Episode 166: Leadership with Chick-fil-A's Senior VP of High Performance Mark Miller

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. In today's episode, we have Mark Miller. He's an international bestselling author, business leader, and communicator. He's a seasoned business professional who worked his way up the ladder from hourly employee to a senior member of the corporate team at Chick-fil-A. He's been with the company for 40 years and currently serves as senior vice president of high performance. I have to tell you, I have, I think at this point, well over close to 175 episodes. And this is one of my very favorite interviews that I've done. If you listen to this podcast for any amount of time, I think, and hopefully it comes out, how much I love business, how much I love leadership and studying leadership. And Mark and his books have had a profound impact on my life. And just hearing from him and his experience, breadth of knowledge that he's had in helping build Chick-fil-A to where it is. If you're like me, you love Chick-fil-A, but you're also in awe of the culture and the consistency of the product and just the experience that you have every time you go there. I can't wait for you all to be able to learn a little bit from Mark, and hopefully it will help you in your leadership journey as well. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Mark Miller.

Have you ever tried online marketing before and weren't sure if it was working? Maybe your rep talked about all the impressive features and stats and said things were going great, but you didn't know how all that tied into raw new policies written. Well, that's not the case with DirectClicks. DirectClicks is the premier Google Ads and SEO option exclusively for State Farm agents.

Why?

They're 100% results-oriented with an exclusivity guarantee. Every review call you have with your account manager focuses on what really matters to your business, and that's leads and call-ins received. Everything will get broken down to cost per lead received. By investing with DirectClicks, you're going to free up time and energy to focus on what's most important in your agency and doing what it is you do best. This will be the best investment you make for your team by spending confidently and scaling your agency today with exclusive online marketing partner DirectClicks. Visit us at directclicksinc.com. Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. No, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman's Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpeakconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Good.

Mark Miller, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Delighted to be with you.

Excited to have you. Been really looking forward to this conversation, as I shared with you earlier. So we always start with background and origin story. And I think that you have a fascinating story about where you started and then currently where you are within Chick-fil-A and just your entire journey. Can you just walk our audience through your backstory?

Well, I'll share some of the highlights because it's a very long story. Over 40 years ago, I just tell people, 1970-something, I was a Chick-fil-A team member in one of the local restaurants, and I was awful in the restaurant. I won't go into the details, but I hope that none of your listeners have ever had an employee as bad as I was. And I had an awareness of this even as a kid that things weren't going well. And so I made a career decision, and I'm always quick to say this is not career advice. For those that are listening, but I decided to quit because I thought it would look better on my resume to have left than to be fired. And since I was sure my firing was imminent, I quit. And I went and got a job in another industry, and about 6 months later I got laid off. And I thought, man, that's not good, I need a job. And I thought to myself, well, I can't do what they do in the restaurant, so maybe I can work at the corporate headquarters. Which makes no sense at any level. I mean, I understand that now looking back. But, you know, no disrespect to the professionals at the corporate headquarters, but that was my plan. And so I walked in and I told the receptionist I wanted a job working in the warehouse. And so she told me to have a seat. And a few minutes later, Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, came out, took me into his office to conduct the interview. And I see the look on your face. A lot of people go, now why in the world was Truett the CEO interviewing this punk to work in the warehouse. Well, back in the '70s, Chick-fil-A was not a big deal, and I learned that I was actually interviewing to be the 16th corporate employee. So I think your listeners can appreciate, if you've got 15 employees, the head man or the head woman is probably the one conducting the interviews.

Yes.

And so I always tell people it was a combination of God's grace and lack of discernment on Truett's part that he gave me that job working in the warehouse. And I started in 1978. So we're at 43 years on the corporate staff. And it has been a fabulous and winding career path. I've worked all across the business. I had the opportunity to start quite a few things. And I'm quick to tell people, has nothing to do that I could discern with my talent, skills, or ability, it was a little bit, "Let the kid do it, let the kid do it," and I'd do anything. So I started our corporate communications group, and I started our quality and customer satisfaction group. Later on, I worked in restaurant operations, I worked in our training department for over a decade, and I've just really had trouble holding down a job over the years across the business. And it's been fantastic. And then about 25 years ago, I began to focus my energies on helping us grow leadership capacity. And that's probably what brought me to this moment today is even though I continue to have other responsibilities in the business, I've, I've really focused a lot of my time over the last quarter of a century on helping leaders grow.

