The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
Trace: Welcome to Scaling UP! the podcast for water treaters by water treaters, where we’re Scaling UP! on knowledge so we don’t scale UP! our systems.
Hi everybody! Trace Blackmore here, your host for Scaling UP! and folks I want to let you know that I appreciate all your questions and comments. That you go to https://scalinguph2o.com/ and let me know what you want me to talk about on this show.
That is the only way I know what to talk about and the only reason I have a show. So please keep those coming. So today, I want to ask a couple questions to get us started. We all have jobs because of our customers but do our customers know how much we value them? Maybe a more important question for us to ask is do you realize that your customer can get a similar service from somewhere else?
So, how do you show your customer your value while showing them how valuable they are to you? Folks, you know that I love to study business and how businesses practice business. So, when I find a business that demonstrates the answers to these questions and each and every transaction that they do.
I want to share that with you but before I do. I want to talk about one of my favorite tools, and that tool is Audible. Audible is the tool that I use to read books while I am driving, and you can try Audible for free by going to https://scalinguph2o.com/audible. Well folks, if you haven’t figured it out already the business that I’m referring to is Chick-fil-a.
Now, chick-fil-a is a staple here in the Southern United States and I’m willing to bet that most of you out there in this Scaling UP! Nation are familiar with this restaurant. They get involved in their community, they teach their employees work ethic, and these are employees of all ages I might add and above all else they make sure that you know it is their pleasure for them to serve you.
Our guest today is Daniel Perry owner of the Lawrenceville Georgia chick-fil-a restaurant. Join me as I interview Daniel about how chick-fil-a works with employees, customers, and the community. My lab partner today is Daniel Perry of chick-fil-a. How are you Daniel?
Daniel: Hey! great thanks for having me.
Trace: Absolutely, thanks for coming on Scaling UP! I know a lot of the listeners out in the Scaling UP! nation are thinking chick-fil-a? What’s he doing? What is he possibly going to talk about with chick-fil-a? But I’ve learned a lot from chick-fil-a, I’ve especially learned a lot from watching your store become successful, it’s always been successful but just how you develop people and things that we read about? You guys do. It’s the implication of everything that we try to do, you guys actually do, and you do very well. So, we’re going to have a really interesting conversation around a lot of business topics today.
Daniel: Awesome excited about it.
Trace: And as much as I can’t imagine this there’s not chick-fil-a everywhere, some of the listeners out there may not know what chick-fil-a is. So how would you begin to explain what chick-fil-a is to somebody that’s never seen a chick-fil-a before?
Daniel: Sure, so we we’re a quick service restaurant in the United States. We’re in 47 states now if you can believe that. We are not in Alaska and Hawaii and for some reason not in Vermont. I don’t think there’s a specific reason but we’re not there yet. So, we have we’ve been around since 1967 as chick-fil-a and so started mainly in the southeast and so we serve a boneless breast of chicken sandwich.
That’s pressure-cooked, and we cook it to perfection and we put it on a toasted buttered bun with two crucial pickles. That’s our hero product, we sell a variety of other items from salads and grilled items and breakfast. And so, we have experienced lots of growth over the last several years especially and as our company tries to expand. And have a greater impact on states where we might only have a few restaurants. We’re getting to more and more people throughout the United States. And international, I hear over the next couple years.
Trace: well something you said, I don’t know if people picked up on it, but you said we serve the chicken sandwich. And there’s so many ways you can say that but by saying the way you did that we serve that creates a whole mindset that really puts the philosophy of chick-fil-a in bounce I would say.
Daniel: Sure! our founder Truett Cathy, he always talked about people before profits. And so, he believed that if you give people what they want then they will give you what you want. And so, the people that work for us, our team. They are critical to what we do every day and so we believe in selecting the right team members. We believe in selecting great team members that have a heart to serve guess. We don’t have customers, we have guests. And so, we just believe that the way that we talk not only to our guests but to our team. Impacts the way that they are able to serve. And so, we think that it makes difference. We think it makes the sandwich taste better. That the handshake of the host affects the taste of the toast. So that’s a part of why we do, what we do you.
Trace: You got to love that! Daniel, so many people that I speak with in chick-fil-a have a specific story about how they came to chick-fil-a and I’m willing to bet you’re no different.
Daniel: Sure.
Trace: Do you mind sharing your story to how you came to chick-fil-a?
Daniel: Sure, I grew up in Metro Atlanta and so if we wanted chick-fil-a, we had to go to a mall and it was a very special occasion to have chick-fil-a. So, as I got older and became old enough to work. My mother thought it would be a great idea for me to work at chick-fil-a and I thought that was a terrible idea. Because I was 15 years old and knew everything. And so, I worked in a grocery store and I thought this huge grocery store. There’re things to do, it’s going to be awesome. And it wasn’t the greatest experience for me and so I did like most young people do and said well maybe I’ll try out what my mom thought was a good idea. And so, as I applied and worked at chick-fil-a, it turned out to be just the experience was opposite of how I had perceived it in my head. I worked for an operator who like me he invested in the people that worked with us, he gave me leadership opportunities. Even as a young student he allowed me to do things inside of his business.
He allowed me to fail, he allowed me to struggle and then also have successes. And so, as I worked for him I for nine years. And so, through college and after college, it was really the experience for me that helped me understand business. And with a college degree of a middle school teacher and learned so much about business and dealing with teenagers, and with students. And it’s really made a big difference in how I operate my business.
Trace: And you of course own your own chick-fil-a store. I find it interesting how that process is? And so, I’m curious if you can help us in Scaling UP! Nation understand how chick-fil-a works with the franchise owner? How they find the franchise owners? What that looks like?
