Jimmy Allen: How do CEOs grow their company without soul destroying complexity? It's not easy, because growth creates complexity and then that complexity kills future growth, but the CEOs who succeed at this don't just compete on the basis of scale, where automatically bigger is better in everything they do. They also compete on the basis of speed, where time matters and in everything they do, they consider three things. Are we maniacally focused on our mission? Do we celebrate the frontline in everything we do? And do we approach each activity with an owner mindset? With a bias to action. I'm Jimmy Allen and I've been working with CEOs and founders for over 35 years and we'll be talking to a group of CEOs who somehow have managed to either rediscover or maintain their sense of founder's mentality in everything they do and I can't imagine a better way to start our journey together than with Pizza. Aaron Powell: Pizza Hut at our best, it's fun, it's joy, it's experience. The way to win at fun, joy and experience is with people. What we call that, is our reason for being is connecting people through the joy of pizza, so really the thing that gives me great joy is seeing when that happens and just saying, thank you. Jimmy Allen: Look, business should be simple. We make insanely good products, our customers buy them, they keep coming back and occasionally they bring a friend, but for some reason we constantly get distracted by that simplicity. So how do we fall back in love with our product again? How do we celebrate the heroes of the frontline? Well, just maybe the answer lies in some wedding anniversaries, conversations about cheese and Will Ferrell's cat impressions. So today we're joined by Aaron Powell, the global CEO of Pizza Hut and Aaron's been around with an incredible career across Procter & Gamble, Bain & Company, Kimberly Clark and then joined Pizza Hut as CEO in 2021 and we all know Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut's in 110 countries, with over 20,000 restaurants worldwide. I am so excited about this interview for one reason and one reason only, which is not only do I love Aaron, but Pizza Hut is like a defining moment in my life. I think I'm the demographic where Pizza Hut was absolutely the most relevant company. So I was 11 or 12 years old, Southern California, and my father had been watching my horrific little league baseball career and it was horrific in the sense that I led the team in several categories, primarily strikeouts, not as a pitcher, but as the hitter and he needed, because he's a good dad to figure out how you can possibly celebrate this horrible failure of a human being, which was his son in little league baseball and so there was one moment when I was hit by the pitcher and I actually afterwards got hit a lot, but this was the first time, 'cause I'm left-handed, so I was on the wrong side for the pitcher, so they hit me all the time, but this is the first time I got hit, which means it was the first time ever after my dad coming to dozens of games I made it to base and so I was actually on first base and to celebrate, he took the entire team after the game to a Pizza Hut, the first time I'd ever been in a Pizza Hut to have a pizza and my understanding is most American kids in my generation, correct me if I'm wrong, our first pizza was probably at a Pizza Hut and I can testify… Aaron Powell: Most kids around the world, most kids around the world, not just in the America, most kids around the world, but absolutely, unless you're from New York City or Italy, your first pizza was either made by or inspired by Pizza Hut, 'cause we really were the ones that brought this to the world and it really is a unique occasion that brings people together. It's, you know, it's around celebrating, it's around fun, it's around sharing, all that type of stuff. So I could talk forever about it, but your initial story is like most people's stories and for myself to be able to play a small role in that, I was really excited and it was a very different opportunity than any other job opportunity that I've ever been involved in. Jimmy Allen: But let's talk about that, because you know, the danger of any CEO joining a company is, well a pizza is just a pizza, just a pizza, so why are you joining Pizza Hut? Did you ever worry that like, the days that I'm talking about, those were the glory days of Pizza Hut and basically just a pizzas a pizza. How did you get through that in your mind? Aaron Powell: As I joined the company, I spoke with everybody I could, former leaders, current employees, franchisees and many of them had just convinced themselves that this was so challenging, that we were in a knife fight in a totally commoditized category. Jimmy Allen: I think a lot of, a pattern I see talking to leaders is they just refuse to accept that a product becomes commoditized. They can say, "look at the industry's going that way, but I am gonna work for a company where we are in love with our product" and I'm interested that when you got there, were they already in love or have you helped them fall back in love? Aaron Powell: When it comes to pride in having great pizza that is distinct and different, the franchisees, the best franchisees and their best team members were the ones that believed in it strongly, so people that would spend more time on spreadsheets would convince themselves, you know, look a price of pizza has not changed in 20 years, all this type of stuff that would make you nuts, commodity, commodity, commodity. The people that had, were the closest to it knew we're at our best when our pizza is special. Jimmy Allen: I'd love to just understand Aaron, like what specific things did you do to bring the product back to the center of what Pizza Hut does? Aaron Powell: One of the first things that I did was I restructured how food innovation sits within my company. I hired an external head of food innovation that reported directly to me as opposed to reporting into marketing, which is the way that it had always been, beyond