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 learning 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. I better warn you up front, today's episode just might make you hungry. Because I'm talking to Kevin Hockman, the CEO of Brinker International, a restaurant group that includes Chili's and maj pianos, I had the pleasure of working with Kevin back at yum. So I know firsthand what a great leader he is. I gotta say, I'm so proud of the turnaround he's leaving at Chili's, he's put the focus back on what he calls the core four items on their menu. And that's great. But what a lot of people don't realize is that increasing your focus in one area means that you've got to make some tough decisions somewhere else. And let me tell you, when you start talking about cutting and eliminating and simplifying parts of your business, it can feel scary. But as you're about to hear, that's what you got to do. If you want to free up resources for the big things that really drive big growth. Keep listening and see how it's done. Plus, you'll hear a little factoid about chilies, and tequila that I guarantee will blow your mind. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Kevin Hawkman.

Kevin, it's so great to have you on the show.

Kevin Hochman 1:37 

Well, what an honor, it is. David, you know, you had such a huge impact on so many people I'm included in that pool. And I certainly wouldn't be here today in this role, if it wasn't the impact that you've had on me and kind of my skill set. So what an honor. And so thank you for having me.

David Novak 1:52 

Well, I have to tell you, it was one of my highlights in my career at yum when we hired you from Procter and Gamble, I had such high hopes for you when you came in, and you met every expectation I had and exceeded them. And I'm really so happy when I see people that young go off and take on bigger roles and become CEOs. And here you are. You're CEO of a public company for the first time. And when you just took the helm in May of 2022 of Brinker International, which is a fantastic casual dining chain. What's been the biggest surprise, Kevin, as you've taken on that role? Yes.

Kevin Hochman 2:28 

So you know, we own all of our own restaurants, or we own 90 something percent of them right. And, you know, I just assumed that because we owned our own restaurants, that we were going to be very in touch with what was going on with the field and the restaurant teams, right? Because there's so much of our p&l, it's not just a royalty, we actually have to what we say eat what we cook, right. So when I got in, what I found was the restaurant teams had amazing ideas about how we could both simplify the operation. And then most importantly, better serve the guest. And so I just did a listening to her. And now it's actually become a part of our company. We can talk about that in a second. But, you know, my first 60 days I traveled around the country, I sat down with both the restaurant general managers as well as the above restaurant leaders. And I asked them two questions. I said, What's one thing that keeps you here that you're excited about being part of Brinker and Chili's? And then if you were CEO, what's one thing you change, and you can't believe how much feedback I got, and I would summarize it, bring it back to my leadership team that would drive our action plans, and then we'd go back out a couple months later and do the same thing. And so it's really become a way of life. Now everybody leads that way in the company. And our managers, they've never been more engaged, because they know they're a part of the future. And they've seen the changes, hit the restaurants, and everything's up. So you know, turnovers down, that's the only thing that's down turnovers way down, we actually are leading the industry now and manage your turnover. But all the other metrics are up customer experience, our sales are up margins are improved. And it's all because of the ideas from the restaurant teams that we're putting into action. So it's been a great journey. And that really, it was a big surprise to me that those field teams needed to have a big say in the RSC and the restaurants Support Center. I'm sure

David Novak 4:06 

it was great for them to see the CEO out there listening and hearing what they have to say.

Kevin Hochman 4:10 

Yeah, you know, I got a great story. So I think it was like day nine on the job. I'm in a Chili's in Chicago, just outside of O'Hare. I'll never forget this. And I mean, we call it the harder house. So the back of the house of the kitchen we call the hardest house at Brinker and I'm in the heart of the house with a team member. And she's counting shrimp. So her job for the first hour of the day was she counts, ate shrimp, puts them in a little bag, twist the bag, counts, ate shrimp, put some a little bag, twist the bag and so on. And she'll do that for probably 45 minutes. And then she'll do the same thing with brisket, which she'll measure it and bag it and then she'll do the same with the product. It's called portioning. And pretty much every concept at some point has done a lot of testing. We did a bunch of KFC and Pizza Hut when I was there at yum. And the idea is well you could do this before service and it controls what we call a VT or a measure of waste. So you know that you We're always going to get a trip because you're counting it, not in the heat of the moment, and it's very easier and faster service well. So when I asked her the question, hey, what's the one thing that you would do if you were CEO tomorrow, she'd say, I stopped counting these darn shrimp. And I said, Well, what would you do if you didn't count the shrimp? And she said, when the customer orders a shrimp taco, or a shrimp fajita, I'll count eat shrimp, I'll put them on the grill. You know what, sometimes I'll count seven. Sometimes I'll count nine. But guess what, most of the time, I'm going to count eight, right? So we took that idea back to the restaurant Support Center. And they said, Hey, we gotta test this, we're gonna have a bunch of shrimp waste. I don't know about this. And I said, Well, what's there to test like, she's right, like, once in a while, should get it wrong, up or down. But we're not gonna have big waste issue. So we rolled it out. And guess what happened of shrimp waste? Absolutely nothing, right literally didn't change. Like we, we measure this stuff. Literally every day, we get reports every day, it didn't change. And everybody laughs at that story. But you know what's interesting, if you take one hour prep out of our restaurants every day, that's 47 years of labor that we pay for annually, that's over $6 billion of labor that say that we can redeploy to things like that would actually, you know, improve the guest experience or improve the food experience, right? So those are things that add up pretty quickly. Because when you're in a, you know, a restaurant group with a lot of scale, you know, get one hour prep out of the business is has huge impacts. And then most importantly, that team member, she doesn't want to do that she doesn't value that to her that thinks it's a waste of time. So that makes her job way more engaging. When we're like, hey, we listen to you. We got rid of that and go do something that you're excited about doing. I

David Novak 6:34 

want to get more into all the exciting things that you're making happen at breakers and Chili's. But first give us just the snapshot of the Brinker brands and their relative size.

Kevin Hochman 6:43 

So we're about a $4 billion business. We have over 1500 restaurants, most of those restaurants are Chili's in the US. So about 85% of our business is Chili's, about 12 30% of that is the maj pianos brand. That's our other big concepts of my channels. Little Italy is an Italian concept. We call it Polish casual. We have about 50 maj pianos, they do close to $10 million, a UVs, or annual sales volume. So they're they're quite productive restaurants. Typically people go to a Maggio's for either a special occasion, like a wedding or a banquet, or they go there for a Friday or Saturday or Sunday deal with their family and friends tends to be you know, higher check average, a little bit more a higher end customer. And then Chili's is the bulk of our business. And that really was born 48 years ago, in 1975. It's always been more of a family dining restaurant. So it was the original casual dining restaurant, typically families would come in. So mom would have a margarita dad would have a beer, everybody would have burgers and chips and salsa. And there's always something for the kids that still today, we're going to one of our main targets and the people that do the most of the business with us is young families that come in that you know, they don't want to do the cooking, but they want to have a good time. So these brands have been around for a long, long time. And now my job is to continue to innovate after the customer, make sure it's easier for our restaurant teams to make their lives easier, and then ultimately delight the guests and grow sales. And you know, so far we're about a year and three months into it and we're headed in the right direction. You

David Novak 8:15 

said you wanted to make Chili's fun again, how's it going?