Daniel: Sure, we have a very unique franchise process that is different from most others in our industry. And Dan Cathy, our CEO likes to say that it’s harder to get into CFA than it is to get in the CIA. And so, there’s thousands that apply each year and then they select about a hundred and so we grow at about 100 to 120 restaurants a year. And so, the process is very intensive they want to know you, they don’t want to just know hey do you want to go run a business anywhere.
They were looking for a good fit at chick-fil-a. And so just like I look for a good fit for my team. They’re looking for a good fit for us and so they like I like to know why? They want to know what your “Why” is inside of the area that you’d like to operate a chick-fil-a restaurant. And then we partner with them through the building of the building and then as we open the restaurant. And then we have the rights obviously to run that restaurant as our own. So, it’s a unique process. They are looking for folks that are going to invest inside of their community not just be someone who grows multiple upon multiple among multiple of businesses. They want us to be solely involved in our chick-fil-a restaurant, in our community.
Trace: Do you mind sharing your specific experience to how you came to have your store?
Daniel: Sure, I’d be happy to. I’d be happy too, I’ve applied to be a chick-fil-a operator and lived in Atlanta and it was fiercely competitive in Atlanta and so I looked outside of Atlanta to see where would be a place that would be great for my wife and I to go that would be a good fit. And so, we were interviewed and were selected to operate a restaurant in Myrtle Beach South Carolina.
My dad’s family is from Wilmington North Carolina. it’s about an hour away and so we had an opportunity to go there. And we took over an existing restaurant, it was a small restaurant. Three blocks from the beach, if you stood in a certain spot you can see the water which is kind of cool. So, spring and summer was unbelievably strong for us and in the winter we’re like a small town that had these high-rise hotels off in the background. So, it was a great experience but after doing that for four years.
We got an opportunity to come to apply and be selected for the restaurant that I am at now in Lawrenceville. And so, we moved in 2007 and open during that time and we went through a process very similar to becoming a chick-fil-a operator. With interviews and at that time they made visits to the restaurant that I was at. And so, we were selected to come open the restaurant here, and so it’s been an adventure, it’s been a journey and we left Atlanta to go with chick-fil-a with no children. Came back with two, and then they’ve had two more since then. So, it’s been a great adventure.
Trace: Your restaurant is by far my most favorite chick-fil-a. Anybody that’s been to a chick-fil-a knows that there’s a different attitude with the people that are behind the counter. The people that are preparing the food. They really appreciate you being there, and they let you know that. Your store does that and they go above that, I feel. I don’t want to say that chick-fil-a doesn’t do that because they do that. They set the bar but when I go into your store. There’s just something extra about that. I’ve just always noticed that it’s that extra step. Everybody’s making sure that they say hello to you. How do you train that?
How do you get people to want to greet the customer like that? And understand that they’re not just there to do a job, they have that job because that customers there?
Daniel: We talk about our restaurant a lot like our house, so our team is our family and our guests are our guests to our house. And so, as the story we tell a lot with our team is if you’re going to have a guest visit your house. You want to make sure that your house is clean, you want to make sure that things are tidy and organized. And then as your guests come and visit you want them to feel welcome. And so, as our guests come and visit our family, we want them to feel a warm welcome. Not just something that we’re instructed to say but something that feels heartfelt. And so, our goal is for it to feel different and to feel warm. And so, our mission is to be remarkable and so we want our guests to have remarkable experiences.
Something that’s remarkable, you talk about it and so when you work inside of the service industry. You understand that our guests, it’s very easy to remember and talk about something that’s happened that was poor. So, if I’ve had a poor experience somewhere, I might tell a lot of people. It really takes a special experience a remarkable experience for me to talk about it outside of just that time. And thought that was nice but so being remarkable is where we base everything we talk about.
So, if we want our service to be great, want it to be remarkable. For our food to taste great, we want to be remarkable. For our restaurant to be surprisingly clean and so that’s where it starts at being remarkable and we hope that it lasts from the moment you walk in until the time you leave. Not just while you’re standing at our counter placing your order and feel like a transaction. We want you to feel like we know you.
Trace: Well, you mentioned that, and I was privileged to see one of your training videos. I believe it was called “Every person has a story”. And I remember watching that and thinking do these people know they’re a fast-food restaurant? It was incredible, I’m not going to do it justice to explain it over the air but basically it took place in one of your stores.
And somebody was placing an order and it gave a little caption about something that was going on in every customer’s life that you really wouldn’t have known had that caption not been there. And they were pretty serious things. I mean somebody had just gotten over cancer. Somebody lost their job, somebody was celebrating something, but the story was that everybody has a story and if you don’t take a moment to ask you’re never going to know that. And I was just so incredibly impressed that you and chick-fil-a are training people behind the counter to realize that. It was amazing to me; how do you use that in your training process?
Daniel: We all have things that we bring along with us and so sometimes those are experiences that we’ve had and another job as a team member. Sometimes those are good experiences, sometimes those are bad experiences. But even beyond that, our guests bring things along with them too. And so sometimes it’s a regular guest has an expectation of how we’re going to serve them. Sometimes someone comes in and they’ve gotten terrible news. Sometimes it’s even simpler than that, where it’s I’ve just been driving, and traffic has been terrible this morning. And so, we bring things along with us and so one of the ways that we use it most often is when there is a situation where a guest is unhappy with us.
And so sometimes a very simple small thing where we have made a mistake and we’re trying to correct it will be made exponentially larger than you would anticipate it with. And so sometimes “I’m sorry” or when we replace something that we’ve done incorrectly isn’t enough. And so, there’s times we have to remind our team, “hey we don’t know what’s been going on before someone visits us and we don’t always know what’s going on afterwards” but we should be who we are. And we should provide the same level of service that we do.