that, every leadership team meeting that I have has pizza at the center where we're trying things, we're trying innovations and we're talking about it and absolutely every restaurant that we go visit, we talk about the pizza, we engage the pizza and by the way, nine times outta 10, it is to celebrate how great the pizza is and when it's not good enough, not to the team members, but to the franchisee owner and my team, is to have the straight talk saying this is not good enough and here's why. Jimmy Allen: Over and over again, when you look at great companies that either waiver or everything, it's management that give up on the product. It's never the people that make or sell it. When CEOs convince themselves that the product is a commodity, then almost they treat the people that make and sell it as a commodity. If you believe that what you're doing is special, you are reconnecting with the frontline and I want you just to go further, because your LinkedIn page, which of course I stalk is just full of frontline celebrations, but talk a little bit about that, that once you're in love with the product, then you realize how special the people are that make and sell it. Aaron Powell: I think one way to express it is just to share one moment, I have, in my role lots of emails, lots of letters that just come in and some are sorted through and given to me that are worth looking at and one I was told I must look at and when I read this letter, it was from the family of Victor and Robin Markle. It was the daughter-in-law who talked about, "my parents for 49 consecutive years have been visiting Pizza Hut everywhere in the world because they were a family in the military and coming up soon is their 50th anniversary, so of course we engaged and we supported and we helped throw a party and we surprise them. Wow, be like, no one has that type of honor to be that part of someone's life. Even restaurants that are that old, for it to be a moment to celebrate and bring together, it was amazing. I also had the chance to talk more to the franchisee and his team and the team members, it's a company called Tall Timbers Pizza, they do a great job and I was speaking with Aaron Richards, who's the head of operations and he talked about, not only does he remember that moment and his team members and leaders remember that moment, but he told me stories about the amount of wedding proposals that have happened, the amount of just tearful family events, whether they're celebrating or they're commiserating. Now, it's about how we can replicate those experiences in today's environment and doing the Venn diagram of, who are we at our best and what do the consumers and team members need to make the magic happen, to make it happen more often. Jimmy Allen: I just love that, making that magic happen and we know that starts with the front line. We need to really listen to what they have to say and get them excited about what they do and so surprised the front page of the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times are filled with stories of returning founders and in almost every case they come back saying, we've forgotten who the real heroes of our business are. They're not management, they're the frontline. When Howard Schultz came back to Starbucks, he very famously closed all the stores to retrain staff and at the time he said, "Pouring espresso is an art. If the barista only goes through the motions, then Starbucks has lost the essence of what we set out to do 40 years ago. Inspire the human spirit." I mean, founders have lofty goals about what their employees are meant to do, but if the employees are proud about what they do, that sentiment gets passed on to the customer, but the more a company grows, the more difficult it can be to maintain that spirit. It's so easy for CEOs to fall in the trap of average, you know, customer feedback, average employee survey feedback and I think that as a leadership lesson is so important, which is don't get lost in the averages, find when you're at your best and I just think the CEOs that focus kind of vertically and focus on where the business happens, almost always rediscover the magic. Aaron Powell: What we call that is, our reason for being is connecting people through the joy of pizza, it's just articulating crisply the thing that is at our core DNA and by the way, at the center of that it is people, inclusive consumers and team members. So really the thing that gives me great joy is seeing when that happens and just saying, thank you. Jimmy Allen: Amazing again, every time you use an amazing word, I just don't wanna lose, which is you're starting with the specific, Arron, but I've gotta start with the specific celebration, One, it gives me energy, two, it shows us at our best and then I can amplify and yet how many corporate headquarters almost talk independent of a single customer about something to amplify or accelerate. It's just first I've gotta be with the specific, with us at our best and then the other thing you kept saying was celebrations and people, celebrations and people, and that gives energy, but it's also how you are getting energy. Aaron Powell: You wanna talk about giving energy, Jesse is a spectacular example and it's worth me sharing, so he's a owner of more than 30 Pizza Huts and I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years. He named his franchise, his business Jesse, no, the Arnold Family Restaurants, Arnold Family Restaurants, Okay, that's interesting, is it? 