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- [00:00]
James D. White
Leaders have to have a teachable point of view. They're storytellers. They invest in their team, so they're teachers. They're active learners, so they're curious, so they stay curious. And they're always looking to build capabilities.
- [00:18]
Podcast Host/Producer
Transformational, successful, motivational. James D. White is the former CEO and president of Jamba Juice. He led the company during the 2008 financial crisis, transforming it from a struggling smoothie shop into a global, active lifestyle brand.
- [00:34]
James D. White
You give people a chance to come on board, but at some point, you've got to free up people's future to go do something else.
- [00:41]
Podcast Host/Producer
James has also held senior leadership roles at Coca Cola, Gillette, Safeway, and Nestle Purina.
- [00:47]
James D. White
And if you make an investment as a leader teacher, I think you can often be very surprised.
- [00:53]
Podcast Host/Producer
He has also served as a board member on over 20 public and private boards. His experience in business as a CEO and board chair makes him a cultural architect with more than 30 years of experience leading some of the world's most iconic consumer, retail, and restaurant brands.
- [01:07]
James D. White
People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- [01:10]
Podcast Host/Producer
Get ready. This conversation will change the way you think about leadership, company culture, and management.
- [01:21]
Tommy
All right, guys, this is going to be very exciting today. Welcome to the Mellow Millionaire. I got James D. White here. James is an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience leading some of the world's most iconic consumer, retail and restaurant brands. As a former chair, president CEO of Jamba Juice, he transformed the company from a smoothie shop into a global health and wellness brand. James, I'm so happy you're here today.
- [01:44]
James D. White
Tommy, I'm thrilled to be here.
- [01:46]
Tommy
This is going to be awesome. You know, we were just chatting a little bit about. The main thing we're going to talk about today is culture and, you know, building leadership. We talked about building a leadership engine, and I was just explaining, like, it was so much easier. And I. I can imagine as Subway grew and all these other things that these consumer brands and restaurants and everything that you guys, you have done in the past, the. The biggest, bigger it gets, the harder it is to kind of manage it all.
- [02:16]
James D. White
Absolutely. I mean, the main thing that you have to do is you've got to be able to replicate yourself. One of the things we focus on in this book and we actually believe as the world has gotten more complex, it's even harder to do. And it's the thing that people focus the least on is how do you maintain and grow and scale culture? One of the women that we Interviewed in the book, she talks about breakpoints of scale and when the comp at 50 people you can lead in a certain way and maintain a culture, there's a break point at about 500 people, there's another break point at a thousand, and there's a break point at several thousand people. And most times leaders don't think about the cultural kind of breakpoints where you've got to lead installation different kind of systems as you scale.
- [03:07]
Tommy
Tell us a little bit about your book.
- [03:10]
James D. White
The the book is Culture Design, written with my really dynamic daughter. So Krista White is kind of my co author on the book. We interviewed a dozen or so just fantastic leaders of culture for the book. The pillars of the book was know what matters, do what matters, measure what matters. And we do this interesting thing with the book where we try to make sure we capture the cross generational aspects of this work. So we do James's notepad and Krista's note app to kind of delineate our different points of view in the book. And we go back and forth. Every chapter of the book has, you know, kind of takeaway lessons. We, we close the the book with this African proverb that says as leaders we want to plant seeds that grow trees that'll create shade that we might never experience. And that's really that kind of sums up what I believe as a leader and what I think my legacy will be from a leadership perspective. And then one of the other quotes in the book describes culture as the software that the companies that a company runs on.
- [04:34]
Tommy
I love it. Well, I'm going to read it. I was really doing a lot of research on you and one of the biggest things that you did is Java Juice. I don't know, they weren't really doing great. I'm jumping right into it. But what were the biggest things that you had to sit back, observe? What are some of the biggest challenges you needed to confront?
- [04:53]
James D. White
Right in the beginning 2008, I was hired. I had friends of mine said, james, we knew you wanted to be CEO, but why would you take this job kind of in this moment? And it was really driven by two things. One, I felt like the Jamba brand deserved to exist. It played a critical role in people's lives. And I actually felt like from a leadership perspective I'd be able to not only turn around, but transform the company if I could hit on the right levers from a leadership perspective in that first, you know, really important first six months on the job. And what I did up front is I did just an audit of all the stakeholders. So one of the first places I started was in a town hall. Town hall in our support center. And I asked three simple questions. And this is one of the things that we do in our consulting practice. What should we start doing, what should we stop doing, and what should we continue doing? And then kind of the bonus question, what's the advice you'd have for me as CEO? And those four really important questions. And we did that same kind of process with consumers. We did that same process out in our stores. And our general managers actually know the most about, you know, how the customers are experiencing the company and the policy and the strategies that are coming out of headquarters. From a leadership perspective, we did it with board members. We were a public company, so we also did it with investors.
