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 that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Don Sweeney, the former president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association. Now Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, used to say, "Excellence is the price of admission." What he meant by that was that excellence was standard operating procedure at Apple. It's what he expected. It's what was expected by everybody in the company. In an environment like this, colleagues push each other to make things better. They push the boundary of what's possible. And if someone feels like a project or an idea can be better, they speak up. Don Sweeney and the great leaders I know do this very same thing. They speak up when something can be better. They don't accept the status quo, but instead have the courage to push to make everything the best it can be. This my friends, is what it looks like to strive for excellence. And doing things with excellence is the mark of a great leader and it's the mark of a great company. So let's not wait any longer. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Don Sweeney. Don I always like to start out at the beginning. Can you tell us about your upbringing? So I started my career in the food service, working on a roadside stand that my grandfather had a, we had a family farm and grew vegetables on 40 acres and I picked those vegetables and I sold them at this roadside stand literally for the age of 4, 5, 6 onward. And learned a whole lot very early on about customer service, dealing with wonderful people, dealing with challenging people at a very young age and frankly working really hard, both in the fields and at the roadside stand. I really developed a strong work ethic. I wasn't compensated for my efforts financially at that stage, but I was compensated with a sense of accomplishment, working alongside my grandfather and my father, my mother, my brother. But I really took it very seriously and kind of challenged myself in that same way that all of us try to do to be better the next day than I was the prior day. Pick more strawberries, pick more beans, do more, selling of the corn of the cob. I just, I really got excited about being my own personal best and that really laid I think a foundation. I didn't feel competitive with anyone else, but I was very competitive with myself. Did you have a mentor besides your parents that really helped shape some of your early thoughts on leadership? At that young age, I really was my family that I really looked up to and still do actually in so many ways. But as I moved from kind of the family farm into my first paid job, I worked at a grocery store where I bagged groceries and then got promoted to cashier long before the scanning. It was back when you cashier'd when you actually put the price in and hit the, you know, enter key and then worked my way up to being an office manager for the night shift while I was still in high school. And in that environment, I really learned a lot just by watching people around me who were successful and everybody at most of the stages of my high school career, you know, had a more important job than I did at any point along the way. So I really looked up to the people who were, you know, the night shift manager or the office manager of the day shift or the head cashier or the customer service manager. And I just watched them. That's so much of I think how I have grown as a leader is just watching people around me, emulating the characteristics that I would like to have more of. And then also, frankly, watching leadership behaviors that I didn't appreciate as a person who was reporting in at that point in my career to various different levels. And knowing that if I ever did have the chance to lead in a really significant way, these are qualities that I didn't want to emulate. So I probably have learned as much from making sure I didn't gather certain kinds of behaviors as I have from watching folks like you and others who emulate the qualities that I admire so much. Don, you know, what was your first job out of college and how did you determine what direction to take? My first job out of college was here in Washington, D.C., where I still am almost 40 years later. I came out of college on a Saturday. I went to a small liberal arts school in Maine, Colby College. I graduated on a Saturday. I started my job on the Monday with $300 in my pocket and four outfits, which got me through Thursday, but Friday was a push. I didn't know quite what to do. I had to recycle something from the Monday collection. But I had the opportunity. I had two different job offers when I came right out of college. I got my job offers during the spring break of my senior year when I came to D. C., and just kind of pounded the pavement looking for a job. I didn't really have many connections, or frankly, any connections, but at that time you could just really walk around town and hand your resume out. I had a job offer on Capitol Hill to be what was called a legislative correspondent at the time, which was really doing constituent mail. It was before email, so just regular old mail. That was working for a member of Congress. I had an opportunity to work for a trade association called the International Dairy Foods Association that represents the processing part of the dairy industry, so craft, foods, sog etto, agandas, companies like that. At the end of the day, I chose the trade association job rather than working on Capitol Hill, which even surprised me because my whole college work had been on political science and government affairs, and I really thought I wanted to work in the midst of Congress and that environment. I saw the trade association opportunity as maybe even a broader chance to make an impact on a whole industry, and I had no particular knowledge of the dairy industry necessarily, but I found that I learned quickly that I really could have a role, even at that early stage of my career, in making a difference on how an entire industry is perceived and