#289: Kurt Kane, CEO, TruGreen – Fall in love with customer retention

25:14And the mission that we're on to get there is to plant a true green flag in every lawn. So I think by landing on that language, it gave us an opportunity to be able to really get people empowered locally. What does it take to win in your neighborhood? What does it take to win in your local branch area? Whatever your piece of True Green is, how can you help us on this mission? And I think empowerment is one of those things that doesn't get talked about enough, because when you feel like you really can have an impact on how the work is getting done every day, you're a heck of a lot more motivated to follow through and go the extra mile.

25:51And so I think that's an example of how I've been trying to drive it and how we as a collective team have been focused on really empowering people to be successful. At True Green, you talked about one of the ways how you go from industry to industry is there's commonalities and approaches that you can use that are basically going to work, you know, everywhere you go. And, you know, being focused on the customer is one of those basic truths. But has there been anything that you've had to unlearn? You know, you've been doing things one way for a long, long time, but has there been anything you had to unlearn as you went into, as you run this True Green business?

26:29I probably think I've had to unlearn sometimes in, you know, like coming out of QSR background with Wendy's and, you know, and Yum and time at pizza. That was 15 years of my career. And, you know, one of the things that you learn there is if you get a promotion right and a message right, you can drive an immediate result. You launch something on Sunday, you know, by Wednesday, if that thing's working or not. And you can influence the outcome very quickly because you have the media dollars and the tools to be able to either drive a new message out or shift some of the things in the program. I think what I've had to unlearn a little bit is being too short term and start to think more long term about the relationship with the customer, how important that relationship is, how important it is to be able to drive a trust and a partnership between a customer and who's servicing them.

27:18And that's, you know, building a relationship is very different than driving a transaction. So to me, I think I had to unlearn the habit of trying to drive short-term transactions and start to really embrace this idea of what long-term relationships with a customer are all about. And that's a very different thing. When you look at the business and you look at the experience you've had thus far, what's the biggest challenge that you face there? Tell us a story about that and what it's taught you. Yeah, I think the biggest challenge for me has been, as I mentioned, this idea of empowerment. I think for too many years, we got far too centralized in our approach.

27:57And I think people felt disempowered at the local level. And so I thought it was going to be easier to drive this idea of empowerment and local accountability than it has proven to be. not because we don't have great people who who very much want to get it right. But I think if you're told time and time again that a decision is not yours to make, then you start to believe people. And so I've spent the last two years really driving hard against this idea of empowerment and accountability. You may see on the wall behind me three words, make your mark. That's a program that I brought with me. I first established it at Pizza Hut.

28:33I carried it on at Wendy's and then have now brought it with me to True Green. And that's all about the idea of think about the legacy that you want to leave on the business, no matter what your role is, what position you have, and then really get committed to the things that you need to do to be able to make that idea a reality. That's how you're going to make your mark. And that's how over time you're going to grow your career and grow the business. So that to me is it's been harder to drive than I thought it would be. I thought people immediately would spark to that within a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

29:05It's now been two years of talking about that. What's exciting is to see how much people are now embracing it and to see things like our employee engagement scores go up by 20 points over two years versus where they were because people are feeling it and they're motivated by it. And now they're starting to behave the way they need to to get the outsized result that I know we're capable of. So it's been harder than I thought. So you're obviously you're making great progress with the culture to get that kind of engagement that you definitely would want to have. What's the number one thing you've learned about culture that you're that you're you've carried into True Green and or, you know, you've learned it right right where you're at?

29:48Yeah, I think this idea that, you know, I think about my experience in the military and, you know, one of the things I learned really quickly there, and I've recently heard Simon Sinek start talking about this based on exposure to the Marine Corps, but this idea that leaders eat last. you know and sometimes you know it's easy to forget that you know as a leader you know your number one job is to support your people and to support your team and set them up for success and you know we're all fortunate in roles like this one and many other leadership roles you get you know a lot of accolades and you know people are interested in your perspective and your opinion and those types of things but to me I think you know the thing that's most important is making sure that as a leader, you're there to support your team and you're there to help partly hold them accountable, but much more importantly, to be able to help set them up for success and get barriers out of the way and champion them.

30:42And if you can do that, then it's amazing what people will do to go to the extra mile. And I think that's a lesson that I learned a long time ago. I've tried to carry it through my own career, but really here at True Green, given the work that we do and the nature of the work we do, I found that it's more important than ever. So this is your first CEO role. What's something that caught you by surprise, something you didn't expect, just being the CEO? Yeah, well, and this is a true story. The first two weeks I was CEO of a company, I was blown away at the fact that I wasn't getting any internal emails.