- [06:26]
Tommy
So one of the things I always get, and I'm curious your perspective, like, the way I hire is I hire people that dream big and they want to win. Like, it's a super competitive environment. My technicians also have to do the sales. They have to be. They have to do the work. And they need to be pretty good savvy on an iPad. Sure. And I tell them there's no such thing here as tenure.
- [06:47]
James D. White
And one of the.
- [06:48]
Tommy
On the survey, I realized that guys say, you know, they don't like sales and they don't like to have to sell things, and they think we might charge too much. Even though we have five options for every client. We could be the builder grade. We go all the way to the top of the line. Everyone knows what we make each month. Everybody. Everybody sees who's number one at this. There's scorecards for every department.
- [07:07]
James D. White
I think the only advice that I might have is you might have people in the organization that are better suited to different kinds of roles. Yeah. As you scale, there might be process kind of solves and interventions that allows you to capitalize on an expertise that you didn't need when you started, that you certainly need as you've moved outside of this greater Phoenix, kind of Arizona marketplace, in the multiple other markets, you.
- [07:39]
Tommy
Know, we just passed 1100 people, and I'm excited about that number, But I still feel like we're just in the. Barely starting the first inning. Like, I'm not burnt out. I got more energy. I feel like we're just in the fetal stages. I love that we're going to break it a bunch. I'm like, let's fail forward. Let's continue to make mistakes. I'm not waiting for the perfect day to get started. I'm Ready, fire, aim. And it's tough to work with a person like me because I'm very impatient and. But at the same time, I'm like, sometimes you got to take two steps back.
- [08:08]
James D. White
I think that's a benefit. I mean, the thing we talk about in the book, we've kind of built the book on kind of three pillars, knowing what matters. So the context really matters. So the context of your business in Arizona, how I sell, how the business operates, is maybe different than in another state. So the context matters on the macro basis and then doing what matters. So the processes. So even the processes of executing this book, executing this business with excellence might look a little different. You know, kind of the final pillar is you measure what matters. So the measurement systems. And there might be some nuanced measurements that are different in another geography that sits outside of this home.
- [08:55]
Tommy
Did you have different ones at Jamba?
- [08:57]
James D. White
You'd have nuance measurements that might account for the consumer, the different mix in products. So you talked about pricing. So the pricing sensitivity might be different in one geography versus another geography. I don't know if that's true or not.
- [09:15]
Tommy
Well, for us, it's interesting because I've got 20 guys that I could send to any market. It's the same price book across the board. We've got three different brands. We've got a one Dons and Garage Door Doctor. And all you need to do is change your shirt and get a different van. Everything's the same. And I've sent them to Detroit, I sent them to Atlanta, I sent them to Dallas, I sent them to Albuquerque. I sent the same guys into Portland. I sent the same guys in, you name it, St. Louis. And I get the same exact result.
- [09:45]
James D. White
So for those 20 people, how do we capture the best of what they always do and institutionalize it? Because you can't scale a system based on you or me or an individual. We've got to figure out how to scale ourselves. So you've actually gotta be able to institutionalize the best practices from those 20 leaders. And we've done that in what we call kind of action learning, where we literally document kind of step by step what the best of our leaders look like. Think about how do they prepare, what do they focus on, and what you have the opportunity to do, if you can then train and build systems to that you up the level of the play of the whole team.
- [10:36]
Tommy
How important does recruiting play with. When you were at Jamba Juice to get people that actually wanted to smile and say, how's your day? Right Instead of like acting like and say now I gotta go to work.
- [10:46]
James D. White
Well, I think the recruiting is really, really important because you've got to have people that really fit your culture and actually elevate the culture. So there is a set of skills and capabilities just based on your experience where you know this profile is going to do better.
- [11:06]
Tommy
Did you do personally profiling?
- [11:10]
James D. White
We did a bit of that to really understand who's going to really excel with our guests, with our customers, where we could, you know, distill the attributes that we're going to be more favorably disposed to doing a great job as general managers or in the employee, you know, kind of guest relationship area.
- [11:31]
Tommy
Is there any ones that you like? There's like the disc profile. There's Myers Briggs, there's, there's. I've probably used 10 of them.
