53
work for us um and of course that that's always a a mistake um we hired a lot of
00:34:59
the wrong people and you have a lot of churn early on trying to find what that right fit is um and so i remember it was
00:35:06
a really important decision we made where we're essentially going to invert the equation and we said you know five guys is a
00:35:12
really hard job and it is probably not for you and then kind of be quiet
00:35:19
and look for the look for the the woman or the guy who kind of raised their hand and said that kind of sounds
00:35:25
good to me um and so having the kind of negative sell on
00:35:31
working at five guys i think was a really important distinction that we made but once you get into five guys we
00:35:36
have five values that that we build our business on um and that's integrity um
00:35:42
you can't once you lose your integrity everything else is easy um so having integrity in how you lead
00:35:48
being competitive um and you know wanting to win and going after the business being enthusiastic having
00:35:55
passion and positivity and looking for the solution family oriented taking care of people
00:36:01
having a sense about the human beings who are on your crew and the hungry people who are coming
00:36:06
into your store and treating them like family then getting it done not over complicating it our businesses
00:36:11
have you know our menu simple our business is simple but it's really hard but making sure that you have a very
00:36:17
much results oriented focus as a manager and we actually train
00:36:22
and teach those values and when you look at the pandemic and how five guys
00:36:28
comparatively surfed through the pandemic it was because we
00:36:33
taught those values and we all absorbed those values into how we thought and
00:36:38
then when you know you had to be agile and nimble and flexible you knew what what
00:36:44
the what the objective of the business was and all the managers just
00:36:50
beautifully adjusted their business to reflect the opportunities that they could take
00:36:56
how um how do you go about instilling those values in team members um beyond
00:37:01
beyond the day when they're hired is there is there certain things you're doing every quarter is there daily
00:37:07
emails like what is what are the touch points where you're using them as an opportunity to say this is who we are by the way yeah well i think the first
00:37:14
thing um was a a card from uh dec that you played was we we launched an app um right
00:37:21
like within a week of the pandemic falling we had been planning to have an uh an employee-oriented app um but we
00:37:28
launched the app um right when the pandemic struck we're like we have to be able to communicate because we were none
00:37:34
of us knew what was happening and being able to be in direct touch with every human being in the business was
00:37:40
such a um a great tool um and we immediately had like
00:37:45
massive down i mean it was it was universally kind of accepted as a way to
00:37:50
communicate with inside the company and it allowed so i was recording something pretty much every day to say you know
00:37:56
here's what's going on here's what the rules are here's why it's going to be safe to come to work here's how we're going to protect you and your family and
00:38:02
the crew and and the customers in this environment and being able to have that direct line of communication to the whole company
00:38:09
was really powerful kind of cut through a lot of the the fear and um and uncertainty about it one um two is that
00:38:15
we we've now we're now investing massively in learning and development um we 75 of our managers are promoted
00:38:23
internally um so these are people who have joined us we have people who have joined this crew and gone on to be
00:38:28
district managers area managers now so that kind of career opportunity um is
00:38:35
fantastic so if you're ambitious if you're have you know career goals come to five
00:38:40
guys because we're growing and we need your talent to to grow the business so being able to
00:38:46
first of all we know that that career internal development is kind of the best path to um to to growing inside of five
00:38:53
guys and having new leaders for all the restaurants that we're opening we've got to invest in the young people who are
00:39:00
joining five guys and teaching them not just burgers and fries but how to manage how to manage people um you know there's
00:39:07
so many different kinds of people that it takes to make a restaurant work how you communicate with one crew member
00:39:14
may be very different from how you communicate and motivate with another one and giving our managers tools for
00:39:20
how to connect with all different kinds of people who work for them is you know an
00:39:25
important investment that we make before the pandemic happened um i think i said a lot on this in this podcast and just
00:39:31
generally that my single biggest learning being a young entrepreneur starting in business and then making all the mistakes and then getting a little
00:39:37
bit more mature was the importance of talent and i always say that by definition of the word company the
00:39:43
definition of the word company means group of people took me too long to figure that out because when i started i was 20 years old you know you just hire
00:39:49
your mate here 18 years old i started my first companies hired you know my friend here i met someone at rap event i was like
00:39:55
you can be my marketing director went into prada met and other guys that you can be the head of our account it was
00:40:01
just that kind of whoever was willing right right great people exactly probably who i needed at that
00:40:07
phase but for the next phase you need to um i learned that you need a different caliber of person and really i should
00:40:14
have been a bit more ambitious from the jump if i'm being completely honest um and so now i reflect on it and think
00:40:19
damn in fact every company is just a recruitment business at its core like if
00:40:24
i had hired steve jobs i would have and bound them with the right culture and values yeah i would have had an
00:40:30
apple right i would have made an apple how important do you think it is um
00:40:36
to hire the best people and how how do you go about that what is the
00:40:41
the strategy yeah well first of all i think we had the benefit of seeing the success of
00:40:47
five guys in the u.s so charles and i had a conviction that even before we opened the first
00:40:53
store of course we were nervous when we opened it but that we we thought we had a tiger by the tail because we thought
00:40:58
the product was fantastic so we were able to assemble people who were
00:41:05
proven to be really good at what they did from the outset and kind of like across the board in the senior
00:41:10
management team so julie spear who's my head of operations unbelievable we would we wouldn't be where we are without her
00:41:16
richard collier who's head of property i mean he opened up 2 400 stores for carphone warehouse all across europe
00:41:21
really established professional those two are were essential we would never be where
00:41:27
we are without those two individuals but then kind of driving that all the way down to
00:41:32
the you know the the the first crew person who you hire in a new and for a
00:41:37
new store hugely important because they're actually gonna be making the burger and fry for for the customer who walks in
00:41:43
there and you know i think that you know it's probably an urban myth but the shackleton story about you know putting an ad in the paper for his you know
00:41:50
south uh south pole expedition you know it's gonna be dangerous and risky we'll probably you know we may not come back
00:41:56
alive but if we do there'll be glory that kind of negative cell i think was a critical point for us
00:42:03
where you know five guys is a really hard job huge expectation physically demanding job
00:42:10
it's not for everybody and and you know stating that being confident enough to
00:42:16
say look you know you're a very talented human you know professional in food and beverage but
00:42:22
you're just not the right fit for us and being the confidence to say no in that regard that was hard but i think that
00:42:28
was a real turning point um in the business for us what about firing people
00:42:33
that's the worst part of the business um really hard you know i mean it's um you
00:42:38
know if you get it wrong it's so painful you know these are people who you know who
00:42:44
are human beings and if the jobs either outgrown them or they were the wrong cultural fit
00:42:52
