Rob Herold: This is the secret to delegation

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Speaker B: But perfection is really an enemy. It's one of my greatest enemies, honestly, because I want things to be as close to perfect as possible. That's where delegation really comes in. Because you know you can't do it all. You can't.

Speaker A: Welcome to Full Comp, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders and innovators served, uh, up on m the house. What if the most valuable thing you could do for your restaurant is make yourself unnecessary? Rob Herald has operated a single Chick fil a in Bowie, Maryland, for 17 years. While most operators would chase more locations, he went the other direction, building a business that runs without him so that he could coach leaders, serve his communities overseas, and climb mountains with his son. In today's conversation, we get into why your time is worth more than you think and how hiring a virtual assistant became the highest leverage decision he ever made. Rob also digs deep into what it really costs operators to insist on doing everything themselves. So if you're drowning in your own business and calling it dedication, this episode's going to change how you see your calendar.

Speaker B: So my journey in the food service industry, the way I position actually started when I was 15 years old. It was 27 years ago at this point. I was laying on the couch at home and my mom was like, you are not laying around all summer. Get up. We're going to go get a job. Put my shoes on. We went outside and found myself in a McDonald's dining room and got, uh, the job on the spot. Gave me a uniform, said, will you start this afternoon? My second job, about a year and a half later, I was really enjoying the camaraderie that I built with the team members at the McDonald's. But I wasn't really making a ton, so I found a place where I could make a whole dollar more an hour. And that was Papa John's. And I wasn't old enough to deliver pizzas yet, but I can make them. And I thought, man, it would be really cool to learn how to do the little pizza spinny thing where you throw it in the air. So got, uh, hired at Papa John's, walked in, hired me on the spot, said he'd start this afternoon. And I worked there for a bit. And then my mom came back in the picture and she thought, all right, I don't like the fact that you're working on Sundays right now. We've got a lot of stuff that we're doing on Sundays, so you need to find something else to do. There's this place opening down the street and it's called Chick Fil A. They're actually closed on Sundays. You should check them out. So I walked in, they weren't open yet. They hired me on the spot. They said, tonight we're having this dinner. We do this at all of our openings. It's called a dedication dinner. We would love for you to join us. So right away, I knew this place was different. Went to the dinner. It was amazing. There was so many people there that I thought I had known for years, that I had just met. And my journey at Chick fil a began 25 years ago as a 17 year old high school student. Now I really just had no idea what I was going to do with myself after graduating high school. I was getting ready to graduate and I was going to college. I was going to study business. The owner of the restaurant that I worked at, his name was Eric, he saw something in me within, uh, just a couple of months of me working at that restaurant. He asked me if I was interested in being a team leader at the restaurant. I said, I'm not sure what that means. He said, you get to do refunds and you get these cool keys. And I said, man, let's do it. So I became a team leader at Chick Fil A. And then a couple months later, he said, there's a, uh, Chick Fil A opening down the street here, and we need people like you that know how to do this to go and help the new team that doesn't know what they're doing. Would you like to go on a grand opening? And I said, absolutely, I'd love to. So at that opening, one of the evenings, Eric took me and a couple of other trainers to dinner. He was asking us questions, just taking interest in us and people. And he said, hey, do you know what you're gonna do after college? And I said, I'm not sure. He said, well, you're studying business. Do you wanna own a business someday? And, uh, I said, sounds like it'd be cool. The next question he asked me changed my life. Josh. He said, have you ever wanted to be a, ah, Chick fil a operator? And Now I was 17 years old. Of course, I hadn't ever thought of becoming a Chick fil a operator. But that planted a seed in my mind, and I thought, maybe this is something I could do. And he told me a few things. He said, listen, if you come back and work with me during the summers, I will pay for your school books while you're going to college. I mean, who does that? He'd really only known you for, like, six or seven months. The next thing he said was, he said, if you graduate and you come and work with me and you go through the interview process to become a Chick Fil a operator, I will pay your franchise fee for you if you get selected. Now, that blew me away. And I was sold. 17 years old. I decided what I was gonna do with my life. So I went home, told my mom, you know, she was so interested in getting me into the workforce. And as soon as I told her that that's what I was gonna do, she thought I was crazy. Both my mom and my dad, they said, no, you need to find something else. You're gonna find another pathway. Of course, as a teenager, there's only so much your parents can tell you to do that'll make you want to do it. But then you're like, no, I'm going to prove you wrong. And so that's what it became. Josh was, I'm going to do this. Just watch me. And sure enough, graduated college, went back, worked for my operator, Eric, paid for my school books. And then just a few years after graduating college, when I was 25 years old, um, I became a Chick fil a operator. He followed through on his promise, and that was 17 years ago. Now, Josh, I've been a restaurant owner for 17 years with Chick Fil a, and I've loved every moment of it. It does not feel like 17 years. So there's my Chick Fil a origin story.

Speaker A: I mean, there's so much to unpack there. And I want to get into the tactics, the tools and strategies. But I have to ask, why do you think he did that for you? He made you an offer you couldn't refuse. And sure, he might have seen something in you, but like that level of investment. And let's also say, for the record, for everybody listening, $25,000 today was not $25,000 20 years ago. Right. So it was not an insignificant amount of money.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. I'll tell you, Josh, I know exactly why, uh, he did what he did. It was because Eric spent the time. He took the time to care. He took the time to care for the people that were part of his organization and really see them. That has never been lost on me. How important it is to see the people that are important to you in your life. See the people. It's not just business. In fact, that's one of the things I love the most about Chick Fil a is because Truet Cathy said it this way. He said, we are not in the chicken business serving people. We're in the people business serving chicken. So I think that that is the heart of why Eric ch just was so ready and willing to invest in me.

