If you want people to be accountable, you have to actually allow them to do their jobs and not metal or micromanage, which by the way was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn when I started this job as a first time CEO. But in order to hold people accountable, they have to feel accountable for the decisions they make. Make no mistake about it. The world is changing fast. And if you don't know how to lead through it, it can absolutely tank your team. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak. And every week, I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is John Payton, the CEO of Dine Brands, which includes IHOP, Applebee's, and Fuzzy Taco Shop. John says something in this conversation today , I think every leader needs to take to heart. And it's this, the world is changing quickly. As a leader, how do you help your team navigate that uncertainty, navigate all that change, instead of feeling overwhelmed by it? Well, this conversation with John will show you how you can help your team stay agile and act with urgency, because the reality is a fast changing world also brings a ton of opportunities if you know how to respond to them. Plus, John's got some terrific insights into artificial intelligence and social media that I guarantee you will get your wheels turning. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with my good friend. And soon to be yours, John Payton. I want to talk about how you're leading at Dine Brands. But first, I want to take you back a little bit, John. What's the story from your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader you are today? This goes way back. I was a Cub Scout. And remember the Pinewood Derby from Cub Scouts? And so I must have been in third grade or fourth grade. And my father was a very handy guy. He built most of the furniture in our house. He built the closets. He actually built a 35-foot sailboat. He did all of the mechanicals, the electric. He was one of those guys. And so he helped me with the Pinewood Derby car. And remember, you used to have to, I don't know if you remember, you had to wait them down. And so you melted like lead and you put them into the front of the car to wait them down on the track. So my car came in dead last. And I said to my dad, how is this possible? You built a 36-foot sailboat. And it turned out the lead stuck down too low and was touching the ground and slowing, the friction was slowing the car down. But he said to me, in the next day, let's go down in the basement and build another car. And I said, but it's over. We already lost. There is no more Pinewood Derby. And he said, yeah, but we should learn from our mistakes and try again. And so I know that's a lesson that everyone's learned often from their fathers. But that was my version of when he said, even though there's no race on the horizon, we're going to learn from what we did wrong on the car and try and build another one. Yeah, I love the fact that he took you back down and let's do it again. That's great. When did you realize, John, that you had the potential to be a leader? You know, it came up as an unexpected moment. I was in college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And I used to do in high school and college a lot of fine art and graphic design. I drew and things like that. And I joined the school newspaper and became the art and design director. So responsible for the layout of all the paper, the photography, graphs, charts, illustrations on the editorial page. And back then, everything was very manual, right? You weren't doing it on a Mac. You were literally drawing things and pasting up using tape and things for to do charts. And I ended up building a team of 20 designers and artists. And most of them were better artists than I was. And I learned during that in my junior and senior year of college that I was probably better at leading and running the team and developing the people and integrating them into the newspaper than I was doing a lot of the work myself from a talent perspective. And I actually, at the awards dinner that year, they made up a new category, which was manager of the year because most of the awards were about editorial and best sports writing and best, you know, investigative reporting. But they gave me manager of the year because of the department I had built and the contributions it made to the newspaper. And that was my aha that, you know, leading the team is not so bad. And maybe I'm good at it. And you know, you're in the design, you're in art. And I know you've got a marketing background and you're a creative guy. It seems like, you know, so on the surface, it looks like your right brain, you know, how did you develop the left brain skills it takes to be, you know, a CEO? Yeah, so I'm a CMO turned CEO and I know we're in a smaller category than most. And I absolutely, you know, the team here will tell you, I definitely have a point of view on color and design and logos and restaurant decor. But I, I, I majored in English in college, David. And I'll tell you a funny story about that. I, my father was the first MBA grad at NYU in the 50s. He was like in the first or second year. And he was a stockbroker in New York. And it's funny how we all have father stories right now they influence us. And you know, he raised me to have a firm handshake and meet his clients, you know, in the eye. And he was very business oriented. And I went to , I went to Penn, and he couldn't believe that I was not in Wharton and made him crazy that I was in the college of arts and sciences and, and not, and not in Wharton. And I, as a sophomore, I chose my major. And I called him and I said, dad, I've chosen my major. It's English. And literally David, 20 seconds of silence. And his response was, but girls major in English. And you know, you can imagine the therapy and, you know, that led for me for years. But partly in response to, you know, his ingratiating in my brain for all those years, I joined a program after college that was an MBA that NYU had exclusively for liberal arts majors. And so they would hire 80 people a year. It was a work study program. So we were divided up a bunch, a bunch of banks and consulting firms. I was sponsored by Price Waterhouse Cooper's PwC. And so I went right from undergrad to three years of business school for the MBA, which I did in accounting and marketing. And then I went to PwC consulting and became Six Sigma qualified and eventually a master of black belt . So