- [11:37]
James D. White
I've used all of them across my career. But if you can distill it down to the personal attributes to things like curiosity, storytelling is becoming far more important. Like you. I started in sales, so my first job was selling minute made orange juice kind of up and down the street. And the rejections are actually where you learn the most. Yeah, you know, obviously we have some of the attributes that we all kind of lean on. Ex athletes tend to do well in any kind of sales oriented professions. Like you. I'm from a middle class family, Midwest, St. Louis. I was the first member of my family to graduate from college. So there, so there's some of that that I always have looked for in terms of the employees that excel and do the best because they, they bring a desire and kind of a hunger to do better, you know, kind of every single day.
- [12:41]
Tommy
You know, for me that's happened a lot in my life too is where people said there's no chance. You don't understand a chance. Is that a good place to think you to drive from?
- [12:51]
James D. White
I think it's an interesting place to drive from. You can't live there is what I would say.
- [12:56]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [12:57]
James D. White
You know, so early in my career I knew I could outwork the next person. But were I really separated is when I learned that I could apply that same work ethic to outlearning people.
- [13:12]
Tommy
Right.
- [13:13]
James D. White
I always talk about once I applied the work ethic to knowing that when I finished my work in college that that was just kind of a beginning to the learning. And I've always been a really, just a constant learner.
- [13:31]
Tommy
Very curious.
- [13:32]
James D. White
Yeah, the curious, the writing of the books. There's something that I learned early on that I've tried to Pass on to my kids. If you focus on one topic for five years, you can actually make yourself one of the foremost experts in whatever that area is. Just that relentless focus on a particular area, you know, allows you to kind of really separate. And I've done that with the writing of this book. I've done that in my work in the boardroom. So I spent the last decade learning everything I could about the, the. The art and kind of craft of board governance. So I've sat on public and private company boards for 20 years, significant leadership roles in. In the boardroom, and have been able to translate that, really having an impact on the lives of both leaders, the CEOs that I work with, the board colleagues that I sit with, and importantly, those companies that I've served on the boards of. And all of that has kind of really led me to this book around culture and the really need for organizations to spend as much time thinking about culture and people as they do about the financial returns of the company. Because the sustainability of any company or culture is the investment that we make in the people. I know you built a people first environment here, which I applaud.
- [15:09]
Tommy
Yeah, you know what? It's a work in progress. What I'm learning is you can't make everybody happy.
- [15:16]
James D. White
Yeah. You've got to find a way to replicate yourself. I'll tell you just one. One of my driving stories, and I talk about it almost whenever I speak. I was tracked to the slow class coming out of the fourth grade. I ended up being tracked to the slow class in the fifth grade. And my mom's intervention about dreaming bigger and not accepting someone else's expectation has been a driver for me in a twofold way. It drives how I show up, but it drives how I think about what, what. What the human capacity looks like and what people are capable of.
- [15:54]
Tommy
You know, the scary thing for me that I think about a lot, James, is I don't have kids yet. But God's been very good to us. I mean, we live in a nice house. We could do whatever we want, whenever we want. I didn't have that. Mom worked three jobs. I had to go make it. I was shoveling snow, mowing lawns. I was washing dishes a year before I was legally able to at $4 an hour. And I think is when I bring up kids is I want them to have, you know, a man's search for meaning. I want them to have purpose, but I don't want them to just be a trust fund.
- [16:26]
James D. White
I love that. And there's kind of an interesting story to me, right. I've written two. This is my second book, Culture Design, written with my daughter. And my daughter is a theater kid. You know, got an undergraduate degree in theater from the University of, from Columbia University in New York City. I think maybe the last thing she would have envisioned is being in business like dad. But six, seven years ago, we found a common passion around working with companies, started doing some projects. We wrote book one, ended up into book two. But the lessons that we've shared across generations, she's just been a fantastic kind of counterbalance and she brings a. A genera, a different generation perspective. I'm a, I'm a fan of fatherhood and having kids. And you'll be fantastic.
- [17:24]
Tommy
You know, my casket, I don't want to be the biggest garage door best businessman. I want to say the most curious. He meant what he said he was going to when he said he was going to do it. And he's the best dad ever. Here's a selfish question, and I know you're going to say both, but if you had to pick one, do you put your marriage or being a father, which one do you put above?
- [17:43]
James D. White
It's really both. What I try, the way I try to live my life is I come from humble beginnings, and I've never, never lost that. I never lose it. Any room that I walk into, I don't take it for granted. It impacts how I show up slightly differently each year. But it's really about the legacy. It's about being able to make difference. I want to be a fantastic husband and a great dad, but it's really about the family. One of the interesting things that we've done recently is we do this vision back. So I've started, you know, Ron and I have started to write a 2030 plan for the family where we envision where we'll be in 2030.
- [18:34]
Tommy
And what does that look like? Is that because I always talk about my success, family and friends, family, faith, fitness, finance, future self and fun. Those are kind of my six buckets. And it's off balance on purpose. But my question for you would be, is 2030, is it like if there's more grandkids, is it where we went to where we traveled together?
