What Happens When Leaders Actually Care? Jeff Chandler on Keep It Human

Hey, I've been wanting to share this gentleman with you guys for quite a long time now. I did an event for this company called Hopdoddy Burgers and Beer, and that sells them real short, I'll tell you, because this is one of the most remarkable organizations I've ever worked with, and you're going to see in a few minutes why I feel this way. Their leadership is really walking the walk when it comes to talking about keeping it human. So in a couple minutes here, we're going to introduce you to a new friend and a terrific leader, Jeff Chandler. You know, I've been blessed over the last couple of years to work with so many amazing organizations, and the need is stronger more than ever for us to keep it human. I hope you don't feel that that's just a slogan. This is actually— I believe with every fiber of my being that This is the most important mission we're on these days, especially as we face new challenges from technology and whatnot. Worked with a couple groups in the restaurant industry, and they, they're kind of the canaries in the cave as far as some of the AI and the new technology goes, because there's a lot of temptation to automate there. I think it could be a good thing for them in a lot of ways, but there are some companies that are still dedicated to making sure that they take care of their people, not replacing people, but making sure people their jobs and their performance is enhanced by all this new technology. And this is one of those companies. Anyway, one of the best people I've met in a long time, and we're going to introduce you to him right now. This is Jeff Chandler, the President and CEO of Hopdoddy. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on today.

Oh, Jim, thank you very much for having me, and I appreciate the nice introduction. Thank you.

Well, first of all, your event was one of the best that I've ever been to. Jeff took us all out to the Grand Canyon. That's how we started the first session. I was a little skeptical because I'm kind of a vampire. I think I told you that before, but that truly was one of the most remarkable experiences I ever had in my life. Thank you so much for that.

Well, Jim, you made it incredibly special and even more special. And one of our mantras during our time together is we want to take people to places that they never would really go to on their own or an experience that, you know, is new and novel and memorable. And, you know, this sunrise hike out to the point that you were a part of was, I think, one of those occasions where we took people a little bit outside of their comfort zones, you know, maybe getting up at 0 dark 30 and getting on a bus and walking down a dark trail all of a sudden to kind of come into this, you know, this vast darkness. But you could tell how expansive it was, right? And, and then to have you take us through a really great exercise up there, it was truly a highlight of our year.

Well, you know, let's, let's cut right to the chase with that, because one of the things I thought was so remarkable about the whole event, you know, I know We have to cross the T's and dot the I's. That's important. And you guys take care of business. We'll talk about that a little bit more later on. But to prioritize the human experience was just incredible. And your whole event was built around that. Even having it at— was it Canvas Under the Stars? I'm not—

Under the Canvas.

Under the Canvas. Amazing organization too. Those guys were terrific. So prioritizing the human experience first and everything you just said. Tell me seriously, for the skeptics, how does that relate to your bottom line? Is that helping or does it make a difference at all? What are you seeing? Because I know, I know you're cognizant of that.

Hey, look, it's in my opinion, it's absolutely the foundational layer that drives every bit of performance in any organization. If you can't capture, you know, not only the minds, but the hearts and the spirit and the esprit de corps of your team, you're kind of fooling yourself thinking that you can drive results just through mandates, metrics, monetary incentives. You have to capture the whole person and their whole interest. And so, you know, at the heart of what you saw at our HLC, our Hapdadi Leadership Conference, was really, you know, taking and making an investment in people in the whole person. Right. And we really feel if we can refine and improve the whole person, and that whole person is a better spouse, wife, husband, sister, daughter, friend, whatever, a better human being, we really believe they will be better at work. And they will— that holistic approach to driving performance makes not only a more well-rounded leader, but it also makes a leader that is a little bit more resilient to burnout and to facing the pressures of everyday work. And they have a little bit get more tools in their tool belts to work with to allow them to manage the complexities and the stress of, you know, a pretty demanding job.

You know, that's where the rubber hits the road because it's so funny, and I'm not even going to— I was going to play the role of skeptic, but it's just, it's not going to come across right. It's going to be disingenuous, right?

