Welcome to Howl Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learnings of the by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Dan Cathy, Chairman and CEO of Chick-fil-A. With Dan at the helm, Chick-fil-A has become the envy of the restaurant industry. The average unit volumes in their stores honestly just boggle my mind, even though they're closed on Sunday, and they've had sales increases every single year of the 75 years they've been in business. Now, you can't get that kind of growth for that long without being really good at innovating and adapting. But somehow, they've done it while also staying true to their founding principles and their values. The secret Dan says is to marry the mission and date the methods. I just love that. Marry the mission and date the methods. That means they're not afraid to try new ideas or get rid of what's not working , whether that's a strategy or a process or a menu item. But the core mission never changes. If you're the kind of person who wants to chart a bold path forward but you don 't want to lose sight of what got you to where you are, then you're going to love this conversation. Although I should warn you, it could cause some pretty severe waffle-fry c ravings. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Dan Cathy. Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us. Thank you, David. Of course, as you well know, that CEO reference that you made, of course, all the listeners know that a course stands for Chief Encouragement Officer. And I want to thank you for setting the pace because you're known industry-wide and throughout all of businesses being the leadership, encouragement, recognition guru. So thanks for being a place set up for all of us here. Thank you, Dan. And let's start out with a little fun. I understand you have a pretty wild sock drawer with all kinds of colors and cows on them. What's the story behind that? I don't know. We just started having fun with that two or three years ago. And I got socks falling out of my drawers there. I got so many socks that people have sent me. I've got some Chick-fil-A socks on right now that are kind of fashionable with the black and white spot and cow socks on. We've got milkshake socks and just all kinds of things that people have sent me over the years. But it's been a lot of fun. And I think those people looking in the wrong direction. And your advertising is also a lot of fun. Featuring a cow saying, "Eat more chicken." What was the thinking behind that approach? I always like to find out, "What's the real story?" How did that happen? Well, it's about 18, 19 years ago, I guess, maybe now. We were our agency of record at the time was the Richards Group in Dallas, Texas and Stan Richards, who started that incredibly wonderful independent agency out of Dallas, Texas. And we wanted to do something different. We were not much on TV at the time, mostly radio and a lot of billboards and directional billboards even that we were doing. So we wanted to do something different. And they came up with several ideas. And one of which was this one cow sitting on the back of another cow with a dri ppy paint brush that did their best to spell eat more and chicken. The best they could do with chicken was CHI, K-I-N. And it had such a... People just resonated with the plight of these poor, helpless, senseless cows. It did not have a spell very well, but they were passionate, getting their message out. And David, you can appreciate this. I get letters from time to time from English teachers reminding us of the dis service to literacy in America with these pals on billboards all over the country that don 't spell very well. I sent them a little letter back. I said, "Well, if you'll pass out copies of our latest ads to the students, let them circle the Miss Bell words, then maybe we can help on the literacy issue." But they're a great campaign for it. People ask me, "How long I'm going to keep it up? I like to tell them we're going to continue to milk it until the cows come home ." Well, I don't blame you. It's one of the best in the industry by far. I love what you put on your name badge. You call yourself the chief encouragement officer. What's on your name badge? So it says, "In training, David," and this came from visiting one of our restaurants at a grand opening several years back. All the new employees had this sort of in training attached to their name tag. I said, "What is this all about? How do you get one of these?" I said, "Well, these are our new team members and they're learning a lot. They're reading books, they're watching videos." And besides that, if they make a mistake, if the customer sees that they're just a trainee, they're in training, then maybe they'll extend a little grace to them. I said, "Wow." I said, "I like that idea. I like to have four or five of those myself." So I got an answer to my name badge, which I did. And obviously it provokes a little conversation, but it's very serious with me because I don't do it as a joke. I do it to really ask myself, "Am I still learning? How many books did I read? Who's podcast am I listening to?" And actually, how many mistakes am I making? Because as a leader, we need to make mistakes just to let everybody else know that they're free to try new things as well. And as you know, business today is driven by curiosity. And we've got to be curious. We've got to be explore things. We've got to make mistakes. And that's got to be very tolerable within the organization. So the leader has to set the pace. Yeah, I think you're very serious about that name badge. It really makes a lot of sense as you talk about it. And at the same time, Dan, you do have a lot of fun. There's no question about that. How important do you think it is for a leader to break through the clutter in the organization and have a little fun with themselves and not take themselves too seriously? Well, the leader leaders, obviously, as you know, have to set the tone for the rest of the organization. And as rapidly as the marketplace is changing today, if we're not having this playful attitude of exploration and adventure, we're doing our organizations a disservice. You know, a rut as someone has described David as a grave with both ends knocked out. And it's so easy for any of us leaders as well to lapse into the convenience of ready thinking. We get into a trough and it can lead to