where my, I think where my genetic comfort zone was on the right brain literature, you know, art side. I, in a sense, you know, forced myself to default to what I thought I needed to do for the future, which was, which was learn, you know, math and numbers beyond when a professor said, please turn to page 32, which was the expense of my, my numbers in college. Well, you got out of your comfort zone and certainly work for him. And that's right. As I understand it, John, you spent 18 years in operations and marketing at Starwood hotels and resorts. And then you were the president of a division of a reality franchise group. Tell me what you learned in that job that you carried forward into dime brands. So as the president of religion, which was residential real estate brands like Century 21, Caldwell Banker, Better Homes and Gardens, I ran a franchise group of 2,400 franchisees and 120 countries on the world. And I got to benefit from a couple of things. The first was, you know, I've learned David, you can learn a lot from really great leaders and you can learn a lot from less great leaders. And I had the fortune of working for a CEO at Reology. His name was Ryan Schneider. And you talk about right brain versus left brain. This is a Ryan had a PhD in economics from Yale. And so, you know, you had to know your numbers. You had to know your data. He's highly analytical. But I learned how he, I've thought really expertly and thoughtfully managed board of directors and how we kept them informed about how we engaged the board in helping us and leveraging an expertise. I saw how he ran the investor relations process and how much time he invested in crafting the quarterly message, you know, to investors and analysts. And I came here to, to, to Dine Brands, you know, as a first time CEO three and a half years ago. And I had the benefit of really replicating what I saw as his best practices in areas like IR and, you know, capital management that, that I was always adjacent to as a business president, but had never run myself. That makes a lot of sense. And give us a snapshot of the business that you now lead at Dine Brands. Sure. So Dine Brands, as you mentioned, were Applebee's, were IHOP and were Fuzzy's taco shop. We have about 3,700 restaurants in total across all three brands. All but 250 of them are in the US. Applebee's competes in the casual dining space, which includes alcohol, IHOP is in family dining, which does not. And the, the great thing about the two brands, number one, is they're both the largest in terms of their number of units in each of their categories. So they're, you know, they're number one in terms of footprint. They're great, you know, legacy brands. Some would say nostalgia brands when I was, when I was recruiting for this job, David, I would say to friends or family, I'm thinking about going to work for IHOP and Applebee's. And almost everyone says, oh my gosh, when I was a kid, you know, my grandfather took me to IHOP every Sunday after church. My little to league went to team, went to Applebee's . And so it was super, it was super exciting to me to become part of brands that are every part of people's everyday lives. You know, they all have experiences and memories. We 're 100% franchised. So we're both a B2B business and a B2C business in that, you know, those who pay our royalty fees directly are the franchisees who own our restaurants. And so we're , we're partners with them in helping them build their businesses and maintain profitable restaurants. And at the same time, our teams are all about making sure that we attract as many guests as possible into those restaurants. And that's the B2C component of our business. That's interesting. I've never really heard anybody talk about the franchise business as being B2B makes a lot of sense. I never never thought of it that way. And I've been a pretty, pretty big franchise organization. Well, yeah, it's always occurred to me that if you're running a franchise business successfully, particularly when it's 100% franchised, the phone only rings when things aren't going well, right? And if the phone's not ringing from your franchisees, then our marketing is working, our menu innovation is working, our learning and technology is working. And these franchisees range from owner operators who own literally one or two iHops or fuzzies. And you know, and the whole family works in the business to we've got franchisees that own, one franchisee owns over 400 Applebees, you know, and owns a quarter of the system, you know, which is a huge organization. And so our job is to make sure that whether you're a large company like that or an owner operator who owns one restaurant, they've invested their money in these restaurants. And our job is to make sure their businesses are profitable. And then they're paying us to talk directly to guests, right, and have them come to the restaurants and enjoy the experience. You mentioned that iHops and Applebees are certainly legacy brands and they've been around for a long time. What kind of potential do you say, for example, for a brand like Applebee's, that what are you going after that hasn't been tapped into? What we're focusing on for both brands, Applebee's and iHops is being as a former marketer myself, is to be really clear on what the story is. And every brand has a story to tell , right? Every brand has its core values. And every brand has to be relevant in what I call and what I learned at Starwood, every brand's got to be different, better, and special. And if you can articulate how you're different and better and special, then you're going to win, right? And so you know, Applebee's, when it comes to its core menu, right, it's about great burgers, great wings, great margaritas, it's a neighborhood gathering place. And I love the tagline, which preceded me, you know, eating good in the neighborhood. And as long as you're focused on being local, being relevant, and having great food, great beverages, great experience, you know, they're going to win. You know, iHops is all about putting a smile on your face. It's all about families and leaning into breakfast, you know, even at night, 75, 80% of what we sell is breakfast items. So they're open 24/7, but it's all about great pancakes, great omelets, great cup of coffee. And tell me about fuzzy tacos. I have to admit, I haven't been to fuzzy tacos. How many restaurants you have and what do you see as the opportunity there? So there are 140 fuzzies . They were found at about 20 years ago in Texas, half the restaurants are in Texas and they've since grown to Oklahoma, Colorado, and sort of the middle of the country north. We love the concept because it's in a high growth category of this, you know, select service, limited service, and Mexican is also a high growth category. And this is more like, I would say, a California, southern California , Baja, you know, avocado and fish and very good for you healthy tacos at an accessible price. Like all three of our brands, it's, you know, the value brand in the category. And we think it's got the potential to become a thousand restaurants the next 10 to 12 years. You know, we bought it because of that growth opportunity to grow East West and North. And we intend to build it to a national brand. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with John in just a moment. It's the Halloween season. And while we don't do a lot of spooky content on this show, I do think it's the perfect time to revisit my conversation with famed mental ist, Oz Perlman. This guy can perform some eerie mind reading tricks. I mean, just Google Oz Perlman Buffalo Bills. If you want to spend five minutes being amazed at what he does. But what's just as impressive are his insights into creating memorable moments for his customers. Always kind of look to see the value you deliver to others. I have a profession where it's very focused on me. And it's like, look at the cool things I can do and look at how I can fool you and look how people think, Oh, I'm smarter than you because I can do a trick. Can't I always take that out of the equation? And I want to walk into a room and I want to make it all about my customer or all about my audience and know what appeals to them. And my job is not for you to walk out of that room thinking how great I was. It's to create a memorable moment for you to take with you for your life that I hope you will continue to talk about and tell others about. And that's what I focus on is creating very memorable moments for other people. I'm just a piece of that memory. But that's what it's all about. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with those episode 107 here on How Leaders Lead. You know, I'm a big believer in pattern thinking, you know, looking outside your industry and pulling over the key learnings and then applying them. Tell me about a time that you've done some pattern thinking. There's so many examples from my 18 years in hotels and hospitality that influenced the way I think today. I can give you a couple of those examples. One is I was at Starwood back when the online travel agencies, the OTA started. And you remember Priceline and William Shatner, Captain Kirk was, you know, sort of the original commercials for Priceline. And when the hotel companies first started reacting to the OTAs, we put all our inventory on the OTAs and essentially ended up competing with ourselves. So for example, a business traveler who's going to Chicago would book his or her flight, his or her hotel three months in advance for 300 bucks. And then the week of the of the stay, they would go on Priceline or Expedia and see that the room rate was now $180 and they would cancel the $300 rate and rebook it for 180. And so we were we were harming ourselves. And we learned back in those days that we had to figure out how to advantage booking on our own sites, Sheraton.com, Weston.com versus the OTAs. And at a hotel, you've got a lot of ways you can do that, right? If you book with us, you get your points. If you if you book with the OTA, you don't. If you book with the OTA, you get a crappy room over the garbage in the back of the hotel. If you book with us, you get a good room on a high floor, etc, etc. And so when I came to this, this space, and I'm looking at the third party delivery options and the door dashes and the Uber Eats, it was sort of the deja vu right all over again and thinking about how do we make sure that we're not giving away business to third party channels and how do we bias our guests toward the benefits of booking online. And so that was a really parallel experience for me. I'll give you another example that around innovation and creativity that stuck with me for a long time. So you may remember W Hotels, you know, W Hotels ? Yeah, absolutely. So W Hotels didn't exist until the mid 90s when Barry Sternlich, who invented Starwood, invented W. And he came in one day and he said, "I have a new idea. We're going to have a new hotel, it's going to be called W. We're going to call the lobby the living room, which really means it's a big bar. And on top of it, we're going to put some rooms." And we used, and then it took off, it became a phenomenon. And we would have Harvard Business School and McKinsey Callis and say, "We want to do a case study on all the work you did to design and arrive at W Hotels." And we want to know the data and the consumer insights and the research. And we would say, "There was none." It Barry came in one day and said, "This is the idea." He did the same thing with SPG, the loyalty program. Your listeners may know that Barry Sternlich had a read back in the late 90s with 70 or 80 hotels in it. And then he bought Sheraton in Weston within a two- year period. Created Starwood hotels in overnight. There was a competitor to Marriott Hilton in Intercon. And he wanted to stand out. So he had to create a loyalty program. And again, Larry said, Barry said, "No blackouts. There'll be no blackout dates." The owners said, of the hotel said, "That's ridiculous. You're going to bankrupt us." What's a blackout? Meaning, with most loyalty programs, when you want to redeem points for nights, they will say, "Well, you can't do it Christmas week. You can't do it New Year 's week." Barry said, "You can redeem points with us 365 days a year. No blackouts," which made the points much more valuable because you could redeem them during the most exciting weeks of the year. No research, no data. I'm not saying that every innovation should be research- free or data-free, but what it did teach me is that sometimes you have to trust your gut. When you want to have a big idea that's disruptive, moving quickly, being agile , and taking some risks is an important thing to do because you can test and require data until you've missed the opportunity. That has stuck with me for years and years. There's a lot of talk these days about artificial intelligence. How's it making its way into your company or is it? It is. It