Sam Donaghey
Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host, Sam Donaghey, and joining me today is FSM’s Director of Growth, Michael Johnson. Michael, it’s always a pleasure.

Michael Johnson
It’s always great to be here, Sam.

Sam Donaghey
Well, today we’re talking about what separates the good brands from the legendary ones. The ones people don’t just buy from, but believe in. Our guest is Scott Wozniak, founder of Swaz Consulting, and he’s the author of Make Your Brand Legendary. Scott spent nearly a decade at Chick-fil-A’s headquarters, where he worked alongside leadership on strategy and customer experience. And since then, he’s helped companies across six continents, from Fortune 500 giants to startups.

customer experiences. Scott, it’s awesome to have you on the show today.

Scott Wozniak
Thanks, Sam. Michael, looking forward to hanging, guys.

Sam Donaghey
Well, Scott, let’s start with the big one. What do you think really makes a brand legendary? You know, and how is that different from just being well known or successful?

Scott Wozniak
I think it’s easy to make a splash or have a lucky product. And I think this is where a lot of people try to make their big bang is invent the new thing, right? Come up with the next iPhone or cool tool or breakthrough idea. And what I’ve seen is that even if you invent a cool new product, then that only works for a short period of time. You get a spike.

The real legendary brands have figured out how to build raving fans year after year, decade after decade. It’s not a one-time lucky thing. They stuck around and did it for a long time, My favorite example personally is the Blackberry. I was nuts for the Blackberry. I was resistant to the iPhone because I loved my Blackberry.

man, that thing is an expensive brick in my drawer right now because they could not figure out how to sustain that.

They got stuck. They had a cool product and they didn’t move past their one cool idea to a truly legendary brand.

Michael Johnson
Scott, you’ve studied world-cl brands, you’ve worked with some like Chick-fil-A, there’s others like Disney and Nike and Delta that you’ve talked about. When you break them down, what are some of the shared elements that you see in how they are?

Scott Wozniak
Yeah, that’s the question, Michael. And so

I’ll give you a little bit of backstory just on my role at Chick-fil-A, because it helps explain some of the answers I’m about to give. So I had a really unique job there. My title was organizational effectiveness consultant. So I was on full-time staff for a while. By the way, I left and the first client to sign me when I left was Chick-fil-A. So I have a great relationship with those guys and I still kind of do what I did then just now as an outside guy. But here was the job.

50 % of the time I traveled the world when inside other great companies, learned how they operated, picked their brains, and then I came back and the other half of job was turned it into some sort of upgrade at Chick-fil-A, build a new system, change a standard, launch a new department, whatever.

I didn’t originally set out to find the shared patterns. We stumbled into this. I set out to like go answer a specific question, then another specific question and another one. But along the way I was like, wait a minute.

There is a pattern. They all have some version of this. They all have some version of that. So we went back and had a few more conversations and started scribbling this down. Now I’ve got this diagram that’s an engine with different gears in the engine. And that’s what we use to try to clarify like, yeah, this is the pattern that I saw.

Because they really do, even in different industries, they have the same set of systems. so, so to stay with me on the visual, the answer to your question, there’s fuel that comes in, there’s three gears at the center and a belt behind the gears, keeping it all synchronized, right? And the five pieces that everybody who became great has are these things. So the fuel coming in is customer insight. Do you really understand your customers? And what we found is that most people have customer data.

not customer insight. And we know facts about them, right? What they buy or where they buy. We can kind of see the seasonal changes or patterns, but do we know why? Why they pick us? What else did they consider? What is it about our stuff they love versus the parts they don’t really care about? Do we really understand their life and the life they’re trying to build? Because if I’m to be blunt, they don’t really care about your thing, your customers.

care how your thing makes their life better. So if you don’t know the life they’re trying to build, you don’t know how to tweak your thing to make it even better for their life. And too often we just know they buy it, but why? So customer insight, it’s the fuel because it drives everything else. All our other decisions get smarter, faster, even cheaper, because we know exactly what they care about and what they don’t. And I see a lot of companies guessing and you don’t have to guess. You can just get insight.

and then target them. And if I could make a plug, ⁓ you guys and what you do is actually really essential. You’re one of the best groups I know. By the they did not ask me to say this. ⁓ For the record, this is totally unsolicited, but legit. You guys and the software tools, you guys helped them build.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
actually is one of the key things we say for the insight systems. Like you can tell me you have insight. If you don’t have a fully baked, mature integration with the CRM and all the software like you guys do, yeah, you don’t have customer insight. You have a bunch of anecdotes. You might even have a spreadsheet with some cool charts, but there’s a whole other level to go from data to real insight. So that’s critical thing. Yeah.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, Scott, I want to go

through the whole model, but the insight is such an important piece. you talk about, I love this analogy you used about Ozzy Osbourne and King Charles. And if you look at demographically and age and everything, they’re the same.

Scott Wozniak

Dude, identical. It’s weirdly the same. Born in the same year, same age, both on their second marriage, both live in a castle, both two famous children. mean, it’s like list after, and yeah, you’re right. If you look at them demographically, like Charlie, Ozzy, same guy. ⁓ But I’ll.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, but totally different.

Yeah,

you seen,

before we get into all that, I love the model, and before we get into that, just on customer insight, have you seen companies have a situation where they treat an Ozzy and a King Charles the same? Do you have any stories or experience with that, and what does that even look like?

