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 chilies and majianos. I had the pleasure of working with Kevin back at Yum, so I know first hand what a great leader he is. I got to say, I'm so proud of the turnaround he's leading at chilies. 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've 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 you will blow your mind. So, here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Kevin Hoch man. Kevin is so great to have you on the show. Well, what an honor it is, David. 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. Well, I have to tell you, it was one of my highlights in my career at Yum when we hired you from Proctor & 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 at Yum 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, is you've taken on that role? Yeah, so we own all of our own restaurants or we own 90 something percent of them, right? And 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, but 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 my first 60 days I traveled around the country, I sat down with both restaurant general managers as well as the above restaurant leaders and I asked them two questions . And 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're a 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 turnovers down, that's the only thing that's down, turnovers way down. We actually are leading the industry now and manager 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 were put into action. So it's been a great journey and that really was a big surprise to me that those field teams needed to have a big say in the RSC and the restaurant support center. I'm sure it was great for them to see the CEO out there listening and hearing what they have to say. Yeah, I got a great story. So I think it was like day nine on the job. I'm in a chilis in Chicago just outside of O'Hare. I'll never forget this. And we call it the heart of house. So the back of the house of the kitchen, we call it the heart of the 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 eight shrimp, puts them in a little bag, twist the bag, counts eight shrimp, puts them in a little bag, twist the bag and so on. So she's not for probably 45 minutes and then she'll do the same thing with brisket, much she'll measure it and bag it and then she'll do the same to the product. It's called portioning and pretty much every concept at some point has done a lot of portioning. We did a bunch of KSC and a 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.V.T. or a measure of waste. So you know that you're always going to get eight shrimp because you're counting it, you know, not in the heat of the moment and it's theory easier and faster service. 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 eight 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 got to test this, we're going to 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, she'll get it wrong up or down, but we're not going to have big waste issue. So we rolled it out and guess what happened to 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 million of labor that's saved, that we could redeploy to things like that would actually 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 restaurant group with a lot of scale, 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 want to get more into all the exciting things that you're making happen at Br inkers and Chili's. But first, give us just the snapshot of the Brinker brands and their relative size. 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, 13% of that is the Magiano's brand. That's our other big concept. The Magiano's little Italy is an Italian concept. We call it polished casual. We have about 50 Magiano's. They do close to $10 million AUVs or annual sales volume. So they're quite productive restaurants. Typically people go to a Magiano'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 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. You know, it's still today, you know, one of our main targets and the people that, you know, 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, you know, 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 know, you said you wanted to make Chili's fun again. How's it going? So I sat down. It was our fourth CEO, but he's kind of like the guy after an orbit bringer 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's, so it made over 40 years. He was the 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, when Chili's was at its best, what was it like? What were we like, right? Like, when we were growing and things were really good in the business, like what was it like? And he talked about, he's like, oh man. He's like, you know, the team members were 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 ship. We don't do that anymore. Obviously, we can't do that. 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 loved each other and they loved 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 work for us 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 like, there's a culture here. And when I first heard Chili Head, when I started, I was like, well, 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 working at 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 out of 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 there's 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. It's always something the team members can look forward to. So it could be like a nacho 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 barberita that barbs are her fans. 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. What are you going to do at Barb's day? How are you going to dress? Even like the NFL season started a couple of weeks ago, 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 wearing 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 engagements have never been higher right now. You talk about driving the core four of 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 of the coaches I've had in my career, 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? I had another leader who's the CEO of Signet Jewelers, Jenna Drossa. He's talked about drive the core and 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 and I 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 and you try to drive sales, you can add more things to the menu. And then 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 do 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 sell a ton of chicken tennets, 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 that 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 would be the third largest and by a big country of tequila in the world. You have United States, Mexico and then Chili's. So that's how big of a margarita player we are. And so we used to not, on our premium margarita, the presidente, we didn't handshake 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 in 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 KSC or Raising Cains 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 tend ers 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 turnar ounds is make big changes to big things and you'll get big results out of that. You know, it's really interesting that you're the number three margarita country in the world. And margaritas, as I understand, have pretty nice profit margin. Yeah, that's exactly right too. So like, you know, one of the things that I learned at Yum from a lot of great mentors 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, Mike Colp, who 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 at KSC. 