What You Can Learn From the CEO Who Built KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut

26:23And when I got that skill, I was able to get the ultimate job that I wanted. How did you learn the skill set required to become a good COO? Well, first of all, I acknowledged that I didn't know anything. I was the marketing guy that go into the bottling plants. And this is why Wayne Calloway probably felt the way he did. I feign interest while I'm thinking of all the ideas I had to do when I got back. But when you have that as your job, you say, okay, I need to learn in a hurry. I had a lot of power. When you're the chief operating officer of Pepsi Cola Company, you have a lot of power. So what I did is brought in the top operators who really knew what they were doing and asked them what they would do if they were me.

27:07What's working? What's not working? And we really identified the processes that needed to be fixed so that we could run better bottling operations because we were not doing it. We were not great bottlers. We owned a lot of company bottling plants. We were not doing a good job. The other thing that I did is I went out on Monday morning and I came back on Friday or Saturday and I went to the bottling plants and I listened to all the issues that were out there. I found things that were being done that were great, how people were winning. And then I brought all this stuff back and brought my learnings back to the team and we acted on it.

27:46We were active learners, not just learning something. What are you going to do with it? OK, so we would get this learning and then come back and then we change things for the better. And that was how I did the operating job good enough to where I could become the president of KFC, which was a key moment. But I always say, if you don't know something, find the people that do know it, fill your gaps. That's how you can succeed. if you try to pretend like you know everything or pretend like you know stuff that you really don't know, you'll ultimately be found out and you'll make some big mistakes because you don't have the knowledge or the know-how that you need to have.

28:24So what I'm hearing is a bias towards implementation. A bias towards learning and implementing what you learn. Right. You know, I used to think when I interviewed people that the reason why you'd be successful, Paul, is you're an avid learner. And then I thought, that's not really true because you could learn something and you could be very book smart, but did you put it to use? You have to make that transition and become an active learner. Tom Brady, greatest quarterback of all time, he goes to see Tom House, who's the greatest throwing coach of all time. He could go spend three days with Tom House, say, oh, I learned a few things, but then go back and set up the same way he did before throw difference the same way he did before.

29:10He's just learning. He's not an active learner. But what makes Tom Brady great is he puts all that learning to use. That's the key thing. You just don't want to learn for learning's sake. It's like I read Elon Musk's book. The one by Walter Isaacson? Loved it. Very different kind of leader than me, but what an innovator he is. So if I'm running a company, I read that book and I say, okay, now how can I do the kinds of things he does in a way that's right for my company and the way that's right for me. Maybe I don't have to do everything the way he does it, but there's a lot of kernels in that book that I would take back and say, I'm going to do this at Yum Brands.

29:52If you were still running Yum Brands today, having just read the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, what from that book would you take into Yum Brands if you were running it today? I would bring all our R &D people together and all our marketing people and our presidents together and say, how convicted are we around our ideas? How much do we get into the nitty gritty? How much do we know how things really work? How much are we really setting the example of the work ethic that we want to have around here? How long will we push an idea even when we know it's being criticized? There are a lot of great insights in that book that I think would force you to self-reflect on where you're at.

30:32Now, I don't know what the answer would be for you, Paula, or for my head of R &D or whatever, but I know one thing, anybody who read that book with that kind of mindset is going to be a hell of a lot smarter and will come up with ways to drive greater action. Some of what you just said, you know, how convicted are we about our ideas? Sometimes you have conviction about an idea, but it ends up not panning out. Other times you have conviction about an idea and it works. And sometimes a switch, like I read about how you realized simply calling it ranch Doritos was not going to be enough, but cool ranch Doritos was much more compelling.

31:13Cheese Doritos, eh, who cares? Nacho cheese Doritos, much more compelling. Right. Well, getting back to Elon Musk, okay, a lot of the things that he did didn't work, but he pursued the idea. Right. Like, you've got to do it with less solar panels or, you know, you go through the whole thing. Right. A lot of the times it doesn't work, you know. But see, that's what life is, Paula. It's not like, it's not a straight line up. You know, you've got to go through life, look for the lessons, and try to be better at things based on what you learn. I try to be a lot better listener now. I've evolved from people not realizing how smart I am.

31:54Some people say that things can't be done every step of the way, which was basically a conviction statement that when I first taught that in my leadership program, it was all about how you need to be convicted because people say you can't get it done. Okay. But then I've evolved that to listen to what the obstacles and barriers are and figure out if they're right or not. And then if they're not right, have conviction. But just don't assume you're right. Hmm. How do you distinguish between when people are bringing up obstacles and barriers, when naysayers are bringing up obstacles and barriers?

32:26As I think through that, there are kind of two categories of obstacles and barriers that I typically hear. One are obstacles that are based around specific fundamentals, like this doesn't taste enough like Pepsi, right? There are other obstacles and barriers that seem to be based around probabilistic reasoning. Hey, only one out of every 20 entrepreneurs end up staying in business after X number of years. Do you think about those separately when people cite probability and stats as the reasons why this is never going to work? One of the first responsibilities of leadership is to define reality.

33:08So you need to understand what the reality is of what you're trying to embark upon or get done. If people just saw the world the way how it really is, okay, and never wanted to change it, we wouldn't have all the innovation that's happened in our lives. So I think you have to have a mindset that you're really trying to make your business better, make yourself better, and you got to seek the truth out. Seeking truth is really an important thing. The holidays are such a busy time of year and I want to give my family one last relaxing weekend away before the new year. We can't wait to get out and experience life in the wide open spaces of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania filled with locally owned shops, fantastic farm-to-table dining and one-of-a-kind experiences.

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35:38Let's go to your framework because you've talked about seeking truth, but truth can be difficult to come upon because it's so easy to be delusional. It's so easy to fall prey to cognitive biases, to simple heuristics, to mental models, to crises of confidence, of self-doubt. And it's difficult to sometimes see through to the reality. You've talked earlier about truth tellers. Sometimes you'll encounter, this has happened to me, I've encountered, there's one person I'm thinking about in particular, who, on one hand, provided some good business advice in that he gave me no holds barred feedback.