- [18:56]
James D. White
It's really, it's really all of those things is what are the experiences that we want to have? Experiences that we want to have as a family? What do we want our health to. To. To look like? So for me, I'm a prostate cancer survivor, and one of the things I'm proud of in 2017. And this was ahead of the prostate cancer. I, I, I started kind of marking the health I wanted to have and I turned 65 in December. I've done a hundred thousand push ups every year. I, I moved across the million push up mark since 2017 I work out.
- [19:35]
Tommy
Four to five days a week. I lift a lot of heavy weights, like really heavy. My long walks are what I miss the most. They change everything I get in my own head. Well, you're thinking, I'm thinking, I'm not on the phone and I'm brisk walking. I'm getting the exercise three mile walk every day. And that's the one thing that I'm like, man, I can't wait to get that back because I've, I've, I'm a body at rest days at rest. And I realized I could, I'm sleeping like crazy.
- [20:01]
James D. White
Seven, eight hours is the right place to be. And that's still a big aspiration.
- [20:07]
Tommy
So you started at Coca Cola working in sales and early management roles. Then you moved to Nestle, Gillette and Safeway before Jamba Juice. What was your dream? What was your goals? What were you thinking when you started again?
- [20:22]
James D. White
Much like you first member of my family to work in a professional job so you only know what you can see. And if you can't see it in your family, you have to be inspired kind of other ways. So for me, I felt really fortunate landing a job with one of the greatest companies on the planet, the Coca Cola company, right out of university. So that was a big deal. And as I could see more opportunities, my aspirations grew and they continued to grow. Never would my ambition have been to be CEO of a public company. I could see that I could apply the leadership lessons that I had learned along the way. My first leadership job was at the age of 24. And all the guys that work for me and they happened to be all men at that time. For me at Coca Cola were 10 to 15 years my senior. And one of the early lessons that I learned is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And I was always able to, you know, from that early stage on be able to get discretionary effort from my teams in that career. And I always invested in people. I always look at what are the strengths, what are the gifts. And I want to play the people that I work around to their strengths. And my job as leader is unlocking the full potential in my team individually and collectively. And it gets back to this point around building a leadership Pipeline, a leadership engine where you're actually building capability intentionally into the team.
- [22:08]
Tommy
What are the largest leadership qualities that you try to focus on and build? I'm just curious if you got, like, a list of, like, where. Because leadership could be a lot of things.
- [22:19]
James D. White
Yeah. Just from a philosophical perspective. Leaders have to have a teachable point of view. The force multiplier for me, from a career perspective was when I learned that if the more I invested in building real capabilities in myself, the better leader I'd be to the organization. Whether I was running a division, a unit, or the company, a CEO. You can build capabilities that really make a difference from a leadership perspective. If you stay curious, how important.
- [22:55]
Tommy
I've always said I was 22 years old in a CPA. He only had 10 clients. They were all multi. Multimillionaires. I didn't have a penny to my name, not a whole lot. And he said, hey, I don't know why, but I really like you, kid. He's like, you just seem, like, fascinating. You seem excited about life. He goes, when's the. What's the last book you read? I said, to Kill a Mockingbird. And he said, would you want to read a book? I said, I'm not really much of a reader. He goes, this is called the E. Myth by Michael Gerber. He goes, I think you'll really dig it, man. I came back two days later. I said, what else? He goes, I call this the Red Bible. It's called the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. And this happened over and over. And he's like, do you like reading now? I'm like, I didn't know there was books like this. And all of a sudden, I figured out, like, people that genuinely like to read and they find a liking to it. How do you build that? Like, wanting to learn?
- [23:49]
James D. White
I think it's just. It's like exercising. I mean, once you learn the benefits of it. I mean, so it's interesting. Like, the big unlock book for me was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And I listened to it for six months. So my first job at Coke, you know, driving all over southeast, southwest Missouri, and I'm literally programming myself listening to that book. But I learned if I'm going to spend time in the car driving to my next sales call, I might as well learn something. So back in those days, I'd read 30 books a year.
- [24:25]
Tommy
When you stepped in as the CEO of Jamba Juice in 2008, when the company and the. The country were dealing with all this stuff, I mean, it sounds like you were confident you could turn it around. But what was the most, I'll say controversial or hard thing of becoming the CEO? Obviously you stepped into a mess in a lot of ways. What do you think was the hardest thing?