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 the guests to what they want? So for example, a great example is, you know, we sell $5 or $6 what we call the margarita of 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 an incredible value. You can't go anywhere and get a margarita for $5 or $6, right? But we knew if we started innovating around that against the Presidente, which is our number one selling margarita, we started innovating on higher end tequilas like Tera Manoblanco or George Clooney's Casa Migos margarita, which we sell for $14. We knew that some guessed, they don't want the cheapest thing. They want something a little more premium, a little smoother. And so we put that in the business. Well, we woke up a year later, half of the $5 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, that's something that I'm always going to take with me and whether you work in retail or whether you work in restaurants, you know, how you orchestrate your menu or how you orchestrate your shelf is going to make a big difference in your profit margins. You are always really good at thinking about pricing. And I understand you, you have what you call a barbell pricing strategy. Explain. 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 where there's no real, we have no real income bet to our guests. You know, we have lower income 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 for, 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 Migos Margarita I talked about. So like Margarita is a great example where if you just only have six bucks for a Margarita, you're going to 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 to 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 a skinny Margar ita or ranch water, you can go up to the nine dollar tier. And then you can go all the way up to super premium on the Casa Migos I was talking about. So, you know, we have something to depend 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. You know, another examples on our burger business, which is one of our core four 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 fry our chips and make our salsa daily at bottom of soft drink for 10 99. 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 in the burger. You know, that's going to cost 15, 16 bucks. And that's for a big eater that's willing to pay more. And that's what we talk about as a barbell strategy, we're always going to have good, which is an entry level price point for that. Guess that that's what they want to pay. And that's the experience they want. It will go to a better strategy where, you know, in burgers, it's going to be with bacon or multiple toppings. And we'll get you all the way to that best 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 those customer needs met on the core items that you want to really win on. Kevin, I know you know this better than most. Technology is a major leadership tool, especially today. How do you think about it? You know, here's how we think about technology. You know, a lot of folks think that like there is nothing I think as a technology project. And you know, it's something I've learned kind of recently as we think about R IT roadmap. Now, the most important thing 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 Brinkers, they 're all enterprise projects. So, for example, we have these devices that sit on the 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 in 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 to allow the guests to check out. Now, what's in it for the guests? What do you want to do at the end of a meal? How do you think about that? You want to get out of Dodge, right? You don't want to sit there waiting for the check. You want to get out of there. And so if you have technology that allows you to self-checkout, you're going to use that, especially if it works every time. So that's an example where that's an enterprise project because it's like, we need the 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 we call them PW, but our HR resources are going to have to get involved. And then marketing can deliver messages on these devices in terms of advertising or messaging. And we can also collect their loyalty program numbers through the device and they can get free bonuses, et cetera from it. So pretty much in that example of pay at the table, hey, 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 tenets of how do you bring people along to get better results that you bring them in earlier in the process? You know, another great one that we're working on now is we have a new kitchen displaces and we're working on KDS. Every restaurant chain has a KDS, right? It's essentially the brains in the heart of the house, in the back of the house of the restaurant. So we're going to talk about 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 connecting to our POS system and what comes through and 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 how can we make that system easier and better so that our orders are more accurate, right? It's going to require finance and supply chain to negotiate for the screens, et cetera. And lastly, it's going to require some facilities people to actually install this stuff, right? So 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 it's IT's problem, you got a problem. All of these things are enterprise projects that cross functional teams need to leave. Hey, everyone, it's Kula here from Three More Questions. If you're leading a team, I know it's really hard to find time to consume leadership development content and continue investing in yourself. That's the whole reason we launched the new How Leaders Lead app. If you just take two minutes a day each morning to watch the Daily Leadership Insight and the How Leaders Lead app, you'll stay inspired with practical leadership lessons from the world's greatest leaders. I've started using the app and I love how the Daily Leadership Insight gets my mind right before the busyness of my day starts. Download the How Leaders Lead app today in the app store and stay inspired with amazing leadership wisdom and just two minutes a day. Kevin, you know better than most technology is a major leadership tool, especially today. I understand you have this rule. It's called the 80/20 rule. Tell me about it. When I first started, 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 bus food. Now they don't have arms, so like someone 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 either the heart of the house or come out to a table. 