36:25and much of the feedback that he gave me were problems that I myself had noticed, but had not discussed with anyone. And so he was independently highlighting very similar problems in my business that I myself had also noticed. So he independently corroborated some of what I had also seen. But he did so in a manner that amplified the flaws or exaggerated the flaws to such an extent that the prism through which he saw them seemed not overcomable, which created a crisis of confidence, which then clouded my framing in terms of how I was able to see potential solutions ahead. So this is turning into kind of a long question, but even in these moments of gathering advice, of listening to truth tellers, it can be quite difficult to navigate out of a certain set of assumptions that really create a fog.

37:26And is there even an actual truth or is it simply an amalgamation of a lot of different perspectives? Well, I think it obviously depends on the situation and the context. I think as a leader, you want to try to understand the root of what somebody's really trying to say. But you said something that I think is really instructional for people to think about. Here you had this person. He's giving you this feedback. But at the same time, he's knocking you down. You know, he's not building you up. He's not inspiring you to take that feedback and move up because he's just dealing with the negatives.

38:09The best way to give feedback, and this is something that I learned in my career, and I use it to this day with everybody that works for me and all my nonprofit work, is that you need to start out first with, Paula, here's what I appreciate about you. These are the things that I see that give you the differentiation, that make you special, that you've got this characteristic and this characteristic and this characteristic, et cetera. These are the things and you've done this, this, and this. And then once you know, Paula, that I acknowledge that, then it's very easy for you as a coach to turn the corner and then say, and not, but, and you can be more effective if you do these things.

38:56And then you hone in on the more effective things that you might want to try this, this, this, and this. that's the way to provide balanced feedback because once people know that you recognize them for what they've done and who they are they will then accept that that feedback okay now when you're getting feedback you've got to be wise you've got to be discerning you got to say okay now the feedback from someone you really respect and you know has your interest at heart that's one that you really want to listen to. If it's somebody that just kind of chimes in, doesn't really know you, kind of chips in from 100 yards away or whatever, you don't take that as seriously.

39:42So you've got to be discerning on who are you going to really listen to? And I think that comes into a case-by-case basis. It's a context situation, but it's very important. You know, my wife, Wendy, who just passed away recently, she was my treat teller. And if I gave a speech and I thought it was a she'd tell me that was a B. And I said, well, why was it a B? Everybody gave me a standing ovation. She goes, well, it's a B because this joke missed you. You kind of lost your way in this part of the speech or whatever. But I'll tell you what, I knew she cared about me before she gave me that feedback.

40:16And when I got a from her, it worked. You know, it was like it mattered. But I've had many truth tellers. I had Jonathan Blum, who was my head of public affairs. he would like bang my door down, okay? Even when I didn't want to hear him, okay? And, you know, I would at least listen to what he had to say because I knew he had my interest at heart. It's very important to know that whoever's giving you the feedback cares enough about you, has your interest at heart. Nobody's going to care about you, okay, until you care about them. And that's a key element in terms of being a good leader and a good coach.

40:56You let your people know that you care about them. Right. And you also role model truth telling to them as well. I try to. I mean, nobody likes conflict. In my leadership programs, I say, how many of you enjoy conflict? Nobody raises their hand. You know, role modeling, truth telling, giving direct feedback is very important. But how you give that feedback means so much because, you know, people will read their reviews and they'll just go to the two negative things. Right. That's just human nature. Right. Well, and that's part of why one of the points that you made was that silence is something that you need to listen for because given that we are so conflict-averse, particularly at the workplace, oftentimes silence might actually mean dissent that no one is overtly voicing.

41:50Paul, one of the real arts of leadership is sniffing out the slow nose. And slow nose are often very silent. And so you've got to ask people what they really think. Don't let them get away with the slow nose. You know, so I think you've got to sniff out the conflict. Let's say I'm having a meeting with a marketing person and a finance person. You know, the marketing person never wants to take price eating. The finance person always wants to take price eating. And so you got to get that conflict out on the table and have both people really get their points of view so you can wrestle it to the ground.

42:25That's what a good leader really does is he's constantly looking for where the conflict areas could be, where people really aren't talking. And, you know, the other thing I think is really important is when people give you the truth, scream it from the rooftops. you know let people know that you would have gone down this path if it hadn't have been perpala okay right and and that means that you appreciate it and then if that's what you appreciate as a leader that's what you'll get so publicly praise the people who give you unfettered feedback yes i want to get to the framework that you have who you learn from what you learn to and then there's how you learn by.

43:09Right, right. And those are critical distinctions. In terms of who you learn from, one of the things that I have discovered kind of the hard way over time is that it's most helpful to take advice from people who have actually done the thing that you are trying to do in the domain in which the advice is applicable. I used to make the mistake of taking a device from the peanut gallery of not being discerning, as you were talking about earlier. And oftentimes that has, you know, I thought that I was following a device, but it's actually led me astray because I violated my own instincts by virtue of assuming that others knew better than me.

43:53How do you balance learning from others with trusting your own instincts? Well, you know, I think it comes from self-awareness that you figure out this is what I need to learn because basis, whatever the situation is. I think you build like sort of a know-how target list. Okay. So if I want to learn about finance, who can I learn about finance from? Like when I became the CEO of Young Brands, I'd never worked with Wall Street. So I finagled the way to get into Warren Buffett's office in 1998 and talk to him about finance and how to talk to investors. And he taught me a lot of great stuff. And I went to see him every year.

44:35We became really great friends. And, you know, he's a super guy, but he has knowledge that I don't have. And I learned from him. Another person who has great financial skills was John Weinberg, who was the former head of Goldman Sachs. and he was on our board. So I went to him for counseling. Ken Langone, the head of InvaMed and co-founder of Home Depot, great financial person. So I went to these people because they were people that I knew that could really help me fill my gaps. And I also knew, certainly with John Weinberg and Ken Langone, who I knew, they had my best interest at heart. And then Warren Buffett became a person who I knew had my best interest at heart and we had a great relationship.

45:21But you need to figure out what you need to learn and then ask yourself who in your universe that you already know can help you learn this stuff. And then ask yourself who's outside of your universe that you'd like to go to and then figure out if there's a way that you can somehow crack the code and get in to see them. And I've found that people love to give you advice. people are really open to giving you advice because they like to talk about themselves that old dale carnegie thing right you know i think like if you go on a new company look around you know in your first job look who's really respected who really knows something find a way to get into that person's office even if it means if they get there at six o 'clock get there at 555 be walking around getting your coffee and have a conversation with them and then end up talking to him about when did you start in the company?