Scott Wozniak
Yeah. Yeah. Um, let me give you a fun Chick-fil-A example. So

the way, we do this with business to business technical. This is not, uh, you know, everything from healthcare to manufacturing to, to, you know, high-end legal,

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
but man, Chick-fil-A in the U S is really well known in any restaurant. you kind of, so this example may be more available to folks. we talk about the difference between soccer mom, Sarah and business owner Beth, right? Now, both of these women are 37 years old.

They both come every Monday, they both get the number two value meal. They both have 2.3 kids. mean, statistically, it’s the same woman, right? But functionally, Sarah is there with her children. She’s gonna have a mom’s morning out. Most Chick-fil-A’s will have a playground area, like a little enclosed space. She’ll bring her kids and meet like seven other moms and they’ll put their kids in the playground. Sarah will hang out for an hour and a half to two hours.

It is a wonderful experience. And the staff is trained to notice Sarah versus Beth. When you see mom with the kids in the stroller and all that stuff, they don’t even ask. They do things like, hey, I’m going to grab your tray and carry your food to your table. Cause, cause her hands are full of kid stuff, right? Um, they do little things. They sit and chat with her. She’s there for social hour. They even have these cool little plastic, like cartoon stickers, like laminated mats. And you put it on the table and your kid can eat right off the table. And Sarah feels like it’s safe and clean.

Tara loves this. Okay, now Beth is right behind her in line. She ordered the same meal, but Beth’s kids are in school or daycare. She’s not there for social hour. In fact, she’s got 45 minutes to get in and out and really to be blunt, she doesn’t really want you to talk to her. She doesn’t want you to spend time chatting. She’s like, just leave me alone. I talk all day long. I want to eat and quiet, have a little oasis of peace. She doesn’t need you to carry her tray.

She definitely does not need a cartoon plastic mat put on the table in front of her. Now, both of them, for all your products, all your services, there’s a core functional thing you’ve got to get right or they don’t care, right? In this case, the sandwich, the salad, it’s got to be good food. If the food’s not hot,

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
I don’t care how fancy or polite you are, it’s got to be good. But there’s these little touches on top of that. Let me give you maybe a more technical example.

If you’re serving someone who is the CEO, entrepreneur trying to build their business versus what you sell to, like is a business to business play. You sell to an employee, someone who’s the VP of supplies or facilities director, right? And you’re a vendor that sells into that space. Man, it’s a very different conversation talking to the CEO entrepreneur than it is the high level employee. And it’s the same

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Scott Wozniak
and it’s maybe even the same company as someone else.

But this CEO handles the sale and this company, delegated that out. The way you motivate them, what gets them engaged. Again, you have to be good at your thing, but there’s these little stuff that you add around the edges or how you say it that clicks for somebody or

So do you know the difference? Because yes, fundamentals, some parts need to be the same, but some of this is meeting them where they’re at, speaking their language.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

And they’ve got, like you’re saying, they’ve got different problems that they want to solve with what you do. And so the CEO wants to solve something different than the VP of sales. Even though at first they may tell you this the same thing, there’s a core problem there. And I love that in the engine, how that’s the foundational piece.

Scott Wozniak
Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

the first piece of the whole deal. Everything else umes you know your customers.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. So walk, didn’t mean to stop you. Walk us through, walk us through the rest of it and, you know, get us, for those that aren’t familiar with the customer experience engine, do the rest of it and then what, how do you help companies really build this into something great?

Scott Wozniak
No, it’s good.

Yeah. So the three gears, this first part’s for us, the fuel, right? That makes us better. The three gears are for them. And the three gears are operational excellence, personalized service, and memorable moments. So I’ll unpack each briefly. Operational excellence is the fundamentals I was just talking about, right? Like the food’s got to be hot. If you have software, it’s got to be up. If you have an equipment piece, it has to function. This is not the fancy stuff.

Do you show up on time? Do your staff treat people with respect? mean, do we do the basics of operation well? And what we’ve learned is the first question they’re asking is not how cool are you? It’s not how fancy? It’s not how pretty your marketing is? The first question the customers are asking is can I trust you? Can I trust you? And that is a, it’s all about consistency. here’s the hard truth, inconsistent excellence.

earns the same trust as consistent failure. Like you get it right some of the time, I don’t trust you. It’s not like, yeah, know, 75 % of the time he’s fine, but yeah, they’re 25%. No, you either trust, I know it’s gonna happen, or I don’t trust. And you could like get it right sort of, you know, but he’s a good employee. I mean, he steals from me once or twice a year, but the rest of the year, right? Good guy. Like no, you trust somebody.

Michael Johnson
Wow.

Scott Wozniak
Or you don’t, and the same applies to a brand and a company. And I can’t tell you how many times this is what wrecks people. Cause they’re thinking it’s the raving fans guy. It’s great custom. We’re to get fancy parties in it. And I’m like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Until your operations are reliable and consistent, none of your fancy stuff matters. Cause they don’t believe it. In fact, I’m going to give you the Scott Wozniak plan for ruining your company permanently. Right? I know this is what I’m trying to get for. It’s getting great, right?

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Let’s go. I’m gonna take notes.