it's really obviously it's hard for them but i mean it's def it's really it's it's a soul-crushing moment which makes
00:42:59
it that much more important to hire right and in the interview for culture you know but when when an interview
00:43:06
finally gets to my level i am 100 focused on culture i mean the
00:43:11
the whole qualification of their professional skills has been addressed by the time they get to me and i am
00:43:18
solely focused on are you a good cultural fit um are you the kind of person who you know obviously is good at
00:43:24
what you do but are you going to be when we're in the trenches and when the the chips are down and we have to make the
00:43:29
hard calls are you going to value the the same things that i will
00:43:35
and that we do as a company um to make your decisions what is your philosophy though for moving people and you have a
00:43:40
clear philosophy around hiring people what is the philosophy for moving people on because i've made this is again one
00:43:46
of my other biggest mistakes in my professional career was allowing people who are clearly not right fit to kind of
00:43:51
overstay their uh journey with my company i just wish sometimes that i had because
00:43:58
the net damage of that when you your gut tells you this isn't this is not the right person yeah but maybe for whatever
00:44:04
reasons emotional reasons you don't act fast enough is so severe yeah well you know i mean i i first of
00:44:10
all i think i think you can't you have to make the decision that's best for the business um and the in in realizing that
00:44:16
this business is bigger than any of us um including me um you know i can be i'm
00:44:22
i'm hired and fired by by my board um you know charles and the morels can decide any day that i'm not the right
00:44:29
guy to lead the business going forward and certainly at the executive level to me my expectation is that everyone should
00:44:35
have that expectation it's a privilege to have the jobs that we do it's not a right um and if if there's a if there's
00:44:42
a tough decision to be made making it clearly cleanly um and directly is the best thing and there's
00:44:48
no reason to be um negative about it you have to be but you do have to be very direct about it um
00:44:55
and quick um quick is really important in in my book you know there is a bit of a difference
00:45:02
between the uk and the u.s um you know the u.s has a um favors that quick side
00:45:08
of things and i think i probably fall into that category and that can be a challenge in an environment where
00:45:13
there's like you know what about a six-month garden leave yeah i'm like what is it i'm not sure what a garden i went the other way so i launched a
00:45:19
business here then we took it to america and i'm like what two week notice period everyone has a two week notes but what
00:45:24
the hell is this yeah and it's really just a box and you know please you probably should leave now uh in america
00:45:29
more than more than not it feels like um but i think once you've made that decision
00:45:35
it's you can't move soon enough um because and it's rare that someone is that you would consider
00:45:42
to say i really don't think they're right for the job and that that person kind of recovers to being a superstar
00:45:48
right that almost never happens so if you do have that i'm not sure that
00:45:53
i'm not sure this person's right for the business either from a talent perspective or from a cultural fit perspective you know it's probably i
00:45:59
mean i think you need to listen to that urge because it's probably right and actually it's a favor to that human
00:46:06
being as well because they're gonna whether it's talent or if it's um you know a cultural fit
00:46:13
there may be a fantastic opportunity elsewhere for them and all you're doing is holding them in a you're holding them
00:46:18
back professionally because they're never going to fly in your organization but they might in another court in
00:46:23
another culture so i know it never feels like that um to say you know look i'm doing you a favor
00:46:30
by you know telling you that you you know not to work here anymore um but if you know someone's not going to be
00:46:36
successful in your business it is best for everybody to do that quickly and as soon as you can actually
00:46:42
how important have you realized it to be in the five guys business and
00:46:48
for the success of a five guys brand to have a real high attention to detail and to sweat the small stuff because a lot
00:46:54
of businesses don't sweat the small stuff they kind of see it as being petty or not mattering and they kind of focus
00:47:00
more on like the big decisions they make but you know what's your sort of philosophy towards the small stuff
00:47:06
um well first of all i think being operationally focused is something that
00:47:14
defines your business um and for us so our details are the standards for
00:47:20
cooking burgers and fries and you can never focus on that enough um you can and you
00:47:25
know if you're not actually cooking burgers and fries you better be supporting someone who is in the business so that that kind of
00:47:32
um horrible disconnection that you can sometimes have of a head office people
00:47:38
who call it the head office we call it the back office from the actual business
00:47:43
um is is you know to me is the death knoll for uh you know for for certainly for a food and beverage business um so
00:47:50
having that connectivity to the detail of um of the the purpose of our business
00:47:56
which is feeding hungry customers uh is is to me is essential now
00:48:01
from a detailed perspective i don't want to get into the details of my i.t guy or my marketing team or the property team
00:48:09
you know i've hired people who are fantastic at that and i don't want to be into the
00:48:14
details i can't be into the details of each of those professional expertise that you hire for you have to hire
00:48:20
talent and let them do their um their professional expertise but how do you check that you know if
00:48:26
something say something in one of your stores and say like we mentioned milton keynes so let's just keep focusing on that um
00:48:32
in milton keynes if standards have dropped because of the leadership there how are you checking that
00:48:38
those standards are staying high yeah so we mystery shop every store twice a week okay and and we put the money that we
00:48:46
would typically that other brands would spend on advertising we spend an incentive compensation for crew so we
00:48:52
pay out millions and millions of pounds of incentive compensation to crew to be
00:48:58
the to be the best of the best and we grade so the mystery shop looks like 120
00:49:03
points of what of what's important from a burgers and fries perspective from a cleanliness perspective from a customer
00:49:09
service perspective and the top rated shops that have
00:49:16
that perform get paid incentive compensate meaningful incentive compensation um so i'd say that com back
00:49:23
to the competitiveness everybody wants to get paid everybody wants to compete for that excellence and to be recognized
00:49:28
for that um so mystery shopping i think is a is a fantastic way of
00:49:34
ensuring that we're all focused on the same thing and if you find a location is continually ranking at the bottom of
00:49:39
that mystery shopping scoreboard what what are the next steps of action yeah well i mean you know the first question
00:49:45
is in store leadership you know who's who's leading the store are they the right person do they have the right orientation do they have the right
00:49:50
values um are there are they trained enough to do their job well um so um you
00:49:56
know we have a very flat organization where you go from general manager to
00:50:01
district manager area manager and then you know basically the top of the business um so it's it's
00:50:07
pretty pretty quick um and and i do what's called a mid-year review i'm actually missing a couple to be on your
00:50:14
on your on your podcast today uh but we have every gm stand and present their
00:50:19
stores performance once a year in june july august in that time frame and so i get a view of the in-store
00:50:26
leadership you know who is that human being who's in charge of that store what do they have to say about the results
00:50:31
that they've delivered both from a financial perspective most of all from a perform from a customer service
00:50:36
perspective and a quality perspective so you kind of get a direct view into who is that human being who's running the
00:50:42
store one of the things that's happened over the last couple of years is this this pandemic it's been this very tectonic shift um in many industries but