46:13What would you recommend for a person like me? And you're going to get all kinds of insight. So it can be as simple as that or, you know, not everybody gets to see Warren Buffett. You know, I was able to use my influence to do that. And I had people that could get me in that office. What is it about Warren Buffett that makes him so special? Well, I think Warren Buffett has the characteristic I write about and of all great leaders and how leaders learn. He has an uncanny combination of confidence and humility. He's extremely confident. He knows how to do analysis for investments. He knows that he can assess people.

46:48He has all the skills it takes, but he's humble enough to know that he doesn't know everything and that he needs other people and that he listens to them. So it's that balance of confidence and humility that makes him really special. And I think the humility part is what motivates and inspires other people. Right. You wrote about, you gave the example of Jamie Diamond when he joined the board of Yum Brands in part because there were things that he wanted to learn from other board members about retail. Yeah. He wanted to learn the consumer side of business and retail. Right. And I think he got a lot out of that.

47:30And then I later went on his board because I wanted to learn more about the financial world. And we both went on each other's boards because we cared about each other too. We took an interest in each other. We wanted to help each other be successful. So it was a win-win-win that way. And I think that's the best of all situations. I went on the Comcast board with Brian Roberts. Brian Roberts is a fantastic CEO, but I went on because I wanted to stay current. I wanted to know what was going on in the world. You know, in the world of NBC, Universal, Sky, streaming, you know, everything that's going on in cable and broadband and the entertainment world, movies.

48:14There's no way I wasn't going to stay on top of what's going on in the world. And by being on that board, I was going to have that opportunity. So that's how I looked at my situation because I'm not a person who would go on a lot of boards. I like to run things versus be a board member. but I felt like I could really help Brian and I felt like I could learn a lot at the same time. And I have, it's been great. That was exactly what I was going to ask about. I actually, literally, you'll see, I have my finger on the page and I highlighted the part where you talked about how you got invitations to a lot of boards.

48:47You said no to most of them. You said yes to Comcast. I wrote in the margin, why, what was the differentiator? There you go. And that's why, Right. That's why. And I originally told him no. But then I hung up and I thought about it more. And I thought about what would keep me current and young and on top of things. I've loved every bit of my board meetings. I look forward to going to the board meetings. Just like I look forward to going to work. I never went to work. Okay. I went to pursue my hobby. And that's kind of how I feel with Comcast. Right. So essentially board service and more broadly for the listeners, being involved with other companies, advising other companies is a way to not just serve others, but really to learn, to hone your skills.

49:34I think you should look at it. I would never go on a board if I didn't think I could support and encourage the CEO or if I didn't think there was something new that I'd be able to learn to put into my repertoire that I needed. Hmm. In terms of who you learn from, one of the stories that you tell is the importance of learning from the right people at times of crisis. In 2007, there was a video of rats getting into a KFC that went viral on YouTube. Yeah, it was a tough time for us, obviously. Embarrassing. But you have to learn from crises. And the biggest thing you have to do is you have to say, hey, here's what the situation is.

50:18Here's what we're doing to solve the situation. And then here's what we're going to do to make sure it never happens again. And in this particular case, we did all of those things. And we enhanced all of our pest control policies and suppliers. and we came out better from it, but it was a very painful experience. But you can't waste a crisis, I think, as Henry Kissinger said that or somebody did. You've got to take advantage of those crises and learn from them and do everything you can to make sure they don't happen again. I remember I learned from Craig Weatherup when we had the syringe crisis at Pepsi-Cola Company.

50:54People put syringes in the Pepsi. Right, I remember that. And I remember walking into Craig's office one night when he's getting ready to go on the Larry King show to talk about. I said, what are you doing? How do you get ready for Larry King? He says, I'm reading my mail. Now, why would he say something like that? Because he knew the business cold. And, you know, I saw how calm he was under pressure. I learned that from him. And, you know, that was very valuable because when you have crises, you can't run around like a chicken with his head cut off. You got to be the person that's going to steer the boat and people are going to follow you.

51:30And people have got to have the confidence that you're going to come out stronger. Right. But what happens in a crisis when you, and this goes back to the importance of being discerning about who you learn from, what happens in a crisis when you take advice from the wrong people and they lead you astray in terms of crisis management? Specifically, the example I'm thinking of is the story that you tell about United Airlines. Yeah. Well, Oscar Munoz, who was the CEO of United Airlines, they had a passenger incident where the passenger was thrown off the plane and it was very ugly. And they used some wrong language about, I forget what the language was, but it's unaccommodating or something like that.

52:13And it was just complete BS. And he's being sheltered by his people. This is something that'll blow over. And then it didn't get solved until he actually went on a today show or a morning show and he told everybody, I absolutely blew it. I mean, I'm accountable for this and we did it wrong and we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right. But sometimes people want to hide. They want to hide from the problems, hide from the crisis and just pray that it goes away. It'll go under. I think when you know you've got a problem, the sooner you can identify what that problem is and deal with it and face that reality, the better.

52:53In that particular instance, it sounded as though he received the advice to deflect. Right. And that turned out to be the wrong advice. Yeah. How do you know then in any situation, but in a crisis in particular, when you're getting advice that's actually misguided? A lot of it's gut. A lot of it is the reason why you're the leader. I mean, until he made that right decision, he'd made all the wrong decisions. And I guess he said he got down on his knees before he literally, before he went into this show and something told him that he needed to let people know that this is the deal. That was some tough learning for him.

53:35But unfortunately, I had quite a few crises to deal with in my career. But I always found being very clear about what's the issue. Here's what the issue is. Here's what we're doing about it. And here's what we're doing to make sure it never happens again. It's real one, two, three, very simple. But you follow that and you'll come out of it. And it doesn't have to be a crisis. This is kind of like you should almost assess everything you do that way. Here's what we learned. Here's what we should do about it to be better the next time. And here's what we're going to do to make it even better the next time.

