Growing Brand Culture From The Ground Up with Steve Robinson

Well, you know, you don't have to live under a rock to realize. You'd have to be living under a rock to realize that culture is important. But why? Why is it so important? Where does it come from? We got some powerful thoughts on that from the world of Chick Fil A and lessons learned at many years at Chick Fil, Everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach and host of this Scaling up business podcast. Our show comes to you weekly with authors, experts, everything to do with growing and scaling your company, successfully enjoying the journey. And that's the kind of show that we have for you today. You'll find our 550/ episodes@scalingcoach.com along with our monthly workshop on the tools and mindset required for Scaling Coach, the stages of scaling. We've got a free course offer there for you right now where you can kind of see and understand where you are in the stages of scaling your company and what you need to do to advance to kind of the next stage that we see most commonly with so many companies. So all that and more@scalingcoach.com all right, listen up. I'm joined now by Steve Robinson. He's a business consultant and speaker with 30 years more experience as an EVP and as the chief marketing officer at Chick Fil A. He helped grow that company and build that company into, you know, the powerhouse that we know that it is. He's also the author of COVID Cows and Chick Fil A and. And helped to create the Eat More Chicken campaign. We'll talk about that. And like, what does. What does culture have to do with any of that? We'll get into all that. Steve, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Bill. Great to be with you. Yeah.

Where are you?

I am in Highlands, North Carolina, Western North Carolina. There you go. Up in the mountains.

Up in the mountains. Well, I'm in the mountains outside of San Francisco. So we're on, like, opposite sides of the country.

That's all right.

Our love of growing business. Yeah. So maybe talk to us about how you got yourself to Chick Fil A. What that was like.

Why? Yeah, yeah. Well, the. The top headline is you'd have. I'd have to say it was a God thing when something I was planning on. I went to. I grew up in south Alabama. I went to Auburn University for undergraduate and I met my wife there on a blind date. And in fact, we just celebrated 52 years this. This past week. And after graduation, went to graduate school in Northwestern. And from there I went to my first job, which was with Texas Instruments in Dallas, which at the time it was their brand new semiconductor group, marketing high end scientific calculators directly to consumers, which was all new to them. And so I got hired into that group in charge of going after engineers, students, architects, that sort of thing. Learned a ton there. Phone rings one day and it's the director of marketing for Six Flags Over Texas. And I had been in at Northwestern. I had a classmate who was the brother of the director of marketing at Six Flags over Texas. So he's calling me, say, hey, I got an opening at Six Flags. Short of that story is I spent a full day interviewing with him. They offered me a job I liked. I always liked Six Flags. They were a strong marketing company, brand company and TI was an engineering company. And it took me a year or so to figure out that wasn't going to change. And so I jumped, I jumped into, I jumped into Six Flags. And I was with them for seven years. In my last four years, I was director of marketing for Six Flags over Georgia in Atlanta. That's where I first crossed paths with the folks at Chick Fil A. We actually pitched them on building a restaurant in the park as a way to build their brand crew trial. Because this is, this is the late 70s. They're only in malls. They're mostly only in nine southeastern states. And that mirrored the footprint of Six Flags Over Georgia. Yeah, didn't do a store. They were trying to make money off the store. And we told them, no, the only people are going to make money on the store is the park. But we're going to help build your brand and create trial. But they didn't convince them. So that's how I met him. And it's two years later and my phone rings. I'm sitting in my office of Six Flags and it's one of the gentlemen I met. It was Jimmy Collins, who was the chief operating officer. He reported directly to the founder. And Jimmy said, steve, your name keeps coming up. We don't have a marketing department. We're doing a search. I know you got a great job, but I wonder if you would have an interest in talking to us. And Bill. My immediate reaction without saying anything, listening to Jimmy on the phone was, I know you don't have a marketing department or you probably would have done that deal with me two years ago. But regardless of that, I had learned enough about the company, their, their menu, their operating model. Talk about a little bit in a minute. Their culture. I'd met the founder and so I was fascinated. I Said, sure, let's talk. I figured, what's, you know, three or four days, nothing else. I'll learn something. So I started interviewing with them. Bill, in August of 1980. I'll jump ahead. It's now December, early December 1980, and I'm still interviewing. And I'm sitting in the office of interview. Yeah. Long, long interview process. And I finally looked at Trude and, and I've. And I've interviewed anybody that, that has any role in the business at the home office. They've got about 140 stores. Their sales are a little under 100 million. And I. And I'm doing this stealth because I do like the job I had at Six Flags. I told True. I said, true, this is getting a little cumbersome. What are you looking for in the ideal market in Canada? There's this long pause, and he looked at me. He said, I have absolutely no idea. All I know is, whatever it is, I don't want to do it. And I was a little taken back by that. And I. And I didn't say anything before he piped up again. He said, but I'm counting on Jimmy and others to figure out if you can do the job, what we need, whatever that is. I'm more interested in who you are, because if we invite you here, it's my intent that you will never leave Chick Fil A. And I want to know that. I ultimately want to know if we can trust each other and have a good time together and if, if we can. I think you're gonna like it here and you're not gonna go anywhere. Yeah. Another pause, and then he looked me square in the eye and he said, the most important decisions we make here are who we invite into the organization. We don't. We don't train culture, we hire it. Now, I tell you that story, rather a lengthy story, because it is, it is, but it represents a cornerstone principle of Chick Fil A. Still to this day, the most important decisions they make at Chick Fil A, in terms of the culture, is who they invite into the business and the diligence of interviewing and vetting and screening candidates without breaking any laws. Being very thorough is without question the biggest reason I stayed 35 years. Because true told me, whatever it is you're going to do, I don't want to do it. He absolutely told the truth. The number of times he called me to his office to ask me a question about what I was doing or why I was doing or why you messed up was zero.