I tell you what, there is no question for those of us that have all visited a Chick-fil-A, the culture and the leadership to allow that culture. Kudos to you and your team because as we talked right before we started hitting record about how well— and we may have actually talked about this— how much you all are studying excellence from others, football coaches, etc. People look to Chick-fil-A to study what all you have done, you as a team have been able to accomplish. And I just want to tell you that every time I go into one of those stores, it's an amazing experience. But beside the food, the culture and the consistency of the culture continues to absolutely amaze me. And that actually leads me to my first point. There's a lot of our business leaders that have wanted or are beginning to think about scaling to other locations. And they have struggled in some cases being able to keep the culture consistent across those other locations. What are some of the things that you can speak to just about scaling culture to other locations and other businesses?

Well, I don't know if this is good news or bad news. But it's my experience that there's a single critical non-negotiable element to scaling culture across locations, and it's the point leader. It's the point leader. So if, if one of your listeners wants to set up a second location, I think the success and long-term viability of that second location is going to hinge on who's leading that second location. And certainly with regards to culture, is people always watch the leader, and the leader is the one that sets the cultural aspiration. They, they, when they're doing it well, they work constantly to amplify that aspiration And they're also listening so that they know when they need to adapt, when that culture needs to change or morph or be enhanced. And so I think our competitive advantage as an organization are our restaurant operators, the women and men that run these 3,000 restaurants, that they are our competitive advantage. And I think for your listeners, their competitive advantage could likely be the people that they put in place as they attempt to scale their business.

Amazing. The first book that I read, and you've now on your— the most recent book, which we're going to speak about, is your 10th book, I believe. The book that I was first introduced to of yours was Talent Magnet.

Okay.

It had a fantastic, uh, pronounced influence on my life and my business at the time, and so I'm grateful for that. But that's actually where I wanted to go into actually recruiting. So you just talked about the people, but then within all of those locations, there is— I actually don't know, maybe you can share the, the average number of people that are on staff. Again, it goes to the experience itself, but can you just talk about the challenges and then some of the things that would go into actually finding really great people in our organizations?

Okay, so there's a lot in there. So let me, let me try to tease out a couple of points. Our restaurant operators will, on any given day, employ 300,000 people across the nation. Wow. If you factor in turnover, there'll be over 400,000 go through those restaurants as hourly employees over the course of a year. So a lot of people, the majority of them are teenagers. That is by choice. The operators tend to like a younger workforce, and we support that strategy. You know, management and leadership decisions are made by those local operators, and we, again, we think that enhances and really creates this competitive advantage I mentioned. You get great leaders and you give them that level of autonomy and wonderful things can happen. But to your question specifically, we are experiencing what much of the world is experiencing right now as it relates to finding talent. And it's just hard. So I wanted to preface my remarks by honoring the challenge, right? It's, it's real. And I talk to operators all the time who are having trouble staffing at the levels they'd like to staff. So let's start there. However, even in the midst of those challenges, you mentioned Talent Magnet. I would argue that what we found when we did that research is still true today, even though we did it several years ago. So for your audience that's not familiar, Let me just give a quick snapshot of what we did, why we did it, and what we learned. And I'll move through this quickly. We were trying to help our restaurant operators with what had become, even several years ago, their number one challenge, as self-reported, is finding and keeping people. And I was asked to try and figure this out. And on behalf of the operators, how do we help them with this? And I know the first operator I talked to told me I didn't understand the problem. And I said, well, I think the problem is finding and keeping people because that's what the operators have told us. He said, no, you don't understand the problem. And I said, okay, what is the problem? He said, well, probably two. One is the way you worded the question. But he said, let me tell you what the real problem is. I said, okay. He said, it's finding and keeping the right people. You can add a few more dollars to, to your average wage and you can have people line up for a job. Yep. But he said the trick is finding and keeping the right people. So I thought, well, that's interesting. So we began to look for some research on what attracts what we call top talent to an organization, and we couldn't find it. And we spent about 6 months. We talked to Gallup and Aon and all the big global HR firms. We talked to academics. I called Marcus Buckingham, you know, on and on and on. And like people said, there is no research on what attracts top talent. I said, this is the craziest thing I may have ever encountered. Like nobody in the world has ever studied this. And we just kept getting no, no, no, no, no, no. So we wrote a really big check and we commissioned a study on what attracts top talent. And, and we found they want 3 things. One, they want a better boss, meaning they want to be well-led. Now, you may be thinking, doesn't everyone want to be well-led? Well, at some level, but for top talent, it's a condition of employment. They're not well-led, they're an immediate flight risk. So they need to be well-led. The second thing they want is a brighter future. You say, well, doesn't everybody want a brighter future? Well, top talent looks at the future differently. To typical talent, the future is Friday. But to top talent, they come into a job interview with different questions. They want to know, what am I going to learn? How am I going to grow? How is this going to be preparing me for a brighter future? This job, this role, these tasks. And third is they want to be part of a bigger vision.