Regardless of how someone shows up for us, so if you come to my restaurant and you’re happy. That’s awesome. We want to make your day better. If you come in, and it’s a bad day and we can provide just this little bit of a positive atmosphere maybe it’ll make a difference. And if things are frustrating for you but we can still have a smile and still provide great service. We believe it makes an impact and we’ve had stories where guests come, and we have guests that come regularly and man sometimes they just don’t seem happy.
And so, we just try to help put a little bit of positive in their day. And so, we have stories where guests come, and they say, “hey thank you”, “hey this was going on for me and you guys were just nice, and I appreciate it”. And then we have regular guests that have tragedy in their lives. We have a guest that eats with us many mornings a week and I remember when he lost his wife. So, we have those times where we’re the place that provides comfort. And so inside of our mission of being remarkable, the purpose of what we do is to create a place of restoration. And so, the background of restaurant is a French word and in the meaning of that is “restore” or “restoration”.
And so, we believe that you come to a restaurant obviously to be restored physically through hunger and through a meal. But we believe that people are restored not just in their stomach but in their head and in their heart. And so, as they visit with us, we want to be a place where we can be restorative to someone. Sometimes it’s very simple, it’s a smile and it’s a thank you, and it’s on my pleasure, and it’s just a nice pleasant experience.
Other times it’s bigger than that. As we get to know guests and we get to find out a little bit more about them, about their family, about their work. Where we can be someone that gets to be there. To hug them when something goes great, to be there won’t cry when something goes bad. But we believe that we can offer just that piece of restoration in their lives.
Obviously, every time they come to eat but sometimes we have guests that come, and they just need to come. And they’ll put their ear buds in and listen to music because maybe they work in an environment where it’s loud and it’s busy all the time and I just need a little bit of peace. Just for that 45 minutes or an hour that I might get for lunch. And so that’s a big “WHY” behind what we do because it’s bigger than just a chicken sandwich. It’s the best chicken sandwich and we love it and we’re proud it. But we believe that it gives just a little bit further than that.
Trace: Simply amazing! And you know when you go into any chick-fil-a. You can see the things that you’re talking about. You can go into some other places and see that they don’t put as much value into some of the things that we talk about.
Obviously in order to get consistency like this there has to be a mission. There has to be core values. Do you mean sharing with the nation what your mission is? and I think not only do you have the corporate core values, but your store has their own set of core values.
Daniel: The way we talk about our core values it’s a process and so we think that the first thing that we have to do. Our first core value is “Clarity” and so as we talk to our team and as I work with my leaders. The first question I ask is “Where we clear in what we expected?”, “Where we clear in how we communicated?”, “Where we clear in what we want to be outcome to be?”. So, clarity is a huge first piece for us.
If we’re not clear our second piece is irrelevant. Which is “Communication”. And really over communication, one of my leaders worded it well the other day he said communication to the point where you’re almost annoying. And so, we believe that we have to be clear in our communication.
And once we do that and we communicate well then, we can get to our third value which is “Commitment”. So, if you understand what’s expected of you, we communicated well, you can look at me, we can shake hands, we can nod our head and say yes, I commit to do that. And so, once we’re committed and it’s communicated and clear we’re aligned. We are aligned as one team and if you read books that talk about alignment.
Alignment is the single greatest determination of success in a business. A business that is aligned, it doesn’t matter where the experience and the education is at that particular point when they’re aligned. Those things are very important but a business, a family, a church, anyone that’s aligned is able to do substantially more than one that’s not. And then the final one we have to do is “Follow through”. so, follow-through is important because we’re people and we we’re not perfect, we make mistakes. And so, as we assess our alignment, and we have to make adjustments, and we have to find something that we have missed or something that’s falling between the cracks, we do follow-through. So that’s the process of we talk through our core values. And what I love about core values is it doesn’t mean we’ve got it all figured out. Because there’s certainly days we’re not clear in what we’ve communicated. It’s not this piece of who we are that we’re perfect. But this is who we aspire to be.
Trace: With core values, people that use them well, they use them to hire, fire, reward, recognized, trained. What are some of the ways that you’re using your core values to do those things?
Daniel: Well, we use it as we troubleshoot, so almost every one-on-one meeting, our leadership meeting that I have with someone on my team. When we bump up against a question or a problem. We go back to our core values and we ask those questions. Sometimes it’s just one of them, sometimes it was well, we communicated that, but I did you get them? did you get the head nod? did they agree to say they were going to do that for you or did you just tell them what they were going to do?
Because I don’t believe that people believe what you tell them, I believe what they discover on their own. And so, as I can go, and I can tell you that “hey you’ve got to dress a certain way in your uniform to work here”. “You’ve got to perform in a certain way”. But when you can discover it on your own and I can say “Hey tell me what the expectation is for your uniform as a 16-year-old team member”, and you can tell me what the expectation is and then I can ask you how you’re doing.
That that level of commitment is different, so we use them and how we and how we troubleshoot. We also use them in how we can celebrate the success as you review something that’s successful. We’re able a lot of times to high-five and go wow that went really, well Wow our team really everyone understands what’s going on and with 93 people on our team. And so, to make sure we communicate to everyone it’s challenging sometimes.
And so, we do that well, we need to make sure that we celebrate that high-fives accolades. Those are very very important.
Trace: You mentioned working with teenagers and people in our industry have to do some sort of training and that’s probably the one thing that they struggle with the most. And we’re dealing with people that have chosen a specific career. Now we’re talking about you and your store and you’re working with teenagers. People that know that it’s a part-time job.
