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you know when barack obama left the white house to go pick up five guys we're gonna go get some burgers 41. that's what makes five guys a treat and special john eckford the ceo of five guys europe five guys has a global cult following five guys burgers are fries it was banging covent garden was the very first five guys outside of the us we knew that we weren't gonna be advertising we're entirely relying on someone tasting a great burger and crying and telling their neighbors or their friends it has to be that's [ __ ] fantastic that covent garden location sold more than any in the world it did yeah by far i'm responsible for 225 restaurants now how do you stop getting a little bit sloppy and complacent we've actually gotten better the key to that is [Music] as the ceo of a business that's gone through such chaos when was your hardest time so i had two young children the fact is that there were moments where they woke up and needed both their parents and i wasn't there you'll hurt the people you care about in ways that you don't intend in ways that you don't understand so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this yourself [Music] john i've i've read quite extensively through your story and um i guess my first question is when you when you think back to your pre-twenties right what is that what are the most important things from that era of your life that shaped your perspective and approach to the world and to business today wow well first i grew up in a very counter-cultural isolationist family so we didn't we didn't watch tv we didn't celebrate birthdays or holidays and um i kind of got up at five a.m to practice violin for an hour before school
and had music lessons after school every day and so it was very different and i think i always i think i grew up feeling different with this kind of [Music] longing to have a sense of belonging um and that was always something that i was looking for in my professional life i think as well i would have been a fourth generation doctor if i had gone into medicine and my father told me that the profession was changing and it wasn't so much about patients and um and doctors and kind of the relationship that can develop in terms of health and bringing your you know your health to your doctor and getting advice and it was changing in america dramatically and so he he said you know don't uh don't do that you know i'm not encouraging you to do medicine so i knew i had to kind of find a different role in life and i read um anne rand in high school um and not suggesting that uh that she's gotten everything right but one one interesting thing that she did propose was that there's there could be something noble in business be you know being a successful entrepreneur could be a noble thing and my so the the kind of orientation from my family was make sure that you do something important or in your life and that meant you know taking care of other people or doing something that was had some greater purpose to it than kind of just making money but that seed of a thought that being in business could actually be a noble profession and you actually could do something important to make people's lives better um and take care of people in a different way in business was kind of i think an important penny to drop for me um when i was when i was 18. um but yeah it was a it was a it was a definitely a different upbringing than than most and that that
sense of belonging is something i've been searching for my whole life do you think you've been searching for that sense of belonging more so than the average person um i think so you know i i think if you have something in abundance you take it for granted maybe um and it was something that i definitely didn't have and and that i um and i very much felt um you know an outsider looking in um and i i saw this you know other other people had community other kids had community and and kind of broad-based friendships and and a sense of really kind of relaxed belonging and i kind of always had this kind of anxious drive that you know looking for that um and you know i think business was um you know certainly lived that out in the business world um as well you you had a um quite a journey through banking and being a being what we'd call like a a regional councillor and all these things and eventually you you came back to the uk kind of where i wanted to to start this this story off um in 2010 i believe that's right um your good friend sir charles dunstan who was the founder of carphone warehouse um and you went into business originally and then you went went on in search of um a new business to sort of partner with him on and that's kind of where the five guys stories begins yes well i i had been a student here a long time ago and lived in a tiny basement one room flat much smaller than this studio is um and uh charles lived upstairs with his his sister and girlfriend and they invited me up for drinks one day and they pretty much adopted me for my year abroad um and we went to their parents home in cambridge and to norfolk for for a holiday and um they so they really made england feel like a home uh and i always was always my ambition to return with a non-student's budget to england
and so the chance came in 2010 and moved back here and charles had just spun talk talk out from carphone warehouse and so i guess you can't be ceo of two publicly traded businesses so he became chairman of both and ceo of neither and began thinking a bit more as an investor and we got to talking and thinking what's the next big business that opportunity that we we could leverage his experience in reputation in retail but we wanted something that amazon wasn't so much a threat to as electronics online felt like a real threat to that industry segment and we thought food and beverage has got to be a segment that's a bit more protected from the online world you kind of have to show this is before delivery kind of blew up you kind of have to show up and and and eat your food where it's prepared more um so we thought that that would protect uh you from the online competitive world and but we didn't know anything about food and beverage neither of us did um and so we went looking for a great concept that wasn't in the uk that we thought could bring that expertise we could bring the kind of operational uk property knowledge and hiring practices and market knowledge and partner with someone who would bring that food and beverage experience into the into the proposition we talked to so many u.s concepts that weren't here and eventually kind of collided with the morel family there actually are five brothers and their mom and dad so there's seven in the family but five brothers who are the five guys who founded the business and they were looking to go global having pretty much allocated the u.s amongst their franchisees how many so how many other concepts do you think you looked at and was there any near misses was there any that you thought you know what maybe any other concepts that you nearly committed your your life to yeah so um we talked with a lot of different concepts and um still
in contact with a lot of those uh those concepts um and some of them have been really helpful in terms of um building the five guys business here so you know if you can use insight from another concept that maybe isn't a competitor isn't here um that can be really helpful and some of those still may may come to play um then why five guys well i think it starts with the product um you know it's it's such a simple fantastic product you know it's just burgers you know the menu is like shockingly stark i mean it is burgers and fries and that's it um and but it you know when you when you take a bite of a five guys burger when you when you when you have fries that are cooked exactly right it is it's magical i mean it's and it's fantastic it's a world world-beating product and that was that was i think you know there's so many concepts have had gone like broad you know like um you know there's so many concepts in america like you can get everything in the in the menus like a bible and you know you kind of flip through the section you're like how can they possibly be preparing repairing all this stuff at the top of the game and um and five guys was going you know completely against that which was you know everybody told the morel family you know you have to have a salad if you're gonna you know be successful you have to have you know chicken you know you can't just have a burger on your menu and they're like when we add other stuff to our menu it just like blows our mind we don't we lose focus on making a great burger and so i think part of their genius has been focus you know we're going to do just one thing and do it really well i mean that was the thesis for the founding of the business was if you're going to have your mom over and and make make burgers you know what would you do you would buy the highest quality ingredients you possibly can you'd make everything fresh um that was i think the morels were so far ahead of their time when they founded the business in 1986 because there's literally not a freezer in
the five guys equipment infrastructure everything is obsessively fresh and right before the we we signed the joint venture to bring them here there was a study done that said the number one criteria that anyone across the uk looked for in determining where you were going to eat was was the freshness of the food and whether it was white tablecloth or at a fast food place it didn't matter that was the most important criteria and that was like the morales thesis they you know not everything had to be freshly prepared that day or it went um it's interesting because conceivably it seems to me like they were very much at the right place at the right time there was this macro change in public perception and awareness around food and what's going into food organic and vegan all these kinds of these conversations around food started to emerge which seems to have hurt a lot of big brands um in a very uh fatal way whether it's in the sugar based fizzy drink industry or whether it's in the fast food industry um it's conceivable that the world could have gone another way maybe we could have doubled down on liking even faster food that was has more crap in it right yes um so i just i just wonder how important you think timing was in in their thesis catching public that sort of public wave coming into shore no i think that's i think that's very i think you're very right about that you know the the our fries have three ingredients in it potatoes the peanut oil we cook it in and a dash of salt some of our competitors you know have like 16 19 ingredients in their fries like what do you what else could there be in in fries you know so from our perspective our you know our fries start as potatoes in the beginning of the day they're hand washed hand-cut and then twice cooked to a very specific standard and you know just keeping it again just keeping it simple um and i think i think it's very much um i think they they position themselves in front of a tidal wave without without knowing it um and that that trend of freshness um i