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? How's the robot working out?" And the guy's like, "Oh man, it's great. I love it." I'm like, "What do you love about it?" He's like, "Well, kids love it. We sent it over to sing Happy Birthday to the kids." I'm like, "Oh, that's cool. Do you think you're getting more traffic because of the robot?" Like, "Oh, absolutely not. It's just they like it." So they sometimes request it when they come in. I said, "But that's kind of odd because what I was told was all about 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, "Well, what do you mean?" They're like, they're incredibly slow. Like, look how slow that robot is and it's like going around the thing. People are just literally walking around the robot and I'm like, "Well, wait a second. I got this. We have a lot of data at Brinkers. So I'm looking at the data. I'm like, "Wait a second. You used this 40 percent of the time. So 40 percent of checks you're using a robot. 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 percent of the time where 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 not actually helping us with our operational challenges. So one of the things I was, when I first came in, we saw a lot of quote unquote robot projects and technology. The reality is our foundation, things like pay at the table, our kitchen display system, which is the heart of house brains, 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're working on things that are five, 10 years out. Well, we had to change all that. So we call the 80/20 rules. 80 percent of our time needs to be on these foundational things that are going to really improve the operation. We'll be friction either for the guests or for the team member. And then we can spend 20 percent 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 to make sure that we don't chase after shiny balls, when we have important foundational things that we've got to fix going forward. Kevin, you talked about going back to basics in some respects by just identifying the core for and then making big changes to them so you could really grow the heck out of your business. Yet I know innovation is critical to any company's success. How are you going about driving innovation as the CEO of Brinker? The 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, where it can apply to food, where it can apply to marketing, etc. And 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 heart of house, you can innovate with your advertising. Innovation can 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 a line on what's the bigger strategy so that your innovation drives into that strategy versus letting people go crazy on their own. So for us, for example, having the core for and saying, look, these are things that Americans eat and drink. Margarita is the number one drink to kill us the number one spirit now. Hamburgers are the number one item they eat, bold as fried chicken is the top five item, and it's been growing in the last 30 years. And Fajita's Tex-Mex has been growing for two decades. 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 are the best possible items that we have and then innovate outside the core on those core fours. So for example, why can't we have innovation on 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 to 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 grows margins. The second thing is we're willing to take on some operational complexity, but the size of prices got to be really big. So if it's something that's going to grow our business five or 10 points, we're willing to do a lot of operationally to make that happen. If it's something that's going to go to the business one point, we probably can't have as many ingredients or 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 would require investment and some are things that we can't invest as much because they're not going to have as big a size of price. Right. You know, a third thing and probably the most important thing is is the guests going to 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 Creed would 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 the guests going to love it today, but is it going to get them to come back over time? 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 going to move for a Margarita. Am I going to go to, you know, Olive Garden? Or am I going to 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 organizational line on how you think about innovation is critically important going forward. You know, I want to get more into how you lead, Kevin, but first, now I want to take you back. Share with me a childhood story that really impacts the way how you lead today. The biggest thing I would tell you that I remember at my childhood is 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, you know, 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 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, hey, I'm not doing 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 analysts in this new job that I have, like in 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 valid to me. I love spending time with our board of directors. We have an incredibly diverse board. You know, we have Francis Allen, who's the CEO of Checkers. 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, Joe DiPinto, who's the CEO of 7/11, he knows what it means to run a gigantic retail concept and really can share with me the idea of, you know, scale and what it means and how to manage it and how to manage, you know, how to helicopter in and helicopter out. And so I just love serving others. And I think I'd get that from my mom and it just, you know, when I see on my calendar, like yesterday I look at my calendar and I've got like this two hour training I 'm doing with the team, I can't pumped up. Like I'm like, oh man, this is going to be a great day because it's a way I can serve the team instead of them serving me. So that's probably the biggest thing I took away from my child, who is like, I love serving others. 