00:50:49
there are a few industries that have been affected more than like the high street and retail and food and beverage
00:50:55
there's been real tectonic shifts in technology and footfall and all of these things um as the ceo of a business
00:51:02
that's gone through such chaos how do you maintain your own personal calm within all of that chaos because it
00:51:09
is just never ending we were talking before we start recording you've gone from a pandemic to inflation issues to
00:51:15
this sort of great resignation and uh you know talent crisis as they're talking about all of these things
00:51:21
happening at once you're a human being in the heart of that how do you enjoy your life and
00:51:27
keep calm and you know not annoy your partner or whatever um yeah i'm sure i do all those things
00:51:34
i'm sure i'm sure i don't keep calm all the time and that's okay you know i think
00:51:40
just as we in the business try to keep things simple um focus on burgers and fries um i think there's
00:51:47
keeping focused on just a few things and picking the couple of dials that that will
00:51:53
determine whether you survive whether you live or die whether you win or lose
00:51:59
and hopefully picking those right things to focus on i think is
00:52:05
the way i try and and manage myself as a ceo um you know i
00:52:11
think it's interesting you know the the moments that i
00:52:16
consider to be the most intense and the most rewarding as a as a leader
00:52:22
are the human ones where because i'm ceo people have to explain what's going on
00:52:29
in their lives and those moments are just rich gold for
00:52:35
me as a human being where someone comes to me and says you know i have i've got a parent who's suffering from dementia i
00:52:41
have to you know have to spend some time looking after that and um or you know i i've i've had a loss and i've got to
00:52:48
figure out um you know how to manage that that loss and and those human connection points
00:52:54
are um are and actually that kind of feeds back into our family value um you know where
00:53:01
we and as a ceo i have my a smaller direct report community that i have to
00:53:07
take care of those human beings and my my view is that if i can take care of those human beings they'll they'll do
00:53:14
their job and take care of of their human being so recognizing that it's not you know it's not all dollars and pounds
00:53:21
and and pence it's not all um you know kpis that you can manage it's not quarterly earnings it's the human beings
00:53:28
and if you focus on them particularly on the vulnerable moments when they're most
00:53:34
um upset when they're most um at risk um and being able to say yeah you know
00:53:40
take a week take them you know what what you need as a human being is important for the business because i need you i need your
00:53:46
professional acumen but i need it focused so being being sure that they're all right
00:53:52
in those moments i think is uh um gives me
00:53:57
the satisfaction that i'm looking for from the job of of chief exec um my dad was a psychiatrist
00:54:05
um and you know was obviously clearly focused on mental health and well-being and you know from a chemical perspective
00:54:12
um and you know realizing that whatever whatever chemical i mean obviously i'm sure he
00:54:17
did important work in that regard um but you can
00:54:22
at work you have the ability to either build up or tear down
00:54:28
someone's mental health and being able to provide an environment where
00:54:33
someone's mental health is protected and perhaps even tended to
00:54:39
i think is a is a powerful um it's a powerful thing for me as a as a
00:54:44
leader and and and hope what i see is that that approach
00:54:49
carrying out throughout the business so that style of leadership um is you know is is
00:54:55
contagious as a value in the business so you know if if someone's in distress
00:55:02
um in in a crew um you know the the shift will suffer and you have to take care of that person who's um in distress
00:55:09
um and um understand them and and see what it takes to build them back up and to provide them the support and security
00:55:15
to to be effective in their job what about your mental health when was your hardest time my hardest time
00:55:22
in your five guys journey yeah well um i was i went through a very painful
00:55:28
divorce um and went through something called leave to remove which i wouldn't wish on my worst
00:55:34
enemy it's the essentially it's the right to have your children taken out of the
00:55:40
country so i had two young children um who um
00:55:46
the court system approved leave to remove which allowed my ex to to take my kids back to america um which was um
00:55:54
incredibly painful um and my whole um view of myself my definition of who i
00:56:00
was changed i thought i thought of myself as a you know great partner good husband good
00:56:08
father devoted father you know i was in politics back in america
00:56:13
was involved in my community and a church leader and businessman and i thought you know all
00:56:19
these things are who i am and essentially all of that was uh you know a quite a large bonfire of vanities
00:56:27
and that was a real dark dark moment for me um and there were there were days
00:56:32
when five guys was the one thing in my life that was stable and that i could hold on
00:56:39
to and that really pulled me through a very difficult dark time uh personally
00:56:45
how long did that that process last um that's part of the uk challenge it took years um a better part of two years uh
00:56:53
we're in that process um and then um you know trying to um rebuild those
00:56:58
relationships and thankfully i'm in a an amazing place with my kids now um and have um you know
00:57:05
accepted that they that we have had a more adult relationship
00:57:10
prematurely but now that they're both at university it feels more normal
00:57:18
now and those are hard fought hard-won recast relationships
00:57:25
which you know were really important are important to me but was i was
00:57:31
the thought that they were at risk was um caused just enormous anxiety and and
00:57:38
living with that kind of anxiety and the personal side having having a place
00:57:43
where um you know things were more predictable
00:57:49
was um in being able to work in that way and provide for them um was uh you know
00:57:55
a real um yeah really helped me through when your kids are
00:58:01
essentially taken away to another country and you you've got this huge responsibility of running this big
00:58:06
business how do how does that impact your ability to show up every day professionally yeah
00:58:13
well i mean it was it was 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
00:58:20
just relocate back to america and do my job um so it felt like a huge catch-22
00:58:26
because i had these court-ordered financial obligations and the only way that i could really fulfill them was to
00:58:32
keep doing my job here um so coded financial obligations is in the separation costs and stuff that you have
00:58:39
to pitch apart yeah exactly um so it felt like a catch-22 they were allowed to leave but i had to provide for them
00:58:45
so i had to stay and so it felt like a um kind of a indentured servant to for a
00:58:50
bit but um you know being able to um to focus on
00:58:56
um on a important job that i had actually was enormously relieving because i knew that
00:59:02
for you know 10 hours a day you know 12 hours a day whatever whatever it ended up being that
00:59:09
i could actually do something productive that i knew i was good at um that made a difference
00:59:15
for them um and that um was it the the anxiety of of being
00:59:21
separated i i could set aside for a few you know for those hours in a day and that was really helpful um it it it
00:59:28
could have absorbed just kind of overwhelmed me um but work was able to
00:59:34
it was it was a place where i could or i could escape from that did you see your motivation fluctuate often when we
00:59:40
have these like pretty substantial life events there's an initial period where getting out of bed in the morning is a
00:59:45
little bit more difficult it's almost like someone is messed with your why your reason to get out of bed in your sense of purpose yeah so you always have
00:59:53
to i've learned from my own experiences that you have to spend a little bit of time you're almost faking it
00:59:59
to get to get the drive back if that makes sense no of course no well you know i told you i got up at 5 a.m when i
01:00:05
was a kid and practice violin for an hour before before uh school and what i mean i was never a great musician but
