Leadership Lessons from a Fortune 200 CEO

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Laughlin, former seven time World Champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about the Purpose Club. I started the Purpose Club quite some time ago so that I could coach people of all backgrounds. Not everybody has access to coaching and certainly it can be out of people's price range. So I wanted to create a community where I coach my members each month and it's incredibly affordable and I do a deep dive monthly live session and deliver my best techniques, strategies and habits. And I impart great lessons on leadership, motivation, mindset, abundance, habit, installation and you're creating a lasting legacy. There's free replays in there from all the previous live casts. There's high impact worksheets for you to take home and actually work through. Throughout the month you'll receive weekly planning emails with actual planners to fill out your weekend. You'll get a weekly self evaluation email where you can evaluate yourself on all different levels. Relationship, life, business, wealth, career. Everything that you want. You'll get weekly journal prompts to really get your mind tuned into that higher level thinking. And also on a monthly basis you'll get planning worksheets and reflections for your month. So if you would like to learn about it, please get in touch with me or someone in my team. You know, jump onto Instagram. Jameslochlanofficial drop me a DM or you can email me james jlochlan.com or just go to the website jjlochlund.com and check it out. Enjoy the show and I hope to see some of you guys over in the Purpose Club.

Foreign.

I'm incredibly excited to welcome Greg Creed to this week's podcast. So he's the former CEO of Taco Bell and another Fortune 200 company we talked a lot about the three ingredients that leading brands must have if they truly want to thrive. And we talked about his new book, Red Marketing. So relevance, ease and distinctiveness. We got to chat about how he's applied that in his life and also how to lead a company of any size through crisis, whether it's the global financial crisis, whether it's Covid. So sit back and enjoy this amazing episode.

Greg, a massive welcome. The Life on Purpose podcast.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thanks for taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. I know you've got a lot of things that you're juggling and doing over in the States there, but obviously that's not an American accent. So tell me a little bit about where life started for you.

Yeah, so it's an Australian accent, though all my Australian friends think it's not.

As Australian as it used to be. And all my American friends think I'm English, which is a moral.

You know.

I'd rather be called a Kiwi or South African than English. But anyway, that's what happens. So. So I was born in Brisbane, raised in Brisbane, went to school in Brisbane, went to university in Brisbane, and then I joined Unilever. And one of the reasons I joined Unilever was I always wanted to go and live and work overseas. And so Unilever obviously is an Anglo Dutch company and you know, they have great brands in Australia like Omo Drive, Surf, Chiff, you know, you name it, they made it. And so I wanted to have a marketing career and I thought, well, if I can work for a world class marketing company called Unilever and eventually, hopefully get sent overseas with them, you know, sort of check the box. So, yeah, so I joined them out of university. The funny thing was in those days before you went into marketing, I love this, you had to be in sales for a year. So I've actually sold, you know, soaps and detergents all up and down the Queensland coast. And then I went to Sydney, got married. My wife's from Brisbane, so she's also a Brisbane girl. And we've been married 40 years this year, which is fantastic.

Congrats.

And when we, before we got married, we had the big conversation because her father was an engineer, worked for a radio station and he basically worked nine to five. And I was like, look, if we get married, we're going to, we're going to go overseas. That's the plan. But she was in for it and has enjoyed the whole thing. So, yes, I went to Sydney Worked at Unilever in marketing primarily and loved it and love marketing and sort of just had a. It's like everything in life. When I was at school, I always jokingly say I was sort of like a good B student. I was probably the laziest B student that the school's ever had and was partly because I was, you know, I.

Didn'T know what I wanted to do.

And so I was studying things like physics and chemistry and biology and I'm like, why did I even think about some, you know, I'm the worst scientist on the planet. And so when I got to university and I found this thing called marketing, it's like, you know, what you love, you find easy. And I did really well at university because I was just loving what I was doing. So I've always loved marketing. In the book, which we'll talk about later, I used to have a game with my dad. My dad and I would play Guess the ad. So we would watch television. In those days there was only four channels. Three of them had ads and one was the abc. And the game was the first person that could name the brand when the ad came on, won a point.

And I think that was probably the first thing that sort of got me into marketing. I just, I love playing that game with my dad. So it was a great time to spend special time with my dad. But I also just love this whole idea of, you know, branding and marketing and making brands distinctive and how you stood out. I really enjoyed it. So it's just one of those things I've always loved.

I love it. And to go from what you were doing with Unilever to then what you were doing with, say, Taco Bell and Yum. So how did that all come about? What was the transition there?

Yeah, so I went, I did get. I did have my, you know, dream. I got moved from Sydney to London with Unilever, mind you. I almost. I almost destroyed it. You know, how do you grasp defeat? From the jaws of victory. They sent Unilever, sent a guy out who was like the number two guy in the detergents business worldwide. They sent him out to Australia. I didn't know he was vetting me for a job in London. And what I. And actually he ended up becoming my boss. So it's a great story. So I thought I'd throw him a barbecue. Right. Well, this is the most toffee up English guy you could ever meet. And he honestly thought barbecues were for barbarians. So.