our demise. One of my leadership heroes of the '80s and '90s was Jack Welch. And I love what he said when he quoted that when the rate of external change exceeds the rate of internal change, disaster is imminent. And so being well traveled and seeing a lot of things keeps us from getting into a rut and keeps our thinking sure up alive, we're constantly looking like scouts on the top of a mountain looking, you know, over the hill into the next valley, trying to anticipate where the puck is headed. Well, you're one of the best innovators in the consumer world these days. And you know, you talk about innovation being an iteration. You know, tell us your thinking on that. Well, it's not just the Eureka, you know, bright idea that kind of dawns on us, but I think a lot of innovation, frankly, is just the fresh combination. You had a wonderful affiliation in your career, of course, with Harlan Sanders and his, you know, secret spices that he put together. You know, those spices have been around since God created earth, just like Stephen Jobs and an apple phone or an out phone or an iPad, you know, those minerals that those fundamental hardware pieces have been around forever. But what he put together was a fresh combination. Great chefs are always working on great new combinations. Business leaders, I think David of the same way, we are always looking for a fresh combination that's exciting, that's new, it's interesting, it's novel, it solves a customer problem, maybe a problem they don't even know they have. But as leaders, we've got to anticipate maybe a problem that they might have. I never knew I needed an iPhone, you know, that has all these incredible exciting features on it five years ago. Now, I don't know how to live without it. So it's all about putting, you know, fresh combinations and unique combinations around. And it's a lot about incremental improvement, leaning in little nuances every day, you know, just continuing to tweak with a real eye to the outside world as we make internal changes. You know, I don't know if I've met too many people that love ideas more than you and you're an idea man. You know, so I imagine you have so many ideas, you can drive your people crazy with all the things that you probably want to do. You know, how do you go about processing your own ideas before sharing them with your team? Yeah. Well, one, I take people with me. I don't go solo, whether it's visiting one of our restaurants or if it's going to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas or other conferences, we take groups of people with us. South by Southwest in the last 10 years has been a tremendous inspiration for me. And we rent two air B&Bs and populate those at a conference like that with accounting people, lawyers, operations, tax accounting and so forth, so that we bring everybody along with us. If I had the vocabulary Shakespeare, it would be impossible for me to fully communicate some of the things that I see on my travels. So I think it's essential as leaders, we need to be well-traveled, but we better be having other people in tow with us because it's something about being on site in the moment in which we're seeing something, we say, "Hey, that's a great idea. We need to apply this." That way, you've already got some built-in momentum already when you come back to share the new process. When you come up with an idea on your own, do you let it ruminate a little bit before you share it? Absolutely, David. I think that's a very important point because ideas can be very fragile. We can drop them too easily. We need to let them incubate. And then at the right time, just very, very modestly, begin to open the curtain to what that idea might be because if you've not built enough courage and enough passion or emotion around the idea, somebody's going to rain on your parade too quickly. But let it ruminate, go running, play around the golf, whatever we need to do, let these things resonate with us to see if they really are viable. This is something that really moves us personally. Can this something we can really be passionate about? Because it's for sure we're going to hit headwinds because the natural tendency is to put things to stay exactly as they are. It takes a lot of energy. People change for three reasons. They change for pain, as you know. Get your head off the hot stove. Pain, fear of consequence, or vision. Pain is a real easy motivator to motivate everybody to get a vaccine when everybody's suffering as they have been with COVID-19. But it could be fear of consequence, but to get people to move based on vision takes a lot of energy. But it's very sustainable once it gets going. Dan, what would be the biggest idea you thought you had that didn't turn out so well? Oh my goodness. One that comes to mind is I've shared with you is the idea of expanding Chick- fil-A to South Africa before we had expanded into our neighboring countries like Canada or Puerto Rico or Mexico. And we jumped out into a very volatile world in South Africa. I won't get into all the circumstances of why we were there. But I'm so passionate, continued to be that Chick-fil-A is a brand that needs to see its day in other countries. But after we opened our first store there in '96 and two others in the next 48 months after that, but we ended up closing all three of them in 2001 after five years. So a lot of lessons to be learned. It helped me move a little bit more cautiously, representing how challenging these things need to be and how important it is that we have really, really good strategies. So we've expanded now into Canada, doing very well there in Toronto. We'll be expanding this year in Puerto Rico and hope to learn a lot of lessons, David, from you and your leadership at Young Brand. So there's a lot of good research out there that we need to take advantage of. Well I definitely think you will be a global brand. You've got everything it takes. Was there ever a time that you felt that your organization was getting a bit stale? And if so, what did you do about it? Yes. When we started seeing the movement towards salads and produce and consumers warning waters and other kinds of things, we didn't have a good water partner. Co-kid not come up with DeSanti at the time. We were doing a lot of independent water brands. We were not moving as fast with our salad programmers we needed to. We were not breaking up our