Hmm.

Uh, and so once we realized this, we said, we actually think this will help attract and keep top talent.

Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club capital, way more than a CPA firm.

But, but we learned— I call this an indirect finding of the research— you may provide those three things, but if people don't know it, you don't get any credit. Yes. So we had many of our operators who were doing that, but they couldn't get people because they weren't telling the story. And so we say, if this is in essence your employee value proposition And we know that top talent will be attracted to it. The question then becomes, are you proactively and strategically telling that story?

Yes.

Now, the reason I think that'll stand the test of time— somebody might pick up that book and go, wait a minute, you wrote this book 4 years ago, whatever it was. It's like, this is old news. Here's, here's, I think, the magic in the research methodology. We looked at age 15 65.

Wow.

In all 50 states, like 7,000 people in this sample. What we were trying to do is, is normalize across generations. If someone through this complicated process of segmenting typical from top talent, which I don't understand, and really smart people working on that, What we were trying to look for and what we found is that the things I just shared with you are true for 15-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, 20-year-olds, and 60-year-olds.

Mm-hmm.

So that's why, even though the data is a little bit older, we actually think if, if that's inherent in these people, that it is still inherent in these people 4 and 5 years later.

Absolutely. And if you, you just mentioned previously that a lot of your operators are employing a heavy workforce that are teenagers, you could have focused that research just on, on that workforce that makes up the majority of the Chick-fil-A and the owner operators that are there. But you guys did not do that. You went across generations, which obviously, even with when what has happened since the book came out, that research and that data still holds true.

I think so. And by the way, we had our sample included all 50 states. And the reason I point that out is some of our research is global, but that was not global. That was just US.

Sure.

But again, we just finished something on culture. You mentioned culture earlier where we talked to leaders and frontline people all over the world. And so we do global work, but that was a US-based study.

One of the things that I want to give— I've actually never shared this before. But I have heard for a long time— I don't know where I first— but when I got into business 12 years ago, around the, the importance of core values. And I had heard that, and then I tried to implement about 15 different core values, and that fell and didn't work. And I was actually at one of your stores, and on the back of one of the doors that went to the kitchen area, it said our our core 4. And I could read their core 4 values. And the door was just happened to be open in that moment. It wasn't designed to be facing with the customers. It was for the team. And I said, oh, I like that core 4. And now I really embrace the value of core 4 values. And that has really played out because to the point of which you mentioned of if you don't tell the story, You can actually have it, but if you don't actually share it with your prospective top talent— Right. I like to call them A-players, top talent A-players.

Sure.

Then they're not gonna know what they're actually gonna get.

So let me give you one tip to your listeners. It's really a question. If somebody goes to their website, which by the way, the last numbers I saw, over 80% of people looking for a job will go to a company's website first. Before they do anything else. So my question is, if your value proposition includes better boss, brighter future, bigger vision, regardless of the language you use, do you, do you actually check those 3 boxes? How clear is that to someone who goes to your website? How many clicks do they have to go to find what you offer to them as an employee? We even had one operator that on their Instagram account, they quit putting pictures of the food. And I said, tell me about that, 'cause I'm thinking we are in the restaurant business. And they said, yeah, but I'm using this for recruiting. And he said, when my customers go there, they all know we sell food. So I'm talking about our employee value proposition on Instagram. And so that people will think, huh, they just gave a scholarship to this person. Huh, they're doing leadership development. So they were— they had chosen to use that channel not to tell people we sell chicken sandwiches, which they said that we already know. We're going to use the channel to actually tell our story, which I thought was brilliant.

I love that. I love that. I really want to transition now, but using one of the things that you just mentioned about being a better boss, and I want to transition talking about specifically leadership. And one of the things that in preparing for the interview that I've heard you say and read in some of the books is— and especially I find this to be true right now— is that despite our best efforts, we are just working harder and harder and harder, and we seem to be getting a lot less out of the work that we are spending. And I've heard you say it is existential quicksand. Which I thought was such a great imagery of how it feels at times. Why do you think that is? And what's our solution?

