Moment 109 - How to Overcome & Push Through Your Hardest Times: John Eckbert

0:02When was your hardest time? my hardest time and in your five guys journey yeah well um i was i went through a very painful divorce um and uh went through something called leave to remove which i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy um it's the essentially it's the right to have your children taken out of the country so i had uh two young children um who um the court system approved leave to remove which allowed my ex to take my kids back to America, which was incredibly painful. And my whole view of myself, my definition of who I was changed. I thought of myself as a great partner, good husband, good father, devoted father.

0:54I was in politics back in America, was involved in my community and a church leader and businessman. And I thought, you know, all these things are who I am. And essentially all of that was, you know, quite a large bonfire of vanities. And that was a real dark, dark moment for me. And there were days when Five Guys was the one thing in my life that was stable and that I could hold on to. And that really pulled me through a very difficult, dark time, personally. How long did that process last? That's part of the UK challenge. It took years, a better part of two years, we're in that process. And then, you know, trying to rebuild those relationships.

1:43And thankfully, I'm in an amazing place with my kids now, and have, you know, accepted that they that we have had a more adult relationship prematurely. But now that they're both at university, it feels more normal now. And those are hard fought, hard won, recast relationships, which, you know, were really important, are important to me. But was, I was, the thought that they were at risk was caused just enormous anxiety. And living with that kind of anxiety on the personal side, having a place where, you know, things were more predictable was, and being able to work in that way and provide for them was, you know, a real, yeah, really helped me through.

2:42When your kids are essentially taken away to another country and you've got this huge responsibility of running this big business. How does that impact your ability to show up every day professionally? Well, I mean, it was really complex for me because I had a non-compete back in the US for the business that I had sold. So I couldn't just relocate back to America and do my job. So it felt like a huge catch-22 because I had these court-ordered financial obligations and the only way that I could really fulfill them was to keep doing my job here. um so court ordered financial obligations as in the separation costs and stuff that you have to pay to your part yeah exactly um so it felt like a catch-22 they were allowed to leave but i had to provide for them so i had to stay and so it was it felt like a um kind of a indentured servanthood for a bit but um you know being able to um to focus on um on a on the important job that I had actually was enormously relieving because I knew that for 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, whatever it ended up being, that I could actually do something productive that I knew I was good at, that made a difference for them.

4:00And that was the anxiety of being separated, I could set aside for those hours in a day. And that was really helpful. um it it could have absorbed just kind of overwhelmed me um but work was able to um it was it was a place where i could where i could escape from that did you see uh your motivation fluctuate often when we have these like pretty substantial life events there's an initial period where getting out of bed in the morning is a little bit more difficult it's almost like someone has messed with your why your reason to get out of bed and your sense of purpose yeah so you always have to i've i've learned from my own experiences that you have to spend a little bit of time You're almost faking it to get the drive back, if that makes sense.

4:45Yeah, no, of course. No, well, you know, I told you I got up at 5 a.m. when I was a kid and practiced violin for an hour before school. And I was never a great musician, but what I did find was that if you did something every day, you actually could get better at it, maybe even more than competent. And I think it was something like that that just in me, you know, said, you know, get out of bed, do the next, do the next thing. Um, and something, things will change. You will, I called a friend of mine who'd been through a similar, um, situation. Um, and he said, you know, just keep showing up, you know, you know, texting my son every day, calling, you know, every day, um, being as present as I possibly could.

5:31Um, and you know, obviously it's imperfect. and it's deeply upsetting, I'm sure, to them as well as to me. But doing as much as you possibly can to be available and in touch. And then you just have to trust. Trust something that it'll be okay. Trust something? Is it just trust life that it will? No, I mean, you know, now we're getting very personal, Stephen, but, you know, I believe in a higher power. I don't pretend to understand it. but I think there's something much more powerful than I am in the world. And what I will say is that it helped me to see the world in two camps. One are things that I can control and some things that I absolutely can't control.