The—

I've met with many organizations over the last few years who who simply don't see the wisdom in what you're saying and who don't prioritize this people-first culture and developing the individual. They just— I don't want to say that they don't think it's important. They probably somewhere think it's important. They just put other priorities in front of that. And it's hard to measure, right? It's hard to measure what you're doing. But one of the things that I see consistently when someone talks to and challenges— and hey, I get it. They say, "Hey, Jim, we're doing great financially." I say, "That's all cool." And I see sometimes companies that are actually abusing people that are doing well financially. But I like to see their churn rate. And one of the things that impressed me with your crew, to me, one of the most important parts of any event like that is just getting to know your people off to the side, right? In between sessions and at the social events that you had. One of the most impressive ones is at the final dinner that I was at. I know you guys went on further than that. Your CFO, Kenny, is he the CFO? If I remember right.

He's the VP of Ops.

VP of Ops. Okay, cool. He was sitting with somebody and they were obviously in an emotional discussion. I almost didn't want to interrupt and they invited me in. And what this gentleman was saying, I wish I could remember who it was. He just looked at me, said, "Jim, I'm a lifer." I said, "Oh yeah, you know, a lot of people say that." He said, "No, I'm serious." And he went on for about 5 minutes and this was with with Kenny there. And he said, look, I've been with Hopdoddy a while now. I'm going to be with Hopdoddy the rest of my career. That's it. That's the kind of thing that shows that, you know, what you're doing actually works.

Now, look, we're blessed to have great team members that buy into our overall mission. I mean, look, for us, we're in the food and beverage industry. We're in the hospitality specifically. We're in the fast casual restaurant industry. But really what our talent is and what we have all kind of gotten behind and aligned and rallied behind is this mantra of helping motivated people achieve their dreams. And look, that sounds great and warm and fuzzy and everything else, but when the rubber meets the road, it truly is a meaningful driving factor for us. We— so much of our business is dependent upon the quality of our team members. And, you know, simple little things like our team members making eye contact, smiling, thanking people, welcoming people in. I mean, it's genuine hospitality. And I think so to kind of drive that, everyone is in our industry. A lot of folks are in it for a different reason, right? We get a lot of hourly workers that are putting themselves through school or college or, you know, supporting a dual income family or helping mom and dad out. Like, there's a lot of different reasons people are in the industry. And so we try to make sure that however long you're with us, right, whether it's a stepping stone in your career or I think it was like Josh LeBlanc, the young man that Kenny was speaking with, who wants to make it a career, right? And I think we try to impart value in everyone's journey, right? Whether they're with us for 3 years or 30 years, it really doesn't matter. We find each individual contributor so incredibly valuable, and we don't want to waste a moment of an opportunity to engage people and fully get them rallied behind what we do. So that we can be great at our jobs, right? And more importantly, we can enjoy what we do and who we do it with. I talked a little bit earlier about the resiliency and how important and impactful that is for us. Burnout and turnover in our industry is notoriously bad, right? Most restaurant companies have over 120% turnover rate. I mean, just think about that for a second. You know, 120% per year is turning over. You know, I'm lucky and fortunate enough to say that at the hourly level, our turnover is less than 70%. Wow. And so, we're extremely proud of that. Most management turnover is in the 40, 50, 60% range. Our turnover is less than 5%. And so, I think, you know, having that low turnover, A, makes you more successful given you've got the right people, right? You're not letting people that are just getting by. You have the right people. But we feel that that is a competitive advantage of ours because we're never rebuilding a team. We're just kind of reloading a team mentality.