01:00:11
what i did find was that if you did something every day you actually could get better at it
01:00:17
maybe even more than competent and i think it was something like that that
01:00:23
just in me you know said you know get out of bed do the next do the next thing
01:00:28
and something things will change you will i called a friend of mine who'd been through a similar um situation um and he
01:00:37
said you know just keep showing up you know you know texting my son every day calling you know every day
01:00:44
being as present as i possibly could um and you know obviously it's imperfect um and it's
01:00:52
deeply upsetting i'm sure to them as well as as well as to me um but doing as
01:00:57
much as you possibly can to be available and in touch um and and then you just
01:01:02
have to trust um trust something that it'll be okay trust something
01:01:09
doesn't just trust life that it will no i mean you know i i
01:01:14
now we're getting very personal to even but uh you know i i i believe in a higher power um i i don't i don't
01:01:19
pretend to understand it um but i think there's something much more powerful than i am in the world
01:01:25
and what i will say is that it helped me to see the world in two camps one are
01:01:31
things that i can't control and some things that i absolutely can't control
01:01:36
and if you spend if you allocate your mental um health and your time on the
01:01:41
things that you can't control um you can drive yourself to distraction and eventually madness um so being able
01:01:49
to focus on the things that you can control um and and realizing that that's
01:01:54
your job um you know your job as a human is to do the things that you can control and if you if you you know it's just
01:02:00
it's just arrogance and and um ignorance to to focus on the things that you can't control um and so
01:02:08
identify those identifying those two camps and being at peace with that accepting that you can't some things you
01:02:13
can't control that's really hard but it's hugely important yeah i i was at this festival this
01:02:20
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
01:02:26
asked over and over again how to deal with exactly that which is when chaos arrives in our lives what to do on that
01:02:32
day and people had me recording these voice notes for them for that day so when that day comes they just wanted to be able to play it and what you said
01:02:38
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
01:02:45
promise to me that you'll spend 100 of your mental energy focusing only on those things because you can't because obviously yesterday focusing too much on
01:02:52
that tends to lead to depression as i think the lu sao the philosopher says focusing too much on tomorrow and the
01:02:58
things that are yet to be in your control will also cause a lot of anxiety so really focusing on today i think is
01:03:03
just phenomenal advice in terms of um a it's the thing that's most conducive
01:03:08
with a successful outcome but b it's also the thing that's most conducive with having a healthy mental
01:03:14
state in total chaos i think that's absolutely right i mean i think the other thing is that realizing
01:03:19
that our pr i believe our purpose in life is human connection um i think that's why we're here i think we're
01:03:25
we're made to to connect and sometimes it's you know we're colliding with you know and
01:03:30
more than connecting but but figuring out how to connect with other human beings and i will say you know
01:03:36
that was the making of me as uh uh the in being able to to
01:03:42
you know when someone comes into my office and says you know i've i've lost my i've lost my partner you know they
01:03:47
passed away you know way before their time you know
01:03:52
being able to connect with that person in that moment of loss is
01:03:58
hugely valuable as a company but hugely meaningful to me as a human
01:04:04
being and i wouldn't have been able to do that if i if i hadn't been through the
01:04:11
loss that i that i had experienced um so you know it's one of those things where you end up being grateful for the the
01:04:17
most upsetting things that happen in your life um because i think they're the making of you in many ways
01:04:23
because of what you said at the start of this conversation about that importance of feeling like you belonged and that's so it's so evident that that is
01:04:30
um much of the reason you've also been successful is your you you mean even from this short conversation we've had you strike me as a very empathetic
01:04:36
person who's able to connect with others that moment must have been presumably
01:04:42
even more difficult because your sense of belonging in that moment was was taken from you to some degree the family
01:04:48
unit right no for sure that was that was a yeah that was a defining moment um but now you know
01:04:54
the thing about about five guys is that you know we have these 8 600 people who get up every
01:05:00
morning and have this shared vision mission to make great burgers and fries for hungry
01:05:06
customers and i get to be a part of that and you know i get to be a part of this larger
01:05:12
community that that has this the in the you know winning in business feels fantastic right i mean it's a real
01:05:20
it's a real high it's a it's a um it's a drug and it's an addiction and being a
01:05:27
part of a community that had that that's accomplishing this thing you know we were the we were the
01:05:33
eighth fastest growing business uh in 2016 i think in the uk and the fastest growing food and beverage business and
01:05:40
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
01:05:46
behind by by by my mind and um being it being a part of this community
01:05:51
that shares our our values and that are all working towards us is is
01:05:56
enormously satisfying and um and yeah fill something that that you
01:06:02
know has always been empty some days as ceos we
01:06:09
maybe we're tired or you know we're in a bad mood or something's off um we can sometimes not show up as our
01:06:15
best selves and sometimes when it happens with me i i regret it so i'll go home and think i
01:06:21
just wish i had i wish i'd handled that situation differently does that happen to you a lot where you think
01:06:26
i wish i'd been in a better mood or i'd slept more today or something yeah julie tells me
01:06:33
julie my head of ops she comes in and says yeah you really [ __ ] up that meeting but but but actually having um having
01:06:40
somebody who um you know to me the the one of the worst things that can happen
01:06:46
are these um you know emperor has no clothes where you know where the where the the most important powerful
01:06:52
person in business has blind spots that you know everybody knows about and somehow you you know you work around um
01:06:59
and and that's just hugely dangerous as a business and having people who can come into your
01:07:05
office and go john that that was you know that comment was just way out of line or really unhelpful you know you
01:07:11
now have people thinking like this is that what you wanted so people who can confront
01:07:17
power with truth and you know to me that that kind of culture is hugely important to a
01:07:24
company because you can go so wrong with the emperor has no clothes and people think god we know this we just
01:07:30
can't tell them to that person how did you cultivate that because i imagine a lot of ceos and a
01:07:36
lot of team members that work for a ceo think ah there's no way i could go to my ceo and tell them that was wrong or he
01:07:41
shouldn't have said that or she should have said that i think publicly owning your [ __ ] um is is
01:07:47
really is really helpful um in that way you know so showing up at the next meeting and go hey you know what i said
01:07:52
this the last meeting and that was just really wrong it was off and you know i was i was off my game or you
01:07:58
know i didn't think it through and you know and it should be the opposite it should
01:08:03
be the opposite of that um and and you know showing that you can respond to that
01:08:12
kind of challenge i think is is is important as a leader and then you give everybody else permission to do the same
01:08:18
thing you know i mean you can change your mind you're allowed to change your mind you're allowed to be wrong as a fallible human being too um
01:08:25
and and confessing that it's powerful that confession there when i heard when i heard that example
01:08:32
what it actually says to me as well is that as a ceo you care more about the correct answer not being right so that
01:08:38
might be confusing as because of the way i said that when you come stand in front of your team members and say you know what in
