David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. You know, leadership looks differently for everybody, when you really consider all the various industries and backgrounds and personalities that are out there. But no matter what, there's one thing every leader has in common, and it's this, you gotta deliver results. So I'm excited to be sitting down today with one of the most results driven leaders I know. And that's all when Louis, he's the former chairman and CEO of potbelly sandwich works and the former CEO of Sears Holdings. He also served as the Chief Operating Officer at yum brands, when I was the CEO there. And let me tell you, he and I shared some really wonderful moments collaborating together. If you want to see what it looks like to deliver big results, while also keeping culture and people at the heart of how you lead. Well, I can't think of a better person for you to learn from all when truly is one of the best leaders I've ever worked with. And if you keep listening, you're gonna understand why here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours all when Louis.

Owen, thanks so much for being on the show. I'm really looking forward to this,

Aylwin Lewis 1:34 

David, it's a real honor. You know what you've meant to me and my career. So it's very honored to be asked to do this conversation with you.

David Novak 1:40 

You know, and you truly are one of the best leaders I've ever worked with. And I can't wait to get into how you lead. But first, tell me a story about your upbringing that shaped the way you lead.

Aylwin Lewis 1:53 

I'm the product of Albert in St. Louis, my mom and dad. And you know, we grew up poor, first 10 years in the project. But one day I came home and told my mom, I found a short cut way to go to school. And she sat me down and said, Listen, there are no shortcuts in life. I want you to always take the straight and narrow in always do the right thing. And that's just Canada conversations as a mom she had with us be independent. Education is the way out and always do your best work. But that no shortcut really resonated with me.

David Novak 2:30 

Yeah, I remember you talking about your mom and how much you admired and loved her. And as a young black man starting your career in the in the 70s? How would you compare your opportunity that you had to what your father faced,

Aylwin Lewis 2:43 

my worst day was the best day he ever had. He was a man who got up at five o'clock every day was out the door at 530 always pressed and polished. So it's such a great example of working work three jobs to provide for the family. And so I never wanted to do anything to dishonor him and my mom. And my career was a dedication to what they meant to me, and trying to demonstrate what was possible in his bloodline. So he was very influential, there wasn't a day that I didn't go to work without thinking about him and his generation. You

David Novak 3:21 

know, I remember you talking to me, and you had this amazing phrase, and you said, as a minority, you need to figure out how to hold on to who you are, and fit in with the majority. And I'll never forget that all. And would you mind sharing the story of how you did that? Well,

Aylwin Lewis 3:40 

again, when your frame of reference is, I'm like the first generation to break out and to be able to have college education to be able to work in mid management for a large organization to manage your business. So the goal was then to say, how do I be true to myself, understand the heritage, but then be open so people be willing to help you. And the key to that was my father said, Listen, you can go through this thing called life as a black man in America can be angry, you can be resentful, or you can do it with a lot of pride, and a lot of love. And allow people to help you by being open by demonstrating your worth the effort for them to invest in you. So that was the way for me. How do you work on the inside? You're no one's fool. You're very prideful, but you're not angry. And you're open. Bill Russell once said, If you build a wall around yourself, you're leaving more out than you're putting in. And so my goal was to demonstrate that I was worthy of the effort I was worthy of, of someone like you coming in KFC when you came in as the president. I was one of six and being able to demonstrate Hey, I'm someone that you can trust. I'm someone who's all about results. I'm someone that you can partner with. And I remember you met with me in Chicago in my office and said, I have few blood brothers in this life. And you can be one of those. And we kind of made a pact that day to take care of each other. It was that type of thing that allowed my career to happen.

David Novak 5:18 

That's a great story. I'm going to come back to that a little bit later. And I also remember you telling me that your dad actually told you you needed to get a haircut if you wanted to get ahead. So

Aylwin Lewis 5:29 

the story was, I got a call. I was I was a district manager Jack in the Box, great results. And the financial guy from Dallas, the division called me up said, The reason I've missed out on three promotions, he called me up his name was Chris Chris called me and said, I want to tell you something on acuity, the reason that you have not been promoted is that your airflow is too large. And he said, If you ever tell anybody I told you this, I'll deny it. But your afros too large. So I went to my father, that's that was on a Friday. I went, I went to my father on Saturday and said, Can you believe this or tell me I'm not getting promoted because I have an afro. And he said, looked me in the face. He says the barber is right down the street. So what, listen, you couldn't go wrong with parents and values like that. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And he's like, Listen, if it takes to cut your hair to get promoted to barbers right down the street, I went down the street that day and got a haircut. Within a few months, I was promoted,

David Novak 6:31 

you go to college, and you graduated college and start out working a Jack in a box. So restaurant manager, what did that teach you about leadership? Everything.

Aylwin Lewis 6:41 

That was the foundation one, serving customers are very exciting, having the privilege of being a young man at 23, running a million dollar restaurant, that awesome responsibility. But the thing that really taught me was how you can get a group of people that are from an underrepresented part of society, and help them reach their American dream. And it was just so the teamwork, having them understand how to run a business, understanding a hierarchy in the restaurant, understanding as a social environment, understanding you need values as a foundation, because if you have that, that will allow you to pick people to share your attitude about your mission, and about your work. The whole thing of putting a plan together, and using that plan to run the business, so you're not victimized by the business. I was restaurant manager for 18 months. But those things I did those 18 months, was foundational for my whole career, and getting it done through people. And because of people, I think was the key foundation.