Wow. Okay. You asked really good, big questions. So let me, let me say, um, the world we live in is, is more complex than any world that has ever existed. The level of busyness is, I don't think, going to subside. The number of distractions are increasing exponentially. We looked at some research before COVID and we found out that the average person is picking up their phone 150 times a day, and they're clicking, swiping, liking, or doing something else with their phone 2,617 times a day. We learned that there are over 432 1,000 hours of new YouTube content uploaded every day. We learned that the typical office worker is distracted or interrupted every 3 minutes. The problem is the psychologists tell us that it takes on average 20 minutes to regain the focus and mental acuity that you had before the distraction. So by natural extension, you can actually go to work and leave 8 hours later having never regained the focus, clarity, and mental acuity that you had the moment you walked in the door. So I think those things are, are unrelenting. And I was sharing that with a leader we were interviewing as we were trying to get our head around this quicksand and how we might help, to your question. And he listened to those things like what I just shared with you, and he said, yeah, I understand all that, but those aren't my problems. And I said, okay. I said, is there anything impeding your leadership effectiveness? He said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just not your list. I said, well, give me your list. And he said, fear, fatigue, aimlessness. And he said, if I'm honest, success. That's impeding my effectiveness because I've become risk averse. And there might be a better way, but I, I can't afford to try. And so my team said, what do we do with that? And what we decided was, well, those are just other descriptors of quicksand.

Yes.

And in reality, we probably all have our own toxic mix. And it probably changes from time to time based on circumstances and role and responsibility and staffing and circumstances. But those things that keep us from leading to our full potential, that's our quicksand. So fast forward, we went to work and said, we need, we need to help because this, this is the problem. We need to help leaders be more effective. And we realized that people fall into 3 fundamental categories once they end up in, you know, in this situation. They either swim in the quicksand, which is A, not sustainable, it's exhausting, and you're never going to do your best work, right? No gold medals have ever been issued for somebody swimming in quicksand.

That's right.

The second option is you sink. You just give up. You know, this great resignation, there are probably a lot of drivers, but I think some people are just giving up because they're just tired. They're just exhausted. Maybe because they've tried to just keep swimming. What happens if you give up? You die. Now, you may not physically die, but your hopes and your dreams and your aspirations are extinguished.

Absolutely.

The third group are the folks who decided to escape. They weren't going to try to swim in it. They weren't, they weren't going to give in and sink. They wanted to escape. And so we ended up focusing our research on who are the folks that don't spend much time in quicksand. And if they do, they get out.

They get out.

They get out. And so if you'd like, I'll give it to you at a really, really high level, what we learned.

Yes.

And then we'll go anywhere you want to go because I just kind of put it out there.

Perfect.

Let me, let me just let me say it like this. The key to escaping the quicksand It's not your skills. It's your choices. It's your choices. Skills matter. I've spent my life helping leaders develop skills. Skills still matter. Skills will not get you out of quicksand. Choices get you out of quicksand. Choices give us agency. They give us responsibility. And they give us some accountability. And in the book that we ultimately published called Smart Leadership, We call these smart choices, and there are 4 of them, and I'll hit them real quick and then we'll, we'll let— we'll follow your lead. The first choice is to confront reality.

The best use of money is to buy back your time. And one of the best ways to do that is with a virtual assistant. Rock Solid Virtual Assistants brings together top business leaders with exceptional virtual assistants to build successful relationship-driven teams. The services they provide range from graphic design and marketing to executive admin assistants and everything in between. There are many virtual assistant companies on the market to choose from, but at RockSolid, their processes and passion for what they do place them at the very top of that list. Not only is their hiring process exceptional, which nets them the very best assistants, but they also provide superior support to their teams for the duration of your time with them. The matching process at RockSolid is unlike any other. and they have the track record to prove it. Their hands-on approach has proven to increase the success rate of their teams exponentially. So if you're looking to build a rock-solid team for your business, reach out to Tracy and the team for a no-pressure discovery call at rocksolidassistance.com. They value your success as if it were their own, because it is.

Only when you're grounded in truth can you lead from a position of strength. And I think your listeners only need to think for a moment, even if they don't think about themselves, think about all the leaders you know who it appears are unwilling to confront reality. And there are any number of root causes, but the consequences are the same. People ask me if this is the most important choice of the 4 because you put it first on the list. And I said, well, I will say this. It's first among equals. You can't win here, but you can lose here. Like, there's even no— there's no need to talk about the other choices unless you're willing to confront reality. So the second choice, the second smart choice, is to grow capacity. Again, this feels counterintuitive. A lot of folks would say to me and have said, well, if I had capacity, I wouldn't be in quicksand. Okay, okay. Hit pause. Okay, maybe that's true. But what have you done? What choices have you made? What activities have you engaged in purposefully and strategically in order to grow your capacity? And there are things we can explore if you want to go there. The third choice is to fuel curiosity. People often ask me if there's a leadership fountain of youth, and what I used to tell them is, I hope so, because I want to find it myself. I want to add value to my last breath. Now I say there is definitely a leadership fountain of youth, and it's curiosity. Yes, it's how you maintain relevance and vitality in a dynamic world, but it's a choice, and it's a choice that the best leaders make over and over and over and over again. And the fourth smart choice is the choice to create change. And I shared this content with the group this week, and I could almost see their eyes rolling. I was actually in the room with them. It wasn't a Zoom call. And I said, okay, you're thinking what my team was thinking. Does this really have to be a choice? Is this not a blinding flash of the obvious? And then we began to reflect on how many leaders are unwilling to create change. Maybe they even make the first 3 choices.