how it's able to be successful and advanced. I started very early as a lobbyist for the dairy industry, and I was saving up money to go to law school, which is what I thought I wanted to do at the time, and my then supervisor, who is one of my great mentors in life, Linwood Tipton, who became the CEO of the organization during the tenure that I was there, he said to me, "I really think you'd do much better in business school than law school, and if you will stay," he said, "eight years after you graduate from business school, we'll pay your way to business school, so that's even longer than military service, you know, when you have to give back." And I said, "That's great, because I wasn't making much money, and it was going to take me a long time to save up the money to go to graduate school." So they actually underwrote my MBA. I went to school at night while working full time, and it took me about four, almost five years to get my MBA doing it that way, and then I stayed the eight years that he asked me to after that. And in that time, I had the opportunity, which was amazing at this young point in my career, with a brand new MBA, to get involved in a campaign that ultimately turned into the Milk Mustache campaign, the Got Milk campaign. Tell me about that, because that's one of my favorite campaigns of all time. Tell me how the Milk Mustache campaign actually happened. It's a fascinating story, and it's one of those things that when I look back on it now, I can't believe I had the, you could call it courage, or maybe even audacity, to take the position that I took on this, because I didn't have, you know, a particular deep experience or background in marketing or advertising or anything else. But we had a chance through a check-off program that my then-bossland would tip and had gotten approved by USDA to have a massive amount of many millions of dollars to be able to launch a campaign to help the sales and consumption of milk among young women in the target audience at the time were women 16 to 24, because their consumption of milk at that time was dropping precipitously. And if that became a trend, you know, that played out through their lifetime, milk consumption overall was going to drop precipitously. So we were trying to really arrest that decline and try to make drinking milk more cool, fashionable, fun accepted among these young women 16 to 24. We hired an ad agency, Bozell Jacobs in New York City, and they developed several different concepts that we had to bring back to a board of milk processors. And in this particular case, the board happened to be comprised of all men over the age of 50, and they were the ones that were going to make the decision about what the campaign was. It was going to speak to women 16 to 24. And they naturally chose a campaign that was different than the milk mustache. They just didn't think that was going to do it. They liked this other one. And I somehow found the, I'll say, courage, or audacity, or whatever you want to call it, to say, I have to say, I think I'm the only person in the room that's in this demographic or close to it. I might have been 25 at the time. They're only the only person in that age group, but I was literally the only woman in the room. And I said, I honestly think you're wrong. I think this is the campaign that will speak to these young women more than this one that you're headed toward. And over time and a few hours of conversation, they eventually came around and said, yes, we're going to do that. One of that was obviously a very successful campaign to completely reverse the decline of consumption among young women and then had a lot of legs on it. We extended it to different audiences. It was a 25-year plus successful campaign that did a lot to advance the industry. But that was one of those moments where you're at the table or I may not even bet at the table. I may have bet in the back row of the room for a way I can remember. But I remember thinking, I'm in this room. I really have something significant, I think, to offer. I'm worried about the direction they're going. I think they're wrong. And I'm going to speak up. And I'm really glad that I did. Good for you. That is clearly one of the greatest advertising campaigns in the history of marketing. So congratulations for having that courage of conviction. Don, you've worked for three different associations since then, I believe. And what made you change jobs? And what advice could you give to others on this front? Why should you change a job? I think today's generation is much more facile with that and willing and able to take those risks than, let's just say, my generation, I have had four different organizations. I've worked for over 40 years, but that's an average of change of jobs every 10 years. It's not the same kind of pace that I think today's generation is changing jobs sometimes every 10 months. For me, each time I felt like the place that I was going to had a bigger opportunity for impact or set a different way. The industry that I was moving into had a problem that I thought I could help solve. In some cases, multiple challenges. I'm very much motivated by making an impact and an impact not just on a community or an industry, but actually on society in an even bigger way. And so in each case, when I went from the dairy foods industry to the electric utility industry during the time of utility deregulation, I saw a huge opportunity to make a difference that I moved to AARP, which was an organization that was really trying to grow its membership and diversify. Its impact among lots of different people over the age of 50, and I really thought I could make a difference there. And then most importantly for me, once I found my real home here in the restaurant industry, this has been the culmination of a path that I've been on for a long time, but this is the industry. I absolutely adore the people in it, the work that we do, the difference we make in people's lives. And I think for me, each time it's been a question of how can I have more impact and how