Brave Men S1E13: Ed Preston - Ed's Laws of Leadership Pt 2

It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. Brave Men starts now. Hey, on this episode, we've got really part two of Ed's Laws of Leadership. I'm sitting with Ed Preston, who owns Biscuits Cafés, major restaurant corporation in the Western United States, and Ed, it's great to have you here. We went through parts one through five, the other episode, one of my favorites. I think number four was it or number three, which was when everything hits the fan, it will not be evenly distributed. If somebody listening or watching right now didn't catch that one, go back and watch part one on that. That was awesome. But I want to continue in. We left off with the last time, you were talking about people over profit, that you really as a business owner, you've got over 300 employees. But you spend a lot of your time investing in people. Probably the main focus of our company is our employees, and is number one, our customers are number two. Really? When you set your, here's our goals for this year, people, clientele, customers, and then the profit is going to flow from that. Right. Wow. Yeah, because if everybody's performing up to par, then the customers are just satisfied. I like to say to our leadership team, when the customer leaves to go get in their car, they're making a decision right at that moment ever to come back and patronize you again. Right then. Right then. Wow. Wow. And you know, and we like them with the mind frame that when they get up in the morning to go have breakfast, they're going to go down to Ed's place, or Jim, or manager's place, or Susan, the manager's place, versus going to Biscuits Cafe. We want it personal, to be a personal aspect. And what is it? Let me just stop right there. You have a logo saying at Biscuits Cafes, and it's on the wall of every single one of your restaurants. What is it? It says that we don't serve fast food. We serve fresh food as fast as we can. I love that. Because right there, you've tweaked it and told me you're, as a customer, you've told me your commitment to excellence. Right there. Yes. It has played very well for us. Yeah. Right. And it's on every wall. Wow. And then our logo, Chef Head, is right next to that. So it, in other words, we own it. Yeah. No, where is it you? No, where do you live it? No. So no matter where you go, that's who you are. Right. Exactly. So people over profits. So it's on our business cards. Even on your business cards. Right. So the next one that we have here is, and this is dealing mostly with our employees and our management leadership and so forth, failure isn't an event, never a person. Okay. Failure isn't an event, never a person. So you're not blaming somebody, we're not blame shifting, we're not casting it onto somebody else, we're going to hit it head on. Okay. In other words, I like to say we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and do it right this time. Yeah. Figure it out. Okay. Because you've had some different concepts, you've tried different things, you've tried and then they didn't work. We always go back to what Dr. Koeh taught me, stay with your power base. They were power bases. But you know, it was fascinating to me is a being in your restaurant and I watched you and the personal nature with the team and so forth. But I watched you look at the table and the food that was coming back off the table. Because you were watching what people liked and didn't like. So the little detail of that, to me, spoke so well of how you actually run a business with excellence. Yeah, we do that and the other half of that failure is not an event, isn't an event, I mean. And the other part of that is forget your mistakes but remember what they taught you. Wow. So if there is a mistake, we're not going to blame shifter, we're not going to push it on to somebody else and so forth, we're going to own it. We're going to forget about the mistake but we're going to remember what it taught us. We're going to learn the lesson. So you're not looking that you don't walk in back into one of your restaurants a couple weeks later, look at an employee and say, oh, that's the one that, but instead you've put that aside. So now that person can live in a confidence that management is not just on them all the way. Right. It reminds me of a slogan of the church that I attend in Phoenix, Arizona and their slogan is this and it kind of really works with our employees too because we've kind of adopted it. We don't care where you're been, we're concerned about where you're going. Wow. And that's Pastor Kevin and Melissa Gough. Right. In Phoenix, Arizona. That's great. And so that, that isn't, you know, some of these I have labeled as critical factors. That's one I have labeled as a critical factor. Really? So that's one of the most important critical factors to me or some of the core values right that we try to manage a kind of thing. Now, does this work, does this work if I've got two employees versus two employees? It even works if you're the only employee. If you're your own employee. Wow. If you're the only one. Yeah. And then we move into, if you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over? And we deal with that one a lot. You know. If you do it right to the first time because if you can't get it done, then when are you going to have the time to do it right? Yeah. Measure twice, cut once. Right. Yeah. That's the old carpenter rule. Exactly. If you cut it short, you can't lengthen the wood. And then I like this one, even though it's simple, the good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow, but do it anyway. Do good anyway, even though it might be forgotten, do the right thing, right? And so you teach this as a corporate core value. And because sometimes we want, in accolade, we want a return. We want somebody to walk back in and go, ah, yeah, you were the one that, and if we don't get that, we go, wow, I'm not going to do that again, or I'm not going to remember their glasses and run out to the car again. You know, but you do the right thing anyway, no