The Exchanges

Q I think it's a good time to sort of pause and just give us a thumbnail sketch of your career. I mean, it's very narrative defying in a lot of ways. A lot of people work in hospitality, but not a lot of people have the trajectory that you had at such a young age. Can you walk us through some of your experiences and how we got here today?

A Yeah. Started working when I was 15. Sold clothes in malls. I then started at Hooters at the age of 17 as a hostess. First person in my family to get accepted to college, became a waitress at 18 my senior year, then started college and kept waitressing. But then I also started cooking. The cooks quit one day, and I ended up picking up kitchen shifts. And then another day, the bartender had to go home, and she needed one of the servers to help her take over the shift. And so these things kept happening in the business that resulted in me working different jobs. And before I was 19, And before I even finished my first year in college, I had worked every job in that business. I knew how to run a restaurant without realizing I knew how to run a restaurant. But that was not my ambition. My ambition was to get my degree. I was a electrical engineering and computer sciences major, a psychology of women minor, and my plan was to get those degrees and go to law school. I thought I would be an attorney. And By the time I was 19, what I mentioned before with this story with Bonnie, she came to me and said, you know how to do every job in this building. I trust you. I know you'll represent us well. I'd like to nominate you to be a part of the training team to go launch the first ever Hooters franchise in Australia. No question, no doubt. Yes, I want to go to Australia and help launch a fra…

AI assessment note: “Started working when I was 15. Sold clothes in malls. I then started at Hooters”

Q Is there an example where you ever did that, and you got in trouble after?

A Oh, I got in trouble for that. The head of supply chain and purchasing, who managed the food specs, he let me know that that was not my job, um, that I was out of line, that this is not, I do not own this brand, and do not have the right to make these changes. I mean, it, it made me teary, you know, it like, I'm a young employee, and I thought I was doing the right thing, and I had Some reinforcement from some executives, but the one who's, like, approving the specification sheet and who, by the way, when I come back to the U.S., I need to keep working with, was angry, was audibly angry. Luckily, I leaned on the vice president of training. Her name's Cheryl, and I remember calling her, and I was upset, and I felt comfortable being upset with her, and I was like, I'm so sorry. You know, I thought I was doing the right thing. I know you support it, but this Other executive is really upset, and I don't know what to do, because I can't, I'm down, I'm down here, you guys aren't, I can't undo this decision that I still think is the right decision. And just, you know, allies and advocates and mentors and all the words you want to use are so important. She said, don't worry. He's just crotchety. He'll get over it. You're doing the best you can. We'll get better at this as we do more of it. The company was growing, and I was caught in the crosshairs of the company growing faster than it…

AI assessment note: “Oh, I got in trouble for that. The head of supply chain and purchasing”

Q at Hooters and climbed her way through the ranks of leadership to eventually become the COO of a global brand. I asked her about the first person to ever bet on her, and our conversation took off from there. She outlined how her belief in the power of possible shaped her incredible career arc. It's time to listen and learn. Who is the first person to ever bet on you?

A Wow. Um, I would say my mom, maybe by default, I had to watch the girls. I was nine years old, and she was working three jobs. She fed us on a food budget of 10 dollars a week for three years, uh, which meant she wasn't home a lot, and so she trusted me. Outside of my mom, what feels like the first person to bet on me was Bonnie, who was the person who hired me at Hooters. She hired me as a Uh, and she was the general manager at the store. She herself had been a waitress, a Hooters girl, and moved her way up to running the restaurant. And she is the one who gave me the ability to move into being a waitress. And she's the one that came to me when the corporate office called and said, we're looking for really great employees to travel around the world to go launch the franchise. And, and maybe as importantly, she's the first person to call me out. And treat me like an adult. I was working three jobs in the early days, and I was late pretty often because I was working three jobs, and it was impossible to juggle getting from one place to the other given the shift time. And she sat me down. I'll never forget it. I remember the exact words. You're great with your peers. I'd love to give you more shifts. I would love to give you more opportunities, but I depend on you showing up on time. And if you're late, other people have to stay later. And I need to know that I can depend on you. …

AI assessment note: “I would say my mom... Outside of my mom, what feels like the first person to bet on me was Bonnie”

Q both at work and at home, And so much more. This is a conversation you'll want to listen to over and over and share with your friends. It's time to listen and learn. I was trying to think about where to start this and I think a good place to start is the dark side of gratitude. What does that expression mean to you and where does it come from?