can I help solve some of the really vexing issues that an industry or a society is facing? I want to get onto some of the things that happened since you left the dairy association, but I do want to ask you about your mentor. Your mentor basically convinced you to do the MBA, then you did the famous milk campaign. How did you muster up the courage to go to this guy and say you were going to actually leave the company? That's a great question. If I look back on my own career and say, you know, what were the hardest days I 've ever had? And the day when everything went sideways and some kind of thing blew up, in every case, it was when I had to go to those cases, every case, my mentor and say, I'm moving on. And even after the case of the Dairy Foods Association, it was there for 12 years, and it was the only job I had ever had, it was a hugely difficult thing to do because you feel like you're leaving your family, the people who have raised you and helped you and supported you. And in the case of that first time that I did it, and the two subsequent times I've done it since then, I've always been amazed at how supportive, and I've tried to do this myself when people come to me and say they're leaving as devastated and disappointed as I might be for myself and for the organization, I have to believe that it's the right thing for the person. And in this case, it was the right thing for me each time. And my mentors in every case have as much as I've worried about telling them when I finally get around to say it, and they always to a person say, we're sorry to see you go, but we're very happy to support your next success. And so I think that is another mark of a great leader is someone who can look past what's in the benefit of their own personal interest and the interest of their own organization and help someone succeed and ascend and rise when it's time for them to do that . And we all kind of feel in our gut when it's time, you know, when you feel like I really have maximized my impact here, and it's time for me to try a new challenge. And so I've been very blessed, and I've tried to do that same thing as a leader myself. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Don Sweeney in just a moment. Scott Mahoney is the chairman and CEO of Peter Millar, a premier clothing brand . In our conversation, we talked about what it looks like to go the distance for quality. It's not about margin. It's doing it right. It's treating your customers right, making your products great, and having integrity in your company and in your products. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Scott Mahoney, episode 59 here on How Leaders Lead. You mentioned before coming to the National Restaurant Association, you were the group director for membership for AARP. And I have to tell you, Don, I hated getting my AARP. So tell us how you went about making that brand more relevant. So this was in the early 2000s that I was there, and we were really struggling at the time with both the brand relevance of AARP, which still had a real tenor of retired nature to it, and we were trying to make the organization much more relevant, not just to the 65 plus population, but to the 50 to 65 year old who are eligible to join, but like you and I and many others are reluctant to join because we don't see ourselves as part of that demographic. And so we really had to remake the brand to make it relevant to people who are still working. And people who, and frankly, way over 65 oftentimes are still working. But take the R as it relates to retired, kind of out of the nomenclature and really move to an organization that is devoted to supporting people as they enter that next stage in their life's journey. Whether it's reinventing yourself for a new kind of an occupation or changing your kind of relentless lifestyle to one of more flexibility, there's just a lot of different things to do that don't really fit into the genre of retired. So we rebuilt the brand around that, really built an enormous impact and quick resonance actually among the 50 to 64 year olds, and we spent a lot of effort looking at the diversity of our membership because at the time the organization was not representative of the population. It was much more white and much less diverse from a demographic, social, economic as well as racial perspective. And so we wanted to make sure that 20, 30 years later, the organization would continue to be relevant as the population continues to change in terms of its demographic makeup. So we made a lot of changes to the products and services that we offered, launched a product for health insurance, for example, for people 50 to 64, which is a huge issue for people who may want to step out of their normal day job but don't have health insurance. So it was really kind of a remake and then I moved over and ran the for-profit subsidiary of AARP, the business part of it for about seven years. And that's where we really kind of picked up on steroids and got a lot of strong member value products developed for the younger population and that has sustained to this day. You're known as a very innovative leader and you had a lot of success with product innovation to AARP. Innovation today is almost like a buzzword. Why do you think it's so important for leaders to be innovative and forward- thinking? So I think you're so right and I think innovation, the definition of innovation has changed dramatically just in the last five or six years in terms of the pace and the speed and the, to be innovative in the past was to come up with kind of a new bell or whistle on an already existing idea. Now you've got a completely remake of marketplace to be innovative or to be able to qualify for that nomenclature I guess. In every case what I've tried to do is to look at the industry I'm serving whether it's the 50 plus population AARP or whether it's the million restaurants in the restaurant association and say how can we add value to their ability to be successful, fulfilled, human beings, individuals, companies, etc. In the case of AARP