Speaker A: I, uh, want to talk about, uh, the playbook. The corporate playbook for Chick Fil a is renowned. And I think that everybody thinks they're buying a business in a box, right? That that's what you're getting. And I can imagine that every Pizza Hut franchisee looks at every Chick Fil a franchisee and thinks, man, it must be easy day to day, right? They know fires. It's perfect playbook. Nothing ever goes wrong. Independents think the same thing about franchisees, right? Like they're just doing the same thing over and over again. If you just follow the playbook, they can let go of the wheel and the thing is going to drive itself. Rarely are you buying a business in a box. What is the perception versus the reality, you think, as it relates to not just owning a franchise, but being a Chick Fil A operator?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll tell you this, Josh. I know a lot of people that own businesses. I know a lot of franchisees. But it is something different. And I'd like to add special to have a restaurant, because a restaurant is a different beast entirely. There are no two days that are the same. Uh, everything could be going great one moment, and then your registers are all down. Or there's a fire in the kitchen. Thank goodness that's never happened to me. There are just so many different moving pieces to a restaurant that it just really takes us another level of focus and intentionality to run a restaurant really well. Franchising helps in my opinion, I mean it's, you know, the only business I've ever had is a franchise. But it helps because you, you uh, know one thing Chick Fil A says is you're in business for yourself, but you're not by yourself. And I think you have that support system, that network of people that are there to make sure that you can stand on your own two feet, but that you have someone standing there helping you along the way.

Speaker A: And I want to talk about the Chick Fil? A structure because in our pre interview you said something and the phrase has just stuck with me in Chick Fil? A caps operators at one, two, sometimes three restaurants. But it's specifically so you stay embedded in the business and in the community as opposed to stretching thin. And the way that you described it, the words that you used were built to be present. And I just uh, you know, it was a very off the cuff statement, but it really resonated with me. And so when you look at the design of the structure, how is it built and how does it enable you to be present in these businesses?

Speaker B: Yeah, no thanks Josh. I appreciate the question. I will tell you that, you know, over the years Chick Fil A has changed a lot from um, when it was started back in 1967. And currently the way it stands is as an operator you can have a restaurant in a community. If another restaurant opens within a certain amount of distance and impact of that restaurant, you can be eligible for a second restaurant. In uh, special instances. There's are, there are operators that actually have three restaurants. But I want to go back to something that Truett said. Truett Cathy, who founded Chick Fil? A, he said we should be about more than just selling chicken. We should be a part of our customers lives in the communities in which we serve. That's our job as operators really is to be a part of our communities. Selling chicken is just the channel of the vehicle, which we do that. But it's more than just about the food. So when you think about restaurateurs that have 4, 7, 12, 15 restaurants and it's remarkable. I know some amazing restaurateurs that do that, it is fantastic. But it's very, very difficult for that individual restaurateur to then be a member of that community because they're, I mean, we already said it, Josh. A restaurateur or someone who owns a restaurant, they're a different level of person that can manage all the different moving pieces. Imagine having more than one of those and it's twice as many things to focus on three. Wow, that's crazy. Then you get to 20, 30, 40. You just can't be a part of the community. So I think for us, that's really what it's about, is making sure that we can be present in our communities.

Speaker A: Uh, and I think a contrarian position to bring up is. And this was very much true for me, I opened more restaurants with the idea that I would make more money, which long term, did work out that way, but more because I was lucky than skilled. I think that, by and large, is an industry we see growth as an anecdote to, uh, inefficient operations, low profitability, poor design. And so I think that Chick Fil a is this grand contradiction in the way that, like, you can own, um, one, and you can have a beautiful and dynamic life where you're able to make incredible amounts of money and still have financial freedom, freedom of time, freedom from overwhelm, which is certainly not the overall ethos in the industry. Can you talk about your experience there?

Speaker B: Well, you know, for me and Josh, I can't speak for all operators. I can speak for me, but I can tell you I like Venn diagrams. You see the three circles that intersect, and there's, you know, some that overlap here and some that overlap here. But then you. You kind of want it right in the middle. Here's what Chick Fil a does for the operator that I think is very, very difficult to replicate. The first Venn diagram, that's money, income, whatever you want to call it, wealth. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you're in business and you're not looking to try to generate some money, you should reconsider. Maybe nonprofit might be better suited for you. Right. Then you think about the time. How much time is it going to take you to get this? And I know some very, very well to do. People that make a lot of money, that spend all of their time making that money, that's all they do. They're married to their jobs. Great for them. No judgment. But there's that third circle in the Venn diagram. It's passion or purpose or whatever you want to call it. For me, it's purpose. And if you have all the money to do all the purpose, but you have no time, it's hard. If you have all the time to do all your purpose, but you have no money to do it, it's also hard. I'm sure there's a book about this somewhere. Probably read this somewhere. I'm probably stealing it from someone. But what I'll tell you that Chick Fil A does so well, Josh, is that it hits right at the heart of that Venn diagram where an operator has the opportunity to generate an income while pursuing their passion and controlling their time while they're doing it. That is in essence what it is. And those are my words. Those aren't Chick Fil a's words, but 17 years as an operator, 25 years in the brand. I can tell you from personal experience, that is the secret sauce. It's the operator that is the secret sauce for Chick Fil A. We could talk about toolkits and systems and playbooks and all that, but the operators who runs it at the restaurant level. And so that to me is really what. That's it. That's the secret sauce.