think was a huge um a huge win for the family i think the other thing that they did which was very early on trend even early from when we found it here in the uk was customization and having something exactly the way that you want it we have 15 free toppings which means that you can have every burger 250 000 ways just by the combinations of those those toppings and everything is made by hand just for you we don't cook anything until stephen walks in and says you know this is the burger that i want um now the challenging thing is is that as soon as you've placed your order there's 249 999 wrong ways to make your burger um so the customer one of the one aspect of customer service is getting that right the first time um but customization was new i think i mean in america you know it goes back to harry met sally and the way she ordered her salad in the you know in the restaurant um you know is um you know an example of how americans want things just the way they want them um but i think that's been a newer thing to europe you know they like the chef should know you know chef tell me how i should order this um and saying no no it should be exactly the way you want it um and i think that trend is the certainly the millennials are very much onto that you know i want it exactly the way that i want it and five guys is really ready for that the whole machine is like um uh i liken it to putting a a ferrari engine on top of an ox cart and then racing it around a track so we're very old school very analog in our product in our production it's very manual um everything's handmade and yet we can do you know a 4 000 pound hour out of uh you know of oxford circus making you know burgers and fries um you'll see kind of 25 30 people running around madly behind an open kitchen making your food i think that was the other secret because five guys doesn't advertise so there literally is no way for us to tell someone who doesn't know five guys what we're about or you know what makes us
different or special um we're entirely relying on someone walking into the restaurant seeing how the food is prepared tasting a great burger and fry and then telling their their neighbors or their friends you know hey look you've gotta you gotta try this um so having an open kitchen where you can see that freshness and the customization i think has been part of the um success of the business it's almost like there's a set of really strong values underpinning the business and the business has been reverse engineered maybe not even reverse engineered because when it's the case of a founding family still running it i'm sure it all comes sort of intuitively to them but and so in hindsight we look at it and go that's the point of genius that's the point of genius but it all comes from these underlying values one of those is about the freshness of the ingredients and all being very real so of course the kitchen would be open right because you've got nothing to hide yes but in hindsight you go well you know that's that's genius well no it would be strange to hide away the kitchen in such a context but um that that particular point about the kitchen being open at five guys is very different from all the other fast food restaurants that came before five guys that dominated the high street where you'd order the burger and then something would go on in the back and then you'd get this thing wrapped up given to you yes i've also seen this trend with all these fast salad outlets where they put all of the vegetables the carrots and the the cucumbers on show in front of you as if to say these are the carrots that are going to go into your salad yes and it's small you don't really you don't think about it as a customer that much but somewhere subconsciously it really really matters right yeah no i mean i think you know part of the the original founding of the business um jerry morrell picked a very obscure location and said look if we can make this location work we know we have something it almost was like a speakeasy um you know we're like you know knock three times and you know someone will open the slide window and you know you give the secret word and then you come in and so
five guys kind of had a little bit of that kind of coolness factor of like hey let me tell you about five guys it's amazing and you know maybe you haven't heard of it certainly haven't seen it on tv or on the radio but it's amazing and if you you know come find out so you know when barack obama left the white house in his limo to go pick up five guys and for his office you know that was you know a great example of how of course you know everybody knows who he is and that's kind of like a megaphone but that's how five guys was discovered that's how five guys built its business was one recommendation at a time and i can remember covent garden was the very first five guys outside of the u.s and we'd spent a lot of money paying for the bar that was there to leave and then building the first five guys and uh the we were quite nervous we were well into five figures seven figures for you know for the new for the first store and um the night before opening we were like what happens if nobody comes and jerry morell laughed and said you know look you've picked a good location someone's going to walk by here and they'll walk in we'll make them a great burger and they'll tell their neighbors and it'll be fine and of course there was a queue at 4 00 a.m in the morning and there was a queue around the building for you know the first two years that the business was open until we opened up more five guys around there because people had tried it in america including me i tried it and i think i tried it in america before i tried it here i'm 99 sure that i tried on my way to coachella one year or something but and then when it came here i was like oh that's that amazing burger place from america is that why there was a key around the corner when you were working there actually is a burger blogger community right this global okay and everybody talks about burgers and you know it's one of those very um articulate communities that and there's a lot of debate about who has the best burger and why it's the best burger and five guys is in that debate in that mix and so we're really fortunate for that um and and actually
when charles and i were were thinking about who to do business with it really was when you know when charles flew over and went to five guys in manhattan was like this is fanta the product's fantastic one thing that we did really differently in the uk was the property approach we thought the product was it was a category winner it was the best that we had that we could find but it was positioned from a property perspective and you know mostly in strip centers and in kind of b locations in america and we thought let's give it the property presence that it deserves and i think that positioning was a really important distinction that we made richard collier who runs our property has done a fantastic job of picking the flagship locations to say there isn't a better premium burger than five guys and we're gonna make sure that you discover us partly because of where we are so you chose aspirational locations because you wanted to make the brand aspirational essentially well we knew that we weren't going to be advertising so you know if you can't tell people about who you are you have to rely upon the footfall and that which essentially becomes a word of mouth accelerator so if you have a lot of people walking by your store some will make the decision to come in and then that larger group who comes in then kind of tells everybody else and and that's really the way the business grew and worked you know you have this you have this rule where you don't do advertising has there ever been a time where you thought [ __ ] i just want to just run a little facebook ad you know the pandemic comes around things start changing in the world you think [ __ ] i just wanna you know i know you joined some of the delivery um services which was a which was a big big decision for the uk yes because the us hadn't done that previously that's right but in those moments do you not think [ __ ] i just want to run a little it's real tempting isn't it i mean you know when you think about the dashboard that most
food and beverage executives have you know you have an advertising dial that you can crank you know you can choose the quality of your messaging and the budget that you put in and the way that you spend it and all those dials are gone and off the off the table so you know it does focus you on the things that you can do which is making great burgers and fries hiring people who are passionate about it you know kind of back to the whole people thing the people who are in the store make such a difference um you know food fundamentally is about passion we all have you know you you're you remember the great food experiences that you've had you talk about them and it becomes part of your if you're on holiday having great food is part of that experience and um having a passion about food is so important and and having you know i'm responsible for 225 restaurants now um and 8 600 people a day get up and put on a red shirt and go into work into five guys and whether those people who are actually shaking fries and grilling burgers care about the product that they're making the food that they're that they're cooking that's all the difference because all we have is the customer eating a great product it can't be good right if a customer takes a bite of a burger and goes huh that's really good that doesn't move the dial nothing happens it has to be that's [ __ ] fantastic you know i'm going to go tell somebody who else who do i know who likes good food i'm going to tell them about a burger or a fries you know the fries at five guys it has to be that level good and you only get that level good with people who pour their passion and their care into the food that they're preparing and having that many people care about about burgers and fries is the you know i think the what makes us successful you know that that sort of psychological device that's making people want to tell their friends do you spend much time thinking about exactly why that is like what is the why would i care if i've had a great burger why would i care psychologically to tell my best mate about that burger what is it doing for
me that's next level thinking stephen and and actually is the i one thing we have been able to do is to encourage the morels to widen their thinking a bit um and delivery was a great example of that where um they opened up a store near the pentagon and a general called up jerry and said like a thousand burgers at you know noon and uh you know jerry bought a big sign and hung it up no delivery and put it on the side of the building um and you know the thesis was right which is that our burgers and fries taste best right off the grill you know it's the best food experience you can get but we convinced him that actually it wasn't just your cheap local you know guy who was delivering food it was actually really high quality food and more and more people were actually looking for really good food delivered if you could come and try it here yeah yeah from delivery yeah yeah absolutely before it went before it went to america for sure um but we convinced them that all of the better restaurant concepts were were actually heading towards delivery and so gosh five six years ago now we we started we launched delivery in the in the uk and it really worked it kind of became about 20 of our sales and they saw that of course it's not as good as right off the grill but it actually is a good product and people like it and it and it can work and if you work with your delivery and you have a commitment from your delivery partner to take care of the food as it's transported to the customer it can really work and we did a lot of stuff like you know telling people to you know turn your oven on 200 pop the fries in for about you know just a couple minutes it'll really you know liven them up before you eat them so they saw that it worked here and they picked it up and of course during the pandemic it was our lifeblood um you know it would have been a very different journey um if there hadn't been delivery um in the system but we've been able to convince the morels that some of those things that were were rules of the brand before can actually be good for the brand and
