Latest / CEOs and ABCs / Barry Westrum (Dairy Queen, KFC, Del Taco, Taco John's) Building Culturally Relevant, Emotionally Connected Brands & The Power of Boundaries at Creating Work-Life Balance #025

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Barry Westrum (Dairy Queen, KFC, Del Taco, Taco John's) Building Culturally Relevant, Emotionally Connected Brands & The Power of Boundaries at Creating Work-Life Balance #025 · CEOs and ABCs

• 0:00
  Speaker A: One of the keys to being successful at work and being successful at home is that boundary setting at work. The first time you're walking out of a meeting at 4:30 because you've got a kid thing at 5:00 clock might have raised a few eyebrows. Suddenly you see around that same table somebody else leaving it. So it becomes part of the culture. You aren't going to get the most out of your team if they aren't able to be 100% at work when they're at work, but also 100% at home when they need to be at home. You were managing the whole employee and not just that employee that was, that was at work during the day.
• 0:37
  Speaker B: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting, wins and fails, and everything in between. I'm your host, Kevin Rice. Here's today's episode. Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. Today I'm joined by Barry Westrom, a career restaurant marketer who's helped shape some of the most recognizable QSR brands from from Dairy Queen to kfc, Del Taco, Long John Silver and Taco John's. But this conversation isn't about big campaigns and billion dollar brands. It's about what actually makes marketing work. Building emotional connections, staying culturally relevant and learning to lead people, not just projects. Barry shares some of the frameworks he learned inside of Yum Brands. How mentorship and formal training accelerated his career growth and what he believes marketers must master if they want to reach the CMO seat. We also go behind the title. Barry opens up about leading at work while leading at home. Building a creative, grounded family culture with his wife, raising two daughters while his career was taking off, and the boundaries he set so he could show up for the moments that mattered most, even during an 18 month commute cycle. So if you're navigating ambition and family at the same time, you're going to love this episode. Barry, thank you so much for being here today.
• 1:53
  Speaker A: Good to be here. Kevin, it's great to see you.
• 1:56
  Speaker B: We first met back in 2016, maybe, maybe 2017 when you were the Chief Marketing Officer of Dairy Queen. Since then you've held titles as the Chief Marketing Officer at Del Taco Taco John. Before that you were the Chief Marketing Officer of Long John Silvers and kfc. You've had this amazing career in marketing. I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 2:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, great. Well, uh, thanks for having me. I think back to those days at Dairy Queen. Quite a bit. Those were. That was definitely one of the highlights of my career. I just love that brand. Um, it needed a little TLC. We were able to grow it from 3 billion to 4 billion in sales during my tenure. Uh, and they've been on a heck of a run ever since I've left, so it's just been fun watching that brand succeed. It was always about the emotion with the brand and that personal connection. Like, we. We did a lot of work with the consumer, and relative to any other brand in qsr, Dairy Queen had the strongest emotional connection. It was like. It was your first job. It was where you. You met your wife. It was. It was.
• 2:59
  Speaker B: I mean, it's where we went to after all of our soccer practices every time.
• 3:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And that was really amazing to me. And the rest of QSR can be seen as so transactional. You know, it's. It's. I went for a $3 sandwich because it was convenient and it was quick and it was cheap. But at Dairy Queen, even if you were just going in for a lunch, it rekindled memories of your past and relationships that you had. And it was. It was a ton of fun treading in that emotional space for the brand. And I think. I think that's what. That's why we had such success. There was. We capitalized on the emotion, but we did improve the function of the brand. The brand wasn't really resonating from a value perspective. We. The pricing. Right. We did some really smart promotions. Digital was becoming a big thing, and that's what you and I had worked on, was getting the brand relevant from a digital perspective. That was really, you know, kind of what I learned at Yum. And what I was able to apply at Dairy Queen was this notion of strengthening the emotional connection with the brand, but also building the functional connection. And that was kind of the model for success at Yum. It's what I applied at Dairy Queen, and it was great to see those results.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: Well, you guys did a great job tying into just cultural themes and being relevant with consumers. I remember we themed the Dairy Queen mobile app for a Jurassic World release, and then not much later, there was a Dairy Queen scene in Guardians of the Galaxy. So there's just, like, all these great ways that you were tying into, like, consumer trends and just being relevant to the. In the culture.