Huh?

He. If he Trusted you. Yeah. He left you alone. Yeah. And the operating model of the men and women who run the Chick Fil? A restaurants, they call, they're called operators. They're independent contractors. They don't put any. They're not, they're not an equity investor in the business. They're sharing net profits of the stores for their income. Chick Fil A owns all the assets, but because every, every incremental dollar, they're getting a piece of that dollar. They behave like an entrepreneur. They take care of customers, they track better talent, they keep them, they train them. Turnover is very, very low. And so if you have, if you have consistently good experiences at Chick Fil? A, it is because of the kind of leadership that that vetting process attracts to the business. Men and women who are not only competent, but there's a character fit and there's a people chemistry fit too. And that, that is. I was, I had, I stayed 35 years because I love. True, I love the values of the business, but I had a lot of fun because I was empowered. And most of the people within the Chick Fil A family are very, very empowered to think outside the box. Innovation, self starters, room to make mistakes, as I talk about in my book. And you, you, you, over time, you, you figure out this is a place I can really grow, not only professionally, but. But also personally.

Yeah.

So long. Answer your question. But that's how I ended up there in a. And the biggest reasons why I stayed as long as I did. Yeah.

You know, I. What I'm struck by as you share that story is how many of our entrepreneur leaders are accused of being micromanagers and feel overworked. And I, when we talk about they're overworked and that kind of thing, and they're like, yeah, my people aren't carrying their own weight.

And.

But then as you dig into it a little bit deeper. Okay, so tell me, how do you spend your time? What are you working on? And that kind of thing. Like, you see their hand in everything that it doesn't need to be in. Like, trust your people. Right. Like maybe appreciate what they're up to, maybe know what they're up to, maybe support them. Don't let them fail. But, but like don't microman. Don't tell them what to do and get involved in every kind of thing. And it's like so obvious to get any. And that's like a fundamental character flaw, right?

Yeah. Right. Well, I think you use the key word trust if you can't, trust if you can't trust your people. Whose fault is that? Maybe you hired the wrong people and maybe.

Or you don't have any capacity to trust. Right.