can work and delivery was a good example of that i guess that's important because the world is changing so like stubborn values are really good to some extent but in a changing world um it's almost a bit like the bible you have to be able to look at the thing again and go huh yes maybe you know so indeed indeed and actually in the morels defense you know they've they've become successful who they are is saying no to change you know when everybody told them they should do a chicken sandwich everybody told them they should do a salad they were like no no it's too complicated we take our eye off the ball and the kind of core of what we do um and helping them to just to discern that delivery actually is okay you can be the best burger being delivered because it doesn't compromise on their on their values those core values of serving food that your mother would love basically exactly right so they're willing to innovate but with i guess they're not compromising on their values then because those core values are still there but now it's just about distributions changing a little bit well you mean you have a customer who wants a great burger and they happen to be watching the football match and they're like i am not leaving my chair right i'm watching the football match and but i want the best burger i can possibly get so that customer you can still reach and and you can give them a really good product when you think about the incumbents then those we'll talk about just the burger incumbents that were there in the let's say in the european market before five guys arrived why do you think now from everything you've learned that incumbents often fall what is it gosh well you know i i i all i can say is that i think part of it is the the most enduring concepts will survive um and i think if you look at five guys you know we five guys wasn't successful because we put a
slice of avocado you know on a burger so it wasn't there was nothing trendy about five guys you know the the kind of the 15 toppings that you know you can put on a burger whether it's you know grilled onions or mushrooms or cheese and you know lettuce tomatoes fresh is trendy uh yeah it it it is trendy but i can't imagine it ever going out of trend i mean you you know yes i know there are restaurant concepts where you walk into their kitchen and there's little like a bank of of microwaves and they like kind of pull this stuff out and you pop them in the microwaves and i mean you know i can't imagine that anyone would ever go let's go back to that you know i mean i think i think fresh is is now a an enduring expectation across price points i mean if you can have you know a you know a five guys that's incredibly obsessively fresh you know why would you not if you could one of the things that i sometimes think about why incumbents fall is that um quality and attention to detail declines as growth increases so the more locations we have quality i can see from your face but this is but obviously i think about you know i won't name names mcdonald's but i um i just think you know the more locations you have especially this underlying franchise model will really ultimately hurt the quality of the product and if it hurts my quality going back to what you said if i have a bad burger in milton keynes i'm less likely to go into mcdonald's in thailand yes so i mean you know it's funny i mean mcdonald's i would say is actually a really strong competitor i mean they they they give you what they say on the 10. is it declining i don't know the numbers but is that i know you're not you're not trying to slag anyone off here but is my thesis is those those businesses are in decline because there's been this new wave of like fresh and you know almost all of our customers also go to mcdonald's um and you know
if you if you look at the frequency of five guys you know mcdonald's has a huge frequency you know eight times or more a year which actually ends up being you know people go there a lot um and five guys frequency is much lower than that and and you know it's five guys is a treat you know it's not something um you know like a competitor of mine that i think very highly of you know prett's done an amazing job uh with who they are you can go to pret pretty much every day right and you know the subscription coffee stuff you know all that kind of you know stuff works on a routine basis you can't go to five guys every day i mean i i go to five guys you know you're pretty close to it but um you eat a burger that you know that kind of frequently but um you know most of the customers are are going you know a couple times a year um so it from a frequency perspective i think um you know that's what makes five guys a treat and special so on that point about um the incumbents and what makes them fall and scale being one of those key factors how do you how do you guard against that you know you've got 250 225 locations you said in europe that you're managing yes um how do you stop the 226th location you know getting a little bit sloppy and complacent and then serving bad burgers yeah gosh david that you know the the that was my primary concern when i you know i was charles and i structured the joint venture together we you know we hired the first employees you know and opened the first restaurant and you know it had such amazing momentum you know it's kind of this explosion of five guys and it was you know really you know fun to be a part of it in my the the kind of thing that keeps you up is okay we're gonna grow this business you know as fast as we can because we know we have something how are we going to keep the intensity and the energy and the in the passion that we see in the store in come and garden how do we make sure that every one of these restaurants has that kind of that was the the most that covent garden location sold more than any in the world when it launched it did yeah by far i
mean we underwrote it for like a five and a half year payback it paid back in two years i mean it was just a phenomenal uh success um but yeah i mean the thing that kept me up at night was you know how can we make sure that you know we open up in milton keynes we open up in um you know um the smallest you know we're we're gonna open up a store in st andrews you know how do we make sure that that those stores have people who are absolutely passionate about burgers and fries and taking care of hungry customers um and that i will say has been one of the biggest surprises of my uh tenure is in this business is that it's we've actually gotten better and the key to that is hiring very talented professionals and trusting them um and you know my personal style is a very hands-off style of management i mean if you expect me to micromanage you i've we've gotten off in is the wrong place is the wrong fit you know we hire professionals who are really good at what they do and let them do their job and finding those people who are absolutely operators i i'd say the other bit is that we are very operations led um i was a banker before it before this but i'm fully qualified in a five guys kitchen so i can do every task that you see in you know making a making burgers and fries i'm certified to do that and people who are much better at it than i am could do it much faster than i can but if you have any credibility in the business you have to be operationally capable and hiring operationally capable people who are really good at identifying and qualifying those people who can run a store and bring that passion into a store that's been the the secret of the of the the growth of the business um because having that kind of commitment from the person who's showing up and running a shift that's what that's what makes this restaurant successful
going back to that point about values i i would imagine that you know from speaking to actually sports teams and speaking to the players in those successful sports teams whether it's the manchester united players that were under sir alex ferguson for 20 odd years and they they said something to me which is really interesting and i never forgot ria ferdinand said to me he said how many times do you think sir alex ferguson came into the training ground changing room i said i don't know you tell me he goes twice in 26 years and i go why and he goes well the culture was in there so he didn't need to come in and it spoke and then he told me about when he moved to another football club and in that same training ground changing room they're all bickering and talking about how much they're being paid and like slagging things off whereas sir alex ferguson never needed to walk into that room because the culture was already in there and it made me think about how you know to keep the specialness of what made you successful at one location when you have 225 those values and that culture must be so strong so if i'm if i'm starting at five guys in a management position today what are you saying to me to turn me into a five guys disciple well i mean i guess the we do actually have values that we identify with inside the business and hiring right is essential i mean there's so many talented food and beverage professionals who are really good at their job but who are a terrible fit for us and so being able to find those human beings who work in a five guys so a general manager works in the restaurant with customers with crew making burgers and fries taking resolving problems and issues there's not a laptop job and a five guys um so someone who's looking for kind of you know kind of ice skate above things and you know not really getting your hands dirty that's not the right fit for us so i guess the first thing we did was when we opened up nobody knew who five guys were so we had to beg people to work for us um and of course that that's always a a mistake um we hired a lot of the wrong people and you have a lot of
churn early on trying to find what that right fit is um and so i remember it was a really important decision we made where we're essentially going to invert the equation and we said you know five guys is a really hard job and it is probably not for you and then kind of be quiet and look for the look for the the woman or the guy who kind of raised their hand and said that kind of sounds good to me um and so having the kind of negative sell on working at five guys i think was a really important distinction that we made but once you get into five guys we have five values that that we build our business on um and that's integrity um you can't once you lose your integrity everything else is easy um so having integrity in how you lead being competitive um and you know wanting to win and going after the business being enthusiastic having passion and positivity and looking for the solution family oriented taking care of people having a sense about the human beings who are on your crew and the hungry people who are coming into your store and treating them like family then getting it done not over complicating it our businesses have you know our menu simple our business is simple but it's really hard but making sure that you have a very much results oriented focus as a manager and we actually train and teach those values and when you look at the pandemic and how five guys comparatively surfed through the pandemic it was because we taught those values and we all absorbed those values into how we thought and then when you know you had to be agile and nimble and flexible you knew what what the what the objective of the business was and all the managers just beautifully adjusted their business to reflect the opportunities that they could take how um how do you go about instilling those values in team members um beyond beyond the day when they're hired is there is there certain things you're doing every quarter is there daily