The fact that he still hired me after I threw him A barbecue. And we actually became very good friends. Dirk Riddell was his name. He was a great guy. So I had two years in London, then I went to New York for six years. Oh, I didn't know I was going for six years. I went to New York, ended up running the Dove brand globally, which is one of their big powerhouse brands. And then I'd been gone. We'd been gone eight years. And the sort of deal I'd had with my wife was we would bring the kids back home to be educated in Australia because we didn't want them educated necessarily outside of Australia. And the problem was when you run the Dove brand, it's such a big brand. I couldn't get home to Australia because it didn't have such big jobs. So I ultimately had to leave unilever. I joined PepsiCo, and I thought they would send me back to run, you know, Smith's Chips or, you know, Pepsi. And they sent me to go and be the chief marketing officer for kfc. So we went back to Australia and we ran the Australian and New Zealand business, actually out of Sydney at the time. And so I was the chief marketing officer for kfc. Loved it. Great brand. Huge brand in New Zealand, as you know, just does massive volumes in New Zealand, as it does in Australia, too. And then the Taco Bell business in the US was not traveling well at the time. And the current CEO, I happened to be in Singapore with my wife at a conference, and I gave a presentation. And this is where you honestly don't know sometimes, you know, what's the outcome of a presentation. I was just invited to go to Singapore to give a presentation. I can't even remember what the hell it was about. And I got in the elevator with my wife, Carolyn, and then David Novak, who was then the CEO of Yum Pops, in he goes, great presentation. I want you to go to be the chief marketing officer for Taco Bell. So I'm in an elevator in Singapore being asked to sort of leave Australia, having told the family we'd never leave again. But one of my things in life has always been I've always said to people, do the jobs no one else wants to do. And I think what I love about that thought is, it's funny, when I ran the Dove brand, which is like Unilever's creme de la creme, I thought, I can only really screw it up, right, because it's such a great brand. How do I make it better? In earlier parts of my career, I worked on brands that hadn't been Doing well. And if you can turn them around or fix them up or make them better, it's a way to get noticed. And so I thought that, you know, the chance to go back to the US to Taco Bell, also to live in California, which obviously is not too dissimilar from living in Australia, you know, on the ocean and all that sort of stuff. So I thought, I've got to practice what I preach. You know, this. The business had seven years of transactions declined before I got there. And I thought, well, you know, I tell everybody else to go and do the jobs no one else wants to do, so no one wanted to do this job, so I should go and do it. And this is where I was lucky to get the team that I colloquially called mavericks and misfits, which I was told by everybody. You can't say that about people, but everybody loves on the team, love being called a maverick and a misfit. And pretty much that team helped turn that business around. And I think back in 2000, it was probably doing about 4 or 5 billion. I think today Taco Bell does about.

US$12 billion in the US alone.

And it was just a great brand. It was a youthful brand. It was sort of left of center, edgy. You could, you could try everything. You could be really bold and courageous. And it was just a brand that suited how I wanted to be a marketer. So it was just a huge lot of fun. And you know, actually, you know, this.

Is a funny story, this is a personal story, which I'm sure we'll get into more later.

But so 10 years, or actually nine.

Years ago, I launched a product called Doritos Locos Targets, which is, we made.

A product, a taco shell out of Doritos. Fast forward, next year is its 10th anniversary.

My daughter is the senior brand manager of Doritos in the US and she her first project.

She sent me a text this morning.

Saying, dad, you're not going to believe what I'm taste testing right now.

I said what?

She said, I am tasting the new.

Doritos Locos taco shell for the 10th anniversary. So that's been launched. How epic is that from a family point of view? I launched it and 10 years later.

My daughter is, is going to be.

There for the 10th anniversary and from the Frito site. So anyway, and then so I got to run Taco Bell then for eight years. And I was actually also the chief.

Operating officer of Yum for a year.

Really to sort of improve my operating.

Capabilities because obviously we're a Restaurant company.

And I'd largely been a marketer, so.

I did that for a year, which was fantastic. Learn a hell of a lot in a year.

I learned how hard it is to.

Run a restaurant and my joke is.

That it's actually harder to run a.

Restaurant than a restaurant company. And I don't think the general public.

Really appreciate just how hard people work.

In any restaurant, whether it's a chain restaurant like ours or just your local restaurant. I don't think that the average person appreciates just how hard it is. And so I have a lot of time and respect for everybody. Anyway, Taco Bell was luckily successful and yeah, so seven years ago I got tapped on the shoulder to actually run the entire business, Yum, which was then a Fortune 200 company. We had, I think, I don't know what we have now. They now they have 50,000 restaurants around the world in 140 countries. And at one stage there was 1.5 million people working at a Yum restaurant.

Somewhere in the world.

So, and I love that because I got to travel the world, which I really enjoy. I love going to different cultures and meeting different people and also just seeing, you know, how, how brands can adapt and be successful in different cultures. So it's been an awesome ride. I had an amazing wife who supported me. My kids, you know, our daughter came with us when we came back to the States in 2001. But our son who was at school.

In Sydney, he became a boarder at one of the, at Knox, one of the boys schools where they play rugby and cricket. Probably cricket better than the Kiwis and.

Rugby a lot worse than the Kiwis.

That's right.

Anyway, which is pretty normal.

Right?

Pretty normal.

Anyway. So, you know, the family has had to, you know, have its trials and tribulations, but I think everybody.

I think, saw it as an opportunity to sort of experience more of life. And now we're all in the US which is great. Now I have a grandson and so, you know, life's worked out. Life turned out pretty, pretty good, which my son and I are trying to work out how to teach our now his 21 month old son, my 21 month old grandson. How the hell are we going to teach him to play rugby and cricket? We're not sure how we're going to do this, but we are intent on teaching him both of those sports.