I would say the thing I'm the most proud of is what we did in the health insurance realm for people 50 to 64 because that was a product that just didn't exist. You couldn't get it, it wasn't affordable, it wasn't accessible and it definitely was not crafted for that population. The National Restaurant Association is the largest trade group in the US restaurant industry and they recruited you to become the CEO. How has the job evolved over time? That's a great question, it has evolved dramatically in part just because the industry has evolved so dramatically in that time but in part because as you well know when you have great success the bar for success just keeps getting raised and so as you deliver results you have more resources to deliver more results and the aperture gets bigger and bigger and wider in terms of the impact you can make and so we have gone from an organization that represented about 40% of the industry to one that represents about 65% of the industry today. We represent all top 200 brands in the industry which I'm really excited about as well as many, many, many small restaurants that otherwise would not have kind of an advocate to advance their interests. We've built partnerships with all 52 state and regional restaurant associations so we can deliver greater value to the large and small members and I think those innovative moves allow us to have more resources to be more impactful and then again I think the bar for success just keeps getting raised which I love tomorrow has to be better than yesterday. I love waking up every day and just saying how can I be better? How can we do more? How can we be more successful and just raising the bar kind of on ourselves is impactful. You know your jobs evolved over time but how have you as a leader evolved over time? How are you today Don different than you were 10 years ago and have you had some major shifts in what you've learned in leadership? Absolutely as recently as yesterday and as likely as tomorrow I think almost every day I feel literally every day like I learned something that I want to incorporate in my new being that I'm going to try to be tomorrow and sometimes those things are learned through difficulty and tragedy and loss and mistakes and oftentimes frankly I think they are. You grab those things and you internalize them and you try to move forward. Oftentimes they are learned through success and elation and moments of joy and things where you see unexpected success that you didn't necessarily even anticipate. It's interesting I think your all your frontline jobs you had as a kid I'm sure it just has made you really have a great appreciation for the restaurant business. When I came into this job I had never worked in a restaurant and I spent the first 18 months working in restaurants doing shifts all the time every position in a restaurant drive through fry cook prep cook expedite or you know hostess bartender I did every position I could find in a restaurant over 18 months and boy I never worked so hard in my life as I did and boy talk about appreciation that changed everything in terms of my ability to feel like I could speak for people who are in this industry when you work those jobs boy you have a lot of respect for those folks. You're known Don as a fierce tireless advocate for the restaurant industry. Tell us about the biggest fight you've had to take on. I would say the most difficult fight is the work that we did on menu labeling. In this started with a patchwork of regulations and you'll recall this well I know around the country different cities and states that were putting into effect various menu labeling rules saying that menus menu boards had to be labeled with in some cases calorie, sodium, fat, cholesterol all kinds of different things and they were different regulations in each city and state so that a company such as your former company or any very large company that operates in multiple states would have to have different menu boards and menus and you know from literally sometimes one city to the next let alone one state to the next and we had this kind of uprising of these local and state level initiatives and we felt as an industry we had to respond and we responded with a proposal that said we will have this kind of menu labeling in all 50 states it'll be a federal mandate but we were asking as an industry for regulation which was not our normal stance. We normally were opposed to regulatory action against our industry and in this case we were requesting it. We were saying this patchwork of state local is too difficult for our industry we'd like to have a national standard but at the same time we were trying to exempt the smallest restaurant companies who had 20 or fewer locations under the same brand and it was a really tense negotiation both within our own industry which was actually harder in some ways than the work that we did on Capitol Hill to get the industry aligned around a singular model that everybody could live with and then to take that to Capitol Hill and get that passed into legislation which we ultimately did but that was incredibly difficult both within the industry and on the hill to get the support not just to get the support but maybe even more difficult to keep it together during the times when we were getting attacked from all kinds of different angles. What would be the single biggest thing you'd think you did to keep it together to get it done? Communication just really staying connected to our constituency really being transparent and open about what our challenges were taking the intellectual leadership of the industry and bringing it all to bear so that we weren't at the national restaurant association needed to figure everything out by ourselves but really facilitating a process where the intellectual capital of the industry could be leveraged and having them help convince each other as well as us helping to convince everybody was a big part of it. You were the first female CEO for the National Restaurant Association and you 're a tremendous role model