They’ve got other things that they’re focused on and they just need to be there for spending money or whatever. So, you’re taking them, and you are having them, and they’re wanting to produce this product that you described to us. So, we think we’ve got problems in training. I’m sure it doesn’t hold a candle to what you’ve had to deal with, but you’ve done it you’ve done it successfully. How did you do it?
Daniel: Well, we are not just an employer you know, we are teachers. And coaches, and we believe that everyone has the opportunity and the ability to perform at the level that we hope. And so, with anyone at any age we have these three letters that we use. Where the first three would create expectations. We make sure that someone has the skills to do the job that they’re supposed to have. And we make sure that they have the resources. So, hey this is what I expect of you at a job of chick-fil-a.
We believe you have the skills to do it and here’s the resources you need to work at chick-fil-a. And so, if we don’t provide those things for a team member 16 or 60. They can’t do their job, so we’ve got to teach you how to run our cash register, our POS system. We’ve got to teach you how do you bread a chick-fil-a sandwich and so once we do that people can do their job. And so, the last one is C, or you have to have consequences. Everybody thinks consequences are bad and I have consequences I’m in trouble, and I give consequences to my son and he’s done something wrong with.
Consequences are positive, and consequences are negative. So, we believe that if we don’t make consequences clear that people won’t do their job. We talk through those letters and most of the time we ask questions about those letters and we say okay if a team member is not performing at the level that we hope. We have to ask, where expectations clear? do they have the skills to do the job?, and did we train them? Did we give them the resources and then lastly once they are. Do they know what the consequence is? do they know what the consequence is when we provide a great service to a guest and the consequence of that is the guest talks about us, and they rave about us, and they come more often, and they love our food, and they love us.
A consequence of when we provide bad service is much more obvious to a 16-year-old student, but we want to make sure that they understand both sides. Understand the “why” and with students, with young adults’ patience is important when a student doesn’t perform how we want. It’s not just well thanks for trying have a nice day and show them the door. It’s trying to understand what’s going on inside of their head because they bring stuff to work too. It’s tough day at school, maybe they failed the test, maybe they’ve got an hour of homework after they get off of work. Hey, help me understand what’s going on because rare is the problem or rare is the time where the team member says you know what Daniel I just don’t like you and that’s why I did it wrong.
And we think as humans that sometimes it’s so personal towards me when so many times. Especially for a student there’s so much more personal going on inside. There spinning so many plates and they’re so amazingly talented that if we don’t give them an opportunity to make a mistake then we’re doing them a disservice. And we’re doing ourselves a disservice because sometimes our team members that need just a little bit more care in the beginning can be the greatest asset that we have long term.
Trace: You know I’m listening to you and I’m I’ve read all of Truett Cathy’s books and I’m thinking you know those weren’t just written down on piece of paper. I mean what he was saying is obviously the philosophy of chick-fil-a. One of his goals of course was to make sure that he was allowing young men and women to be prosperous in life. And just hearing how you’re speaking with that, this is exactly how you’re doing that and how chick-fil-a is doing that. I am curious, Truett Cathy was an amazing individual. I never got a chance to meet him. I read several of his books of course I live in Atlanta, so I see the landscape that he made Atlanta to be. Did you ever get to meet him?
Daniel: I did, I did. I was able to meet him a few times which was really special. The very first time I met him I was I was a 16-year-old student I was a junior in high school. And growing up in Atlanta we live about an hour from the from the corporate headquarters from the Home Office.
They did an open house every Christmas and at that time it was the company was much smaller and so I went with one of the people that I worked with that invited me to go and we went and we walk in and they have small refreshments and meet people and one of the people you got to me was Truett. And so, I stood in a line at that time it might have been 15 people deep and got to shake his hand and got some meat him. I remember that day, I remember we’re in the and they call it the support center now. I remember we’re in the support center he stood that day.
And then a few times as a franchisee. I’ve had interaction with him and he was always, he would always give you something. So, you’d go and visit his office and so his office was always open. His office is still open to see but if he was there and he wasn’t meeting with someone specific. You were welcome to go into Truett’s office and so he would give you a ruler. He has a ruler with the golden rule is to treat others as you would want to be treated or he would have an article about something with chick-Fill-A.
Have you seen this, or he give you a book one of his books that you’ve read and so he was always trying to give something or do something. And then an hour, we have a company-wide seminar every year. And so his message was simple but it was always tried and true and he would talk through things and he would give the things that were on his mind and on his heart but at the end he would always say why not your best .So are you giving your best? and if not, why not?
So, he lived to be 93 years old and worked for about 91 years. Now he’s worth changed as he got older and he was able to do the things that he enjoyed in his later years but that was always his thing was why not your best. But if you love what you do you’ll never work another day in your life and that he truly exemplified that and what he did.
Trace: Something that was very important to him and now chick-fil-a was stayed involved in the community. Why is that so important to chick-fil-a? and what are some of the ways that you personally do that?
Daniel: Sure, the community is vital to who we are. It’s the reason we’re in business and so where my restaurant is in Atlanta, in Lawrenceville. Where we have a really unique opportunity because we have multiple groups of guests that eat with us depending on the time of day.
We have guests that live in our community and eat with us. We have guests that work in our community and eat with us and then because of the traffic in Atlanta.We have guests that just commute through our community and eat with us. And so, as we try to reach our community, we reach it in different ways, but the number one thing is knowing that that guest is more than just a transaction and that we’re about more than just a chicken sandwich. The easiest, number one most important way is in our schools. And so, the schools that we work with. We are involved and come to community activities that they do.