matter what. Right. And one thing we've learned over the years is that turnover and help is basically what an employee doesn't understand, or they haven't been taught why. But if they understand and they know why, okay, then usually they will develop themselves over that, and then it always turns into them enjoy working for you. Well, so you can go back on a lot of these core values and say, if I don't train these, then I can't blame the employee because I'm the one that didn't train them on. Wow. Or do you can't expect what you didn't train, or train, yeah. Do not lose focus on your core values, okay? The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. I like it. What is your main focus? What is your main focus for being here? What is your main focus for growing this business, you know, and keep it the main thing and keep it in front of you, keep it in your focus, and is it easy to get distracted and begin to think that something else is what your business is about rather than the core thing? Well, sure, because this world is full of it, distractions. It's full of them, you know, so how do you press through those distractions to the main thing? You know, why am I here, why am I doing this? So you've got to bring it back all the time to presenting somebody walking in, seeing them, greeting with a smile. It's the number one thing you talked about, presenting them, what was the thing over here on this paper? Anthropy. Anthropy. Tell me that again. Anything left on a tenet will turn to crises. We'll turn to crisis. If I don't keep doing the basics, if I miss that, if I get distracted, I'm going to have a crisis. So that's true of a church, as a pastor, a leader, a servant leader, true of a marriage, if I don't do the basics, you know, it's like the guy that had a problem that came to the counselor, and he said, I don't know why my wife and I have a problem, and the wife says, well, he never tells me he loves me. And the man said, you know, I told you, I loved you, and we got married if it changes all the time. You know? You know, so the fact is he's not doing the basics. So you're talking about there, don't get distracted with the things that don't matter. Yeah, it goes back to you also, if you don't have the time to do it right, then when you're going to get the time to fix it. Man. That's so true, because how many times, this is true, I can think about this in my whole life. How many times have I had to spend a lot of time fixing something, doing something that I should have done well or taken the time to do well the first time? Or read the instructions? Like putting together a key and then you end up with these bolts and you go, I thought I key a new. You know, also the true impact of leadership is not what happens when you are there, but what happens when you're not there? Wow. Okay. And that goes into training. It goes into people. It goes into imparting your culture, because if you can't grow a business, if you can't trust it to go without you there, in other words, so even as we sit here today taping, you've got over 300 people working at all these different restaurants. And you're confident that your managers and your regional managers, or how do you run the thing. You're confident even down to the bus boy or to the guy flipping a pancake, it's being done the right way. Right. That is a major task. And so that's something you're on all the time. Well you have to be on it all the time. So that right now as you sit here, you're not worried about a guy at a restaurant in Phoenix making a pancakes wrong. Right. Not worried about it. Wow. And we also teach the leadership it's better to know what's going on than to wonder what's going on. And so, if you know what's going on, then it's okay for you to take some time off, right? Okay. One of our corporate leaders is getting married next month and going to be gone for two weeks in my first thought, okay, who's going to do this while he's gone? Well he's got his people trained to the point that he doesn't have to worry about it. Everything's going to be taken care of. Everything's going to be taken care of. So he's not getting in a phone call. So there's a second day of stress. So there's a second day of stress. Wow. And it relieves the stress. Wow. And that is a relief of stress. My people know what to do. My goodness. Right. Very important. This is good stuff. Ed's laws of leadership. So is this going to be in a book? Is this going to be in a book, Ed? Well you keep saying it. Oh yeah. Come on. We got a commitment right here. You're trying to make me come here, aren't you? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a possibility. Yeah, that's a possibility. I think it needs to be. What's the next one? Customers are like girlfriends. If you don't treat them right and appreciate them, they will go somewhere else. Man, I like that. That is so true. Oh yeah. Now you had said earlier you had talked about people are making a decision to minute there. Even as they're walking out the door with a little, they'll ever come back. Right. They're deciding before they get to their automobile whether they're going to come back or not. I think we get off on this. Sometimes we think sales is about, you know, just trying to get the next deal. And really, the guys who are prosperous are the ones who have returned business, right? Yeah. So a customer will forgive you for a higher price, but they will never forgive you for lower quality. Well, say that again, because that's huge. I think in everything, every part of our world, and you see it in all kinds of businesses today, you know, a customer will forgive you for a higher price, but they will never forgive you for lower quality. And when they're walking to their car making that decision, I guarantee you that's what's on their mind. You know, I- It's a quality, not the price. I can think of that. I can think of a really small thing, okay? I have purchased, because I, you know, I travel a lot and so you get in different weather. I have purchased a half dozen umbrellas on the road, right? And I have found myself purchasing