front counters so we had better access to the consumer. We were just feeling very stodgy for me. And ultimately we partnered up with SCAD, Savannah College of Art Design, as many MBA programs have done where they partnered up with great design schools to kind of kickstart a more innovative thinking process within the culture of our business. This year we're celebrating 75 years of being in business. And I say that as I was talking about innovation, to say that the seeds of self -destruction are right there in that statement that we've been involved in business for 75 years because you start paying the cow pass. Your museum of the past is bigger than the museum of the future. And so we radically redesigned our whole innovation process, put everybody through it. We started doing much more prototyping and we built full-scale mockups and warehouses, practicing, rehearsing our drive-to-play, redesigning prototypes of equipment. Now I think we're an industry leader in that right now. You know, Dan, I can't go any further without asking you what I know everyone wants me to ask and I know you've answered it a billion times. Why do you, why in the world do you close your doors on Sunday? You know, analysts say that you're leaving at least $2 billion in annual sales on the table. How'd that decision come about? Well, it goes all the way back, David, to the time my dad worked with his mom in a boarding house in Southwest Atlanta. My grandfather was not able to provide for the family and so that responsibility, by default, fell on the shoulders of my grandmother. And so she opened up their home to borders that would come and stay. And my dad's job was to work with his mom in the kitchen, shucking corn and shell and peas and washing dirty dishes. And on Sunday, after they had a big meal, he was still out there washing pots and pans while his buddies were out there having a good time. And he said even as a young child, if he ever got in the restaurant business, he would close on Sunday because he didn't like to ask other people to do that, which he was not willing to do himself. That was not a big issue until the 1946 when he opened up his first restaurant. He decided to be closed on Sunday then. It was not a big trading day, as you can imagine back in the 1940s. But it really became an issue as we got into shopping malls, particularly in the 80s and certainly the 90s as being up seven days away was more common. By then, we'd already established a reputation that we generated more business in six days than any of our competitors did in seven. And we've maintained that practice. From a practical standpoint, I like to say that our food tastes better on Monday because we're closed on Sunday. And I really believe that if we will make sure that we take time and we're honoring our people behind the counter, internal service quality, it gets external service quality. And to the degree, and I know you believe this so much because of all the things you've written and said, David, yourself, but as we love our people and they know that we love them, then that idea of loving and care and concern and genuineness at the personal level, that spills over the counter in ways that we'd never be able to describe. And a three ring binder on our website someplace. Also think that as Solomon said that if we'll be wise to acknowledge the Lord in all our ways, He'll direct our paths. And for us, it's just a little bit as our nation says, in God we trust and at Chick-fil-A, we express that by being closed on Sunday. I respect that enormously. And you mentioned her, Frother, and he was an amazing man. And I believe he died when he was 93 years old. And I understand that he would have turned 100 years old yesterday if he was still alive. When you think of your father, Dan, and I know you could go on and on about him , but what would be the single biggest thing you learned from him? Well, obviously he didn't teach me how to grow hair because I'm as bald-headed as he was. I think it's part of being in the restaurant business. But I'm surprised you still have such a nice head of hair and stuff, David. I don't have volumes like yours. Golly, I would say learn to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. And I think that's really true in this day and time. Things are moving so rapidly. We all have strategic plans. We have budgets we have to put together on an annual basis. We refresh those and update those, of course, throughout the year. But if we would allow a little white space on our calendar, if we would have a little extra cash so that we can move and adapt quickly to ever-changing dynamics that are going on in the marketplace, that we could incubate new ideas, then we could have things on the back burner, as we might say in the restaurant business. We may find that those things on the back burner, all of a sudden, are catapult ed forward to the main stage, the main entree at a moment's notice. So it's important to have that debt. So let's learn to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Oh, that's great. You know, I read this and I understand that he made you sign a covenant that you'd never take the company public and not open up on Sunday. Is that a true story or? No, it's not. It was thinking. Not true, David. In this, he didn't make us do it. Actually, it was my brother and my sister, and I was three of us kids, and it was not his suggestion or even his idea. But way between the three of us, we said, we need to affirm our parents. We need them to know that now we're in our adult years, that we want to affirm the values and the principles that they taught us to be cooperative and collaborative in the way in which we make decisions to be honorable and respectful of our restaurant operators and our corporate staff, and that we're not going to open on Sunday, and we're not going to take the public, the company public. And we just simply wrote that in two or three little paragraphs. Each signed our name to it. We presented it to our parents, and we really had no intention of making a public statement about it. We shared it with our operators and shared it with our corporate staff, and it seemed to really meant a lot to them. So it was not at all something he made us do, but something that we willingly committed to him. Someone said that children are messengers we send to a time we will not see. And so I hope that between