- [24:43]
James D. White
Really, the, the biggest challenge was the clock was running. So I, I knew I had about really six months to really turn this thing around or it wouldn't get turned around. And it's because of the confluence of the economy. The company was literally running out of capital. So I needed to one, adjust the strategy so that we can continue to be a going concern. But also I needed to be able to secure enough confidence from investors that, hey, this guy and this team could turn the company around. And that was really driven by the focus on the culture and the, and the customer is, is where I decided to focus. And I knew if I could keep us healthy enough for six months, we'd be able to figure out over the long haul. I'd had lots of success across a range of different businesses over time.
- [25:43]
Tommy
What, how many locations and people under management did you have?
- [25:49]
James D. White
As I finished up, we had about 7, 800 locations. And we were, you know, global at the. We weren't global when I started. We ended up in South Korea, the Philippines and other international markets. We became more oriented to franchising towards the end of my tenure. So you've actually got to be able to have a strong kind of core foundation.
- [26:18]
Tommy
And was it, was it a corporate owned?
- [26:20]
James D. White
We were. When I started, we were probably 70% company owned. By the time I finished up, we were the reverse of that, about 30, 40% company owned, 60% franchise.
- [26:34]
Tommy
Do you love the franchise model?
- [26:36]
James D. White
It worked well for that business. Now I sit on boards of other businesses. So I sit on the Cava board, the Mediterranean chain, which is one of the fastest restaurant chains in America. And we're all company own, which is the exact right place for us to be. I previously sat on the Panera breadboard and we were about 50, 50 franchise company owned. There is something to be said to be able to control the culture, the innovation and drive the growth. What franchising allows you to do is you get to scale faster.
- [27:13]
Tommy
Right, Right.
- [27:14]
James D. White
But you do give up a little bit of control and have to be more expert at managing partners.
- [27:20]
Tommy
You know, I can't tell you how many podcasts I sit on. On the Home Service expert podcast, for years, everybody said, I'm going to franchise this business. I said, so you got at least three locations that are killing it. And they say no. And I'm like, well, explain to me why you want to franchise. They're like, well the biggest reason is someone's going to pay me. So, so it's almost like they fund the expansion. But I'm like, you know what a franchise or has got to do. They got to have the systems, the sops, the CRM or the, the POS system. They got to have everything. They got to have the marketing. People want to buy a business in a box, they want to have expected outcomes. And a lot of the easiest way to say is I want to franchise it. Meaning I want people to pay me money for my ideas. But yet they don't have a proven track record. They haven't taken market share in even one market. I'm going to ask you three questions that I ask here in every podcast. What's one piece of game changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s?
- [28:17]
James D. White
I just think the, the, the advice that I gave around being just an active, active learner, you know, because I'm coming from a blue class, you know, you know, a middle class working blue collar environment. So I knew I could outwork the next human, I could put in the hours. But the fourth multiplier and separation was the capacity to out learn. The other point I'd make is you literally can build capabilities that matter in five year increments at a time if you just pick a topic. I mean, one of the topics I'm fascinated by right now is AI. But what I think most are missing is they've left the humans out of, of how AI will have an impact on the world. And I think, you know, AI is going to shift culture, it's going to shift capabilities, have done well. But I think most of the experiments are not going to go well because all the big companies I see rushing into AI, they seem to have excluded the human beings from the discussion.
- [29:31]
Tommy
I've talked to a lot of companies, some of the best companies I know, they're like, it works well with humans and how do you make that work? But unlike the industrial revolution where you know, if you had a farm, farming equipment, one person could run it, that did the work of 20, those 19 other people able to find other jobs. Just like when the, the phone operators, they just got another, another job. But AI makes it tough because you're not going to need any more. Like right, what was the one thing they said 10 years ago? Become a developer, learn PHP and Python and Ruby on Rails and all that. And now they're saying stop, don't learn any of that. AI is taking that over. They could, the machine could do much better coding than you could do that. So now they're saying go to home service, home improvement. Because the machines, they're not taking over fixing a pipe at 2am anytime soon. It's not that far away. But I think you're right. I think we need human connection.
- [30:26]
James D. White
Yeah, there's always going to be human connections. Humans, I mean the thing we talk about is AI doesn't have empathy and AI can't do the leadership things and the culture building things that you and I are talking about. About.
- [30:41]
Tommy
Well, next year comes the robots and I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll just say that I'm a little bit worried. I read a lot of books and it could go several different ways. But when this super, the SGI comes out, we're five to 15 years on every book I've read. It's coming sooner than we think. You're not going to need to drive anymore. You're not going to need to get groceries. I mean Bill Gates just came out, said in five, five years you're not going to need to have a job. So did Elon Musk.