Yes.

But progress is always preceded by change.

Yes.

You got to create change today to ensure a better tomorrow. And if you're in quicksand, unless you're willing to make some changes, you're going to stay in quicksand.

Absolutely.

And so, so those are the 4 choices that we've been sharing with with leaders that came from our research and our study.

I love it so much. So I have so many things I want to dive into, a couple of these. Let me ask you around number 1. I can think at times there's people that come to mind, but I just want to point the finger right back at myself where I had a lack of humility of where I was. I did not want to confront reality. I wanted to tell myself a story. Self-deception. There's a book, Leadership and Self-Deception.

Yes, it's a very good book.

A very great book. And I think it was actually one of those books that started to make me think, you know what, I might need to look in the mirror and actually say, you know what, I'm telling myself a story. I'm delusional about what is actually happening, my leadership, etc. Where do we get to a place when we just say, I just feel like it's humility to say, you know what, I think I need to just be willing to tell the truth to myself. Can you just speak a little bit more to that?

Well, I would not disagree with anything you've said, that humility is part of the solution. But here's something I'll say about all 4 of the choices. The choices without activation, it's just an intellectual exercise.

Yes.

It's just an intellectual exercise. So I'm encouraging leaders to, yes, make the choice and then figure out how to activate the choice. Now, you probably won't make the choice unless you have humility. But you can just say, yeah, I'm willing to confront reality. And I'm going to say, well, how are you doing that?

Yes.

And so one of the things— and it's just a quick strategy that I would share with your listeners— is to find fresh eyes, because it's really hard for us to do this well. I would even say it's impossible for us to do this by ourselves. I mean, blind spots are called blind spots for a reason, right? And so I would, I would encourage people, there are a lot of tactics you can employ here. You can get a personal board of directors, you can hire a coach, you can find a mentor, uh, you can start a mastermind or a peer group. I've been in a group now for 23 years studying leadership, and one of the things we do is we share a draft of our annual development plan while we're still working on it to get their feedback. And their challenge and their— and then we, we rework the plan and we send it back to everybody so we can check in. So there are any number of mechanisms that you can put in place and you'll need some humility to do all of that.

Yes.

And I think humility is a wonderful thing. And I'm still going to say, and what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? You have to do something.

What are you going to do?

You have to— I've heard this before, ideas are everywhere, but implementation is everything. You have to then do something with it. I love the idea of a personal board of directors. I think it ultimately, it also speaks to this broader point for leaders that we have community, people who are willing to speak into our life call us out on our bull and to be able to say, that's actually— I don't think you're thinking about that the right way. This is where you come across this way at times to other people. Somebody who has a confidence and, and somebody who we are actually willing to listen to. Because unfortunately, I have heard— I've had people share things with me before, but because it was coming from one person and not someone else, I didn't listen to them.

Right.

Same thing came out, but somebody else said it. I'm now, I'm now paying attention, right?

Which is why, I mean, hopefully we can all reach a level of maturity that will listen to feedback from everybody. But I know exactly what you're talking about, which is why when I talk about finding fresh eyes, you go get people that you already trust or that you're willing to give the benefit of the doubt, people that you think care enough to tell you the truth. So because you're creating the list, it tends to mitigate. I mean, sometimes you'll still hear stuff from people you've invited to give you feedback and you go, I don't know if I want to believe that or not. Oh, but that's why you ask somebody else in your network, in your community. They say the same thing. It's like, okay, I probably need to— I need to— I need to listen to this.

There's a— there's a great book written by Gino Wickman called Traction. And in there, he talks about— he has a, I guess, a framework, GWC. And he's talking about recruiting people. And it's get it, want it, capacity to do it. And so often that we begin to think, well, I'm interviewing someone that's hopefully is going to be top talent. I got to see if they have the capacity. But often we don't think about our own capacity and growing our own capacity as leaders in being purposeful with doing that. Thoughts?