our marriages and all our children that continue to be involved with our business, that we can be an extension of that life's message. I love the fact that you guys did that. That's just great. And now you look at Chick-fil-A, and you are the envy of the industry by far. You have the highest average unit volumes in the industry, over $5 million per store. And just for our listeners out there, KFC would do a little over a million per store. So that's just a huge business. But listen to this. Just a few facts here for you. 90 stores that are Chick-fil-A's do over $10 million in sales. And one store in California does $17 million. These are like unheard of volumes. Dan, tell us about your business model. How do you do this? Well, it's built on the idea that Dad, when he was 25 years old after World War II, opened his first little restaurant called the Dwarf Grill. And when he and his brother opened that restaurant, the only cash they had was $4,600. And that's after they sold the car that they owned between the two of. Then they got a loan for $6,000. So for a little over $10,600, they bought the land, built the building, and equipped it. But he really languished over it, having enough capital to grow the business and do the things that he wanted to do. And to advertise, he had a lot of inherent marketing savvy, although he never attended college. And so when we opened our first shopping mall location in 1967, he remembered back what it was like for him to be 25 years old. To not have the cash, he had a burning desire to be successful. And so we built our Chick-fil-A operator model today after that experience that he had. So we Chick-fil-A corporately, we fund all the capital that it takes for the restaurant, for the real estate, the building, equipment. And we sign an operating agreement with an individual to operate that location. And unlike any other franchise systems, we actually share in the profitability of that restaurant, not just the percentage of the sales. And that's very unique. And it puts us on the same side of the table with our restaurant operators. Any new equipment, any new menu items, any major renovations that are required, we as the brand fully fund that. So that keeps our restaurants looking sharp and not dependent upon the cash reserves of a local franchisee to put money back into the business. And that over time has become a distinct competitive advantage. And you've had, believe it or not, everybody, 75 years of sales increases. When you look at just the Chick-fil-A success, what do you think is the key that drives the sustained success that you've had? Oh my goodness. You know, I don't want to be overly spiritual here, but if you ask it that way, I have to be very honest with you to say that we feel like God has divinely blessed our business. And it's nothing that we've earned or deserved. None of us ever earned or deserved God's favor on our lives, on our marriages, on our health. It's just a gift that comes from Him. But if we'll just acknowledge Him, as I mentioned earlier in all our ways, He 'll help us make wise decisions. He'll help us make good decisions about how much debt we take home. He'll help us make wise decisions about people choices and decisions that we make. Peter Drucker wisely said, "It's not about the what. It's all about the who." And boy, do we have to ask for a lot of wisdom to make good choices about selection of restaurant operators. It's said that it's easier to get a job with the CIA than it is with CFA because we labor so hard in multiple interviews that may take the course over several years actually before a person. You know, we decide on a person for an individual restaurant. So selection of people, be careful in making good decisions. And if we just pray and ask God to give us wisdom, He will. You know, with the kind of success you've achieved, you could either grow or swell, Dan. How do you keep the company and yourself hungry? Well, he keeps my feet on the ground to be married to my wife who helps me keep my feet on the ground, for sure. You know? And we all of these leaders have to have these people that are truth tellers in our life that man, they won't let our heads swell up with pride or arrogance or hubris. And as I said, when you walk around with it and your name text is in training, you know, you make mistakes, it's easy to be. It's easy to have attitude of gratitude and thankfulness that you're surrounded by such a wonderful, incredible group of people that we've accumulated into our Chick- fil-A family over a long period of time. I do think growth and a growth mindset, David, is very important to momentum. We personally have got to be growing in every way, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And that growth mindset becomes a magnet for other people to say, "Hey, I want to get caught in the wake of that kind of growth. I want to be reading off his reading list. I want to be listening to his podcast and on and on and on. So there's a draft, if you will, that is the leader moves forward in their own personal and professional development. And people want to draft alongside that and they flourish. And so some of the leaders that we have in our own, Norm Brinker is an example. I think of Norm out of Dallas, Texas. He passed away here a number of years ago, but he was kind of like the Jack Welch. Would you agree in our industry? Yeah, he was amazing in terms of attracting leaders. Yeah. So, you know, Dan, you know, speaking of leadership, you started out at the top of the show talking about the COB and the chief encouragement officer. What hats do you wear as the CEO? I mean, do you think about wearing different types of hats or do you just kind of see your role in, you know, pretty single-minded fashion growth or? The leaders I see are so, they're buzzing around. They're in so many different areas of their business and they're in so many different areas in the marketplace, as I said, being well-traveled. There's a lot of people like Sam Walton who are the baseball hat which sit on a concrete floor with his associates doing the Wal-Mart cheer with the squiggly and everything. There are people like Bernie Marcus Arthur Black who had walked through Home Depot's with the R.J. Pranone. You know, these are the kind of earthy, approachable leaders that are authentic . You can see the transparency. They open their lives up. They're incredibly