54:11But, you know, you can work off those three questions and do a lot of good things. Right. Is it more important to assess failures or successes? Depends on what you're looking for, right? Failures, I think, are really good to learn from. and failures can give you a history lesson and learning that can help you handle the next time. I'm a big believer that you should learn from winning. You know, when I was the CEO of Young Brands, we wanted to become a great company. We wanted our stock price to grow on a consistent basis. So we identified the winning companies at that point in time. And we went and we visited with Walmart, Home Depot, Southwest Airlines, Target.

54:54General Electric was a powerhouse at that point in time. These were the great companies in the world or certainly in the United States. So we visited them and we came back and we codified what they did that allowed them to get consistent results every year. Because we went to them because they had consistent results year after year. The stock went up year after year because of that. So we came up with the, I wanted to create dynasty-like performance. That was my phrase. We wanted to create the Yum Dynasty. And so we codified what we learned. There are five things. Every great company, all the dynasties create cultures where everyone counts.

55:31They're maniacal about their customers. They have competitive differentiation in everything that they do. They have continuity and people in process. And they consistently beat year ago. And those became our five dynasty drivers. and I built the company with my team around those five drivers for my entire tenure. I always talked about how we're building the Yum Dynasty. And we got, I also learned that the dynasties consistently got at least 10 % earnings per share growth every year. So we got 13%. And that's why our company did so well. What were the factors that didn't make it onto the list? I don't think we really had any issues with things that didn't make it on the list because the good companies are doing the great stuff.

56:16We went there to learn what they were doing. We learned by winning. So we weren't really learning from their failures. But I will tell you this, the single most important thing that all the companies talked about was creating a culture where everyone counts. That was the number one thing that I worked on as a CEO was working on the work environment where everybody in the company counted. What would a company look like if there was a culture in which people didn't count? People don't feel valued. Every job doesn't have dignity. It's very top down. It's a telling culture. It's not an involvement culture, very little collaboration.

56:57It's a miserable place to work. And it's a reason why I think 82 % of people don't feel like they're appreciated at work by Gallup polls. It's sad. There's two reasons why companies lose people. Number one, they don't feel appreciated for what they do. And number two, they don't get along with their boss. So that's why I was a huge believer and still am in recognizing people for their contributions. And that's why I believe that you don't have bosses, you have coaches. And that was the mindset that we tried to build. What are the biggest challenges in steering a culture towards one in which everyone counts?

57:35I think the first thing is that you have to recognize that the leader casts a shadow. People are going to do what you do. So you as a leader, you've got to believe this with every fiber in your body. Then you've got to make sure that your direct team believes it. And then you've got to hold them accountable for getting their direct reports to believe it. And you just cascade it all the way up the organization. That's the way how you get it done. You can't just say something. You got to show it. You know, people often judge themselves by their intentions. But the key is the actions that you take.

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59:51We've talked a lot about who you should learn from, but let's talk about learning to, the habits that you adopt in order to be a lifelong learner, and the methods through which you develop better critical thinking skills, that metacognition of thinking about how you think. Yeah. Well, first of all, you have to learn to listen. That's one of the most important things I talk about. That's a critical learning skill that too few people have. In the book, I talk about Ken Chenault, who was the CEO of American Express, and he thought he was a really great leader and he thought he was a good listener.

1:00:30And his people told him, you're not, you're not a good listener. We have a little phrase for you, which is you go into the kin zone, okay? When somebody disagrees with what you have to say, that really made him internalize that, gave him higher self-awareness, and then he worked on being a good listener. And it said it took him a long time to overcome that perception. And that's one thing to remember. When you have a perception, it's not going to change overnight. You got to work at it every day. I think about five years later, people started recognizing him for being a good listener. But that's a very, very good thing to be thinking about.

1:01:07You've got to learn to see reality, see the world the way it really is, not the way you want it to be. So you've got to open your mind to see what's really happening out there. A lot of times you get so insular and you think you've got it all figured out and your business is running well, but you've got to have a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo that forces you to literally want to see it the way it really is. Given that there's a natural tendency to have some degree of confirmation bias and to filter for data or arguments that feed our preconceived notions, how do we circumvent that?

1:01:51How do we overcome that, given how natural that is? Well, it's a beautiful thing you just asked, right? Because you know that. The first thing is you've got to be aware of that. learning about confirmation bias and then asking yourself, what am I going to do to make sure that I don't exhibit that, I think is key. But you got to, first of all, recognize what is confirmation bias. That became sort of a hot topic a few years ago. Without having an understanding of it, it's hard to deal with it. And then it's why when I'm watching news, I never watch MSNBC without flipping the channel to Fox because I'm aware of confirmation bias.

1:02:34I want to see what both sides are really thinking. And, you know, I think in the news world today, that's, it's almost imperative because it's not an objective world in news. It's hard to get the objective facts. You got to filter both sides to really get it. And I think that that's, that's true. And when you're building your know-how and learning how to learn. How are you going to make sure you get the total picture? How do you curate your information? I was very applied. I'm very practical. I didn't like to waste a lot of time. I didn't read nonfiction. I read stuff that I figured would help me.

1:03:16I curated my learning around what I felt would help me move the ball forward. That's why I created almost a learning map for every big initiative I had. It's like a lot of times people will say, okay, I've got this product. This is my target audience. I would have a learning map of the places I would go to seek knowledge, seek know-how. That worked for me. So let me make sure I'm understanding that correctly. So let's say there was a particular initiative or project that you wanted to implement. You would map out what are the things that I need to learn in order to execute this? and then those would be the specific things that you would then seek to learn?

1:03:56Yes, absolutely. Who could I learn from? You know, if it's technology or whatever, maybe I got to go to Microsoft or there's a particular leader who just wrote a book about this particular thing. For example, at one stage in our company, I thought we had a lot of really good ideas, but we weren't that great at execution. So I built a relationship with Larry Bossidy, who wrote the book Execution. and I had Larry Bossidy come talk to our top 100 leaders and it was very applied. So I read the execution book because I thought it was something that I could actually use and I did. And we put a lot of things that he talked about in his book into practice at YUM.

1:04:39Are you a believer then in what's referred to as just-in-time learning? That rather than broadly develop a skill set that could be nimble. You instead have task-based learning that you do just in time. I would say I'm more of a magic of the end to use the Jim Collins phrase. I think you need both. You've got to look at your general assessment of where you stand and where you need to build your know-how that will ultimately make you a better leader. And then you have different tasks and different projects or products that you might be working on. And then that becomes more of a task-based know-how building project.