We have activities and we do fund raising for them inside of our restaurant. So, we believe, and we want everything to be win-win for our community. Schools are a huge part of what we do and then as we move into middle schools and high schools by the time we get into high school. We want them to be just raving fans of chick-fil-a because when you want to eat somewhere, or when you want to get your first job, or when you want support with something.
We want you to lay to be the place that you come to first and we just think that that’s extremely importantbecause there’s lots of choices. On our street on sugarloaf Parkway, there are multiple restaurants to choose from and we can believe we’re the best all day. But if we don’t show up that way and if we don’t give that experience to our guests and they don’t believe it. Then it doesn’t matter, so the community is vitally important to what we do because we believe that it’s people first.
Trace: When I was younger I was involved in Junior Achievement. They came into my middle school and I can’t say that I own a business today because of Junior Achievement but I will say it helped.
Maybe it helped spark the entrepreneurial bug in me and I know you’re very involved in Junior Achievement, the Discovery Center down the road where there’s a building in the county school system that teaches people business. Do you mind speaking a little bit to that?
Daniel: Sure, I’ve got a sixth grader at home and she went to the Discovery Center this year for the first time and when you’re in middle school you go in the sixth grade and in the eighth grade in Gwinnett County. And so, every County middle schooler gets the opportunity to go.
The Discovery Center in Gwinnett County is amazing they’ve made it like two cities in Gwinnett. They’ve made it like the county seat in Lawrenceville with the old courthouse and then they’ve made it like swanee. A more trendy town center type feel that you see all throughout the country and so students get the opportunity to go and visit and so in the sixth grade they go to something called biz town and they get assigned a job.
When my daughter went she was the CEO of Georgia Gwinnett college and she was super excited she got dressed. She wanted to make sure she looked professional and it was a very exciting day for her. So, they got the opportunity to say okay what is it like to run this business.
It’s chick-fil-a, it’s Kwik Trip, its Home Depot. There’s a local bank, I mean there are multiple businesses in the little town and so they learn about what is it like to run a business. Then in the eighth grade, they go to finance park and Finance Park is more personal, it’s more individual. You have a job, but the purpose of Finance Park is not to run your business. It’s to run your personal business.
If you were to run your home and so you get a job you find out what your job is, how much money you make and then you have to go find a place to live. You have to find transportation to work, you have to buy clothes and so you get to see regardless of whether you think this profession makes lots of money and this doesn’t. Either way if you don’t live on a budget. You’re in trouble, so it’s a really neat experience for middle school students and there’s a chick-fil-a in both of those. Chick-fil-a connects the two, they eat in the chick-fil-a cafe and some of the students will eat chick-fil-a on those days and so it’s a fun experience it’s a great learning immersive experience for a student that’s never worked a job before.
So Junior Achievement is a really cool part of what goes on.
Trace: And they’re able to do that because of businesses like yourself that supply what they need in order to do what they do.
Daniel: It’s been very foundational to the chick-fil-a foundation. The nonprofit arm of chick-fil-a and they are very passionate about young students about education and what that future looks like and so Junior Achievement centers all throughout the country and growing more. Some in areas like our County and that where every student gets to go. Then there’s some in other areas. There’s one in downtown Atlanta that serves multiple school districts and so sometimes it’s the first time a student’s been exposed to what business looks like or what is it what does it mean to get a paycheck and I’ve got to make it last till the next payback. So, it’s pretty cool you know.
Trace: It’s interesting sitting across from you because you know you’re so dedicated and you just light up when you talk about your business. But you did the exact same thing when you talk about giving it away to the community and putting back in the community as well. People can say that but not everybody does that. Definitely not everybody experiences the joy and live by it like you do and you can tell just looking at you how you talk about it and how you light up with it.
Daniel: Well, thank you it I think it makes business fun. I think I love the business that I’m in and I think the other things that we do just to get to add on top of that and make it better.
Trace: Well, we have a lot of business owners that listen to us or people that are running a little small business within their business. So, I was thinking maybe I can ask you a brief topic and you maybe give us the chick-fil-a Dan Perry advice on how they can deal with it.
Daniel: Sure, so be fun.
Trace: So rapid-fire.
Daniel: Okay great.
Trace: Alright, so working in communicating with the team? Some advice that you would get them.
Daniel: Biggest advice that I’ve received over the last year is as I communicate “How do I show up?”, “How do I show up and how do I communicate?”. So, when I come and talk to you, if I just show up and tell you a bunch of stuff that you’re not doing right and that you need to do and then go and leave. I leave this unbelievable wake behind me. So, if you think about riding on a boat and if you think about looking out the back of the boat. The boat produces awake and so we all produce a wake, and so do you want to produce a wake that gives the skier the opportunity to jump and do skills and have fun? Do you want to give them the opportunity to learn the skies? Or do you want to be the boat that produces wake that’s choppy, that’s impossible to go behind? It just makes people fall, it just it’s brutal and so I’ve learned about myself personally.
That how I show up, how I interact, that first interaction with my team is critical and so if I come in and talk to up my team and find out about them. It changes the day or if I come in head down and just make a beeline but what I’ve got on my mind.
People question, they wonder what’s going “oh was he on a bad mood today?”, “what’s happening?”. And so how we show up it’s such a critical piece. And then we talked about earlier that “People don’t believe what you say, they believe what the discover on their own”. And so, I’ve worked really hard to ask lots of questions. Notes or questions. I can ask you all day did you do that right yes or no, but they tell me what you were thinking?