Scott Wozniak
Here’s what I want. Let’s build world-cl marketing and advertising,

and then have really bad operations. You’d get everybody to check you out. You get a lot of attention and they’d come show up and find out you’re bad at your job and tell all your friends, you can’t trust those guys. So you really don’t want to get good at the fancy stuff until you get the fundamentals. And so that’s the first gear. And in my little diagram, it’s actually the biggest gear is dang it. Operational excellence takes so much work.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
It is all day, every day,

into the grind and doing the details with excellence.

And that is the first critical piece. Can I trust you? Can you show up with excellence on the fundamentals? Then we move to making a personal connection. This is personalized service. The question they start asking is, you care about me, about me as a person? Do you see me? Do I matter? Or is this just another transaction for you?

We do little touches to make a big difference. In fact, for these next two years, they’re smaller on the diagram that I’ll draw. And that’s because I’ll say like once or twice a year, do one or two things for a customer. This is not a all the time, every day. That’s the fundamentals. This stuff is the once in a while reminding you, I like you, I see you. I actually care about you as a person. So it’s proactive, it’s custom. This isn’t generic.

⁓ Dear customer here, it’s like, man, Sam, how are you doing, man? Last engagement we had, this is what happened. I hope it’s continuing to go well. by the way, this isn’t a sales pitch. You should do sales pitches. That’s good for your business. And you should have something that just says, I’m thinking of you. How you doing? Now, this could be anything from ⁓ old school. Send them handwritten notes or giving them a gift, like a surprise gift to…

One of my favorite tools to do this is actually a great CRM. Like seriously, you plug it in, if you’ve done it right and you’re actually using it, then you can add stuff like, hey, Michael went to the beach and then someone pings him and says, hey, heard you went to the beach with your family, how’d it go? Right? Because somebody caught that in an engagement, they put it in the notes, then it pings somebody and someone else sends them. So these little touches like, hey, Michael heard your family was at the beach, how did it go? That’s a…

Michael Johnson
Absolutely.

Scott Wozniak
cool little moment that just, it’s it. could literally be the whole message, a text or an email. And they’re like, ⁓ they see me. How cool is this? Right? ⁓ So there’s fancy stuff. You can really get high-end personalization. ⁓ Everything from kind of using Amazon AI to customize your webpage so that everyone’s page is personal to them, down to just like literally a handwritten note and you send it out. Small touches that make a big difference that say, I see you, I notice you.

personalized service. It can be done in person if you have engagements that work that way, and it can be done virtual if that’s how your company rolls. So operational excellence, personalized service, and to bring us home, it’s memorable moments. Now, memorable moments is the final piece. If you do all the other stuff, but not this one, they probably love you and probably aren’t telling anyone about you. What we found is people don’t talk about you just because you’re awesome. They have to have a reason to talk about you. They don’t tell facts.

They don’t tell feelings, people tell stories. So if you want your customer to talk about you, you have to create a story they can share or what we call a memorable moment. So it’s this cool experience that pops and they’re like, oh, and then they want to tell everyone about you. Now warning, you can’t skip all the other stuff, make a cool, memorable moment and hope things go viral. If they don’t trust you and they don’t already feel seen by you, they don’t really care enough to tell you a story.

But if they do all that and then you do this little story, that’s when it goes big and it buzzes all over and people talk about it. This is a mistake I’ll see all the time from growth and marketer folks is they’re trying to come up with the cool edgy campaign that’s going to get them all the virality. Here’s the missing ingredient. They have to already think well of you and then you have to do the cool edgy thing. Otherwise they don’t have enough emotion like, that’s cool. And they might even enjoy or like it, so to speak online, right? Give the heart or the thumbs up and…

Michael Johnson
Mmm.

Scott Wozniak
but the sharing comes because they ociate with it. So do the first part and then man, once or twice a year, do one or two cool moments for each customer, gives them invites them into something. I will say one more challenge or mistake I made on this. Man, in the early days, I tried to get customers to talk about me by creating stories to showcase how cool we were. It’s kind of logical, right? You know, like I’m trying to get you to tell stories about me. So…

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
I’m gonna use Star Wars to illustrate this. You might’ve heard this metaphor. I keep wanting to make a story where I play the role of Luke Skywalker, right? I’m the hero of the story. I’m the Jedi with my cool skills. You know, I got the force and it’s gonna be awesome. And it doesn’t work, man. Like maybe they even show like, I’m like, they’re gonna say, check this guy out, everybody. Look at the Jedi. They don’t wanna tell my story. They wanna tell their story. So if you want your customers to talk about you.

Michael Johnson
No.

Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
You have to make a story where they feel like the hero. They get to be the cool Jedi, right? Now, we do gotta be in the story though. Like how do I get business value if I just talk about how cool you are and I don’t have any? So here’s it, we show up, we don’t show up as Luke Skywalker. We play the role of Yoda. We’re the wise mentor, we’re the guide that enables them to go be awesome

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
and our stories to celebrate them based on something we helped them do.

So we get to celebrate our customer, not our company, but in a way that our company’s work is what enabled them to do that. And so you create these moments that make them feel like, I’m awesome. I’m doing something right. I’ll give you a couple of examples. ⁓ The easy ones is the start or the end. At the very beginning is what these are wet cement moments, right? Is there a little bit of effort can make a lasting impression. So

Michael Johnson
Hmm

Scott Wozniak
find a way when you kick off.