01:08:43
hindsight i actually got that really wrong and i i [ __ ] up what you're actually saying is my number one thing as john
01:08:50
is to be is to find the right answer not for me to be correct
01:08:56
yeah and it's like and it's a really it's really refreshing to hear that you're in search of truth and the correct answer not in search of
01:09:02
validating your own um your own opinions and yourself which as you say creates
01:09:08
that culture of humility where hopefully others around them will go i'm also wrong in this situation
01:09:13
exactly business shouldn't be an homage to an individual right i mean you know we have we're about perfect burgers and
01:09:20
fries hungry customers clean restaurants customer service and that's that's really simple i mean it's not a um and
01:09:27
if if any of us isn't the right human being to
01:09:32
fill the function that we're supposed to be performing you know we all should raise our hand and say you know it's probably not me anymore how do
01:09:39
people give um do you have a system in which people at five guys could give that are working there in the team could
01:09:45
give critical feedback safely yeah so i mean we do have kind of like the scheduled uh annual conversations um
01:09:54
i didn't often uh you know it was kind of in my you know in my don't micromanage um you know it was
01:10:01
just kind of like you know people will come to me if they you know if they need to and i think that that probably was wrong um
01:10:07
and you know saying look we're going to have a dedicated time and and really
01:10:12
you know i i don't i don't like fill out a form where you know so you did well in this and poorly in that you know we
01:10:17
don't i don't do that you know um but i sit and say you know let's talk about what worked and what
01:10:22
didn't both from you know chance for you to tell me what didn't didn't work but also for us
01:10:28
to talk about what didn't go right you know and and worked you know this year for you um and you know what do we do to
01:10:34
fix that you know how do we how do we make it better um so i think having a set time to talk about that actually is
01:10:39
a good idea and i've taken that up relax somewhat reluctantly but now enthusiastically
01:10:45
you much of this conversation is centered around um five guys sort of central philosophy of
01:10:50
really really caring about the customer and you talked a little bit about how each store has mystery shoppers that
01:10:57
come in and make sure those standards are maintained um is your objective now to push the standards up even further
01:11:04
or is it to maintain the standards no i i well well first of all i think
01:11:10
you know i'm responsible for germany france spain portugal uk and in each market has a little different national
01:11:16
temperament and figuring out what constitutes good customer service
01:11:21
is a is a bit of a nuanced thing in each given market give me an example of the difference um you know does does someone
01:11:29
want to be checked back on you know so they're you know someone's sitting there eating their food you know they're kind
01:11:34
of like one of the things we talk about is first mover advantage you should have your head on a swivel looking around for
01:11:39
people who are looking for a solution to a problem with their meal um and you i'm sure you've
01:11:46
had that you know we're like you know i'd like some yeah like some extra topping or sauce or something and you can't get anybody's
01:11:52
attention and so teaching someone how to how to be in tune with a customer who's
01:11:57
looking for help and that's very culturally uh dependent um someone can communicate that very differently um in
01:12:04
you know in the different markets one of the things i've been thinking a lot about because i had that exact problem recently was i was in a restaurant it
01:12:09
was very busy and i feel like i spent 15 minutes like trying to get someone's attention to try and get some ketchup yes um the food goes cold i'm like you
01:12:16
know and then i start eating it by the time they've come she really wanted that ketchup yeah they're really and it's gone before then i asked for the ketchup
01:12:22
and i've eaten it before the ketchup so i just have a bowl of ketchup and no food um and i was thinking i sat there in this restaurant in
01:12:29
in spain a week ago and i was thinking if they just had an ipad on the table i could
01:12:35
have pressed a button and they would have known and they would have and it would have helped them because i'm sure they want to help me they just weren't
01:12:41
aware yeah and i would have got helped faster have you not considered implementing more technology
01:12:47
in and in the place of um human beings that sounds pretty brutal
01:12:52
but it's just the truth yep no i mean technology is part of the solution it's
01:12:57
certainly i mean and actually probably your phone is already there and there's got to be a way to make yours you know
01:13:04
this communication tool that you already have in your hand hooked up to an effective way inside the
01:13:10
restaurant now more and more young people expect technology to be part of their
01:13:16
journey um and they're securing of the things that they want and need but they're they're also people who are you
01:13:21
know completely opposed to that um you know we are we are a very analog brand in that sense um
01:13:28
i think that there is more openness to technology and there ever has been before so we did curbside service um
01:13:35
which essentially is like reverse uber where we can kind of track your car as it approaches and we can prepare your
01:13:41
food as we see the countdown for your arrival and so the the kind of perfect scenario which we often get is where you
01:13:48
drive up and the fries have just come out of the the fryer and shaken and salted and ready to go and and it kind
01:13:54
of like comes together beautifully at the at the right moment so you absolutely we should use technology to
01:14:00
meet the customer's needs and to address those people who want to who prefer technology to and
01:14:06
also we can't be everywhere and be perfect in every you know in terms of responsive so yes technology will be a
01:14:12
part of that interaction going forward somewhat caught between two generations i imagine because i was in nando's the
01:14:18
other day and the first time they've told me oh you can just order from the qr code stuck on the table right and i imagine my my dad
01:14:25
might not like that experience yeah for me it was convenient i said perfect great as not to talk to anybody
01:14:31
typical you know millennial gender but well and and we should be able to adapt
01:14:37
for the for the customer um because they're they're human beings who who actually view customer service as not
01:14:43
having to speak right i really just want to stay in my own world and and you know press a button and and and get exactly
01:14:50
what i want um and you know we should be responsive to that how much do you think the the structure and the way that the
01:14:56
business the foundations of the business in terms of it being a joint venture with the morales as opposed to a
01:15:01
franchise and generally the philosophy towards what you're building and how long that sort of time horizon is has
01:15:08
impacted the product and therefore the customer and therefore the success
01:15:13
of the company well i mean of course my experience is incredibly biased because all i've ever known is
01:15:20
the company owned model um and so the franchise model is genius and it really works and there's a powerful power to it
01:15:27
and you can become really strong as a franchise and franchised business um
01:15:32
it's really worked well for us um you know we wrote you know whenever you whenever you form a company and whenever
01:15:38
you form a joint venture you kind of have all these rules and you know governance and how to make decisions and
01:15:44
bro we've never even referred to it once over the past 12 years um so you know the having nothing
01:15:52
but building a profitable business has been fantastic for me as a chief exec because i knew that my
01:15:58
shareholders were completely aligned um and we would never have made the decisions that we did particularly from
01:16:04
a property perspective without being a joint venture as a franchisee you wouldn't have paid the
01:16:11
premium to be to buy a ten thousand square foot property on the champs-elysees and between the louis vuitton corporate headquarter and the
01:16:17
abercrombie and fitch global flagship store um and there's five guys it's amazing you know it's it's it's probably