• 4:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. There were some big brand marketing ideas that we cultivated at Yum. You were expected to bring those to the table. It was part of that Yum marketing magic. And at Dairy Queen, they had played the Ball pretty conservatively over the years. And there were some very smart bets for us. We, we doubled down on the media side. Franchisees were confident in the brand and confident what we were doing. They. We doubled down on media spending and we had our first tie in with Major League Baseball, which when you think about baseball, particularly Little League baseball and Dairy Queen, I mean, that's a match made in heave. We had a great Valentine's Day promotion where we did the Singles Blizzard. Okay. So when you think about Valentine's Day, Right, it's all about couples and such. And at the time statistic came out that there were actually more people who identified as single in America than there were in a relationship. And so we came up with the Singles blizzard and we got a ton of natural pickup on that story because it was so culturally relevant. And I think. And I think that was what was really fun about that brand. And what was really surprising to me was how much the brand just lives in these cultural moments. They just needed to be sparked a little bit to get the brand talked about again.
• 5:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I want to go into all of this like, how did you develop these skills? How did you build this career? But yeah, tell us a little bit about what life looks like today for.
• 6:04
  Speaker A: You before we do. Yeah, I, I left Corporate America about 18 months ago. I've been doing a lot of consulting, some traditional consulting, but primarily now with different companies in the AI space. They are either in the restaurant space today or they're looking to expand into restaurants. They might be international and they are now looking to develop in the United States. So there are some really wonderful AI based technologies that are making life easier for restaurant operators, for brands that are looking to do really great marketing but need to do it with faster and at lower cost. And I'm helping these companies kind of shape their product for the US Marketplace as well as introduce folks into my network and really broaden their awareness in the restaurant community. So it's an exciting space. It's making for, I think, a democratization of the restaurant space where it's not just the big brands getting the best technologies. You know, medium and small size brands can access these technologies so they can improve their competitive standing in a. In a hyper competitive marketplace.
• 7:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. Would you consider yourself kind of like a fractional CMO or more of an advisor? Cause I see a lot of executives who have kind of finished out their core career in corporate America and now they're transitioning into like a fractional role. And that seems to be like the buzzword is that Is that kind of how you position yourself or is it more of a like advisory role?
• 7:33
  Speaker A: It's def, it's definitely much more in the advisory role. I, I, I, I did a little work on the fractional side. Really it's about the, what are the projects that are most interesting to me? I've, I've always considered my core strengths being about understanding what makes a brand tick. How do you communicate that, how do you deploy the right levels and the levers in the marketing mix in order to grow a brand. And I think that's where these AI, AI technologies kind of mesh well with my experience and my strengths is helping translate between the platform and the brand to understand how these platforms can fundamentally change a brand's growth trajectory. And that's been really exciting for me. Yeah.
• 8:19
  Speaker B: What's like one, one of the most exciting startups that you're advising right now.
• 8:24
  Speaker A: There is a company out of the UK called Loke. They have a combined ordering, loyalty and payments platform. And so one of the things we've all seen that have just been so problematic with technologies today is our tech stacks have just gotten larger and larger in these integrations that are supposed to work, sometimes do, sometimes don't. And it's driving cost. And the notion of consolidation to where loyalty, payments and ordering can all be under one platform is a huge advantage and allows for smaller chains to really compete with the 500 pound gorillas in the marketplace. And so they've recently expanded in the United States and I'm helping them get more traction here and position their product right for the US marketplace.
• 9:13
  Speaker B: So you're telling me that sometimes people sell platforms that don't actually work and they don't actually integrate? No, that can't be true. So where did this all start? Because you've had this like incredible career as a chief marketing officer. Where did that start for you? Did you want to go into marketing?