accessible. They easily share their cell phone numbers, their email addresses. They make it easy for people to know that they can get in touch with them. And those are the kind of leaders I admire. Those are the kind of hats, if you will, that you put it, that I think we have to wear. You mentioned it earlier. You're a family of entrepreneurs. And as you look in the future, how do you keep the spirit of entrepreneurship alive in your own company? And do you worry about losing them? There's a wonderful book out now, David, that I really resonated with in our Chick-fil-A halls and it's the founder's mentality. And it's going back and trying to understand what were some of the key fundamental principles of entrepreneurship that led to the evolution or the development of a business. And somehow we need to continue to tell those stories and to incubate some of that skill level. Now Chick-fil-A is a privately held business and it's just our own family members that own the business. And it'll be to our death if we don't continue to perpetuate entrepreneurial skills. And so we very intentionally are building new business ventures that our third generation can participate in. I myself have got a lot of side hustles that have really helped me expand my thinking about new markets, new industries, and how if we could have two or three different industries that we could hold in our head at the same time and watch how rapidly they are evolving, we'll find that it's going to be a tremendous benefit to our core business in expanding our thinking and see the possibilities that are out there. Dan, you mentioned this or you referenced a little bit earlier. We did go through an incredible experience as a country when we saw the tragic murder of George Floyd and racial equality is a huge issue in our country. How much of the recent events really influenced your leadership? Well, it has to be a heartbreaking situation for us. And it was breaking my heart before we saw the summer of 2020 as I saw the issues of crime in our 30314 zip code in Atlanta. It was the number one zip code in Atlanta right across from a multi-billion dollar football stadium, number one zip code in the state of Georgia on homicides, home forecl osures, HIV/AIDS, high school dropouts, incarceration rates, number one in the whole state of Georgia right across from this incredible football stadium, which I was very supportive of, but I'm not supportive of having people dig around in a trash can trying to find something to eat. When we got to people eating cocktails in caviar at a nice stadium and we failed to acknowledge and Arthur Blank, who is a dear friend and colleague in Atlanta, he also broke his heart. And so Arthur Blank and myself and other Atlanta citizens that have a burden for this see the need. And so these issues like we saw of injustice, they've got to break our heart. It's got to be something that emotionally moves us to take action. We're allocating, for instance, this year in our Chick Play Foundation and our win shape giving programs where we're focusing in on black led, African American led, ministries and social organizations, because we're going to have to really heavy up in these communities to span the bridge of the chasm. There's so many factors, David, that are causing a divergent seater. For instance, the internet creates huge learning inequities like we've seen with remote education. It doesn't work when you don't have a high speed access cable coming into your home or apartment where you may live. And so we've got to step in the gap. We're going to have to go out of our way to make up of these inequities that we have. It'll take a long time to close this gap, but I feel like it's a moral imperative for us as a nation. I agree. You know, moving back, shifting gears and going back to Chick-fil-A a little bit, you know, absolutely focused on the customer experience. I mean, I remember talking to you years ago about, you called me up and you told me about your extra mile service program that you had. And one of the things that I really love seeing in your restaurants is how focused you are in the family experience. You know, everybody talks about creating that, you know, unique retail experience, but you're really focused on the family. How do you think about that? Well, we have a family bias in that we're one we're owned by a family. We have family leadership that's with the brand, our operators, our restaurant operators, you know, our family members themselves who have a spouse that may be working for them. They may have a son or daughter that is working in that restaurant as well. And many of them that are working as sons and daughters, they aspire to want to be there, be a restaurant operator themselves. And we have dozens and dozens of our restaurants now that are operated by second and even third generation, you know, families that have been in the business. But we we're serving families in our local communities, both the urban stores as well as suburban stores with children's playgrounds and so forth. We love to do events, David. We can't wait to get back to doing events. We can repopulate our diagrams again after COVID. But we have what we call daddy daughter date night, for instance, which is a fun deal where we our local operator will get a limousine or maybe even a horse strong carriage. And the dad will be there with his date, which is a young his young daughter. And she'll be all dressed up like a Valentine's night, perhaps. And they'll take a ride around the store and a horse strong carriage. If you can imagine this, we'll turn out the lights in the dining room and light up candles on our tables. We'll have a printed menu. We'll see them. And not only can they order off the little menu there, we'll bring it to their table table side like a four store, five store restaurant. But then we have discussion guides, David, which really cool. And it's questions that a daughter can ask their daddy and questions that the daddy can ask the daughter. You know, one of the fun questions, you know, daddy, when did you and mommy kiss for the first time? You know, girls have never heard that story, but those are fun little stories to prompt. And, you know, Chick-fil-A, if we can be the most caring company, it's because we care about helping parents be better parents and to love their children and to be the examples that they are so