6:19And if you spend, if you allocate your mental health and your time on the things that you can't control, you can drive yourself to distraction and eventually madness. So being able to focus on the things that you can control and realizing that that's your job. Your job as a human is to do the things that you can control. And it's just arrogance and ignorance to focus on the things that you can't control. And so identifying those two camps and being at peace with that, accepting that some things you can't control, that's really hard, but it's hugely important. yeah I was at this festival this weekend and there was a I did one-on-one meetings with lots of people that were in the audience for three hours and I found myself being asked over and over again how to deal with exactly that which is when chaos arrives in our lives what to do on that day and people had me recording these voice notes for them for that day so when that day comes they just wanted to be able to play it and what you said that is exactly what I said which is there are a small list of things you can control and on that tough day make a promise to me that you'll spend 100 % of your mental energy focusing only on those things because you can't because obviously yesterday focusing too much on that tends to lead to depression is I think the Lu Sao the philosopher says focusing too much on tomorrow and the things that are yet to be in your control will also cause a lot of anxiety so really focusing it on today I think is just phenomenal advice in terms of a it's the thing that's most conducive with a successful outcome but b it's also the thing that's most conducive with having a healthy mental state in total chaos.

7:59No, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think the other thing is that realizing that our, I believe our purpose in life is human connection. I think that's why we're here. I think we're made to connect. And sometimes it's, you know, we're colliding, you know, more than connecting, but figuring out how to connect with other human beings. And I will say, you know, that was the making of me as being able to, when someone comes into my office and says, I've lost my partner, they passed away, way before their time. Being able to connect with that person in that moment of loss is hugely valuable as a company, but hugely meaningful to me as a human being.

8:49and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't been through the loss that I had experienced. So it's one of those things where you end up being grateful for the most upsetting things that happen in your life because I think they're the making of you in many ways. Because of what you said at the start of this conversation about that importance of feeling like you belonged and it's so evident that that is much of the reason you've also been successful. is you're, I mean, even from the short conversation we've had, you strike me as a very empathetic person who's able to connect with others.

9:23That moment must have been presumably even more difficult because your sense of belonging in that moment was taken from you to some degree. The family unit, right? No, for sure. That was a defining moment. But now, you know, the thing about Five Guys is that, We have these 8 ,600 people who get up every morning and have this shared vision mission to make great burgers and fries for hungry customers. And I get to be a part of that. And I get to be a part of this larger community that has this – winning in business feels fantastic. I mean it's a real high. It's a drug. It's an addiction. and being a part of a community that's accomplishing this thing.

10:16We were the eighth fastest growing business in 2016, I think, in the UK, and the fastest growing food and beverage business. And even with that, we never met a budget that I had made. So we were fastest but still behind by my mind. And being a part of this community that shares our values and that are all working towards this is enormously satisfying and, yeah, fill something that has always been empty. Some days as CEOs, maybe we're tired or we're in a bad mood or something's off. We can sometimes not show up as our best selves. And sometimes when that happens with me, I regret it. So I'll go home and think, I just wish I'd, I wish I'd handled that situation differently.

11:08Do you, does that happen to you a lot where you think, ah, fuck, I wish I'd been in a better mood or I'd slept more today or something? Yeah. Julie tells me when, uh, Julie, my head of ops, she comes in and says, yeah, you really fucked up that meeting. That was, um, but, but, but actually having, um, having somebody who, um, you know, to me, the, the, the, one of the worst things that can happen are these, um, you know, emperor has no clothes where, you know, where the, where the, where the, the, the most important, powerful person in a business has blind spots that, you know, everybody knows about and somehow you, you know, you work around.

11:42Um, and, and that's just hugely dangerous as a business. Um, and having people who can come into your office and go, John, that, that was, you know, that comment was just way out of line or really unhelpful. You know, you now have people thinking like this, is that what you wanted? So people who can confront power with truth. And, you know, to me, that kind of culture is hugely important to a company because you can go so wrong with the emperor has no clothes and people thinking, God, we know this, we just can't tell them to that person. How do you cultivate that? Because I imagine a lot of CEOs and a lot of team members that work for a CEO think, oh, there's no way I could give it to my CEO and tell him that was wrong or he shouldn't have said that.

12:26or she should have said that. I think publicly owning your shit is really helpful in that way. So showing up at the next meeting and go, hey, you know what? I said this to the last meeting and that was just really wrong. It was off and I was off my game or I didn't think it through. And it should be the opposite. It should be the opposite of that. And showing that you can respond to that kind of challenge, I think, is important as a leader. And then you give everybody else permission to do the same thing. You know, I mean, you can change your mind. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to be wrong as a fallible human being, too.

13:09And confessing that is powerful.