Speaker A: And then you look at Truett Cathy as just a great example of someone that I think is essential to Chick Fil A and Chick Fil A success while being incredibly unnecessary for Chick Fil A's success. And I think that there's a really clear delineation there. Something that you had shared as a goal, which is fascinating because I think that, again, this is very counterintuitive, is that you described one of your goals as an operator is making yourself increasingly unnecessary to the success of the business. When I think that so many of us get joy from. From saying, you know, this thing lives or dies based on my individual contributions to this business.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How did you get there?

Speaker B: Well, so something that you said there, you said being essential or non essential, here's the value. And I, uh. Truett. Like what an example. Truett. Kathy was. Truett taught us that a good name matters more than anything else. A good name as individuals, a good name as restaurants, a good name as a brand. And so when you think about that type of visionary leadership, you follow somebody because you want to, because of who they are, not because they're telling you to do those things. That's level five leadership. I'm a John Maxwell guy. I love all the stuff that John has to say. And that's one of his books, is the Five Levels of Leadership. And level five is you follow somebody because of who they are to you. You don't have to hear what they have to say. You don't need to fear what's gonna happen if you don't do it. You want to do something because of cause, who someone is to you in your life. So that to me is the value of that.

Speaker A: So one of the things I want to dismiss before we get into the Next topic I want to cover is people could, like, hang up now, right? They could stop listening to the show and they'd be like, cool. Rob just wants to run one Chick Fil a. That's all he wants to do with his life. It's all he's done with his life, right? Full stop. That's not me. Those aren't my ambitions. I want to do many things in life. I want to do many big things in life. And if they just cut the conversation now, they would be wrong. Because you do have ambitions outside of Chick Fil A and you do have interests, and your career is incredibly dynamic. So I would ask you to describe, like, the other facets, uh, of your career as well, before we get into delegation.

Speaker B: Well, I appreciate you asking that, Josh. And if it's okay, the way I want to lead with that is, you know, the very first thing you should know about me is I'm a dad. My son, he's 15. I've got just a couple years left with him before he turns 18. I'm a single dad, so I get to spend a lot of one on one time with my son. Just that Venn diagram. I go back to my thing is that purpose piece and that timepiece, the money. Yep. It's great. But I really want to focus on those other two things. So, you know, you didn't ask, but yesterday was Father's Day, and, uh, I had an opportunity to do something really adventurous with my son. We do this thing every year where we try to go and visit Major League Baseball stadiums. We're trying to knock off all 30 stadiums before he turns 18. Up until this weekend, we were at 22 stadiums. So I had this crazy idea, all right, let's fly to Phoenix on Friday. We'll go to a Diamondbacks game. Then we'll fly to Colorado on Saturday and we'll go to a Rockies game. And we did that. But I'm like, you know, we're going to be in Colorado on Sunday. We got to do something interesting. What are we going to do, Josh? I decided we're going to go climb a mountain because we're in the Rocky Mountains. We did that yesterday morning. We got up at 3.30am we drove to Mount Bierstadt. We which is a 14er, if you are listening. And you know what that means. I did not know what that meant before I started planning this trip. I've never climbed a mountain before. I was not training to do it. I like to think I'm in pretty good shape. I try to take care of my health. But Yesterday we. At 10:45am we got to the summit of Mount Bierstadt, 14,062ft. And I got the chance to sit up on the top of that mountain with my son and just teach him some lessons, talk to him. Trying to catch our breath, of course. But we had an opportunity to just spend time together doing that. So that's the first thing I want you to know about me, is that I am, um, a dad. And I'm very passionate about anybody. Whether you're a business owner or you're. You're not a business owner, but you have kids. Being a good dad is really being a good parent. I mean, moms are so essential. But I'm not a mom, so I got to talk about how great it is to be a dad. So outside of Chick Fil A, I am a certified Maxwell Leadership Team member. I've actually been a part of John Maxwell's team for over six years now. And there are probably, I think, about 60,000 coaches. It's the largest leadership coaching organization in the world. Uh, I don't know all 60,000 of them. I know a couple hundred of them. But some of the most amazing, incredible leaders that I know are part of that organization. When I joined that team, I joined it as kind of a personal growth and development. I had no interest in trying to start my own coaching business or speaking or any training or anything like that. I just wanted to grow. And, uh, man, I had. I have gotten way more than my money's worth being a part of the team. Because as a part of that opportunity, I've had a chance to spend time with John, with other mentors that are a part of that team. I've had a chance to do some international trips with the Maxwell Leadership Team. I go and serve at the conferences each year. It has really stretched me beyond my limits that I ever thought I could have. Uh, so it's helped really build my own leadership capacity that's benefited me in my life with my son and my restaurant. The other thing that I get to do outside of Chick Fil A, and this, this is kind of part of Chick Fil A, but it's the nonprofit side of what I get to do. I'm, um, very passionate about serving we as a brand. Chick Fil A, we're getting bigger. And it's really difficult, as a company gets bigger for the people that are integral parts of that company to stay close together. You know, it's not a mom and pop shop anymore. There's 3,000 chick fil A's with 3,000 operators, give or take a few. And we don't all know each other anymore. So one of the ways that we here in the Washington D.C. area that we kind of have built a community around this is we, uh, decided to take on a service project with a nonprofit. Chick Fil A has a, uh, nonprofit that we partner with called Lifeshape. And what they do is they help operators find partners that they can do work with service work around the world. So they partnered us with a, uh, nonprofit called 410 Bridge. They're based in Alpharetta, Georgia, but they are present in, I think six countries now all over the world. And what they do is they help communities climb out of poverty. That's their goal. They're very holistic in how they do that. And what they do is they find folks that have a specialty in some area, whether maybe you're a doctor, you'll go and serve in medical missions. If you're a business owner, you'll go and serve doing leadership things or doing business trainings, and you can go on with that. So what we as operators did in D.C. is we got together and said, hey, let's part partner with 410 Bridge. Let's select a community or let's let them select a community for us. And so we were paired with a community in, uh, what's the name of the community is Muga, and it's about three hours north of Nairobi, Kenya. And what, uh, we get to do as a community of operators is we get to go on projects together, we get to bring team members with us, we get to go and serve in community. Spending time doing business trainings, leadership trainings, really just helping, encouraging this community as they work towards graduation to where they've kind of climbed out of that poverty line there. And we also do fundraisers in our restaurant to help support the community that we're serving there. And it really is just, it's about more than just a chicken sandwich. Right? Again, going back to what Truitt said, serving and knowing your community. And who is your community? Is it just the people that are like in, within the 5 mile radius of your restaurant? No, we're a global organization. We really want to make sure that we're making the world a better place. And so that's one of the ways we get to do that. And so that initiative is something that I was a part of, the foundation of that particular nonprofit initiative with our market. So those are some things, Josh. Those take some time. There's no income that comes from any of those other things. Chick Fil? A is the engine that drives everything else I get to do. But it is that passion piece that it really helps kind of fulfill that part of who I am as a person.