for not only women but men but what advice would you give aspiring females who want to take on bigger and bigger leadership roles? I take that role in responsibility extremely seriously because I have been inspired by so many men and women over the course of my career and organizations like the Women's Food Service Forum that are devoted to advancing women leaders in our industry are really vital for developing the skills and competencies and the role models frankly I think for women to be successful. In our industry we still are not at parity in terms of the number of women that are able to ascend to those C-suite levels in our industry and many of us are devoted to changing that. There's a lot of work going on with the leadership of the Women's Food Service Forum to address that but I would say broadly speaking the advice that I would give and that I followed frankly my whole career is good for women men or any of us which is to show up, speak up and deliver your results deliver them. If you deliver results a lot of the other noise gets removed from the equation. I do think kind of my mantra has been for many years work hard and be kind and I think those two things together really are impactful for both women and men. I think the work hard part there's no substitute for that even today. I think there's an awful lot to be said for just getting in there and just working hard. I think the be kind part the further up you ascend in an organization you see more and more opportunity to utilize the footprint and the platform that you have to help other people. I try to do that in every way I can and I think that in kind of a karmic way comes back ultimately to help each of us when we help others. Men sometimes can be uncomfortable when they're giving women feedback. What advice can you give men that will help them be more effective in that area ? That's a great question because women cannot be successful without the help and support of mentorship of men. In our country, in our economy, in our business, men still have so many of those leadership roles and it's just vital I think that that feedback be thoughtful and honest and complete and transparent and delivered in a way that it can be heard. I think sometimes men and women in leadership roles don't always take, I think we have to take a risk on each other, we have to say certain individual may have 80% of the competencies that we think we need for a role. Maybe they don't have 100% but in the case of women they may have checked 8 of 10 of the boxes or 6 of 10 of the boxes. How do we identify those skill gaps? Give the feedback that's needed. Oftentimes it's financial acumen or things like that that they just haven't been afforded an opportunity to have a role that would allow them to build those skills. How do we make an intense effort to put women in roles that give them that experience, that fill those blags and fill those voids so that they can be considered and the pipeline is stronger for women. I think building that pipeline is vital and in terms of feedback I think it's just honestly being honest and sincere and direct is really important. Every week I send out an email to thousands of people to help them develop as a leader. I give them a three-step plan to improve their skills so that they can grow in their confidence and grow their businesses. I'd love to send these emails to you too. To sign up for free go to howleaderslead.com/plan. Again that's howleaderslead.com/plan. You had a distinguished career and you recently retired from the National Restaurant Association as their CEO at the end of 2019. How are you spending your time these days? Well I use you as my inspiration. I continue to. I probably did that for several decades actually but I'm doing the things I love just like you are. I've served on several for-profit and non-profit boards helping large associations in the food and ag and just broader association space to be successful in growing their revenues. I'm doing some consulting work for a very large publicly traded real estate firm and just having a really really good time helping also the National Restaurant Association whatever they call. That's great to hear. I knew you would keep after which is terrific. Being a board member of these days is really challenging. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're up to on that front and what's really changed when it comes to board work? You know I would say honestly having reported to a board for much of my career and now having served on boards for the last decade or so I would say absolutely you are right things are definitely changing. I think it's much more complex. The work is more challenging in a good way. It requires a level of discipline and a cultural understanding of the brand and you were always have been so good at articulating that. I think that has become mainstream now whereas when you first started talking about it it was really a brand new thing that I think based on your work has made the culture of the brand and the leadership essentials really vital right now and I love being in that mix being part of the conversations with the CEOs of these various organizations to help them be their very best. I think it's hard to be a CEO. It's always hard to be a CEO. It's really hard to be a CEO these days. Can you tell us a story about one of the companies that you're working with and one of the big challenges they are having to overcome right now? One of the most interesting boards that I'm serving on is a real estate investment trust that owns shopping centers, open air shopping centers and high demographic areas, mostly suburban markets across the United States. It has been fascinating while we were doing well before COVID. The COVID timeframe really had a major impact on our success honestly because as everybody was migrated back to the suburbs or many people were in these higher demographic areas in particular not going to the office, not going to the city, not going to work in that way. The open air shopping centers that would be really busy