Kevin Hochman 8:19 

So I sat down, it was our fourth CEO, but he's kind of like the guy after Norbert Brinker that everybody knows in the business. His name is Doug Brooks. He still has an office here in the building. He's been with the business. Well over 30 years, he was actually at the first chili so a bit over 40 years. He was a manager at the first Chili's on Greenville Avenue here in Dallas. So I sat down with Doug, it's probably my first week on the job. We went and had lunch. And I said, Doug, would Chili's was at its best. What was it like? What were we like, right, like, Well, we were growing and, and things were really good in the business, like what was like and he talked about, he's like, oh, man, he's like, you know, the team members, we're having a ton of fun, partnering with each other to serve the guests. There was nothing better in the restaurant than when it was a full restaurant. And they were getting slammed on a Friday night. And the guests were having an amazing time. The team members were having an amazing time, they were having a fun time together, they had a thing, we can't do this anymore. They had a thing called shift shots where they would all do shots during the shift. We don't do that anymore, obviously. But there's plenty of other ways we can have fun, right? And his point was like, no matter how hard that restaurant got hit with the customers, this team rallied together to serve the guests. And they love each other and they love serving the guests. And so that's a pretty good vision, right? Like if you think about what's going on with, you know, today's workforce, and the idea of having real meaning in your jobs and making meaningful connections. Like that's a very differentiated idea versus other restaurants out there. And so the idea was how do we get back to that Chili's that people love to come work at and they love to grow with right and it's interesting we call them chili heads. So it's there's a culture here, and when I first heard chili head when I started I was like, like that seems kind of silly. And then you actually learn about what chili head life is, it's about you don't take yourself too seriously. You're in love with servant leadership. So you want to serve your fellow team members, but you also want to serve the guests. And ultimately, you want to have fun doing it. And at the end of the day, why does someone come pick a job in restaurants, versus, you know, driving Uber or work at an Amazon warehouse? They do it because they love people, and they want to serve people. And so it's my job as the CEO is, what can I do to take all that stuff away, like shrimp counting, and the restaurants so they can spend more time both making great food and having fun with the guests. And so that's the first thing we did was we just got rid of a lot of the unnecessary stuff. So it was a lot of more time to actually service the guests and have a great time. The second thing that we did, we've actually instituted what we call a culture calendar. So every couple of weeks, sometimes it's every week depends on the month, there's always something that team members can look forward to. So it could be like a natural contest, so build us the best Nacho that you can and then they put it on Twitter and they compare to other restaurants or, you know, we're going to have up and coming we have a Barb's night, which is going to be for Nicki Minaj fans. She tweeted something about Chili's last year so we had we created a barber Rita that Barb's are her friends, people will come in and have those margaritas, they'll get dressed up like Nicki Minaj. And our team members love that. It's just something to look forward to throughout the week. Okay, we're going to have Barb's day, you know, what are you going to do at BB say, how are you going to dress even like the NFL season started a couple of weeks ago, and we have Sunday Ticket available in all of our restaurants for our guests. And now our team members can wear jerseys all weekend for their favorite sports team. They love that like Who doesn't love. You know, we're in the University of Louisville, Cardinals jersey, I know you're a big fan, or I love wearing my dolphins jersey to work, right. So that's the kind of things that we're doing, let's get out of their way. So they can focus on the guest. And then let's give some fun things that they can do and invest in it. So they have things to look forward to over time. And you know, engagements never been higher. Right now,

David Novak 11:50 

you talk about driving the core for the Chili's menu. Tell us about the core four and how you came to that conclusion that this is really what you wanted to make the engine of the brand. Many

Kevin Hochman 12:02 

of the coaches I've had in my career, you know, it comes in different language, but it's always about make big changes to big things. I think that's the way you talk about it. Right? You know, I had another leader who's the CEO of Signet jewelers, Janet Drosos. She always talked about Dr. The Korean go for more, right? It was always about got to make big changes to big things if you want to move a big business. And so when I came onto the business that looked at the menu that we had, it was really complex, it's still complex, we're making progress on it. And the reason why is because over time, you're gonna try to drive sales, you can add more things to the menu. And ultimately, what happens is you have so many things on the menu, it's very hard for the teams to execute consistently. And then you're not telling the guests, you know, why did you come to Chili's. And if you go back in time, when Chili's once again, was at its best, we sell a ton of burgers, we sell a ton of fajitas, we sell a ton of margaritas, and we sold a ton of chicken tenders, we call them chicken crispers. In fact, at the time, 40% of our business was done in just those four items. So the last year and change, you know, we've been focused on simplifying the menu so we can focus on the core four, and make those things better. So we've eliminated over 20% of our menu, you know, why do people not eliminate menu items, we're afraid of losing sales, we actually have grown sales pretty consistently over that time. So we've been able to get all of that kind of what I call the poison out of the business. So we can focus our energies on the things of why customers come to us. And now what are the results of that? So for example, in margaritas, guess who the number one Margarita sales company in the world is? It's Chili's, if we were a country, this is mind blowing. David, we will be the third largest imbibing country of tequila in the world. You have United States, Mexico and then Chile. So that's how big of a margarita player we are. And so we used to not on our premium Margarita, the president day, we didn't hand shake every one of them we would pre batch some and anybody knows in cocktails. If you don't handshake that freshly every time. It's just not going to be the same experience. And so we moved to a handshake and Margarita and guess what our premium margaritas are way up? It's no surprise. You know, another thing that we've done on chicken tenders was we were selling chicken tenders only in one size. And we didn't care about dipping sauces. And when you talk to the guests, they're like, hey, I want to buy bigger bundles like you go to KFC or raising canes or Chick fil A, you don't just have one size and they have a plethora of sauces. And we ended up having to get rid of one of the other recipes of chicken tenders in order to make the other one really really well. And so even though we've gone down to one recipe instead of two, we now are actually selling over 40% More tenders than we did with two recipes right so those are the examples of what the power of focus on big things can do to the business. And once again, the same lesson every time I've been in one of these turnarounds is make big changes to big things and you'll get big results out of that.