• 9:32
  Speaker A: You know, I, I always wanted to be an ad guy. I grew up watching. This was long before Madman. It was more like Bewitched. You know, Darren Stevens was the, was the ad guy. Larry Tate was his boss. I was really fascinated by the notion of how communications can solve Big bro. Big, big business challenges. When I was a senior in high school, I went to a Communications Week presentation by what was to become my alma mater, Cal State Fullerton. They had the largest ad program on the west coast. And at this day long seminar you had ad executive after ad executive after ad executive come up and share stories of how businesses were faltering with the right Communication strategy and the right execution plan. These businesses blossomed and, and I was just taken by that. And long before super bowl ad meter, I was critiquing advertising in my living room with my family and such. And so I went to work in advertising agencies for the first few years of my career and you know, had the opportunity at a very young age to work on some incredible brands. Pepsi Cola, I was working for Tracy Lock out of Dallas. We were doing the regional Pepsi work out of 26 offices across the country. At 24 years old, I'm presenting the client TV sports storyboards with athletes of the day, Joe Montana, John Elway, John Stockton, Carl Malone, and you know, just these wonderful experiences. So, you know, I, you know, enjoyed that time. I met my wife at Tracy lock, you know, 30 some odd years later, here we are, two wonderful kids. But I, you know, I loved my time in advertising. I love seeing how creative can help drive the total business. But I did see that all the decisions were going on at the client side, right. I could have wonderful recommendations, great creative, great media strategies and such, but all the decisions were being made on the other side of the table. And so I wanted to be on the other side of the table. And that's when I got the call from an old boss of mine from Tracy Locke who had gone to Taco Bell, had suggested I come over to work for her in the field marketing team. And that was my first foray into client side marketing. But it led to this really wonderful 18 year career at Yum, where I was able to work my way up from, you know, associate manager, field marketing to chief marketing officer of kfc. You know, the lessons I learned there, the people I met, the mentors, I had shaped my entire career. It's a phenomenal company. To be able to be there at its inception back in 1997 was just fabulous. And to watch it grow and to see it prosper even today with their earnings release and seeing what's happened there, I mean it's just, it's, it was, it was a phenomenal experience. And I, some of the best friends I've met in my life that I'm still in very close contact with today was from those 18 years at Yum.
• 12:40
  Speaker B: Amazing. I love how the early life experience, early career experiences really start to shape where you're going to go. And sometimes it helps you understand where you want to go, but sometimes it's like helps you understand where you don't want to go. For me, I did an internship in high school where I was in A PR internship at Intel Corporation. And it was your typical, like, ocean of cubicles. Just cubicle after cubicle after cubicle. I got a little cubicle. They put me in a bunch of busy work. It was nothing intelligent. It was just kind of doing some basic, like, research and spreadsheets for them. And that's when I learned I do not want to be in a cubicle setting. You know, later I saw the show off the office and I was like, oh, my gosh, that is literally a parody of what I experienced when I was in this internship program. Probably the only reason I actually liked the internship program was because it was after school and it was, it was a little hard to get. So my high school was actually really, like, supportive that I had gotten this internship over other students that applied for it. And I wouldn't say I was a troublemaker, but I certainly got detentions pretty often in high school. So the thing that saved me was when my vice principal tried to tell me, like, oh, you're going to have detention. I had an excuse. I could say, but, you know, I have this internship program. I have to go to the internship program after school, so I can't really do detention today. And I just felt like I had had this like, get out of jail free card that worked all year long.
• 14:18
  Speaker A: That's great.
• 14:19
  Speaker B: So you mentioned something that I want to go back to because you said that you met your wife while you were working at an ad agency. Sounds like an HR nightmare. What happened here?
• 14:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, actually it was quite innocent in the sense that I had moved around offices with Tracy Lock and there was an art director that I was working with and we worked really, really well together. You know, I always felt like she was a. She did great creative, but appreciated that there were budgets and timelines and came to find out that she always felt that, you know, I could drive budgets and timelines. But I appreciated and pushed for and supported great creative. And so when I moved to Los Angeles, I didn't have a car and I needed to get around. And she was kind enough to drive me places to pick up things that I needed to move into my apartment, all that stuff. Well, anyway, we started spending a lot of time together and realized that, you know, this was pretty serious and for a long time kept it, kept it very quiet in the office. Nobody knew. And I think that just further built our relationship and such. And so I didn't want to on a long term basis. I didn't want to work together and be dating. And so I actually switched Accounts and that's what allowed us, and we were able to become public and say, you know, here we are. But to this day, he's been, of course, the love of my life. But, you know, whether it's designing our home, I always trust her with the creative side. She trusts me with the project management. And we were a good team then, then and a good, good team now.
• 15:54
  Speaker B: And how did that early chemistry and collaboration translate into later in life as you guys started to have a family, you guys have two daughters together. How did that kind of translate into the home life that you were building?
• 16:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's interesting. We have a lot of artists in our family and we were a household that, you know, celebrated art and artistry and such. There was always music in the household, there's always singing in the household. We would crank the Hamilton soundtrack while we were doing dishes and things like that. And so I think that kind of creativity was a big part and still is a big part of our marriage, the celebration of creativity. But we also know our way around spreadsheets has just led to balanced. Being well balanced on the home front.
• 16:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like great ingredients for a recipe for success. Hi, Kevin here. If you're enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who's working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I'd really love it if you could share this episode with them. It's one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they're proud of without missing the moments that matter most. I think if I do the math, your daughters are in their early 30s, is that correct?
• 17:13
  Speaker A: 30 and 27.