needed today. You guys are definitely doing it. And that's why you have the kind of volumes you have. You know, you want to come back to Chick-fil-A. You know, it's amazing when you go through the drive-through at a Chick-fil-A and you got all these cars just stacked up. But I have to tell you, I go in that drive-through with 100% confidence that I 'm not going to be there that long and the time flies. And, you know, how do you build a culture of speed like that in your restaurant ? Well, it's enabled David with a lot of technology. I would say that before COVID, we'd been leaning forward into, as I mentioned earlier, as we think about innovation and creativity. You know, you're oftentimes working on projects that may not have an immediate apparent application, but are more, you know, kind of where the puck is headed as Wayne Gritzke, that great hockey player would say. And so we have to have, you know, built in this reservoir of new thinking, new ideas. And we had a crash and burn on our electronic payment transaction system with credit cards that went all the way across the country. It was an awful day. It was back in the March. And boy, had we not had some backup, new currency things that we were working on, backup systems, we would have been in big, big trouble. So it's not just for the anticipation of growth of the future, but it also helps build, you know, a defense mechanism that you can handle emergencies when they come your way, which they should have. We can never anticipate everything that's going to happen. So we better build a big, big strength. It was major news would, I think, was Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. They had a drive through coronavirus vaccine clinic. And the cars were just backed up there and people couldn't get their vaccinations. And I understand the mayor, the town mayor, called the Chick-fil-A manager and asked him to help him out. And what happened? So yeah, I think the headline is calling it. The mayor says, let's call in the professionals. So they call the local Chick-fil-A operator who within minutes kind of saw the problem that was there and began to apply some of the expediting ways in which we move cars, move people, organize things just a little bit better. But we just make little small tweaks, David, and it'd be amazing how much better the throughput is of whatever the system may be. So someone said that we need to Chick-fil-A needs to be administering all the COVID testing and all the vaccine distribution. But we're going to stick to what we know to do. But it's honoring when that happens and to know that you can be trusted and to be able to trust where the brand. So all of this is leaders. Let's keep the main thing the main thing. And that's really important first. Let's get better and better at making these incremental improvements every day. Speaking of COVID, how did COVID impact your business? What did you do to really make your business thrive in this tough time? Because you had increases in sales this past year. Well, I'll save the punchline to give you that answer in just a moment, but to say that it had a huge impact on any retail business, obviously. Many of which have immediately shut down for the most part. You know, during the month of March and April, we began to kind of figure out how we could safely repopulate our restaurants with team members. And we have thousands of teenagers that are working with us and huge responsibility to parents of young teenagers to have a safe working environment for them. So we put hand-washing stations and all of our drive-throughs. We deployed iPads and tripled the population of people outside, taking up orders. Our local building authorities in zoning permitted us to have canopies and covers that we began to put out in our parking lots. But the net of it is we shut down our restaurants and the inside of our restaurants. We moved all that business outside and we ended up with a little over a 10% overall sales increase for our system in 2020, which we were very, very grateful for. Well, you know, what's the capital A stand for in Chick-fil-A? It stands for Grade A, the original chicken sandwich. Dad named and put it on his little dwarf girl menu called a chicken steak sandwich. And it was such a hit on our menu that other restaurant tours wanted to, you know, we serve this chicken sandwich too. But then went to an attorney to find out you could not register the name chicken steak sandwich. It was too generic. It came up with a spony little spelling, Chick, and then Phil in the A. So the Phil A is a play off the idea of a filet mignon, but then the little twist with the -A standing for Grade A, number one, U.S. Grade A. So that was the idea, Chick, and then Phil, and then the -A. And by the way, David, you'll appreciate this. He paid an artist $75 in Atlanta to come up with that little chicken comb and the beak and the lye that's there, $75. And I've got a copy of that invoice. The best that I've ever spent. You're right about that. And you know, you've added new products over time, including, I know you have this mac and cheese product. How does a new product earn its way on the menu? Well, it has to go through quite a gauntlet. You know, one is, does it meet a need that we don't already have covered on our menu? And again, those needs continue to evolve and change. The items that we had like coleslaw and carrot raisin salad and potato salad at one time, those were great products back in the '60s and '70s, but we had to move along. And the expression that I really resonate with, it says we've got to marry the mission and date the methods. And some, oftentimes in the restaurant business, we can have some tired, worn out menu items that are tired and worn out, but they've been such a tradition that we keep them anyway. But they take up space. They take up space, as you know, in equipment in the kitchen, you know, small kitchens, you can't keep adding things to the menu. And certainly with a drive-through business, you add complexity and it takes longer for people to make choices looking at menu boards. So you've got to be committed to pruning your menu in the restaurant business. And every business has to prune their ideas. You know, don't pave the cow pass. Don't marry methods. We need to stay married to the mission and only date the methods. And I believe about 90% of it is methods. Only 10% is the