'Cause he's second, third generation, I wasn't sure exactly where it came from. I quickly learned it's because he views all of his team members as his family and he's incredible about, he bought this business, he did not lay off anybody and the pride that he takes from promoting and seeing his people grow is where it's all about. When I go and visit, first thing he wants to do is tell me the stories of these individuals who he's known and loved for 10 years, he was all about his team and his people. Jimmy Allen: Guys, there's a theme here and it keeps coming back to product. You can't delight customers unless you love your product. You can't celebrate the heroes of the business and the story we just heard unless you love the product and get them excited about making and selling that product and I don't think there's a better story in business about a company falling back in love with its product than PetSmart. They chose as a strategy to delight the pet parent and pet parents are insane. Pet parents are the ones that sign their pet's names to the holiday cards, I am one. Pet parents are the ones who say out loud to their dog, cat or bird, not once but twice a day, I love you and so PetSmart said, "this is who we're going after." They were going after what you might call fanatics. Fanatics are the people who are gonna passionately love and champion your product. These are not just fans or average users, targeting your core market of fanatics, how you might lose some fans along the way, not everyone is gonna like what you're going after and that's okay. I didn't learn this lesson in the boardroom, I actually learned it from studying comedy. Archie Henderson, who we're about to talk to now, is one of the great brands in musical comedy. He created this really weird character called Jazz Emu and that character has a hundred million views right now on YouTube and he appeared this year three different times in Glastonbury and he's gonna talk about what it means to design your product around fanatics, even at the expense of fans. Archie Henderson: The act I do is a character comedy act, when I do live shows, so I do this insane voice that he's, you know, got very over pronounced and enunciated everything he sounds, you know, not quite sure where he's from geographically and he's a musician, he thinks very highly of himself. He's a sort of arrogant narcissist. The original driving force was like, how do I do something different because I really feel like if I go straight down the line, this isn't gonna work for me. I just wanted to see where it went and I didn't put any restrictions on myself of, okay, this has to be the perfect comedy song or it has to be the perfect pop song, but it's got funny lyrics. Jimmy Allen: Where did it come from? And then how did you develop it into a craft and into a profession. Archie Henderson: I sort of just let whatever happen, happened and I, through doing that, found this character I think, which then I was like, oh, now that's a USP, 'cause it feels really different to something else and I could kind of going through that feedback loop, settle on something. Jimmy Allen: Was it scary to commit to a bit that it involves such an odious character? Meaning that you, you took the extreme of not wanting to please the whole audience with then a decision to potentially alienate an entire audience? Archie Henderson: I think the sort of commitment to the bit is a phrase I always liked and I think feeling sort of instinctively, okay, this is the bit that I like and I think that if I double down on it, people will be sort of compelled by the commitment to the bit, they'll either find it odd or they'll find it interesting or they'll be, you know, confused but can't stop watching. Will Farrell's audition for SNL is him for four or five minutes pretending to be a cat and I loved hearing him describe the process because he is rolling around the floor, he's pretending to, you know, bop a ball of wool around and you can tell it's dead silent in the room, you can tell no one in the room of the four people watching his audition are making any noise and you can sort of, he says he was halfway through and thinking, "what have I done? What have I done? This is not working." But he stays completely in it and you can't see him break at any point and it obviously, and obviously worked, it obviously won them over. When I was doing things where they were sort of more palatable and never finished an idea, because it would be like, here's the idea, boom, it's done, let's do another one. The opposite version of that, even if it's going really badly, there's a sort of armor that you have, where you're like, it's funny that I've got myself into this situation, because I really wanted to do it and no one is enjoying it. Jimmy Allen: The thing that strikes me when I think about having watched you over time is how much creating this character has liberated you to look at the world a different way and that it kind of has opened up a world to you that's not available to a lot of people, because you're able to sort of embody that. Did you find it liberating or constraining? Archie Henderson: That's liberating that feeling, I think. I think really committing to this bit of being a deluded funk character and going, you know, as far into that as I possibly can, has really pushed me in front of this audience who are interested and excited to see someone commit to the bit in that way and even though it's alienating some other people and pushing away people who I initially would've thought, "no, I need everyone to come with me," it reinvigorates my energy in what I'm doing, because I'm being fed back the energy of people who are excited to see me be me and do what I want to do. Jimmy Allen: So I imagine when you started listening to today's podcast, you didn't think you'd be getting business advice from this weird guy, Jazz Emu, but we can learn a lot from Archie and his decision to create fanatics even at the expense of fans. Being insanely great is not for everyone. Average products, average feedback, average employees, average customers, that's a vicious cycle, that is the road to mediocrity, but let's imagine that we actually create insanely great products, so much so that our customers wanna wear a tattoo with your brand. That's exactly what's happening today, to Disney, to Nike, to Lego, to Harley Davidson, Nintendo, the top five most tattooed brands on earth and Aaron gets this. The quality of the product is a non-negotiable and that attitude is mirrored by his partners, the franchisees. Aaron, you've talked before