Yeah. And I'm kind of glad you went that way with it too, because we could probably talk, unpack things all day long, different layers of how this affects your operations. But one of the things I don't expect you to remember this, it's a moment that stuck with me. You caught me off to the side in between sessions and I said I wanted to have you on the podcast and it was something I really wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to save it for the podcast. We probably could have talked about it then. And it is this impact of technology and AI. You know, I was just speaking with another person in the industry about casual dining and fast food becoming commoditized. You know, that it really has become commoditized in a lot of ways. You can get good burgers and good beers in a lot of places, but where can you get the experience that you guys are creating at Hopdoddy? You certainly can't do that unless you have the consistent team retention that allows your team members to build relationships with the customers, right? And there's layers and layers of layers we can unpack there. But again, you know, this idea of being able to— where is the core of it coming from? That, you know, you somehow realized or somehow developed the belief that you had to put your people first. And in the face of all this technology, how are you managing that? Because different people are I get it. I don't blame them for wanting to adopt it, at least to some degree. But a lot of people are really tempted right now, just let's be blunt about it, to put people on the street. That's right. Replace them. And I don't think that's the way to go. To me, I know the experience economy is kind of a term that was coined back in the '90s, but I believe we're entering the experience age where if we're not giving people experiences AI is going to be doing a lot of functional stuff. We have to be willing and able to create experiences for people. And I think that's— if I heard you right, that's a lot about what you're talking about at Hopdoddy.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not just for the people, but for the customer too, right?

For the guest, exactly. And look, there's a place for AI and we're excited for AI. I think AI will help make us more efficient, more effective in how we communicate with our team members. How we communicate with the guests, what people are liking, what they're not liking. Like, it'll allow us to make better decisions, but we do not view it as a labor-saving mechanism, period. And every brand, every concept may be different, right? You might have a robotic sushi concept and people want to come in and they just want really good sushi and they want to get out. Like, okay, I can see, I, I can see a place in hospitality for robotics and more AI. In our concept, in our lane, we really feel that, you know, to your point, burgers are a commoditized product. You can get a burger dang near anywhere. Okay. So what our lane of differentiation is, is obviously we want to give you a better burger, right? With better quality, more uniqueness, more variety. But we also want to do it in a way with unexpected hospitality. And I think it's that unexpected hospitality that means so much more than when you expect hospitality or you walk into a fine dining restaurant, you're, you're expecting great service and great hospitality. And so in our space, I think, you know, providing that unexpected— you walk into a fast casual concept and we're taking care of you, delivering and running food and getting you refills and maybe another milkshake. Like we're, we're doing those things that aren't typically done in our space. So, A, we think that's a competitive advantage. In our space. Secondarily, I will say, I think coming through COVID and where we are today, yes, there's a lot of commoditized eating experiences. Look at the third-party delivery platforms and look how prevalent it is to overpay for food that's been sitting in a box for half an hour. Okay. And look, I'm guilty. I will use it occasionally, but I think the human being core people yearn for relationships. They yearn for interactions with other human beings, and they're looking for ways to interact with other human beings. And at Hopdoddy, you know, one of our missions is to create a great, vibrant, fun place where people can interact with one another and experience unexpected, genuine, true hospitality. So it's more than just a commoditized burger event. It's a commodity. It's a— it's an experience around great burgers and great people. And so I think, you know, that's kind of our take on it and our lane. And we feel that human hospitality is around for a long time. So, look, I think everyone's trying to figure out where do you put technology into your business. And we've done that and we've looked at, you know, what are the key hospitality human touchpoints that make us special, unique, and different. And that's what we're working to deliver on.

That spins us right into the heart of where it touches leadership too. One of the things that impressed me— this is kind of a marker I use when I go to events— are the executive team, is the executive team and the senior leadership separating themselves, segregating themselves from the rest of the organization, or are they mixing with them? Now, there's places, right, where we need to be independent, that's for sure. Absolutely, where it's valuable, especially— and I'm going to qualify this because sometimes when people challenge me on this, I think it's good sometimes for C-suite folks to have their own space so that they can speak and be comfortable and not have to be as careful about what they say, right? And that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that. But at your event, what was so special was even with the table setting, like I said, usually there's a head table, right? And that's where all the VIPs are going to sit and then nobody mixes. You made sure that all your executive team was seated with the district managers and the local managers and whatnot. I thought that was really special. And also what was special, here's the other marker I use. Sometimes when I'm given a tour of a facility, for example, I'll listen. How are people reacting on the floor when the C-suite guys are giving me the tour? Is everybody, "Hey, hush around, Jeff's coming," that kind of thing? Or is it business as usual? And I've been in a couple organizations where it was business as usual, and that's impressive. Your people were talking very openly, and they were talking too, and this— well, I know I'm going two different directions here, but I don't want to forget this one too, circling back to this idea that hospitality is an art, because I've heard that from a few folks. So I want to come back to that too. But first, that leadership part, you know, I'd just like to hear you expand on it. I mean, it sounds to me like that was very intentional, that you made sure And it doesn't sound like that was a one-off. It sounds like you've got a pretty good open line of communication in a genuine sense with all levels at your organization.