David Novak 7:45 

When you start talking about the restaurant business, you just you light up, you know, you really light up, what is it about that business that really gave you the most joy,

Aylwin Lewis 7:54 

put a group of people together to have success as a team. I mean, when you when you walk into that environment, and you see a well run restaurant, and people know their place, because they're well trained or taken care of customer, they have speed to putting out super high quality product, and it doing it at a rhythm and a pace and a joy. It's just a thing of beauty is absolutely, it's like going to a great concert, and watching musicians play. And the fact that you can get people from different backgrounds, bring them in an environment, have them be committed to great service and great quality. I just love it. You know, I was a graduate student working on my PhD, when I started to work for Jack in the Box. I was just gonna do that as a summer job to make money. And a week into it. I'm like, wow, this is really different. This is really satisfying. And so that, that getting people together to serve customers and serve great food, that became a passion, and I love everything about it. You're

David Novak 8:56 

gonna learn from this conversation that I remember a lot of things that you talked to me about and you know, you are very results oriented guide, no question about it. And you talk to me about how you couldn't hide from the profit and loss statement. And the power it gives you to really separate yourself. Talk about that.

Aylwin Lewis 9:17 

I'm a manager for the first time. I'm really running a country club for about the first six weeks, I'm doing tasks for everybody. I'm their friends. I'm a bleeding heart liberal. I'm just trying to please everybody. So my district manager comes in and shows me a p&l for the first time. And he's like, we're losing money. Your food costs is 5% over your labor cost is 5% over your minus 15 in the whole from your profit and loss. That was startling to me. It did. He's like, you know, you got people stealing from you and they're taking advantage of you. And that just shook up it's like you know, this is not fun. It can be in a job or environment. But we're here for a reason. And we're here to make money. So that created this whole sense of how do you make money the right way through people, and do it in a way that you can teach people because you need help. But you can't run away from results. And the results are the currency you use to say, I deserve to be promoted. I deserve that raise. I deserve to come back to work the next day. Without results. Nothing's possible. We're not running a nonprofit business, those are important, but to frame of our businesses, how do I make money so I can afford to reinvest, so I can afford to hire more people. So I can afford to have resources. So I can do service well, and maintenance well, so that that was a very important lesson after those first six weeks of saying, Oh, I'm everybody's friend, I'm running a country club to Oh, no, we got to have standards, we got to have procedures, because we need to make money. And then, you know, coming to work for Jack in a box and PepsiCo, those organizations that if you didn't make plan, you're not going to be around. And so the notion of how do you make money, do it the right way. But do it over and over again, became very important. You could do it by accident once. But you know, my goal was always out of a 13. Period year, can we blow a plan? 12 out of 13. So we can have an excellent year, you always gonna have one? That's kind of unexpected.

David Novak 11:23 

You know, you mentioned it, I met you for the first time in Chicago, your regional vice president there, you're working at KFC. And I saw you give this rousing speech to our restaurant general managers. If you are a tremendous speaker, you know, one of the best I've ever seen. What advice can you give other leaders on, on how to frame a talk that will really fire up the troops, you,

Aylwin Lewis 11:47 

you're so important in my career, I used to go on and on and on. And you're the guy who said, listen, leave them wanting more. So don't you know, and so what I will tell you I, I write out an outline, I frame it around themes I want to have. And if I someone said you have 30 minutes to give the speech, I shoot now for 22 minutes, I don't need to say everything that's on my mind, I need to say what's important. You understand the crowd, and you'd be prepared. And while I always like to give the appearance that you know, I could do it off the cuff, I spent a ton of time practicing, you're driving, you're practicing, you're practicing. I don't write out the speech because I used to try to remember rice things. And the minute you lost that you didn't remember one word and sequence it would throw you off. So then it's like, here's my outline. You look for someone a face in the crowd, and you talk to their face, and you have a conversation. That's what people looking for. They're looking to say, can you be frank, can you be honest? Can you be authentic? Is the message you're trying to give to me a message that I need? And if I know anything about the speaker, does your work? And does your values represent what you're trying to tell me? You know, the power of what you taught me was when you cascade things to levels down. And you're talking to folks, if you don't have integrity, you can't have credibility, to talk about integrity in front of people. If you don't actually walk the talk is the phrase you always use. So I think speaking is important communication is important. Practice, practice, practice, put an outline together, be as brief as possible, and then have a conversation. You

David Novak 13:27 

know, when, as you well know, restaurant turnover and in the businesses, often over 200%. And yet you were one of the best in the industry, certainly the best that yum brands ever had in terms of reducing turnover. First of all, for the people that don't know the business tell us what 200% turnover means. And then how did you reduce it many times under 100% 80%? If I recall,