1:05:18Know-how building is a great skill that everyone needs to pick up because it is the characteristic that I think the most successful people in the world have somehow stumbled into or they have it, but they learn on purpose. You mentioned earlier, so if you're trying to execute upon a particular project, you map out particularly what you need to learn for that project. Is it more important to ask how or to ask who? In other words, to acquire the skill set or to recruit people onto your team who are experts at doing the things that you need done? I think how and who are intertwined. I really do. You know, you can talk about how I'm going to do something, then who's going to do it?

1:06:03Okay, who can I learn it from? So I think they're very intertwined. How do you develop the skill set of recognizing excellence in the who, particularly for tasks that are newer or skills that are newer. Like if you had to hire somebody for AI right now, how would you even recognize the person who's genuinely good versus the person who's full of fluster? Good question. Really good question. I'm not sure I'd be perfect at it. It was never perfect at hiring everybody at a hundred percent level. But I guess what I do in a situation like that is I would go what companies really would have the people who are experts in AI.

1:06:43So obviously, NVIDIA is one that you would look at, other companies that you look at. And then I would always try to check what people have done, you know, myself. If I hired somebody from NVIDIA, I'd try to make sure that I found a way to check out the references myself. If the person gave three or four references, I would want to call those people directly and smoke it out because people have a hard time when you call them directly. They have a hard time not telling the truth. You can pick it up. That's sort of an instinct maybe, but you can pick it up. If I'm hiring for areas that I'm not that familiar with, I would definitely think about the companies that are good at it.

1:07:30Then I would try to find some people in that company that could really help us. And then I would try to corroborate that with the references. And then I would also try to ask other people who else I should be talking to. And you can do that almost at every level. I think you can do it. This isn't just CEO stuff. This is what I did when I moved from copywriter to account executive to marketing head. I did this my entire life. I've been a learner my entire life. That's the only reason why I was able to get to where I am because, you know, I don't have the MBA. I had to learn my MBA and I had to get results.

1:08:11And the only way I could get results is if I put the learning that I got into action. And this works for everybody. This is, you don't have, you do not have to be a CEO of a company to do what I'm talking about. That's why I think, you know, How Leaders Learn is such a good book. It's just practical advice with stories, people working their way up their life, up their career, finding their way to the top and to the success that they have. That's what people want to learn. That's what people want to know. They want to know how you got to where you are. And it's not straight line. It's not straight.

1:08:42We all struggle along the way. If you read How Leaders Learn, you'll read a lot about the times I did not do what I wanted to do. You spent the first 15 minutes talking about Crystal Pepsi. Okay. Right. But that's okay. But that's what people want to know. When I taught my taking people with you program at young brands, what people wanted to know, they wanted to know, most people know how you got to where you are. Most people definitely know who you are. Okay. Why you're the CEO, et cetera. They don't know how you failed along the way. They don't know the stumbles. They don't know that the anxiety that you had, you know, like people can't believe that I used to be worried about speaking.

1:09:18I mean, I get paid a lot of money to do motivational speeches now. But when I was coming up, I said, you know, more than you could say, you know, I mean, I was nervous. I would have the stupid joke that didn't work. I just really wasn't that good of a presenter, but I learned how. And I told everybody how I learned how I told everybody what the challenges were for me. And that once I started focusing on the audience and not listening to everything that I had to say, that if I made a mistake, it really didn't matter. I was focused on you. I wasn't focused on anybody else. I'm focused on the target.

1:09:54You know, that's when I became a good speaker. But I didn't learn that when I was 24. I didn't learn when I was 26. I learned 27. I was terrible. And then I was afraid of doing it for six years. And then I finally had a big breakthrough moment where I got the confidence and the training to get to where I needed to go. But that's what I think people want to know. They want to know how you learn. You mentioned both confidence and training, and it seems like both of those are necessary. For the people who are listening to this, who lack the confidence, you know, we ask our listeners, the ones who subscribe to our newsletter, we say, hey, email us back and let us know what are your dreams and what's stopping you from getting there.

1:10:40and time and time again, people reflect that they suffer from a lack of confidence, that they're not sure that they can do something and that they're plagued by all of these anxieties. How do you, and I thought your earlier description of Warren Buffett was beautiful, where you said he has that ideal balance of both confidence and humility. How do you develop confidence in an area where you have no track record and when you are attempting something that does have a high probability of failure? Well, the first thing is you got to be good at what you do. You got to make sure you have the skills to get it done.

1:11:21You have that capability first. If you have capability first, you can do the job well and then you get results and then you get wins and the wins are what give you the confidence. If you're falling down all the time, It's hard to be confident. You got to perform when it really matters. When you perform when it really matters, that gives you the confidence. It's hard to fake it. Maybe you haven't won a Super Bowl, but you got the capability. You know you have the capability, but you haven't reached your full potential yet. So at that point in time, you got to know that you have the capability and fake it till you make it.

1:11:58Isn't it easy, though? So you said that confidence comes from wins. isn't it often easy to attribute wins to some degree of luck? I think those are the people that just make up the reasons why they're not getting the wins, okay, that somebody else is lucky, et cetera, you know. It's funny how many times, how successful you are, where people will say you're lucky or whatever, but there's always a lot of hard work behind most of these things, okay? I think that that may happen once or twice. you know, it's not how you build sustainable performance. And a lot of times people make excuses saying, oh, that person was lucky and I didn't have the break or whatever.

1:12:37And you got to take the initiative and try to make the breaks for yourself. Right. No, I meant it the other way around. It can be easy to discount your own successes. Sometimes there's a tendency to view others who have succeeded as highly capable while simultaneously discounting your own successes because you can see in your own circumstances the ways in which fortuitous timing played a role. Yeah. Well, I think that can happen, but that's why maybe you need to, not you, but people need to have their own personal highlight reels. When you have those wins, write them down. When did you have success?

1:13:20Create your own personal highlight reel that will give you confidence. You know, it's a process that we all go through. You don't get to the very top all at once. It's a real process that you go through and building that confidence is, I think, one of the more challenging things to do. But I think your point is right. You must not discount what you've done and minimize that. In fact, you need to elevate it so that it will help you get to where you want to go because people will be chipping away at you. It's just a natural kind of thing. You know, sometimes people are not really rooting for you.