You know, I think that's something I picked up years ago, probably either playing youth sports, particularly football, or coaching youth sports and football. And that is, you know, everybody has a role in an organization and every role is really important or we wouldn't have it. Okay. And so, you know, we try to dispel any myths around hierarchy and who's more important than one another. We need everybody, right? And so, you know, at the heart of it is this roll-up-the-sleeves, you know, blue-collar, lead-from-the-front mentality. You know, we truly believe that we are best when we're unified in our approach and we're not in a hierarchical event or a, you know, typical chart where, you know, we're way above here. In our industry, what makes a lot of our leaders good is that We've had those jobs that those folks are in, right? We know the stresses and the pain points and the pressures that are, that are on them. And so I think just embracing it and being one of them. Again, we all have a role. My role is different than their role, but my role is not necessarily more important than their role, right? They're all important and critical. And I think that's a hallmark of helping in a way explain the why. And what I mean by that is You know, my motivation should be the exact same as our general manager's motivation. There should be the same— my— like, we need to be aligned. And to do that, you need to be able to clearly articulate the why, and you need to be able to always talk about the why. Why is this important? Why are we going this direction? Why is our menu like this? And so to do that, we, we really have to have, you know, 360-degree you know, conversations with everybody to make sure that we're listening to everybody, we're getting everyone's input on all of that stuff so that we're all on the same page when it comes to the why.

You know, I'm going to be a jerk about this for a second. Everybody says that, right? Everybody says that we have these interviews. But, and again, I'm trusting what I heard from your frontline managers. You guys are living it. I mean, you I didn't hear one story. Well, you know, yeah, maybe a couple, but I didn't hear any, anything, any complaint or concern that you guys weren't addressing and you weren't open to. I think that's probably the best part of it.

Um, well, we have this, we have this mantra, this phrase of speaking our truths.

Yeah, but you do, but you do more. You do more. There's some way I'm looking for— I'm not looking for this for the secret, but it seems like there's something consistently you're doing to keep those channels alive and keep those channels open. I mean, and I don't know if that's— I believe it can be trained, but you can only train the willing, right? I know from— and I'm not trying to build you up too much, but getting to know you a little bit, I could see that, you know, you provide— you lead by example. You provide an example there. But I didn't see any faults. And that's pretty unusual. And I'm not saying that just to make you feel good. Seriously, I just didn't see any danger signs that I usually see in other organizations.

Yeah. Well, look, I think if I— I personally have a tendency to overshare, right? Like, I think sometimes, like, I'll say something to our team. I'm like, oh, I probably shouldn't have said that. I probably should have held back. But look, I think maybe doing that over time people realize that their leadership's an open book. There's no hidden agendas, you know, there's no secrecy in what we're doing. And we are what we are, and we, we say what we say, we do what we say, you know. Like, so I think there's no, there's no fear of people wondering, what am I really thinking, right? Oh, these are great platitudes, you know. When we say something, we mean it. And look, we, we also speak our truth, so that means telling people the good, bad, and the ugly. Like, we're not afraid to sit down with people and say, you know, hey, look, love, love your heart and energy. We're not producing the results, and we're saddling up next year to figure out why. How can we help you? Right? We're not going to be one to criticize. We're going to be one to say, okay, you know, if we're— if we have a weak link someplace, we own that part of it as well. We're going to sit down and saddle up next and say, you know, what can we do to help you? And, you know, we love on our people. And at the end of the day, if they choose not to put forth the effort or to take leadership advice or whatnot, you know, we promote them to guest in a very respectful manner. And I think that's just all part of this open, honest, these conversations that we have. And I think that puts people at ease. I think people like guardrails.