Or personally don't have capacity to trust. That was not the case of True Catholic. I mean, first of all, he did have a desire to not be involved in the day to day. He did not want to be hands on. Growth did not motivate him. He told Jimmy and all of our executive committee members, if you're counting on me to be highly involved in the day to day business and be involved in solving every problem of the business, then let's quit building stores. I'm not interested.

Yeah.

It was not motivated by money or growth.

Yeah.

Was motivated by surrounding himself with great talent and, and, and a lot of it. New talent, fresh talent. He loved young people. But he was empowering because he did not want to be in the weeds. And because of that philosophy and Jimmy were very aggressive about being diligent in the whole recruiting and selection process. So they, they in turn felt they could trust the people they, they had invited into the business. And so I took the very same approach with the leadership that I attracted into the marketing and the brand group. I want to hire people that are better at what they do than if I was trying to do it myself. At the end of the day, I don't want to do everything myself. I want to focus on things that only I can focus on. So for true, his primary focus was cultural stuff. My primary focus was the overall macro strategy. How we're going to build this brand in a way that allows operators, quite frankly, to make a lot of money and not, not chase transactions, but build relationships and emotional connections in the marketplace so people fall in love with the Chick Fil A brand. That was my focus. And if I could attract people who then could take that, that his vision and our brand vision and then implement strategies that delivered on a brand promise that was consistent with what we want Chick Fil A to be, then my job was relatively easy. And quite frankly, the last 10 to 15 years of my job I absolutely loved because I was not in the weeds. Yeah. I had leaders that were incredibly competent and I helped them figure out this. I help them decide on a fundamental strategic plan for the year and a budget for the year. And unless they had a problem, I left them alone. And I learned that from Truett. Yeah. Yeah. Frankly, that was not, that was not the culture. Six Flags. Some of the leaders, some of the leaders there were very. In the weeds. Yeah.

Yeah. Questioning everything, inspecting everything. Like. Yeah. In, in In.

In.

Before we move on from this hiring story, you said hire for culture, but is there. So what work is done after the hiring around the culture? How is culture kept, maintained, reinforced, trained, beyond the hire?

Oh, well, I break it by. I break it down in about three or four key components. One, you have to be very clear on why you exist. And I was forced to reason the why. Yeah, why. Literally, why does this business exist? Yeah. And I was fortunate to be there when in 1982, we actually put words to that In. In consultation with Truitt.

Yeah.

Who already owned this business for 16 or 17 years. Right. But we wrote the corporate purpose in 1982 because the business had grown. We wanted clarity around why we exist. And the purpose not. Not one word has changed. It's glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and of a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick fil a. That's why to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all that come in contact with Chick Fil a. That's why got up in the morning. That's what made him. That's what made him tick. Well, it's his business, it's his name, it's his reputation. So let's make it real clear. This is the kind of business true Kathy wants. So why. So that was his why. Now, obviously, anyone can design a why you exist.

You know, it's interesting, there's no statement in there about which we wouldn't typically do, but it's fascinating because obviously the company's successful. There's no statement in there about feeding anyone, about chicken, about making money, about.