- [31:09]
James D. White
I think I'd have a slightly different. The humans are going to always matter. From the way I think about it, what our work looks like might change and alter over time, but humans are going to really matter. And I think the leaders that think hardest about how to use the technology as a tool are going to excel in, in, in the, in businesses like yours and the businesses that I work around and kind of the governance of and kind of oversight of AI and how it gets plugged in and leveraged.
- [31:47]
Tommy
I love it. If you had to start over, you only had $10 million. What are you doing with the 10 million?
- [31:55]
James D. White
I think if I'm starting over, I certainly put a chunk in the new technologies that are emerging. I mean so that would be one place that you definitely would make an investment and then the other would be in education related things. Kind of building human capability would be the other place that I have a lot of passion for.
- [32:23]
Tommy
Personally I look at Michael Jordan had four coaches outside of Phil Jackson. Tiger woods always was getting the best of the best. I've always had personal consultants and we're going with three right now. And they're all different aspects. One's a new book I'm working on. I worked with Dan Martell buy back your time and what he taught me was like, dude, you run your business perfectly. Your house is a mess. Like you, why don't you have a chef I'm like, dude, I don't need a chef. I'm like, who? I. I had Chef Borody when I was a kid, but that's about it. And I'm like. And he goes, dude, you're selfish. And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm like, that's the least selfish thing to not have a chef. He goes, you order Uber Eats for every meal.
- [33:03]
James D. White
Absolutely. I mean, the places where I still make investments for coaching, health is one of the main areas, because at the end of the day, our. Our health is the only wealth we're going to have at the end of the day. So for me, I'm on this kick of trying to extend my, my health span to match kind of the life, the. The lifespan. So just maniacally focused there. That's a part of the 2030 plan for us. But I'm also investing in, you might call it, experiences. But my wife and I are passionate about music, so we do lots of jazz festivals and kind of have built community in that kind of space. So that's another place that we spend a lot of time. And then family is really all about family and kind of legacy moving forward. And kind of the flip of that is I do a ton of coaching with CEOs and entrepreneurs personally, so that's a part of me being able to give back to the next generation and impact really more companies. And the writing of this book is a part of that.
- [34:18]
Tommy
You served on 20 boards, scale global brands, and advise CEOs across various industries. What's one thing you've learned that all great CEOs have in common?
- [34:27]
James D. White
I think they do a. A really fantastic job of managing their time. And a part of that. You mentioned sleep and health. Those are at the tip of the spear of the most productive leaders. They have that balance kind of figured out. And then the other point I'd make is they learn how to replicate themselves, and then they know what they're good at. So they surround themselves with people that are better than they are at certain other things, and they invest in team and culture.
- [35:05]
Tommy
What do you think the biggest operational mistake that you see leaders make when.
- [35:09]
James D. White
They'Re trying to grow their brand? I think they miss the routinizing of systems and processes as they grow rapidly. So as an example, we're consulting with a consumer goods company trying to grow. They've got major technology investments that they're making, and the culture is starting to vibrate and shatter a little bit from what has been a historical strength and what we're encouraging them to do is really kind of step back, take a look at where they sit, and then, you know, really over communicate into the organization where they're headed.
- [35:56]
Tommy
We all know where AI is going with call centers, you know, and I've kind of heard either you gotta move on these things because if an AI agent could do as well, I mean, they built in tonality. It's not quite there yet. But I had, we went to Hungary about eight months ago and I had a call, Verizon to change to long distance. It was the best call I've ever had. And boom, it was done in three minutes. Bam. It was perfect.
- [36:23]
James D. White
And it.
- [36:24]
Tommy
And there was an expected outcome because, you know, if you look at it, we've got 70 call center reps, but at the same time, what do you, how do you communicate that? That's one of the dilemmas about, I.
- [36:34]
James D. White
Think the, the way I would think about it is, you know, for some subset of the folks that are in that call center, you're going to need them to build the most sophisticated version of AI to replicate what you do today. So there is leadership opportunities a time there.
- [36:53]
Tommy
Yes.
- [36:53]
James D. White
For them. And they're likely with what they know about your business. Where do you reskill? Where do you upskill?
- [37:04]
Tommy
What do you think about Jack Welch getting rid of the bottom. I think it was 10 or 20%, I can't remember, but this was obviously 70s and 80s.
- [37:13]
James D. White
Yeah. I was a huge proponent of Jack Walch and the things that happened. One of my favorite books, I mentioned it early on is the Leadership Engineering and that was written about Jack Welch's Crotonville, which was their, their leadership academy that he put on. I thought they did the best job of institutionalizing leadership. I think one of the places that they lost their way kind of over time is they, they didn't, they didn't contemporize for the changes that were happening from a leadership perspective. But I was a huge, you know, in the, in the core of my own career. Would have been a huge fan of Jack Welch and many of their principals and actually borrowed from the action learning that they did at Grotonville and their academy. So those things, I applied generously every place. I talk about them in parts in the books that I've written as well.