David Novak 14:43 

You know it's really interesting that you're the number three Margarita country in the world and margaritas as I understand it have pretty nice profit margin. Yeah,

Kevin Hochman 14:54 

that's exactly right to is so like, you know, one of the things that I learned it yum from a lot of great man and tours was about the menu mix and the idea of how you merchandise products will determine how you want to orchestrate the guests. So, you know by COPPA, we were talking about earlier before we got on the podcast like, that's a guy that taught me well. He is the largest franchisee of KFC, he taught me a ton about menu, merchandising and advertising. And the idea is, hey, we got to advertise great value to get customers in. But a lot of those customers don't necessarily want the cheapest thing. And so how do you orchestrate the menu and how you merchandise around the menu to get to get to what they want. So for example, a great example is you know, we sell $5 or $6, what we call the margarita the month, it's like a special, it's always a special delicious Margarita with some very good tequila in it. And that's always going to be a great seller because it's a incredible value. You can't go anywhere and get a margarita for five or six bucks, right. But we knew if we started innovating around that against the president day, which is our number one selling Margarita, we started innovating on higher end tequila is like Terra, Mata Blanco, or George Clooney is casamigos Marguerite, which we sell for $14. We know that some guests, they don't want the cheapest thing, they want something a little more more premium a little smoother. And so we put that in the business. Well, we woke up a year later, half of the five and $6 margaritas are now being sold in more premium margaritas, $9. And up. So the power of menu merchandising can make a huge difference in what you do. And you know, it's something that I'm always going to take with me and whether you work in retail, or whether you work in restaurants. Now how you orchestrate your menu or how you orchestrate your shelf is going to make a big difference in your profit margins.

David Novak 16:27 

You are always really good at thinking about pricing. And I understand you, you have what you call a barbell pricing strategy. Explain.

Kevin Hochman 16:37 

One of the things that's so important for any business is to understand who your guests are, and what do they want. And so we have guests from all walks of life, there's no real, we have no real income bet to our guests there. We have a low rank of guests, we have middle income guests, and we have higher income guests. And they have different preferences in the things that they want. So what we've committed to is in all of our core four, we want to have ways to have an entry level price point. So if you only have this many dollars in your pocket, and you want to go to casual dining, you can come to Chili's for that and we go all the way up to super premium like the Casa amigos Margarita I talked about so like Marguerite is a great example where if you just only have six bucks for a margarita, you're gonna get a great Margarita with Top Shelf liquor, you know one of the name brands or several of the name brands, we merchandise it right front and center when you come into the restaurant. So you know, you know this is the special of the month. And then you can trade up to our president day. Or if you want to skinny Margarita or ranch water you can go up to the $9 tier. And then you can go all the way up to super premium on the on the cost amigos I was talking about so you know we have something that pet no matter where you are and what type of tequila and what type of Margarita you want. We're going to make sure you meet your needs that are examples on our burger business, which is one of our core for where you can come in to Chili's. If you have 1099, you can get close to a half pound burger, fresh fries, endless chips and salsa, we fresh fire chips and make our salsa daily at bottom a soft drink for 1099. And no offense to you know all of our QSR friends and our fast casual friends. You can't even get 1099 in those channels, let alone with three different courses, right, we call it the three for me. So if you want to get that and you only have 1099, you can get an unbeatable value in any of the channels of restaurants, you can go all the way up, if you want to get what we call the double OTC That's our best selling burger, but it's got almost a pound of meat, and the burger that's gonna cost 1516 bucks. And that's for a big eater that's willing to pay more. And that's what we sell as a barbell strategy, we're always going to have good, which is an entry level price point for that guest that that's what they want to pay. And that's the experience they want. And we'll go to a better strategy where you know, in burgers, it's going to be with bacon or multiple toppings. And it will get you all the way to that that super premium burger, which is almost a pound of meat that you can't get anywhere else. Right. So it's critically important to have all of those customer needs met on the core items that you want to really win on.

David Novak 18:50 

Kevin, I know, you know this better than most technology is a major leadership tool, especially today. How do you think about it?

Kevin Hochman 18:59 

You know, here's how we think about technology. You know, a lot of folks think that like, there is no such thing as a technology project. And you know, it's something I've learned kind of recently as we think about our IT roadmap, the most important thing and technology in technology is really about what are you trying to solve. At the end of the day technology, especially in restaurants is about removing friction either for the team member or removing friction for the guests. And so the way we're thinking about technology projects here at Brinker is they're all enterprise projects. So, for example, we have these devices that sit on a table that when you want to check out and leave the restaurant, you can just swipe your card, leave a tip, and you can leave you don't ever have to talk to a team member. That device will tell the team member that you've paid but you don't have to talk to anybody. Now why is this good? Well, it removes friction for the team member because the old days you had to get the card you had to run back to the POS you had to swipe the card, you had to run back with the ticket, then you had to collect the ticket and bring it back to the station. That takes a lot of time in a labor starved world. You don't really want your servers doing that when you can use technology. Chi, to allow the guest to check out now what's in it for the guests, you know, what do you want to do at the end of a meal? Like, how do you think about that, you want to get out of dodge, right want to get out want to sit there Wait, I gather. And so if you have technology that allows you to self checkout, you're going to use that right? Especially if it works every time. So that's an example where that's an enterprise project, because it's like we need to technology to self pay. But that's going to change the labor deployment with the server, it's also going to change the way we charge out things with finance, it's also going to change the way we train our team members. So are we call them PW, but our HR resources are going to have to get involved. And then marketing can deliver messages on these devices, terms of advertising or messaging. And we can also collect their loyalty program numbers through the device, and they can get, you know, free bonuses, etc. from it. So pretty much in that example of pay at the table. A it's a technology project. No, it's an enterprise project. And the only way that's going to be successful is if cross functionally we're leading together. It's the one of your classic tenants of how do you bring people along to get better results? If you bring him in earlier in the process? You know, another great one that we're working on now is we have a new kitchen display system we're working on kts. Every restaurant chain has a kts. Right? It's essentially the brains in the heart of the house or the back of the house of the restaurant, it tells the team members, what should I make right now? And how should I pack it out? And that's an example where Yeah, I guess that's a technology project, because it's going to require, you know, connecting to, you know, our POS system. And you know, what comes through, and you know, how the products break out. But the reality is, it's an enterprise project, it's going to require new training with operations, it's going to require the team members to change the way they look at the screens, it's going to require we're going to bring an anthropologist in to learn, you know, how can we make that system easier and better, so that our orders are more accurate, right? It's gonna require finance and supply chain to negotiate, you know, for the screens, etc. And lastly, it's gonna require, you know, some facilities people to actually install this stuff, right. So, you know, I think technology is kind of a misnomer. I think people are like, oh, we need to have a new technology program. I think all these projects are enterprise projects and technology, just like marketing or operations or whatever. It's just inputting into it. And sometimes they take a bigger role. But the most important thing I would tell people in a business in my role, is if you're thinking about technology, as its it is problem, you got a problem. All of these things are enterprise projects that cross functional teams need to lead.