Any of that or stockholder return. No, no, no. His. His favorite Bible verse was Proverbs 22. 1. A great name, a good name is to be more valued than silver and gold. That's what was important to him. And his logic was, if I have a great name, if Chick Fil a has a great name, then the business will be successful. He wasn't motivated by wealth. I mean, he didn't even push the finance guys on the return on equity versus putting his money in the bank. It wasn't an issue to him. He cared about cash flow and he wanted no debt. No debt. And we were able by the mid-90s, have to get the business completely debt free. It still is today. But no, I think the why the business exists needs to represent the values of the ownership. Slash the key leaders in the business now if it's a public company, there's, that's a, that's a bigger challenge because you got a board and. Yeah, we know all those. Yeah. But particularly for entrepreneurs and private business ownership owners, I think one of their greatest advantages in the marketplace is have clarity around why they exist. That yeah, in itself begins the process of sorting who wants to work for you. Right. Okay. All right, so first key component of culture Chick Fil A is clarity on why they exist. Number 2 Core Key Core values that help people make decisions. I used to call them non negotiables but they were things like great stewardship, generosity, fun, real, real growth. And we met real same store or real profit growth. We want to begin, we want to be, you know, we want to be gaining share market, etc, competency, character and chemistry of the people in the organization. Okay, now why will those, those values and they all reflected him. Yeah. If they're clear and there's, there's stories with them, there's illustrations with them, there's training with them, what happens is with the purpose statement of why and clear values, you start to make it easier for people to make decisions without going vertical. They don't come running to me. They understand what's important. They know why we exist and they know these values are kind of the box top of how we're going to filter up our decisions around here. Which fundamentally is just two things. Where are we going to put money, where are we going to put talent? So then the third, then the third key piece of the culture at Chick Fil A is clarity about what is the brand promise? What do we want the business to be in the customer experience and for us after. And it can go through generations of changes. But when I left the brand promise where good meets gracious. Now interestingly, there's no food in that, is there? There's nothing about, nothing about sales. It was all about the guest experience where no matter where we interact with the customer in the store, in the drive through, in the community, at a community event, at a parade, at a football game, doesn't matter. Wherever we interact with them, meet them where meet eye to eye, personal contact, show respect by the very fact that you act like, you act like you're glad we're there as a customer. We're good. Meat, good. Everything's good. Good ingredients, good food, good environment, good cleanliness, good people. Gracious. Where good meets gracious, people experience hospitality and respect at a level above what they expect from a fast food restaurant akin to even a white tablecloth experience. And we over. Over evolution of many years. This is another benefit of not having turnover. We, we shape strategies around every guest experience to contribute to where good meets gracious. The food, the hospitality, the advertising. These still accounts make people laugh, be.

Different.

Engage with them, add a little smile to their day. Yeah. So those are the top three pieces of culture. Chick Fil a clarity and why they exist. Core values, non negotiables. Here's how you make decisions and the third piece, how you make decisions and develop strategy. Strategy then falls out of what do you want the brand to be? The promise. And then you come to strategy and then by the way you get to people and money.

Yeah.

Many firms, most organizations have got that stuff going on the in the opposite direction. They start with programs, they start with money, they start with people and then they then, and then they try to make it all fit so the guest experience turns out okay. And people. Is it any wonder that brands ebb and flow? And then in the public sector it's made even worse when you have all kinds of leadership turnover and the CEO and the CMO and the CFO and what the board members want to do. And it's very difficult to create culture in a. I think it's very difficult in a public organization to create a great culture. My hat's off to those that can. There's some that obviously do.

There's definitely some that do.

Right.

And but maybe started with a great culture before they went public.

They did Apple and then they find.

It complicated after the fact. I think in most cases there's a culture there that, that begins and then there's so many stakeholders.

Apple, Nike and BMW and organizations. That's exactly right.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

A bit of a long answer but everything I just described then you talk about, you tell stories about, you train, you have field trips, leadership travels with staff, talent to be in the restaurants. And you talk about the things that are historically important to the business. You learn from the operators because they're the ones closest to the customers. And not only does customer research but operator data drive innovation that, that rewards, that continues to reward the customer experience. So that's, that's kind of how culture drives Chick Fil A at least, at least while I was there.

You know, it's to underscore for our viewers and listeners this is the whole top part of our vision summary one page plan. Right. The, the how, the why and the what. So how we operate day to day is the values we what we could look to to make decisions. The why, our motivation, the emotional center of our decisions and actions, the what people can count on from us, the brand promises. And. And then one other piece that you didn't mention is some big goal, some goal that lights you up and those.

Four elements in your annual and three year planning, however you do it.

Yeah, we're Talking about a 10 year goal in most case. What's the transformational long term goal? Most often we're using Jim Collins big hairy, audacious goal. We're thinking 10 years out, like where do you want to be? That's fundamentally different. That requires a breakthrough.