emails like what is what are the touch points where you're using them as an opportunity to say this is who we are by the way yeah well i think the first thing um was a a card from uh dec that you played was we we launched an app um right like within a week of the pandemic falling we had been planning to have an uh an employee-oriented app um but we launched the app um right when the pandemic struck we're like we have to be able to communicate because we were none of us knew what was happening and being able to be in direct touch with every human being in the business was such a um a great tool um and we immediately had like massive down i mean it was it was universally kind of accepted as a way to communicate with inside the company and it allowed so i was recording something pretty much every day to say you know here's what's going on here's what the rules are here's why it's going to be safe to come to work here's how we're going to protect you and your family and the crew and and the customers in this environment and being able to have that direct line of communication to the whole company was really powerful kind of cut through a lot of the the fear and um and uncertainty about it one um two is that we we've now we're now investing massively in learning and development um we 75 of our managers are promoted internally um so these are people who have joined us we have people who have joined this crew and gone on to be district managers area managers now so that kind of career opportunity um is fantastic so if you're ambitious if you're have you know career goals come to five guys because we're growing and we need your talent to to grow the business so being able to first of all we know that that career internal development is kind of the best path to um to to growing inside of five guys and having new leaders for all the restaurants that we're opening we've got to invest in the young people who are joining five guys and teaching them not just burgers and fries but how to manage how to manage people um you know there's so many different kinds of people that it takes to make a restaurant work
how you communicate with one crew member may be very different from how you communicate and motivate with another one and giving our managers tools for how to connect with all different kinds of people who work for them is you know an important investment that we make before the pandemic happened um i think i said a lot on this in this podcast and just generally that my single biggest learning being a young entrepreneur starting in business and then making all the mistakes and then getting a little bit more mature was the importance of talent and i always say that by definition of the word company the definition of the word company means group of people took me too long to figure that out because when i started i was 20 years old you know you just hire your mate here 18 years old i started my first companies hired you know my friend here i met someone at rap event i was like you can be my marketing director went into prada met and other guys that you can be the head of our account it was just that kind of whoever was willing right right great people exactly probably who i needed at that phase but for the next phase you need to um i learned that you need a different caliber of person and really i should have been a bit more ambitious from the jump if i'm being completely honest um and so now i reflect on it and think damn in fact every company is just a recruitment business at its core like if i had hired steve jobs i would have and bound them with the right culture and values yeah i would have had an apple right i would have made an apple how important do you think it is um to hire the best people and how how do you go about that what is the the strategy yeah well first of all i think we had the benefit of seeing the success of five guys in the u.s so charles and i had a conviction that even before we opened the first store of course we were nervous when we opened it but that we we thought we had a tiger by the tail because we thought the product was fantastic so we were able to assemble people who were proven to be really good at what they
did from the outset and kind of like across the board in the senior management team so julie spear who's my head of operations unbelievable we would we wouldn't be where we are without her richard collier who's head of property i mean he opened up 2 400 stores for carphone warehouse all across europe really established professional those two are were essential we would never be where we are without those two individuals but then kind of driving that all the way down to the you know the the the first crew person who you hire in a new and for a new store hugely important because they're actually gonna be making the burger and fry for for the customer who walks in there and you know i think that you know it's probably an urban myth but the shackleton story about you know putting an ad in the paper for his you know south uh south pole expedition you know it's gonna be dangerous and risky we'll probably you know we may not come back alive but if we do there'll be glory that kind of negative cell i think was a critical point for us where you know five guys is a really hard job huge expectation physically demanding job it's not for everybody and and you know stating that being confident enough to say look you know you're a very talented human you know professional in food and beverage but you're just not the right fit for us and being the confidence to say no in that regard that was hard but i think that was a real turning point um in the business for us what about firing people that's the worst part of the business um really hard you know i mean it's um you know if you get it wrong it's so painful you know these are people who you know who are human beings and if the jobs either outgrown them or they were the wrong cultural fit it's really obviously it's hard for them but i mean it's def it's really it's it's a soul-crushing moment which makes it that much more important to hire right and in the interview for culture you know but when when an interview finally gets to my level
i am 100 focused on culture i mean the the whole qualification of their professional skills has been addressed by the time they get to me and i am solely focused on are you a good cultural fit um are you the kind of person who you know obviously is good at what you do but are you going to be when we're in the trenches and when the the chips are down and we have to make the hard calls are you going to value the the same things that i will and that we do as a company um to make your decisions what is your philosophy though for moving people and you have a clear philosophy around hiring people what is the philosophy for moving people on because i've made this is again one of my other biggest mistakes in my professional career was allowing people who are clearly not right fit to kind of overstay their uh journey with my company i just wish sometimes that i had because the net damage of that when you your gut tells you this isn't this is not the right person yeah but maybe for whatever reasons emotional reasons you don't act fast enough is so severe yeah well you know i mean i i first of all i think i think you can't you have to make the decision that's best for the business um and the in in realizing that this business is bigger than any of us um including me um you know i can be i'm i'm hired and fired by by my board um you know charles and the morels can decide any day that i'm not the right guy to lead the business going forward and certainly at the executive level to me my expectation is that everyone should have that expectation it's a privilege to have the jobs that we do it's not a right um and if if there's a if there's a tough decision to be made making it clearly cleanly um and directly is the best thing and there's no reason to be um negative about it you have to be but you do have to be very direct about it um and quick um quick is really important in in my book you know there is a bit of a difference between the uk and the u.s um you know the u.s has a um favors that quick side of things and i think i probably fall into that category and that can be a challenge in an environment where
there's like you know what about a six-month garden leave yeah i'm like what is it i'm not sure what a garden i went the other way so i launched a business here then we took it to america and i'm like what two week notice period everyone has a two week notes but what the hell is this yeah and it's really just a box and you know please you probably should leave now uh in america more than more than not it feels like um but i think once you've made that decision it's you can't move soon enough um because and it's rare that someone is that you would consider to say i really don't think they're right for the job and that that person kind of recovers to being a superstar right that almost never happens so if you do have that i'm not sure that i'm not sure this person's right for the business either from a talent perspective or from a cultural fit perspective you know it's probably i mean i think you need to listen to that urge because it's probably right and actually it's a favor to that human being as well because they're gonna whether it's talent or if it's um you know a cultural fit there may be a fantastic opportunity elsewhere for them and all you're doing is holding them in a you're holding them back professionally because they're never going to fly in your organization but they might in another court in another culture so i know it never feels like that um to say you know look i'm doing you a favor by you know telling you that you you know not to work here anymore um but if you know someone's not going to be successful in your business it is best for everybody to do that quickly and as soon as you can actually how important have you realized it to be in the five guys business and for the success of a five guys brand to have a real high attention to detail and to sweat the small stuff because a lot of businesses don't sweat the small stuff they kind of see it as being petty or not mattering and they kind of focus more on like the big decisions they make but you know what's your sort of philosophy towards the small stuff um
well first of all i think being operationally focused is something that defines your business um and for us so our details are the standards for cooking burgers and fries and you can never focus on that enough um you can and you know if you're not actually cooking burgers and fries you better be supporting someone who is in the business so that that kind of um horrible disconnection that you can sometimes have of a head office people who call it the head office we call it the back office from the actual business um is is you know to me is the death knoll for uh you know for for certainly for a food and beverage business um so having that connectivity to the detail of um of the the purpose of our business which is feeding hungry customers uh is is to me is essential now from a detailed perspective i don't want to get into the details of my i.t guy or my marketing team or the property team you know i've hired people who are fantastic at that and i don't want to be into the details i can't be into the details of each of those professional expertise that you hire for you have to hire talent and let them do their um their professional expertise but how do you check that you know if something say something in one of your stores and say like we mentioned milton keynes so let's just keep focusing on that um in milton keynes if standards have dropped because of the leadership there how are you checking that those standards are staying high yeah so we mystery shop every store twice a week okay and and we put the money that we would typically that other brands would spend on advertising we spend an incentive compensation for crew so we pay out millions and millions of pounds of incentive compensation to crew to be the to be the best of the best and we grade so the mystery shop looks like 120 points of what of what's important from a burgers and fries perspective from a cleanliness perspective from a customer service perspective and the top rated