01:16:24
the most high profile visible five guys apart from the one that's in the dubai mall
01:16:30
so that property strategy was definitely influenced by the structure of the deal
01:16:35
taking those high you know high investment property uh decisions to reposition the brand um you know as
01:16:43
premium as we could get it and it's still running like a family business at its core yeah still making those very
01:16:48
value focused decisions as opposed to making decisions for the stock market or the quarterly earnings report is not a
01:16:54
pressure for me at all um you know the the family meets every tuesday and talks about the the future of the business
01:17:01
i meet with charles on a monthly basis to review the property and the pricing and the positioning of the brand um and
01:17:08
those conversations would be different with a different structure for sure because one of the things you said is i
01:17:13
don't have a time horizon which means you're not trying to build a business for three years and then jump ship and get out so you said i don't have a time
01:17:19
horizon i'm going which allows you to build a really great business for the long term yeah and that's what
01:17:25
i'm kind of getting at because there'll be business owners listening to this that are maybe thinking oh i'll build for two years then i'll sell it or i'll
01:17:30
build for three years and i'll sell it but what you alluded to there is that you'll create a much better business if you remove that time horizon
01:17:37
it has been for us um you know and obviously i've been involved in private equity investments i mean
01:17:43
there certainly is a place for that um and i'm not saying you can't be successful in those environments it's
01:17:48
really worked for us to be able to focus on you know an indefinite time horizon
01:17:53
and doing the right thing today i mean ultimately private equity wants you to do the right thing today
01:18:00
and whether it plays out next month next week next quarter i think the sometimes the interpretation of the
01:18:06
urgency of the investment window can be misinterpreted to make urgent decisions rather than the right
01:18:11
decisions and i think it's up to this to some degree it's up to the chief exec to say wait a minute
01:18:17
you're you're all focused on the wrong thing just right now we could do this which is going to make more quarterly
01:18:22
earnings next quarter and i'll make my budget but the right decision is to invest in the medium term long term and
01:18:28
here's why so i think it's i think there is a lot of pressure but to some degree
01:18:34
it's it's that that position of chief exec where you need to say wait a minute that's the wrong wrong business decision
01:18:41
and we can to build a better business be more successful by thinking not about next quarter what's the biggest threat to
01:18:47
five guys biggest threat to five guys um i think losing focus on the the basics
01:18:55
of burgers and fries thinking that we're something other than being burgers and fries um you know that laser focused on
01:19:02
making the best burger you could for your mom i mean that has got to be at the center of you know of of who we are
01:19:08
and what we're about treating each other like family um and realizing that it's the human beings who
01:19:16
are in the store fundamentally that that that to me was the biggest inversion from banking
01:19:21
banking was it felt like to me a very prima donna-ish business where
01:19:29
very individual accomplishment and you could get ultimately get paid
01:19:34
by moving from one shop to another and taking credit for work you might not have been 100 percent responsible for
01:19:42
in this business it's all about reflecting any glory that comes to the business to the people who are actually
01:19:48
making the burgers and fries taking care of the business and to me whenever we
01:19:55
if we were to ever lose focus on burgers and fries that would be the end of the business on a personal level then what is what
01:20:02
makes you happy outside of the professional stuff outside of five guys what what is it what are the ingredients
01:20:07
that make you happy um it's the connection stuff um the painful
01:20:12
gritty vulnerable connection stuff um and um yeah you know i mean
01:20:18
like i tell my kids now you know i mean i hope that i'm the guy that you call when something's gone wrong um you know
01:20:24
it's great it's great to get the calls that you got good grades and that you you know you got the job you wanted and
01:20:29
things are going well you got a promotion you know that's wonderful but i want to be i want to be the call when
01:20:35
something you know some when something goes wrong when someone breaks up with you and you know you don't you're i mean your job doesn't go the way you want to
01:20:41
want it to go you know to me that connectivity at the vulnerable place places is the currency that is most
01:20:47
precious to me it's much the reason why we started this podcast to be honest because
01:20:53
you know sometimes being a ceo much of it is about
01:20:58
well i used to think it was about being seen as being perfect and strong
01:21:04
and like you never had any personal issues yourself i think that's probably what i what i'd learned about being a
01:21:09
ceo and a leader it was always you know you've got to be um uh
01:21:15
rock solid but um the reason why this podcast was called the diary of a ceo is because ceos are
01:21:21
humans too successful people are humans too and it turns out they have all the same [ __ ] and problems and pain and
01:21:27
personal stuff that everyone else has in their lives and you've talked about much of that today if you're if you're if
01:21:33
you're i know this is a question i've asked a few of my guests recently just i really enjoyed asking the question but
01:21:38
it's there's somewhat of a pun in it i guess in this case um if your if your happiness is a recipe consisting of a
01:21:45
series of ingredients and different quantities like you know the five guys fries just being three
01:21:50
ingredients what would be what are those ingredients and is there anything missing
01:21:56
[Music] well i think vulnerability is the you know probably the biggest new
01:22:02
ingredient that i've had to mix into into my life how to yeah i mean you know i think i think the
01:22:10
being separated from my kids forced a you know forced me to re-look at everything
01:22:16
and i think also um realizing that i have massive blind
01:22:23
sides that i don't see um and that i i have convictions about the way i
01:22:30
think in my intentions but actually there's a huge sea of unconscious motivations that i that i'm
01:22:38
unaware of and purposefully so right we we build our our mental defense
01:22:43
constructs to deny the unconscious motivations but that actually drive us
01:22:49
um and that's what my my partners helped me to see that you know that there's so much that i you know i think
01:22:56
i'm doing something because i'm trying to be generous and actually it's not because i'm working out some anger
01:23:02
and and i don't want to admit that you know i want to be the good guy right um and and being able to see that shadow
01:23:08
side of yourself and to acknowledge that and to and to even embrace that and to say it's okay that's part of me um and
01:23:16
you know that's really um that's been the hardest bit for me in the past couple years but um i think probably the
01:23:22
most um the most valuable what did you find in the shadows oh
01:23:28
gosh all the stuff you don't want to see about yourself that you're selfish that you're um that you
01:23:34
i i think you know i grew up thinking that i couldn't express negative emotions you know i couldn't be
01:23:40
angry i couldn't you know i and and but that goes i mean of course you get angry all human beings do but and that goes
01:23:47
somewhere and if you if you stuff it somewhere it comes out in the worst ways that people
01:23:52
that you love and care about um and in ways that you're probably that i'm not even aware of
01:23:58
um so feeling that that it's okay to to be angry um is probably you know the
01:24:05
hardest thing for for me i'm i'm i'm just starting to work on that i don't pretend to be to be good at it um but
01:24:13
being able to be if i were to tell little john growing up
01:24:19
you know something it would be it's okay to have all the emotions that you you know that
01:24:25
you have and there's room in the world for all for you to express them and to to feel them and to own them and to you
01:24:32
know to to be part of you it's okay um and you know
01:24:37