- [38:19]
Tommy
Yeah. At what point do you feel it's okay to top grade?
- [38:23]
James D. White
I think everything has a time and a place and you've got to look at kind of the life stage of the company and decide what's going to work in your particular Environment. I think there's maybe a generational challenge where that doesn't work the way it worked in my generation of business people, business leaders. And you've got to figure out how to account, you've got to, you just completed a major survey of the organization. I think there's some follow ups that you might do as a leader to tease out additional insights. Could be one on ones, could be other kinds of discussions to get more granular. You need to be able to cut the data generationally. Yeah. Because like these top 20 leaders that you talk about, I wonder if they are all sit in the same kind of generation. You, if you're like most of the other companies, probably have four or five generations in your workforce today and they're going to show up slightly differently.
- [39:33]
Tommy
They do. That's what's nice about the HR tools we have is they could splice it, they could splice it into so many different factors and they could take the data they could look at, they could look at it by market, they can look at it by hiring date, they can look at it by years they've worked for us, they can look at it by generational. And the problem is with the data we have, is this too much data? It's like overload sometimes. Let me ask you this, what are some of the early warning signs that a company's culture is eroding? Like is there KPIs that you could look at?
- [40:07]
James D. White
Yeah, so turnover is a, you know, is an early warning signal. But I just think inconsistent kind of engagement, if you track engagement scores over time that the decline there is kind of the first kind of signal because typically when the culture is eroding, you start to lose your best people because they're, they're, they're, they're the most desirable externally. Just, I mean just always having constant kind of feedback mechanisms is, is maybe the advice, both quantitative and qualitative and as you scale the company you want to have listening mechanisms. So there's a CEO, technology company CEO that spends two, two, two times each month, so 24 times a year talking about values and culture with his organization. That's the only thing on the agenda. And he'll take 10, 15 minutes of anonymous Q&A. So 2000 person company. And he said, James, we're going to do this as long as I have 200 people and it's voluntary. Of the 2,000 people show up, he talks about, he has one example about culture, values. He'll take 15 minutes to questions. But that's his way of two times a month.
- [41:39]
Tommy
Two times a month. 15 minutes?
- [41:40]
James D. White
No, no, it's an hour.
- [41:42]
Tommy
Oh, one hour.
- [41:42]
James D. White
Two times a month, which I couldn't. So when he shared that with us, we couldn't believe it. He's been doing this for five years. He's a leader that says he would view himself as somebody who was late to the culture game. He said, I got it now.
- [41:56]
Tommy
You know, we. I came up with a custom software, and I'm thinking about commercializing it, but it talks to our HR tool, so it says the hiring date, and I got their birth dates, and through my scorecards, I got their performance. So I'm able to send videos and handwritten cards. So every birthday, every anniversary, I'm sending messages. And if they get off boarded, because I used to make this. I used to do it very archaic. It'll pull them off of our app. And now I get to see their face, too. So when I'm in the software, I could. Like, now I could put a name to the face, because a lot of times I'll be walking.
- [42:28]
James D. White
So you've got a face to every employee. I love that. One of the people we talk about in the book, Doug Conant, who was the CEO of Campbell Soup, has written 30,000 of those letters of gratitude to his employees. And I just feel like that's a important kind of reinforcement to the point I hear you making here 30,000. So he's keeping up with the notes.
- [42:53]
Tommy
It's a huge deal. And I used to have people call me up crying and say, we didn't even know, you know, who we were. I'm really interested in learning about boards. You know, we're PE backed. You know, I rolled almost 50%. I'm a big fan of equity. I'm a big fan. Not of an esop, but letting people have an opportunity to earn equity. The current. The company's called Cortech. They're not a big fan of, like, external boards bringing people in, and that's okay, but I know probably not very long from now I'll be at a really big partner, a different plat sponsor. And, you know, I want to bring in the best of the best, and I want them to be very. I'm not looking for the good news, I'm looking for the bad news. And you got all this board education, like, how are they built?