Koula Callahan 22:22 

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David Novak 23:10 

Kevin, you know better than most technology is a major leadership tool, especially today. And I understand you have this rule. It's called the 8020 rule. Tell me about it. When

Kevin Hochman 23:22 

I first started, I was the listening tour I was telling you about. And I was in a restaurant that had, we had 62 restaurants that had literally these robots that would go around with like server trays, and they could run out food and they could also bust food. Now they don't have arms. So like some would actually have to take the plate off of the tray or put the plate into the busser. And then they'd hit a button and the robot would go scurry off to the either the harder house or come out to a table, right? So I'm in one of those restaurants, one of the 62 restaurants and I'm talking to the General Manager. And I said how do you like the robot? Like how's the robot working out? And the guy's like, oh, man, it's great. Like, I love it. I'm like, what do you love about he's like, Well, kids love it. Like we send it over to sing happy birthday to the kids. Like, oh, that's cool. Like, do you think you're getting more traffic because of the robot like, oh, absolutely not. It just they like it. So they sometimes request it when it come in. I said, but that's kind of odd, because what I was told was all about, you know, freeing up the operation, like taking some labor out of the restaurants because these things will run food out and they'll bus plates, and they're like, oh, that doesn't do any of that stuff. I'm like, What do you mean, they're like, they're incredibly slow. Like, look how slow that robot is. And it's like going around that thing, like, people are just literally walking around the robot. And I'm like, wait a second, I got this. We had a lot of data breaker. So I'm looking at the data. I'm like, wait a second, you use this 40% of the time. So 40% of checks. You're using a robot. So it must be doing something, right? He's like, Oh, I'm getting rated on how often I use it. I have to use it at least 30% of the time, or I get dinged. I'm like, Okay, I got everything I need to know. And then I talked to a couple other managers about the robots and I find out in fact, nobody likes them because they're way too slow. They like the birthday song and that's about it. Well, they're very expensive, and they're way too expensive if they're slow and actually helping us and it was operational challenges. So one of the things I was, you know, when I first came in, we saw a lot of quote unquote, robot projects in technology. The reality is our foundation, like things like pay at the table, you know, our kitchen display system, which is the heart of house brains, you know, our POS needs to be upgraded. These are things that we use every day for every transaction. And those are the things that need to be upgraded. But we were working on things that are 510 years out, well, we had to change all that. And so we call the 8020 rules, 80% of our time needs to be on these foundational things that are going to really improve the operation, remove friction, either for the guests, or for the team ever. And then we can spend 20% of our time or maybe a little bit less than that, on some of the things that are out there to make sure we don't lose our eye on what's next. But it's really important that to make sure that we don't chase after shiny balls, that we have, you know, important foundational things that we got to fix going forward.

David Novak 25:48 

You know, Kevin, you talked about going back to basics in some respects by just you know, identifying the core four and then making big changes to them. So you could really grow the heck out of your business. Yet I know that innovation is critical to any company's success. How are you going about driving innovation as the CEO, Brinker, the

Kevin Hochman 26:09 

first thing is, it's funny, I just literally did a training with some of our key leaders 30 of our key leaders on innovation yesterday, about how I think about innovation, and how innovation can apply to operations, or it can apply to food, or it can apply to, you know, marketing, etc. And, you know, that's the lifeblood of any company. So if anybody tells you that, hey, we don't need innovation. They're crazy. Because you can innovate in back office things, you can innovate in the harder house, you can innovate with your advertising innovation come anywhere. It's not just about commercial things that you typically think about innovation, right? The second thing I would tell you is, it's really important to get aligned on what's the bigger strategy so that your innovation, you know, drives into that strategy versus letting people kind of go crazy on the road. So, you know, for us, for example, having the core four and saying, Look, these are things that Americans eat and drink, you know, Margarita is the number one drink to kill is the number one Spirit. Now, hamburgers are the number one item they eat. Boneless fried chicken is a top five item and has been growing in the last 30 years. And fajitas Tex Mex has been growing for two decades, like these are the right segments to be playing in now we've got to go make sure we innovate on the core to make sure that the best possible items that we have, and then innovate outside the core on those core four. So for example, you know, why can't we have innovation and burgers? Why can't we have new margaritas that you haven't seen before? So the first thing is really getting aligned on what is the strategy? And why do we pick those things, we pick those things, because those are big traffic drivers for customers going into restaurants, then the next thing is how do we innovate? And so that's making sure that folks know, what are the parameters of innovation, like we don't want to innovate, that drives margins down, we want to innovate that either drives the total business or gross margins. A second thing is, you know, we're willing to take on some operational complexity, but the size of price has got to be really big. So you know, if it's something that's going to grow our business five or 10 points, we're willing to do a lot operationally to make that happen. If it's something that's going to grow the business one point, we probably can't have as many ingredients are any new training or new equipment. So making sure the teams understand know that not all innovation is created equally. Some are big bangs that are require investment, and some are things that we can't invest as much because they're not gonna have the biggest side surprise, right? You know, a third thing, and probably the most important thing is is the guests gonna love it. So, you know, are these concepts that are going to break through that people are going to look and say, hey, I want to come to Chili's to come try this. And one of the greats in yum culture, you know, Greg Crete will always talk about sales overnight and brand over time. And that's something that's a lens I look at in our innovation. So not only is it guests gonna love it today, what is it going to get him to come back over time? And is it going to drive the things that we want to stand for? So you know, if there's Margarita innovation, and people are super excited about it, that helps us both for sales overnight, because we get that Margarita attachment. But it also continues to reinforce what we should be known for, which is being the number one Margarita sales group in the world, right? Like they're known for. So I'm in the mood for a margarita, am I going to go to you know, Olive Garden? Or am I gonna go to Chili's, right. That's why those trip drivers are so important. So you know, making sure that you have innovation that's focused on the strategy. And then making sure you're getting the organization aligned on how you think about innovation is critically important going forward.

David Novak 29:11 

You know, I want to get more into how you lead Kevin, but But first, now, I want to take you back, share with me a childhood story that really impacts the way you lead today.

Kevin Hochman 29:20 

The biggest thing I would tell you that I remember my childhood my mom is just an incredible servant leader. Like she just loves serving others, whether it was friends or family or all of us kids, I was the youngest of three boys. I get a lot of like, excitement and happiness out of doing the same thing. So whether it's serving any of our stakeholders, whether it's our guests or our team members, and there's nothing I love more than just being in a restaurant doing a roundtable with the local area managers finding out what are the things that we can do to make your job easier. They appreciate it because like they probably haven't seen the CEO before and and they tell me that and it's like and I'm sitting there taking notes like a dork right. And they're like, and I tell them like like they have to do an email. I'm taking notes here and I'll share back What I heard so you guys know what I'm going to take back to the team. I love doing that, right. But I also love like even being with investors or the analyst of this new job that I have, like and hearing what they have to say about our business and what their perspectives are, and what they think we should be doing, that's all input that's really value to me. I love spending time with our board of directors. So we have an incredibly diverse board. You know, we have Francis Allen, who's the CEO of checker. So she comes from the industry, we have people like Cindy Davis, who was the president of Nike golf, and has incredible brand building experience. And even like my chairman of the board, Now Joe dipinto, who's the CEO of 711, he knows what it means to run a gigantic retail concept. And really share with me the idea of, you know, scale and what it means and how to manage it and how to manage it, you know, how to helicopter and, and helicopter out. And so I just love serving others. And I think I get that from my mom. And it just, you know, when I see on my calendar, like yesterday, I looked at my calendar, and I've got like, this two hour training I'm doing with the team, I can pumped up, like, I'm like, oh, man, this is gonna be a great day, because it's a way I can serve the team instead of them serving me. So, you know, that's probably the biggest thing I took away from my childhood was like, I love serving others.