is. We're all thinking about AI and how to leverage it. Our initial approach, which was about a year, a year and a half ago, I would say was too cautious. We learned that quickly. We said, "We're going to give it to a few people. We 're going to give them a lot of training. We're going to have lawyers and finance people look over their shoulder and make sure that they're using it correctly and they're not using data or images that aren't appropriate, and they're not sharing our thoughts out in the public." I think that was under thinking it. We were also using it in a limited way to write emails faster, write guest responses faster from our customer support centers, draft contracts faster, but we weren't using it to drive the business forward in terms of the core business of serving our guests and our franchisees. We rethought it six months ago. We've now launched our tool to the entire company, and we have everybody using it with only a 30 minutes of training. We've also got a core team that's looking at the big ideas. One of the things that we're doing with AI is we've take the Applebee's culinary team and the IHOP culinary teams have taken all of the skews, the ingredients, the stockkeeping units, everything that they've got in an Applebee's kitchen. They've said, "Okay, invent AI. Tell me three new hamburgers. Give me recipes and the ingredients we have at IHOP for a fun Halloween-themed pancake we haven't done before." In the past, where we had humans brainstorming the new ideas using the ingredients we have in our restaurants, or maybe one or two fresh ingredients, we now have a machine that can generate hundreds of ideas that humans can then sort through. It has accelerated innovation and brainstorm ing exponentially. By the way, you can then say, "Now give me the recipe," and you get good results, and then you can then say, "Give me a marketing plan," and you get so-so results, because that creativity part's not quite there yet. And I also understand, I read somewhere that you have this incredible IHOP app that triggers your staff to recommend to a customer to add an item, and it's gotten phenomenal results. That's right. That's another example of we're using AI. Now it's in practice. It's been in place for about a year. It's on our app. It's on iHOP.com in our app. Just like where Netflix recommends what movie or TV show you should watch based upon your past usage or customers like you. I think the statistic is something like 70% of what we watch on Netflix is recommended to us by Netflix, and the same thing on Amazon. Half of what we buy is recommended to us. We're now recommending to guests, "Do you want to add this? Do you want to put this on your order based upon their past history?" And we're seeing great success and strong additional sales as a result of that. You know, with how quickly things are moving, John, and they are, they're moving and changing all the time, how do you set the pace of CO to keep your team from getting lap by competition, or just not being up on what's really happening right now? So, you know, there's a phrase we use here about where we're living and working in an age of great change. And I think it's really important for team members in any organization, you know, specifically here at Dine, to really understand context, right? And the context in the age in which we are now all living and working is things have never come at us so quickly, right? Whether it's the, and in such volume, the availability of data, all of the, you know, the social and digital channels that one has to manage, the way in which running a restaurant has transformed, pre-COVID, for example, Applebee's and IHOP had 7, 8% off-premise sales. Now they both have over 20%. You know, so running a restaurant has become more complicated. And so we've really talked about a mindset, right? A mindset about being agile, a mindset about being comfortable making mistakes and learning from them. We've talked about a mindset of setting big hairy, audacious goals, behags that sort of put a pit in your stomach, but you can't think outside the box unless you've got goals that are, you know, outside of the box. And so for me, you know, David, it's less about saying to our team members or our executives here, make sure you go to three days of adult learning, take this innovation class from McKinsey or Harvard. And it's more about the ongoing everyday mindset of being flexible, changing your mind and, you know, thinking differently. At the same time that you're a sponge and absorbing information that's available to us outside. You know, you could tell people to do these kinds of things, to be flexible, to be open, to go for change, to, you know, take risks. But, you know, people don't like change. They don't like doing this stuff. So how do you practically get people comfortable doing it? I'll give you an example. And I tell the story with permission from the team member involved. So for the last six or nine months, one of my messages to the team, like we've been talking about, particularly the top 80 people in our company, the VPs and above, has been that we need to act with urgency, right? We need to act with urgency because our competitors are putting good ideas in place, because the economy, particularly for our guests, is putting some stress, you know, on our guests wallets. And like I said, the world is changing quickly. And they got the message that we need to act with urgency. What I learned was they didn't know how to make decisions urgently. And I'll give you an example. I walked into a meeting of the IHOP beverage team , and they were, they were making a decision about coffee mugs. The current coffee mug at IHOP is fairly small, and it's thin. It doesn't keep the coffee hot enough long enough. And if you have a large hand, it's even hard to squeeze it between the, you know, the hand, the coffee handle and the mug. And that's one of the number one pieces of feedback we get from our IHOP guests . And so they had selected a new coffee mug, which is a big, thick, heavy mug like you'd buy for your own home. It was perfect. And I said, I love it. This was two months ago. When will it be in the restaurants? End of 2025. And I said, wow, that seems like a long time. Is it the same manufacturer? And it was the exact same mug looked exactly like the other mug, but just like going from small to a medium or medium to a large, same manufacturer, same process. This larger mug is in thousands of restaurants for years and years