We had one of those for us and we adopted it probably early 2000s we said, all right, we want to design this brand and guest experience so customers will help us grow the business faster than we could possibly grow at our sale course operators would ask the question, well what's that look like? Well, it's Certainly more than 3 to 5% same store sales growth. What we settle on was we want to grow the business 15% a year. Because if we grow the business 15 years, every five years we're going to double the business.

Right.

And the, the largest percentage of that 15%, roughly 2/3 of that 15% came from existing store growth. That meant we had to grow same store sales anywhere in the neighbor of 8 to 11%. And by, by the time I left and well before I left by 2015, we were growing at 11, 10 and 11% same store plus new stores over 15%. Fast forward last year they grew at 15%. So when I left Chick Fil A It was a $7 billion business last year, 22 billion. So they're still growing, they're still doubling basically every five years solid.

You know, I think the thing that is fascinating about like in, for our listeners and early stage companies, you might be growing at 25 to 100% or more a year. But that's early stage, right? We accomplish big or technology firms, we, we accomplish really big growth. But then as you start to get your 100 million dollar plus company, you're not becoming 200 next year and 300 and you know, it's, it's often not going quite that fast. The growth starts to slow down and the easy early gains are behind you. As you start to mature as a company, sustaining that decade after decade is, is a really remarkable thing.

So I would people ask me all the time, what do you think the key is? If there was one key and it would be, it would be the flywheel in that everything I've already described rides on, okay, the clarity of why all that stuff. The flywheel is the operator model, the independent contractor in every Chick Fil A store. Let me just tell you how it works. Chick Fil A finds a store, builds the store, equips the store. They find, select train that independent contractor. They don't have to have fast food background. They're looking for an independent entrepreneur basically who can attract and keep great talent and is firing their belly. And what I mean by that, they're never satisfied with status quo. They want to grow the business. So Truist designed this deal back in 1967 where oh, I'll put up all the money, I'll take all the risk. I want you to run the operation. You cannot pass it off. You cannot be a passive investor. You have got to run this business, lead this business, be in this business when the customers are there. When I joined Chick Fil A the average store buying was about. And of course this was the malls. But it was about $400,000 a year. When I left in 2016 the average store volume was about $5 million in sales. Last year it was 9. Now those men and women are the, they are the engine of that engine side growth. Chick Fil A is equipping them with a, with a relevant brand and everything. That means menu building systems operate, hospitality system, back of the house it front of the house it customer facing their Chick Fil A carries all the stuff that makes the brand relevant and operates. But the operators deliver the experience and they are highly motivated to continue to take care of every customer because. Yeah, okay, what's their income? Well, their income is. I'll be, it's in the circular. I don't mind telling you their income is half pre tax profit from that store. The other half goes back to Chick Fil A Inc. And Chick Fil A collects a percentage off the top for the brand and all the support services. So every incremental sales dollar, every incremental profit dollar half comes to the operator. So they're highly motivated. And so people are amazed at the kind of talent they see in Chick Fil A storage. Well, it reflects a better leader who in turn goes out and recruits better talent, trains them, develops them and keeps them longer. And with with experience and training, you deliver a better experience. Yeah. Average operator now employs 125 to 150 employees. It's a pretty significant business. And it takes a full time leader in every restaurant to make that work. Yeah.

You know the thing I think is interesting there we see again and again in many businesses it's let's have key stakeholders, key leaders in the business who have a shared interest. People are like, oh, I want ownership mentality. Okay, sounds good. But do you actually treat them like owners? We have a company that's scaling past 2,000 employees right now, and in our client coaching clients, and we've been with them for a few years as they've gone on this ride up. And their key leader at all their operating units is a stakeholder who shares in the wins. Right. It's not like they're producing things. You know, I helped grow a business for another company years ago. I grew it over $550 million. And I made my salary in a small bonus. I didn't get any proportional thing. And I was delivering two thirds of the operating profit of the parent company. And I, you know, I didn't get private jet treatment or a fancy car or a big retirement like, you know, I was like, yeah, thanks for doing a good job. Look, you're doing a good job building your resume.