Do all the normal stuff you were gonna do, and then you can’t tell them in advance, it’s gotta be a surprise, then you throw something crazy on the top. Maybe you show up in person or even just the packaging. So my favorite example of this is the Apple box. ⁓ Did you know Apple’s patented their cardboard box? Like, it’s a box, like it’s crazy. But it’s wild how much people love the Apple box opening experience. ⁓ I’m gonna put you both on the spot.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sam Donaghey
It is exciting, I can say that.

Michael Johnson
Hahaha

Scott Wozniak
Do either of you have Apple boxes you’ve still not thrown away? Same. It’s like, what’s the deal, right? Now, I hope you have to check. Listeners want to know, do you guys keep all your Amazon box packages and other packages? Okay, good. That’s called hoarding and that’s a podcast, right? Oh, there’s something about the Apple box, right? It’s this…

Sam Donaghey
Yes, 100%. Yeah.

Michael Johnson
Yes, yes.

Sam Donaghey
⁓ no, no.

Michael Johnson
No, yeah,

yeah.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
I think I called them the Little Mermaid moment, right? Where the sun breaks through the clouds. It’s like, ⁓

Sam Donaghey
Hahaha

Scott Wozniak
If you feel like you are magical, awesome person, and the wrapping, it works really, it’s a poof, suddenly it pops, and the first thing you see is your device in a frame, like it’s a piece of art, right? Like it’s this whole moment that we can’t throw the box away. It’s a daggum box, right? Do you actually use the box? Because I don’t, it just literally sits there. I don’t even put the phone back in it when I’m done, like it’s just…

There’s a box. do you guys do anything cool with the box? What’s the deal? They made a memorable moment out of a box opening and now this visual symbol hangs around reminding me and anyone who visits, there’s the box. I have an Apple guy. ⁓ Openings. ⁓ So I know people who’ve shown up live and thrown parties or surprised people with gifts at the opening of stuff. ⁓

Sam Donaghey
No.

Michael Johnson
No,

no, not at all, no.

Scott Wozniak
construction companies who do kind of the golden shovel moment or everyone shows up and they make a big deal. We broke ground and this is exciting, right? Beginnings matter. Endings are another great one. What’s even better for construction is the ending. Because think about this setup, right? We’re to play the role of Yoda. We can celebrate. Look what we were able to do. Hey everybody, check it. It’s not how cool is our construction. Check out the new person moving into their house or the new office building or new hospital.

Look at the cool stuff they’re gonna do in the world. Aren’t they awesome? Right there, Luke Skywalker. We’re so glad we could just be a small part of helping them live their dreams. We’re Yoda.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
And you throw this big party at the end. So maybe you don’t want them to end. There’s all sorts of other ways to do this, but I think it gives you this idea that you don’t just do the thing. You do the thing and then you celebrate your customers in some way that make them feel like, I’m pretty awesome, because I did this thing with you guys. ⁓

Again, if you just skip that, they don’t care. But if you’ve done all that stuff, that little moment, take pictures, capture it, send it to them, they will share it all over the place. You can post and talk about how cool these guys are. It’s the coolest way to get things to go viral. And as a bonus, it’s significantly less expensive than trying to buy the market with advertising only. I’m not anti-ads, but ads work better early in the process to create awareness.

Ads don’t actually create virality. Virality means it has to be a story about me that I want to share. And so you make me feel awesome. I want to tell everybody I know about it. So that’s the process. Last piece is the belt. It’s a healthy leadership team. We learned this the hard way. It wasn’t on the early versions, but dang it. Like if you don’t have all in buy-in from your team, it’s not a separate gear. It’s the belt that synchronizes and keeps the whole process looping and going.

Because what we learned is if the whole team doesn’t work together, collaborate and do this as a single unit, it doesn’t work. You can’t yank one of the gears out of the engine, right? And then the whole thing function. So everybody’s got to buy in and your team’s got to truly be a collaborative team. The key word is healthy. I see a lot of smart leadership teams who aren’t actually healthy in the sense that they don’t truly collaborate. They’re kind of isolated experts who get together for a weekly report. ⁓ So yeah, that’s…

That’s the engine. ⁓ Lots of fun stories and examples on those parts, but that’s the overview of what literally every great brand from Toyota manufacturing to Pixar movies is created to deliver great products year over year, decade over decade.

Sam Donaghey
Wow. Scott, in your book, you discuss the danger of focusing on big before awesome. You for a growing business, the temptation to chase every shiny new marketing channel or client is immense. So what would you say the most single common mistake you see leaders make when they fall into that big trap? And what’s the first sort of most difficult step that they’re going to have to take to get back on the path to awesome?

Scott Wozniak
can I confess,

I really struggle with this one. I’m a clic visionary entrepreneur wiring and I’m like more and better and bigger and we’ll figure it out as we go. And there’s a certain amount of ⁓ wisdom in that, the kind of audacity to just get started and figure things out. But here’s the struggle that I had to learn in the early days and the challenges. You can get good enough to make it a profitable thing, but it’s not great yet.

And then I have another idea for the next thing and an idea for the next thing. And I want to add another channel and another channel and another channel. And when we go actually do this analysis, I work with clients who make the mistakes I made. I see it, maybe because I’m the guy who did it. We haven’t yet fully maximized or we’re done with excellence. The current thing we have in our hand.

⁓ And we think, here’s my next growth opportunity. Here’s my next growth opportunity. And I think the long-term game, man, you’ve got to be great before you open the next category. ⁓ Seven B minus level things, right? Like, it’s not bad, but it’s not amazing. ⁓ You’re going to struggle all along. What we often find in these markets is that it’s a power curve, not a bell curve.