David Novak 31:05 

That's great, you know, and every leader Kevin has a hip pocket skill. When did you realize that you wanted to make yours marketing?

Kevin Hochman 31:14 

You know, it's funny, like, I'm starting to evolve like, I think it's marketing, but it may not be because now that I you know, I'm leading a concept that has on so many of its restaurants, I actually enjoy I love working inside the restaurants like with the teams and learning about what we can do to help them so. So I think it was marketing for a while and, and I think that was a function I worked at Procter and Gamble. And we have amazing leaders that teach us about marketing vectors, one that's being honored today, ACI glisten, embraces just getting some gigantic award, actually, for just leadership in New York City today. And like, she's the kind of person that just taught me like the core skills of brand building and driving innovation and how to make great ads and how to get the organization rallied around that kind of stuff. And then when I got to Yum, I learned from people like you, and Mickey pant. And Greg and Roger Eaton, like how do you be commercially aggressive, like, fast food is fast for a reason. Because every month if you don't have something, someone else is going to get that business from you. Right? And so, you know, how do you have passion for that. And so I think over time, by learning from great leaders that love marketing, like I became a good marketer, or at least I knew how to surround myself with good marketers, like George Felix, my current cmo who did all the kernel lead. So you know that at the end of the day, like, I think I kind of just lucked into it, because I had these leaders that knew a lot about marketing. And they kind of trained me, I will tell you now that I'm like, deep in the restaurants, I love operations. And I've had several of the board members comment, like, you might be an operations guy instead of a marketer, which I love hearing that. So

David Novak 32:43 

I have to tell you, I was looking at everything you've done at Chili's, and you've done most of it on the operations front. And I think of you is primarily that hip pocket skill being the marketing. And here you're making all these operational changes that breakers and you seem to know the business inside out, how have you gone about adding that skill set to your marketing acumen, which is considerable, and I am going to make you talk a little bit about that later.

Kevin Hochman 33:10 

It's very similar to your story, when you talk about, you know, at Pepsi. And your feedback was, hey, you need to learn the operations, you want to be an enterprise leader. And then you went immerse yourself in that you went and got a job and you did it. And it was uncomfortable for you. And you realize very quickly, we're not just collecting a royalty here like the p&l is our p&l. And so those restaurants better be operating real good. And you better have great margins and be expanding them if you want to make money. And so very quickly, you figure out you better start doing soliciting to the restaurant teams. And so the good news is that I read, I really learned this from you, I gotta be candid, I'm not just blowing smoke, you know, sitting down with these teams that are closest to the customer, and asking a few questions, and just doing some real intense listening, and asking follow up questions, you can learn so much more than you can learn from sitting down with a one on one with anybody, right, just asking the right questions and listening. It's just so important. And I gotta tell you, like, I started falling in love with the idea that we can do something like there was so much low hanging fruit that we could quickly get after. And so what was happening was like the first month, you know, we're on a town hall with all our general managers, you know, on a video call, and I'm like, here's what I heard, here are the things that we're going to work on. And then the next month, they saw it happen. And I told him about the next things that we're working on, and the next month, the next month, and we a GM conference. And it's funny, because we just had our second GM conference in the rolls. This is like last month, and I had so many of the managers come up to me and go, you know, that first year, you said all the right stuff, but we're kind of wondering whether you're actually going to do it. And they're like, it's a year later. Now the business is completely transformed. It's fun to work in Chili's, again, like you're listening to us like the ideas that are coming from us or showing up in the restaurant. And I gotta tell you it that gets me so pumped up to go do more of it. So I think that's why I've kind of focused on it because one, there's a lot of low hanging fruit that we could make real hay and real profits out of and two it's about Over leadership, it's about listing their ideas, and then making them come to life. And then you can do things pretty fast. It's not like you got to take two years to change the equity of a brand like you can make things simpler real fast if you get after it. Well,

David Novak 35:11 

now I'm going to make it tell some marketing horror stories. Okay? You're famous for developing the Old Spice man at Procter and Gamble. Yeah. Tell us the behind the scenes story of how that came to be.

Kevin Hochman 35:27 

Yeah. So you know, a lot of people have a hand in that. So I just want to make sure I was the head of marketing when we brief those ads, and then, and they eventually were made. But here's the stories I've never heard. It's a funny story. So p&g is owned by Old Spice. And then our rival was Unilever, and Unilever, gigantic consumer product goods brand, package brand. And they have a gigantic deodorant business. They had all of our same patents. That's a whole nother story we could talk about. So the technologies are very similar, right? So it's very much a marketing challenge. The deodorant and antidepressants work very similarly. Because they all have the same technology, at least those two companies do, right? So they were coming to market with what was called dove ferment. So remember, the Dove soap and it's like, it's really nice on your skin. It's a synthetic, so people love it smells great, right? And it's like, we're gonna make love from it. And so about half a Procter and Gamble in the deodorants counter was laughing like our guys gonna buy dove for men. And then there were people like me who had worked on our Walmart team and saw how nasty a competitor that Unilever was, and said, You know what, it doesn't kind of make sense. But these guys make everything work. So we better take this seriously. So we knew they were going to launch it Super Bowl, they're going to launch a dove ferment spot with Drew Brees of the Super Bowl. And that was when the shelf resets happened. So it was like a big deal that they were going to come guns blaring with done from it. And so we wrote a brief and the brief that we wrote to the agency, this agency widening Kennedy that ended up doing all the colonel ads was Why do you want to smell like wildflowers in shame? You need to smell like a man man. It's called the slam campaign. And so that was the brief that we gave them. And it was to prevent against dub for men coming because Old Spice was about being manly like manliness, right? So they came back with the Old Spice character, which was like, you know, Hello, ladies, like, look at your man, look back at me, you know, and it was all about the essence of being a man. And that's how that character was created. So some brilliant creative at widening, Kennedy took that brief, and they came up with this character. And the rest was history. But you know, it starts with great breeze, like it was a really great brief, we had this entity coming called Duck for men. And we had to go, what are we going to do to protect ourselves? And that's where that character was born out of.

David Novak 37:31 

And another famous campaign that you did was the colonel campaign. You know, a lot of times when people come in and market you, they want to reject everything that's ever happened in the past. But your knowledge for what is called the recurve analyzation of KFC, you brought the colonel back did advertising. How did that come about? Well,

Kevin Hochman 37:53 

you know, it's a good story. I don't know if you remember all of it. I'm going to tell it very candidly. And I'm curious if you remember how was told I

David Novak 37:59 

do remember it because I've got my version of it. I remember when you presented it. And I said, Listen, you know, people have talked about bringing the kernel back. We've had dead kernels before come back, you know, we went historically, we've had animated kernels. I mean, you're going to you bring in all these celebrities, you know, how are you going to really make this work? I mean, you may be the idea, but how are you going to make it work? So how did you make it work? Because you did? Yeah.