Speaker A: Well, and I wanted people to see how dynamic you are. Right. And all of the different things that you're working on. Because we're going to get into what is like a really interesting conversation about delegation. Because, uh, again, the central focus of Chick Fil? A, the whole thing is built around staying connected, which feels like the antithesis of delegation. But the reason I wanted to have you on the show is not just because I think you're a best in class operator. It's because I think you're an expert in delegation, which I would argue, uh, is a hurdle for the industry at large. For most entrepreneurs, but specifically to our industry, I think it's an even larger hurdle. How did you come upon the decision to commit to delegation? Because everybody's delegated in the past and Lord knows it's not pretty in the initial phases. So how did you decide not just that you were going to delegate, that you were going to stick with it until it worked?

Speaker B: Yeah, Josh, it is very, very difficult to delegate. And I think you hit the nail on the head in our industry. In the restaurant business. When I graduated from what we call Fundamentals of Restaurant leadership, it's the Chick Fil A university, if you will, for new business owners. With Chick Fil? A, they give you a couple mementos to kind of help remind you what your role is. And one of the things they gave us was a tasting spoon. You gotta taste it to make sure it's good. That's what a good restaurant owner does. Right. And if you're not there, it's really hard to taste it. So, you know, there's this idea that as a restaurant owner, uh, you have to be present all the time to make sure everything's running. But if you're going to scale, you're going to grow, whether it's your business or yourself and your own impact, you have to realize that you gotta just let go of the vine. And I got that from Gino Wickman from EOS Worldwide. I have implemented Eos at my restaurant. And that's one of his key principles. You gotta let go as an entrepreneur. If you're gonna really go up, you have to give up to give up, to go up. I think that's a John Maxwell saying, by the way. But you have to delegate. So as a new restaurant Owner. When I first took over a restaurant in my early 20s, it was a mall. There were 25, maybe 20 to 25 team members. We weren't doing crazy high volumes. It was a higher than average volume mall store. But the restaurant I had just left, where I was a manager, was one of the top restaurants in the country as far as sales were concerned. So I went from running this high powered sales machine to this tiny little mall that I kind of could twiddle my thumbs and be fine if I wanted to. But man, I had to get in the weeds as an operator and. And I had to get again back in the kitchen and you wearing a couple hats and you're doing a couple things. But I knew if I wanted to grow, I had to step back and find ways to make roles or make opportunities for people to kind of take on something so that I could then go and focus on something else. I was in the mall for seven years. I learned how to do that to where I completely had replaced myself in the mall setting. I didn't ha. Uh, the restaurant didn't rely on me for any operational needs. And then when I opened the Freestander, where I am now, I've been. This is my 10th year anniversary at, at the Freestand, the Chick Fil a here at Bowie Marketplace. And it's like square one. You're grand opening a restaurant. And Josh, I would assume you've grand opened some restaurants, right? You've. You've opened some. It is. I mean, I still have nightmares about.

Speaker A: Best case scenario is a shit show.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Yes. There you go. That's the best way to describe it. And you know, you have all of these things that have to happen by the deadline because the doors are going to open whether you're ready or not, they're coming. It's a great problem to have as a business owner, but it's super stressful. If you want to be a great business owner, if you want to run a great business, you want to make sure it's perfect. But perfection is really an enemy. It's one of my greatest enemies, honestly, because I want things to be as close to perfect as possible. That's where delegation really comes in. Because you know you can't do it all. You can't. I mean, uh, let's face it, if you're listening and you think you can do it all, just hit rewind and then play back the last five seconds again and just do that again until you realize you cannot do it all if you're a business owner. But you really shouldn't have to anyway. There are people in the world that are capable of taking the things you, you do and doing them not just the way you want them done, but better than you ever thought they could have been done. I think. And that's the secret behind delegation is the way you do things is only the way you do things. But when you delegate, you get to unlock the creativity and genius in someone else that you may never even thought existed. So for me, delegation is so, so important.