these cheap low umbrellas by the time I use them twice. You know, the thing is sprung or they're facing the wrong direction or something. So they may cost eight or nine, let's say eight or nine dollars or ten dollars or something like that. So what I did is I went and bought a twenty-eight dollar one, okay? Made by a really good company that's extremely well made and everything. Now I carry that thing everywhere because it's quality. Now when I purchased it the first time, I thought, oh man, this is three times what I've normally spent. Except that, the cheaper ones, I bought six of them. So now I've actually done better by going after quality, right? So now when somebody asks me about something that minimal, I say, yeah, yeah, get the better one. So that's, so that company by making a good one is actually doing better. That's the number one factor in our business is quality. We always go for the quality. We buy the highest quality price products that we can buy because we know that the customer knows what quality is. Yeah. And so that's the cost of that. Yeah, because we're going to spot it. After a while, we're going to spot it that they're shorting me on this or they don't do that or they didn't make that right or this thing doesn't work right. And over time, it comes out. You know, this is probably the number one thing here that I probably make this statement more than any of the others. We do this not only with our upper management, but with our hourly employees. I'm constantly saying this and that is if you consistently do your best, okay, the worst cannot happen. Well, if you have a consistent mindset of being the best, then you don't have to worry about the worst happening. That's tremendous. And I also do that with the competition. I teach the leaders that if we're simply the best, then we will simply have the best business. You'll be there. We will simply have the highest volume restaurants in here. Because in the business you're in, because I mean, I've been in business most of my life and I've heard this a number of times, whatever you do, don't get in the restaurant business. You know, it's a tough business. You know, obviously worked extremely hard. You've gone through a lot of things and yet you've made it successful because you've concentrated on excellence, quality, people, and that can be applied to every kind of business. So you're not really in one sense worried about the competition. Your real competition, your real competition as Ed and as the owner, your real competition is starting to, is really falling back from the core values. That's your real competition. Yeah, people ask me all the time, who's your competition? And I always answer that by we are our own competition. Wow. If we are competing with ourselves to be better than we don't have to worry about the restaurant down the street. And we've proved that many times. And that also blends in to back to people again and our employees. People may not remember how fast you did your work, but they will always remember how well you did it. Man, that is so true. Yeah, it's heavy. And you know, so do it well. Do it well because we'll remember that. You know, don't do it well just for the company, but do it well for your own, your own self worth. Last night, you and I and my wife, Judy and my kids, we were not grabbed by tea. We went to a pizza place, casual dining place. And only because there's not a biscuit, and it was dinner anyway, itself, to the area. But I remember telling Judy, I said, why don't we go up to this particular restaurant? It's a very known, well-known chain. And she said, you know, the last two times we've been there, it's been really slow. And the people really didn't care about serving us. And I went, oh yeah, you're right. Because I like the food, actually. And she said, I said, oh yeah, let's go to the other place and the place where it was great. They did a great job for us. And I really like the pizza there. But I thought of that twice. Now this is a place we've probably been to over the last 10 years. Maybe we've been there 35 or 40 times. But the last two times, service was down. These core values you're talking about, they weren't doing it, they weren't doing it quality. They didn't have an excellence, a spirit of excellence. There wasn't a sense of serving, it was slow as it could be, it was terrible. And we're not going back. That's stunning when you realize how much we've been there. Yeah, we've tracked our business and over, we're approaching close to 80% repeat business. And our customer numbers. Wow. That's remarkable. But it's because this list, Ed's laws of leadership, you consistently go over with your top teams. Exactly. All your different teams. So all the way down to everybody knows these core values. Right. I would much rather have you come back, you know, 15, 20 times in a year, then to have to spend thousands of dollars advertising to get one person in. So let me ask you a question, that's a good question. So here's a business owner and we're talking about repeat business. Does that mean that once you've got the restaurant launched, I know you do a big launch in advertising and the normal things, right? But once you've got that going, you don't have to do as much advertising because your customer becomes your advertiser. So that's actually a profit margin. repeat business will tell you that word of mouth advertising is the best that you can do. So quality actually creates profit margin for you, Ed. That's incredible. Got it right there can be a breakthrough for some of us. Exactly. It is a breakthrough. Yeah. It is a breakthrough. And back to training again of those people so that you will have happy customers, is every day that you are not improving your training is a wasted day. I have never witnessed a spontaneous recovery of poor service or attitudes. It happens over time. So you've got to consistently be trained. You always have to be improving it. Yeah. Improving your training. But we're like that as people. Because I know you're talked about in one of our episodes, you talked about the start of your