Kevin Hochman 38:25 

So you know, it's funny, that's exactly what happened. I felt like and I was pretty stressed out, I was nine months with the company, your you know, our basically our founder and CEO, right? And that was pretty intimidating for a nine month old, right? So and you said, you know, how is this going to work? And I said, you know, here's how I think it's gonna work. And if it doesn't work, this is Plan B. And honestly, if it doesn't work, you're probably going to new cmo next year. So I will tell you, the thing I learned in that though, that was I thought really valid and really important thing, especially for young leaders that want to drive change, and they feel frustrated in the organization, if they're not getting changed done is like one, you have to be really well thought out. If you're going to take some risks with your business, you have to have some really well thought out. And what I mean by that is not just the strategy of how it's going to work. But even more importantly, when you take risk is what are the things that could go wrong? And what are you going to do to prepare for it? Right? So if there was some big backlash about the criminal campaign, what we're gonna do, we're going to continue to run the ads or we're going to run food ads, and what are we going to pivot to right? How are we going to measure like the sentiment because like, anytime you do anything that's provocative, somebody's gonna hate on it. That's just the way the world unfortunately now, the question is, is it 10 people hating on it? Or is it 10 million people hating on it? And so you've got to have you know, you're listening spiders and all the people that sit in the rooms that look at social media have a way to measure how much you know, sentiment, that is right. So, you know, it's critically important that not just that you have a well thought out idea and a well thought out plan, but what is the plan B and what is the plan, see if things go sideways, because when you talk to your leadership about you know, this is something I'm passionate about Something I want to do, as long as you talk about Plan B and Plan C, and they know that you've thought about what could go wrong, it's a lot easier for them to have your back versus like, I hope it works, right. So I think it's a big lesson, especially for the younger people that listen to this podcast is like, senior leaders like me and you, we want people to enact change. But you've got to have a well thought out, and you got to think about Plan B, and Plan C. And if you do those things, we're going to have your back every time.

David Novak 40:24 

You know, one of the things that I brought up, I remember we had this BD Well, I said, you know, you got to be careful with the celebrity you get one celebrity and then they own you. And then you know, it's very, very hard to deal with the situation like that. And you solve that in an ingenious way by changing out the colonel advertising with different celebrities for everybody from George Hamilton, to Reba McIntyre, to even the Chippendales? I mean, was that an accident? Or was that one of your well thought out plans, it

Kevin Hochman 40:55 

wasn't an accident, I would love to say I took credit for it. But I'll tell you the real story about that. So the original plan was like, we'd run the kernel for a few years, and then maybe we'd switch the kernel. And the first ad started running with the, with the first kernel Darrell Hammond, and the business like it definitely took off, we definitely saw a meaningful trajectory change in sales. And so we're like two weeks into the campaign. In the advertising world. For those that aren't familiar, you gotta probably shoot eight to 12 weeks out, it's like you don't it's not like you shoot a week before and then you air it. So you've got big decisions to make in the advertising agency, this widening Kennedy. And then at the time, my head of marketing, George Felix, who now works for being here at Chili's, they came to me, they said, we've got three options. One option is to stick with the current kernel. And we'd like those ads, that's pretty good. And then we got another option, or there was two big options. The second option was we've switched the kernels. And we do it with an ad where the you see the old kernel and there's new kernels, like that's not the real kernel on the real kernel. And I remember going, when they first said, Hey, we're thinking about switching the kernel. They didn't show the ads. I'm like, What are you crazy, like, this is working, we can't change this now. Like, that would be the dumbest thing you could do. I literally said that to them on a call, I got really kind of passionate about it. And he said, Well, can we just show you the other atom of the switching the Colonel's. And I'm like, okay, George, whatever. So he shows it to me, and I'm like, That's brilliant. We're gonna do that. Right. So and that's a true story. I literally was like, What are you guys crazy, we can't change this thing. This thing's working. Right? So, you know, we ended up changing the ads. And honestly, that was probably the spark, what made it really special versus a short term blip in sales was this idea of rotating colonels. So this, you know, it's a great example, where you surround yourself with great people to give them like, you know, clear direction, given the support that they need, and then you let them go, and you trust them. And they come back with way bigger ideas, and you could ever, you know, if it was up to me, and I was creating that we would have done probably there will have been for two years, and nobody would have remembered it. But they remembered everything once we made that change. And so great people support them, they'll do amazing things.

David Novak 42:55 

You know, another learning there is that you got to be flexible enough to change your mind when you see something that you think is great.

Kevin Hochman 43:01 

That's true. That's true. You can't be stuck in your ways. If you see something great. You got to you always say if it's great, there's no debate, and it was great. And I was like, Okay, we're gonna go

David Novak 43:16 

we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Kevin Hawkman. In just a moment, talking to Kevin, I'm reminded of another incredible turnaround story that once again proves the power of focus. Jim Weber is the CEO of Brooks running, they got sidetracked and went into a lot of categories that they just didn't have enough expertise in to truly win. So he and his team decided to cut every part of their business except the one that really matters most. And that's creating the best running shoes in the industry, and doing the things that really make them the expert and running. And it's the kind of success story you have to hear to believe. I

Jim Weber 43:55 

came in private equity owned, very leveraged 30 $40 million of debt. Only 65 million revenue was losing four to 5 million a year and it lost money for about five years. And it wasn't a 90 year old athletic footwear and apparel brand that was kind of everything to everybody almost mirroring what the big brands were doing, you know, court shoes running every category, every price point, good, better, best broad distribution. The problem statement is we are sixth or seventh or eighth at everything. We didn't lead anywhere. And so, you know, we just decided to burn the boats and focus on one category running and never looked back. We put everything into that category made the products better focused our distribution on it focused our whole team on it. And 20 years later, you know, we shrunk the business in 2001 from about 65 million to a core performance running business. So maybe 45 million. Last year we finished it 1,130,000,000 And right now we're kind of growing at a 20 30% clip. Go

David Novak 44:58 

back and listen to my entire comment. session with Jim episode 106 here on how leaders lead

you mentioned him a little bit earlier you mentioned Norman Brinker, the, the founder and father of casual dining as a matter of fact, and an absolute legend in the industry. What have you learned by learning about him that's guided how you lead.