Aylwin Lewis 13:54 

200% turnover means people are not trained, means you're not going to have great service. You can't have excellence because there's such turmoil. So all the things you look for and saying, Can I build a team? Can I get that team to be excellent? Can I get that team to understand my values? Can I understand the priorities of management 200 turnover said Listen, I'm not going to do training. Until the first 30 days, I know you're going to stay here. And those first 30 days is when you learn everything about the business so you can never go back. What got me on the turnover of the low turnover path is when I became CEO of Pizza Hut. I went out and spent time with a guy named McCarthy at Marriott. He was the CEO of Marriott. And at the time, they had 50% turnover with their mates. And I went out CEO pizza can go out and get a meeting with anyone. And he gave me the book. It was probably a two hour meeting. And it turned out to eight hour meeting. But the biggest thing he said was first you only hire people to share your values and low turn Over starts with who you hire. So hire hard and you manage easy. And you got to give your managers the room to be patient with hiring the right people. And that is the secret. And as you know, we got it down to like 85% at Pizza Hut when we came to yum overall, you know, got it down to 85 to 80%. The great days at potbelly one reason that was such a strong operation, we had 50% turnover as an organization with 50% 80% turnover, you can demonstrate the difference between profit at 80%. And the difference at 20% is almost double. I remember when I went out a CEO at a Taco Bell franchise meeting, and at the time, they were like 150. And they were very proud because they were high volume organization. And I said, you know, we really need to get turnover down to 80%. And they were polite, but you can see we're laughing. And then when I put up the chart to set at 80%, here's your profit. And at 200 and 150%, here's your profit. And a difference was $100,000. Well, they didn't laugh, then it became okay, how do you do it? And again, selection is the key. Orientation is the key

David Novak 16:17 

and 200% turnover beings, you basically turn over your your team twice, you know, in the course of the year, right?

Aylwin Lewis 16:24 

Yeah, higher uniform costs, higher training costs, all those ancillary things, just eat up your profit, eat up your time, and your managers cannot get stability in the restaurant. You

David Novak 16:37 

know, I remember when you were the chief operating officer at Yum, we had this customer program called last. And then you you really thought about it, and you changed it to blast. Now last minute, listen, act, satisfy and thank and you made it blast. And the B was to start by believing that the customer had positive intentions. The point

Aylwin Lewis 17:00 

of that was you would have customers come in with complaints. And we wouldn't believe them, they would have to bring me the receipt, bring the added but then to conversate to French, as he say, understand where you do that the message you're sending is, uh, you know, you're gonna make mistakes. So let's believe the customers tell us true. Back in that day, 90% of customers were telling you to true, you don't put a program in place for 2%, knuckleheads. And if you're solving the customer problem, and empowering the employee at the point of contact, to solve the problem, you could show demonstrate to people, that's a small cost. And you're getting a customer for life, because so many customers are not believed in our business. And it's a point of difference is a way to grow sales and to build loyalty was 2.0. And

David Novak 17:50 

how'd you go about spending time understanding the needs of the frontline in our customers? Well,

Aylwin Lewis 17:55 

had good demonstration one, you know, I did a lot of blind visits, which meant you go out incognito, to see the business in a real basis. And there you get, you just understand what's really going on, as opposed to when you go and people know you're coming. So the blind visits were important. But then a lot of roundtable, David's, as you know, where you would go in, and you go into a market and you'd meet with, you know, 10 shift leaders, you'd meet with 15 assistant managers you meet with managers. And I'd ask basically three questions. You know, why do you work here? What do you like about working here? And what do you don't like working here? And with those three questions, you could just learn a lot. If it was an hour and 20 minute meeting, I would spend an hour just listening. And then at the end, you would answer questions, and you would correct misconceptions that people had. And then the last thing I would ask is say okay, you go back to your, your restaurant, what are you going to tell them about this meeting? What are you going to tell them you get out of this? And then I would take those notes back and share that with the team. And there are always some nuggets there that we could do better? That question of, what would you do better? In fact, I would ask if you had my job for a week, what are the three things you would change and you just get power out of that? When you visit at restaurants? I made it a point. And you did this too. You go and you speak to everybody on the floor. You shake their hands, you look them in the eye, you say thank you. If you want to know what's going on in a KFC restaurant, go back and have a conversation with the cook if you want about food quality. If you want to have a service, talk to the shift leader. I consider myself a personal to people because that's where I came. That's my orientation of frontline orientation. The reason you and I were such good partners that we had this common person we wanted the company to work for The front line. And we set the whole thing up for the general managers, our number one leader, because they manage the front line, they have cash registers and they serve as customers. And when that's your orientation, then you have to demonstrate that by listening to the front line, and then we did to culture surveys every year and out of that gave you a lot of information on what you should be doing better. It was always not satisfied with where you are with satisfying the frontline and ensuring that those environments were positive for them and she could possibly make them.

Koula Callahan 20:35 

Hey, everyone is Kula co host of three more questions, and I have some exciting news to share with you. We just launched a breakthrough app that will help you become a better leader in less than two minutes a day. It's called how leaders lead. As you know, on the podcast, David spends about an hour each week interviewing some of the top leaders in the world, people like Tom Brady, Condoleezza Rice, and Jamie Dimon. But we know that leaders like yourself are pressed for time. So we've taken the very best clips from these conversations, and put them into an easy to use mobile app that you can learn from and less than two minutes a day. If you want to become a better leader, start a daily leadership habit with the how leaders lead app, it's available now for free and the App Store, download it today.

David Novak 21:28 

You are known for being an outstanding coach, you know, tell us a story about how you help someone see a blind spot they they may have had.