• 17:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, 30 and 27. So you would have been just kind of starting your career at Taco Bell when you had your first daughter?
• 17:23
  Speaker A: That's correct, Yeah. I, I had been with Taco Bell for about a year when Samantha was born. And I remember getting messages from my team and my boss of congratulations on that same amazing.
• 17:38
  Speaker B: What was that transition like for you? Because you were still early in your career, you were building skills, proving yourself, and now you had all these additional responsibilities of taking care of a tiny human. How did life change?
• 17:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know, we were really, really lucky in the sense that we were surrounded by great support. We lived three or four blocks from my in laws home. We had great neighbors that were incredibly supportive. And you know, it's the old adage, it takes a village to raise kids. And so my wife was. And you know, had it not been for the support of our in laws and our neighbors and things like that, with childcare and, you know, rides here and there and things like that. It would have been really difficult. But I think that's what, you know, having that, having that kind of support network was really, really critical. And that's what we're, that's why we moved to Richmond, Virginia, because, you know, our daughters, they plan to start a family here in the not too distant future and we want to be there for that. And knowing how important that support network was for us then, we're trying to create the same thing now.
• 18:43
  Speaker B: It's so important. And up until maybe a hundred years ago, that's how families existed in multi generational close proximity to each other. And it's really only been recently that that kind of dynamic has changed where, you know, maybe you don't live near your parents. I was really fortunate. My parents decided to move down to San Luis Obispo about a month before I found out my first son was conceived. And they've. It's just been a godsend to have them here. I went through a really difficult divorce, became a single parent. And during that period for a couple years where I was parenting by myself, it wouldn't have been possible without their support. And I've had lots of other guests on the show who talk about that village concept and, you know, getting, getting teaching and parenting from different generations and different perspectives so that it's not solely resting on the parent to be everything to everyone. So it's great that you're able to, you know, do that for, for your daughter as well.
• 19:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You kind of mentioned the notion of like a multi generational household. That's one other thing. My wife's dad, he's 90 years old and he lives with us. He's. He's in great shape. He's. He's lived with us for the last eight years. And you know, that I think that's a powerful component of the household dynamic, is that gets to be a part of all our family celebrations. Not just major holidays, but Sunday dinners can be with my daughter and son in law and him and ourselves. At one point, when I took the job at International dairy queen for 18 months, I commuted from Louisville to Minneapolis because my daughter was still in high school and I didn't want to pull her out of her senior year of high school. And so that was tough. One hand allowed me to focus on work, but on the other hand, you know, you miss Tuesday night dinner and things like that. I think kind of a strong component of that time Period was. I was very upfront with the folks at Dairy Queen around. Look, I'm happy to commute and we'll work through it, but there are going to be key things I need to be at home for, from a family perspective. For example, my daughter was playing high school soccer at the time, captain of the soccer team. And I'm like, I want to be there for those games. And those games were like, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And so for those weeks, I might. I might not fly to Minneapolis until Wednesday or fly back in time to be there for that Thursday game or what have you. And at the end of the season of talking with some of the other dads, I was like, you know, yeah, you know, I've been commuting back and forth to Minneapolis, and they're like, wait a minute, you've been. This entire time? You know, There were like 16 games, and I think I was at 14 of them. They were like, I had no idea you. You got to more games than I did, that kind of thing. And actually, really, you know, I credit the team at Dairy Queen for giving me that kind of flexibility. And, oh, by the way, this is before the pandemic. This is before remote work was a thing. This is before Zoom. And the fact that we made that work was just so important to me, you know, on the professional side, that the company was so understanding, but on the personal side that, you know, I was still able to make those important family events so that it wasn't as though I was absent for 18 months. It was just that I was. I was moving around a lot for those 18 months, but I was there for the important things. And I think that, that, that was very important to me. And I'm. And I'm glad that worked out.
• 22:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, and that's great that they were flexible with you, but I think it started with you setting those professional boundaries, which can be really difficult, whether you're setting it with an employer or even if you're trying to set your own boundaries, because it's just so easy to flex over them. When you were earlier in your career, were you able to set similar boundaries or different boundaries, or was it more.
• 22:29
  Speaker A: Challenging when you were not, you know.
• 22:32
  Speaker B: Already in an executive role?