and years. Why does it need to take so long? Well, we need to test it in 100 restaurants. It needs to be washed 2000 times, you know, and, and, and I said, it seems to me this is a low risk decision relative to other things we might do. And not every decision requires the same level of risk mitigation. We can put the mugs in faster, given the fact that we've got their little brothers already in the, in the stores. And so what I'm doing is using stories like that, because I, I have found David that when you use the platitudes, right, when you say what we've been saying for years, team, we need to have be more accountable. Team, we need to work with urgency. Team, we need to be more agile. It's hard to know what that looks and feels like as an everyday decision maker. But when you then tell the story about the mugs, and it shouldn't take a year and a half of testing to put the new mug in place, it makes it concrete. And so I'm looking for and always sharing examples like that of where we acted with urgency and what that looks like, or that we didn't as a way to make it concrete for people. Well, that's great. And so tell me a story of how you give people ownership and hold them accountable. So we're here. So I died brands. It probably helped understand the structure. Each of our four businesses, Applebee's, IHOP, Fuzz ies, and the international business are our business units with a president, a P and L at the business unit level, a CMO, a COO ahead of development that supports that business. And from my perspective, the presidents run their business. My job is to help at the beginning of the year, set a budget, set goals, work with them on their strategy. It's not my job to decide each and every person they hire. It's not my job to review commercials for Applebee's, even though I'm a former CMO. And if you want people to be accountable, you have to actually allow them to do their jobs and not meddle or micromanage, which by the way was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn when I started this job as a first time CEO. But in order to hold people accountable, they have to feel accountable for the decisions they make. And they have to be able to point decisions they made that worked well. And they need to be able to understand decisions they made that didn't. And if someone is interfering, then they're truly not running their business. So if the president in my mind doesn't feel like he or she runs their business, then they're never going to feel accountable. You mentioned earlier, you're a 100% franchise business and that's your business to business part of your company. What's the biggest challenge you've had to work through with the franchisees that's really tested your leadership? So franchisees who own our restaurants and franchise or, and it's really got nothing to do with restaurants and specific, right? The nature of a franchising business, whether it's in my experience, hotels, residential real estate, or restaurants, or mobile dog grooming, or EF Hutton, or any sort of franchise, your interests are 80% aligned, right? When they succeed, we succeed. But there are differences among franchisees, right? What's helpful for a franchisee that owns hundreds of restaurants may not be helpful for a franchisee that owns one or two or vice versa. And so the biggest challenges with franchisees is getting a system to agree to agree to a change, particularly a change that will cost them money, right? Because most ideas cost money and the money is spent by the franchisees for the most part, not us. So it's really important to have a great ROI. I'll give you an example from my hotel days. So remember when the bed spreads and hotels sort of looked like your grandmother's curtains, they were all sorts of different colors of maroon and orange and swirly, and then about in the mid 90s, they became white. And now most hotels have white beds. Western hotels, which is a Starwood Hotel, was the first hotel to go to all white linens. And by the way, that's another example of Barry Stern coming in one day and saying, "The linens will be white." And we all said, "It should look residential and a high threat count." And we all said, "That's crazy. It's going to look dirty." And he said, "No, people want to feel like they're sleeping in their bed at home." And we turned the beds white. The Western owners, the people who own the Western hotels, had to invest in all of those new matt resses and new linens. And we couldn't get them to do it. I was the brand leader at the time. And the idea we came up with, it was about skin in the game, right? When we realized that they weren't going to buy into white beds. So we said, "We will suspend your marketing fee for a year." And you can use that money to put in the beds. And that broke it through. They did it. And our belief was the beds themselves are more than any marketing we could do online or on television. And before you knew it, the whole industry went to white beds. So it was a way of thinking about a different way of motivating, this in this case, financial relief versus being able to convince them in advance. It was a good idea. Hey, everyone. It's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second. Before we do, though, have a question for you. Have you downloaded the How Leaders Lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't, take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for How Leaders Lead, and download the How Leaders Lead app. In the app, every day, you'll get a two-minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you. And to really get your mind in the right place before you start your workday. So go to the App Store, search How Leaders Lead, download the How Leaders Lead app, and start your day every day with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds. Go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from How Leaders Lead. You also have a very unique strategy where you, it's a dual brand strategy where you're putting iHops and Applebee's in the same location. We did some of that when I was at Young Brands, and we had our challenges with it. So I'm curious how it's working out for you. So this is a little bit different than what I think Young Brands did, right, years ago, where you had similar brands and similar day parts in the same restaurant or box. This started for us internationally, and we now just opened our 13th dual brand restaurant outside the US. And the concept is that you have an Applebee's and