I was hoping that's where you're going to go with it because it strikes at the heart of— some people don't believe this, but this has been well tested. I know Gallup has done the study. I know Wharton School has done the study. Two of the top markers that show us someone's going to be an effective leader are uncertainty, and we could talk about that all day, and vulnerability. And that's what you just talked about, right? And vulnerability, not in the sense of crying in your beer, come out and bemoaning your every, every, you know, not using your people as therapists, right? But to come out and say, here's what's going on, this is, this is what's happening. And sometimes I think it's, it's okay to expose what's happening with you or your concerns. Not, you know, you got to decide what, what you want to share. But I, I appreciate what you're, what you're saying there, and, uh, you know, your willingness to show a little bit of your humanity, because how People don't trust, I don't know, people don't trust talking heads. And I think that's gonna get more and more acute as we go along, right? I mean, having said that, and then I'm thinking about the politics I read about this morning. We do trust talking heads maybe a little too much. But people are definitely becoming more and more skeptical about that. I think the tide is turning.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think people are looking for, then this word gets overused, but, but I think it's true. People are looking for authenticity.

Yes.

Right. They're looking for real people having real conversations. Skip the false platitudes and, oh, this is so great and you're so great. But be intentional. Right. If someone's great, I think you have an obligation to tell them exactly what they're great at. Right. Or with, or be specific. And I think that's what people are looking for is just authentic, free-thinking, consistent leadership, I think, is important. I think when you know how you show up for your team and that you're showing up consistently, that doesn't mean you can't get heated and get excited about things and show your emotions. I think great leaders should show their emotions, right? Which I differ a little bit from some of the conventional wisdom that says, oh, great leaders, you know, they never let people see them sweat. Man, I think it's okay. I think it's okay to show your emotion and get excited or get mad. I think holding it in—

Well, that's a lot different, right? That's a lot different than panic or rage, isn't it? I mean, some people when they say, "Don't." Yeah. Yeah, a little sweat, even a little tears from time to time. I think that's different. I think it is the responsibility of the leader to be very measured about displaying panic or rage. But short of that, be human, right?

Yeah, be human. Exactly.

In fact, everybody should be a little more cautious about showing panic or rage. That's—

no, I think we could get off on a breeze or discipline and holding back. But I think, you know, at the core of it, look, none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes, right? So it starts with a certain level of humility that we all need to own.

No, no, no, no, no.

And I think once we realize that we're not perfect, then we make mistakes and we're allowed to make mistakes. And, you know, at Hoppdotty, we're tolerant of mistakes.

We're just—

we're not tolerant of excuses, right? Take ownership, learn from it, move on, get better, and we're not going to judge you. You know, just get better. Best today, better tomorrow.

I appreciate that. And I appreciate how you're pointing that towards, you know, real tactics that can help the individual develop and help the individual get through a tough time. But I want to shift gears for just a second because a lot of— there's a lot of people, a lot of organizations, and this is going to be a huge thing, especially as we start to adjust to this new technology. But we're in for a period of disruption that we might not have ever seen before. But we're always in these periods of disruption, right? We're always in these periods of chaos. I think the best things come out of that. In your industry right now, I know the cost of food is one of the toughest variables you guys deal with, the cost of your your raw materials. And the cost of beef right now strikes at your heart as much as any other.

All-time high.

Yeah. So when something like that affects the performance of the organization, no fault of anybody else's, again, a lot of organizations would like to hide the bad news or they don't think the frontline people can handle it. How do you approach something like that? How do you share, not necessarily bad news, but a challenge like that?