Aylwin Lewis 21:37 

I'm coo Pizza hut in the West Coast, working with and you know, we, we called everybody coaches back then. So working with a VP of ops running the West. And its person, he was MBA from Chicago, PNG as his first job. He was a marketer that was trying to be an operator. And what he was always trying to do is elevate the job of the person first is concentrated on operations. And it was a real blind spot because he would go in and talk to the leader and make them feel great. But he left out why he wanted them to be great. He didn't talk about results at all, didn't talk about frontline at all didn't talk about service at all. It was always just talking about the person and why he wanted them on the team. And so we're in his car, driving down it in in LA and I said you know, you may not make it in this role. If you continue to only focus on your top leaders and not focus on results, not focus on the frontline. Not focus on the culture. You won't be here in six months. And it shocked him tremendously. I got pedigree, I got an MBA from this. And this is like, Yeah, but results out here should be awesome. They should be our best results. But you are not driving results, because you're only talking to the leader and telling them why they're so great. And so I think the person thought about it, we know the person, it turned around to be one of our best divisions and profit grew, sales grew, you know, coaching to me is individualized perception. How do I assess the situation? How do I assess the person and then provide the coaching that's very specific. There's group coaching you need to do. But when you're coaching specific team leaders, you need to come with the facts and understand their situation. So you provide the coaching that's really needed. And

David Novak 23:46 

sometimes we all need to have a two by four, you don't kind of hit us over the head. So we really get jarred into really changing and that worked in that particular situation. It

Aylwin Lewis 23:55 

wasn't a lot. But there are times you had to do a two by four to me to say.

David Novak 24:01 

I want to ask you about that, you know, oh, when you were a CEO in the restaurant business, see on a retail business, you've been on boards, from Disney to Marriott Voya. What do you think it takes to be a great operating officer in any business that you may be in?

Aylwin Lewis 24:19 

You know, David, I think first is a real understanding of the culture. Culture is very important. And I probably should have led with that. And the thing that you brought to us at KFC, Pizza Hut and yum was how important culture is that you can teach culture and you want to make culture personal. You want to make it an invitation. And you lead by example and your public as a leader about the values and how you want to lead to values the I Will statements were very important, because then you have no room to move but to do it. So walk to talk becomes very important. You You got to be an operational leader in any business, you've got to use the culture, you got to represent the culture, you got to lead with the culture, that's very important, then you have to understand the business and put processes and tools in place where distributed population can be excellent. For me, that was the balanced scorecard that we develop, and use tools to help teach it put a playbook together. So as a general manager, here's your playbook on how you can be excellent. If you never see your boss, this playbook will allow you to be excellent on the things that we say that matter. If you happen to have a boss that comes around and coach you, that's a Lucky Strike extra. And they put a system in place that says, I want the majority of my stores to win. Or yeah, we used to rack and stack. And then the only person would win at the end of the year was number one, everybody physically can't be number one. But everyone can be a contributor where there's a safety zone, you're not looking up, you're not looking sideways, I'm delivering the right results, I'm making plans. And once you can get that, that people understand how to win, why they want to win, how I get to team organized the goals. So it's process and discipline is how you win a scorecard is understanding the business is teaching a business, but it's all pulled together because of the culture. Without culture, greatness in operations, greatness in business is not possible.

David Novak 26:35 

As a leader, I know you always looked at yourself and kept polishing the apple and trying to get better and better. When did you first have that deep down belief that you could become a CEO, meeting people

Aylwin Lewis 26:49 

like you, you

David Novak 26:51 

realize how easy it was.

Aylwin Lewis 26:54 

The thing that you brought to be as one of my key mentors in my career was he forced me to bring my whole self to work. He forced me to trust the people that I worked with peers and leaders above you. And by using the culture, you're like, well take your wall down. I literally would have a compartmentalize work and who I was. And by then said, bring your whole self to work, then you're not running to books, and then you can spend the time to really become great, because once you get to the C suite, it's all about teamwork, trustworthiness, and a no look pass, is completing each other's sentences is the enterprise becomes the key. Yes, you have a functional team, and you're accountable for that functional result. But you become part of understanding how does the mothership reach his potential. So the enterprise view becomes the thing. Without that enterprise view, you cannot become part of C suite. And you definitely won't become a CEO. I used to call it the three circles and how I look at businesses like ours, you have the OB circle, you have a finance circle, you have a marketing circle, I say you have to be an expert in one of those yet to have high competency and a second one. And then you have to have high curiosity. And the third, because so much about you know, and you said a lot, you never seen a great leader that wasn't curious, never had never been around greatness that wasn't always trying to understand more about their world, their situation and the world in general. They can have a different point of view on stuff. But they will always curious when you find leaders that are self contained, that are self important, that are finished product, that you're looking for someone who's going to be not successful in the long term. You know,

David Novak 28:59 

you left yum to become the CEO of Kmart and then Sears. And both those brands have had a very troubled past sort of left in the dust by competitors like Walmart. What gave you the confidence to go to these troubled brands?