Right.

It was certainly motivation in the next jobs I had and the next companies I pursued. Um, let's.

Well, let's move on. Let me give you a little background on that operator agreement. The background on that is when True it opened his first two restaurants. He had managers in those stores. The original fast food model. Yeah. And Jimmy Collins, who was working with him at the time as a consultant designing these stores, comes in with the next two store designs. And Truett says, I don't want to build them. What do you mean? Well, these managers are calling me with questions and problems. I, I don't want it. I don't want that. I don't. Yeah, I don't want those people bothering, bothering me. And that, that desire to have a business but not to be in the weeds of the day to day at every location resulted in that deal that I just described to you. And True it had no problem with being generous because obviously what I described you as, incredibly generous. The operators are making substantial income, but the deal has never changed. And as a result attracts great talent and they don't leave. And then when you throw an operator, for example, you throw a new menu at an operator, you throw a whole new hospitality model to an operator. These men and women, women are capable, catching it and, and infusing it into their talent, into their systems and making it work.

Yeah.

So they are, they are the, they are the horsepower of what makes Chick Fil a work.

Deal them in, share the wins closer to the customers.

Yeah.

They care and, and reward them for such. Don't take advantage of them. Yeah.

Things about Chick Fil A operators is they're so engaged. I could always know that if we were doing something stupid, not only good, but something stupid, they would let us know. Yeah. And we, we got, we learned to listen to. Yeah.

As we got ready, we prepared a number of shows stories for this show like we always do. And I was struck by one note. In them. I've made some multimillion dollar mistakes. Not more than one in my career that I like are very clear. Multimillion dollar mistakes. You shared a $2 million mistake. Tell us about that story.

Yeah. Well, fortunately, it happened early in my career. It happened in the second year as a Chick Fil a, I was involved in helping to run a national promotion across the entire chain. I remember at this point they're all in malls and I didn't, I didn't know any better. I was incredibly aggressive. I wanted to, you know, I wanted to raise my flagpole, my flag high.

Yeah.

It featured coupons and discounts like everybody else in the fast food industry. Well, the problem is it was too successful and it went over budget by $2 million. That may not sound like a lot now to you, but $2 million on a business at the time that only had gross sales of about 120 million. Big deal.

That was a big deal.

Yeah. And it hit at the same time that we were having that national financial high cost of money in 1982, and retail sales were in the tank. And it was one of the contributors to us going off site to figure out how we're going to manage sales that were down. Cash flow was down. And I, I contributed $2 million to hurt cash flow. But coming out of experience, two things we wrote. The corporate purpose. This is what is really important. And my, myself and my key leaders decided we're never going to deal discount or coupon at Chick Fil a again. We're going to figure out how to build this business and build the brand where people are going to be perfectly satisfied with paying full price. You can do that overnight. That's a journey. It was a decision. We're going to figure out how to market this business differently than everybody else in the, in the, in the industry. And the evolution of it led to what later kind of got encapsulated in a book unrelated to Chick Fil A called Blue Ocean Strategy, where we basically adopted an attitude, okay, let's look at menu or advertising. It didn't matter what we're looking at if the industry leaders are doing it. This way, then we're going to do it this way. We're going to be renegade in our thinking and be innovative and not market the business in a way that looks and smells and sounds like everybody else in the category. So that, that 2 million dollar mistake actually turned into a blessing. The third, third key thing that happened when that, that thing blew up. I go into Jimmy Collins office three or four days into the explosion, and I tell him, look, I'm really sorry. I was too aggressive, and quite frankly, probably out of ignorance and a little bit of arrogance, I apologize. And he said, don't worry about it. I knew what we were doing. I, I supported you. And he said, besides, We've just invested $2 million in your education. You'll never make that mistake again. And he was right. And as I just said, we walked away from couponing and discounting forever. But it also told me that Jimmy and Truitt had not lost confidence in me, at least not yet had my back and never even in that situation. He didn't call me to office to complain or anything. I, I asked Jimmy, I said, do I need to go to True's office and apologize? He said, no, I don't think I do that right now, but I've already talked to him about it. So I never had anything from Truett, Kathy, or Jimmy Collins that caused me to want to avoid risk. And I think that is incredibly healthy. Don't do anything stupid, but don't, don't have so many strings and create a culture where people don't feel the freedom to take risk. Chick Fil A has a culture that allows it.