Tell me what was going through your mind as you did this because I find out so often the majority of the time our team and I would imagine the teams and the employees and the families of the group that’s listening. I would imagine so much, they want to be successful. The want to do what’s best and sometimes maybe it’s not clear. Sometimes maybe they did the best and it just wasn’t enough but let’s try to understand. So those are my two thoughts.
Trace: Working with customers?
Daniel: Working with customers. It is the big picture of the long-term is what’s most important to me. Especially, we’ve worked really hard in catering and growing a catering business. And so, we’ve learned that we’re asking you if you’re going to feed a large group. Well, it’s not cheap to feed a large group and so there’s times where we have learned that in order to think long term.
Well, the investment on the front end is very important and so sometimes a guest may ask for a little bit more and on the front end let’s do that. Let’s do that to win our guests, let’s do that to wow our guests because never have I had a guess where we’ve had a conversation and they asked me about something and I said well you paid me $7 for your number one meal and I gave you a number one meal what’s the problem? That just doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t mean that that’s not true.
It doesn’t mean that we didn’t provide the service that was asked, and they didn’t get the meal that they ordered but I just think that it’s a bigger piece than that. I think it’s a bigger picture because I don’t want you to just come once. I want you to come often, I want you to visit with us often and so especially in sales. If you want them to call the next time, what did we do this time to get in the call the next time to order whatever is that you’re selling?
Trace: Great advice! Daniel, what do you do when an issue comes up? And I’m sure never any issues come up in business. Birds are singing, rainbows are everywhere but in the one occasion that there is an issue.
How do you ensure that one you’re talking about the right issue not just symptom of the issue and then once you discover what the real issue is? How do you go to make sure that it gets solved?
Daniel: Sure! I’d love to tell you we never have issues, but I came to work today so we had an issue. If we ran a perfect business, if my business was perfect I’d show up and mess it up. I mean that’s, we’re human and so problems happen.
As it relates to issues, as it relates to issues with our team. We were dealing with an issue recently with our team where it was just a disconnect between why are you one of my young adults was acting and the way he was working and how our leaders were perceiving it. And so, we just started to dive a little bit deeper and try to understand what’s going on with both people.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. There are issues that we don’t tolerate and there are issues that if you act a certain way “I can’t help you you’re going to get promoted to customer. Have a nice day. But that’s not the norm, most of the time like we talked about with our guests earlier. There’s just something one layer deep or two layers deep. So as we talk, learned it as we deal with issues. I’ve got to make sure that the emotion is out of me. That if I’m emotionally wind up and frustrated, I’ve got to wait because I go and I try to approach an issue when I’m frustrated.
We don’t get a layer or two deep. But if I can go with all honesty and with all hope to really find out “hey what’s really going on” then we can we can get somewhere. And I think that works with my team members. I really think that works with my guests too. Because sometimes with a guest, the question we ask is “I’m really sorry that this happened, how can I make this right for you?” and sometimes the guest says, “Could you just give me a sandwich?”.
Sure, I can give you your sandwich. I’m so sorry that happened and they’re on about their day. They’ve got somewhere else to be sometimes it’s a little bit deeper than that and the guest wants to talk a little bit more and when that’s the case let’s do it. Let’s find out what’s going on just a little bit below the surface so that we can do like we talked about earlier is creating a place of restoration.
So, issues are real, and I think when we don’t address issues. When we don’t, when we say “Well, that’s just how so-and-so is”. We all have somebody in the office, we have somebody in my restaurant that you know how they’re going to respond to a certain issue and say well that’s the way Jimmy is. We are just, we’re just kicking the can down the road when we do that.
That issue is going to comeback. It’s going to come back and when it comes back the second time or a third time. What was very small to begin with was bigger. And then the last thing that I would say that I tell my younger leaders is when you feel like you’re supposed to say something.
When you feel the little butterflies in your stomach that go oh that’s going to be uncomfortable I don’t want to talk about it. Find out one small question you can ask and as soon as you ask it and it’s out there the butterflies go away. The discomfort goes away. You’re not responsible for whether that person is defensive. If you ask the right question, if I say hey Trace I noticed you don’t seem to be in a good mood today.
You’re not your normal self, can I help you with anything? If you respond like you’re mad at me. I don’t have stroll over that, I just if I approach you with the right heart and with the right purpose behind what we’re doing. We can really make progress. We can really work to resolve the issue.
Trace: I want to let you know, it was not lost on me that you don’t fire people you promote them to customer.
Daniel: That’s our favorite thing to say. It’s just the deal of look you’re welcome here. You just can’t work here anymore. We still love you to come eat at chick-fil-a but you’re just going to have to be a customer.
Trace: Then you’re one of the more organized people that I’ve seen. I’m looking at your iPad and you’ve got calendar events. You’ve got things going on. You’re obviously somebody that knows how to stay organized.
I’m sure chick-fil-a probably has things that they instill in their owners on how they can stay organized, so they can keep commitments. What advice can you give to our listeners on how they can stay better organized?
Daniel: I learned lots of my organization by making mistakes. I wish they’re things that I do now that wish I would have done 10 years ago. But I learned through showing up late somewhere that I was supposed to be at a certain time. I learned through forgetting about things. And so, we talked heavily about systems, about organization systems. And so, when X happens, when there’s a schedule and you and I dealt with this as we scheduled this.
You were very gracious to me to say hey I came to you I said I want to do this but can we revisit it and so we revisit it again and we schedule this time and I’ve been thrilled to be here. But I made mistakes where I would overextend instead of saying hey I want to do this. Can we find a different time? Inside of our business organization, it is critical from everything from making sure that we don’t run out of chicken which would be a bad day.