31:18I actually thought my computer system was broken because all the emails I were getting were from outside parties saying things like congrats on the new role, really excited for you. You're going to do amazing things, all those kinds of nice things. But I wasn't getting a lot of internal communication, almost none. And I seriously thought that I had a filter. And it's because people were intimidated to send a note to the CEO of the company. You know, they weren't sure that, you know, they would get the response they were looking for, or there are a million barriers why people hesitate to reach out to you when you're in this role.

31:52So what I found is I really had to be, you know, wildly proactive in connecting with people and dropping those barriers. And, you know, what I like to think about with our culture here at True Green, the way I try and lead it is incredibly informal, but very disciplined at the same time. Let's focus, let's be disciplined about the results. Let's be, you know, laser focused on what we need to achieve, what's going on in the business. But that doesn't mean we can't have a lot of fun along the way. It doesn't mean we can't laugh a lot along the way. Let's make it fun and energizing to go to work.

32:21And let's drop the formality of what it means to be in any of these senior leadership positions so people can really voice their opinion. And we've made a lot of progress on that. So I'm pleased to see. And now my inbox is filled with ideas and suggestions, which is exactly what I would have hoped for. Kurt, I think one of the things that, you know, really strikes me is that comment about formal informal, you know, how do you do that? Oh, that sounds nice. You know, let's have fun. And, you we're going to be disciplined, we're going to be formal. That sounds really great, but that's, that's not easy to do.

32:56I mean, how do you, how do you balance those two things? Yeah. Well, I think it's, if you're, if you're constantly building relationships where you're, you're building them together, where you're talking about the work and you're talking about what, what needs to happen. Um, I think the reality of what we all get to do every day, um, that there are a lot of fun things that happen. And I think if you genuinely enjoy people and people know that you enjoy people, um, you know, then they naturally open up to you. And And if you're receptive to that and you give back and you pour into those relationships, then you find that it I find anyway that it comes to life pretty comfortably.

33:30And so I think the risk is you become too informal and you're not focused enough on the results or you're not in the business just to be everybody's best friend. But I think at the end of the day, if people really do see that you genuinely care about them, you care about who they are, you care about their families and you care about their success. People open up very comfortably. And so I think that to me has been my experience along the way. And so I think I've been able to balance it and keep it in balance. But at the same point, I think as long as you're bringing people back to the result that we need to drive and the commitment to those results, I feel like that's a balance that can be achieved pretty comfortably.

34:07And, you know, when you talked earlier, you talked about these five pillars that you had. You know, not every strategy is created equal. How did you get people focused on what really matters most in terms of driving your growth? Yeah, well, I think, you know, we set out with what's the goal? And if we talk about we're trying to retain customers today and drive new ones in, I think the beauty of our business is what we're trying to accomplish is actually very simple. Executing it takes a tremendous amount of work and it's hard. But if you say at the end of the day, how do you measure success? Are we growing customer counts and do we have more customers in our business?

34:46Are we successfully delivering financial results? And are customers more satisfied each year than they were the year before? So I think we were able to simplify it down. And the five pillars that we landed on were explode customer interest, which is all about driving differentiation, brand awareness, and what sets us apart. Owning the neighborhood, we have a big neighborhood sales organization in addition to an inside sales organization and call centers. But how do we really drive, if we get into a neighborhood, how do we drive our presence all the way through to completion? There's a lot of benefits to doing that with efficiencies, but there's also a competitive idea about owning the neighborhood and taking pride in that.

35:27Nothing beats a true green lawn is a strategy that's all about, are we executing to the very best level possible? No customer left behind is all about retention. But then the fifth pillar is actually the most important of all those pillars, which is what we call our foundational pillar, which is one team together. And so that is the anchor of everything else we do, which is how do we work together as a team to support each other to deliver the other four? So for me, I was actually really pleased with how quickly those pillars came together and the thinking around those, because I think they were very anchored in the truth of the business.

36:02And if you stay focused on the truth of the business, then the strategies come to life pretty quickly. Speaking of truth, what was the hardest truth you had to tell the organization and how did people react? I think the hardest truth at True Green was we weren't executing as well as we needed to on the lawn. Because customer satisfaction tells you everything in our business. And our customers were telling us that they weren't as satisfied as they needed to be. And we weren't delivering as well as we needed to. And we've got a lot of people that work really hard to try and get it right every day.