• 22:33
  Speaker A: I think one of the keys to being successful at work and being successful at home is, to your point, that boundary setting at work, the first time you're walking out of a meeting at 4:30, because you got a kid thing at 5:00 clock back in the day, culturally, that kind of might have raised a Few eyebrows. But when you work through that and the next day you're following up on those things you might have missed on the last, from that last 30 minutes of the meeting, suddenly you see around that same table somebody else leaving at 4:30 or 4:00 clock in order to get to another kid thing. And so it becomes part of the culture. And later on in my career, I think that's one of the things that I always made a point to make sure that was a critical component of our culture, was recognizing the whole person, the whole employee. And you aren't going to get the most out of your team if they aren't able to be 100% at work when they're at work, but also 100% at home when they need to be at home. And having that kind of flexibility, having that kind of understanding, I think made for a better workforce and made for a more productive team, a happier team, a more inspired team, because you were managing the whole employee and not just that employee that was at work during the day.
• 23:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. And you're walking the walk. Right. It's one thing to tell employees that we're flexible, you're free to leave. Just get your work done in whatever time it makes sense for you. But then if you're the one staying there till 7, 8 o' clock at night, everybody's gonna follow suit. They're not gonna do what you say, they're gonna do what you do because you know your teams are watching, Right?
• 24:11
  Speaker A: Absolutely. And that was, that was really the key. And then you also had to do some of that with. I had worked in franchisee businesses my entire career. These folks are salt of the earth. Like they make these brands run and their businesses are 247 and their mindset is not that kind of that corporate 9 to 5 world. And so, you know, occasionally you get that call on a Saturday where it's about, you know, an emergency and you need to deal with it. And that's perfectly fine. Sometimes you'd get that call on a Saturday just to chit chat and it'd be like, you know what, no, I'll catch up with you on Monday because I'm at a game now or something like that. And so I think doing that in the early days was really, really critical with managing franchisees. You needed to be there for the business because the business is 24 7. But when it's time to, you know, be with family, you don't pick up that phone.
• 25:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was the hardest thing for me to do, was to set my own Boundaries. Because, I mean, technically I didn't have a boss, but I would try to set boundaries, like, okay, I'm not going to work on Sunday or I'm going to turn off. And it was just so hard to stick to it because I found myself just constantly thinking about work. I would be reading a bedtime story or doing a bath routine, and at the same time, I'd just be mentally rehearsing the next day's meeting or the previous pitch that could have gone better. And so it was really hard to turn it off. How did you manage that? Like context switching when you were building in your career and now you have a young family at home?
• 25:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I was. I was always a big, you know, call it separation of church and state guy. You know, like. Like when I was at. When I was at work, I worked. I didn't. I rarely took a personal call. I. You know, I didn't take. Necessarily take care of personal business. But that drive home was critical for shutting it off. And when you're at home, you're home. And like I said, I rarely took kind of business calls at home unless they were an emergency. And, you know, I. There was a phrase we used at Yum that really stuck with me was this notion of be here now. Let's not be distracted when we're trying to tackle a problem. Let's be very focused in the boardroom. But it applied at home, too. To your point, when you are reading that bedtime story or when you are at the performance or at the game, be there. Be focused on what's going on so that after the game you can say, hey, great, play on when this happened. Or your singing was beautiful in that one scene. I really thought it was really good. You don't miss it when you're there. And so be here now was always a message that really stuck with me.
• 26:51
  Speaker B: Especially with kids, because they only live in the present moment. They're not thinking about the future or the past. It's one of the most innocent, pure things about children is they exist in that moment. And as adults, we're constantly thinking about the future or the past, and we're rarely intentional about where we're at moment.
• 27:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's so true. And I think one of the biggest lessons about parenting that was shared with me was this notion of meet them where they are, right. Whether it was theater stuff or soccer stuff. I remember driving my kids all over Southern California to tournaments and theater camps and all that stuff, and you could be in the car with them for an hour. Or two. And you know, you may not say a word, right, and just listen to music. You, you might have to have the conversation about the birds and the bees. The point is if, if they're, if that's when they want to talk about it, that's when you've got to be, you've got to be ready to go. And so I'll need some pointers from.
• 27:49
  Speaker B: You on that conversation because it's probably coming up soon with my nine year old.
• 27:53
  Speaker A: Oh, boy. Yeah, there you go. Well, I don't, I don't know if I claim to be an expert there, but the, the, you just have to be ready to go when those things come up. And so, and even, even sometimes just listening to the chitter chatter in the backseat between them and their friends, you kind of pick up on what's going on in their lives. Then you come back a little bit later and say, hey, I noticed you and you know, Carly were talking about this or that. Is that something that's bothering you or is that something that's on your mind? Is this something we need to talk about? That kind of thing.