day and how you read. You talked about your renewal of faith and coming to Christ and all that about how you became a reader. You begin to read. It changed everything in your life. But you still do that. I still do that. You study. You've got apps on your phone that you listen to Bible teachers. You're consistently learning. I think that's huge and I think sometimes I would think a lot of guys would say, well, Ed's a right. He doesn't have to do anything now. Right? Well, I don't think that's the case, but you're consistently learning, consistently expanding your thinking, your capacity, your spiritual life, your prayer time. I have learned over the years that as long as you're building, then you're basically guaranteeing your success. Wow. When you quit building and just manage what you have, then you're basically guaranteeing your failure. Hmm. And there's nothing static. Right. And that's one of the reasons that we keep building more restaurants and building more teams and building more people is because I have learned that if I keep doing that, then I'm basically guaranteeing my success and the people that work for us or with us, I should say. So coming to the end of this, this is basically my last statement is that, and this is taught to our leaders also, make a list of things that make you happy. Like Dr. Cole always taught, write it down. Make a list of things you do every day and compare the list, okay? Make a list of the things that make you happy. Make a list of the things you do every day, compare the list and adjust accordingly. Wow. So there are some things in that training yourself, basically. So there are some things that creep into our personal habit life that we do that's discordant with what we'd really like to be, right? So for instance, this is a little example of a man will get into a car and turn on a radio and immediately turn on some sort of sports talk or news or something like that. When maybe the best thing for him would be to put in the Bible on audio or an audiobook or something like that. And we're doing things over and over that create frustration or crisis in our lives and we don't realize it comes out of a habit we do all the time. And that's training your heart, I believe, you know, what things in your heart is comes the abundance of life and that's me parent-fraising it. Yeah, well, we're good with paraphrases, right? Yeah, the abundance of your heart comes your life. And so Jesus taught, He said, out of your heart comes your words. And words can betray us, but words reveal what's in our heart. This is powerful stuff, so Ed would done two episodes, Ed's Lods of Leadership. One of the things I want to get back to, you talked about treating other people right about operating successfully. One of the things that you told me one time on a trip was you were negotiating a contract with one of your vendors and you were negotiating, I came here with his bread or whatever it was. And when you got done with the negotiation, you asked the other person, hey, are you okay on this deal? Well, I also asked them, are you going to make profit on this? Okay. But see, the world system says drive as hard as you are, you know, get whatever you can and that doesn't regard the other person, you know, that's lust. And for yourself. And but I derived that from the Bible principle that you're blessed to be a blessing, okay. And I make the statement from time to time, if you go down and buy a car, why don't you just pay the guy what he wants for it and see how God blesses that. He's blessed. You're blessed. He's blessed. Yeah. And it's a Bible principle to me. And I always ask no matter what it is, what's contract, what's insurance, even insurance complex. Builders, and builders, contractors, food purveyors, the whole thing, I want to know if they're going to make profit. Once we've negotiated the deal, are you okay on this side? Because if they're okay, then you've got a long term relationship. And when I negotiate on a new restaurant building, the conversation is always at the end, this has to work for you as much as it works for me. Yeah, because now you know. And we both need to make profit on this. Wow. That's tremendous. And so, and it's all based on blessed to be a blessing and it's worked very well for us. Yeah, it has. You know, you and your wife, Barbara, I was in Peru recently and went to a home for young women who have gone through terrible crisis. Many of them have gone through abuse, sexual abuse, eating disorders, all kinds of things, termination of early pregnancies and trauma. And watch these young ladies come through and they come through a one-year course at Camino de Vida at Gracehouse. And as we walked through that amazing home and saw these lives that had been redeemed and resurrected and renewed and young ladies and transformed, walked into a side building. There's a building here and it's just outside of the city of Lima and walked into a side building. We walked in and there's this amazing huge industrial kitchen. And above that, it says the Ed and Barbara Preston kitchen. And that's really what it's about for you, isn't it? Things like that. Yeah, God has tremendously blessed me so, you know, I blessed to be a blessing and when I go down for those graduations and see those young ladies, lives transferred, you know, if only one person has changed, it's worth it all, it's worth it all. It's worth the whole thing. And so, and that's basically what drives me every morning now because, you know, I don't have to get up and go to work every morning now, but it drives me because of the things that we can do. You know, I made a promise to God about 10, 12 years ago that, you know, for many years, I did what I wanted to do now, I was going to do what he wants me to do. Awesome. And he gives me things to do and we just bust our butt to get it done. It's awesome. And that's what we do. Thanks for being with me. It's good to be here. Thank you. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Global Fatherhood Initiative. Connect with Paul Light. Brave Men. God Men. That's Brave Men. God Men.