an iHop in the same restaurant. Consider like a red side and a blue side and a common entry. They have a shared kitchen and cross-trained staff. So from an economics perspective, a cost perspective, there's a lot of synergy there. You activate the restaurant during all four day parts, right? iHop is primarily breakfast and late night, and Applebee's is primarily dinner and lunch. And so you go from either brand being active for half the day to activating the restaurant for 24 hours. The revenue at these restaurants that have opened are, and they typically are adding one brand to an existing brand we already had, are 2x before, right? So it makes sense. Put both brands in the box and they're doubling their revenue. And so we're now opening our first couple in the US in the first quarter of next year. And even more than a proposition for our guests, you know, you and I just talked about how B2B is part of how I think about the business. This is a proposition for our owners, our franchisees and our developers, that if you can build a restaurant that's the same size that you would have built for an Applebee's and iHop, you put both brands in and you have potential to double your revenue, which is a significant contributor to their bottom line because restaurant margins are, you know, about 10%. It's a thin, large business. So we think it's a very big idea, particularly based upon the international reaction to it. And we're anxious to see it here. I believe we've got to build a couple in the US to prove it out because the brands are so well known here. Internationally, guests don't necessarily wonder why an Applebee's and iHop are in the same building. They don't know their own by the same company. And so here in the US, where guests really have strong opinions and beliefs about the brands, we need to actually show them what it looks like. I don't think we can do market research that says, what do you think about an Applebee's and iH op in the same building? They wouldn't know what that looks or feels like. So we're going to build a couple in partnership with our franchisees and we think it's got a big potential for unlocking growth. Well, there's no question the customer loves that branded variety. You know, I was in Nashville a couple of years ago and I met this guy named Josh Jenkins, who just so happened to write one of your favorite songs with Walker Hayes. And that song is, Fancy Like, all about his wife's and his date night at Applebee's. Well, as I understand it, I mean, this this went viral. There's all kind of it really, really took off. Tell us about that experience and how you capitalize on it. So crazy phenomenon, right? A gift from the heavens because we had nothing to do with it. And we all talk about what happens when something goes viral and we all work hard to make things go viral. And the truth is, if we had asked our ad agency to write a song about Applebee's, nothing would have happened. But the truth is that Walker Hayes, he and his wife have date night at Applebee's in their real life. They have six children and he wrote the song that meant a lot to him. He then made it extra viral by doing the dance that he put on TikTok. And our marketing team jumped on it. We partnered with him. He ended up doing over 40 appearances for us. He performed at our brand conferences. There were so many versions of the dance on TikTok that we then our TV spots became a accumulation of just TikToks , including Shaq leaving at Applebee's and doing the dance with some other guests that were just in front of the restaurant. You can't pay for that. You can't make that up. I saw that. I said, did you do that? No, it actually happened. No. When Shaq knows the dance and Shaq's doing the dance with people who are walking into the restaurant, you just look up to the skies and you just say thank you. But to your point, you have to have a really nimble, right into our point earlier, marketing team that knows how to jump on it and amplify it and turn it into something. And that's exactly what our team did. And now I understand you've got some NFL players working in your restaurants. Tell me more about that. So Applebee's is the casual dining sponsor of the NFL this year. First time we've had a partnership at that level, and we just launched two weeks ago, a new series of spots featuring NFL, not all players, right? So we have Dan Campbell, the coach of Detroit. We've got Brock Purdy from San Francisco, Shacwan Barkley from Philadelphia. And they're all in spots. They're very funny . They're very clever. When the spots, Campbell is an assistant manager. One of the football players is a server in training. And they're breaking through. So Dan Campbell did a really clever spot where he's taking an order, but he puts the menu over his face like he would, you know, calling his plays from the sideline because he tells his guests he doesn't want the table, the other table next door to them to hear their order. And he was hilarious. He was a natural. And at his first, the NFL season kicked off two weeks ago, but at his pregame press conference, he got 10 minutes of questions from the sports media about the commercial. And we had no idea you were so funny, Dan. And why did you decide Applebee's? And again, like to your point, that's the cherry on top, right? We didn't pay for that. But the commercials broke through. And we're thrilled that he got 10 minutes of questions about the spot during his pregame press conference. So the coaches and the players, they kind of go undercover and work at Applebee 's. Speaking of going undercover, you know, have you ever done anything like that? Or how do you stay connected to the frontline and find out what really is going on? It's you got to be out there, right? So I am in the market. I do two or three weeks, a quarter, visiting restaurants and visiting franchisees and spend, you know, at least an hour to two hours in each restaurant. And it's talking to the general manager. It's talking to the back of how staff, the wait staff, talking to guests, and hearing about what's going well, what's not my favorite question, particularly to team members is, you know, what do you go home at night? And you say to your loved one at the kitchen table, you know, you bang your head and you say, I can't believe headquarters hasn't figured this one out yet. Why are we still doing it this way after 10 years when it's so obvious the other way is better? And that usually unlocks , you know, a smile and a list of