Aylwin Lewis 29:16 

I was in a great spot. I was four years working for you. You had a great team at Yum, we were accomplishing really great things. I think those four years we hit our quarterly numbers. As the ops person I could go around the globe and provide goodwill but I wanted to be a CEO that never was going to happen at yum. You know that nobody's gonna move you out to put me in. And I could never compete against a family. So you would get calls. I never took those calls because I wouldn't get to compete against yum brands that left out the whole industry that I knew it so you know when I got the opportunity to go to Kmart, it was a $20 billion business billion dollar EPA, out of bankruptcy, you know, kind of a fighter brand. I thought I could do things there. I never knew was gonna be merged with car sales I would not have went to Sears was a dinosaur from three weeks in, I can't come back to yum. You know, guy calls up and says we got to buy Sears and I made the best of it when I was say you look at those three years, it was a $53 billion company. We average $3 billion a year in EBIT da. That hadn't happened before. That hasn't happened after those three years very important. But eventually became untenable, because strategically, there was no reason to have a general store that was mall based that was competing against great competition that was specialized. You had Lowe's, and Home Depot and hardware, you had all the fashion chains and the soft lines. And then we were mall back base general store, there was no reason the person who hired me who, you know, owned 70% of the company, I said, you know, instead of merging with Sears, you should have taken a flight up to Seattle, and see if you could have merged one of these businesses with Amazon when they were still small, that would have made more sense. But putting these two failed brands together, then not wanting to do the work, the reinvestment that was gonna take, you know, we spent a ton of money buying stock, buying back stock and didn't take care of stuff. I'm proud of the work, learned a different business changed out 75% of the managers really focused on the culture. And the best year there. The second year there we made $3.6 billion, a lot of learning, but very difficult. But essentially, I didn't want to compete against a family. I wanted to be a CEO. And you know, got an opportunity to do that. When

David Novak 31:45 

you got there on how did you go about learning what most would say was a vastly different industry and Retail Merchandising, which is, you know, an art

Aylwin Lewis 31:55 

100 days, my 100 day plan submersed in a business, first at Kmart, and then when we announced a merger with Sears doing a deep dive of finding, you know, the best in breed processes and the best in breed people. And so I went on 100 day mission to learn the business, there were some similarities with operations in the stores and how those should run culture people that was all transferable. The toughest part was this merchant class that they have in retail, it makes no sense. They, they highlight these merchants and all they do is product design is product marketing, and product development, but they have their own p&l, they have their own math, you know, they elevate these folks to level. That was probably the biggest challenge. I was fortunate. Two and a half those years, I had two really good chief merchants, one at Kmart one a Sears, that were were able to work together and do some things, had two great store guys that I still talk to today. And then we had fairly decent marketing. The biggest thing, David is that when you're trying to turn around companies who have failed, the vision and the alignment just has to be so so tight. And even then the odds are against you. When it's not tight. And me and Eddie, who was the chairman and own 70% of the company, there was just not a tight enough alignment around what needs to be done, and how you need it to be done. He didn't believe in long term plans. He didn't believe in budgeting. So all the stuff that drives businesses, he didn't believe in given annual raises, you have to start in September building the case on why we should give our people raises. And so after three and a half years of that in five minutes, you just wake up one day and say I may not can make it here. You can be a great jockey. But if the horse is not great, you're gonna win race. And so that's the conclusion I came to in December of of oh seven, and then work to debate to leave and go on to something else.

David Novak 33:58 

What have you learned about the power of relationships and trust?

Aylwin Lewis 34:03 

Well, I think integrity is the most important thing in business and definitely, as a leader. You can't be a leader unless there's integrity. You can't be a leader unless people trust you. Because people have to allow you to be their leader. This is volunteer. If you try to use power of the leader, that reservoir goes down and it never comes back. So you got to influence and people have to believe what you say. You taught me the vulnerability of they want you to know that you're human. I didn't always accept that because I was Spock, I was always friendly. I was always decently nice, but I'd never shown vulnerability because that had been used against me prior my career. So you want to be vulnerable so people know that you're human and you bleed and you feel the same things that you do. And the biggest thing, David, I think you have to say is that when you make a mistake When you disappoint someone, you gotta go public with it and say I'm sorry. And I apologize, that won't happen again to this degree. And when you work with people, they're not machines. And often, you have to let people win sometimes even when they don't deserve to win. Now, I'm not talking about people to break the rules. But you know, you go on a restaurant on a Friday, high volume, and they're not having a great day, as a leader, you can't go in and pour acid on that situation. You can't go in and list 100 Things they ain't doing right. What you have to do is, say how you calm them down? And how do you get them elevated one level grade, so you can leave? So how do you make it better? I'll come back and talk to you about deficiencies I see tomorrow. But when you're in a high pressure environment, you got to be smart about it, you got to be calm. That's what people look for leaders to do. How do you make me better. And one of mindset I had was why without in the field, I was trying to bring my A game so I could have an impact on someone. I was trying to change your life. Now. That's rarely can happen. But if you had the mindset of someone today, I'm going to do something to say something that may change their life, you got a shot to do it. So that was my mindset when I went out and dealt with the folks talking to folks believing it, folks. And even now you meet people and they're like, Gee, you had an impact on me or you said something to me 20 years ago that really, you know, as you get older, you don't always remember names and stuff there. But that's important. And that was the intention. Trust is everything. It's everything. So

David Novak 36:43 

you move on from Sears and Kmart. And you go to become the CEO of potbelly. So you now you're back into the business that you really love. Tell us about the potbelly brand itself and what you inherited at the time. So