Power curve means the line just kind of goes up, like it’s flat, flat, and then it spikes up, right?

Michael Johnson
Interesting.

Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
And the top 10 % in a power curve make more money and own more of the market than the other 90 % do. The top 1 % make more than the other 99%, like it spikes. And so the biggest rewards are for the people who get that to the top tier level. And too often we’re the next tier down where we’re making it, but man, it’s like…

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
Ah, it’s only going to be 10%, but the difference between 85 and 95 % excellent on this kind of arbitrary scale I’m drawing is difference in being fine and being one of the greats in your categories. And I will see people get good enough and move on, including use their industry as an escape. Like, I’ll do the next thing. I’ll do the next thing. You know, one of the most crazy raving fan brands I know in America right now is a brand called Buc-ee’s.

Michael Johnson
Hmm.

Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
Sam, Michael, you know, right? Sam, I don’t think Buc-ee’s has made it to the UK yet, right? ⁓ Yeah. If you were going to pick an industry and say, you just can’t do it, you’d pick this industry. Like nobody wants to, we were forced to do it. ⁓ It’s kind of a generically unpleasant experience, but some suck less than others, right? And then there’s, I’m kind of dragging it out because like, okay.

Michael Johnson
I know Buc-ee’s. Yep.

Sam Donaghey
No, I don’t think it has.

Scott Wozniak
Michael, why don’t you tell them what Buc-ee’s is? Cause I’m not sure if they’re gonna believe me.

Michael Johnson
⁓

Sam, it’s imagine a wonderland. ⁓ go to a petrol station, you go to a gas station, but the inside is basically the size of a Walmart here in the States, a super Walmart. It’s huge. ⁓ It’s got the cleanest bathrooms you’ve ever seen. There’s someone constantly cleaning the bathrooms. There’s walls of gummies and treats. There’s tons of beef jerky. They have

Scott Wozniak
Yeah, super Walmart at that, yeah. Fantastic.

Sam Donaghey
So it’s huge. It’s huge.

Scott Wozniak
Gorgeous.

Sam Donaghey
⁓

Michael Johnson
brisket, they have really good barbecue there.

Scott Wozniak
⁓ you know

those fine chocolate shops where they make the fudge in front of you and do free samples? yeah, you can do that right in the middle. ⁓

Michael Johnson
Yes.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Michael Johnson
Yeah. Clothing,

branded clothing with Buc-ee the Beaver on it. Their own custom snacks.

Scott Wozniak
Oh, and I…

Good. Beaver nuggets are dangerous. I’m just telling you. No, it’s ridiculous. People literally plan their road trips around where the next Buc-ee’s is. It’s a gas station, right? Like if the gas station can do this, in my area, I don’t know how this is for Michael, on Halloween, we start seeing kids, because they’ve had a Buc-ee’s here for, I guess, two or three years now. They start seeing kids wear the Buc-ee’s beaver. That’s their mascot.

Michael Johnson
Yes.

Yes.

Sam Donaghey
goodness.

Scott Wozniak
as their dress-up uniform for Halloween and go around like, like nobody’s going to do this for another gas station company, right? It’s crazy. ⁓ So here’s what we say is like, ⁓ I don’t know. I got my thing. You can’t do too much. You just grow this through more. And I’m telling you, there’s usually a significant advantage if you could break out of the norm and become the one great in your category. I’ll give you a Chick-fil-A story for this. So.

Michael Johnson
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
For those who don’t know our international listeners, Chick-fil-A, if you’re outside, it’s in the US, it’s mive. ⁓ per restaurant, Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s, the top two, and they are neck and neck. If you don’t know this, this probably will be the year, current growth trends, that Chick-fil-A pes McDonald’s for the domestic US as the largest fast food joint. ⁓ Yeah. Now globally, Chick-fil-A is just starting its international journey and McDonald’s global is a huge piece, but domestic.

And McDonald’s has 14,500 some locations in the US and Chick-fil-A has about 3,300. So the per store sales, they’re both 22, 23 billion in sales. They’re both mive, right? Okay, now why am I getting on this whole deal? Chick-fil-A’s be like, how do I get big like Chick-fil-A? Well, man, there was a moment back in the eighties. I was not there, but I happened to grow up knowing the Cathy family that owns Chick-fil-A.

That’s how I got connected and how I got this crazy cool job. The current CEO, Andrew and I went to high school. His cousins are my buddies. ⁓ I’ve known his family forever. They’re great guys. Okay. So before my time, but I’ve heard stories from the guys who were in the room. There was a moment in the 80s, 90s, I think it was, ⁓ where late 80s, early 90s, where Boston Market was another chicken restaurant chain in the US. Michael, you remember these guys. ⁓ They were good at first. I was pretty excited.

And they raised a bunch of money and went on a big growth spurt. I’m saying to your question, they went for bigger, big time, right? And they were rivals of Chick-fil-A. The product’s not identical, but it was this kind of high-end fast food, like fast sit down. It was right on that middle, kind of a fast casual thing. And they were growing crazy. mean, they opened hundreds a year, raised a ton of money. And Chick-fil-A guys were like, oh no. And we had this meeting. I wasn’t in the room, the guys in the room were like, we were freaking out.