Well, sure. And I would encourage your listeners, if you want to scale your impact, which is really the premise that we were chasing, right? Leadership effectiveness to what end? So that leaders can have a greater impact on the world. So if you want that, you're going to have to probably come to grips with your personal capacity. And there are any number of strategies and tactics. We review them in the book, and some of them are, are quite pedestrian. Things like your personal energy. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you drinking enough water? Are you getting enough exercise? It's like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Time and priority management. Like, for every minute of that you can free up on your calendar, you just created some capacity. So those are kind of the the more predictable things, the way you're structured, your leadership philosophy, you know, are you overly controlling? Are you so forth? All that, none of that's going to feel revolutionary. But I will say the most controversial idea probably in the entire book, at least based on the feedback I've received, is this idea of margin.

Hmm.

If you want to grow your capacity, you have to create margin. Now, some would say that's like watching a drowning man and saying from the shore, I've got coupons for swimming lessons. Like, that guy does not want swimming lessons. It's like, oh, of course I want margin, but I don't have any. I even had somebody tell me they don't have time for a vacation. I said, well, hang on, hang on, let's not debate that. I said, maybe you do based on that comment, but we're not going to talk about that. I said, let's talk about margin as a leadership discipline. He kind of looked at me funny. And I said, when do you have time set aside to reflect, to assess, to think, to create, and to plan? Let me say that again. When do you have time set aside to reflect, to assess, to think, to create, and to plan? He said, well, I don't. I said, well, who's going to do that?

Oh, I love it.

Who's gonna do that?

Hmm.

There was a study just completed. Harvard did a 12-year study of CEOs, looked at their calendars. They spend on average 28% of their working week alone.

Wow.

And somebody said, what do you think they're doing? Reflect, assess, think, create, and plan. And then the follow-up question is, so is 28% the right number? I said, I have no idea what your right number is. But here's what I would tell you. The bigger your hopes, the bigger your dreams, the bigger your vision, the bigger your challenges, and the more daunting your obstacles, the more time you're going to need alone.

Mark, you don't realize this, but you just gave me for the last 5 minutes, you just gave me personal coaching. I needed that this week. The last two weeks actually, which is kind of ironic, I just came off of hosting a business retreat. Now it wasn't much of a retreat for me because I was hosting people, and the last two weeks have been on, uh, hyper speed for sure. And I sent a message to my wonderful executive assistant Courtney and said, I need more margin. I actually used those words. I said, I need more margin. And we looked at my calender between now and the end of the year and carved out, moved some things, canceled some things to do exactly what you were saying. Because I said, I don't have time to create, think, plan, plan for podcast and be able to prepare hopefully really great episodes for our listening audience and many, many more things. Thank you for that.

Yeah, well, it's my pleasure. Let me just say it showed up over and over and over and over and over in our research. Even going back in history, you find great leaders, they created margin. Don't think of it like a vacation. Think of it like a leadership discipline. I talked to the guy, a guy who became the president of a multi-billion dollar company, and I said, okay, what's the first thing you did? He said, I doubled my alone time.

Wow. Wow. That speaks.

So for your listeners, for your listeners, if they have no experience in margin, I would encourage them, try to find an hour, try to find 2 hours, and schedule it and put it on your calendar and write meeting with me. So when somebody says, hey, can you meet with me or do XYZ, you can look at it and with full integrity say, nope, I'm sorry, I've got a meeting, got a meeting, there's a meeting with me. And then last thought on this, if you're really struggling with quicksand, that's your first topic. Reflect, assess, think, create, and plan on how you can get out.

I love that. Yeah, because you're right. You were talking about with team how many times we're distracted with our phone and how long it takes them to get back on task. Well, the same thing applies for us if we're just constantly in meetings, meetings, meetings. We're not doing Reflecting, Assessing, Thinking, Planning, Creating. I have a question that in preparing for this, what is a question around leadership that nobody asks you that you wish that they did?

Oh my goodness. People, I don't know that maybe I've never been asked or I've certainly not been asked enough, why should I lead?

Mm.

And my answer is, well, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you shouldn't. Leaders lead. And if that's your calling, then you should lead. If that's your heart's desire to serve others and you think you can do it in a leadership capacity— because there are infinite ways to serve other people There is. I think more people need to say, why should I lead? Or maybe, why am I leading? Because if it's about the power and if it's about the perks and if it's about the position, you're always going to struggle as a leader.

Yes.

But if in fact you're in that position of leadership because it gives you the opportunity to serve then you're probably right where you need to be.

When did you know you were a leader?