shops that have that perform get paid incentive compensate meaningful incentive compensation um so i'd say that com back to the competitiveness everybody wants to get paid everybody wants to compete for that excellence and to be recognized for that um so mystery shopping i think is a is a fantastic way of ensuring that we're all focused on the same thing and if you find a location is continually ranking at the bottom of that mystery shopping scoreboard what what are the next steps of action yeah well i mean you know the first question is in store leadership you know who's who's leading the store are they the right person do they have the right orientation do they have the right values um are there are they trained enough to do their job well um so um you know we have a very flat organization where you go from general manager to district manager area manager and then you know basically the top of the business um so it's it's pretty pretty quick um and and i do what's called a mid-year review i'm actually missing a couple to be on your on your on your podcast today uh but we have every gm stand and present their stores performance once a year in june july august in that time frame and so i get a view of the in-store leadership you know who is that human being who's in charge of that store what do they have to say about the results that they've delivered both from a financial perspective most of all from a perform from a customer service perspective and a quality perspective so you kind of get a direct view into who is that human being who's running the store one of the things that's happened over the last couple of years is this this pandemic it's been this very tectonic shift um in many industries but there are a few industries that have been affected more than like the high street and retail and food and beverage there's been real tectonic shifts in technology and footfall and all of these things um as the ceo of a business that's gone through such chaos how do you maintain your own personal calm within all of that chaos because it is just never ending we were talking before we start recording you've gone from a pandemic to inflation issues to this sort of great resignation and uh
you know talent crisis as they're talking about all of these things happening at once you're a human being in the heart of that how do you enjoy your life and keep calm and you know not annoy your partner or whatever um yeah i'm sure i do all those things i'm sure i'm sure i don't keep calm all the time and that's okay you know i think just as we in the business try to keep things simple um focus on burgers and fries um i think there's keeping focused on just a few things and picking the couple of dials that that will determine whether you survive whether you live or die whether you win or lose and hopefully picking those right things to focus on i think is the way i try and and manage myself as a ceo um you know i think it's interesting you know the the moments that i consider to be the most intense and the most rewarding as a as a leader are the human ones where because i'm ceo people have to explain what's going on in their lives and those moments are just rich gold for me as a human being where someone comes to me and says you know i have i've got a parent who's suffering from dementia i have to you know have to spend some time looking after that and um or you know i i've i've had a loss and i've got to figure out um you know how to manage that that loss and and those human connection points are um are and actually that kind of feeds back into our family value um you know where we and as a ceo i have my a smaller direct report community that i have to take care of those human beings and my my view is that if i can take care of those human beings they'll they'll do their job and take care of of their human being so recognizing that it's not you know it's not all dollars and pounds
and and pence it's not all um you know kpis that you can manage it's not quarterly earnings it's the human beings and if you focus on them particularly on the vulnerable moments when they're most um upset when they're most um at risk um and being able to say yeah you know take a week take them you know what what you need as a human being is important for the business because i need you i need your professional acumen but i need it focused so being being sure that they're all right in those moments i think is uh um gives me the satisfaction that i'm looking for from the job of of chief exec um my dad was a psychiatrist um and you know was obviously clearly focused on mental health and well-being and you know from a chemical perspective um and you know realizing that whatever whatever chemical i mean obviously i'm sure he did important work in that regard um but you can at work you have the ability to either build up or tear down someone's mental health and being able to provide an environment where someone's mental health is protected and perhaps even tended to i think is a is a powerful um it's a powerful thing for me as a as a leader and and and hope what i see is that that approach carrying out throughout the business so that style of leadership um is you know is is contagious as a value in the business so you know if if someone's in distress um in in a crew um you know the the shift will suffer and you have to take care of that person who's um in distress um and um understand them and and see what it takes to build them back up and to provide them the support and security to to be effective in their job what about your mental health when was your hardest time my hardest time in your five guys journey yeah well um i was i went through a very painful divorce um and went through something called leave to remove which i wouldn't wish on my worst
enemy it's the essentially it's the right to have your children taken out of the country so i had two young children um who um the court system approved leave to remove which allowed my ex to to take my kids back to america um which was um incredibly painful um and my whole um view of myself my definition of who i was changed i thought i thought of myself as a you know great partner good husband good father devoted father you know i was in politics back in america was involved in my community and a church leader and businessman and i thought you know all these things are who i am and essentially all of that was uh you know a quite a large bonfire of vanities and that was a real dark dark moment for me um and there were there were days when five guys was the one thing in my life that was stable and that i could hold on to and that really pulled me through a very difficult dark time uh personally how long did that that process last um that's part of the uk challenge it took years um a better part of two years uh we're in that process um and then um you know trying to um rebuild those relationships and thankfully i'm in a an amazing place with my kids now um and have um you know accepted that they that we have had a more adult relationship prematurely but now that they're both at university it feels more normal now and those are hard fought hard-won recast relationships which you know were really important are important to me but was i was the thought that they were at risk was um caused just enormous anxiety and and living with that kind of anxiety and the personal side having having a place where um you know things were more predictable was um in being able to work in that way and provide for them um was uh you know
a real um yeah really helped me through when your kids are essentially taken away to another country and you you've got this huge responsibility of running this big business how do how does that impact your ability to show up every day professionally yeah well i mean it was it was it was really complex for me because i had a non-compete back in the us for the business that i had sold so i couldn't just relocate back to america and do my job um so it felt like a huge catch-22 because i had these court-ordered financial obligations and the only way that i could really fulfill them was to keep doing my job here um so coded financial obligations is in the separation costs and stuff that you have to pitch apart yeah exactly um so it felt like a catch-22 they were allowed to leave but i had to provide for them so i had to stay and so it felt like a um kind of a indentured servant to for a bit but um you know being able to um to focus on um on a important job that i had actually was enormously relieving because i knew that for you know 10 hours a day you know 12 hours a day whatever whatever it ended up being that i could actually do something productive that i knew i was good at um that made a difference for them um and that um was it the the anxiety of of being separated i i could set aside for a few you know for those hours in a day and that was really helpful um it it it could have absorbed just kind of overwhelmed me um but work was able to it was it was a place where i could or i could escape from that did you see your motivation fluctuate often when we have these like pretty substantial life events there's an initial period where getting out of bed in the morning is a little bit more difficult it's almost like someone is messed with your why your reason to get out of bed in your sense of purpose yeah so you always have to i've learned from my own experiences that you have to spend a little bit of time you're almost faking it to get to get the drive back if that
makes sense no of course no well you know i told you i got up at 5 a.m when i was a kid and practice violin for an hour before before uh school and what i mean i was never a great musician but what i did find was that if you did something every day you actually could get better at it maybe even more than competent and i think it was something like that that just in me you know said you know get out of bed do the next do the next thing and something things will change you will i called a friend of mine who'd been through a similar um situation um and he said you know just keep showing up you know you know texting my son every day calling you know every day being as present as i possibly could um and you know obviously it's imperfect um and it's deeply upsetting i'm sure to them as well as as well as to me um but doing as much as you possibly can to be available and in touch um and and then you just have to trust um trust something that it'll be okay trust something doesn't just trust life that it will no i mean you know i i now we're getting very personal to even but uh you know i i i believe in a higher power um i i don't i don't pretend to understand it um but i think there's something much more powerful than i am in the world and what i will say is that it helped me to see the world in two camps one are things that i can't control and some things that i absolutely can't control and if you spend if you allocate your mental um health and your time on the things that you can't control um you can drive yourself to distraction and eventually madness um so being able to focus on the things that you can control um and and realizing that that's your job um you know your job as a human is to do the things that you can control and if you if you you know it's just it's just arrogance and and um ignorance to to focus on the things that you can't control um and so identify those identifying those two camps and being at peace with that accepting that you can't some things you can't control that's really hard
but it's hugely important yeah i i was at this festival this weekend and there was a i did one-on-one meetings with lots of people that were in the audience for three hours and i found myself being asked over and over again how to deal with exactly that which is when chaos arrives in our lives what to do on that day and people had me recording these voice notes for them for that day so when that day comes they just wanted to be able to play it and what you said there is exactly what i said which is there are a small list of things you can control and on that tough day make a promise to me that you'll spend 100 of your mental energy focusing only on those things because you can't because obviously yesterday focusing too much on that tends to lead to depression as i think the lu sao the philosopher says focusing too much on tomorrow and the things that are yet to be in your control will also cause a lot of anxiety so really focusing on today i think is just phenomenal advice in terms of um a it's the thing that's most conducive with a successful outcome but b it's also the thing that's most conducive with having a healthy mental state in total chaos i think that's absolutely right i mean i think the other thing is that realizing that our pr i believe our purpose in life is human connection um i think that's why we're here i think we're we're made to to connect and sometimes it's you know we're colliding with you know and more than connecting but but figuring out how to connect with other human beings and i will say you know that was the making of me as uh uh the in being able to to you know when someone comes into my office and says you know i've i've lost my i've lost my partner you know they passed away you know way before their time you know being able to connect with that person in that moment of loss is hugely valuable as a company but hugely meaningful to me as a human being and i wouldn't have been able to do that if i if i hadn't been through the