on Saturdays and Sundays and maybe Friday nights, not really busy on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday also. We had a real influx of traffic at the restaurants there, at the grocery stores there, at the retail shops and the nail salons and the pet grooming places, etc. It's been really interesting to see what a difference this has made in our ability hopefully to sustain much of the growth that we've had. Even in the midst of the Amazon nature of our world now and retail business changing so much there's still a huge place I believe in our society for coming together. Restaurants obviously being a huge part of that retail. There's just a lot of opportunity in that space particularly in the suburban markets. It's been something I've been enjoying that part of the work as well. Do you think that's desire for people coming together is actually going to bring people back into the office? I mean everybody thinks it's virtual from here on out. What's your view on that? It's interesting because another area that I'm engaged in as a strategic advisor is with a very large real estate firm and they have incredible research and incredible insight that would lead me to believe that it's different. Obviously it's going to be different forever but I do believe people's desire to work together to solve complex problems are going to allow and require more in person. It'll be different in person than we've had pre-COVID. But I think the in-person nature cannot be, I wouldn't count it out at all. I think it's going to be even more important going forward. And again the companies that are going to be doing the best I think are going to be recognizing that and creating opportunities for people to come together in new and different ways to solve these really complex problems that we have in business today. What's on the horizon that you're really excited about on a personal basis? A project that are something that you're part of that really brings you a lot of joy. Honestly everything I do right now brings me a lot of joy which was very true in my career as well but when you're working full time there's always things you have to do that are not your most joyful moments. I only do things that I enjoy now and so that's really super fun for me. I would say the thing I'm working on right now that I'm probably the most excited about is some work with the Georgetown University. I'm an executive in residence there at the business school and we're working on lots of issues at the intersection of government, society, social impact and business and so we're working on things like rural health development. We're working on things like portion balance for helping to advance nutrition and health. Those kinds of issues where you have people from the public and the private sector, the business community working with government which is a lot of the intersection where I spent my career, I really can see progress and it's fun and exciting and impact fully motivating for me to do that. That's some pretty meaty stuff there and when you think about the whole area of nutrition what's changing in that area? I do think people are more aware of the importance of nutrition and health because we've all lived through so many challenges in the last several years. We're not necessarily seeing it in the consumption patterns in a big way I would say but I would say just more broadly speaking. There's more awareness and so perhaps more opportunity to impact that now people are aware and realizing so much of their own health is within their own domain of control and so I'm optimistic about the opportunity to use the silver lining part of COVID to help advance some of those items. It's been so much fun doing this conversation with you and one of the things that I'd like to do is have a little bit more fun with you Don and have a lightning round. Are you ready for this? I'm ready I think. All right what are three words that other people would use to describe you? Optimistic, hard working and whatever the noun version of perseverance is. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself who would it be and why? I would really want to be someone who makes a difference in someone else's life so I would like literally this is I would be holding a baby in the NICU that is coming off method fedamines so that kind of thing that's what I want I don't know who does that but that's who I want to be. What's your biggest pet peeve? People who are late. Do you have a favorite quote? Yes, make no small plans. If I were to get in your car right now what would be coming out of the speakers ? Audrey Day I think is the artist I listen to song called Rise Up. The first thing I play every time I get in my car every day. What is the book that you've bought and given away the most copies of? There's a book called The Speed of Trust written by Stephen Covey Jr. and I if it's on the best seller's list and they've sold 10,000 copies I've bought 2,000 of them. I actually interviewed Stephen Covey and did you really? Terrific, yeah we talked about The Speed of Trust, yeah he's an impressive person. What's something about you that few people would know? That I'm an introvert. It's so funny how all these extroverts try to convince themselves that they're an introvert. I promise you I'm an introvert. I've worked real hard to be out there all these years to be where I need to be and do them what I do but I am at my core I'm an introvert. How do you overcome that or not not overcome? There's nothing wrong being an introvert but how did you become an extrovert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? 