Trace: People would fry it.
Daniel: Sure! It’d be awful – making sure that when we hire a new team member that we do a process this consistent. And then I guess the last thing about organization is I can’t do it all on my own. And I would tell you even for your entrepreneur that’s by themselves. And they’re going “Well, Daniel doesn’t know what’s going on with me” because I am yet. I would even challenge beyond that. Whether it’s just technology, whether it’s outsourcing something like an assistant to help you.
There are so many ways where we can have other people come and help us. Someone has created an app that will help you. So you may be using it through a tablet, or a computer, or through, an iPhone or an Android device but somebody made that to help you and so let’s find those ways.
And that’s what’s helped me tremendously with organization. And the last piece with organization is I just want to be able to do what I tell you I’m going to do. And we agreed to meet at a certain time today and I want to be here at the time we agreed to. I don’t want to be running in the door like a crazy man, five minutes late. I just think that piece impacts so many other things leading up to it. That have caused me and forced me many times to make sure that organization is at the top.
Trace: It seems like in today’s age, people almost expected that whoever they’re talking, to wherever they invited is going to be late. And now when people are on time or like you were you were 15 minutes early which I appreciate and that is almost going up and above today because people are always expecting others to be late. So, I would say that if you learn how to keep your commitments.
I mean, you are the sum of your commitments to other people. So, if you do that well and you do it better than other people. Like you show up early, you’re going to stand out and people are going to say you know not only is Dan the right person to get that done. I know he can get that done.
Daniel: We tell our team members that early is on time and on time is late
Trace: Vince Lombardi time.
Daniel: Yeah!
Trace: Absolutely.
Daniel: It’s such a critical piece.
Trace: What about goal-setting? I know you and your restaurant. You set a lot of goals, you hit a lot of goals. But there’s a lot of process that goes on there. How do you one, decide what goal you’re going to go after and how do you make sure it sticks so you can get there?
Daniel: Wow! Making it stick. You know a year, as a year goes by fast but it’s a long time. The day after day, month after month. It’s the most challenging thing for me inside of goals is to make sure that those top-level goals that I’m responsible for. The goals that only I can set. The goals that are critical for me to set that I talk about them all throughout a year. And I’ve had times where I’ve not done that, and you can see it. You can see it in sales, you can see it in performance metrics. That our guests write us on. You can see it in bottom-line profit numbers. You name it, you can see it. If we don’t communicate it all throughout the year.
And so, for me, top high-level goals whether it is our top-line sales goal for the year, whether it is high level metrics that we look at that our guests measure us on and then the third one is through third party audits that we get on our processes and our quality. Those things are important, we talk about them all the time. We get an email with some of our guest metrics every day. And so, as we look at those metrics. My team’s responsibility is to go “Okay, if we are struggling in an area.
We have ways to dive deeper and find out what’s the real issue going on.” Because if a guest says that we’re not fast. Well, that’s a very broad random thing to say. There’s comment inside of a score, there’s something specific inside of a survey that our guests are so gracious to do for us. That tell us, that gives us the root cause of what’s going on. Because we can try to be faster but if we’re trying to be faster inside our restaurant and our guests are telling us we’re not fast in the drive-through.
We’re just spinning our wheels, so goals are important because the mission, and the purpose, and the values of what drives us long-term. But the goals are what else go okay what does that look like today and what does that success look like today. And so, setting those top high-level goals is what’s very important to me and just be in that over communicator. Broken record if you will that says hey remember we’re reaching towards this number.
And my favorite thing to say is hey when I when I go to start to tell you about a goal and you interrupt me and go “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah I got it, the goal is this.” That’s when we know we’re onto something.
Trace: Sure! I don’t remember who said it but whoever said people have to hear something seven times before they hear it the first time.
Daniel: That’s right!
Trace: So, you got to repeat those things. Would you ever want to own a second store?
Daniel: It’d be awesome, it’d be amazing, it’d be a great opportunity. There are, I don’t know the percentage but there’s a decent number of chick-fil-a operators that have multiple restaurants.
And the way chick-fil-a sets it up. It has to be within your trade area and so if they were to open a restaurant that’s in our same community, there would be a process and an opportunity for that. It could be a neat opportunity, it would change what my responsibilities look like, but it would also give opportunity to other or other people on my team to have more responsibilities and I think that’s neat.
Trace: Well, I really want to thank you for coming on Scaling UP! we could talk for hours. I can ask you so many questions. You’re very easy to talk to and such great information. So, I might be going to for lunch and ask you for another interview. So, I just want to prepare you for that, but I’ve got a couple of lightning round questions for you if you don’t mind.
Daniel: Yeah! it’s great.
Trace: Alright, So If you can go back in time and visit yourself on your first time as a franchise owner. So, you’re just starting your store out, what advice would you give yourself that you know now?
Daniel: I would tell myself not to take myself so seriously. I would tell myself to not realize that it all depends on me because whether I think that or not it’s a joke, it doesn’t. And there’s a song that’s one of my favorites. And a couple of lyrics in the song as the artist says “Dear younger me, where do I start? If I could tell you everything I’ve learned so far then you could be one step ahead. “But then later he says, “I can’t decide, do I tell you about how to get the most out of life or to try to change because the choices that you’ll make for the choices that have made me.” And so there are things that I certainly wish that I was better at or did different. They are the things that have made me who I am today through mistakes and through failures. But I would say just don’t take yourself so seriously.
Trace: Daniel, what are the last three books that you’ve read?