Good luck.

Exactly. There's no other kid will want to play it, so.

I know that's brilliant. I love it. The All Blacks are heading over to America. They're going to be over to east coast later in the year, so you'll have to get across if you get a chance to go and see them play. They're going to be playing in Washington, I believe.

Yeah, I think there's more chance because my son actually, even though he was in Australia and he went to high school and university in Australia, he did an exchange year in the US and played rugby. I think it'll be easy to teach my grandson rugby. I don't think there's any chance he'll ever end up playing cricket, unfortunately. So anyway, it is what it is.

I love that. Tell me. That's great. What was your greatest challenge sitting at the helm of a Fortune 200 company?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Yeah, look, you know, one of the greatest challenges is really culture and people and because if you think about it, you can't, you know, I had a team of about seven or eight people that reported to me directly, right? So out of 1.5 million people, I got seven reporting to me. And you can't have delusions of grandeur that you can personally, you know, you know, touch people and, and make things happen. So the real key is already about people and culture. And it's interesting. One of the things in business school you got taught a long time ago was this idea of strategy structure, culture, define the strategy, work out the structure, and then do culture. And I think they're the right ingredients. I think they're just put in the wrong order. So my fundamental belief is it's culture, strategy, structure. So I probably spent. And where a CEO spends their time defines to the organization what matters. And so, you know, if I spent my time playing golf, they would. Everyone would think, well, you know, Greg doesn't care. And so I spent, I would say, most of my time on the first two things, on culture and on strategy. And then obviously traveling the World to meet the people, to see the businesses firsthand. Because I don't think you can sit in any city, doesn't matter whether it's Auckland or Dallas, and run a global business. So I really did enjoy getting out and going to different places and meeting people and trying to understand different cultures. And that was one of the really exciting and joyful parts of the job. Love it.

And you talked before this, before we hit record today, we talked about culture. We were talking about some top performing teams like the Australian cricket team and the All Black. So for you, what does culture mean in an organizational sense?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting for me, first of all, I think the primary thing for me is I think culture fuels results. And so I used to teach a class, I wrote that. I didn't write it to be fair. There was a one day class we created which I taught about 19 or 20 times around the world in probably about 12 countries. And it was called Leading Culture Fuels results. Because I think there is still a fundamental belief whether it's in sports or in business, that cultures are nice to do. And it's sort of like the rah rah bit at the end. And it's sort of like, well, when the work is done, we'll sort of do the culture. I'm absolutely convinced, I will go to my grave believing that the better the culture, the better the results. And the great thing is in a company like Yum, which is, you know, was three brands now, four brands in 140 countries, we were able to demonstrate that where we had the best culture and whether that was just greater diversity and inclusiveness, whether it was just a clear set of values that everyone lived by.

And that people walk the talk that those businesses outperform the businesses where we didn't have a great culture. And so I just have made it my life's. My sort of retirement.

Vision, I guess is to try and get people to understand that culture fuels results. It's not just a nice to do, it actually delivers better performance. And I am totally convinced that's the case. And I think that the different businesses we had in Yum demonstrated it conclusively.

I absolutely 100% agree. You know, I've been coaching teams. One of the teams won the world championships and the difference between them winning and coming seventh a few years before fifth was culture. The people that change the skill set didn't really change, it was the culture.

Yeah, I mean when, when I turned around, when we turned around Taco Bell in the early 2000s, I pretty much had exactly the same team that had not performed for the seven years previously. And it wasn't. When I got there, everyone said I need to sack everybody and hire new people. And I was like, no, no, no. We just, they just need to be led differently. And I think that's probably one of the proudest moments was taking a team that everyone thought were under performers and actually turning them into the top performing team in an organization. And I probably, I honestly get more pride out of that than I do, you know, do I launch product X or product Y or product Z as a marketer.

Right.

I really, I think you get more out of just taking a team and making it perform more. And it's interesting. One of the things I've always felt in life is that the role of the captain, even if it's in a football team or a cricket team, is that role is a specific. It's sort of. I don't have a better describe it is. I think the captain is a specific play within the team. So I played a lot of cricket and rugby, you know, growing up, and I was not the best rugby player or the best cricketer on the team, but invariably I was the captain of the team. And so I think the role of captain is one that isn't usually given to the very best person, it's just given to the person that can get the best out of the team. And I think sometimes people go, oh, well, Billy or Mary, if we're playing netball or soccer or whatever, you know, Mary's the best in netball, we'll make her the captain. No, no, no, you've got to make the person the captain who will get the best out of that team. And so, and I've also looked, as I hire people, is to find out, you know, if you played sport, were.

You the captain of any teams when you were playing sport?

I think it's a great indicator of the people who will probably be successful later in life.

That's amazing. And so if you think about jumping into a team that was underperforming and you want to turn it around, how do you develop influence over that existing team to get the results?

Well, I think the first, you know, it's funny, the first thing is you've.

Got to give everybody like a common goal, right? But a common goal that is achievable.

Not a common goal that's not achievable.

And then I think, you know, it's.

Really funny, the team that I had.

At the time, and I think the reason it was successful was everybody on the team had an expertise, and we didn't, because.