I remember making a mistake early in my career in the 80s. It wasn't quite that big at that time, but it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they fired me for it. And I was really upset about it. I was really upset about it. I'm like, yeah, it was a mistake, but we're trying things and whatever. But then as it cooked with me, as it percolated, as I settled into the lesson, the pain of it, I realized that actually wasn't the mistake. The few hundred thousand dollars mistake that became the reason was the excuse was the legal justification for the dismissal. The real reason that I've been fired is that I was an arrogant jerk and I was walking around like the king of the hill, you know, at 27. And my boss couldn't wait to get rid of me because she was irritated with me. She couldn't believe she'd inherited me.

Well, yeah, fortunately, I, I don't know How. But the good Lord impressed upon me. You. You. You created a problem because you were. You were too aggressive and probably arrogant. And I think the fact that I was willing to go to True and Jimmy, or go to Jimmy, just tell him that probably went a long way. And so I. I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about them.

So what was your Blue Ocean strategy at Chick Fil A? How did you come up with that? What was that?

Well, the Blue Ocean strategy was basically expressed in the brand essence, where good meets gracious.

Okay.

We. We want to create brand experiences, brand encounters, whether it's with menu, the restaurant experience, hospitality, digital facing. Doesn't. Advertising doesn't matter. We want to create brand experiences that don't look anything like the competitors. Not. None of the other boats around us in the water look like the way Chick Fil A goes to the marketplace? And how do we create a brand experience so unique and so special that people are actually not only willing to pay full price for it, but they're willing to go out and talk about it to other people, and they become brand advocates. And. And we work with an outside consultant, a guy from, Gosh, forget the company now. But his name was Fred Reichel. He wrote the book about the ultimate question.

Bain.

Yeah, yeah. Great guy. And we designed research to measure whether people were becoming brand advocates or not. And. And you may know a lot about his work, but basically, based on your experience at Chick Fil a today, would you recommend friend or family member 1 to 10? And we said, we're only gonna. We're only gonna work. We're only going to take credit for tens. And when we started that research, about 6% of our customers were giving us tension. When I left Chick Fil A, it was in the high 20s. I talked to my successor about a year ago. I said, by the way, John, what's the number on tens? He said, it's running in the high 30s now. Those are the people that are come. Rabbit fans come more often, pay full price and tell others. That's what they do. Yeah, yeah. And that's how we knew we were creating a Blue Ocean brand. Yeah. I don't really explain it, but. But for me, it was also the question which I've already mentioned. If it looks or smells like the other guys, I don't want to do it.

Just to pause right there. That also goes back and ties into our show, number one back in 2016 with Robert Bloom. Bob Bloom, former chairman of Publicis, who talked about Inside Advantage. He's like the Only customer to focus on is that customer who pays full price and who will rave about you to their friends and family. That person is the one you should target, is the one you should put the one you need more of. Study that person. Don't study all your customers. Study the people who really, really love you and then try to figure out how to find more people like those.

And what we, what we learned was it was less about demographic measures, it was more about lifestyle. Lifestyle measures, yes. Did what they, what their hobbies were, how they spent their time, how they spent their money. Yeah, there were, there were income thresholds because Chick fil a within the context of fast food is not cheap. But it was, it was more about understanding what was important to them and their family and how they like to spend their time and money. For example, it's one of the things that took us into college football. They're huge, they're huge collegiate fans. A higher percentage of them were college graduates. We couldn't do everything. We'll focus on college college athletics. They enjoy, this is true. They enjoy a good laugh. Okay, let's create advertising that makes them laugh. Instead of pushing a, you know, pushing a product or price and say, give us your money, let's just make them smile. And people fell in love with it. And it made again added to that that essence of being different. I called it how do we create an onion layer, Every onion layer on the brand that makes us different.