Well, look, I think it all starts with just level setting on, you know, what are our core brand pillars, right? What are our promises to both our guests and our team members? And we're not going to waver from that, right? So we recommit ourselves to our foundational core values. You know, for Hopdoddy, you know, it's quality, uniqueness, it's variety, right? And then we talk about our core values. Well, those are the things that we're not going to put on the table for discussion, but everything else is on the table, right? Like, you know, how do we do it? What are our efficiencies? Who do we buy it from? How can we be more creative in our menuing? I think a lot of companies would take opportunities to cut corners, per se, you know, reducing portion sizes, maybe reducing the quality a little bit to the saying that, oh, the guests really can't tell the difference and this is fine. And so I think that's a slippery slope or companies will just raise price, right? Which is what they've done in the last few years. They've really raised price. Look at rampant inflation and how that's affecting the industry. You know, now, you know, food from away from home and food in home, you know, those have been going up and down and now food away from home is way, way, way up here. And so we struggle with that and a lot of companies, You know, when they talk about value, the value equation in simple hospitality terms, value equals the quality of the experience in terms including the quality, the hospitality, the portion sizes, the whatever divided by the price. A lot of companies are going at the price. You see a lot of value meals, bundle meals, $5 off, you know, lowering their price on certain things because they're also lowering the quality of their experience. Right. And so they're trying to get stronger value. So I think our approach is we're going to create value, you know, not necessarily by lowering price because we are a premium offering, a premium-priced item, but we're going to work on and obsess over the quality of the experience, the quality of the execution, the consistency, the quality of our beef. Right? Even though it's rising, we're going to source the best. We're still into that. And so I think our way of battling it is just make sure it's worth it, right? Um, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna price accordingly to, you know, what we have to, to stay in business and meet our obligations. But it's going to be worth it from the guest perspective. I mean, just like, you know, some people can find utility or value in an expensive car like a Mercedes-Benz. Right? So it doesn't have to be cheap and inexpensive. The value, the quality just has to be worth the price you pay for it. So we take that mentality approach. And then there's a lot of things we can do within our menu to incentivize people to maybe avoid that very expensive beef item, and maybe they're going to go into a chicken item or a bison item or a tuna item or something different on our menu. So There are some things we can do to incentivize guests to stay away from the more expensive items, but at the end of the day, we want to sell what people want to buy, and we want to do that as best we can.

You know, not surprisingly, you, you brought it full circle to the tangent I wanted to explore just a little bit too, um, that idea of hospitality as an art. You know, it's interesting, when I was younger, I used to go to this Italian restaurant that a friend of mine from school used— his family ran this. And it was amazing. And they had a few people in there who were the— and I'm sure you'll understand— they were hospitality people in the European sense. They approached it as a true art, as a career. This is what they are dedicating themselves to. And it was amazing. Even the smallest details, the way they set the table, the way they served, the way everything was It was noticeable. And I think you're touching on that, right? And I'm glad you differentiated between price and experience. I mean, value and price, because value is a perception, isn't it? And if I don't feel that someone's caring for me, if I don't feel that connection, then the value of that experience diminishes greatly. It doesn't matter almost how good the food is. I think that's one of the great ironies in restaurants. Well, they have great food. You can have the best. I just walked out of a restaurant recently. Recently that I really enjoyed going to for a long time. The food's terrific. The service just was horrible, horrible. Yeah. And I won't go back. So to approach it that way, but you can't have that happening. You can't create that experience if your people are looking over their shoulders all the time wondering what's going to happen to them, wondering how much, if you care about them or if it's just lip service. I've never seen an organization succeed. Succeed creating any kind of experience unless their people are genuinely well cared for.