Sometimes I play Sudoku now that I'm retired, because I got time to play Sudoku. And I think sudoku is actually a great metaphor for business because if you think about Sudoku, you actually have to have nine numbers in the box, right? You can't have two twos or three threes. You got to actually have, you know, one through nine. And then. But in every time you play it, and then every box on the Sudoku page, they're in a different order. And so I think what happens with teams is people find people that are either like themselves or people that they like or whatever, and then what you don't have is a broad enough skill set on the team. You've got people that can do so, you know, you don't want a bunch of people who can all bat well. You're not going to win a cricket match if all you can do is bat equally. You don't want people who can bowl. Right? So I think that what. What with the Taco Bell team in particular, everybody on the team had a. Had a real functional expertise. And at the end of the day, we would call on them. If we couldn't decide what to do, we would let that functional expert, you know, make the call. And I think those were some of.

The sort of critical things. And then we just. We all, I guess, in a weird way, bonded as a team around trying to prove to the world that this bunch of misfits and mavericks led by this crazy Australian, could actually, you know.

Be the most successful team in.

Yum. And I think there was just pride that sort of made us want to do well. And it's funny, I'm still friends with a bunch of those people from 20 years ago. And we all look back at it, and I think everyone is incredibly proud of the fact that the team that everyone had written off was a team that actually ended up being the most successful.

Well done. That's phenomenal. And when you look at that, you're humming like things are going well, you got the team going well, then GFC hits or coronavirus hits. How have you personally traversed some of the greatest challenges?

Yeah, look, I think what you've got to do is you have to be. You can never be satisfied. Right? And I've always said that when things are going well is when you actually should take the time to reinvent yourself, because when you hit a crisis, that's not the time to reinvent yourself. And I think what often happens is when things are going well or business is going well, people actually almost coast.

They sort of go into coast mode.

Because, oh, I worked really hard, I fixed this up, now I'm going to have a bit of a coast. And my point of view is that's when you need to actually, like, double down and, and try to make the team even better. Because there will always be a crisis. Look, I was in business 40 something years and I can tell you that there's always a crisis lurking around the corner.

But even when you're in a crisis, there are particular things you got to do, like be incredibly focused. Using a military metaphor, which not everybody will like. You know, I think it's about you.

Got to be a sniper, not a machine gunner, right?

And what tends to happen when things go wrong is everyone goes, I'll just.

Shoot a bunch of bullets in the hope that I hit somebody versus saying.

No, no, no, I'm going to fire one bullet and I'm going to make it really matter. And I think part of that comes from what I call a lack of courage.

Because if one of the things I always decided, if I give you 10 things to do, like if I'm the boss and I give you 10, you.

Know, hey, tangent, I want you to.

Do 10 things and let's assume at.

The end of the year you do seven, we'll have an interesting conversation. Is seven a good number? Is it a bad number? You'll think it's good, I think it's okay, whatever, right?

But if I give you one thing.

To do, there's only two outcomes. You either do it or you don't do it. So the challenge in business is to get the organization just so focused. I, at one stage when I was running Taco Bell, I had what I called an obsession metric, which was for six months we only focused on one thing. And everyone thought I was complete lunatic and I lost the plot. But what happened is we made so much progress on that one thing. It was also progress that the customer noted. And you know what was interesting? Every other thing that we didn't chase actually improved at the same time. And so I'm a big believer, particularly in a crisis like whether it's Covid or, you know, global financial crisis or, you know, food is, you know, food safety issues. If you're in the food business, you got to get the organization incredibly focused. And to be incredibly focused, you have to be courageous because, you know, you know, it's. It's because if you pick the wrong one thing, then that's not going to turn out well, but equally, if you pick 10 things and you're firing machine gun. Yeah. You're not doing the right thing by the organization. So be incredibly focused, particularly in a crisis. And then when you're not in a crisis, that's the time not to coast. That's the time to actually put the pedal down and actually try to do things that make you more relevant or more distinctive or whatever you want it to be.

Incredible. And during those times when it's not a crisis and you can be reinventing yourself, would you be investing in your team in terms of developing them professionally and personally and giving them access to what they need to develop?

Oh, yeah. Look, I think that.

You know, we've. You've got to.

You can.

You have to be inquisitive and you have to be a continuous learner.

Right.

And so you have to provide people with those. The options and the availability to do that. Because also, things change. Look, hey, you know, as I jokingly said, when I. When I was a kid, there were four TV stations. You know, one was the ABC and three were commercial. And now, I don't know, is there a thousand stations? And there's not only that, there's social media and there's all these things. So if you stop learning, you stop being relevant.

And, you know, it's interesting, and I know we can talk about the book.

But I've sort of the analogy in the book of brands being relevant.

You as an employee have to be relevant.

You have to be relevant as an.

Employee by actually demonstrating that you are functionally relevant.

You understand that you need to build new functional skills.

So.

And it's funny because at the very.

End, when I was running. Yum. I mean, I had never done, you know, I knew we were marketing on.

Snap and Facebook and Instagram and all that, but would I have known how to do it? No, because that wasn't available when I was a marketer.

Right. So I think there's two lessons in that.

One is you actually have to continue to build your own functional skill set. And secondly, you have to understand that there are people who will have skills. Even as the CEO of Young, there were people who had a lot of skills I didn't have. Just let them do their skills and let them be successful and not try to be the smartest person in the room.

That's great. No micromanaging.

No, I think people would have said.

You know, it's funny.

I really am quite proud.

Everyone that's ever known me said, I'm like the world's greatest delegator.

And everyone. I think some people think, well, I'm the world's greatest delegator because I'm lazy.

But my belief is, look, if I've.