Well, probably 3rd or 4th grade. Hey, but here's what happened. I, it was, I, you know, I think different people clearly have different paths to that moment. My path was— it was a little bit thrust upon me. Uh, I was, I was playing baseball. I was just a little kid. I, I need to go back and figure out— I would ask my mother, but she's, she's gone. But I was little, again, 10, 11, maybe somewhere in that. I don't even know what grade that would be. And my coach told me one day at practice that I was going to be a catcher. What actually happened is the catcher didn't show up that day. And so he put all the gear on me and I said, well, I don't know how to catch. And he said, well, he said, what's most important is to keep your head down. And that was kind of my training to be a catcher. So I'm getting in there and I'm keeping my head down. And so I went and I checked out a book in the library there was a book by Johnny Bench.

Oh, wow.

Hall of Famer on how to catch. And on the first page he said, you are the leader of the team. And I went, I am. And he went on to explain his theory and his philosophy. Like, you're the only one who can see the entire field at all times. You, you tell the cutoff man where to throw the ball, and you say you take the signals from the bench and you relay them to the pitcher. Like, You are the on-field leader. And so I started saying, okay. And so I started actually doing the stuff I read in the Johnny Bench book. And I realized that people were responding to that, even my coaches, because I now knew more about catching than they did. Remember, their counsel was to stay low. And I knew that on an infield ball, I should run down the first baseline to back up the first baseman. And I'm like 10 years old and I'm doing what Johnny Bench told me to do.

Yes.

Right? And so people started responding to my leadership as a kid, and I just kept trying to learn more about leadership.

Oh, that's unbelievable. I'm a person of faith. I think that was a God thing, that that was going to be orchestrated for that to happen and for you to have been able to be with Chick-fil-A and do all the things that you guys have done. Over, you know, 40, 50 years or so. What a great story. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm curious, right before we hit record, we started talking about how you all are still learning. And I mentioned this at the very beginning. What are some of the things that Chick-fil-A leadership does to continue to learn and grow and evolve as things are, as your organization is growing? As you develop more leaders, you are constantly trying to get better. What are some of the things that you all are doing, maybe you personally are doing, to continue to show that leadership yourself?

This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your career plug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started.

All right. Well, I want to say again, you ask amazing questions, but that's a really big question. So let me just take a swipe at it and then we'll We'll go from there. We as an organization have made a commitment to lifelong learning. And that was driven by some of our senior leaders decades and decades ago. And again, I think it's a stroke of genius, and even more so in our case because we have low turnover. So in most organizations, You got fresh ideas because you've always got people, you know, people turning. Well, we— it was a little bit self-defense because we sit in rooms with people we've been in the same room with for 30 years. So if we're not intentional and thoughtful and purposeful and strategic about learning and growing, we could get stale really fast.

Oh, that's so sweet.

So we have, we have always— again, Throughout my entire career, have focused on that at the organization level. So that's one thing. As far as my team's work, for about 25 years now, we've been trying to figure out what are the current and emerging needs that our leaders are facing or will likely face. I mean, it's a little bit of try to look over the horizon. And then we go to work. I mean, you mentioned— The fact that we've now published 11 books based on 11 research projects over the last 25 years with issues that leaders are facing— Talent Magnet about attracting and keeping people, Win the Heart about engagement, Chess, Not Checkers about building a high-performance organization, most recently Smart Leadership we've been talking about, which is about leadership effectiveness. I mean, we've, we've done 12 of those projects, and I got 2 more in the works. And so we're always trying to figure out how do we grow leadership capacity? How do we improve leadership effectiveness? And we commit time to it. We commit resources to it. We commit teams to work on these types of things. We did— this is what we were talking about before the show started. We did a multi-year study on execution. Like, how do some organizations consistently excel at execution? And why, in fact, are there so few organizations that excel at execution? And you and I were talking about football, seeing your helmet in the background. And we, we've learned from University of Alabama. We've spent time with the coaches on the Clemson staff at their place about how they think about execution. Spent time with the sports psychologist from the Georgia Bulldogs and others. And so we'll study anybody who does something well. We've studied Starbucks for various things and we've studied the Navy SEALs and we've studied Zappos. And we've, we even studied a few years back a world championship sailing team. Hmm. America's Cup sailing team.

Yes. Yes.

And then On the new book on culture, I think we did interviews with probably 60 different brands from Porsche to Nike, all about culture. So we're just committed to help our leaders grow. And that's part of the role we can play.

That is fantastic. Well, I hope In the future, whenever you publish another one of the books based on the research, I would be honored to be able to have you come back on the podcast.

Well, I would consider it my pleasure.