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What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? What do you think about the introvert? You know, you talked a little bit earlier about from an early age. You've always chased your personal best. How have you stayed focused on that? And it's so easy for us to measure ourselves against other people's scoreboards . How have you done it? I have been a reader all my life. And now a reader allows you also to be an audible book listener and a podcast and a teacher and TED Talk subscriber and YouTube listener and all those other things that have been created over the last many years. I love to listen to other people's growth stories. And I use those as inspiration for myself. And as you say, hopefully for most of us, we're able to not use it in a comparative way, but in an inspirational way. And that's what I've done my whole life. You know, it's so clear from this conversation how you've continually motivated yourself and you're always learning and you're always improving. What is your personal process around continuous improvement? And how are you sharpening your acts today? For me, it's kind of a two-path process. One is every single day I try to be just a little bit better than I was the day before. That's been my mantra for many years and just a little bit better. Doesn't have to be a big step forward, just a little bit better. It's something that I did the day before that I want to do better the next day. At the same time, I'm also looking for opportunities to take the quantum leap. You know, when I have a chance to move in a big way in an improvement, I try to take advantage of that too. So not doing either to the exclusion of the other, but trying to do both at the same time. When was the last big quantum leap you had? Probably when I retired and didn't say yes to 15 things that I didn't want to do. That's a good one. You know, it takes courage to have your convictions and to stand up what you believe in. And you've done this throughout your career. How was the leader of you fostered that same kind of behavior in others? It is always about surrounding yourself with people from whom you can learn. People who are better than you in multiple dimensions in their abilities to do various things that are important to the advancement of the business or the organization. And really being motivated by the people around you, I have always wanted to be a better leader, not so much because I want to be better, but because I want to be better for my people, for my team, for the people that are counting on me. That's always been a big motivator. And when you're surrounded by incredibly talented people, you have to be because they are demanded, you know, and I appreciate that and I admire it. You know, as we closed on, I'd love for you to leave us with three bits of advice for aspiring leaders. What would they be? I would say to me, the very most important thing is to be self-aware. And that's a lifelong process, but to be very devoted to your own understanding of yourself and who you are and what's important to you. And where your areas of improvement are, so to speak, so definitely self- awareness. The next is probably overstated, but I think it's vitally important, is humility to really honestly genuinely be able to understand who's making what contributions, the fact that none of us individually can do much of anything that it takes a whole team to execute something magnificent. And then the third would be work really hard. I think working hard is a hugely undervalued strategy. And I don't view myself as the smartest person around by any means, but I cannot work most anybody. And that's been, I think, a big part of my success, to be honest with you. Well, Don, you certainly exhibit those three behaviors and that certainly served you well. And I want to thank you once again for taking the time to be on the show. And congratulations on how you're attacking life. I read a book once that said that you shouldn't retire, you should refire, and it sounds like that's exactly what you've done. Exactly my goal. And it's a lot of fun, I will say. And I appreciate the chance to be with you again. And I love this podcast. I just love the work you do. You have such inspiring guests, and I'm learning a lot, continuingly, to learn a lot from you. So thank you so much, David. Thank you. You know, I love this idea of speaking up. And I have to tell you, one of the things I enjoyed most about being the CEO of Young Brands is I love to eat our food. I love to go into the kitchens and try all the new products that we were making . And you know what? I don't know if it's true or not, but I kind of felt like I had the golden palette. I mean, I really think I have a great sense for what tastes good and what doesn 't. So I always would taste the products, and then I would say, you know what? This is good, but it's not distinctive enough. How can we give it more flavor? And then it was so gratifying to come back and find that we had a better pot pie, to find that we had a better Doritos Locos Tacos, to find that we had better crispy strips. It was so exciting to make things better and raise the bar for people and then better yet see them jump over it. One thing's for sure, you got to have the courage of your conviction to speak up and be heard. And if you're credible, people will listen to you. So this week, here's something simple you can do to apply what you've learned in this episode. I would imagine that it won't be long before you're sitting in a meeting and something will be said that you don't agree with. And you're going to have a decision to make. Are you going to speak up or are you going to stay silent? Well, I hope this conversation you heard today will give you the courage to speak up and make everything you do at your company the best it can possibly be. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders speak up when something can be better. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Bill Harrison, the former chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Feedback is long as you do it in a way that you can manage it in control of it is something you ought to do and just deal with it. Get people together, get them to talk, get them to be open and you can resolve a lot of problems and build a team that starts working. So be sure to come back 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. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]