Done something 100 times and I do it for the 101st time, I'm not going to learn anything. But if you've never done it before, or you've only done it once and you get a chance to do it twice, the learning that you will get out of that is just significantly more than the learning I'll get now. Here's the key, though. If you're going to delegate, you actually have to know what you're delegating, and you have to pretty much know what the outcome would be. So I always joke to people and say, look, I may be. I'm really proud of being known as a great delegator. It doesn't mean I didn't know the business cold.

So you're not delegating away the results. You're delegating away the opportunity for someone else to grow and learn.

That's amazing. Yeah. Hopefully all the CEOs and leaders that are listening to this could take that on board. That's phenomenal.

Yeah. I just find there's so many people that, you know, there's a lot of people who think there's only one way to solve something. So I'm going to ask you a question now, right? What two numbers, you know, make the number five? What two numbers make five?

So for me, right away, it's three and two.

Right? Three and two. So if I tell you, it's, you know, and it's 3 and 2, some people will say 3 and 2, 4 and 1 and 5 and 0. Those are the answers I get.

Right.

But if you think about it, there's actually an infinite number of two numbers that make five, because you can have seven minus two equals five. And so the question for me is, unless it really matters, do I have to tell you to make it three plus two? No. If I tell you what I want is an outcome of five and I empower you, then if I tell you, do three plus two, you've learned nothing. You just said, oh, Greg told me to do three plus two. If I tell you or I give you the task of getting me to 5, it may be that 7 minus 2 is actually a much better way to get there than three plus two. And so I've always felt that you've got to be clear. You know, one of my other favorite sayings, you won't always be right, but you always have to be clear. So, you know, five is the two numbers, making five is the goal. But unless it really, really matters. And in business, maybe in, you know, surgery or building a bridge, it doesn't matter how you get to five. But in business, often it doesn't matter. And if I tell you to do three plus two, you're empowered. If I tell you to get to ask you to get to five and I empower you to choose how you get to five, all of a sudden you own the outcome. If I give you the outcome of five and tell you it's three plus two, you own none of that. You have no personal vested interest in that. But if I give you five and then you have to get the five, you know, you now own the outcome as much as I do.

That's amazing. For me, like, a lot of big, large companies are focusing on retention because it costs so much, obviously, when you're recruiting. And so retention is so key. So things like that, where you're empowering staff and providing autonomy, that's going to really help from a retention standpoint?

Yeah. Look, I think, you know, maybe ping pong tables and riding a scooter around the office matter, but I think empowerment and clarity around what the goals are, I think those things matter more to retention than, you know, whether you've got a ping pong table you can play at at lunchtime. Having said that, I did have a ping pong table in the office because I love playing ping pong. But anyway, that's not the point. It's not the point.

I love it. Well, let's chat about the book. I really want to chat about the book. And for everybody that's listening, I'd love them to grab a copy after they hear what it's all about. So red marketing and it's the three ingredients of leading brands. Let's chat about the book and the three key ingredients.

Okay, so I should start by saying, and I say it in the forward, that I said I would never write a book, and obviously I ended up writing one. And I said I'd never write a book for two reasons. One is I'm the world's worst speller.

I was so bad in school that spelling bees. The teacher didn't even ask me to stand. I just sat down because the first word I was going to get wrong, which is also living proof that you can be a really bad speller and still be a CEO 100%. And then what I didn't want to write a book was about, oh, you know, I grew up in Brisbane, and now I'm the CEO of a fortune to own a company because there's a million of those and they're as boring as hell. So about 10 years ago, I met a guy called Ken Mensch. Ken was working at the agency when I was running Taco Bell. And he was just one of those, they may not have the beer in Australia. I call him Mr. Dussecki. He's the most interesting man in the world, right? And he is just one of those inquisitive guys. And he was running planning at the agency, and the agency were brilliant at planning, but they weren't so great at the creative execution. So I sort of said to him and another mate of mine, look, set yourselves up in a company. I'll spend enough money with you for you to get going. And then you go find some other clients, which they did. And then I worked with them at Taco Bell. And then when I became the CEO of Yum, I bought the company because they were so good. And the reason I bought them was that they were really good at this whole area of insights. You know, just cultural insights, social insights. This. This idea of understanding why do people.

Do things and why do we not do things?

And because I've got this fundamental belief that we don't do things. Everyone thinks we make decisions for rational and functional reasons. And I think it's complete bollocks. I really do. Right. So I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. You have to play along here. I'm going to demonstrate to you with three examples that we actually. Every decision we make is an unconscious, emotional decision. Ready to play along?

Let's do it.

Okay. All right. What's the functional role of a watch?

To tell a time.

To tell the time. How much do you think it costs to build a watch that pretty accurately tells the time? $20, maybe. I don't know.

15. 20 bucks.

15, 20 bucks. If I ask everybody that I know or have worked with who wears a watch, everyone has spent a hell of a lot more than 15 or 20 bucks. Right. Okay, next question. What is the functional role of a.

Car to transport humans from A to.

B. Yeah, to get you from A to B. So if I drive a Kia and a rolls Royce for one hour at 80 kilometers an hour, how far do both cars go?

Equally distant.

I go 80 kilometers. Third question. And this one I love, because this sort of gets into gender disparity, often gets me into trouble. But what is. What is the biological reason that you have Hair on your head keep you warm. Keep you warm, Right? Perfect answer. So I then, when I'm actually giving a presentation, I say to the guys, how much does it cost for haircuts? And how much does it cost for a guy's haircut in New Zealand?