Aylwin Lewis 36:57 

it was small, it had managed to, you know, it was 160 stores, they had great volume, they had a great store culture, great food, tremendous throughput. It did a great job of hiring nice people and teaching a popular way. And then at the headquarters that they call, we changed it to support center. They had 200 people that were geared for the future growth. They when I got hired, they had a $50 million, you know, this is oh eight, so they had a $50 million revolver and they were gonna use that revolver to build the business can we had seven equity investors, private equity investors, and they had done seven rounds and they weren't putting more money in. I get there. And in two weeks, you go through the numbers, you find out they're borrowing million dollars a month just to make payroll to other people at the small company at headquarters. And they was totally disassociated from the stores. So why the stores had this great culture, doing amazing things. The fastest port center had nothing to do with it. So my first job was to fire 120 people. So we got down to 80 people, stores were averaging $1.2 million. They had a restaurant margin of 15. So you have to grow that, oh, it happens. But throughout all of that what was important was, how do we establish the culture. So basically, what I did once he picked a team is we documented the culture that existed in a store, so it's very strong. The service, don't mess that up. Throughput don't mess that up. And then we just started teaching the cultures. We had six values that we drove. We had this one pager that you taught us all how to do, it was called a potbelly advantage. So we had our vision, our mission, our passion, and then our strategic framework. And that's how we ran the company. And we taught that throughout the whole company. And if you got hired no matter when you got hired where you got hired at a company, you had to talk about the potbelly advantage within two weeks of being hired. And we've started every meeting by asking someone to talk about the possibility advantage, but it was a great brand. It was I called it the neighborhood said, we did the ACA motto but we best place for lunch to 60%, our business between 11 and two, very predictable, and neighborhood sandwich shop. And that's how we ran the brand didn't have enough money to advertising. So the experience had to be there. And our ratings were off the charts. We had like a 98% customer satisfaction, rating and purchase retention, you know, would you bite come back again. That was over 95%. So super low turnover. So I was there for nine years. I would say seven and a half those was really excellent. When I left after nine years, we'd gotten to 500 restaurants. We've gone from minus 16 million EBIT data the first couple years to 50 million. I always said I wish we had done that during the clip yours because, you know, you could have been a Chipotle of sandwiches. But you know, when you go into Denver and your seventh sandwich player in, they have a better mousetrap. But it becomes just tremendously difficult. You're competing for the same spaces as we started doing Dr. Foods, which were tremendous, but you're competing with Starbucks and Chipotle for for those things. But it was great, right? Culture was very important. kind of woke up in April of 2017. And said, you know, this summer, we'll have been in the business for 40 years. And that's enough. And so, you know, I retired in August of that year, but great brand, great product, the intersection between the customer, the product, and employees, the associates was just at a very high level. And we really drove that.

Koula Callahan 40:55 

Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asks his guest? Well, I do and I know a lot of you do, too. My name is Kula Callahan. And together with David, I host the three more questions podcast that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes. And in them, I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career leading yum brands. And all of His answers are super practical and inspiring. Like this great insight David shared and one of our most recent, three more questions, episodes, be

David Novak 41:38 

here. Now. When you're with someone, give them your full attention. And that means listening to them. You know, don't be looking at your phone, don't be talking on the phone. Don't be multitasking, really be here now with whoever you happen to be with at that specific point in time. And that's how you're going to learn from that's how you're going to understand what they have to say. And that's how you're going to be able to do one plus one equals three, because you really can't go it alone, you need the help of other people. And the only way you can get that help is to recognize the fact that you need to listen to them, and give them your full attention.

Koula Callahan 42:25 

Get the three more questions, podcasts and your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know and love. Just subscribe to how leaders lead wherever you get your podcasts.

David Novak 42:44 

So you're in this hugely competitive category sandwich category. I don't know if there's anything more competitive than that. How much of your time did you spend focusing on competition,

Aylwin Lewis 42:53 

I was aware. What we tried to do is say when we were when Chipotle and Panera was our size, that became our comparison. So those were our hero brands. When I was out in the field, I would just always go and visit those two companies to see how they did things and understand their history and how they grew. Talk to their founders about key points. I do a ton of folks from from Starbucks. So I had that as a comparison. And that kind of we use as I touched down a guiding point, very aware and very appreciative of the work and the marketing that Subway did, although we didn't want to be subway, but they created the healthy glow for sandwiches and made that the counter to fast food. And so I'm very appreciative of that. We had a great bass trap our throughput, we could do up to 300 orders every half hour, our high volume store was Midway Airport. And when I got there, it was doing about 5 million a year when I left it was doing $9 million a year. And it didn't have any different equipment and the other stores throughput was great. We definitely had to have great operations because experience was everything. That sandwich shop was our marketing. And we hired from the neighborhood. And our goal was to have 80% of our managers work in their neighborhood. That became a really big deal because then I got no travel. I'm serving the customers of my kids that go to school. I'm banking at the same bank that I'm banking in. So my neighbors are my customers. And I feel like when people are serving their friends and their neighbors, they put a little extra juice in it. So it was a great experience on can culture really drive it. Take it down to the frontline. We taught three values twice a year to our classes down to the frontline. My experience was a multiplier because the business was small. Started franchising had 30 units in the Middle East. We had London we had Toronto, and so it was a great experience. I wanted to stay around long enough to get to 1000 units, but just didn't make it.

David Novak 45:02 

If you were talking to new employees of potbelly, how would you describe the personal opportunity they had

Aylwin Lewis 45:09 

95% of our managers started as team members 75% of our district managers, people running six to eight restaurants, they started as team members, our regional managers fit themselves folks started as team members, we had more opportunity, then we had people available to fill it. When I left, you know, I said, I fired 120 out of 200. So that was at when I left, we had 89 people at the center. So we spent our money closer to the customer, so have trainers to have training restaurants, they have district managers, when you're growing at 20% CAGR off a small base, I wanted to make sure the resources are spent closest to the customer. So when you have 80 people, and then you only have 89. That means when you hire someone at the center, you want it flexibility, we hired a guy who was our planner, you know, he planned as did the store plans, we lost our very competent supply chain guy. He raised his hand and volunteered and became a tremendous, tremendous talent with supply chain. He CFO of a company now. And so it just reinforced the power of when you hire the right people, when you use the culture to hire, you do a lot of training and development, you can really create an army of leaders. So that was the frontline focus of you start today. It's a starting point. But we need GMs we need district managers, we need regional managers, and we could fulfill that.