36:35But the perception was that we weren't getting it right often enough. And so I think facing up to that truth, having real conversations internally about what it meant to be able to deliver what our customers really needed us to do, what investments we needed to make back to be able to make sure that we could deliver for them. I think, you know, those are some hard conversations up front to say, can we really deliver what our customers need us to do? But I think by having those conversations and facing up to that reality, we've been able to move customer perception very, very quickly. Because at the end of the day, customers were rooting for us to get it right for them.

37:10And so they could see the turn in the business. They could see what we were doing. And it's paid off in significant retention growth. It's paid off in overall Google star ratings. All the things that you could look at that you want to see if customers are seeing the difference. But we had to face that truth and have some real hard conversations up front to get there. How competitive is the category, Kurt? And is there anything that competition is doing that you particularly admire, whether you admit it publicly or not? Well, it's about as public as it's going to get. So, you know, it's a very competitive category.

37:41And, you know, we're fortunate. It's, you know, in the category, in our overall size and scale, we're four to five times larger than the next largest competitor. But that said, that's because of our national scale. And you have a number of local competitors in every one of our markets. There's not high barriers to entry in our category. So, you know, for us, we can have a lot of local competitors. So I think for us, you know, what I admire with our local competitors is that they are very good at building relationships with customers. They're very good at focusing in on what makes them unique and different, or at least driving a perception that they are unique and different because of their local nature.

38:20So I do admire that about our competitors. And everybody in this space works really hard to get it right. They genuinely do. I think we have scale advantages that we need to drive harder. But I think underneath that, as I mentioned before, we are as local as anybody out there. And I think building those local connections is incredibly important to be able to reinforce. And do you have a particular innovation that you're most excited about? To me, the power of our category is, you know, we work with a lot of suppliers that do a number of things. But there's one of our suppliers that's an equipment supplier.

38:56And they are a ride on equipment provider. And so instead of having to walk every lawn, they've got a great piece of equipment that allows you to be able to go out and actually use this ride on piece of equipment, all kinds of technology to make sure you get it right in terms of the amount of product you put on every lawn. because that's one of the biggest risks when you're out doing what we do is you can actually do more damage than good to a lawn if you don't apply the products in the right way. So I love this company called Stinger. It's actually a West Point class of mine that founded the company.

39:28We've had a lot of conversations along the way about how we use their equipment in a very advantaged way, both for our customer, but also to uniquely set True Green apart for the work that we're doing. So I love the work that's going on with that. How's AI changing your business? I'm really excited about AI because for us, we have a large sales organization and we have a lot of data. But for us, selling comes down to really making sure that we're connecting with what the customer needs, but also getting connected with the right customers at the right time. So we're using AI to be able to help bring together a lot of the data platforms that we have to be able to fuel the right conversations with either potential new customers or with existing customers to help get them connected with some of our additional product lines.

40:12So we've had a lot of work going on within this, within the AI space as a whole. But when I look at the upside from it, it's immense. So I think for us being able to, in my mind, I think the best opportunity is to help every one of our sales leaders think like our very best sales leader does today. How do you help automate the questions that they think through? How do you help them analyze their business? How do you help them get to the right outcomes in terms of the next action step or next follow up? AI can help us a lot with that. And so far, I've been really encouraged with the progress that we've been making because of that.

40:45And how are you growing as a leader with AI? What do you do to make sure that you can lead on that front? Maybe it's embarrassing to say this out loud, but one of the first things I did was I went into it when I first went into to chat GPT and some of the other tools is I typed in how could Kurt Cain be a better CEO for True Green? And it was amazing that it was within 30 seconds, spot on with everything that I genuinely needed us to be working on and that I thought I could be doing better. So to have that kind of insight very quickly, and I'd encourage anybody listening, go in and do that. Think about your business.

41:18Ask a question just directly about yourself as a leader or your business. It was amazing how fast answers started to come back, you know, exactly around that. So I just, I personally use it as a tool to challenge ourselves, challenge accepted beliefs, and really try and gather up as much as we can in terms of insights related to consumer perception and how they feel about our business. AI is a great tool for all of that. So for me, I'm really excited about what it can bring to the table. Kurt, it's been so much fun catching up and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this?