• 28:22
  Speaker B: It's kind of like the equivalent of walking the halls, as in a leadership role, you know, around the office. You mentioned a phrase that you, that stuck with you while you were at Yum. I have had three or four people on the podcast who went through the ranks at Yum. And for whatever reason, it seems like Yum is just this amazing organization for building executive leaders because there's just so many C level executives that have, have gone through the program of Yum and arrived, you know, at the pinnacle of their career. What were some of the things you learned while you were in the school of Yum?
• 29:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think there are a couple things that Yum did really, really well. And you're right. There was actually an article in forbes back in 2016. I think it's been updated since. But they've talked about how Yum is one of the best companies in the United States for growing C suite leaders. I think three things. One was Yum was big on mentoring and both informal and informal mentorships. I, you know, had, you know, I was very lucky in the sense that I was mentored by some of the titans in the industry. Formal meet every other week and chat about what's going on in your career and at home. And that, that, that was just critical because what you were not necessarily able to pick up on the job. You had free rein to chat with these great leaders and be able to say Here's a problem I'm having. You know, what's your. What's your take on it? Or. One of my mentors was a tremendous presenter. One of those presenters that can captivate a room. And I was working on my presentation skills, and he gave me how he prepared, how he wrote his presentations, how he practiced, the tools he used, the technology he used to practice, and things like that that, you know, were just. Were just incredibly powerful for me. And two was real quick before.
• 30:29
  Speaker B: Of course, when it comes to mentoring, I think we've all heard the importance of having mentors, but where I know a lot of people get stuck is just understanding what should that actually look like? Is it a structure? Is it a. Is there a timeline for it? Like, it's one thing to, like, know I need a mentor, and it's another to know how to go about getting and working with a mentor. So do you have any tips for anyone that might be trying to get a mentor or just starting working with a mentor? Like, how do you get the most out of that relationship?
• 31:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'll tell you. I'm actually a part of a mentoring group right now called the GLEAM Network. Folks can look it up. It's a wonderful program that partners you with another person in the industry based on, you know, where you are, what you've done, where you want to be, where you want to go. And it's a very formal program. There. There. There's a. A platform that you use to enter in the goals of both the mentor and the mentee in the relationship, suggested time frames for you to meet, suggested scripts for certain meetings. And I actually find the formality to be very, very helpful because some folks can be really good at getting the most out of the relationship. Sometimes, you know, you run the risk of having a lot of conversations, but no real meat, you know, and no real action and no real development occurring. And so for me, I just recognized that these were phenomenal opportunities. And I just made. I made sure that I came to every meeting prepared, and I came to every meeting with what I would call three big questions. You know, that was it. Nothing more than that, but about things that I was fascinated in seeing from these leaders, like major strategic decisions for the brand. How did you come to that decision? What were some of the inputs that you used? How did you, whether formally or informally, get feedback on that decision before you made it? You came from this background, yet you developed this strength. How did you complement your skill set that way? Like trying to ask big questions? Because it felt like that's the way I was going to get the most out of the privilege of being mentored by these great leaders. And so that's the thing I would encourage folks to do is if a seek out these mentorship programs, make it formal and take it upon yourself to ask big questions. And if you do that, you're going to get the most from them. You'll find that this is what allows you to leapfrog in your career because it's learning from, you know, we called it yeoman, called it standing on the shoulders of giants. You know, learning from those who have been there and done that is, is one of the most important ways to grow in your career. So mentoring was number one. Two was there was good, very good formal development. And in classes, I mean literal, you'd go to classes. I remember one that I went to some of the best leaders from around the globe at Yum. They flew us all to Louisville and they gave us a bunch of case studies on challenges that brands were facing and decisions that were made. And what they taught was a framework around the way to think about these business challenges. Strategy, structure, culture. And you know, real simple, it was, okay, here's your business problem. What's the strategy by which you're going to use to, to solve it? You know, discuss and debate that. Once you've established the strategy, how are you going to build your structure in order to solve that strategy? What are the right people? What are the right functions that you're going to need to help? Where, where are you going to need the talent? And then culture is like, what are the key cultural tenants that are going to be necessary in an organization to make the strategy work? And so, and so this, that framework of strategy, structure, culture really stuck with me my entire career. I think I even use it in my LinkedIn profile or my LinkedIn bio. You know, using strategy, structure and culture to solve business problems. And I think that was a great example. It was a three day program at yum. Again, some of my best friends in the industry I met at that three day program. We've all gone on to these, do these different things with wonderful organizations. But three day class, but it was so powerful that, you know, here I am a number of years later sharing it with you. And I think that between the mentorship and the, and the formal training and I. And then I think the third component I would say would be you were given a fair amount of independence early at yum. You were given big projects, big objectives, big expectations and a little bit of hand holding. But the expectation is you were going to bring that initiative to life. And I think between the real world experience, the formal training and the mentoring, that's why Yum is so great at developing C suite leaders. Yeah.