Well, people want to connect, find out, find your books. Mark, where would you point them to? This has been— I could just talk to you for hours around leadership and culture and development, personal development, professional development. But where can somebody find you and find some of your books?

Okay, markmillerleadership.com is, is a place where you can find some of those things. And I'll give everyone my cell number in case they want to reach out to me personally. It's 678-612-8441.

Awesome. Amazing.

Awesome. Love to serve any way I can.

Mark, you have been fantastic. Thank you for coming on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for the opportunity.

You know, I do it every week on our Monday interviews to give takeaways, and I don't even know where to begin. I, I wrote so many notes down in my Remarkable, which is where I keep all the notes. And if you don't have one of those, they're pretty cool, by the way. I, I would say number one, if is, is not just your skills but your choices. And then when he went through the 4 different choices— confronting reality, growing your capacity, fueling curiosity— and we didn't talk as much about that one as, as I wish we had time for— and then also just creating change— those really stood out to me. And then for me personally, I really did mean it when I said that I had reached out to my EA about, hey, you know what, I need a little bit more margin, actually maybe a lot of bit more margin in my, in my week. And so we just started to discuss that. And when he said margin as a leadership discipline, if we fast forward years from now, I bet you that one is the one that's going to stand out to me more than anything else. Definitely going to want to pick up his books. Go to Mark Miller leadership.com, markmillerleadership.com. Uh, the first book I read of his was Talent Magnet and have began to get all of the books in his series. His most recent, Smart Leadership. A big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, DirectClicks, Club Capital, and Rock Solid Assistants. All fantastic people, amazing leaders. In their own right. Look, we talked about the importance of finding top talent. I tend to call them A-players. And if you know you need to do that and you know you want to be involved in the process, but you know that the process itself needs to be happening on a daily basis, it's exactly where Autopilot Recruiting can come in and be able to take that part of it off your plate. They're not going to make the decision for you, Ultimately, you know that that's your job. Mark was just telling the story about Truett Cathy, uh, uh, speaking with him and interviewing him at the time in the warehouse. And I know for all of you, you are so critical to making sure that you find some of those A-players. Well, Autopilot Recruiting can be able to help you do that. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. And use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. autopilotrecruiting.com. You know, with Mark, we talked about developing our teams, developing people, and how do we, you know, what are the things that they want? I mean, he said that they want to be able to have, uh, this actually should have been really one of my takeaways. They want a better boss, they want a brighter future, and they want to be a part of a bigger vision. Well, if they want a better boss, you're developing yourself, hopefully listening to this podcast and through reading books like Mark's book. And they want a brighter future, and they want a brighter future to be able to connect the things that they're doing on a day-to-day basis to ultimately where does it help them in their career. And they want to be able to be good at what they do. And so that's where developing your team really comes into play. And you know that, you're listening to a podcast around leadership, you know the importance of that. Go to coachpconsulting.com and invest for $250 a month. It's unbelievable that David's charging that. Twice a week, you'll be able to peek behind the scenes of what they're doing in his leadership with his team to develop them and be able to help them along their journey so that his team members and now your team members can have a brighter future. Actually, I just talked to Tracy this morning, and I'm gonna tell you, there's not many people that really care about the well-being of their team as much as Tracy does. And she, uh, loves her team, really cares about her clients and having success for both you and for her VAs. Go to rocksolidassistants.com if you're ready to be able to have a growth assistant to be able to— it's going to help you to be able to find some of that margin, as Mark was talking about on the podcast, and as I was sharing about how I reached out to, to Courtney, uh, my EA, to be able to help me to find some margin, then go to rocksolidassistance.com. Wouldn't be able to do this without our partners with DirectClicks and Club Capital. Go to directclicksinc.com if you want to be able to know and, and understand what the whole SEO game is, pay-per-click. You want to do it where it's you get customized professional services, you know, that you know it's going to be just your area that they're going to work with, that you have exclusivity. That's where DirectClicks comes in. Not every provider does that because they're wanting to be able to grow and scale at a level and they're going to be able to put multiple people in a certain area. But that's not what DirectClicks does. Go to directclicksinc.com. And lastly, appreciate the team at Club Capital for the opportunity to get to serve all of you. If you're ready to take better control of your finances, Club Capital is way more than a CPA firm. Book a no-obligation demo, see what they— how they can help you, whether it's their day-to-day services, things that they've been doing for a long time, or if you want to inquire about their CFO services, go to club.capital. That's one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done. Pleasure having Mark on. I hope to be able to have him back on in the future to talk about some of his future books. Till next episode, lead well, everyone.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.