41:50I'm ready. Fire away. The three words that best describe you? Team-oriented, loyal, and passionate. it. If you could be the one, if you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? Nate Bargetsy. He's a great comedian based in Nashville. We are, I think he's hilarious and connects with people in some fun ways. I think that'd be a lot of fun. What's your biggest pet peeve? Lack of accountability. Who would play you in a movie? I'd probably have to go with Tom Hanks on that one. If you could play center court at any major championship venue in tennis, where are you playing and who are you playing against?

42:23Yeah, I would love to have the opportunity to get on the court at Wimbledon against John McEnroe just one time. Do you play a lot of tennis now? I've hung in there. I played back in college and have hung in there through the years. And yeah, it's a lot of fun to get out there and chase the ball around. What's something you've been curious about lately that has absolutely nothing to do with work? You know, for me, I've started to get a lot more interested in things like chemistry and the science behind it. My son's a chemistry major now in college, and he's totally different than me on what his interests are.

42:55So I've started to fall in love with a lot of his interests to learn more about him. What's the one thing you do just for you? One thing I do for me, he asked about tennis. That's really a thing that I get out there and I love to compete. It's a lot of fun to get out there. I can't play like I used to, but I try to keep up with it as best I can. And it's a lot of fun to do so. Besides your family and friends, what would be your most prized possession? My most prized possession is actually my late father's watch. He passed away this past year and we were incredibly close and he's a big, big part of my life.

43:28And so I'd say that's absolutely my most prized possession. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Outside of your podcast, you'd hear a lot of other podcasts, a lot of things like Joe Rogan and others. I just think there's so much to learn that when I used to listen to music in my car, now what I'm listening to all the time is different perspectives from different people. What's something about you that few people would know? I think just how much I care about people. I think I hope people know that, but just how deep and central it is to who I am. I'm an incredibly loyal person.

44:01I love having great and close relationships with people. Sometimes I think that I might come across as a little intimidating or too serious sometimes. And I like to have a lot of fun, but I really like to build close relationships with people. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never, ever miss? I just try and get up and take, you know, I think taking physical care of yourself is important. So the first thing I do every day is get up and go work out. Helps you clear my, it helps me clear my head, helps me get focused for the day. So that's a really important part of my, of my life.

44:33All right. We're out of the lightning round. Great job. You know, you mentioned something, you know, that I thought was, you know, you know, you could be intimidating. Okay. you know, just by the nature of the job, being the CEO, you're intimidating. You know, you know, the person you'd like to be is a comedian. You know, it's like, and you got a sense of humor. How do you, how do you, how do you think about humor and leadership at work? I think humor is really important. And I have, I have a very dry sense of humor, but I find that, that humor can help disarm challenging situations. And I'll give you an example, which was, you know, when I was leading the Wendy's U.S.

45:14business, I believe that Wendy should get into the breakfast day part, which it had failed at a number of times, you know. And so I think being able to rally the franchisees around that opportunity, do the work to set the business up for success, to be able to get into that day part. As you know, it's incredibly challenging to expand into new day parts. So doing that, I think humor was a tool to be able to to defang a lot of the objections that people had by being able to kind of just get into conversations with people in a different way and to be able to not make light of past failures or past challenges, but to be able to recognize that you understand them, but also to be able to say there's a way to work around them.

45:57And so if you could keep conversations light and you could keep people laughing, sometimes they could forget the pain of past failures and open their minds to the possibility of what could come. So I find humor is a really good connector of people. And at the end of the day, it can take serious topics that may be overwhelming and allow you to break them down and not seem so overwhelming after all. So I think humor is a really important part of, I think, a leadership persona. And it doesn't mean you're always cracking jokes all the time. But I do think if you can keep people laughing or keep people finding the lighter side of a situation, they're more motivated to try and find solutions when things are difficult.

46:33How do you lead at home, Kurt? Yeah, well, I think that team together idea is really important. I think for me, it's trying to champion our kids. I've got two great kids. My wife and I have been married since we met. We actually met on the first day of graduate school and we got married on graduation day. We actually skipped graduation to go to our wedding instead. So we've been very much a team together throughout our entire marriage. And my wife, Christine, is just absolutely fantastic. She challenges me. She pushes me a lot. But I think for our kids, it's all about supporting them and also challenging them to be the best that they can be.