loss that i that i had experienced um so you know it's one of those things where you end up being grateful for the the most upsetting things that happen in your life um because i think they're the making of you in many ways because of what you said at the start of this conversation about that importance of feeling like you belonged and that's so it's so evident that that is um much of the reason you've also been successful is your you you mean even from this short conversation we've had you strike me as a very empathetic person who's able to connect with others that moment must have been presumably even more difficult because your sense of belonging in that moment was was taken from you to some degree the family unit right no for sure that was that was a yeah that was a defining moment um but now you know the thing about about five guys is that you know we have these 8 600 people who get up every morning and have this shared vision mission to make great burgers and fries for hungry customers and i get to be a part of that and you know i get to be a part of this larger community that that has this the in the you know winning in business feels fantastic right i mean it's a real it's a real high it's a it's a um it's a drug and it's an addiction and being a part of a community that had that that's accomplishing this thing you know we were the we were the eighth fastest growing business uh in 2016 i think in the uk and the fastest growing food and beverage business and even with that we never met a budget that i had made so you know we were you know we were fastest but you know still behind by by by my mind and um being it being a part of this community that shares our our values and that are all working towards us is is enormously satisfying and um and yeah fill something that that you know has always been empty some days as ceos we maybe we're tired or you know we're in a bad mood or something's off um we can sometimes not show up as our best selves and sometimes when it happens with me i i regret it so i'll go home and think i
just wish i had i wish i'd handled that situation differently does that happen to you a lot where you think i wish i'd been in a better mood or i'd slept more today or something yeah julie tells me julie my head of ops she comes in and says yeah you really [ __ ] up that meeting but but but actually having um having somebody who um you know to me the the one of the worst things that can happen are these um you know emperor has no clothes where you know where the where the the most important powerful person in business has blind spots that you know everybody knows about and somehow you you know you work around um and and that's just hugely dangerous as a business and having people who can come into your office and go john that that was you know that comment was just way out of line or really unhelpful you know you now have people thinking like this is that what you wanted so people who can confront power with truth and you know to me that that kind of culture is hugely important to a company because you can go so wrong with the emperor has no clothes and people think god we know this we just can't tell them to that person how did you cultivate that because i imagine a lot of ceos and a lot of team members that work for a ceo think ah there's no way i could go to my ceo and tell them that was wrong or he shouldn't have said that or she should have said that i think publicly owning your [ __ ] um is is really is really helpful um in that way you know so showing up at the next meeting and go hey you know what i said this the last meeting and that was just really wrong it was off and you know i was i was off my game or you know i didn't think it through and you know and it should be the opposite it should be the opposite of that um and and you know showing that you can respond to that kind of challenge i think is is is important as a leader and then you give everybody else permission to do the same thing you know i mean
you can change your mind you're allowed to change your mind you're allowed to be wrong as a fallible human being too um and and confessing that it's powerful that confession there when i heard when i heard that example what it actually says to me as well is that as a ceo you care more about the correct answer not being right so that might be confusing as because of the way i said that when you come stand in front of your team members and say you know what in hindsight i actually got that really wrong and i i [ __ ] up what you're actually saying is my number one thing as john is to be is to find the right answer not for me to be correct yeah and it's like and it's a really it's really refreshing to hear that you're in search of truth and the correct answer not in search of validating your own um your own opinions and yourself which as you say creates that culture of humility where hopefully others around them will go i'm also wrong in this situation exactly business shouldn't be an homage to an individual right i mean you know we have we're about perfect burgers and fries hungry customers clean restaurants customer service and that's that's really simple i mean it's not a um and if if any of us isn't the right human being to fill the function that we're supposed to be performing you know we all should raise our hand and say you know it's probably not me anymore how do people give um do you have a system in which people at five guys could give that are working there in the team could give critical feedback safely yeah so i mean we do have kind of like the scheduled uh annual conversations um i didn't often uh you know it was kind of in my you know in my don't micromanage um you know it was just kind of like you know people will come to me if they you know if they need to and i think that that probably was wrong um and you know saying look we're going to have a dedicated time and and really you know i i don't i don't like fill out a form where you know so you did well in
this and poorly in that you know we don't i don't do that you know um but i sit and say you know let's talk about what worked and what didn't both from you know chance for you to tell me what didn't didn't work but also for us to talk about what didn't go right you know and and worked you know this year for you um and you know what do we do to fix that you know how do we how do we make it better um so i think having a set time to talk about that actually is a good idea and i've taken that up relax somewhat reluctantly but now enthusiastically you much of this conversation is centered around um five guys sort of central philosophy of really really caring about the customer and you talked a little bit about how each store has mystery shoppers that come in and make sure those standards are maintained um is your objective now to push the standards up even further or is it to maintain the standards no i i well well first of all i think you know i'm responsible for germany france spain portugal uk and in each market has a little different national temperament and figuring out what constitutes good customer service is a is a bit of a nuanced thing in each given market give me an example of the difference um you know does does someone want to be checked back on you know so they're you know someone's sitting there eating their food you know they're kind of like one of the things we talk about is first mover advantage you should have your head on a swivel looking around for people who are looking for a solution to a problem with their meal um and you i'm sure you've had that you know we're like you know i'd like some yeah like some extra topping or sauce or something and you can't get anybody's attention and so teaching someone how to how to be in tune with a customer who's looking for help and that's very culturally uh dependent um someone can communicate that very differently um in you know in the different markets one of the things i've been thinking a lot about because i had that exact problem recently was i was in a restaurant it was very busy and i feel like i spent 15 minutes like trying to get someone's
attention to try and get some ketchup yes um the food goes cold i'm like you know and then i start eating it by the time they've come she really wanted that ketchup yeah they're really and it's gone before then i asked for the ketchup and i've eaten it before the ketchup so i just have a bowl of ketchup and no food um and i was thinking i sat there in this restaurant in in spain a week ago and i was thinking if they just had an ipad on the table i could have pressed a button and they would have known and they would have and it would have helped them because i'm sure they want to help me they just weren't aware yeah and i would have got helped faster have you not considered implementing more technology in and in the place of um human beings that sounds pretty brutal but it's just the truth yep no i mean technology is part of the solution it's certainly i mean and actually probably your phone is already there and there's got to be a way to make yours you know this communication tool that you already have in your hand hooked up to an effective way inside the restaurant now more and more young people expect technology to be part of their journey um and they're securing of the things that they want and need but they're they're also people who are you know completely opposed to that um you know we are we are a very analog brand in that sense um i think that there is more openness to technology and there ever has been before so we did curbside service um which essentially is like reverse uber where we can kind of track your car as it approaches and we can prepare your food as we see the countdown for your arrival and so the the kind of perfect scenario which we often get is where you drive up and the fries have just come out of the the fryer and shaken and salted and ready to go and and it kind of like comes together beautifully at the at the right moment so you absolutely we should use technology to meet the customer's needs and to address those people who want to who prefer technology to and also we can't be everywhere and be perfect in every you know in terms of
responsive so yes technology will be a part of that interaction going forward somewhat caught between two generations i imagine because i was in nando's the other day and the first time they've told me oh you can just order from the qr code stuck on the table right and i imagine my my dad might not like that experience yeah for me it was convenient i said perfect great as not to talk to anybody typical you know millennial gender but well and and we should be able to adapt for the for the customer um because they're they're human beings who who actually view customer service as not having to speak right i really just want to stay in my own world and and you know press a button and and and get exactly what i want um and you know we should be responsive to that how much do you think the the structure and the way that the business the foundations of the business in terms of it being a joint venture with the morales as opposed to a franchise and generally the philosophy towards what you're building and how long that sort of time horizon is has impacted the product and therefore the customer and therefore the success of the company well i mean of course my experience is incredibly biased because all i've ever known is the company owned model um and so the franchise model is genius and it really works and there's a powerful power to it and you can become really strong as a franchise and franchised business um it's really worked well for us um you know we wrote you know whenever you whenever you form a company and whenever you form a joint venture you kind of have all these rules and you know governance and how to make decisions and bro we've never even referred to it once over the past 12 years um so you know the having nothing but building a profitable business has been fantastic for me as a chief exec because i knew that my shareholders were completely aligned um and we would never have made the decisions that we did particularly from a property perspective without being a joint venture as a franchisee you wouldn't have paid the premium to be to buy a ten thousand square foot property on the champs-elysees and between the louis