So we're looking at, like, 40 bucks.

40 bucks. So I ask all the ladies to put their hand in the air. And I ask them, I say to them, you can put your hand down if, as a lady, you spent less than $40 on your last haircut. And of course, not one lady ever puts their hand down. So here's the reason a watch is not to tell the time. It's a way for you to demonstrate success or whatever. You know, a car is not just to get you from A to B. It's again, to demonstrate either success or a passion or whatever. And let's be honest, your hair is not just to keep you warm. It's a part of how you feel, how you portray yourself, how you present yourself. And so if as marketers, we actually just talk about the functional benefit telling the time, going from A to B, or, you know, keeping your head warm, then we're not going to sell anything, because that's not how we make decisions. And so because of that, I was always. I saw so much advertising growing up. There was so function. 10 of these, 5 of these, 2 of these. You know, mine does this, you know, that I wanted to fundamentally sort of change, just, I guess, jolt people into thinking that that's not why we. That's not how we make decisions, and it's not what motivates us. So Ken and I had a chance to then not just work on Taco Bell, but when they came into Yum, like any big company, we did brilliant marketing, average marketing, and terrible marketing. That's just what happens in a great big company. And so I wanted to find a framework that we could roll out to the organization that would really get us from average to better than average and sometimes spectacular. And so Ken and I worked for about five years on this framework, and it ended up being called Red, which is if you make your brand more relevant, if you make it easier, and you make it more distinctive, then there's probably a 95% chance you will be more successful. And so we practice Red at Yum. We talked about red. Everything was red at Yum. And then just as I was retiring, Ken said, hey, why don't we write a book about red? And everyone was like, well, why would you give away the secrets? And the answer Is because I think what we believe is if you make the profession of marketing better, more successful, then you grow brands and you grow businesses and you sort of lead to the creation of capital. Right. And so with my then success's permission, we wrote the book and I'm really proud of it.

Well done. That's amazing. It's so simple in terms of how you lay that out. So if I was a solopreneur or maybe I'm a multi billion dollar company.

How could I take each of those.

Principles and just integrate each of them.

In a. Yeah, so as you said, what I love is, as we said earlier, I'm a real, I'm like make things as simple as humanly possible. Right. So red, there's three things under it. Functional relevance, cultural relevance and social relevance. And so functional relevance is what it says, you know, the product in a sense has to perform functionally. But it's also about can you find other opportunities for your product. So I guess a good example, Taco Bell was obviously we sell, there's Taco Bell in New Zealand now.

Yes.

So we sell, obviously we sell food but in the US we had a clothing line, we sell chips. So the chips in your supermarket, you can buy Taco Bell nacho chips in your economy but in the US you can. And then one of the best things we did is we did a pop up hotel, a pop up Taco Bell hotel in the, in Palm Springs in the desert. And it had 70 rooms for four nights, it sold out in two minutes. And so, so if you think about it, we made it more. It wasn't just a food brand, it was more a lifestyle brand because we did, we had fashion, we had accommodation. You know, you could buy chips. So functional relevance is about being functionally great. But it's also about finding what I call customer usage occasion. Other, other occasions people can use it. Cultural relevance, which I think is the.

Most important thing of all of them.

Is really what it says. It's about making sure that your brand is culturally relevant. And cultural relevance is either like a, it's either like a wind in the sail or it's like an anchor being dragged behind the boat. If you get it wrong, and there's lots of examples, I'll give you a good example. So this was after I left KFC Australia. So I'm sitting in Dallas, I'm running Yum. And I get to see the ads from all around the world and I see an ad with pluck a duck. Now as a Kiwi, you may not even know what Plucker Duck is so. Plucker is a character from a show called hey, hey, it's Saturday from Australia in the 80s and Plucker is skateboarding down a mountain in New Zealand. Now this is now being shown about a month later at a global conference. And everybody in the audience is sitting there going, why is a duck man dresses a duck on a skateboard skating down a thing in New Zealand for a chicken brand kfc? The rest of the world doesn't get it. Everyone in Australia, it's so iconic. Everyone in Australia thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And so that in a simple way is an example of cultural relevance, which is, here's an idea that really only could play in Australia, but in Australia, it was so powerful that it grew the business exponentially because everyone's grown up with this stupid little icon called Plucker, right? And the rest of the world are like, have the Australians lost their mind? I mean, what is this? And so being culturally relevant is critically important. And what it means is you really have to understand the culture of the. Probably the, I guess the country you're in or the place you're in and how it's evolving and how it's changing and all of those sort of things. I'll give you another little example. So 100 years ago, when I was the Softly brand manager in the wool washing product Softly, which I think is probably in New Zealand, so there was a product called Martha Gardner's Wall Mix, which was like a famous radio personality in Melbourne, and she had this concoction which, you know, you could mix up in your at home and make a Wall Mix product. Well, one of our competitors decided to commercialize it. All of a sudden the softy share went from like 70 to like 50. And a lot of people tried to do the, oh, we'll change the product, we'll change the packaging, we'll change the formula. All the stuff you get taught at marketing school and it all failed. So they're like, okay, Greg, you have a go. And what was funny, and I didn't know it at the time, so I'm being completely honest, but what I realized was if you're an Australian, you get taught that Australia was built on the.

Back of the merino sheep, right?