47:09And so we're really fortunate. We've got two kids that are doing really well. We're incredibly proud of them. But it's fun to watch them grow into their own leaders as they go forward down the path and they take on different leadership opportunities as they start their own careers and as my son finishes up college. But for me, it's really about them knowing what I had for my own parents, which is I was loved, I was supported, I was championed, and I was going to be challenged. If I had those things going for me, that I want to give those same things to my kids. And you said that your wife challenged you and helped you to get to a better decision.

47:41Has there ever been something that she's done or advice she's given you that changed your approach to decision. And if so, you know, tell us the story. You know, she's, she's a great sounding board. And, you know, I've been fortunate to be able to share a lot of my, my work experiences, you know, with her, you know, and I think, you know, years ago, I think one of the things I was excited about at Pizza Hut, we were launching a product they still market today called the Big Dinner Box. And I thought this was going to be the greatest idea in the world. And it's, it's actually proven to stand the test of time.

48:13But the way I wanted to launch it was to run it for president. And so there are a lot of things around that idea. We put it into the political campaign back in a time when there was a heated political environment. But as we pushed that out, I wasn't necessarily listening to enough people who said, I don't know that you want to push your brand into the middle of the political debate. It can get kind of heated. And I kept pushing because I thought it was a great idea and we could get a lot of attention. Eventually, it started to go a little bit sideways. And I got a call. They wanted me to be on the Today Show to explain why I thought this was a good idea.

48:45And as a marketer, I thought, this is a great idea. We'll go on the Today Show and we'll talk all about it. And I still remember her counsel saying that is not going to go well. So whatever you do, do not take that interview. And I think she was exactly right. So I think sometimes you got to listen to your inner voice. And a lot of times she can be my inner voice to be able to keep myself out of trouble sometimes. But at the end of the day, she's been the best champion in the world and has really supported everything that we've been doing together as part of this journey. What's the most encouraging sign you're seeing right now at True Green that tells you that you're waking up to your full potential as a company?

49:22I mentioned those employee engagement scores. To see those move as rapidly as they have tells me that our team is catching fire. And we've got really good financial results. We've got really good business results. I'm pleased to see all that moving in the right direction. And I think that tells you a lot. But underneath it all, when you see employee engagement move as quickly as it has and as meaningfully as it has, that tells me that our best chapter is very much ahead. We've got great people who care a lot. They were looking to be unlocked. They were looking to be empowered. That, to me, is the metric I look at that tells me that really good days are ahead.

50:00Great. And last question here is, Kurt, what's one piece of advice you'd want to give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? One thing, and maybe it's two pieces of advice. One would be believe in yourself. You know, and I think, you know, it's you put yourself in a lot of different positions. These leadership roles are hard and they're challenging. And sometimes they can be intimidating. But at the end of the day, believe that you got into the position because of the work that you've done and that you've got the skills to be successful in the role, even when you're facing big challenges. The second thing I would say is, you know, really embrace that idea of be comfortable being uncomfortable.

50:41Recognize you're going to be doing new things. You're going to be doing different things. You're going to be stepping up in some very big ways. So embrace that. Embrace the feeling of what that's all about. And if you do that, then you're going to make sure that you're on point. You're ready to drive results. And you're going to do the follow through work required to be successful. So those would be the two big pieces of advice I'd give people. Well, Kurt, I'm glad you're having fun and you're in this role as CEO and taking True Green to the next level. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.

51:14Well, I appreciate it. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for the coaching you gave me throughout the years. I can think of a number of one-on-one coaching sessions where you took me through a three-by-five card exercise on things I could work on, things I could be better at. And without coaching sessions like that, then I'd be nowhere close to in the role that I'm at today. So thank you for your leadership example and the work you're continuing to do on this podcast and helping everybody be a better leader. It's really impactful.

51:44Well, it's clear that Kurt is, you know, a wildly successful CEO. He's worked in a number of different industries and he actually, David, worked for you at Yum Brands. Yeah, he was the, he ran marketing for Pizza Hut and did a very good job there. And, you know, one of the things that gives me a lot of joy is just looking around the business world today and seeing people who used to work at Yum Brands and work with me. And they end up being CEOs. And I think my CEO tree is close to 30 executives who are making a difference around the world. And all of them have really taken the approach to people first and recognition.