That's right. Well, look, and for us, it starts with kind of one simple theme, and that is the guest experience will never exceed the team member experience. We know that to be true, right? We can't— I can't touch every single guest interaction with our company. Right. So, so our whole focus is on making sure that our team has the greatest experience possible. And that starts with, you know, hiring for personality and attitudes, training for skill. You know, we're not in a fine dining environment where, you know, you have to be very polished in the manners and the way in which you serve the guests. We're in a fast casual space. And I talked about it earlier. Our goal is to provide unexpected hospitality, right? When you walk into a Panera Bread or a Chipotle, like, do you expect hospitality? Most people do not. And so when you get that unexpected hospitality, and it could be something simple as, Jim, as eye contact, smiling, hey, great to see you again, Jim. Welcome back. I saw you in here last Tuesday. Gosh, it's great to have you back. You know, like just little things. And so we hire for personality and attitude. We train for the skills and we have basically 5 human touchpoints that we really seek after for a great memorable guest experience, right? Simple things like, you know, eye contact and smiling, warm genuine welcome when you walk in the door, right? The cashier looking you in the eye and smiling and greeting and truly communicating in their personal style. We don't script what our team members say. You know, we don't say, hey, you have to say, Welcome to Hopdoddy Burger Bar. My name's Jeff. I'm here to take care of you. Thank you so much for coming today.

That stuff drives me up a wall.

We just want our people to be real people, like, greet them like you're greeting your best friends that you haven't seen in 3 years, right? And so we try to simplify it to center around these 5 human touchpoints that we really think can drive that forward, that make a memorable experience. And at the heart of it, and I'll pause, is this whole notion that I think true genuine hospitality is these 3 things: show me you know me, show me you care, and show me you're committed to something really crazily cool and fun and craveable and awesome. Like, you know, those 3 things. And I think if you can do those 3 things during a visit, you've captured, you know, you've captured and engaged a guest.

I couldn't have asked for a better answer. We're going to break that down into an outline.

I was just going to say, Jim, we learned so much from you and our people are still talking about the impact that you made. You led us in a session of gratitude there towards the end that was just extraordinary. And you saw that, you were a part of that.

No, you guys made that extraordinary. I got to interject that because that exercise, usually people are pretty nervous about about that. For people who haven't been to one of our workshops, a lot of times at the end we just ask people to stand up and recognize other people in the group who contributed something that, that was meaningful to them, right? And usually we're good to ring 10 or 15 seconds out of each person. You guys went on for— oh my God, was it an hour or more?

It was an hour, right?

Oh my, you set the record by far.

Yeah, well, it actually caught me off guard as well, uh, and The level of emotion and sincerity that poured out of that have really created a lot of great will, and I just, I'm blessed and honored that you helped lead us to get to that point.

That's all you.

We were able to go deeper and further than we ever have before, and I think that's just your nature of drawing people in and together and have them be reflective and truly open up was remarkable.

Is there any kind of final thoughts that you'd like to share with everyone? Because I just want to amplify too the way you started the conversation, that you're all about obviously creating a great restaurant experience, but as important, if not more important, if we properly put the horse before the cart, is that your philosophy, and that was deeply felt when I was with your people, is that you're all about developing your people and what they need, and as much as you can in a business setting, satisfying their needs, helping them meet their challenges, and helping them realize their desires and their ambitions, right? So if there's anything you can add to that, I think that's the heart of Hopdoddy, if I read you guys right.

It is. And again, it goes to our mission of helping motivated people achieve their dreams. And that truly is something that's genuine to us. I mean, we we ideated that and said, you know, what's really important to us. And at the end of the day, you know, the business is a business, but man, it's also a collection of human beings, and it's a collection of ideals and values and aspirations in a certain sense. And isn't that what's really important in life, is like chasing your ambitions and your dreams and becoming the best version of yourself, right? And so How rewarding is that to help others, right, become and craft and chisel and hone their best version of theirselves? And it's idealistic, but man, it's aspirational. And when it works, you feel it. And I think you saw that in that room. And, you know, we're really proud to be part of that. Right. And, and to get back to your earlier point, you know, why do we do all of that? Well, we do it to create a great business. I mean, Jim, we're coming off of, you know, last year was a record year for us. This year we will beat that record. Like, our— we're— knock on wood, we're blessed. Our financial results have continued to soar. And I don't think it's— I don't think it's by coincidence. I think it's because we put people first. And I truly believe that's what is at the key of our success.

That's a perfect place to stop. Jeff, thank you so much for being with us today. And thanks for sharing your ideas. I hope you'll come back and talk with us again.

Oh, anytime, Jim. Thank you. I appreciate what you do.