vuitton corporate headquarter and the abercrombie and fitch global flagship store um and there's five guys it's amazing you know it's it's it's probably the most high profile visible five guys apart from the one that's in the dubai mall so that property strategy was definitely influenced by the structure of the deal taking those high you know high investment property uh decisions to reposition the brand um you know as premium as we could get it and it's still running like a family business at its core yeah still making those very value focused decisions as opposed to making decisions for the stock market or the quarterly earnings report is not a pressure for me at all um you know the the family meets every tuesday and talks about the the future of the business i meet with charles on a monthly basis to review the property and the pricing and the positioning of the brand um and those conversations would be different with a different structure for sure because one of the things you said is i don't have a time horizon which means you're not trying to build a business for three years and then jump ship and get out so you said i don't have a time horizon i'm going which allows you to build a really great business for the long term yeah and that's what i'm kind of getting at because there'll be business owners listening to this that are maybe thinking oh i'll build for two years then i'll sell it or i'll build for three years and i'll sell it but what you alluded to there is that you'll create a much better business if you remove that time horizon it has been for us um you know and obviously i've been involved in private equity investments i mean there certainly is a place for that um and i'm not saying you can't be successful in those environments it's really worked for us to be able to focus on you know an indefinite time horizon and doing the right thing today i mean ultimately private equity wants you to do the right thing today and whether it plays out next month next week next quarter i think the sometimes the interpretation of the urgency of the investment window can be misinterpreted to make urgent decisions rather than the right
decisions and i think it's up to this to some degree it's up to the chief exec to say wait a minute you're you're all focused on the wrong thing just right now we could do this which is going to make more quarterly earnings next quarter and i'll make my budget but the right decision is to invest in the medium term long term and here's why so i think it's i think there is a lot of pressure but to some degree it's it's that that position of chief exec where you need to say wait a minute that's the wrong wrong business decision and we can to build a better business be more successful by thinking not about next quarter what's the biggest threat to five guys biggest threat to five guys um i think losing focus on the the basics of burgers and fries thinking that we're something other than being burgers and fries um you know that laser focused on making the best burger you could for your mom i mean that has got to be at the center of you know of of who we are and what we're about treating each other like family um and realizing that it's the human beings who are in the store fundamentally that that that to me was the biggest inversion from banking banking was it felt like to me a very prima donna-ish business where very individual accomplishment and you could get ultimately get paid by moving from one shop to another and taking credit for work you might not have been 100 percent responsible for in this business it's all about reflecting any glory that comes to the business to the people who are actually making the burgers and fries taking care of the business and to me whenever we if we were to ever lose focus on burgers and fries that would be the end of the business on a personal level then what is what makes you happy outside of the professional stuff outside of five guys what what is it what are the ingredients that make you happy um it's the connection stuff um the painful gritty vulnerable connection stuff um and
um yeah you know i mean like i tell my kids now you know i mean i hope that i'm the guy that you call when something's gone wrong um you know it's great it's great to get the calls that you got good grades and that you you know you got the job you wanted and things are going well you got a promotion you know that's wonderful but i want to be i want to be the call when something you know some when something goes wrong when someone breaks up with you and you know you don't you're i mean your job doesn't go the way you want to want it to go you know to me that connectivity at the vulnerable place places is the currency that is most precious to me it's much the reason why we started this podcast to be honest because you know sometimes being a ceo much of it is about well i used to think it was about being seen as being perfect and strong and like you never had any personal issues yourself i think that's probably what i what i'd learned about being a ceo and a leader it was always you know you've got to be um uh rock solid but um the reason why this podcast was called the diary of a ceo is because ceos are humans too successful people are humans too and it turns out they have all the same [ __ ] and problems and pain and personal stuff that everyone else has in their lives and you've talked about much of that today if you're if you're if you're i know this is a question i've asked a few of my guests recently just i really enjoyed asking the question but it's there's somewhat of a pun in it i guess in this case um if your if your happiness is a recipe consisting of a series of ingredients and different quantities like you know the five guys fries just being three ingredients what would be what are those ingredients and is there anything missing [Music] well i think vulnerability is the you know probably the biggest new ingredient that i've had to mix into into my life how to yeah i mean you know i think i think the
being separated from my kids forced a you know forced me to re-look at everything and i think also um realizing that i have massive blind sides that i don't see um and that i i have convictions about the way i think in my intentions but actually there's a huge sea of unconscious motivations that i that i'm unaware of and purposefully so right we we build our our mental defense constructs to deny the unconscious motivations but that actually drive us um and that's what my my partners helped me to see that you know that there's so much that i you know i think i'm doing something because i'm trying to be generous and actually it's not because i'm working out some anger and and i don't want to admit that you know i want to be the good guy right um and and being able to see that shadow side of yourself and to acknowledge that and to and to even embrace that and to say it's okay that's part of me um and you know that's really um that's been the hardest bit for me in the past couple years but um i think probably the most um the most valuable what did you find in the shadows oh gosh all the stuff you don't want to see about yourself that you're selfish that you're um that you i i think you know i grew up thinking that i couldn't express negative emotions you know i couldn't be angry i couldn't you know i and and but that goes i mean of course you get angry all human beings do but and that goes somewhere and if you if you stuff it somewhere it comes out in the worst ways that people that you love and care about um and in ways that you're probably that i'm not even aware of um so feeling that that it's okay to to be angry um is probably you know the hardest thing for for me i'm i'm i'm just starting to work on that i don't pretend to be to be good at it um but being able to be if i were to tell
little john growing up you know something it would be it's okay to have all the emotions that you you know that you have and there's room in the world for all for you to express them and to to feel them and to own them and to you know to to be part of you it's okay um and you know even looking at my kids now trying to say you know actually some negative tension in our relationship is really valuable um you to be able to see that it's okay for you to be angry at me me to be angry at you and to work those out and it's gonna be okay and that we're gonna be we're gonna be um connected even with that that's really powerful because they need to be able to take that into their adult relationships um and you know else they'll you know they'll struggle they'll struggle those places too um and it'll become that intergenerational uh negative baggage that gets passed on so i'm trying to try to do something different in that regard that conversation with um younger john about it's okay to be have a full range of emotions and to be angry because if you don't you'll hurt the people you care about in ways that you don't intend in ways that you don't understand and they and they may not understand i mean you know i'm lucky in my partner that um you know that she's quite um attuned she has a she's just finishing her master's in uh psychotherapy and so you know being able to say yeah i mean i'm i'm getting this from you even though you don't intend it um let's deal with it um that's a that's a gift well you're talking about there as well as this process of like becoming more self-aware about yourself because you're completely right i mean a lot of the stuff i've been reading recently about psychology talks about how we actually have as exactly as you said have this default to just reinforcing ourselves reinforcing the way we think and believe and searching for evidence that confirms it and confirms the identity we want to
have of ourselves but to become self-aware is is a very difficult challenge requires a huge amount of humility feedback um uh you know unlearning learning um what's what has been the the practical ways that you've gone on that journey to become more self-aware is it therapy is it just the feedback from your partner what is yeah well i mean i think first go through something really horribly painful where you have to reconsider everything um and you know who you are and to be willing to put those on the on the table and say you know i thought i was being a great partner i wasn't um you know and and being able to being able to re-define the givens of who you think you are that's that's really that's really painful um and you know you you you come up with these ways of thinking about yourself for a reason and they're typically defense mechanisms from a very young age so these are not easy things to to give up but to me it was it was i had to do it or i would lose connection with everyone that i cared about and to me it was it was it's you know connection is worth it um and my uh i can remember my grandmother who was one of the first ones who taught me to love food i had a very strange relation have a very strange relationship with food in that regard but she um you know she she was um and late in her life she was an amazing cook and i could see the love felt the love she had for me and the food that she prepared um and late in life she was in a retirement home and and uh some health inspector deemed some of the food had been passed like its expiry date um she came to me and she said they were trying to serve us food that was unfit for human consumption and we were like oh that's terrible we'll fix that but i always worried that i somehow particularly in a romantic partner setting was unfit for human consumption and maybe maybe in my weird isolated countercultural upbringing there were skill sets that was that worked in being a business leader but maybe those very things disqualified me