52:25that really makes me feel good because, you know, I know they're creating work environments that people want to go to work at and attacking what I think is one of the biggest challenges in business today, and that's the toxic work environment that too many people have to endure. So it's great to see Kurt be successful and move on and all the other people that I've had the great privilege to work with and coach. David, it's clear listening to this episode that Kurt is laser-focused on retaining his current customers. And he sees that as the biggest growth opportunity at True Green. And I'm curious, when you think about acquiring new customers versus retaining your current customers, how do you know when you're focused too much on acquiring those new customers that you forget about retaining the ones that you have?

53:14Well, I think that's the art and science of marketing. But the one thing that I've learned in every category is your existing customers, particularly a heavy user, is by far and away the most important segment that you've got to stay focused on. You know, I always called it the 80-20 rule, okay? You know, you'd have 20 % of your customers count for 80 % of your volume. And, you know, that's really important for everybody to understand is that there's nothing like having a heavy user. And so many times, you know, marketers go into a situation where they think they've really got to grow the business and they think it's all about, you know, attracting new users and broadening your reach, when the real fact is you've got a bird in the hand.

54:01That bird in the hand is your existing customer, and how do you get them to want to use you more often? The people who really understand that, you know, stay focused on what really matters. You know, I remember KFC at one point in time was really trying to, you know, get more users into the business. and that was really hard to do because if people weren't interested in KFC, how are you going to get them all of a sudden to come to KFC? But what we really uncovered was let's take the people who are already like KFC and love it and give them more reasons why they should come. That wasn't like creating a non-fried option.

54:41It was more about creating more fried things that people love to indulge in. And, you know, once we became even more proud of what we make and why we make it and what it provides to our customers, you know, we were able to get our existing customers to come in more often. And that was a lot easier than trying to get somebody to come into KFC that had no real plan to do it. It's so helpful, too, when you think about how to prioritize different initiatives that you want to pass, because it becomes really clear what you need to focus on when you realize that the person that you're focusing on is someone who already loves your brand.

55:20Yeah. And, you know, I think when if you listen to this podcast and the conversations we have with great marketers, they understand the importance of really focusing on their core user. And when you do that, you know, you can usually grow your business and you get a much higher payout from your marketing dollars and all the operational efforts that you bring to bear to make your customers happy. Another thing I was really struck by in this conversation with Kurt is his way of boiling down what the strategic pillars are for True Green. And he got their strategic pillars down to five and they all live on one page and one document.

55:58And they tie everything back to that document. They tie meeting agendas back to that document. They tie reports back to that document. And I'm curious, David, hearing that, what would you say to leaders to help them make sure a strategy document like this is actually one that takes root inside the business and doesn't just live on a wall and get ignored? Well, number one, I think Kurt drives home one of the key things you got to do is you got to simplify what needs to be done so that everybody can really understand it. And that simplification is really key. And then you want to be able to, you know, articulate it in one page or a half a page is even better.

56:40It kind of reminds me of so many people get attributed with this quote. But, you know, Abe Lincoln is one. Mark Twain's another, I think. You know, it's like I would have written you a shorter letter if I had time. because what that says is that you've got to take the time to boil down what you want to say to make the letter shorter. You can ramble on and on and write a long letter, but to really make it concise, that takes effort. So I think as a leader, whatever you plan on doing, you need to take the time to really articulate it in the simplest, shortest form possible. And then do it with powerful language.

57:18You know, I always talk about the importance of breaking through the clutter with your communication. And that takes powerful language, you know. And, you know, it's like one of the things I always talk about there is I remember the old theme line for RAID, which was, you know, the function of RAID, which is RAID kills bugs, right? But they didn't just kill bugs. RAID kills bugs dead. You know, adding that one more word really gave a lot more power and memorability to what you're about to say. You know, I remember one of our strategic pillars was to be obsessed with the customer. So I came up with the notion that we wanted all of our people to be customer maniacs and everybody needed to be maniacal about understanding what our customers wanted and what they needed.

58:10You know, so, you know, saying that we were going to be focused on customer mania, you know, people go, well, you want me to be a maniac on customers? Yeah, absolutely. Go for it. You know, well, that broke through the clutter and it communicated one of the things that we wanted to do strategically. So, yeah, it's very, very important to really articulate what you want to do very simply. And then, you know, that old saying, communicate, communicate, communicate, come back to it, come back to it, come back to it. Don't get bored. you know, with what your message is, just keep driving home that message.