mission. So in other words, everything needs to be subject virtually to change except for our core mission and our core why of what we're doing. So we're constantly evolving our menu. We've got all kind of test panels. We've got dietitians where we're anticipating new flavors, new ingredients, continuing to improve our existing menu items, but incubating. And we'll probably have at any given time at least a dozen or more items that are in prototype and six or eight different markets and it's about a two year process. I know that sounds long and it's longer than it should be, but we really work these new items to make sure they're going to work in our kitchen. Also, make sure we can train our people to do it properly and make sure that it doesn't starve off other menu items that may be in a competing space. Well, that mindset drives operational excellence for sure. And then when you think about your life and your career, you've had so much success, but everybody struggles. What would be the biggest personal adversity you ever faced and how did you handle it? There was a time early in my career in the 1980s, I guess it was, where we did a survey David in which our customers in a particular market said and we were just beginning to do customer surveys. That became very popular in the 80s and 90s and we have mystery shoppers in different processes and so forth that have evolved over time. But initially, we were doing just a little interview survey and there was a time I was in charge of directly in charge of operations and the result was 25% of the customers said based on that visit, they would not return back to Chick-fil-A. And now I was a gasp of that to think 25% you're losing 25% of your customers, think of how much effort it takes to replace those customers. And so I thought that everybody else was the problem. I thought those operators weren't Chick-fil-A restaurant operators, they weren 't paying attention to cleanliness in the restroom. And the Wall for Fries were getting cold and the service was surly and those operators, they need to be doing a very good job. I was pointing to the Fager Tower operations people and our corporate staff that they're playing too much golf. They're not actually confronting problems and owning them. And after about a year and a half of beating up on everybody else, there was a book that mysteriously appeared on my desk called Quality is Free by Philip Crosby. And in this book Quality is Free, one of the salient points that really hit me between the eyes is when he said that what's in a business is a reflection of leadership. And boy was that incriminating. If I really accepted that, that means that that's surly, you know, service or cold wall for fries or dirty restrooms, that was a reflection of me and my attitudes and my behavior. But if I could change me, I could change the rest of the organization. So all of a sudden I had a much different attitude and I became a student. We began to study what was going on in quality in the automobile industry and in other industries. And this quality revolution that was going on in the 80s and the 90s, they kind of put us back into a globally competitive place in a lot of manufacturing areas. And we applied those principles to Chick-fil-A and it changed our bit, but it changed because I had a different attitude as a leader. I said, I've got to learn this. I've got to know this. I've got to have a teachable spirit. And I've tried to maintain that still today since I'm just a training. You're a very good training. You know, this has been so much fun. I got to ask you some questions. I love to do this lightning round of Q and A here. So I'm going to do a real quick lightning round of Q and A. What three words best describe you? A visionary, passionate and caring. If you could be one person for a day that isn't you, who would it be and why? If I could roll back the clock, it would maybe be a Sam Walton because he was such a courageous leader and he turned retailing up on his ear. I have a great effort. I had a privilege of meeting one time and being one of his Saturday morning meetings and it was one of the great memories of my life. I've seen those there. What's your biggest pet peeve? Letter on the floors. I love to pick up paper. I hate to see it. But so I'm a paper picker upper. I'm going to let me walk in our little restaurant as a child and let's say I had a cigarette butter, you know, something in my hand. So all these picking things up. Only thought is when I pick up paper, my wife won't hold my hand until I wash my hands. That's only probably. This is something about you that few people would know. Not many people know that I'm a trumpet player. I'm an avid and lifelong musician. Love music and I try to practice every day and I'm staying in pretty good shape . I've got a wedding coming up soon for a nephew. So I'll be ready to go. You're an avid learner. You visit all different kinds of companies, you know, Mattel, Google, all over the place. What's your favorite best practice visit? Recently at Amazon, I mean, I could cite a bunch of them, but recently been in Amazon in Seattle and seeing the way they've organized their campus to see how forward thinking they are in collaborative learning space. That and other site visits cause us to dramatically change, you know, the whole style in which we operate. We have I have no desk. I have no credenza. I have no door. I have no defined space. I have a little locker like everyone else has where I could put a put a hat or a raincoat or an umbrella or whatever. But I just migrate all over the office. You know, when we when we reconvene our office, which you've not had for the last year, but I think it's been able to move around. But visiting, you know, places like Amazon and others, these new learning environments, the new operating environments are critical to business performance. You know, we talked about your dad. What's the biggest lesson you learn for your mom? She was the technology person. She was the early adapter. She we were the first ones to have world book encyclopedia, David, on the old Turner Road. So she was the first one to have a Kodak, an instrument camera with the little rotating flash cube on it. She was the first one to have a big, it looked like a big suitcase that was a video photographer to, you know, do capture videos. So I appreciate that about her. And I still