Speaker A: I think the hurdle for so many of us, I think it comes down to a few different things. Number one, uh, the type of delegation that I want to talk to you about specifically is like a VA or an ea, right? Like an executive assistant, like somebody that is helping you do your things. Because, like, we could talk about, uh, you know, delegation in terms of general manager and all of that. I think that makes a lot of sense to everyone, but I think makes this conversation really interesting is the opportunity to talk about how we amplify our own efforts. Efforts. You know, I can only speak for myself and for the people in my circle, but I come from a generation of restaurateurs that have absolutely no respect for their own time. I think that you could look at those of us in our 40s to 60s and say, hey, I could save you an extra 10 hours a week. And they would say, like, who cares? Like, I'm gonna work that I'm gonna work those hours anyway. Who cares about saving that kind of time? But you figured out something that I think most of us come too late or not at all, which is if you're able to amplify your efforts, every facet of your life gets better. And so what I want to start with is when you decided to begin to delegate the things that you were doing, right, These direct contributions as a restaurateur, as an entrepreneur, how do you figure out what to hand off when everything's urgent and everything's important? And let's get real, like, we are in a detail oriented industry. So like, everything is precious to us.

Speaker B: Yes, it really is. So when you were sharing that, Josh, something came to mind. Uh, I had a very, very good mentor. And I'll tell you, Josh, that that has gotta be something that anybody who strives to be good at anything in life, you have to have somebody that's better than you, that's guiding you along the way. Maybe somebody's a little farther down the path or, uh, has accomplished something. So Eric, he was my mentor. Eric passed away back in 2019. But one of the things that he left me with were these sayings that helped me kind of remember that there's a better way to do things. One of them was, you need to do what only you can do as a leader. And as you get busier, as you get more responsibility, there are going to be less and less things that only you can do as leader. But they're big. They're very, very important. You know, if you want to go and cut a deal with the local sports team for selling sandwiches in their arena, at some point, you're the only one that can go and do that. But then at some point, you've got someone on your team that you've developed to the point where they could probably go and do that better than you. And so you've got to let that go at some point in your organization. I think the heart of your question was, as a restaurateur, how do you replace yourself? How do you multiply what you yourself are doing? How, uh, do you extend your own time? And for me, again, just going back to my time learning with the Max Organization and learning from Gino at eos, I learned about executive assistants. And I really had never thought about them before I had spent any time in that world because I spent time with restaurant owners, and restaurants don't necessarily think that way. But, uh, we were challenged at an event I was at, we were challenged, hey, if you own your business, you are the CEO of your organization now. You might even have a franchise. But if you own that franchise location, you are the CEO of that location. Do you think of yourself as the CEO? They challenged my thinking on that. Then they said, think about CEOs and what they do with their time. Do you know any CEOs? I happen to know several CEOs. In fact, I've spent time with Chick Fil A executives fairly often over the years. There's certain things that I know that they just don't do. And all of them have executive assistants. And so it got me to asking myself the question, as an operator, why don't I have that? It's not wrong to not have it. But what could I do if I did have someone in my corner that kind of had eyes on my schedule, on my calendar, on my priorities that helped me stay accountable. And here's another thing, Josh, that people that aren't business owners don't understand is that when you are the business owner, you are the ultimate accountability for yourself. You'll have team members, you'll have customers, though you know they'll have needs, but ultimately you're the one that can keep yourself accountable to what you do. For me, the executive assistant became an added layer of accountability to where almost like I hired my own boss, right? My va. Her name is Mindy. And I have a, ah, fun back and forth with her about different things. And one of the things I sometimes I say, all right, boss, thanks, I appreciate that. Because I need that in my life. I need to make sure that someone knows the things I need to be doing. Because if not, there's the temptation. It's like, you know what, I'll get to that later. Like, nope, it's something you've got to do. The great thing about a va, though, a, uh, great va, Josh, is that when they see something that you shouldn't be doing, they'll say to you, hey, let me. Can I take that off your plate? Can I. You want me to handle that? Can I delegate that to someone else on your team? And it changed the world for me. Six years ago, five years ago. I think it was five years ago that I brought Mindy on. I worked through an organization, uh, Belay, Belay Solutions. That's where I found Mindy. I know there's a lot of executive assistant organizations out there, but Belay is where I was. I had the opportunity to partner with Mindy, and they were fantastic in helping me find someone that can help me address what I needed to address in my business and take things to the next level.

Speaker A: I want to ask about that, because you could have gone through upwork, right? And then just. It would have been like a crapshoot. But the reason that you chose to go with Belay, and I thought this was really, really interesting. It wasn't just about finding someone that could do the work, because there are a lot of people that could do the work. It was about trying to find someone that could work with you, Rob, and your disposition and the yin to your yang. And that's why you went with Belay was because you weren't trying. You were going. The way you explained was something around, like trying to go for fit as opposed to function. Explain it. Yeah.

Speaker B: Josh, I think a lot of your audience can probably relate to this analogy here. You know, if I need to hire a cashier, I can put an ad online for that. I can even do walk ins if I need to. I don't even need to advertise for that. I can rely on the fact that I'm going to have a steady stream of applicants coming in for different vital tasks. We can't do anything without our team members. In fact, the front lines, uh, at Chick Fil A is really what makes Chick Fil A who we are. Okay. I want to make sure that is very clearly stated at the front because our team members are fantastic. But there's so many great team member options out there. When I need to get to the manager level, I got to get a little bit more intentional about where I'm looking for managers for leaders, for people that can run my organization. And the more responsibility I need that person to have, the more intentional, the higher level quality I need in an individual that can handle all those different things. I am not a professional recruiter. I didn't sign up to be in the HR business. I'm in the checking business. Right. But there's recruiting agencies out there that can and have over the years helped me recruit great leaders because that's what they do. And what they do, Josh, you said it perfectly. They're not looking for function necessarily as much as they're looking for fit. They're looking to make sure that that person can mesh well with you as the owner, with your brand, with what you're doing. We can teach them how to do all that other stuff, you know, the closing and the opening. But really finding those high quality leaders that can do what it is. So when it comes to executive assistance, you have things like upwork, which I did kind of consider that. But when you think of, you know, with at the time, it was probably 12 or 13 years of restaurant experience when I brought on my VA. I have had horror stories, Josh, of looking for high quality people in all the wrong places. Not relying on recruiting agencies or relying on, you know, great looking for that fit. Look, just you gotta get somebody, get em in the door and we'll figure it out afterwards. No, it really matters who someone is if you give them a great level of responsibility. What greater level of responsibility do we have as business owners than managing our own time? And that is I think a crucial reason why uh, an organization like Belay is so uh, vital in helping a business owner find someone. You can spend hours and hours and hours and hours on upwork trying to find somebody experimenting. It can get real costly or you can one shot. Mindy was the first person we interviewed and she stayed with me and she's been with me ever since.