We were like, no, we’re going to miss this and we got to get, we got to start raising money. And if you don’t know Chick-fil-A was entirely bootstrapped and run by the Cathy family. didn’t take outside investors. And they’re like, maybe we need to do that and get investment. We got, we’re going to be bought out. Like they’re going to beat us cause they’re bigger. And there’s this whole stress and everyone’s like, what are we going to do? And Truett, who was generally a really chill, just wonderful human being. He got really fired up and it kind of got hyped up and guys were standing up and talking and he.

slapped his hand on the table and he said, that’s enough of that. He said, this is the last time I ever want to talk about getting bigger for bigger sake. We will get better and let our customers make us bigger. And that has been their mantra. so here’s the more like the kicker of the story. Chick-fil-A is massive. Michael, when is the last time you’ve been to a Boston market. Do you remember? Yeah, because Sam, they spiked.

Michael Johnson
Mmm.

us.

It’s been years. It’s been 10 years plus.

Scott Wozniak
did not have the excellent systems in place to keep up with it. And they started getting sloppy. And that sloppiness meant people started getting untrustworthy. Like, I don’t know about them. It’s not as good as it used to be. And then they were highly leveraged because they bought that big sales, right? A lot of debt, a lot of raise, and they broke below the margins of what they could handle. It wasn’t epic crash, but it was just enough. They had a dip.

Sam Donaghey
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Scott Wozniak
And now they’re over their skis and struggling to keep up with it. And they went bankrupt and collapsed. And I think there’s like 15 left in the whole nation. Bigger is not better if you aren’t ready for it.

Sam Donaghey
Wow.

Michael Johnson
crazy.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah, it’s a lesson

in striving for excellence, having the right systems in place and growing organically, right? Instead of just buying the market up and

Scott Wozniak
Yes.

Yes.

And if you’re going to pay a lot of money to big growth, I’m not opposed to that. You just have to put at least an equal amount of effort into upgrading your systems and your team along the way. And so I’m not saying organic only. I’ve seen acquisitions and roll-ups. I’ve seen people have a hit campaign and it spikes and like, what are we going to, like, I’m okay with that, but be very careful when your external growth outpaces your internal growth.

Sam Donaghey
Right. Right, right.

Scott Wozniak
then you are setting yourself up for an ultimate collapse.

Michael Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. Scott, your story there about Truett Cathy, you’ve had the opportunity to work with the founding family of Chick-fil-A, which is fantastic.

Scott Wozniak
Yeah, with Truett

directly later. No, I wasn’t there for that meeting, but when I came, I did get to work with Truett and the rest of the team. Yeah.

Michael Johnson
curious what’s one less leadership lesson you’ve learned from them that maybe you found counterintuitive initially but ultimately proved to be a cornerstone of building a great legendary brand.

Scott Wozniak
Yeah. Oh man. Uh, like it doesn’t come to mind. I’ll give you two.

One is that the higher up you get in the organization and the bigger the organization gets, the more deliberate and intentional you have to be to get back down to the front lines and do basic things. Um, I can’t tell you how many times I saw Truett. We’d go with him and he would spend 33%, 35 % of his time.

Michael Johnson
Hmm

Sam Donaghey
Wow. Wow.

Scott Wozniak
visiting restaurants, talking to people in the field. And you know the kind of stuff he would do when he showed up? He would sweep through the drive-through and pick up trash and cigarette butts. He would walk through the dining room and pick up trash and wipe a table down. Now, he’d go wash his hands afterwards, right? like the guy, like then he would go talk to his frontline team members. mean, the guy’s a billionaire at the time and he’s talking to his 17 year old.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
⁓ Checking on the register, he’d chat with a customer and like, he, that’s true. It was awesome. He would skip the grownups and talk to the little kids a lot of times and like crouch down on his knees and chat them up. ⁓ The danger, what I see is they get big and high and mighty and everything we get field wise comes either from old data back when I used to be the guy on the front line or from reports up from the front line. And I’m not saying the reports are lies. mean, it’s good information. You should get those.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Yep.

Scott Wozniak
But there’s unreplaceable, irreplaceable. I’m like, unreplaceable is not a word. Irreplaceable, it’s an American thing, Sam. There’s something irreplaceable about getting down onto the front line and building those relationships and seeing it yourself. And I see way too many executives who are isolated in their ivory tower doing their cool stuff.

Michael Johnson
Yeah

Yeah, it’s a mirror.

Scott Wozniak
And if you got a good team, what you do is you give your team the operational decisions and you show up and connect and tune in. Cause those culture nuances, man, you might be less productive. Cause you spend all day just visiting. He’d go to a city and spend all day, literally just visiting six or seven different restaurants and talking to people.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah, but I’d imagine what does that do for the morale of the staff, right, and the people that work for him? That’s transformative, right?

Scott Wozniak
Yes. ⁓ my gosh.

Exactly. And the long lasting impact of that. And then when we come back and we’re having these strategic debates about what’s going on, Truett’s like, I know what’s going on. I was just there. ⁓ Or if we’re not sure what’s going on, well, dang it, let’s go visit them and ask. Forget guessing from a distance. So, you I was ready for this to be the high and mighty billionaire with his cool stuff, right? And he had some cool toys. get me wrong. Dude had a…

Sam Donaghey
He knows.

Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
Epic car collection. That was kind of his baby. ⁓ But when it came to the life he lived, it was very humble, very frontline. And I see this all the time. Like I see manufacturing executives who love to still walk the line. ⁓ I see the production guys who still get down into the details of their video and like geek out about this one piece. And it’s not, again, this important. They don’t run operations or make operations bottleneck on.

but they deliberately spend time getting back into the field where the customers are and their frontline staff is. Big leaders, your company is happening. What’s your customer experience? It’s happening on the frontline. And what we often have to say is like, you don’t actually create raving fans. Your frontline people create raving fans. So your job is to know them and get right to that front level and make sure you’re tuned in. that’s one of the cool things. I’ll give you one other one.

Michael Johnson
Mm.

Scott Wozniak
Man, it’s probably the single, that was very tactical and like basic, but like, let me zoom out. And I learned this, that if you look far enough down the road, there really is no difference between the most noble path and the most profitable path. Like, I often used to think this was attention, like, I don’t know, like how generous are the people and like, maybe we should save some money. And then I’m going say, make a bunch of money here. Then I’ll go do like philanthropy over there.

Michael Johnson
Mmm.

Sam Donaghey
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
It turns out that if you’re really good to your people, I don’t mean wasteful, but like good to your people, then they’re really good to your customers. And if you’re really generous and good with your customers and you do those extra little bits I’m talking about, it costs a little bit more, right? And you got to invest in a little bit better equipment for everybody. like all that little bits add up to be like, I was good enough to like, no, we really cared for them. Well, in the long run, that is way more profitable.

then if you pinch the pennies and make it tight and do this in the short run, right? ⁓ I’ll give a really obvious like restaurant example, try to boil it down. Simple little generosity, like a Chick-fil-A. ⁓ The pack of sauces, there’s all these little sauce packets. They don’t cost any extra. Want a pack? Just ask them. We’ll get you some, no problem, right? ⁓ Whereas a lot of other places, well, those actually cost us money to make. They’re not free, right?

So other places are like, well, sure you can have one, it’s 50 cents, right? Here you go, like, yeah, two for a dollar, come on, give me some. And you’re like, okay, it’s 50 cents. Now, in the short term, those restaurants make more money than Chick-fil-A who give away free sauces. But in the long term, the feeling you create by being just a little bit generous, man, it’s just a totally different feeling than that negative moment when I’m in the other place and I want a sauce, but I…

I guess I don’t want it enough to pay another 50 cents. So I’m like scraping out the one packet I do have and it’s not exactly enough, but well, I’ll eat the last piece without sauce. It doesn’t ruin the meal, but it’s just that little bit of like, I’m thinking of where I want to go. ⁓ I’ll go back to Chick-fil-A rather than I’ll go to the other place. And the same thing happens with your staff. Like, you generously give, I’ll give you one. Do you have, I’ve seen a lot of bigger places. They start having lunches in their building. ⁓

Sam Donaghey
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
By the I’ve worked with a lot of companies, but the Chick-fil-A stories are so good here. Truett did this for the staff at the corporate headquarters, not the locations, they’re franchised, so that’s a different structure. But for the corporate headquarters in Atlanta, there’s a free lunch provided for all the staff. It’s a pretty sweet lunch. It has Chick-fil-A products, but a lot of other stuff too. Don’t tell the cows, but we make some pretty good burgers and even steak once in a while. ⁓ Say the whole Chick-fil-A…

ad campaign is a bunch of cows saying, eat more chicken. So ⁓ they’re like the company fans. It’s like, don’t tell them we eat beef at the headquarters. ⁓ So he’s pretty awesome. Now, why did we do that? Well, cause Truett started as a restaurant guy, right? And so his original office was attached to the restaurant, one of his flagship restaurants. like restaurant guys don’t go out and get lunch somewhere else. He like has his own staff, make a lunch.

Sam Donaghey
⁓ right.

Scott Wozniak
Well, then starts hiring headquarters people to help him with this new growing franchise thing. Well, he’s like, I’m getting lunch. It’d be kind of a jerk move to be like, I get free lunch, but you, Sam, you got to pay for your lunch, right? Fine, I’ll give you free lunch. Well, then there’s more people. And eventually they got so big, they moved to another location, but it was a mile down the road. So he just sends somebody down the road to pick up lunch. And then we got to the headquarters. He’s like, I’ve been giving you free lunch. I’m not going to quit. So we put a cafe in. It started off with generosity.

Well, you know what it turns out? You know who else gives free lunches? Google and most of the big tech companies, Facebook and Apple. Are they trying to be generous? They’re not restaurateurs. Like what’s going on? Well, you literally can do the math and calculate how much money am I paying my staff? How productive are they per hour? Like get hourly labor productivity rates, right? And then you say, okay, if I make you leave and go have lunch off site, how much time is lost in the commute and the chaos versus

Michael Johnson
Hmm.

Scott Wozniak
saving the commute, let alone the fact that guess what happens when we all have lunch in the building? Well, dang it, lot of our lunch, guess what we do over lunch? Like we’re going to talk shop and I might as have a lunch meeting and we’re all right here anyway. And the cost to provide free lunch versus the productivity of providing lunch turns out to be a mively profitable thing for a company to do once they hit a certain threshold of size and it’s worth the cost of the food, right? Truett.

started as just a good, good man. And it turns out that him being really noble about this is incredibly profitable in the long run. Did it cost him more money in the short run? Yes. So whether it was his employees or his customers, he’s like, I’m not going to give away free meals. That’ll put me out of business, but free sauce? Yeah, I could be generous in that. And that nobility in the little things turns out to be the most profitable way to run a company in the long run.