even looking at my kids now trying to say you know actually some negative tension
01:24:42
in our relationship is really valuable um you to be able to see that it's okay
01:24:47
for you to be angry at me me to be angry at you and to work those out and it's gonna be okay and that we're gonna be
01:24:54
we're gonna be um connected even with that
01:25:00
that's really powerful because they need to be able to take that into their adult relationships um and you know else
01:25:07
they'll you know they'll struggle they'll struggle those places too um and it'll become that intergenerational
01:25:13
uh negative baggage that gets passed on so i'm trying to try to do something
01:25:19
different in that regard that conversation with um younger john about it's okay to be have a full range
01:25:25
of emotions and to be angry because if you don't
01:25:31
you'll hurt the people you care about in ways that you don't intend in ways that you don't understand
01:25:39
and they and they may not understand i mean you know i'm lucky in my partner that um you know that she's quite
01:25:45
um attuned she has a she's just finishing her master's in uh psychotherapy and so you know being able
01:25:51
to say yeah i mean i'm i'm getting this from you even though you don't intend it um let's deal
01:25:57
with it um that's a that's a gift well you're talking about there as well as this process of like becoming more
01:26:02
self-aware about yourself because you're completely right i mean a lot of the stuff i've been reading recently about psychology talks about how we actually
01:26:09
have as exactly as you said have this default to just reinforcing ourselves reinforcing the way we think and believe
01:26:15
and searching for evidence that confirms it and confirms the identity we want to
01:26:20
have of ourselves but to become self-aware is is a very difficult
01:26:25
challenge requires a huge amount of humility feedback um uh you know unlearning learning um
01:26:32
what's what has been the the practical ways that you've gone on that journey to become more self-aware is it therapy is
01:26:37
it just the feedback from your partner what is yeah well i mean i think first go through something really horribly
01:26:43
painful where you have to reconsider everything um and you know who you are
01:26:49
and to be willing to put those on the on the table and say you know i thought
01:26:55
i was being a great partner i wasn't um you know and and being able to
01:27:00
being able to re-define the givens of who you think you are
01:27:08
that's that's really that's really painful um and you know you you you come
01:27:13
up with these ways of thinking about yourself for a reason and they're typically defense mechanisms
01:27:19
from a very young age so these are not easy things to to give up
01:27:24
but to me it was it was i had to do it or i would lose
01:27:30
connection with everyone that i cared about and to me it was it was it's you know
01:27:36
connection is worth it um and my uh i can remember my grandmother who was one of the first
01:27:41
ones who taught me to love food i had a very strange relation have a very strange relationship with food in that
01:27:46
regard but she um you know she she was um and late in her life she was an amazing cook and i could
01:27:52
see the love felt the love she had for me and the food that she prepared um
01:27:58
and late in life she was in a retirement home and and uh some health inspector deemed some of the food had been passed
01:28:04
like its expiry date um she came to me and she said they were trying to serve us food that was unfit for human
01:28:10
consumption and we were like oh that's terrible we'll fix that but i always worried that i somehow
01:28:17
particularly in a romantic partner setting was unfit for human consumption
01:28:22
and maybe maybe in my weird isolated countercultural upbringing there were
01:28:28
skill sets that was that worked in being a business leader but
01:28:33
maybe those very things disqualified me from being successful in a romantic relationship
01:28:39
and so overcoming and overcoming that sense of being unfit for human consumption um in a romantic setting is
01:28:46
uh you know that's hard and was that causing some some form of self-sabotage in the romantic context inevitably
01:28:52
inevitably um so um and being able to and being able to go back and accept the
01:28:59
negative emotions um you know it's not up to anybody else to express my anger for me that's up to me um should be up
01:29:06
to me um and i should be able to spontaneously experience that in real time and express that in appropriate
01:29:12
levels that's that's uh that's my to-do list have you been too much of a nice guy
01:29:21
so maybe sometimes but yeah i mean therapy is therapy is great i highly recommend it you know you cannot
01:29:27
over invest in your mental health and that that comes from you know someone who grew up with a psychiatrist for a
01:29:33
dad um and maybe maybe like you know the cobblers kids don't have shoes um yeah i
01:29:39
think uh you know now i'm i'm vest heavily in my mental health there's there's an unlimited budget for for that there's a lot of what you were
01:29:46
saying resonates with me very very um terrifyingly and i the parts that really i was i was most um intrigued by is i
01:29:55
sometimes think in my romantic relationship that i am maybe negligent and i justify it to
01:30:04
myself as because i'm you know working so hard and i'm trying to provide so much and i'm you know and
01:30:10
i think sometimes i'm you know i might think to myself well they just don't understand i'm doing all of this hard work and they
01:30:16
should respect you not respect me they should be more appreciative of all this hard work i'm doing
01:30:22
and it's such a i know it's such a selfish way to look at a relationship because i'm serving myself and then
01:30:27
justifying my my almost neglecting someone by saying well i'm basically serving
01:30:33
myself it is actually and that's yeah you were speaking i was a bit scared that that's me in some ways
01:30:38
no well you remember from the film forrest gump where he's talking to his girlfriend janie or the girl he
01:30:44
loves and he says you know i'm not a smart man janae but i do know what love is and i feel like i'm the foil for that where
01:30:52
i might i might in some ways be a smart guy but i'm not at all convinced that i have any grasp firm grasp of what love is
01:30:59
um and you know what is love will this like authentic real love look like it's probably not
01:31:05
what i try to give my partner sometimes you know i mean you know actually understanding what
01:31:11
what she wants you know i mean sometimes i'm i'm giving you know some imaginary
01:31:17
you know construct what i think they want and then saying well you know you should have that uh rather than pain
01:31:24
really paying attention and going you know what is it what is it that makes you understand and feel loved and known
01:31:30
and appreciated and valued and that's what i want to do um did you not see that growing up at all or you just not
01:31:36
taught it talk you know what i mean because sometimes you can see it but not know what's actually going on behind the
01:31:41
scenes so you can see oh they look happy but not no yeah no i mean i i think when i look back on it there were people who i felt
01:31:48
connection with and that i felt you know some warmth and um in their presence and you know i
01:31:56
didn't understand that i didn't go that's love you know that that really is um you know them seeing me and and and
01:32:04
you know reaching out to me and connecting with me and um but you know looking maybe it's only looking back
01:32:09
that you can kind of see those things accurately and and meaningfully when you look forward then what are the big what
01:32:15
are the big goals for you and you know i'm i'm not someone that buys into making you know vision boards and having
01:32:21
a five-year plan and all that nonsense because i think there's a certain agility required to be successful
01:32:26
personally and professionally and putting your flag too far you know in the future is probably not a great idea in that situation but what
01:32:33
are you what are the found when you think about your life in 10 years time what will it what will the foundations
01:32:38
of that life look like for it to be a really great one yeah well um
01:32:43
i think you know from a business perspective uh i i love what i what i get to do i mean
01:32:51
it feels like it doesn't it doesn't you know feel like work um now um
01:32:56
i mean it feels like a gift to be able to be a part of this business a part of this you know a family who who believes
01:33:04