A Yeah, I, it's funny. I'm definitely known for leading with gratitude. So it's an ironic statement from someone like me, but I remember when my mom Came to me when I was nine years old and said, you know, that's it. I'm done. We're leaving. And what she meant was we were leaving my dad. Uh, my dad was and is a very good man, but at the time was an alcoholic and he had a wife and three young daughters at home, nine, me, six and three, my two sisters. And I had been in multiple car accidents with him, um, drunk driving by the time I was nine. And so I remember when my mom came to me and said we were leaving, I did not cry. I did not get upset. I looked at her at the age of nine and said, what took you so long? And, and it was because I was close enough to the bad to realize that even a scary decision was a better one than the alternative, which was staying. But as I got older, and I talked to my mom more about that decision, which turned out great for everyone, um, I asked her again, what took you so long? Because she started sharing with me how bad it was for how long. And And what it boiled down to was the dark side of gratitude, that she was so grateful that she had a nice house, and she was so grateful that, uh, we had gifts for the holidays, and she was told by her family and my father's family and her friends, who were very poor, much more so than us, we would be considered …

AI assessment note: “what it boiled down to was the dark side of gratitude, that she was so grateful”

Q One of the other things that I think you went through is one day you're, you're a part of a team, the next day you're leaving that team, and that's a really difficult transition for a lot of people to make. Can you walk me through some of the mistakes you made or some of the lessons you learned taking over?

A There's two things that I think have made every new role I've taken full of my most epic mistakes. Uh, one is that I'm often moving from peer to leader, and that's because I haven't hopped around to a lot of companies. So I'm literally moving up leading within a company. I'm being chosen to level up and lead those with whom I have just worked side by side. And what's hard about that is none of us, you know, we're not perfect. And so all of a sudden when someone is plucked out of the peer group to be a leader, then everything that you have done not perfectly becomes an excuse for others to not do it perfectly. And so I have been regularly confronted with my imperfections. And when you get called out, which I did, I remember the first time I became shift lead in the restaurant. And I was telling one of the fellow waitresses, she had not properly filled up her salt and pepper shakers. And she looked at me and said, well, you didn't do that consistently. Just sign my paper and let me go home. And it was this fork in the road. I'm like, oh, am I going to be cool? And be like, yeah, girl, you're right. You know, go ahead. And I said, look, you're right. I didn't always do it the right way. I will now going forward. And you have to now as well. And that over time, people start to respect that you don't, you're not suggesting that because you're now in a leadership role that you are be…

AI assessment note: “one is that I'm often moving from peer to leader”

Q Is there an example where you ever did that and you get in trouble after?

A Oh, I got in trouble for that. The head of supply chain and purchasing who managed the food specs. He let me know that that was not my job, um, that I was out of line, that this is not, I do not own this brand and do not have the right to make these changes. I mean, it, it made me teary, you know, it, like, I'm a young employee, and I thought I was doing the right thing, and I had some reinforcement from some executives, but the one who's, like, approving the specification sheet, and who, by the way, when I come back to the US, I need to keep working with, was angry, was audibly angry. Luckily I leaned on the vice president of training, her name's Cheryl. And I remember calling her and I was upset and I felt comfortable being upset with her. And I was like, I'm so sorry. You know, I thought I was doing the right thing. I know you support it, but this other executive is really upset and I don't know what to do because I can't, I'm down, I'm down here. You guys aren't, I can't undo this decision that I still think is the right decision. And just, you know, allies and advocates and mentors and all the words you want to use are so important. She said, don't worry. He's just crotchety. He'll get over it. You're doing the best you can. We'll get better at this as we do more of it. The company was growing, and I was caught in the crosshairs of the company growing faster than it was re…

AI assessment note: “Oh, I got in trouble for that. The head of supply chain and purchasing”

Q Is there a particular bit of feedback that you've received from your husband that was hard for you that you'd be willing to share and completely understand if you, you don't want to do that?

A No, no, no. I have to, there's, most of it hasn't been hard, but I, I want to think of one that has been more emotional. I mean, I remember after the second miscarriage, And in our check-in, it became apparent that I had been acting as if it was much, much worse for me than it was for him. And not that he was saying it was as hard or harder on him. It was just apparent. He made it clear that my processing was different than his processing, and that he was much more devastated than I had realized. Because he talked about when we asked the, what's been the worst part of the last 30 days? It was all he would talk about. And I, he didn't say, you've been belittling my grieving, right? He didn't say that. It was apparent to me that his, what was lasting, right? It's like whatever shows up at the end of the 30 days, and we do review the calendar because it's helpful. The 30 days is a long time. Um, whatever makes it to that one question is relatively momentous and actionable. And when all he talked about was that this was sad, and this was difficult, and I realized that I was not, and I didn't criticize myself for it, it was just real, you know, that I was not recognizing how he was thinking about, um, and processing this loss. And it was so helpful because it allowed me to then ask questions, and I was much more sensitive and probing in the weeks that followed. It was really powerfu…

AI assessment note: “I remember after the second miscarriage, And in our check-in”

Q Who is the first person to ever bet on you?