Kevin Hochman 45:26 

You know, I've never met him, he died, I think over a decade ago, but many people that work here, new normal breakers, we have lots of, you know, chili heads and sprinkler heads that have been here a long time. And when you ask them about Norman, you know, they'll tell you is Boy, this guy was a people person, like, he'd come into a restaurant and he'd be like, Hey, you're doing a great job. Why don't you take an hour break? I'm gonna go handle the your shift for you. And he went, and we'd go and literally handle the restaurant for someone. And that was the kind of person he was that he would make everybody that he touched feel special. In fact, that's like one of our mantras at Brinker now is we exist to make people feel special. And it really came from Norman Becker. And at the end of the day, the most important thing about Norman Brinker that everybody remembers here, it wasn't like, you know, that he delivered record profits in 2002. They remember how he made them feel. And so that's the one thing that like, you know, I'm always working on but you always talk about, you know, what do you feel you're good at, and how you can be more effective. And it's a softer side and Norman Brinker that like every leader should have. And he could make everybody feel special. He remembered everybody's name, but really remembered it wasn't from a spreadsheet. It was, Hey, how are your kids doing? How's John doing? How's Jane doing? Are they out of high school yet? Those are the things that people remember. And it makes them more apt to listen to the vision and, and go the extra mile because they know you care about them. You know, one of the things all this listening stuff that you taught me, David, even maybe even more important than the ideas that you get from it is that people feel cared for. It's like, my opinion matters. Like this person is here taking notes, and then he's doing something with it. And I'm seeing the change that makes me want to go double down on this company and stay here and do great things. And like that kind of caring that I think you that you have in your leadership style that I think Norman Brinker had and a little bit different way. I mean, at the end of the day, that's how you attract and create great teams, and then go the extra mile. So that's the big thing from Norman Brinker. And I think it's something that everybody should have as part of the repertoire.

David Novak 47:21 

Are you going about changing the historical culture of bankers in any kind of meaningful way? Or is it basically staying true to the past tenant?

Kevin Hochman 47:31 

You know, I think it's returning to the past tenants, I think COVID took a real toll, not just on our company, but a lot of companies. And so you know, when you're not able to be in person all the time, and you know, people are scared, and you just don't have that human connection, you lose some of that culture. And so kind of my job has been like, how to restore that culture, you know, back to what it was pre COVID. So, I don't think there's really anything different. I mean, it's a lot of the same time, it's that you know, from your experience, and bleeding, yum, which is, you know, caring for people, listening to people bringing people along. Recognition is a huge part of our culture. We haven't talked about that. And it was about how do we make sure those things are back at the forefront, versus like, we'll get to it after we survived the pandemic. And so it's really not been about changing the culture of Boras, reinvigorating what we have always stood for,

David Novak 48:19 

you know, Kevin, you know, you've come a long way in your career, you know, when you look back, let's say 1015 years ago, what's different about you today, as a leader,

Kevin Hochman 48:29 

you know, the biggest thing I think, is a humility that like, you can't get anything done unless you have the teams, you bring in teams along with the vision, listening to their ideas, getting into the work together, like having clear timelines and accountability. And I remember when I was 21, when I started a Procter Gamble, I was a cost forecaster, cost accountant in our makeup division in Baltimore, Maryland. My job was like forecast costs for lipsticks and mascaras and stuff. And then eventually, I graduated to marketing and we were launched, you know, it'll say we wanted to launch a new product, right? Here's the deal. I don't know how to formulate a lipstick, I don't know how to mix a lipstick, I don't know how the colors the lipstick work. I don't know how to make an ad for lipstick. I don't know how to cost the lipstick. I don't want to sell lipstick to Walmart or Target. I don't know anything. And if I can't get all of these disparate disciplines to understand why I want to launch whatever this lipstick was, so they understand why it's important, why it's special, what unmet customer need is going to be how it's going to grow their category if you're Walmart or Target or whoever, like it's not gonna go anywhere, right. And so I think that's the biggest differences. Like, there's a humility, it doesn't matter whose idea it is, and where it comes from. If the team is not going to get after it, you're dead in the water. If you want to do it. We talked about big changes to big things. The only way you can make big changes to big things, if you have the organization rallied around it. And the only way you can get the organization rallied around it is to bring people along and to do the basic tenets of leadership. So I think that's the biggest thing cuz I went from like a young kid who was probably pretty bright, who thought he knew at all to like, Hey, I don't really know very much about running this business. But here are the things I can do to get the organization rallied around that vision.

David Novak 50:11 

You know, it's been so much fun catching up with you, Kevin, and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this?

Kevin Hochman 50:19 

Yeah, far away.

David Novak 50:20 

What's the one word others would use to describe you?

Kevin Hochman 50:25 

A good listener?

David Novak 50:26 

What's the one word you would use? To best describe you

Kevin Hochman 50:30 

caring? I like I really care about people a ton. Who would play you in a movie? Everybody thought it looked like that Ben Seaver kid from growing pains. So I guess him

David Novak 50:40 

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

Kevin Hochman 50:44 

That's a good question. I probably be an NFL quarterback. I think that'd be so cool. If I'm honest.

David Novak 50:52 

Your biggest pet peeve?

Kevin Hochman 50:53 

I don't like people getting picked on like that really drives me crazy. If I see someone in the organization that's been treated incorrectly that just that's a hot button. That's that's not acceptable. So that's that's my biggest pet peeve.

David Novak 51:07 

Your favorite Chili's menu item.

Kevin Hochman 51:09 

old timer with cheese it's a we had the best burger in the industry. No offense to the habit burger but our burgers incredible. Your

David Novak 51:17 

favorite masyado menu item.

Kevin Hochman 51:19 

Definitely the we have the shrimp Friday Avila which is it's unlike any other shrimp Foley Have you ever had. It's delicious. But everything's good at Moss? Yes.

David Novak 51:28 

What's your favorite gourmet restaurant in the world?

Kevin Hochman 51:31 

That's a good question. You know, it really depends on the occasion. But I've got to say the French Laundry just because of their service mentality. Like it's all about the guests and trying to make you feel special. And I think that's, I think that's a pretty cool experience. So and it's something we try to learn from for, you know, our Restaurant Brands here.

David Novak 51:48 

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

Kevin Hochman 51:51 

All right now you're going to hear a fantasy sports channel because I got my fantasy team. I'm going to kick everybody's butt hear it at Brinker. So, you know, for the next 16 weeks you're going to hear me listening to fantasy sports. Sounds kind of lame, but that's what

David Novak 52:03 

I do. What's something about you few people would know, I love my puppy dog.

Kevin Hochman 52:07 

Which is weird, because I don't even want a dog. We had a COVID dog with our with my kids. And I was like, Hey, we shouldn't get a dog because you're never gonna walk it and like Dad and Mom are busy. And they're like, Oh, well walk it. They don't walk the dog. But I walked the dog every morning. And that dog sleeps with me now. Like, I can't imagine life with that dog. So it's funny. Today we have we talked about making work fun. We have to take your dog to work day to day. So everybody brought their dogs and I can't bring my dog in because they'll bite somebody he's, it looks really cute. But then you've got to pet them. And anyway, people don't realize I'm a big dog fan now. So.

David Novak 52:39 

Alright, that's the end of the lightning round. And just a few more questions for you. And I'll let you go back to work here. As a public company CEO, how fixated Are you on the stock price?