Daniel: I just finished a book called “Talent Magnet” by Mark Miller, works inside of chick-fil-a and it is written as a fable telling about a business that’s looking for talent and it’s a quick read. It’s 150 pages and it just gives a good picture about what does it mean to be somewhere that people want to work. I’ll tell you three things because I mean literally last one I finished. The three things that people want in a business.
They want a better boss, they want a brighter future and they want a bigger vision. And so, they want a better boss not that you or I or it doesn’t mean we’re a bad boss, but they want a boss this just it’s concerned about them. The one that wants to know what’s going on in their lives. They want a brighter future. If I work here, what does that mean long term?I’m just kind of punch in and punch out and just do this for a paycheck?
How can it be brighter for me long term and then a bigger vision? A vision beyond just I’m here to make money for your business but a bigger vision beyond what goes on that makes this business bigger than just what goes on. I read in a book called “Rest” by Alex Payne very challenging on how much we try to do as people. And he just talks about rest. He talks about naps which is pretty fun to talk about, but he talks about things like taking walks just go and take a 15-minute walk. Just go and sit and process and rest is such an important piece in what we do. And then right now I’m reading a book called “Grit” about Angela Duckworth and it’s been cool it’s about passion and perseverance and how it’s not just about talent. She did all this, she’s a psychologist and all these studies about people and it’s been pretty cool.
Trace: So, I read “Grit” last year.
Daniel: Oh yeah! Awesome.
Trace: I read it because I saw her TED talk. Have you seen her TED talk?
Daniel: No.
Trace: It’s amazing. I’ll send you a link to it.
Daniel: Awesome
Trace: Highly recommend all those in the Scaling UP! Nation to check that out. Obviously, they are going to make a movie about the life of Daniel Perry. When they do, who plays Daniel?
Daniel: Oh my gosh! let’s find some really nice-looking guy that looks completely different than me. That is a great question. Matthew McConaughey can play me.
Trace: I can see that, I am looking at you right now. I can see that It is so believable, this script is being sent to him as we speak.
Daniel: That’s great.
Trace: Alright, my almost last question. I want to throw in a little bonus question at the end. So, you can talk to anybody throughout history. Who would it be with and why? Daniel: Wow! Anybody throughout history. That list is long. Wow that list is long, I think as I think about that I don’t mean this to be cliché by any form but as I think about the life of Jesus regardless of what your faith is and what your background is I think the things that he stood for and the things that he talked about are timeless for today.
And so as it relates to treating others as you would want to be treated as it relates just to understanding and as you read stories about him.hindsight’s 20/20. And in the middle of it, his disciples, the people that followed him. Sometimes he would tell them
something and they would be like “huh?” and so I’d love to just know like I know you’re the son of God but how did you stay patient through some of that stuff? Because I lose my patience for things that are so trivial. And so, they just to say gosh how did you stay patient through that situation? The Bible only reference is one time where he got mad and angry, and he had lots of things that would make me mad but so that that would be my person. Trace: And what was the secret recipe to the chicken sandwich?
Daniel: There’s a safe in our support center that I think two people have the combination to and we when you go tour we should go it’d be lots of fun I’d love to take you and show you around there. You can go, and you can try it but it’s really in there and they mix things separately. They season the chicken separately than the what we call season Kotor that we put on its locked down tight.
Trace: I tried folks! Daniel thanks so much for coming on the show. This has been a lot of fun.
Daniel: Pleasure is mine. I had a great time.
Trace: In my opinion, a company’s worth is all about their culture and culture is defined by company’s core values.
Do you know your company’s core values? Does your company even have core values? Do you use these core values in each and every decision you make within your company? As I work with other water-treatment companies, I find that most companies do have core values but very few use them or at the very least use them to their full potential. My challenge to you is to define your culture. What are the rules of the game that everybody within your company agreed to play by? My company’s core values are INTEGRITY, TEAMWORK, GAS – which stands for “Give A Stuff“, ATTITUDE and SOLUTION-ORIENTED. Now to listen to these.
These are just words to you but here we defined all of these words to make them our own and those words define our culture. We HIRE – FIRE – REWARD and RECOGNIZE team members based on these core values. To borrow from Jim Collins book “Good to Great”, a person who lives these core values is a right person. And folks, we only work with right people and as Daniel put it. We promote wrong people to customer. So, my challenge to the Scaling UP! Nation is to discover and define your core values. And then make a commitment to live those core values. After all, core values are the foundation to your company’s culture. Daniel said people don’t believe what you say, they believe what they discover on their own.
I love that statement what are your customers discovering on their own. If another water treater was to come behind you at one of your accounts. What would they discover on their own? What do the people that are closest to you in your life discover on their own about you? It’s my hope that by asking yourself these questions you not only live your core values. You will realize the impact you have on all the people you come into contact with each and every day.
Something else I’ve learned is that nine times out of ten when there is an issue with the team member. It is a process issue not a person issue. So, let me setup my second challenge for you. Do you have clear processes on everything that you do? Do you train those processes? Do you know for a fact that those processes work? And if all of these answers were YES. When you have that issue, were these processes followed? And only find that people problems are not people problems. It’s almost always people not doing the process, or the process is not correct. So, the next time you have a people issue, approach it as a process issue and make sure the process was correct.
It was demonstrated, trained on, clear, understood, and followed. I’m willing to bet that she will find the cause of the issue was within the process and now you not only solve the issue at hand. You will eliminate this issue in the future.
Folks! I started this episode by saying I love to observe businesses to see how they ask and answer questions like these.
The next time you visit a chick-fil-a or any place of business. Ask yourself what I can take from my observations to help me with my job. Now I’m off to get a chick-fil-a sandwich maybe you should get one too and maybe you should plan to join us next time on Scaling UP!