A Wow. Um, I would say my mom, maybe by default, I had to watch the girls. I was nine years old, and she was working three jobs. She fed us on a food budget of 10 dollars a week for three years, uh, which meant she wasn't home a lot, and so she trusted me. Outside of my mom, What feels like the first person to bet on me was Bonnie, who was the person who hired me at Hooters. She hired me as a seventeen-year-old hostess, uh, and she was the general manager at the store. She herself had been a waitress, a Hooters girl, and moved her way up to running the restaurant, and she is the one who gave me the ability to move into being a waitress, and she's the one that came to me when the corporate office called And said, we're looking for really great employees to travel around the world to go launch the franchise. And, and maybe as importantly, she's the first person to call me out and treat me like an adult. I was working three jobs in the early days, and I was late pretty often because I was working three jobs and it was impossible to juggle getting from one place to the other, given the shift time. And she sat me down. I'll never forget it. I remember the exact words. You're great with your peers. I'd love to give you more shifts. I would love to give you more opportunities, but I depend on you showing up on time. And if you're late, other people have to stay later. And I need to know…

AI assessment note: “What feels like the first person to bet on me was Bonnie”

Q One of the things that you said there that was interesting that it was more important to do right than be right. Can you elaborate on that and give me some examples?

A When I was in Argentina, uh, with Hooters, I was 19, and it was only the second opening I had led fully. And I get down to Buenos Aires and of course the franchisee had gone through training and we had a menu and specifications and equipment that they were supposed to have for the business. And I get down there and they had done everything we told them. Bought all the kitchen equipment, almost identical menu as in the U.S. And as we started training the cooks, It became apparent that there was a problem. They were disgruntled, saying this food is bad, and I can't believe we have to do this, and at first I was like, what's going on? I realized by talking to the cooks and the trainers that we had brought down, That Argentina, I would then learn, is the beef capital, one of the beef capitals of the world, and we had an embarrassingly low quality ribeye steak sandwich that we were requiring them to cook on a flat top grill, which was an abomination in Argentina. In the U.S., if you want a steak sandwich, take a ribeye, you slap it on a flat top grill, a little bit of olive oil, sear it, how do you want it cooked? Medium, medium well, put it on your Texas toast sandwich with some cheese and onions, and there you go. It was, it was so viewed as so low quality that it was insulting there. Not only the choice of the beef, which should have been alternatively hyper local source to be of…

AI assessment note: “When I was in Argentina, uh, with Hooters, I was 19”

Q So let's make that real. I mean, the first 30 days as president at Cinnabon, you talked up your hair, you went in the store, and you started working there. What did you learn through those questions? How did that change your, your first, like, hundred days, and how did it guide you, and what did you find out?

A Um, yeah, I did nothing but work in the bakeries for 60 days, and I mean, I hired a few people, I fired a person who needed to be let go, I had some meetings, but other than that, I was in airports, in malls, taking out trash, rolling cinnamon rolls, hours at a time in a store, not shaking hands, kissing babies, showing up to be seen, like working alongside people, enough time for the facade to sort of fade away, and to really see what they're experiencing, and to have quality conversations. And when I asked, what do we throw away? There were two answers, two buckets of patterns. One had to do with a lot of employee training materials and uniform items and just things the company still had on their checklist as a franchise that were in a bucket, but when the auditor would come show up, they would pull it all out and act as if they were using it. So we were making franchisees buy, do, and use things that were not relevant to the business anymore. They had been a few years prior, um, and Implementing technological solutions for training would end up being the answer for that. But the other one was people buy these giant cinnamon rolls and then they're throwing it away. Like they're, they're, they're either taking it home or they're not finishing it. And that directly correlated with the answer to the second question. When do we say no? We say no when people ask us for smaller por…

AI assessment note: “when I asked, what do we throw away? There were two answers, two buckets”

Q Perfect. There's so many places I want to dive in. Let's start with, ah, when you're 19, where did that confidence come from to do something you've never done before?

A It was this type of confidence that I, I hope to see more of in the world, but it's a humble confidence. It, I never thought I knew what I was doing. Never. Not once did I think, yes, I'm gonna do that because I know what I'm doing. What I thought was, I can figure it out. And that is an important distinction That this set of mindsets of humility and curiosity on one side, courage and confidence on the other, and any of them unchecked without the others have typically been the source of my greatest mistakes. But it was a, it was just as humble confidence. I knew I could figure it out. I knew I would be comfortable asking questions. I also didn't expect greatness from, from myself. You know, I just, I thought it would be interesting. And the idea of saying no Felt so much more painful than the idea of saying yes and screwing up.

AI assessment note: “What I thought was, I can figure it out.”