Kevin Hochman 52:49 

You know, I'd be lying to you if I didn't say I didn't check the stock price every day, and sometimes several times a day. I mean, we're all competitive, right? Like you're competitive. I'm competitive. Like we love winning. By the way, congratulations on winning your Club Championship right. At Shinnecock. That was cool to see on Twitter. But like, you're competitive, right? So you're trying to get better at golf, and I'm trying to get my stock price up. I'm trying to, you know, win market share versus the competition. Like that's what we do. We're competitive people. So I'd be lying to you. If I said I don't look at it often. The reality is the short term fluctuations that has very little to do with like, the longer term and what we're doing right. And so what I know to be true, is if I can continue to grow market share, I can accelerate sales and expand margins that stock price will follow. I gotta remember that so I can't get so you know, focused on looking at the stock price every day. Because what I do every day doesn't really matter for the stock price. It's are we focused on the long term vision? Are we making sequential progress against that vision? And are we seeing it show up on the metrics and as long as we see you know, things like, you know, server attendance and food grade scores, and then the sales that come with it, and the market share that comes with it, as long as we every quarter, we continue to get better. I know the stock price will eventually catch up if it hasn't already, right. So, you know, I'm lying to you, if I say don't look at the stock price, but I also stay focused on the behaviors that will drive the stock price.

David Novak 54:07 

Well, you've had fun looking at your stock price, because it's certainly gone up since you've been CEO. And I know that your wife Han is extremely smart. And she was a marketing leader at p&g as well. Do you run your thinking by her?

Kevin Hochman 54:22 

Oh yeah, all the time. So you know every ad that we make at Chili's and you know, I talked to her about some of the innovation that we're doing she always has a good insightful you know, think about it you know, one of the great example was like we were talking about launching a ranch water Margarita and she's like, You need a skinny Margarita like you know how much skinny shows up in it with my friends in alcoholic drinks and you don't have a skinny Margarita you got 12 margaritas but no skinny right and so, lo and behold, we go and develop a skinny Margarita, we have that benefit space nailed right now. Today. She actually doesn't play a formal role at Brinker. She runs our St. Jude campaign. As the first lady of Brinker. I always joke she's flub right first lady Brinker And so we have donated over $100 million to St. Jude's, which is a nonprofit that has a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and they basically have doctors that are curing cancer, you look at the cure rate of childhood leukemia, it's over 90%. Now, 80% of the kids that go to that hospital will leave cured of cancer, right. So it's an incredible partnership that we've had, we've had it for 20 years, we just came out and said, We doubling our efforts on St. Jude. And so I'm so proud of my wife that, you know, she lost her mom to leukemia. And she's like, this is where I want to add and contribute formally, to bring her in. So we see her in the halls, you know, once every, you know, couple of months. And, you know, she's running some project team meeting about St. Jude, and I just couldn't be more proud of her. And I know, our teams just love St. Jude, too. So it's been an incredible partnership. But she has a more formal role with us now, pro bono, but a formal role.

David Novak 55:52 

That's great. That's great. Last question. What's the single best advice you can give to an aspiring leader?

Kevin Hochman 55:58 

I think it's just be curious and hungry to learn. The most impactful thing I've had on my development was, you sat me down with a note card, and you heard me list in one column. What are the things that I appreciate about myself today? And what are the things that would make me even better in those areas? And then being really honest about what then what am I going to do differently over the next months and years to change that performance? Right. And I think if you have that mindset, you can always get better than you can always get better. Because you know, you're never going to be finished in that journey of leadership. Like even today, I have an executive coach who was he's a retired CEO of casual dining, a giant casual dining chain, over 10 years ago, Dave Goble, and I meet with him probably once every two, three weeks. And I'm like, here's some things I'm having trouble with. And he's done it all before, right? Like, you know, if you run a giant casual dining chain for seven years, I'm not going to be able to stop that guy on anything. And he doesn't really kind of way like he's my coach. And and that's the thing. It's just you got to be constantly learning, you're never at the end of your journey, regardless of how much experience and success that you've had. So that'd be the thing I'd tell folks is keep learning. Well,

David Novak 57:01 

Kevin, I gotta tell you, it's been so much fun catching up with you. And I'm so proud of the leader that you are and the the leader that I know you're going to become because you never stop learning. So thank you very much for sharing your insights today. Well,

Kevin Hochman 57:16 

thank you, David. As I said, In the beginning podcast, you had such a big impact on my career, I did want to do a little bit of recognition for you. So whether you know it or not, your recognition culture is pervading beyond the four walls of yum. So we have something called above the line recognition. So these are cards that we write out for team members or colleagues, or really, anybody can be an agency partner, who has gone above and beyond in areas that are important to our company. So we have hard coded the area. So you just check off the things that they've done. And then you write a quick note. So maybe it's not as sexy as our personal rewards at yum. But it's very meaningful and as meaningful as what we do. So I wanted to acknowledge you with what we call an ATL above the line recognition. So cheers. We always do it this way. So just bear with me for a minute. Cheers to you, David Novak, for being accountable. So David, thanks for the impact you've had on my development, and the development of so many leaders, your lessons on leadership, bringing people along, the answers are always in a room if you're really willing to listen and recognizing team members for doing things on strategy that are truly above and beyond our lessons that have not only helped my personal leadership, but are really transforming our company at Brinker Chili's, managers have never felt more engaged because they are being listened to and see their ideas rolling out quarter after quarter. Managerial turnover is now better than pre pandemic and well ahead of our industry. And this has led to a better guest experience scores faster, same store sales, growth and greater profits. So you've helped bring back guests engage team members, grow sales and increase profits. And so we always stand up and we clap. Even on video, I will make sure I mail this to you. And thank you so much for everything that you do not just for me, but for our industry and all the lies that you've touched over the years, you deserve that recognition.

David Novak 59:00 

The recognition you just gave me really means a ton to me. And I love how you made it personal. When leaders can make recognition personal, I think you really connect you give away a piece of your heart. And it's something that people never ever forget. And I won't forget this recognition.

Kevin Hochman 59:18 

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on and everything.

David Novak 59:34 

Well, it's easy to see why Kevin has been able to lead this incredible turnaround at Chili's. When you know what's working in your business, it's smart to double down on it. To do that you've got to free up resources by finding things to cut and simplify and put them up against that big idea. So I challenge you to think about how Kevin's thinking how would you simplify the menu of your business? How would you decommission the robot? So that happened to be in your business? How would you stop putting the shrimp in the bags that's taking you down the tubes? It's not easy. And it takes a heck of a lot of listening and courage to do it right. But the turnaround at Chili's is proof positive that when you do, you can get incredible results in a short amount of time. This week, see what you can pare back in your organization, ask people about tasks they do that are extraneous, or, or maybe disarmed, plain unnecessary, then see how they would spend their time if they weren't doing that work. I bet there's some powerful ways you can redirect your team's resources towards more profitable work just by asking questions and having the courage to say, hey, let's do less of this one thing so we can do more of something much better. So do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is the great leaders strengthen core functions by making tough cuts. Coming up next on how leaders lead is how Rosenbluth the CEO of new ocean Health Solutions.

Hal Rosenbluth 1:01:02 

Save is dangerous. Safe is very dangerous right now you you need to be able to innovate and look to the future and create the future. You can't let it create you you're dead in the water

David Novak 1:01:15 

if that's the case. 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 that you can be