David Novak 46:46 

What advice can you gave on on how to drive customer focus throughout your organization?

Aylwin Lewis 46:51 

Firstly, I think you got to put the customer centerpiece when you sit around the table making decisions. The CEO needs to represent the customer marketing person needs to represent the customer operating needs represent the customer first, customers got to be the center of everything you do. You know, it's old fashioned now, but I love focus groups, bringing customers in, you taught me this thing called problem detention study, you should always do those. So you're going to town on the problems that that are detected in your business. And in your brand. You got to do a brand health study every now and then understand how healthy the brand is. And whether you're meeting your brand promise. And then you cannot turn a gruff bunny into a customer service expert. If they're not smiling, and that was the beauty of popular that were small. We ended up with like 7000 customers and you were managing a million customers, a million associates. I mean, I believe around every restaurant, there's 2030 People that are good people that will smile, that want to serve customers. And that's what you got give your manager permission to do do not hire grunt bunnies hire personalities. And then you can teach him to scale. And that's important. You want smiling faces, and then you got to have your managers understand their role. It's more the results are important. But how you get results. getting results to people are very difficult. But that is the mission. And so I can't have a manager that comes to work every day and don't speak. I can't have a manager comes to work that don't believe in the values. I can't have a manager that's not going to help a customer when they see a customer. I can't have a manager get out their car, walk across the parking lot and don't pick up trash. All that stuff send signals that customers are important. And when your orientation is customer first. All those things are important. I had a guy once tell me the best marketing is a clean restroom. And that's absolutely true. Don't talk to you about the latest limited time offer. If the restrooms dirty. That mindset of customer first is important. On

David Novak 49:03 

this has been a lot of fun. And I want to have some more with a lightning round of questions here. Are you ready for this?

Aylwin Lewis 49:08 

Yes, sir.

David Novak 49:09 

What is one word others would use to best describe you.

Aylwin Lewis 49:13 

Fair.

David Novak 49:14 

What's the one word you think best describes you?

Aylwin Lewis 49:18 

Honest.

David Novak 49:19 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?

Aylwin Lewis 49:25 

St. Paul,

David Novak 49:26 

what's your biggest pet peeve?

Aylwin Lewis 49:28 

Dirty restaurants, dirty houses. I hate dirty environments.

David Novak 49:35 

What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Aylwin Lewis 49:40 

Civil rights. The second freedom for black folks in America. Voting right at Bill Russell. greatest champion in the history of sports. Martin Luther King, necessary, visionary, nonviolent change things through love Through forcing people to look evil in the eye, Bill Clinton, smart communicator near great president with lousy values.

David Novak 50:15 

LeBron James,

Aylwin Lewis 50:18 

awesome human being tremendous, talented basketball player. And he's either one or two in the goat conversation.

David Novak 50:28 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Oh,

Aylwin Lewis 50:33 

you'd hear soft rock classic rock. We went to see the Eagles in Denver last week so you know, got a oldies.

David Novak 50:42 

What's something about you that few people would know?

Aylwin Lewis 50:46 

I'm an introvert. Very shy person, very introverted.

David Novak 50:50 

That's the end of the lightning round. All one and now I got a few more questions. We'll wrap this up. Oh, when you describe yourself as a knowledge acquire? How do you go about building your own personal know how you

Aylwin Lewis 51:04 

have to have a high interest in it. And it's something you do without effort. acquiring knowledge for me. I do without effort and I do it. Every I do it every weekend. Well, but I boasts I mean you even doing your job. You're asking questions here. You're reading things and you want to learn things. So you can discern patterns that can help you be better help you solve problems have you become a better person, my whole life is dedicated being a student. I mean, at an OD you get you recognize you're going to run out of time. But it's something you love is something you're good at. It's something you do all the time. It's not hard work for you. And

David Novak 51:44 

speaking of hard work, you are one of the hardest workers that I have ever known in my life. You know, what have you learned about time management over the years?

Aylwin Lewis 51:53 

Well, you know, I planned everything right? And because that's the way you get things done, I used to stuff too much into it. Time is the one resource that you can't recover once it's lost. And so you should guard it and manage it preciously. Even though I retired, I still do to do lists, I still do yearly goals that I'm going after. And time management is important. I don't know how you accomplish things out a plan, you know, you know, I was very planful one of the big things was tactical plans in restaurants, so it can help managers reach their goals. So time management is everything. And there heaven knows there's enough tools now on the internet that can help you manage your time.

David Novak 52:35 

You know, you were on the Disney board. And you work with one of the most famous CEOs of our era, Bob Iger, what impressed you most about him?