things that could be done better. And I take them back to the headquarters here, our restaurant support center. And it's a great source of information. It also helps build a network of people that I meet who are willing to reach out after I leave sometimes and let me know what else they want me to know as time goes by. So, you know, I can't do my job unless I'm in the restaurants. I learned that at Starwood hotels, right? Is you got to be in the hotels as often as possible. And you got to hear from guests and you got to hear from all the team members that are delivering service. What's the best idea you ever got from a team member in one of your restaurants? Two years ago at iHop, we rolled out the new loyalty program, which was, you know, earn points and redeem them for food and other rewards. We call it the International Bank of Pancakes. Our points are called pan coins and you deposit them in the stack market. You know, and if you, for $15, you earn enough pan coins to redeem for your first stack of pancakes. And so, a big part of what we were asking our team members in the restaurants and our franchisees was to enroll people. And I was in Seattle at one of our iHop's and I met a server, her name was Alma, who had been with this franchisee for 30 years. And she had, you know, all of her regular guests and things like that. And she did two things that knocked my socks off. The first was, she spent her own money to buy, you know, boxes of pens that had, you know, love heart, like a little heart on it, heart, Alma and iHop that she gave to all of her repeat customers. And just a little thing like that, they love the pens. But a lot of her customers were older and weren't as comfortable with technology and, you know, apps. And I saw her sit down at table after table, take out their phones and show them how to enroll in the program for them and show them how to redeem points. And because she did it, other servers in the restaurants did it. And, you know, that was an idea that I took home and said to the team here is we've got to use people like Alma as ambassadors, brand ambassadors for our other servers. If we or the franchisee say you need to enroll people, it doesn't mean the same thing is showing how Alma does it and what that means for her repeat guests. And she did that all on her own. I bet you all my gets the biggest tips . Absolutely right. And it takes time if she sits down at that table and enrolls them, she's probably turning one less table, right? But she's playing the long game number one, she cares about her guests and number two, they're going to come back and they get it and they ask to sit in her section. I love hearing stories like that. You know, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Yes. What are the three words that best describe you? Funny, casual and tired. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Barack Obama. What's your biggest pet peeve? Crunching noises in my ear. That's directed at my wife and her candy corns. Who would play you in a movie? Matthew Broderick. What's your favorite eye hop order? I'm a purist. So pancakes in my mind should only come with one topping. So banana pancakes syrup. How about Applebee's? It's bone in, bone in's very hot buffalo wings all day long. Fuzzy's taco shop. Our new battered cod, our fish taco. Fantastic. Now be honest here. Could you do the fancy like dance? I'm a terrible dancer. I have no rhythm. I can't carry a tune. So whenever we were filming the fancy like dance as a group, I always made sure I was in the back row because it just didn't look good. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? You know, I sort of follow the kids these days. So I like Noah Kahan, you know, in that sort of genre, like the country rock folk right now. What's something about you a few people would know? Well, I told you earlier in the hour, but few people would know that my background is fine art and graphic design and that I spent a big portion of my time in college. You know, as an art director of that newspaper, which was a 40 hour week time commitment because we published five days a week. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you'd never miss? I'm addicted to my protein shake in the morning that I make the exact same way. Banana's blueberries, chocolate protein, ice and oat milk with all of my healthy powders that I mix in every morning religiously. Will we ever see protein shakes at iHop? Stay tuned. I know what the number one would be. Okay, one thing I've always felt is that in leadership, you have to constantly be thinking about creating new memories. And you know, when people say I remember when that can be absolutely deadly and when people are looking back and you've got these brands that have been around forever. How do you create new memories for your team around the brand specifically? You know, I love that you bring up that point because the challenge with what we would call nostalgia brands or legacy brands like ours is embracing what everybody loves and finding ways to make them relevant to contemporary. And so your example of the NFL partnership takes the nostalgia of Applebee's, marries the local community, right? Where we can activate that partnership by having our team members wear their favorite football jersey, right, to the restaurant with something that's very contemporary, which is the, you know, the NFL and all of its digital channels. And so we try to do that here in the office as well. We've got team member resource groups that we established four years ago for the first time. We've got one for our African-American employees, one for our young employees, our female employees, etc. We've got six of them that have now been in place for a couple of years and each of them has established really great rituals. Just today, our Latin American and Spanish-speaking team and resource group had a breakfast. We know with all their favorite cuisine from, you know, countries south of the US and Spain. And so a lot of what we're doing there is helping to introduce just ritual and the fabric of our culture here in Pasadena , where our headquarters is, you know, every day. And it's team member driven, which is what what we love about it. What's it like having a headquarters or support center in California? I mean, do you ever think about moving out like everybody else's? No, no. A couple of thoughts on that. So I was born in Philadelphia. My wife was born in New Haven, and she and I have lived our entire