58:45And, you know, I think that's what leaders do, and that's how you make things come alive. If it just gets laminated and put up in the wall and you go back to it, you're just wasting your time. So you've got to drive it deep, and every meeting that you have, every forum that you have, you know, you just keep reinforcing it in everything you do. If you've got an internal communication that you do, you reinforce it. You tie it back to what you're really trying to get done and why. And I think that always works. David, we mentioned before, and you heard it in the episode, about all the different industries that Kurt has worked in.

59:20And I loved when you two talk about the skills that really transfer across industries. Kurt says, you know, skills like being able to simplify the business down to what matters most is a skill that every great leader should have and one that is really valuable, regardless of what industry you're working within. For someone listening, David, who might be thinking about making a jump into a different industry, what do you really think they should be focused on and what skills should they be developing? Well, that's interesting because, you know, I mentioned earlier when you asked me right after the interview with Kurt about him working for me, you know, I've had a lot of people work for me, go on and run different businesses.

59:59Well, how do they go to these different categories? Well, they go to these different categories with a customer orientation. Like Brian Nickel, you know, one of the top CEOs in the country today. He went to Chipotle, turned around Chipotle and really did a great job. Then he went to Starbucks. And, you know, and he worked for me. And when he worked for me, one of the things that made him such a great CEO at Taco Bell is he was so customer focused. He never lost that. You have to understand what your customers want if you're going to be successful in any business. And that's the transferable skill that everyone has to have if you're really going to be successful.

1:00:34You've got to be able to really take your organization, understand what the customer wants, and then drive home the initiatives that will make your customer happy. And so it's an incredible combination of just being customer focused and then being able to execute and drive home what really needs to get done. But I think those are two transferable skills that everybody has to have. And when I look at the people that I've developed who've gone on into different categories and been extremely successful, you know, they have that capability. And that's why they've been such winners wherever they've been.

1:01:15One thing I've also noticed, David, about folks that have come up at Yum Brands, I think about Kevin Hockman, who's the CEO of Brinker, which is the parent company of Chili's and Maggiano's. And I love following Kevin Hockman on LinkedIn because every day he's posting, celebrating his employees and how great of a job they're doing. And so I also think, you know, that customer mania piece is clearly of utmost importance. It's also that skill of creating a culture where everyone counts that I feel like the CEOs who came up at Young Brands have done at their companies and something that's allowing them to experience a lot of success.

1:01:52Kevin Hockman is just, he's a great marketer. And I think he came up with Marketing Young Brands, but he's running Brinker now and Chili's is having a moment. And I can see why people love working with Kevin because he celebrates the heck out of all the folks that work for him. Yeah, and let's take another guy who's an incredible leader. Let's take Andy Jassy, who we had a conversation with. He's the CEO of Amazon. If you haven't read it, you gotta read it. You gotta read Andy's annual letter. and he talks about the culture that they have to have to be able to embrace change and keep driving new initiatives.

1:02:30And he talks about their strategic pillars that are just so incredible. But it's, you know, here's a guy who understands the importance of simplifying. You know, even mentioned, and I love this, is one of his favorite bands is The Beths, okay? And they have a song about how things are not always in a straight line and that you got to be able to adjust the things when the line changes. And, you know, he does a great job of using that as the theme for his annual report. A great example of what I'm talking about, you know, he makes his point in a way that you remember it. And he breaks through the clutter with his communication.

1:03:09And I think that's very important. But I can't believe I didn't say that you got to build a culture where everyone counts because that's job number one. And I didn't discover that myself. That's not my idea. I learned that by studying all the great companies. And all the great companies do create a culture where everyone counts and they recognize their people and their people feel valued. So that's a transferable skill that any leader can take into any business. So thanks for bringing that up, Kula. Absolutely. Well, David, after this conversation, I am inspired to do a much better job at taking care of my yard because it looks very sad right now.

1:03:46But hopefully my neighborhood is a true green neighborhood very soon and I will get all the people using true green. Yeah. And, you know, I think while you're taking care of your yard, I think all of our listeners can remember the importance of staying focused on their core customer and making sure that they're driving frequency and retaining them and making sure that you communicate your strategy as simply as possible and go back to it time and time again. And then, you know, know that, you know, if you want to move across businesses, whatever, you know, you got to create that culture where everyone counts and your team members need to want to come to work.

1:04:22And you have to be able to understand your customers really well, and then be able to drive the execution that will make sure that your strategies come to life. And I think those are all points that were well made in this conversation with Kurt. Well, thank you again, Kurt, for an excellent episode of How Leaders Lead. And thank you, David. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead. We will see you next Thursday.