- [43:42]
James D. White
Yeah, I think there's the. You know, public and private are different. So. So maybe I'll focus on a private company. One we talk about in the. In. In the. In the book Bay Club, in the fitness space. So we're, we're literally. And we're KKR sponsored. We've got fantastic, you know, really, really fantastic leaders on this board. So my colleagues sitting on this board include the, the former CEO, he's current chair at Domino's Pizza, he chairs our board. The CEO at Ulta Beauty sits on this board. And we had just a great, great board and myself. So, you know, four independent directors who brought different capabilities and skills. The CEO of our company, Matthew Stevens, just a legend in this industry. And we all bring different things to him across the range of places that boards can add value. And he does a great job of tapping into us in that way. So he's building a company that's scaling to a size bigger than he, he's ever experienced. And having people that have been there run bigger platforms. They can say, well, you maybe need to think about this. This is the place when you need to think about X kind of structure, but really thinking about the board as partners that can really help you grow the enterprise is, is, would be the main message. And we've done some. I've got my own nonprofit directors academy. We just ran a, a cohort of CEOs and potential future directors kind of through a session at ASU here in last November, and we'll do another one in the upcoming November.
- [45:46]
Tommy
I got a question. So there's a good buddy of mine, he's got a massive home service company, it's called Groundworks. And he just said, tommy, I don't think it'll be as fun once you get the 250 million of EBITDA. He's like, it's just a different. You're, you're an entrepreneurial guy. He's like, we sit in board meetings, he's like, I'm not, it's not what it used to be. He's like steering a much bigger ship. And it's not that you're uncapable, but it's not as you, you, you're used to riding a speedboat. So one more question about boards. This is probably. It's an interesting question. So let's say you form a board and you got four outsiders, you bring in a team and every kind of year, I guess the CEO and the sponsor, KKR or whoever, have the ability to either renew or they could say, hey, you've done great for us. Is that how L works? I'm just not as familiar or it's.
- [46:40]
James D. White
Typically a longer term commitment. So this particular board I've Sat on since 2020 and have been on the, you know, so there could be an occasion where you added someone and they didn't bring the value you thought they would bring and you offboard them.
- [46:56]
Tommy
Okay.
- [46:56]
James D. White
But typically you're in for the investment cycle.
- [46:59]
Tommy
Oh, the investment cycle.
- [47:00]
James D. White
And typically the way it would work is the sponsor would pick a person and then the founder would have a pick and you'd go back and forth.
- [47:10]
Tommy
So go back and forth to get.
- [47:13]
James D. White
To whatever the number is.
- [47:14]
Tommy
And what. What's a typical board look like of a private board?
- [47:18]
James D. White
Private board is in the five to max seven, but it's more, you know, so for this particular board, there's four external roles and then the KKR principle and then the other resources from KKR in the room.
- [47:34]
Tommy
Last three questions to close this out. Is there obviously Napoleon Hill has affected your life. Is there a couple other books that really changed everything in the way you look at.
- [47:45]
James D. White
Yeah, there's a handful of books. The Leadership Engine by Noel Ticci is one of them. Noel Ticci was a famous business professor at the University of Michigan, and Jack Welsh recruited him to come lead his leadership institute at Crotonville. And then the other Couple books are two CEOs that I have a ton of respect for. One is Jim Kilt, who was our CEO at Gillette. And I sat on a board with Jim today. His book is do what Matters. So very operational from one of the best it could, just frameworks, discipline, process, all about how you execute. And then one of my dear friends who was the founder of Panera, Brett, Ron Shaikh, know what matters, which is all about how do you build the brand, what job do we play for the customer? And really digging deep in that aspect. And, you know, how do you build a great business? And Ron is a true entrepreneur. Jim is more a professional CEO.
- [48:59]
Tommy
And then finally we talked about a lot of things. I'm sure I left some out because I asked a lot of questions that I wanted to ask. But I'll let you close us out with whatever you want. Kind of a final thought.
- [49:10]
James D. White
I would just encourage your audience to really think about what matters. And the argument I'd make is it's always people first and be more intentional about culture because there's never been more important as I look at the changes happening around us in the world, for leaders to really set the context for their organization and to reinforce what values matter most.
- [49:44]
Tommy
I love it. Well, James, I really appreciate today. I had a blast.
- [49:47]
James D. White
This is great. Same here.
- [49:48]
Tommy
Thank you.
- [49:49]
Podcast Host/Producer
Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Like always, we're going to close it out with the Tommy truth, which is a little slice of wisdom from me to you that can help guide you in whatever you're striving towards right now.
- [49:59]
Tommy
Now, what part of your business needs more focus? My attention is almost always on recruiting and getting the leads and capacity planning and culture. But there needs to be strong minds involved in the operational side. I mean, when we brought Kate in, our whole world changed. She just did 10 times better. She took on more. She knows she's an A player. And it completely changed in the way that we handle our vehicles and we get our leases and we go into a new market because of one key hire. If you find yourself micromanaging somebody on the team, it's not the right person for the team. I've always learned build a box, put the person in the box. Don't take the person and build a box around the person, and that's it.
- [50:35]
Podcast Host/Producer
Guys, we'll talk to you next week.