from being successful in a romantic relationship and so overcoming and overcoming that sense of being unfit for human consumption um in a romantic setting is uh you know that's hard and was that causing some some form of self-sabotage in the romantic context inevitably inevitably um so um and being able to and being able to go back and accept the negative emotions um you know it's not up to anybody else to express my anger for me that's up to me um should be up to me um and i should be able to spontaneously experience that in real time and express that in appropriate levels that's that's uh that's my to-do list have you been too much of a nice guy so maybe sometimes but yeah i mean therapy is therapy is great i highly recommend it you know you cannot over invest in your mental health and that that comes from you know someone who grew up with a psychiatrist for a dad um and maybe maybe like you know the cobblers kids don't have shoes um yeah i think uh you know now i'm i'm vest heavily in my mental health there's there's an unlimited budget for for that there's a lot of what you were saying resonates with me very very um terrifyingly and i the parts that really i was i was most um intrigued by is i sometimes think in my romantic relationship that i am maybe negligent and i justify it to myself as because i'm you know working so hard and i'm trying to provide so much and i'm you know and i think sometimes i'm you know i might think to myself well they just don't understand i'm doing all of this hard work and they should respect you not respect me they should be more appreciative of all this hard work i'm doing and it's such a i know it's such a selfish way to look at a relationship because i'm serving myself and then justifying my my almost neglecting someone by saying well i'm basically serving myself it is actually and that's yeah you were speaking i was a bit scared that that's me in some ways no well you remember from the film forrest gump
where he's talking to his girlfriend janie or the girl he loves and he says you know i'm not a smart man janae but i do know what love is and i feel like i'm the foil for that where i might i might in some ways be a smart guy but i'm not at all convinced that i have any grasp firm grasp of what love is um and you know what is love will this like authentic real love look like it's probably not what i try to give my partner sometimes you know i mean you know actually understanding what what she wants you know i mean sometimes i'm i'm giving you know some imaginary you know construct what i think they want and then saying well you know you should have that uh rather than pain really paying attention and going you know what is it what is it that makes you understand and feel loved and known and appreciated and valued and that's what i want to do um did you not see that growing up at all or you just not taught it talk you know what i mean because sometimes you can see it but not know what's actually going on behind the scenes so you can see oh they look happy but not no yeah no i mean i i think when i look back on it there were people who i felt connection with and that i felt you know some warmth and um in their presence and you know i didn't understand that i didn't go that's love you know that that really is um you know them seeing me and and and you know reaching out to me and connecting with me and um but you know looking maybe it's only looking back that you can kind of see those things accurately and and meaningfully when you look forward then what are the big what are the big goals for you and you know i'm i'm not someone that buys into making you know vision boards and having a five-year plan and all that nonsense because i think there's a certain agility required to be successful personally and professionally and putting your flag too far you know in the future is probably not a great idea in that situation but what are you what are the found when you
think about your life in 10 years time what will it what will the foundations of that life look like for it to be a really great one yeah well um i think you know from a business perspective uh i i love what i what i get to do i mean it feels like it doesn't it doesn't you know feel like work um now um i mean it feels like a gift to be able to be a part of this business a part of this you know a family who who believes the integrity of their product there's no pressure to compromise in any way this thing that you know that we're doing and um you know that feels fantastic so you know i i think that the team that we've built is is capable of more i don't know what that is but i'm excited to see what that could be and um and personally you know i think i've got a lot of growth to do i think i've just kind of scratched the surface of the all the the ways that i cover up the motivation the true motivations that i have um so i wanna i wanna i wanna go after that with conviction and competitiveness you know i'm a very competitive guy i love uh you know whatever it is that i do i you know i kind of i kind of go after it um so um yeah and a lot to read a lot to um but you know i think sometimes that urgency doesn't work in mental health um and that kind of you can't rush to self-awareness sometimes it kind of sometimes it's you know kind of like the bird that kind of lands on your hand when you're when you're you know being patient um so um i think i've got to expand my repertoire of of intensity uh in that regard one step at a time and vulnerability being vulnerable i think is one step at a time and it's kind of like opening opening the door a little bit at a time it has been for me anyway i think because i was so scared to be vulnerable i think for much of my life that i tried the experiment of being vulnerable looked around and it seemed to be okay it seemed to help me seem to help others i opened the door a
little bit further it helped me it helped others and so over the last couple of years this is part of the reason we do this podcast is i've been able to be more vulnerable and it really is such a selfish thing because it's the most unbelievable way to live to just be able to sit here and talk about masturbation my sex life mental health i was i've got anxiety about this it's such a free way to live the science supports that you think about those that live most most in tune with who they actually are seem to be the happiest but when i think about the real adverse consequences you see sometimes in certain communities who are not being allowed to live as they are the suicide rates spike and everything so getting closer to your true vulnerable self i think is such a gift and then the way it resonates you'll see as a leader i'm sure you saw in the pandemic you know vulnerable leaders in the pandemic i think won vulnerable leaders when it comes to letting people go always win so um no when i was preparing for this this conversation with you stephen i went back and looked at some of the presentations i'd done to my to my business and one of the presentations that i did was called um have you known hard times and you know and i went through and talked about my hard times um and being able to and to me that was a real that was a real turning point as well um saying you know it's okay it's not only okay it's it's really important for to to acknowledge that we've all had really hard times that like break you apart as a human being and you know make you make you question everything um and that's okay here um that was a um and and then the feedback that i got to say that that was that that was you know that was a positive thing that was that was amazingly uh um yeah fulfilling i am so excited to announce our new sponsor for this podcast and that is blue jeans by verizon for any of you that aren't already familiar with blue jeans they are a video conferencing and collaboration tool who offer an
immersive communication experience that drives pretty unparalleled employee and customer engagement experiences me and all of my teams across all of my portfolio companies switched over to blue jeans a couple of months ago and we have not looked back the best thing for us has been the totally frictionless experience no glitching no sound issues no delays or any of those things that usually make virtual meetings really really frustrating we use blue jeans anywhere on any device at any time and it's perfect for my small businesses that just have 10 or 20 people to some of my bigger businesses that have hundreds of people i'm a big fan as you can probably tell so i've been quite excited for for some time to announce this partnership and in the coming weeks i'll explain the features and really why it's perfect for you if you haven't considered using or switching over to blue jeans yet but if you can't wait head over to bluejeans.com to learn more honestly it's been one of the real sort of game changers in my business um we do have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guests asked the next guest you've done your preparations yes um and i don't read it until i open the book so the question is oh who is the person you'd most like to say sorry to but haven't wow i've got a pretty long list um i would say um i'd say my my ex-wife for um being so blind to the things that i brought to the relationship that must have upset her for years um and you know and insisted that you know that they weren't um things that you know i had said or done and really i mean i guess i i guess that would apply to anybody who i've had a romantic relationship with that you know that i
didn't um i didn't bring my true authentic self that even even though i thought i was um and i thought i was living a purposeful you know life um but but didn't um but then i'd also i guess i'd say um [Music] you know i i think there's a dynamic with my parents that that probably falls into that category of making amends and you know as a um both as the recipient and the perpetrator of you know of some trauma um in that regard um and then i i guess i'd have to say uh to hayden and lucy my kids for um you know for the for not being there in the moments when they needed me um and you know i can blame the uk court system as much as i want but the fact is that there were moments where they woke up and needed both their parents and and in their and i wasn't there um and uh you know i'm deeply sorry for that um and yeah you know and they're and they're probably um they're probably lots of others um in that list um but that's a it's a short summary thank you thank you for your time today thank you for your wisdom as it relates to business and the story of five guys which is just tremendously inspiring and i it's always such an honor to get to speak to ceos and operators that have been part of disruption and really underpinning and sort of really unpicking how they've gone about that that's so immensely valuable to me and i've taken so much away from from that in terms of the simplicity in terms of detail in terms of putting the customer first in terms of the importance of talent and this negative hiring concept which i'm going to adopt in all of my companies but even more importantly for me is is the vulnerability that you've shown and the the human behind all of that because that's the thing that ultimately people can resonate with the
most because no matter where we reach in the in our careers no matter how how high we climb it seems so clearly obvious that when none of us are immune from the the consequences of just being a human being and we can all relate to that regardless of where we are in the world so thank you so much it's been such an inspiring conversation and hopefully we'll do it again sometime absolutely pleasure thanks for the time together i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you for making a product that i actually like [Music]