Aylwin Lewis 52:45 

Bob had encyclopedic knowledge of his company. And my 15 years on the board, he had a flat organization 13 People reported into him. And he defined his role, as you know, being a leader being a culture carrier. But more importantly, called himself the Uber editor, which meant Can I bring good taste and high standards to everything that we do. And he did that very well. He's very unassuming guy had a his Rolodex was tremendous. You know, in a day, he could talk to a country leader, commissioner of a sports team, and then talk to, you know, a great basketball player. And he kept all of that stuff under wraps and had tremendous amount of humility. Definitely Hall of Fame during the time that I knew him.

David Novak 53:33 

I'll never forget, when our leadership team got together with our husbands and wives, and each of us placed ourselves in four quadrants. You could either be a promoter, an analyzer, a supporter, and a controller. Now you put yourself in the supporter quadrant, and novoline, your wife said, you would support people only if you could control them. How important is it for you to have a truth teller like novoline in your life,

Aylwin Lewis 54:05 

that was such an interesting thing for her to say from my peers. So we celebrated 40 years of marriage this past June. And you can't go through life and reach what I've done without a partner that will keep you steady, that you can trust that, you know, manage the annual budget, cash, all the checks, do all the right things and you never have to worry about that for one minute. And so she's been a tremendous part of my life. I've lived with her longer than anybody and you know, not at your, you know, been retired for six years and so spent a lot of time 24/7 But definitely, if you say what it one or two, three people have had the most impact on your life. Mom would probably be number one and wife would be number two. person like yourself would be number three. Number four, but you can't go through life successfully without someone that's gonna help you. And gotta tell you, the truth is gonna keep you also true to yourself. And she's definitely that. One

David Novak 55:09 

of the things that I learned working with you was just the power of working with someone who's passionate, and committed, and willing to do the work to really take a business forward. And the other thing I learned from you is that once I put you in a leadership position, it was amazing how many black leaders emerged at young people who just absolutely kick butt did great jobs. And you really took great joy in finding these diamonds in the roughs and pulling them up and giving them opportunity, you know, what advice can you give people on how to really, really make a difference in diversity and not just give it lip service?

Aylwin Lewis 55:59 

David, thank you for that it was a focal point of bringing underrepresented people and opening a door, it's got to be top of mind, you've got to find diversity that's competent, you gotta find diversity that's hungry. It starts with the values, it starts with people is willing to demonstrate that they're gonna work their butts off. You want them to be humble, but you don't need them to have a service mentality to you as the leader, you want them to serve the mission, you want them to serve the customers, you want them to be committed to results, I call it qualified diversity. And there are people out there is willing, are you willing to do the work? And then how can we create companies and environments where there's no barriers for any person that matches your values, the beauty of what you allow to happen in our company was, we could bring these folks on, we could develop them, we could train them, we use the money well, and then allow them to demonstrate. And then once they can get to a level where they can protect themselves, then they were part of the process of saying how do I bring other leaders on? So it starts at the top of the organization, you had that orientation of common person underdog? How do we help them but it went, we went running to charity. And we didn't want to look at majority men and women and say You're not wanted here. The reason you want a company that's growing, is that the opportunity is there. And it's not too expensive. Anyone, I believe in the rainbow. And you know, when you get our results, and when you meet our culture, I don't care about the other stuff. I don't care to call it I don't care, sexual orientation. I don't care where you went to school. If you're one of us, because you believe our values, and you're getting our results the right way, you're treating our customers the right way. Have at it. And I think that's the beauty, but it started with you at the top of the organization. And so I always rail against people who, number one, you don't make the statement. You do the work. I hate these organizations that, oh, we got to do this. Well, the minute you announce it, you're drawing attention, just due to work. And let the folks who have benefited from it becomes your story.

David Novak 58:25 

Well, thank you for that all one. And you know, the reason why I bring up the novoline story where she said you'll support you only if you could control us because all of us on the team and a lot of fun with that. Okay, giving you a lot of grief over Yes. But the fact of the matter is almost every leader that I've ever known you, including myself, we're all controllers to a certain extent, we want to control our environment so that we can be accountable for what goes on. But if I had to pick one thing that I would say should be attached to you and the quadrant that you're in, is you're definitely our supporter, I will you really, really champion people and champion me and champion the rest of the team. And I want to thank you for everything you did for me and yum, and so many other people. I mean, one thing listeners you need to know is this guy did find talent everywhere, and gave people unbelievable opportunities. People who really didn't have the perfect pedigree, and they absolutely did fantastic in our business. And I'm sure in the retail business that he run. So all one thanks so much for being on the show. I really appreciate you. I wouldn't

Aylwin Lewis 59:37 

have not achieved what I've achieved in my career, my life without you and your support. So it's an honor to talk to you today. And love you and you and your family. And thank you very much for this opportunity.

David Novak 1:00:02 

As all one so wisely puts it without results, nothing is possible. Results are how you stand out. And they're not just numbers on a page. They're proof that the systems and people you're putting in place are really working and that customers are happy. As a leader, it's your responsibility to create an environment where everyone can bring their A game and deliver results. This week, ask yourself, Where do you need to be paying closer attention to results, either in your own career or for your team? Make sure you're not losing sight of that. Because when you deliver great results, you also create more opportunities for both you and everyone around you. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders recognize that results are paramount. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Tim sure the CEO of my company, David Novak leadership. But I've

Tim Schurrer 1:00:57 

just found that for me, success is in the assist. I just believe that some really amazing things can happen. When you're willing to come alongside others try to make them successful.

David Novak 1:01:09 

I just believe that that's us on a better path. And that's how I've tried to show up in my life for sure. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be