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? 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 getting a concept that has owned so many of its restaurants, I actually enjoy it. 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 & Gamble. And like we have amazing leaders that teach us about marketing. In fact, there's one that's being honored today, AC Eggleston Bracey's 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 I'm 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 a Mickey Pant and Greg and Roger Eton. 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 a George Felix, my current CMO, who did all the kernel ads. So, you know, 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. 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 as primarily that hip pocket skill being the marketing. And here you're making all these operational changes that bringers, 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. It's very similar to your story when you talk about, you know, at Pepsi, and your feedback was, hey, you need to learn an operation. You want to be an enterprise leader, and then you went and burst 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 operate and 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 the restaurant teams. And so the good news is, and I really learned this from you, I've got to be candid. I'm not just low in 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 questions, you can learn so much more than you can learn from sitting down with a 101 with anybody, right? Just asking the right questions and listening is just so important. And I got to tell you, like, I started falling in love with the idea that we can do some, like there was so much low hanging fruit that we could, you know, 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 them about the next things that we're working on. And the next month, the next month, then we had a GM conference. And it's funny because we just had our second GM conference in the roles. 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. You know, like it's a year later now, the business is completely transformed. It's fun to work in chilis again. Like you're listening to us. Like the ideas that are coming from us are showing up in the restaurant. And I got to tell you, 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 servant leadership. It's about listening to 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, now I'm going to make you tell us some marketing war stories. Okay. You're famous for developing the old spice man at Proctor and Gamble. You know, tell us the behind the scenes story of how that came to be. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people had a hand in that. So I just want to make sure I was the head of marketing when we briefed those ads and then, and they eventually were made. But here's the story. So I'll never forget. It's a funny story. So P&G is owned by old spice. And then our rival was Unilever. And Unilever is gigantic consumer product goods brand, package good brand. And they have a gigantic deodorant business. They had all of our same patents. That's a whole another story we could talk about. So the technologies are very similar, right? So it's very much a marketing challenge. The deodorants and the interpersonals 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, you know, it's really nice on your skin. It's a synthetic soap. People love it. It smells great, right? And it's like, we're going to make dove ferment. And so about half a proctoring gamble in the deodorant's category was laughing. Like, how are guys going to buy dove ferment? 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 were 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 dove ferment. And so we wrote a brief and the brief that we wrote to the agency, to this agency, Whydon and Kennedy that ended up doing all the kernel ads, was why do you want to smell like wildflowers and 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 dove ferment 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 Whydon and Kennedy took that brief and they came up with this character and the rest was history. But you know, it starts with great briefs. Like it was a really great brief. We had this enemy coming called dove ferment, and we had to go, what are we going to do to protect ourselves? And that's where that character was born at. And another famous campaign that you did was the kernel campaign. You know, a lot of times when people come in and market, they want to reject everything that's ever happened in the past. But your knowledge for what is called the recernalization of KFC, you brought the kernel back, did advertising. How did that come about? Well, 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 it was told. I 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 bring in all these celebrities. You know, how are you going to really make this work? I mean, maybe the idea, but how are you going to make it work? So how did you make it work? Because you did. Yeah. So, you know, it's funny. That's exactly what happened. I felt like, and I was pretty stressed out. I was dying months with the company. You are, you know, basically our founder and CEO, right? And that was pretty intimidating for a nine-month or 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 going to work. And if it doesn't work, this is plan B. And honestly, if it doesn't work, you're probably going to need a 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 their organization if they're not getting changed on. It's 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 them 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 risks 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 kernel campaign, what we're going to do? Are we going to continue to run the ads? Are we going to run food ads? And what are we going to pivot to, right? How are we going to measure the sentiment? Because anytime you do anything that's provocative, somebody's going to 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 your listening spiders and all the people that sit in the rooms that look at social media have a way to measure how much sentiment that is, right? So 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 C 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, you know, I think that'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 it well thought out, and you've got to think about plan B and plan C. And