• 35:25
  Speaker B: And that last example is something that echoes what one of my previous guests, Nick Tran, mentioned. He was in his early career at Taco Bell as well, and I think within his first year they had just given him the key as to the social media handles and said, okay, you run this new thing called social, which is a lot of responsibility for somebody early in their career. Today you have entire teams and governance overseeing that because there's so many things that could happen or go wrong. But I think, I think you and a few other people should get together and write a book about the University of Yum because I think it's so interesting and the results speak for themselves.
• 36:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, funny, actually you mentioned Yum University. So one of the stints in my career at Yum was I was the dean of the Yum Marketing University. And so I actually, I wasn't the first dean, I was the second. But I was able to write curriculum, provide training to young marketers around the world. Basically the premise was that all these great brands, all these great business units around the world, but everybody went to. Went to market differently. Well, how do we take the best practices from all around the globe and teach that as one curriculum at Yum? And that was a fabulous experience. And you know, just, just the ability to interact with some of the top marketers from around the globe at Yum was, was really, really terrific.
• 36:52
  Speaker B: So I saw that that was right before you became the Chief Marketing Officer of KFC Us, right?
• 36:58
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 36:59
  Speaker B: Now, so it sounds like you got a lot of support. There was mentorship, there was training and development, there was giving you a lot of responsibility to help you develop skills. What were some of the things that you did personally in your career to get to where you are today?
• 37:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, good question. I think one of the things that I certainly experience and the things I try to, you know, teach the folks that I work with is this notion of career management is your responsibility. Yes. You should expect things like formality, mentoring programs and training programs and things like that. That's all great things that you can get from your organization. But at the end of the day, it's up to you to do a honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and how do you leverage your strengths to become towering strengths and how do you manage your weaknesses so that they're never going to go away. But you want to manage them such that they're never an Achilles heel. And so because I had come from the communications side of the business, some of those, some of that classic MBA marketing analytics I did not have in my background. And so I needed to learn hardcore financials, I needed to learn how to read a P and L, I needed to learn how to understand a 80 page research document. And I just took it upon myself to like find those leaders, find those peers in my organization who are willing to help. You know, I'd buy them lunch and then I ask them a host of questions about, tell me about the difference between a nine point scale or a five point scale on this research project that we're doing or help me understand this break even. Like, you know, I took it upon myself to kind of learn on my own so that these, these things, weaknesses that I had in my skill set, I minimize them and in some instances they became real strengths. And so I do think that it is important to do that honest assessment of your skills and weaknesses and acknowledge that there's some things you need to work on and take it upon yourself to develop those skills. And like I say, you don't have to make them strengths, but you do have to make sure they're never, they're not Achilles heels that could hamper your career going forward.
• 39:19
  Speaker B: So if we have somebody listening who's maybe earlier in their career, they're a marketing manager director, what are the different skill sets that they need to develop if they aspire to move into a chief marketing officer role?
• 39:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, the things that I always hired for and always look to develop and look for as we, as we promoted folks along the way. You know, there are kind of three core skill sets. You know, leadership, you know, the ability to take an idea or a concept and bring it to life and leading, leading that team, building that, building those relationships, facilitating a team to overcome objectives and bring this initiative to life. That was really one of the primary things that you're looking for. Secondly, creativity is still a big part of the marketing ecosystem. Ideas are still what drive consumer marketing and certainly restaurant marketing today. And you don't have to come up with the idea yourself, but do you recognize great ideas from your teammates, from people that work from you? Do you know how to develop great content and a great content strategy and ideas that are going to, that are going to take off via social media because they're sharp, really good ideas? That kind of creativity is critical.
• 40:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think that of course you need that discretion layer is even more important today. So Being able to discern what is good and what is not, especially when we have all these tools and you're just going into ChatGPT, you know, generating different campaign ideas, they might be terrible. Oftentimes they are. And if you can't discern the difference between what's good and what's not and what should be put in front of the team, you know, you're really going to struggle.