Speaker A: I want to talk about the cost because like to say the quiet part out loud. I think that like the biggest hesitation for so many of us is that ah, like the money that I could pay Mindy, I Could just give to myself. It's the delineation between trying to figure out in your mind, is Mindy an investment or is Mindy an expense, right? Does Mindy cost you money or does Mindy make you money? Because that's the hurdle, right?

Speaker B: It is until you think of it this way. How much is one hour of your time worth as a business owner? And this is something as a listener of your show? You know, I'd say reflect on this for a minute. How much are you worth? How much is an hour of your time worth to you? Maybe put a dollar amount next to that. Figure that out, right? If you could double that amount in, put a number next to it a year, how would that make you feel when you have an assistant? It's like doubling the value of your own time, right? M. I wouldn't say that Mindy's ever physically made me any money. She's never worked a register. She does. She doesn't even live near me. She lives in North Carolina. She's been to my restaurant, I think three times in five years. But she runs my leadership team meetings virtually so that I can actually participate instead of me having to run them. She knows all of my leaders and is a part of all of our group messages. She manages my calendar. She answers my emails. Everyone that interacts with me at some point has interacted with Mindy, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly. Because I, uh, tell her sometimes, hey, can you answer this in my voice? Because this is an important, you know, I don't want someone to feel like they're being handed off to someone that's not me because relationships are really important in this business. But my time is also important. So if there's something that you can do in my voice, I'd like for you to try and do that. And yeah, it is an investment. It's an expense. I don't want to use the word expensive because if you don't see yourself as valuable, your time, then yeah, sure, you could say, oh, man, that's a lot of money. But you're worth so much more. Your time is worth so much more. And you think about those three circles in the Venn diagram, only one of them is money. What would you do if you could make the time one bigger? What would you do with your that passion one if you had more time? So to me, Josh, uh, it's a no brainer as a CEO, but people have to come to terms with the fact that it does cost money to invest in yourself, right? I mentioned I'm a part of a leadership organization. Uh, John Maxwell. I'm not a leadership coach. I don't generate any income from coaching. But yet I spend quite a bit, um, of money investing in that because for me, growth and I think this is something I wanted to make sure I share with you. You know, if you want to be a business owner, you got to grow, right? As a business you have to grow your business, grow your sales, grow your income, grow all that, right? But if you don't grow yourself, at some point you're gonna hit a plateau, you're gonna hit a lid. We call it the law of the lid in the Maxwell world. And if you hit that lid, it's really, really hard, if not impossible for you to grow your business anymore. So, uh, if in order for you to grow your business, you must first grow you, you have to do that.

Speaker A: Don't you feel like the biggest hurdle there? And I, I only, I can only speak for myself. Is guilt and shame the equivalent that I would give you is this, Rob? Like, no. Anyone listening? Right. If I told them that their walk in cooler was broken, they would not hesitate to invest in getting it fixed. If I told them that their walk in cooler was underperforming, that it wasn't as cold as it could be, that it wasn't running as efficiently as it could be, no one would hesitate to, to invest that money in optimizing the walk in cooler. And then you turn to people and you say, hey, listen, I don't think that you are fully optimized. I don't think you're working towards your potential. I think there are so many other things that you could contribute to this business or to this community. And you're going to need to invest your time and your effort in trying to get to the next level. Everyone will be like, oh my God, I don't have that money. I'm not going to spend that money. And I think it's because we could say whatever we want to say out loud. But I think internally, consciously or subconsciously, we don't think we're worth the same investment as a walk in cooler.

Speaker B: I tell you what, one of my leaders, his name is Steven, I'm going to quote him this is one of my favorite sayings. He said, hey, Rob, scared money doesn't make money. And so it's like if you want to earn more, whether it's time or, you know, opportunities, you have to grow in order to grow, you have to invest. So for me it's a no brainer.

Speaker A: And so Talk to me about the first month, the first year, and then present day with Mindy. Because I, uh, would hate for you to set the expectation out the gate that, like, you met Mindy, right? All of these birds were swirling above both of your heads, and she just came into your business. And within a week, everything was running perfectly.