1:13:57Okay. So you got to root for yourself. You got to be your number one fan. Right. And it's oftentimes the people who are not rooting for you disguise themselves as those who are. So it can be. Maybe I'm more of a trust and positive intentions kind of person. That's just how I've always been. And I look for the positives. I extend trust first until somebody proves that they're not trustworthy. And I think 99.9 % of people come to work wanting to do well. I think people do not want to be a part of mediocrity. They want to be a part of greatness. You need to help them see their part within the mission with whatever your team is.

1:14:36It doesn't matter the whole company. It could be just the team that you have. What role do you play? Why are you important? But you got to trust that people want to be a part of something great. And I think that trusting and positive intentions is a very important thing. And that's one of the learnings that I think has really helped me a lot. That's kind of flipping the script when it's easy to go negative. You know, when people are going negative, I try to flip the script. Right. Do you think that that's helped you over the span of your career? Trusting and positive intentions? Yeah. Absolutely.

1:15:09You're not going to like me, Paula, if I don't like you. Right. You're not going to trust me if I don't trust you. Have you ever liked anybody that didn't like you? I'm trying to think. You're going to have to think pretty hard. Yeah, I'm trying to think. Have I ever liked anyone that didn't like me? No, I can't think of anybody. And that's just kind of the way how it is, okay? I guarantee you, you've never trusted anybody that didn't give you a sense that they trusted you. So if you're going to get people really motivated and believing in you, be the first to extend it all. Then let the facts come rise.

1:15:50If somebody proves to be untrustworthy, you figure that out. But at least you rounded up. At least you rounded up and gave them a chance. And you're not stupid. You're not going to like just let somebody keep taking advantage of you or whatever. You'll call them on it or whatever. But man, if you take the high ground, you're almost always going to win. You know, one thing that I didn't ask about when we talked about your ascent, the formation of Yum! Brands as a company. Can you talk about that? Yeah. In 1996, PepsiCo made the decision to spin off the restaurants into a public company. when they made that decision i was the president of kfc and and pizza hut i wanted to be in that job and be the head of the company and i was in the right place to end up being in a very influential role in the company and originally roger enrico was the chairman he was making this call actually indra newey was the cfo she later became the president ceo of pepsico and roger at First, it asked me to go to Frito-Lay, to be the head of Frito-Lay, but I turned it down.

1:17:04Now, why did I turn down Frito-Lay? It was a much bigger division than KFC because of my joy builders. I love food. I love marketing. I love people. I love the restaurant business. I didn't necessarily like the package because it's near as much. So I turned it down. He goes, what? Yeah, I turned it down. It was a much bigger job, but he was trying to get me back into PepsiCo so I could compete for the bigger jobs at PepsiCo down the road. But I said, no. Little did I know they were spinning off the restaurants. And so I said, you can give me pizza. So now I had pizza and KFC. So now I've got two of the three brands.

1:17:38I don't have Taco Bell. So Roger comes back and says, David, I think the guy who's running Taco Bell, he should probably be the CEO. He said he should be the CEO. You should be the president, chief operating officer. You're the spiritual leader. You know the restaurant business better. You know, you're the guy to do that. But, well, I didn't really like that idea because I thought I knew more about the restaurant business than this other guy. And Roger goes, well, he knows a lot about finance. Well, I've checked this guy out. He didn't know any more about finance than me. So Roger said, you've got to go to dinner with him.

1:18:09So I go out to dinner with him. He's a great guy. Liked him. But I felt like I was looking in the mirror. But he didn't have anything that I didn't have. So I went back to Roger and Rico and said, I'm not going to work for him. He says, oh, yes, you are. I said, no, I'm not. So I go back to Louisville, Kentucky, and I get this phone call from Bill Bensel, the head of HR. And he says, David, you got to take this job. You're going to get fired if you don't. I said, well, you can fire me. And I hung up. Well, when I did that, Paul, I realized there's only one person that wins in a situation like that.

1:18:39It's the boss. So I called up Roger, who was a friend of mine, which was the good news. And I called him up. I said, look, I want to come see you at Martin Luther King Day. I'm going to fly up and I'm going to tell you what kind of company I want to build. and why I should get the job. And he says, well, come up. So I put together like a 30-page presentation of my vision for the company, what we could do, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, okay. He said, I'm going to go with you. I'll handle it. I said, but you got to get a chairman. You got to have a chairman that can deal with Wall Street and teach you what you don't know because you don't know what you don't know.

1:19:12And he was right about that. But anyway, I was going to be the CEO. And I said, well, look, One guy I'd recommend is Andy Pearson. He used to be on the PepsiCo board. He's a really tough guy, but I like him. We could get along well. So we go through a five-month process where they're looking for different chairmen. And every one of them didn't work out. So we're getting the point now where in September, we got to go on a road show and take this public company out there. So he calls me up and says, I've been thinking, what would you think about Andy Pearson as being your chairman? I said, I think I'd be fine.

1:19:46Let me go talk to him. So Andy's favorite article was he was the top 10 toughest bosses on Fortune. And he was tough. He was, as I said, past president of PepsiCo, a teacher at Harvard Business School. He was Clayton Dublir and Rice, private equity, fantastic brain, one of the smartest guys I've ever been around. So he loved the fact that he was one of the world's toughest bosses. And I asked him, who's your favorite CEO? And he said, well, my favorite CEO is Bob Crandall, American Airlines. Bob Crandall was one of those guys on the top 10 toughest bosses list. Okay. So I said, well, Andy, my favorite CEO is Herb Keller from Southwest Airlines.

1:20:29And Herb Keller is people first, you know, lots of fun, spreading love all over Texas, built a great brand. I mean, he unbelievable culture, all this. And I said, you know, if you are a Bob Crandall guy and I'm a Herb Keller guy, we could really have a real problem there because I want to build a company like Southwest Airlines and we could be diametrically opposed. You need to read this book. And I gave him this book called Nuts was about Southwest Airlines. Great book. I recommend it to everybody to read you. If you read this book, you'll get lots of ideas for your company or for your team. And so he reads it and then we come back and have dinner game.