try to be absorbent technologist as often as I can. About to wrap this up, just two more questions. One would be, what would be, you've given a lot of great advice already, but what would you be the three bits of advice that you would most want to give aspiring leaders? Well, if I was sitting in a dining room, as I often do, and I'll put together six rated the leaders that are there, and there's, if I was sitting in the Chick-fil-A dining room with aspiring leaders who are young in their career, perhaps they're older teenagers or in their 20s, I would remind them of a simple little Sunday school lesson that my dad often taught to 13-year-old boys. And I think still resonates with us today. You see the three most important decisions we make, start with the letter M, who our master in life is going to be, who our mate in life is going to be, and what our mission in life is going to be. And if we get really squared up and make some really, really thoughtful and wise decisions about our master, mate, and mission, I think we'll be set on a trajectory of success. And I believe God wants us all to be successful, to be the total person he wants us to be, and accomplishing the goals that he helps us to set for our life. Dan, do you have any thoughts on your legacy and how you want to shape the company in the future? Well, I do think companies are at their best when they meet the needs of the marketplace, but they're great citizens in the community. Our corporate purpose probably best expresses how I'd like to be thought of, and it was defined about 35 years ago, and it simply says this, that our purpose, the big wine statement, Simon Sinek, as we know, asked the question, start with wine. So this is the wine. And for me, it's very personal. It says that we're here to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that 's entrusted to us, and to have a positive influence on all the coming content we check for life. That is great. This just makes me have to ask you one more question. You are just unabashed Christian. You believe with God with all your heart, how much does prayer come into your life in terms of the decisions that you make? Well, today's marketplace, as it always has, has called for courageous leadership. And I think there's a sense of inadequacy that every leader has to deal with. If we don't have inadequacy, then we set the bar too low. We're not aspiring to big, hairy, audacious, be-hat goes. Be-hat stands for big, hairy, audacious goals. And so as leaders, nobody's going to aspire to get excited about little dreams. Little dreams stir no man's heart. And I firmly believe as a leader, the bigger, the bolder, the more courageous the goals that we set for ourselves, the easier it is to lead. We better be prayerful, ask God to give us a lot of wisdom, to give us the strength and the courage we need, just like He gave to Joshua in the Old Testament. That's one of the reasons I think the Bible is so authentic. It's so real. It helps us understand our own weaknesses, our own falleability, how weak we really are if we really are honest with ourselves, how much in need we are of those around us that can give us the encouragement that we need. Well, Dan, I want to thank you so much for the great advice that you're offering our aspiring leaders. And thank you for being so open with how you're building your business and your faith. You're an incredible person and I admire you very much. Well, thank you David. And thank you for the work that you're doing. The leadership, as you so often said, leaders aren't born. They're built. They're people that are pouring in to the next generation. And for those that aspire to want to be a leader, it's a noble thing to want to lead for the sake of the influence that we can have on the next generation. If we fail to lead, if leaders that have values, good values and good principles, if they fail to lead, then by default, that leadership of influence is going to go to something less and we can't let that happen in society. We cannot have that happen in the marketplace. Leaders with boldness, encouraging, good faith have got to lead and they've got to be intentionally pouring into others. So it's a real honor, David, to see the influence that you're having, the thousands of people that you're reaching. I love listening to your podcast when I'm out jogging and that's when I get pumped. And I find out if I listen to David Novak's podcast, I'm actually going to run a little faster. So you're the best. You're the best. And thank you for that Chick-fil-A coupon. I can't wait to go get that original chicken sandwich. Yeah, just name David. Be sure to bring somebody else with you to pay his full price. Okay, I'll do it. I obviously came up in the restaurant industry and I have to tell you that was a conversation I just loved. Isn't Dan Cathy a great storyteller? And gosh, he has a lot of great stories to tell about the success that Chick- fil-A has had since he's been in charge. They really do have the best run restaurant operations in the world. And I have to tell you, I'm envious. And Dan's probably got the most fun sock drawer in the world too. I just love that. This guy has everything, the best restaurant company in the world and a sock drawer that everybody wants. And this week, as part of your weekly personal development plan, I want you to do something silly. I want you to buy yourself a pair of fun socks. No, I'm serious. Not just any fun socks. I want you to find a pair that's going to remind you of your mission. For Dan, his socks have milkshakes and cow spots on him. For you, I imagine it'll be something different. I know what I'm looking for right now. I'm looking for some socks with some golf balls on him because I want to improve my game. But when you wear them, you're going to look down and smile and be reminded of a huge lesson for every leader. We've got to find new methods to stay fresh and grow and be innovative. And by the way, have some fun while we're doing it. Never losing sight of our mission. Our big why that guides us and inspires us. Marry the mission and date the methods and hey, go out and buy yourself a pair of socks. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders understand that the methods change, but the missions don't. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader that you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]