the integrity of their product there's no pressure to compromise in any way this thing that you know that we're doing
01:33:11
and um you know that feels fantastic so you know i i think that
01:33:16
the team that we've built is is capable of more i don't know what that is but i'm excited to see what that could
01:33:22
be and um and personally you know i think
01:33:29
i've got a lot of growth to do i think i've just kind of scratched the surface of the
01:33:34
all the the ways that i cover up the motivation the true motivations that i have um
01:33:40
so i wanna i wanna i wanna go after that with conviction and competitiveness you know i'm a very
01:33:47
competitive guy i love uh you know whatever it is that i do i you know i kind of i kind of go after it um so um
01:33:54
yeah and a lot to read a lot to um but you know i think
01:34:00
sometimes that urgency doesn't work in mental health um and
01:34:06
that kind of you can't rush to self-awareness sometimes it kind of sometimes it's you
01:34:11
know kind of like the bird that kind of lands on your hand when you're when you're you know being patient um so um i think i've got to
01:34:19
expand my repertoire of of intensity uh in that regard one step at a time
01:34:25
and vulnerability being vulnerable i think is one step at a time and it's kind of like opening opening the door a
01:34:30
little bit at a time it has been for me anyway i think because i was so scared to be vulnerable i think for much of my life that i tried the experiment of
01:34:37
being vulnerable looked around and it seemed to be okay it seemed to help me seem to help others i opened the door a
01:34:42
little bit further it helped me it helped others and so over the last couple of years this is part of the reason we do this
01:34:48
podcast is i've been able to be more vulnerable and it really is such a selfish thing because it's the most
01:34:54
unbelievable way to live to just be able to sit here and talk about masturbation my sex life mental health i was i've got
01:35:01
anxiety about this it's such a free way to live the science supports that you think about those that live most
01:35:08
most in tune with who they actually are seem to be the happiest but when i think about the real adverse consequences you
01:35:15
see sometimes in certain communities who are not being allowed to live as they are the suicide rates spike and
01:35:21
everything so getting closer to your true vulnerable self i think is such a gift and then the
01:35:27
way it resonates you'll see as a leader i'm sure you saw in the pandemic you know vulnerable leaders in the pandemic i think won vulnerable leaders
01:35:34
when it comes to letting people go always win so um no when i was preparing for this
01:35:40
this conversation with you stephen i went back and looked at some of the presentations i'd done to my to my
01:35:46
business and one of the presentations that i did was called um have you known hard times
01:35:52
and you know and i went through and talked about my hard times um and being
01:35:58
able to and to me that was a real that was a real turning point as well um saying you know
01:36:05
it's okay it's not only okay it's it's really important for to to acknowledge
01:36:11
that we've all had really hard times that like break you apart as a human being and you know make you make you
01:36:17
question everything um and that's okay here um that was a um and and then the
01:36:23
feedback that i got to say that that was that that was you know that was a positive thing that was that was
01:36:30
amazingly uh um yeah fulfilling i am so excited to announce our new
01:36:35
sponsor for this podcast and that is blue jeans by verizon for any of you that aren't already familiar with blue
01:36:40
jeans they are a video conferencing and collaboration tool who offer an immersive communication experience that drives pretty unparalleled employee and
01:36:48
customer engagement experiences me and all of my teams across all of my portfolio companies switched over to
01:36:53
blue jeans a couple of months ago and we have not looked back the best thing for us has been the totally frictionless
01:37:00
experience no glitching no sound issues no delays or any of those things that usually make virtual meetings really
01:37:06
really frustrating we use blue jeans anywhere on any device at any time and it's perfect for my small businesses
01:37:12
that just have 10 or 20 people to some of my bigger businesses that have hundreds of people i'm a big fan as you
01:37:18
can probably tell so i've been quite excited for for some time to announce this partnership and in the coming weeks
01:37:23
i'll explain the features and really why it's perfect for you if you haven't considered using or switching over to
01:37:28
blue jeans yet but if you can't wait head over to bluejeans.com to learn more honestly it's been one of the real sort
01:37:33
of game changers in my business um we do have a closing tradition on this
01:37:39
podcast where the previous guests asked the next guest you've done your preparations yes
01:37:44
um and i don't read it until i open the book so the question is
01:37:50
oh who is the person you'd most like to say sorry to
01:37:58
but haven't wow
01:38:06
i've got a pretty long list um i would say
01:38:11
um i'd say my my ex-wife
01:38:17
for um being so blind to the things that i brought to
01:38:23
the relationship that must have upset her for years um and you know and insisted that you know
01:38:30
that they weren't um things that you know i had said or done and really i
01:38:35
mean i guess i i guess that would apply to anybody who i've had a romantic relationship with that you know that i
01:38:41
didn't um i didn't bring my true authentic self that even even
01:38:46
though i thought i was um and i thought i was living a purposeful you know life um but but didn't
01:38:54
um but then i'd also i guess i'd say um [Music]
01:39:01
you know i i think there's a dynamic with my parents that that probably
01:39:07
falls into that category of making amends and you know as a
01:39:13
um both as the recipient and the perpetrator of you know of some
01:39:18
trauma um in that regard um and then i i guess i'd have to say uh to
01:39:24
hayden and lucy my kids for um you know for the for not being there in the moments
01:39:31
when they needed me um and you know i can blame the uk court system
01:39:36
as much as i want but the fact is that there were moments where they woke up and needed both their parents and and in
01:39:42
their and i wasn't there um and uh you know i'm
01:39:47
deeply sorry for that um and yeah you know and they're and they're probably um
01:39:54
they're probably lots of others um in that list um but that's a it's a short summary
01:40:01
thank you thank you for your time today thank you for your wisdom as it relates to business and the story of five guys which is just
01:40:07
tremendously inspiring and i it's always such an honor to get to speak to ceos and operators that have been part of
01:40:13
disruption and really underpinning and sort of really unpicking how they've gone about that that's so
01:40:19
immensely valuable to me and i've taken so much away from from that in terms of the simplicity in terms of detail in
01:40:25
terms of putting the customer first in terms of the importance of talent and this negative hiring concept
01:40:31
which i'm going to adopt in all of my companies but even more importantly for me is is the vulnerability that you've
01:40:36
shown and the the human behind all of that because that's the thing that ultimately people can resonate with the most because no matter where we
01:40:43
reach in the in our careers no matter how how high we climb it seems so clearly obvious that
01:40:49
when none of us are immune from the the consequences of just being a human being and we can all relate to that regardless of
01:40:56
where we are in the world so thank you so much it's been such an inspiring conversation and hopefully we'll do it again sometime
01:41:01
absolutely pleasure thanks for the time together i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend
01:41:07
came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she
01:41:13
said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's
01:41:19
nutritionally complete in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice
01:41:24
especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete the salted caramel one if you put some ice
01:41:31
cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much
01:41:36
any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie
01:41:42
intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you for
01:41:47
making a product that i actually like [Music]