lives between New Haven and Philly most recently in the last 30 years centered around New York and Connecticut. And so when I got the opportunity to come out here four years ago, we did it in part because our children were young adults post college, you know, living and working in New York. And it's beautiful. It's exciting. It 's a great adventure for us personally to be out in LA. But more importantly, we have over 300 people assigned to this office. And I think to presume that people who have chosen to live in Los Angeles want to live anywhere else is an awfully big presumption. And to relocate a company is the quickest way, I think, to destroy the culture, progress, momentum. And so we are proudly residing in Pasadena. And it's the second largest city in the country. And we have an incredible field of talent to draw from here. And we have an all-star team. And I think it 's because we're in Los Angeles. You know, with three brands, over 125,000 team members, you know, I know you have a lot of demands on your time. How do you prioritize things that are most important to you in your life and in your work and stay super focused? I've always found the work-life balance question, one of the hardest questions to answer. And what I've come to learn over the years is that if I feel like either side is in balance, then I'm out of balance, right? If everything is perfect at home, things are probably coming off the wheels at work and vice versa. And so I've always tried to feel just a little bit uncomfortable on both sides. For me, it feels like the best balance. The other thing that I always felt and I could do this for my kids were young because I lived in New York and we were in New York and Connecticut is I made it a point that if there was a baseball game or a music recital, I could leave and come back to work and have always encouraged team members to do that. And for me personally, this may not be a best practice for everyone, but you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I don't start my day until 9.15, 9.30 in terms of calendared meetings because I go to the gym. And if I start meeting at eight o'clock, I'm not a great person to wake up at 4.30 and go to the gym at 5. I know I need to wake up at 6.30 and go at 7. So I schedule time to not conflict with that because I need that outlook three, four, five days a week to just to clear my head, listen to music and just, you know, feel feel feel good. John, you know, what's your what's your unfinished business? Well, my unfinished business here at Dine is to accelerate growth, right? I want to make sure that it's a it's a tough economy right now. And you know, our core customer has been dining out less the last two or three quarters. And so, you know, we're very focused on ensuring getting to the point where both of our all three of our brands are having positive comp sales, you know, year over year. And we're also working really hard to make sure that we have positive net unit growth. You know, IHOP is remarkable. It's a 66 year old brand. And it's going to open 40 plus new restaurants a year. It does that year and in year out and has some closures, which a brand of that size will, you know, Applebee's has got more work to do to get to net unit growth. And so the unfinished but unfinished business for me is when it comes to comp sales and when it comes to unit growth, that we've got all greens, all positives across all three brands in both metrics. And last question here, what's one piece of advice you 'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? It has to be empathy. And you know, we've been talking about that a lot here as well, particularly post COVID, which accelerated individual team members expressing more strongly about what's important to them and their career and their life. And I think that, you know, in the past, you know, the the Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy School of Management, which was, which was incredibly successful at the time, but it was a little bit more, you know, their way or the highway. I don't think that works today. It doesn't work today with Gen Z. It doesn't work with millennials. And it it trickles up in terms of team members and employees. They want to feel empowered to to be part of the discussion about not only their job and how they contribute, but how they integrate their life and their personal priorities with work. And we as leaders have got to be empathetic and really good listeners and respond to and include them in the process of creating their jobs and contributing to our our success and their personal growth. Well, John, I've really enjoyed this conversation. You've got a good handle on where you're going. And thanks for sharing all your insights. And, you know, when you're in the gym , I recommend that you put on that fancy like tomb and, you know, work on your dance moves so you can move to the front of the row. I may have put the song on in the gym, but I have not danced in the gym. So I will, I will consider putting that those two together, David. Thank you for having me . Okay. Appreciate you. Well, no doubt about it. John is running two of the most iconic American restaurant brands. I love hearing how he's staying true to their differentiators, while also finding innovative ways to grow them. He also found a way to make me crave both wings and pancakes . But more importantly, he's helping his team stay agile and act with urgency in a world that's changing rapidly. This week, ask yourself, in what part of your business do you need to be more agile? And I don't mean acting rushed or being careless. When you act with agility and urgency, you operate with the awareness that every opportunity has an expiration date, especially in a fast changing world. And it's up to you to instill that mindset in your team. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders stay agile in a changing world. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Aaron Witt, the CEO of Build Witt, which is a company that serves the construction industry and a category that Aaron has coined the dirt world. My name is on the company. And if the guy at the company is saying, man, I'm struggling. It gives people permission to, oh, yeah. Oh, he's human. We're all human. I can, I can talk about that stuff too. I can, I can be vulnerable too. And I think, I think when people are more vulnerable, it creates a better organization. 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 you can be.