And so if you look down the road far enough, like get out of the today, get out of the next 90 days. If you start looking in the multi-year and beyond, the most profitable thing you could do is to actually be really noble with your staff and with your customers.

Michael Johnson
You know that I love the stories you shared Scott, because it rings true with a lot of our experience, you know, which is what we do is we’ll come in and maybe someone’s had a CRM and it’s, it’s built, but the team’s not using it. And when you really dig down into it, it’s because someone built it that isn’t on the front lines, you know? And, so, you know, one thing we always say is that those that write the plan don’t fight the plan. And, know, and it’s, it’s really getting the people that

Scott Wozniak
Yes. Yeah.

⁓ that’s good.

Michael Johnson
that are actually using the tool to build the tool. And you learn so much when your leadership, like you’re saying, is willing to get down and ⁓ get their hands dirty, but really learn from the frontline data. But that, to me, that type of leadership can be rare. it backs up with something you said, is that the hardest thing to scale is leadership. Can you expand on that a little bit? What strategy have you seen behind developing leaders that ⁓

that’s fast enough to keep up with growth.

Scott Wozniak
Yeah. So we built a lot of leadership development programs for Chick-fil-A. I built all their leadership development programs back in the day. They were outsourcing it and they said, Hey, we need our own. And so that was my work is that’s one of the things they said, go figure out how to the best in the world do it. And now I’ve done that for a lot of companies. And I’ll tell you the single biggest mistake I make is they think it’s about content. But leadership development is not about intellectual understanding. think leadership development is like being an athlete or a musician.

I need to know some theory or technique. Sure. We need to know what the play is and like the concept of the play we want to run. But knowing about the thing doesn’t make me actually good at doing the thing. Knowing music theory doesn’t make me able to play an instrument very well. You have to practice. So most leadership development programs do a lecture cl, cool interaction. We get a cool concept and then we check the box. Everyone understands the concept. win. Success is not knowledge.

Success is demonstrated skill. That’s what we’re after. And so the program needs to have some component where you get in there and actually practice the thing. Now think like sports debrief with your coach, right? Have somebody debrief with, then you go back and try it again with a new tweak and you get some feedback built into it. And so you might have 20, 30 % of content and 70, 80 % of the time practicing and reviewing it. And then you get with a group and then, okay, got it.

Michael Johnson
Yeah.

Scott Wozniak
And one of the principles we do when we build this program is we say teach at practice speed. Teach at practice speed. Just because I’m intelligent enough and you’re intelligent enough for me to unload 10 modules of content on you doesn’t mean you can practice them all. We should give you module one, go practice module one. Then we’ll give you module two and you go practice module two. There’s no point in giving you all 10 if you’re not going to practice all 10 this month. So designing the program around practice.

Michael Johnson
Hmm.

Right.

Scott Wozniak
That is the unlock that allows you to really take this thing off.

Sam Donaghey
absolutely love it. Honestly, Scott, this has been amazing to listen to you talk about your stories and your experiences. Scott, before we go, we always like to ask our guests to leave us with a quote or a piece of advice that’s inspired them personally. So what comes to mind for you today?

Scott Wozniak
Man, ⁓ so many things, but I think it comes down to systems. So Deming, who was the father of system thinking and excellence and what became the lean production, lean manufacturing movement. Deming says a quote that I kind of love and kind of hate, if I were to be honest, but it’s good for me. He says, every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. So like.

Michael Johnson
Mm-hmm.

Scott Wozniak
If you have inconsistent excellence or you’re not delivering on this piece, then you don’t solve this through motivational speeches. You gotta build a different system. And so that’s the challenge to me is like, okay, man, this one-off, like if you’re getting these kinds of results, yeah, that’s the system. That’s the set of behaviors and tools and rhythms and habits.

That’s what you’ve built. so, ⁓ build a different system. It’s not hype. It’s not moat. What’s that old leadership joke? The beatings will continue until morale improves. work. Right? You just build a different system if you want a different outcome. And that’s what we do. And that’s what I’m trying to do is, and if I can say briefly, like this is probably the number one thing we do is we come in and we do a diagnostic on your engine. What are your systems? What’s the underlying things getting you this stuff?

Sam Donaghey
Yeah. ⁓

Michael Johnson
Right.

Scott Wozniak
And then we give you a custom strategic plan on how you can build a better engine. ⁓ And man, I find so many times it’s not expensive or complicated. There’s just missing pieces that if you plug them in, things take off and you don’t have to whip your people daily trying to get them to do a better job.

Sam Donaghey
Scott, thanks so much for being with us today.

Scott Wozniak
Yeah, my pleasure guys.

Sam Donaghey
Well, that’s a wrap on today’s episode of the Fast Slow Motion Podcast. A mive thank you to Scott Wozniak for joining us and sharing how to build a brand worth talking about. To learn more about Scott, you can head over to swazconsulting.com. We’re going to leave a link to that in the show notes. And as always, you can catch all of our past episodes at fastslowmotion.com slash podcast, or you can subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you’ve got a question or a topic that you want us to explore,

just drop us a note at fastslowmotion.com slash podcastfeedback.