1:21:07He says, you know, I read this book nuts. And you know, I can support you because I believe it's a frontline business and what you want to do is right. And he says, there's only one problem. I said, what's that? He says, I want to be the CEO. And I said, okay, no problem. That's what you want to do. He was 72, I think, or 71 at the time. I knew that I would be the next CEO. He had a three-year contract. I figured if I couldn't convince everybody that I was the guy within three years, there's something wrong with me. So he became the original CEO. Whenever he was in Louisville, which was our corporate headquarters, he lived with me.

1:21:44I never let him out of my sights. He became my best friend. When he was 80, I gave his eulogy at his funeral. I mean, it was like, I love this guy. Incredible learner and opened up so many doors for me. He was so good. But he made me CEO two years afterwards. So it all worked out for me. But the big lesson there was, number one, make sure you follow your joy builders. Number two, if you have something that you want and you think you deserve it more than someone else, make sure that you follow your conviction and fight as hard as you can for it. And number three, if you can learn from somebody, it's okay.

1:22:25It's okay to have them work for them. I never, ever felt like I worked for them. we worked with each other. We're co-founders. We did the whole thing together. He was awesome. I loved Andy. Was it a good balance then, given that you guys - Originally, yes. Great point. At first, he was tougher than me. At the end, you know what his favorite article was? What was that? It was in Fast Company. It was Andy Pearson Finds Love. And it was about how he became focused on the people, et cetera. He said, David, you know, one of the things that you got to think about is you may be getting a little tough, you know, it's like, so we kind of reversed each other, but it was a, it was an incredible learning experience.

1:23:08I'll tell you a story about learning. Andy was this guy who was the smartest guy in the room. You can tell I love Andy just talking about Andy. Okay. But he goes to Harvard after a PepsiCo. He's a Harvard business school professor. He just tells everybody how to think. He just says, this is it because I'm Andy Pearson. Okay. So they give the 360 degree feedback from all the students. He's ranked the worst in all of Harvard professors. The worst. Ouch. The next year, he takes it to heart. He uses a Socratic method of teaching, case histories, and brings in all of his contacts. and he's ranked number one.

1:23:54Wow. It's why I like the book, How Leaders Learn, too, because what I have in my life, because of what I've been able to do, I have all these incredible contacts. So you read the book, you're learning about Jamie Dimon, Indra Nui, Marvin Ellison, Condoleezza Rice, Tom Brady, Neil Boucher, all these people, all these great CEOs and great sports figures and great government leaders. I can open up my knowledge base to other people. That's what Andy did for me. I mean, he introduced me to a lot of great leaders. Right. Among all of the great leaders that you know, the CEOs, sports figures, heads of government, are there certain specific attributes or habits that seem to be relatively universal that they have?

1:24:46And also, are there certain attributes or habits that they do not possess, specific things that people do not do? Yeah. Well, I mentioned uncanny combination of confidence and humility, which leads to a learning mindset and a belief in people. They all believe that you've got to have great people to get things done. The people who are not successful are arrogant, not humble, think they know it all, and think that they're above all the people that work for them. And the other point is the people who are successful see leadership as a privilege. They don't see like it is something that they can lord their power over other people.

1:25:36They view themselves to be people that need to help other people succeed. So that's a few characteristics. Thank you. All right. We'll close out with a couple of final questions around Taco Bell. Very much in the way that we started by talking about Crystal Pepsi, because I absolutely love Crystal Pepsi. I'm a massive fan of Taco Bell in particular. I have to admit to the audience, these final questions I'm asking largely just for my own personal curiosity. In the 1970s and the 1980s, Taco Bell was incredibly important to what at that point was a very relatively small proportion of the population, which were Hindus, South Asians.

1:26:21And it was because Taco Bell was the only major fast food company where you could find vegetarian options. In my childhood, in the 80s, Taco Bell was the one place where my family could go. And that was why it was so important to us. Did Taco Bell leadership at the time, were you aware of that? I mean, there were so few of us in the U.S. We knew that we were a vegetarian option, but it wasn't where we were headed. Yeah. We were trying to mainstream Mexican food, which was very challenging in and of itself because we had to build awareness of the category and the brand, which is really hard. But the good news about Taco Bell, it was first in, and there really is not a national competitor.

1:27:08Taco Bell has like a 70 % share of the quick service restaurant fast food business. Chipotle's come on and fast casual, but Taco Bell pretty much is the dominant brand in fast food. But it was never really the thing that made Taco Bell go. go. It was more that we wanted to make the brand very mainstream, which we did. The biggest thing that Taco Bell did was disrupt the quick service restaurant industry on value. We have amazing value. You get so much food for the money, more so than any other fast food concept. And the food is really good. And so people like it. And it's got a great, young, irreverent target audience.

1:27:48And I think for Yum today, it's 80 % of the profits in the United States. I think Yum has two twin engines of growth. Taco Bell's one, the other is KFC International. Those are the two big growth drivers for Yum. Right. Why is it Dell Taco hasn't taken off in that same way? It's just more of a regional brand, not as good of food, never had the scale to market in a competitive fashion versus Taco Bell. And there's only one Taco Bell. So conversely then, what about, you know, and you wrote about this in your book as well, McDonald's was seeing some gangbuster growth at the time. You were actually observing in your tenure as CEO of Yum, you were observing McDonald's as, hey, they're the winners.

1:28:35What is it that they're doing that we're not? Right. And so we went out and we had a global immersion day on McDonald's where I had all everybody, all the leadership teams around the world go spend a day or two in McDonald's and then codify what they were doing that we weren't so that we could grow our same store sales at a similar rate. So we started after that what we call a sales layer strategy where we wanted to leverage our day parts. We added breakfast late night. We wanted to have everyday value menus. We wanted to have desserts. We really wanted to have different proteins if possible so that we could bring new sales layers to the party just like McDonald's had done.

1:29:16Coffee business, things like that, that we just were not doing. And we started adding them and our sales improved because of it. We had a Taco Bell breakfast. I don't know if you've had that, but it's awesome. Right. Well, my favorite is the Mexican pizza, so I was heartbroken. I actually tweeted about it when it got taken off the menu. Yeah, it comes back. We bring it back as a Crystal Pepsi. Yeah. When we do, it has gangbusters sales because people love it. My two favorite products are the Mexican pizza and Crystal Pepsi. The problem is that it's more complex to make, so it slows down your speed of service.