Speaker B: So I will tell you, and, uh, I don't know if I'm an anomaly, but I told you my origin story, Josh. One day I was hired at McDonald's, Papa John's and Chick fil a. And those are my three places I've ever worked. And I did one interview for all three of them. And I hired the same day and started. And things have just really worked out for. For me in some ways. Mindy was the first Vi I ever interviewed. And we just hit it off. The chemistry was there. And chemistry is so important when it comes to someone who's going to work with you directly. So we hit it off chemistry wise, from a standpoint of just how we interacted. She understood, she anticipated needs. She was very intentional about understanding what was important to me. She's never made it about herself. Now I'm very. I'd like to think, uh, you know, EQ is something that's very important to me. I want people to feel seen and heard and cared for. You know, sometimes I'm asking her, like, hey, can I do something for you to help take this off your plate? And she's like, rob, that's what you paid me for. Like, you don't need to help me. I'm here to serve you, right? It's such a Chick fil a thing. Like, we're here to serve, right? So the first day or first week, I had no idea what I was going to do with Mindy. Didn't have a blueprint for this. I don't know of any other operator that had a VA at the time. I know that there are some now that have them. I'm sure there were, but I didn't know who they were. So we spent the first month just kind of trying to understand what the priorities were. And if you were to judge just that first month by how much I was spending for that first month, you would have probably tried to find out a way how you can get out of the contract. And I guess Belay is smart how they wrote the contract. Cause you can't just get out of the contract. You gotta pay the full amount if you do. So it's like, uh, I'm locked in. I gotta do this. Let me Figure this out or else. So we spent probably about three months experimenting, trying to understand, you know, what amount of time something should take. Where we landed was calendar, my calendar. How I'm really set up to day by day, am I? No, two days, excuse me, are the same. No, two days for me are the same. Tomorrow I'm hosting a training call online for about 300 leaders. The next day I'm going to be at a chamber of commerce doing a teaching of, uh, a training Chick Fil A for everything. Right. I think Thursday I'm going to be spending time with my leadership team at the restaurant, doing some stuff, doing, uh, a walkthrough of some things. So there's no two days of the same. And there's a lot of people that are trying to reach me. Just as the community business owner of the Chick Fil A, you get a lot of people asking, hey, you know, can you come to our event and do this? Hey, can you tell me about your catering options? Can you do this? Hiring, training, all of the things that go into running a business slash restaurant. A lot of moving pieces, right? So knowing where I needed to be and what I needed to do and making sure I was never late because you get one chance to make a first impression and that's it. And so being on time and being present, being prepared, those were really important things to me. So calendar was one, the other one, emails. And I'll tell you, this is a big one. I think for restaurant owners. I know hundreds of Chick Fil A operators. Email can be so overwhelming, so overwhelming. Because it's just there, but it's not open. And when you click that thing and it's open and you see, you know, 400 unread messages, your brain can just turn into spaghetti. It's just like, ugh, uh, and just close it. Cause it goes away once you close it, right? Or at least that's the thinking before you have a va. But when I started working with Mindy, those are the first two things she tackled. And then I'd say the third. I think I mentioned three. The third thing was really just integrating her into my upper level leadership. I had three upper level leaders at the time and I really wanted them to understand what I was doing, that I wasn't stepping away from the business, that I was bringing in a partner that could help me stay accountable to them and to myself and to give them another access point to me. Because if I'm in something and they need to reach me, I mean, I don't want to feel like, they gotta wait for me. They can go right to Mindy and she's there to serve. So those three things, just those three things is what we focused almost all of our time and attention on for the first six months. And Josh, uh, it was like the clouds lifted and the sun came out and birds were singing just how you described it earlier. It was, it was like that six months after starting with her, and it's been amazing ever since then. So if I had to say what present day is, because we've moved from day one to three months to six months, Mindy, she actually is now my own personal executive assistant. I bought her contract out from Belay. I said, look, I want Mindy and I just to be exclusive. So it's just her and me working together. So she prepares for me and a full out, full blown branded itinerary. It's two pages long of every week. She sends it to me Sunday night, she's like, here's your week, we'll talk tomorrow. We meet Mondays and Fridays, and that's something we established early on. Josh. We always met twice a week. We met at the start of the week and the end of the week to review what we needed to do and to review what we did. So it was like that cadence of start, finish. We still do that. But she's got this itinerary. It helps me remember team member birthdays or operator birthdays. I, um, record a video message for every team member on their birthday, wish them happy birthday. If I have to travel, she'll have my itinerary for what my travel is. She does book my travel for me. If I have meetings, she'll tell me what the meeting is. She'll tell me what I need to have to bring to the meeting, what I need to do to prepare for the meeting. You know, I was on time for this call Josh, today because Mindy had it in there that today I had to be in front of this computer with you at 5:00, my time. So there are just, uh, so many benefits. And so for the leadership side of things at my restaurant, she interacts now with my entire leadership team where she's a part of the group chat. She anytime a message comes through there, if it's something that needs my attention, she'll screenshot it and send it to me. If she sees something come through an email, I don't ever have to open my email inbox. She will either text me, call me, or screenshot something that needs my attention. And then she'll say, how do you Want me to respond to this? She knows my voice by now to where she can write something almost perfectly in my voice. If it's high importance, if it's something I want to make sure I have eyes on before she sends it. She'll put it in the drafts we work on. We use todoist. So she pops in things in todoist and that by the end of the day, I need to finish my todoist. Um, I'm telling you, Josh, it's like having a boss all over again. But it's so much different than day one, and it's so much better because it helps me make sure that everything that needs to happen, not just for me, but not just for my team, but for the customers and everything else that all the whole ecosystem, she's just such a crucial piece. Having a VA can help a very busy entrepreneur that has other things they're doing, stay on track so that someone always has eyes on that part of it.

Speaker A: And I would assume that, you know, in working so closely with someone else and seeing your business through their eyes. I can remember Deja is my head of client success, and we did, when we initially got together was I just gave her access and visibility into everything. And she kept asking all these questions, which goes back to what you had mentioned at the top of the conversation. And she was like, why do you do this? Why do you do that? Why is this structured like this? And the answer was, I was working by myself. I was incredibly overwhelmed. I needed to make a split second decision that is how I did things. And I haven't thought about why ever since that moment. Talk to me about how in working with someone else that has the same visibility into the business that you do, how that's changed the way you see your own businesses.