• 41:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean many, many a campaign is launched that is never heard or seen by anybody. And yes, it got launched, but did it really have any impact on the business? And so, you know, having those ideas that are sticky, we used to call it sticky ideas that would resonate with the consumer at some level to where would fundamentally change business trajectory is just critical. And the expectation is, you know, you can do that repeatedly. And again, that ability to, to not just identify a good idea but cultivate it, champion in it through the organization, have it not lose its effectiveness by being watered down by a lot of outside perspectives from legal or finance, but I mean, like maintain that core of that idea so that it resonates with the consumer is just really, really critical. And so those were the three kind of like hardcore key skills that you needed, but you also needed soft skills. I mean, the ability to persuade is just so critical. Whether you are persuading your boss to move forward an idea, you're persuading franchisees to buy off an idea, you're persuading your CEO to be an idea and that is something that you need throughout your career. I mean, at the CMO level, you're trying to persuade the board that your strategy is the right thing to do, that your execution plan is the right thing to do. This power of persuasion can, whether it's the 2 minute elevator pitch or the 80 page deep dive brand strategy deck, can you persuade people to follow you is really, really critical.
• 42:45
  Speaker B: Well, some people go into marketing because they don't want to do selling and persuading sounds an awful lot like selling. So what would you say to the marketers who are like, I don't want to go into sales, but I want to, I want to do marketing.
• 42:59
  Speaker A: You're selling, there is no question about it. If you don't, if you don't want to sell, don't be in marketing. I mean, and again, I, I didn't want to necessarily be a salesperson, but I, you know, you learn pretty quick that if you're going to be in the idea business, and I would argue that to a certain extent that's what consumer Marketing is all about is what ideas resonate. If you're going to be in the idea business, you are, you have to be able to convince people that this idea, you know, what's the right idea? How do I convince you to go execute it properly? How do I convince you to fund it? And, you know, how do we make sure that it, that it does make its way to the consumer? Like I said, many an idea dies because it just gets watered down internally. And the ability to bring it to life in its core form is what separates. And we'll see that on Sunday with the Super Bowl. Right. Some of these, you know, they're the good ads and bad ads. Some of these good ads were conceived by somebody somewhere who persuaded clients and CEOs to spend a ton of money in order to have an impact on Sunday. And I think that kind of power of persuasion is one of those soft skills that if you're going to be in marketing, you're going to have to master.
• 44:14
  Speaker B: Awesome. So for our audience who's listening and they're aspiring to grow in their career, they've heard you say that developing leadership skills, developing power persuasion skills, having mentors, taking initiative and taking learning programs are all, all about, you know, all the different ways or elements of being successful in your career. Now, if we translate that into your personal life, were there any parallels from your work career, all those ingredients of success that kind of had some sort of application or similarities with how you approached being a father?
• 44:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think a couple we've kind of talked about. Right. Which, you know, this notion of be here now, when you're at work, you're at work, and when you're at home, you're at home, and never the two shall meet. That separation of church and state idea kind of, I kind of shared earlier, I think the one thing that I haven't necessarily mentioned that I, that was just a big part of the way that I felt like where my personal life and my business life intersected was this notion of keeping it light. The, the, our, our business lives and our personal lives these days are filled with challenge and conflict. And when you look at what's going on in society, there's a lot of negativity. But I, in my personal life, I'm very optimistic. I'm very positive. My father, even though he was an attorney and had to deal with a lot of crud all day long, you know, he was, at the end of the day, you know, let's clap hands and make jokes like, let, let, let's keep it light. Let's keep, you know, let's. Let's make sure we find joy in our lives on a daily basis, joy in our work on a daily basis, celebrate big wins and little wins. And I think that that that's where my personality, both at work and at home blended. I was not two different people. I was the same person with just a slightly different clothing at a given time. And so I think that's incredibly important today, this notion of optimism, the power of positivity, taking action to solve problems and being focused at the task at hand, whether it's parenting at the moment or dealing with a thing at work. And I think that's where it all came together for me.
• 46:31
  Speaker B: Well, thank you for landing the plane there. That was a perfect conclusion. Barry, thanks so much for joining me today. This was such a fun conversation and just a masterclass in marketing and how the great marketing is really built. You know, the mix of emotion and function and discipline and craft and the ability to persuade people to bring great ideas to life. I just really appreciated your honesty about boundaries, how to be present at home, and how building a strong support network can really change everything for a young family, especially when you're trying to grow a career and a family at the same time. So, Barry, it was great to see you. Thank you so much again for joining me.
• 47:09
  Speaker A: Well, thank you. It was an honor. I really appreciate the. I really appreciate the opportunity.
• 47:13
  Speaker B: If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We've got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow, and stay tuned.