Why don't you go there before we run out of time? Tell us about. Eat more chicken foreign.

It's 1996. 1996. We have, we have at the time, we only have about 500 stores that are on the street. Most of them are in the southeast, mid and the Southwest, about 20 key markets. We can't afford TV, but we're also. But we are at a point where we have enough stores. We need to do some stuff with advertising, support the operators, in essence do for them with advertising what they cannot do for themselves. We couldn't afford television. So when we started doing agency search, we told them right up front we're going to have to have great creative and we're going to have to media strategy that is different than everybody else because we can't buy a ton of television. Did the search, selected the Richards Group out of Dallas. They came back and said, listen, we think we can help. We think you can afford billboards 24, seven year round. But our recommendation is using to build the brand in light of what you're trying to do. And we'd already. We'd already. In the creative brief, we told them, we don't want to show food, we don't want to show price. We want to make people laugh. Well, these are the guys that introduced Tombo debt, you know, Motel 6 and guys and. And the beach campaign. Campaign for Corona. So they understood. Emotionally engaging, fun, creative. We hired them less than a year into it. One of the ideas they brought to us was a billboard that had the creative that's on the painting behind me. Eat more chicken. We put up one board in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. Huge hit. Created all kinds of buzz in the town. Even, you know, generated publicity. Okay. Put it up on our top 20 markets for 90 days to see what happened there. Same thing. A lot of buzz, a lot of chatter. Couple of cows got stolen off a billboard and Chattanooga. And that made the wire service and cnn. And we realized they had something that was bigger than just a billboard idea. Yeah. We went back to them and said, look what happens if these cows become, if you will, the bovine spokespersons for the Chick Fil A brand. And we're just going to make people laugh at the whole idea of eating beef and come eat chicken. And I worked with them on the campaign for 22 years. Migrated to TV, radio, print in store, total campaign. Yeah. And we had a ball with it. People loved it and hit it. It helped put us on the map. Yeah. No question. Yeah.

Eat more chicken. Like, if you're not from the United States, if you've never seen that before, go look it up. You'll see it right to. The cows are telling you to eat more chicken because they don't want you to eat beef. But, you know, the onlybody doesn't like that campaign is vegetarians.

Right. Covert cows. Because we went out of our way for them to show up in places that people wouldn't expect.

Yeah, it's. It's a delightful campaign. Enduring a thing that you recognize even, like, you know, Chick Fil A is not as dominant around here or is newer on the west coast where we are than it. It was historically. But you. But it was unmistakable to see the brand rise over time and to have interacted with vendors and partners. We've had go through some of our programs around scaling and growth and that kind of thing, and it's admirable to see how the company's grown. It's an undeniable, you know, rabid kind of a cult center. Like, cultish kind of. People love it, right?

Yeah. Well, I read yesterday on one of the food industry magazines that Chick Fil A is now the third largest in sales, now the third largest restaurant chain in the business.

It's fantastic. Yeah, so many lessons there. Steve Robinson askrobinsonconsulting.com if you'd like to look at Steve's work and or talk to him and engage him with your company and help grow. Srobinsonconsulting.com is there on screen and will be in the show notes as well. Thanks so much Steve for joining us.

And my book is on Amazon and.

The book right on Amazon. So lots to learn and appreciate and apply to our own companies, Covert Cows and Chick Fil A. Thanks again to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who created the whole scaling up framework that we use to help companies grow every day. If you want to know more about our workshops, about our programs, coaching, et cetera, or get all these back shows like this one, 500 plus@scalingcoach.com Scalingcoach.com is our website, not hard to remember. Also scalingcoach.com so thanks again also to the team at store on Cameron, seth, Christel, Tom, etc. Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling SA.