Speaker B: I'm going to go back to the accountability piece. Have you ever been in a situation where you told somebody something and then maybe a week or so later you told them something completely different? Not intentionally, but just like your feelings on the matter changed, but you're saying it the second time as if it's the first time in your own mind, and then they look at you like you're crazy. Well, that's Mindy for me. Uh, she'll get my opinion on something, a decision I need to make, and I'll share what it is. And then when we move forward, I might challenge her on something that we've decided upon. It's like, hey, well, hey, what about this? And she's like, wait, no, no, you said this. And she'll remind me what I said and why I said it. I don't know that she's necessarily taking notes of every word I say, but she's just so good at what she does that she can make sure that anything I do is really thought through very thoroughly. It's not to say that we don't still have, you, uh, know, decisions that come through and aren't all the way formed by the time we make them, because in the business world, you gotta move fast. You really do. Once you get in a situation where you have to take weeks before you make a decision, you miss opportunities. A lot of doors close in that amount of time. Like for hiring, you gotta. If you find a good applicant, you better make an offer within 24 hours of you interviewing them. Otherwise there's probably somebody else that already found them. In our roles, time and speed is so important. And making good decisions in a short amount of time, quickly, it just helps you set yourself apart as a business owner, as an organization. By the way, I have more than 120 team members now, so wishing everybody a happy birthday. It, uh, used to be a lot easier in the mall, but it's a lot of happy birthdays videos every a year.

Speaker A: Last question for you. What should we steal from you? What are the tactics, the tools, the strategies that have made you a successful entrepreneur, one of the most successful Chick fil a operators out there? Like, what are the tactics, tools and strategies that have served you well that we could internalize and enjoy the benefits of as well?

Speaker B: There's a saying. It's one of my favorites. I'm trying to remember who said it. I want to say maybe it was Jim Rohn, but it might not have been him. And it says that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. You have to surround yourself with people that are going to push you to be a better person. Uh, let me say it this way because I think in the world we live in, Josh, wellness, not just physical wellness, but mental wellness and emotional wellness is such an important thing, especially for business owners, especially for restaurant owners. It's probably the hardest business owners on ourselves. So when I say surround yourself with people that push you to be better, what I mean by that is push you to be the best version of who you need to be. It's, uh, not saying that you need to lose all your friends if your friends aren't that that way. But it's asking yourself, where are you spending your time? Who are you spending your time with? I had a mentor once that challenged me on, you know, my friends group and said, you know, who are you learning from? And I, uh, told him, and I was like, okay, well, how do you get yourself around people that you want to be like or that you aspire to be the things that they do. You want to do things like that? How do you do that? I said, I don't know how to get close to them. Um, he said, well, you spend time with people like that when you're in books or you're in podcasts, or you're, you know, you're doing. You're watching stuff on YouTube, learning, you're spending time in class learning from people who have gone before you and done great things. So you don't necessarily have to physically surround yourself with people to learn from them. You can have a group of people you're learning from. Something I started doing years ago is I would select a group of either authors or podcasters or people who I wanted to listen to, to learn from. And so I try to always have two or three people that are on my radar that when something comes out from them, I'm gonna. I'm gonna just eat it up because that's who I wanna surround myself with. So that's the first thing I'd say, Josh, is to surround yourself with people that are gonna push you to be the best version of you. The second thing I will say is, man, just stay hungry. Once you've, as a business owner, start to feel like you've made it, you're there. The way John Maxwell says is, if you ever think you're finished, you're done. I don't know how to say it better than that.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You. You can't ever stop being hungry if you want to keep growing. So stay hungry. It's a great thing for restaurant owners. It's a great analogy, right? You know, it's what we. We do. We should never get sick of our own product, right? Because we don't want customers to ever get sick of it. So, you know, stay hungry. And then the third thing I'd say is really understanding your why, your purpose, that third circle in the Venn diagram that I talked about, because that's the one that brings true contentment, true happiness. It really is. You could make all the money in the world. You could have the most successful restaurant in the world. You could do all the things. But if you don't know why you're doing all of it, if you don't have that purpose piece figured out, it's not gonna feel whole and I've been there. And so I'll tell you that as you think about this fellow business owner, fellow restaurant friends, know your why Simon Sinek says that, right? That's he's he was one of my people I wanted to spend the most time with at one point. He still is a great leader. He's got some great content out there, but really understanding your why. Another great one for me, Jeff Henderson. If you've never heard of Jeff Henderson, he's an author, a speaker, he's part of the Maxwell world. He's actually, uh, now he's an executive with Chick Fil? A. He's part of the learning development with us. He wrote a book called for and it's about knowing what you're for. What do you want to be known for as a person? It's a really great book. I'd encourage you to pick it up if you can. But really, just knowing that third circle in the Venn diagram, that's Rob Herold.

Speaker A: To learn how to delegate like Rob, check out the free step by step guide included in the show notes. Hey, it's Josh. I wanted to take a hot minute to thank you for listening to today's episode and to ask that if you are getting value from full comp, please like and subscribe and be sure to leave a review. Those reviews matter and they help other independent owners and operators find the show. Also, if you want to take the stuff that we're talking about in these episodes, from idea to every execution, head to joshopel.com there you will find a ton of free templates and tools and all of the details on upcoming learning events so you can keep building momentum. I know you're busy and so I don't take your time for granted. Thank you again for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.