That we had these merino sheep and they exported, you know, wool to the world and everybody maybe like New Zealand, everyone knits. My mother knitted, my grandmother knitted. My mother taught me how to knit. And so what I did was I launched a knitting book. So here's your rugby cricket playing, you know, army cadet kid who's now launching a knitting book.

Oh my goodness.

And it was a knitting book of Australian icons. So the harbour bridge, koalas, kangaroos, you name it. And the only way to get the book was to buy two packets of Softly, which is enough for the winter. And it's I think today still the largest selling knitting book ever sold in Australia.

Wow.

And I use it, I use it as an example of. It was just. And I didn't know it at the time, I didn't even use these words, but I think what it was is I tapped into the culture of Australia which is there is this relationship with wool and merino sheep and knitting. And so, you know, coming up with a knitting book as the answer versus I changed the formula or I changed the packaging, I think was just an early example of making sure that you tapped into a brand that was culturally relevant.

Incredible.

Then there is, you know, social relevance, which is are you relevant with obviously what's going on, you know, in the sense of just from a social media perspective, are you on or are you off? Because these things are hit and miss. It's really funny. Taco Bell in the US today, I don't even know the guy's name, but there apparently was some kid who used to work for us at Taco Bell.

Who'S now like a world, A world.

Renowned rapper who we've just hired as the chief, whatever, chief brand officer. And this kid is essentially now a rapper, but he used to, you know, work at a Taco Bell and brilliant. And so that's like brilliant. You go, wow, that is, that's like, you know, social relevance. Anyway then, so that's. So there's functional relevance, cultural relevance, social relevance, then there's ease, which is really about ease of access, easy to use, easy to find. And it's interesting that you've got to be careful that you don't define yourself by who's the best in your category. So, you know, obviously in the pizza business, Domino's Pizza Hut, I'm sure there.

Are other brands in New Zealand, but.

The competitor set isn't defined by Domino's or Pizza. It's actually defined by Amazon. So if you don't make ordering a pizza as easy as Amazon makes ordering a product, then you're not as easy as you think. And just because you might be better than Domino's, the customer doesn't sort of put things in subcategories or categories of products. So if it's easier to order off Amazon than it is to order a pizza. Pizza people are going to complain.

And I think what Ken and I.

Came to believe that easy was one.

Of those things that was potentially, these days, one of the most important things.

We even got to the point where we said easy beats better.

And a lot of people are like, oh, I don't like that idea. And I was like, I think most.

People believe that products functionally go back to functional relevance.

There's not a lot of difference.

Right.

You know, does.

I don't even know what the laundry detergents are, but does Fab clean as well as Omo?

Probably, Right.

I'm sure the Omo people think it cleans better and the Fab people think theirs clean better.

But to the average customer, it cleans just as well.

So the question is, do you keep trying to make your product functionally better or do you actually just try to.

Make it easier to use?

And given that, I mean, not Australian, given humans are basically lazy, we will find the easiest solution. Then ease becomes critically important. And so that's ease. And then distinctiveness is really about just, are you consistent? Are you breakthrough? And are you. And do you own it? Like, do you own the thing that makes you distinctive? And so we found that if you.

Focused on relevance, ease and distinctiveness. And what was really interesting when we traveled the world was some brands that.

Were really good at distinctive were just.

Doubling down on distinctive, but they weren't making themselves more relevant. Or there were people that were making that were relevant and distinctive, but they put no effort into making themselves easy to access. And so one of the biggest, the biggest thing is to identify what do.

I need to work on?

Because you can, you could, even if you know red and you know the framework, you could work on the wrong thing. If, like, if your brand is relevant but not distinctive, you need to work on distinctiveness. And so the biggest challenge, even when you have the framework, the first decision is, what do I work on? And the other thing is you can't work on all three at once. That's not focused, Right? So even if, even if you have a train wreck of a business you're trying to fix, you cannot try to think relevance, ease, and distinctiveness all at once. You got to pick one, and it's up to you to pick what you pick. Right? So, yeah, so it's been out, it's been published, and the feedback has been really quite amazing.

There's just great feedback because I think it's a simple framework. It's a book that's a Combination of science and sort of how the brain thinks. And there's also then just a lot of practical examples. Some of them where we did well and some of them where we screwed up. To be honest.

I'm excited for my copy to arrive. Mine's winging its way from Amazon us, so I'm looking forward to it.

I know, yeah. And so. And all of the money, just even in New Zealand, the money, Ken and.

I don't get any money.

The money goes to the Yum foundation. And we use that. Yum will use that money to support both the employees and the communities in which we operate. Educational scholarships for Frontline team members. So the other great thing about the.

Book is it's not like Ken and.

I are trying to make any money. All the money goes to the foundation. And so we're really excited that, you know, hopefully we can share a framework.

That's simple.

The number of people have written to me saying, oh, I've already tried this, or I had a guy who used.

To work for me many years ago.

Who now is the CEO of a smaller restaurant company, and I saw some of his work, honestly, yesterday, and I.

Thought, oh, man, that's awesome. And he wrote me today on LinkedIn.

He said, I just want to let you know, I read the book.

And he actually sent me an ad.

I said, you know what? I saw this last night.

I thought it was brilliant.

So it sort of makes you feel.

Good that people can use it. We wanted to make the book provocative.

And at the same time, we wanted.

To make the book practical, because you can often read a book and you go, well, that was interesting and I learned a lot. But what do I do when I go to work tomorrow?

I don't know. So we were provocative around. Not every brand has to have a.