if you do those things, we're going to have your back every time. You know, one of the things that I brought up, I remember when we had this beating well, I said, 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 a genius way by changing out the kernel advertising with different celebrities, from everybody from George Hamilton, to Reba McEndire, to even the Chippendales. I mean, was that an accident or was that one of your well thought out plans? It 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 dad started running with the first kernel, Daryl 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, and the advertising world for those that aren't familiar, you've got to 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, and the advertising, you can see this wide and in Kennedy, and then at the time, by head of marketing, George Felix, who now works for me here at Chili's, they came to me and they said, we've got three options. One option is you stick with the current kernel, and we like those ads, that's pretty good. And then we got another option, actually, it was two big options. The second option was we switched the kernels, and we do it with an ad word. You see the old kernel, and there's new kernels, like that's not the real kernel, I'm the real kernel. And I remember going, when they first said, hey, we're thinking about switching the kernel, they didn't show me 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 they said, well, can we just show you the other ad with the switching the kernels? And I'm like, okay, George, whatever. So he shows it to me, and I'm like, that's brilliant, we're going to do that, right? 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 we ended up changing the ads, and honestly, that was probably the sparkle. It made it really special versus a short-term, you know, flipping sales was this idea of rotating kernels. So it's a great example where you surround yourself with great people to give them clear direction, give them the support that they need, and then you let them go, and you trust them. And they come back with way bigger ideas than you could ever. You know, if it wasn't up to me, and I was creating that, we would have done probably Daryl Hammond 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. 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. 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 going to go. [silence] We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Kevin Hockman 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 in running. And it's the kind of success story you have to hear to believe. I came in private equity owned, very leveraged, 30, 40 million dollars of debts. Only a 65 million of revenue was losing four to five million a year. And it lost money for about five years. And it was a 90 year old athletic footrun apparel brand that was kind of everything to everybody, almost mirroring what the big brands were doing. You know, court shoes running, Aubrey category, every price point, good, better, best, broad distribution. The problem, David, is we were six or seven, they're eight 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 look back. We put everything into that category. We 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 at one billion, 130 million. And right now we're kind of growing at a 20, 30% clip. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Jim, episode 106 here on How Leaders Lead. You mentioned him a little bit earlier. You mentioned Norman Brinker, the founder and father of casual dining, as a matter of fact, an absolute legend in the industry. What have you learned by learning about him that's guided how you lead? You know, I never met him. He died, I think over a decade ago. But many people that work here, nude Norman Brinker, so we have lots of, you know, chilly heads and brinker heads that have been here a long time. And when you ask them about Norman, you know, what 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 going to go handle 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. And he would make everybody that he touched feel special. In fact, it's like one of our mantras at Brinker now is we exist to make people feel special. And that really came from Norman Brinker. 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, like 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 of Norman Brinker that like every leader should have. And he could make everybody feel special. He remembered everybody's name, but really remembered it. 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, you know, apt to listen to the vision 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 in 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 . Are you going about changing the historical culture of Brinker's in any kind of meaningful way or is it basically staying true to the past tenant? 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 tenants that you know from, you know, your experience in 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 survive the pandemic. And so it's really not been about changing the culture more as reinvigorating what we had always stood for. You know, Kevin, you know, you've come a long way in your career. You know, when you look back, let's say 10, 15 years ago, what's different about you today as a leader? You know, the biggest thing I think is the humility that like, you can't get anything done unless you have the teams, you're bringing teams along with the vision, listening to their ideas, getting them to work together, like having clear timelines and accountability. And I remember when I was 21, when I started a Procter game, I was the cost forecaster, cost accountant, and our makeup division in Baltimore, Maryland. You know, my job was like forecast, you know, cost for lipsticks and nascars and stuff. And then eventually I graduated to marketing and we were launched, you know, it was saying 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 to make the colors a lipstick work. I don't know how to make an ad for a lipstick. I don't know how to cost a lipstick. I don't know how to sell a 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 it's going to meet, how it's going to grow their category if you're Walmart or Target or whoever. Like it's not going to go anywhere, right? And so I think that's the biggest difference is 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, we talk 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 you bring people along and you do the basic tenets of leadership. So I think that's the biggest thing is I went from like a young kid who was probably pretty bright, who thought he knew it 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. 