1:29:51And so that's why we just gear up for it every now and then. Right. But you had it for many, many years. I mean, decades prior to what triggered that decision? We added a lot of other products. The big breakthrough we had on Taco Bell is the importance of falling in love with the problem. We really believed that you need to find out what the single biggest problem is that occurs most frequently. And when you do that, then you can go after growths. We had a quesadilla, a grilled stuffed burrito. These are two products we put in a test market. We said, come try our quesadilla, come try our grilled stuffed burrito.

1:30:26No sales growth. Then we did a problem detection study and we found out the single most important problem that occurs most frequently at Taco Bell is lack of portability, messy to eat. So what we did is we took the quesadilla, hired Jeff Bezos, believe it or not, at Amazon to do the ad. had eight people sitting around a table talking about the hottest new handheld on the market. And it was our quesadilla. We have double digit sales growth. Then we take our real stuff burrito, which is a heavier product. And we called it the heavy duty portable and had people driving into our drive-through. And as soon as they got the real stuff burrito, their cars tilted up because it was so heavy, but it's called a heavy duty portable.

1:31:07And that got great sales growth. Those are the same product, but we just repositioned differently. And then we created the product of the year, the Crunchwrap, which is a great product and is contained within the wrap and easy to eat. We positioned it as good to go. And then we took our advertising and created a new line called Think Outside the Bun because we were trying to go up against hamburgers. So all of that led to record sales growth for Taco Bell and we continue to have unbelievable sales results at Taco Bell. It's a great brand. How did you find out that lack of portability was the single biggest issue?

1:31:46Because the way you do a problem detection studies, you go do focus groups. You have everybody tell you all the problems they have with Taco Bell. Just list them all out in real simple language like restaurants aren't clean, products are messy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Write them all out. Then you do quantitative research where people rank in order which are the most important problems. And then you ask, how frequently does it occur? And the real problem for Taco Bell was lack of portability. Because, you know, you perceptually, you're going to eat a taco on the go. Right, right. Exactly.

1:32:18You get it at the drive-thru and it's hard to eat in the car. Yeah, but that's how it works. And I think that if you look at all the great innovators today, they fall in love with the problem. They figure out what the most important problem is that occurs most frequently and they create businesses all around it. And that's how you win. That's how you become a great entrepreneur. That's how you grow your existing, you know, bigger businesses. Excellent. All right. Are there any final takeaways that you want to leave this audience with? If people walk away with one key message, what would that be?

1:32:50Go out and buy How Leaders Learn and learn a ton. Excellent. What do you expect me to say? I'm a marketing guy. All right. Then one more follow-up. Okay. I figured you'd have one. Between KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Habit Burger Grill, which one's your favorite? They're all my babies. Come on. I can't answer that. You have a favorite child. I got a favorite product at every one of them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Let's go with that. Favorite product at each. I love pan pizza, Pizza Hut. Just plain cheese? Well, pepperoni. Pepperoni. Pepperoni. Pepperoni lovers. Oh, okay. Pepperoni lovers, pan pizza. At KFC, I love original recipe.

1:33:31I love it. There's no fried chicken any better than KFC's original recipe. And at Taco Bell, I love our Fresco line, which is, we have five items under 10 fat grams that I like that are very good. Really simple meal that is great. Wow. And I vote for the Mexican pizza. There you go. I'm going to tell everybody, bring it back. I know one person that's going to buy it. Bring it back. And again, particularly for the Hindus out there, my childhood was Mexican pizza, no meat. That was the thing. All right. That's great. Bean burrito, extra onions. Yeah. I like those too. I like bean burritos. Yeah.

1:34:15I'm not even a vegetarian. It was just, that was just what my whole family ordered. All right. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you very much. I enjoyed it. Thank you, David. What are three key takeaways from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, prioritize joy in your work. David emphasizes the importance of finding joy in what you do. He believes that understanding what makes you happy is crucial for long-term success because this is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to be able to sustain it for a multi-decade career. Even if you're retiring early, it's still at least a 15 to 20 year career minimum.

1:34:59So find activities that bring you joy and eliminate the joy blockers from your life. I talk about the importance of writing down your joy blockers. You have to start with what gives you joy. So that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, learn by doing. David's stress is that learning must lead to action. It is not enough to acquire knowledge. You have to apply what you learn in order to achieve results. You might learn something, but if you never implement it, then what did you bother learning it for? So that you could know it theoretically? Great. What's that going to do for the world?

1:35:37So learning through implementation has driven his success. And this can be a powerful strategy for anyone, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a W-2 employee, doesn't matter. Implement, have a bias towards action. You could learn something and you could be very book smart, but did you put it to use? You have to make that transition and become an active learner. Finally, key takeaway number three, seek mentorship from those who have succeeded. So David highlights the value of learning from mentors who have already achieved what you aspire to. And I'm not talking about formalized mentorship, which actually has a documented poor track record, I'm talking about lowercase m, informal mentorship.

1:36:24I'm talking about finding role models and learning from them because this approach can help you avoid common pitfalls. It can help you learn from the mistakes of others, and it can help you accelerate whatever path you're on. I think you build like sort of a know-how target list. if I want to learn about finance, who can I learn about finance from? Like when I became the CEO of Young Brands, I'd never worked with Wall Street. So I finagled the way to get into Warren Buffett's office, talk to him about finance and how to talk to investors. And he taught me a lot of great stuff. And I went to see him every year.

1:37:01We became really great friends. And he's a super guy. But he has knowledge that I don't have. And I learned from him. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with David Novak, the CEO and co-founder of Yum Brands, which is the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Habit Burger Grill. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. First, subscribe to our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter. Second, follow us on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. Open both of those apps. Hit the follow button. While you're there, please leave up to a five-star review along with a few sentences about what you enjoy about the show.

1:37:43Third, recommend us to your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, dog walker, babysitter, second grade teacher. Recommend us to everyone you know because that's how you spread the message of great financial health. And can I throw in a fourth? All right, thank you. Chat with other members of the community. Affordanything.com slash community. All of which is no cost. Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.