Social purpose, unlike everybody thinks they do. And then we were practical.

At the end of a lot of.

Chapters, there's just three or four questions you can ask on whatever your business happens to be. And we didn't write the book just around food. It's around any brand. So anyway, really proud.

So I think it's amazing because you're capturing not just those big, as you say, big food companies and multibillion dollar companies. It's the solopreneur who's starting off selling a single product or a podcaster or, you know, someone that's trying to develop a personal brand. I think it's fantastic. So I'm excited to get it and learn from it and I actually apply it to the business as well.

Yeah, you know, it's funny because someone said to me, does it apply beside branding? I said, I actually think it applies to people. Again, like we started to discuss earlier, relevance is about do you have relevant skills? Easy is in a weird way, are you just easy to get on with or are you a painter? You know, where and then distinctive is about, you know, do you, do you bring questions and thoughts that no one else brings in the organization? So I actually think red not written for personal development, but I actually think if as individuals you can make yourself more relevant, more easy and more distinctive, I think you will probably have a more successful career.

100%, yeah. And your impact and influence on those around you is going to be much greater. I love it. Well, Greg, thanks so much. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that the Amazon link to the book is below all of our different copy that we put out and hopefully everyone will grab a copy. But it's one last question for you. I wanted to ask was for you, what does living life on purpose actually mean?

That is a great question I've.

I got A few years ago.

I was introduced to the concept of.

Ability is equally distributed, opportunity is not.

And it really was a had a profound impact on me that, you know, in life sort of most things fit in a bell curve, right? So there are people that are smart, there are people that are less smart. You know, there are people agree that rugby people are, you know, but I'm sure there's more ability than there is opportunity. And so for me, it's probably for the last 10 years has driven me personally to say, how can I create opportunities for people who have ability where society or life wouldn't traditionally give them a chance? And so my wife and I, we have a foundation and we've, we've done a couple of things. One is I went to the Queensland University of Technology. So we have an endowment there where we obviously provide scholarships for people to go to qut. And then recently we helped establish a chair in Indigenous Studies. I was actually quite appalled to know that not one public university in Australia actually had a chair in indigenous studies I.e. aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. I actually think New Zealand probably does a much better job than Australia. And so my wife and I have helped establish a chair in Indigenous Studies because I think there's an enormous amount we can learn from the Aboriginal Torres Strait island population in Australia. You know, if you go back to things like storytelling.

If you think about.

One of my other favorite little things is I always say to people. If I say Humpty Dumpty, what do you say? You say sat on the wall.

Right, of course.

And if you think about it, you couldn't read or write when you learned that. If I asked you what Pythagoras theorem is, no one can tell me. I can't even tell you either. But if you think about.

Indigenous people.

Centuries and centuries and centuries ago, they were great storytellers. And yet I don't think we ever gave them enough credit for, you know, a lot of things that they bring enrich a culture with. Right. They tend to be marginalized and all the things that we've done to our indigenous population. So I just felt it was one of my and my wife, it was about, you know, creating opportunity for people who have ability. And so that's really been my driving force, which is that, you know, ability is equally distributed opportunities, not so anything I can do in that space. I was a huge proponent of driving greater diversity at Yum. I was really proud of that. I think when I started we had like 28% of the senior positions were held by women. I think it's now 48 or 49 or something. So if you get focused, I honestly believe if you get focused, you can change anything. And the biggest challenge in business is not to chase 10 things like we said. Oh, it's to chase one. And so I guess my whole philosophy has been around either unlocking opportunities or creating opportunities for people who have ability but don't have whatever luck, if you want to call it luck to take advantage. That's sort of the thing that drives me now.

That's beautiful. Simply incredible. I simply admire what you do. I can't wait to get the book and get out to my clients hands. I coach a lot of different people and different backgrounds, so I think this applies to all business, all owners and leaders. So great work for actually putting the effort into getting out. Even though you said you weren't going to write a book, I'm glad you did.

Yeah, yeah. I'm really, you know, it's funny.

Honestly, for many years I said I was never going to write one, but having written one and seeing the response to it and then seeing people's work as a result of it makes you feel really good, I got to be honest.

Well, keep up the amazing work and hey, over the next couple of weeks, let's keep a keep in touch with the Wallabies and the All Blacks. They've got a couple of games coming up, so.

Oh yeah, that'll be that'll be a lot of excitement for Australians.

But no, it's. Yeah. And continued success and what I. What I love. You know, one of the most sacred places I've ever visited was ANZAC Cove in Gallipoli. I've had a chance to go there twice. And if you. I know we joke about Australia and New Zealand and all that sort of stuff, but you go to places like Anzac Cove and you do realize just how close and how important the relationship is between Australia and New Zealand. So there are those places that you go that remind you just, you know, how much alike we are and how. How important each country is to the other.

Agreed? 100%. No, we're very lucky. Our brothers and sisters across the ditch. We give each other hell when it comes to sport, but we're there for each other when it really matters. Right?

Yeah. I think that's what is it.

Yeah.

The more we love you, the more we pick on you.

Yeah. You're like a big brother, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've all got. We've all got big brothers. The US is then the big brother. Right.

So this is. Right.

Yeah. Anyway, it was an absolute pleasure, man.

So great to connect me. I really appreciate it.

It's been an absolute pleasure. Continued success and my best wishes to everybody in New Zealand.

Yeah. Keep up the great work. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button and I.

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You'd leave me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and, folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on purpose.