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? Yeah, far away. What's the one word others would use to describe you? A good listener. What's the one word you would use to best describe you? Caring. I like, I really care about people at time. Who would play you in a movie? Everybody thought I'd look like that Ben Siever kid from Growing Pains. So I guess him. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? That's a good question. I'd probably be an NFL quarterback. I think that'd be so cool. I'm honest. Your biggest pet peeve. I don't like people getting picked on. Like that really drives me crazy. If I see someone in the organization that's being treated incorrectly, that's just, that's a hot button. That's not acceptable. So that's that's my biggest pet peeve. Your favorite Chili's menu item? Old timer with cheese. We have the best burger in the industry. No offense to the habit burger, but our burger is incredible. Your favorite Magiano's menu item? Definitely the shrimp frediavolo, which is unlike any other shrimp frediavio you ever had. It's delicious. But everything's great at Magiano's. What's your favorite gourmet restaurant in the world? 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. I think that's a pretty cool experience. So and it's something we try to learn from for our restaurant brands here. If I turn on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Well, right now you're going to hear fantasy sports channel. Because I got my fantasy team and I'm going to kick everybody's butt here at Br inker. 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 I do. What's something about you a few people would know? I love my puppy dog, which is weird because I even want a dog. We had a COVID dog with my kids and I was like, "Hey, we shouldn't get a dog because you're never going to walk it." And like dad and mom are busy and they're like, "Oh, we'll walk it." They don't walk the dog, but I walk 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're talking about making work fun. We have take your dog to work day to day. So everybody brought their dogs in. I can't bring my dog in because they'll bite somebody. He's, he looks really cute, but then you go to pet them and you, anyway, people don't realize I'm a big dog fan now. So all right, 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? 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 on competitive. Like we love winning. By the way, congratulations on winning the club championship, right? At Chinacock 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 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 is very little to do with like the longer term of what we're doing, right? And so what I know to be true is if I can continue to grow a market share, I could accelerate sales and expand margins. That's stock price will follow. I got to remember that. So I can't get so 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 things like 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 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. 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 Anne is extremely smart and she was a marketing leader at P&G as well. Do you run your thinking by her? Oh, yeah, all the time. So every ad that we make at Chili's and I talked to her about some of the innovation that we're doing, she always has a good insightful thing about it. One of the great examples was 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 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. You know, today she actually does a play a formal role at Brinker. She runs our St. Jude campaign as the first lady of Brinker. I always joke, she's flab, right? First lady of 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 curative 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, you know, we're 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 Brinker. And so we, I see her in the halls, you know, once every, you know, a 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 team just loves St. Jude too. So it's been an incredible partnership and she has a more formal role with us now. Pro bono, but a formal role. That's great. That's great. Last question. What's the single best advice you can give to an aspiring leader? I think it's just be curious and hungry to learn. The most impactful thing I've had on my development was, you know, you sat me down with a note card and you had 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 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 that you can always get better, then you can always get better because you know, you're never going to be finishing 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 are 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 does it in a really kind way. Like he's my coach. And that's the thing is 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, Kevin, I got to 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 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, thank you, David. As I said, in the beginning of 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 permitting 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, it could be an agency partner who has gone above and beyond in areas that are important to our company. So we have hard-coded the areas. 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 the room if you 're really willing to listen and recognizing team members for doing things on strategy that are truly above and beyond are lessons that have not only helped my personal leadership but are really transforming our company at Rinkord. 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 when we clap. So people have to be recognized. Even on video calls. So 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 lives that you've touched over the years. You deserve that recognition. 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. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on and everything. 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 robots that happen to be in your business? How would you stop putting the shrimp and 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 pair back in your organization. Ask people about tasks they do that are extraneous or maybe just are 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 Hal Rosenbluth, the CEO of New Ocean Health Solutions. Safe is dangerous. Safe is very dangerous right now. 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 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 may get 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. [silence] [silence]