about the need to fall back in love with the product. Can you just give stories about where the product was so essential to the consumer or to the frontline that served or made it? Aaron Powell: When I'd go on vacation, I would like to visit a Pizza Hut, when I'm in these different markets for vacation and what I've found there is I've met a few unbelievable people. Dolores was the restaurant general manager in St. Thomas. Right off the bat when I asked who's the restaurant general manager and I go introduce myself, she starts talking about her team, right off the bat. She's been a over performer for decades and decades and decades and she is a pillar of Pizza Hut in the few that we have in St. Thomas, but for her it was about her team, was about her telling the stories and how much pride she have, by the way, what I also love for those types of visits, is what I'll ask, "hey, what's selling well and what's not?" They'll tell me straight. Jimmy Allen: Have you stop things as a result of this visit where you were hearing one story and then you find out no one's using it or doing it? Aaron Powell: What I will say, two things in particular that led to stopping, it's never about the team member. It's never about the team member. It can be about cutting corners, that ultimately impact the experience or the food and that's not the team member's choice and we have several amazing franchisees. Everyone wants to make more money. When anything is talked about that might impact the food quality, they are the ones screaming saying, "no, no, no, no, don't touch that." You know, the most obvious example, just easy to get the head around is how much cheese is on the pizza. The best franchisees all wanna make more money and they'll say, "no, no, no, don't take cheese off the pizza." Those to me are the two tells how much pride they really have in the food and how much they really talk about their people. Jimmy Allen: So falling in love with the product makes you fall in love with the people that sell and deliver it and the lens that you use when you go out there is, am I looking at leaders that have pride in the product? Do I look at leaders that tell people's stories and celebrate? And you can pretty easily figure out, you know, we make business really complicated, don't we? Look, the CEO job is a battle of energy. All roads lead to the question of energy. A tired CEO becomes a great complicator in the business. An energized CEO does the one thing we demand of the leader. They simplify, they focus, so it matters a lot in this podcast that we're collecting tips on how CEOs keep their energy in work, in play. So let's go through a bunch of questions about energy. What brings you energy? Aaron Powell: Seeing people grow, seeing people do things with pride is what brings me just a ton of energy Jimmy Allen: And what drains you of energy? Aaron Powell: Way too much internal focus. You know, we do the pre-meeting to meet, all that type of stuff, that is just an energy drainer. Jimmy Allen: Do you have energy vampires at work? Aaron Powell: Unfortunately yes. As a senior leader, like too many meetings that are not consumer focused or driving real decisions is what is the vampire drainer and I always look at myself and my team and say, "we've seen the problem, it is us, it is us. You know, let's lead by example and be really choiceful when we actually call all these people to meet together." Jimmy Allen: What are you most passionate about? Aaron Powell: Professionally, it's just seeing people achieve their greatest. Personally, I love music, the highlight of a month is when my daughter and I, we'll play some band music in our house together, her singing and playing the piano, me strumming a guitar and having fun together. Jimmy Allen: So let's recap some of the key takeaways from Aaron's story. Aaron Powell: Every restaurant that we go visit, we talk about the pizza, we engaged the pizza and by the way, nine times outta 10, it's to celebrate how great the pizza is and when it's not good enough, not to the team members, but to the franchisee owner and my team, is to have the straight talk saying, "This is not good enough and here's why." Jimmy Allen: It's the product first. Look, it's the customer eventually, but we've got to fall back in love with our product. Aaron Powell: It's who we are, it's what we can do that no one else can do and now it's about how we can replicate those experiences in today's environment and doing the Venn diagram of who are we at our best and what do the consumers and team members need to make the magic happen, to make it happen more often. Jimmy Allen: If we start thinking our product is a commodity, then we're gonna think the jobs that make and sell that product are commodity jobs. In contrast, if we set out to create fanatics, we're gonna celebrate the heroes of the frontline of the business. We gotta commit to the bid. Aaron Powell: People that would spend more time on spreadsheets would convince themselves, you know, look at price of pizza has not changed in 20 years, all this type of stuff that would make you nuts, commodity, commodity, commodity. The people that had, were the closest to it knew we're at our best when our pizza is special. Jimmy Allen: So in all of our work with founders, there's one thing that's been true in almost every case, every great founding team starts at war against their industry on behalf of underserved customers. They're in love with their product, they create fanatics, they commit to the bin, but the endless quest for growth gradually means we become all things to all people. Average customers, average customer feedback. Well, the job of the CEO is to cut through that noise and focus on what really matters, but how do we realign our priorities? How do you create great frontline jobs? In our next episode, we're gonna focus on this. We'll be spending time with Christina Zhu, the CEO of Walmart, China and she's going to introduce this phrase about joyful routines. So stick with us. See you in the next episode. Stay curious.