WOWCast Ep 1 "Live with Integrity" (Mike Lester)

The WOWcast is recording their first episode with special guest Mike Lester, CEO of Walking Tall Brands. Mike shares his background in the restaurant business, transitioning from pre-med to pursuing a career in hospitality. He discusses the importance of integrity and following standards in the restaurant industry. Mike emphasizes the need for consistency and uncompromised adherence to standards to protect the brand and ensure a positive experience for guests and team members. He believes that compromising standards can hinder growth and development within the restaurant. How's it going out there today, walk-ons? This is the WOWcast, where we discuss all things cultural, the walk-on's way. Today, we have a special guest, Mr. Mike Lester, CEO of Walking Tall Brands. How's it going out there today, walk-ons? We are recording our first WOWcast for all walk-ons across the nation, and I'm joined here today by Lexi Gibbs and Charlie Kelly as co-hosts. My name is Chris Williams, and we have a special guest here today, Mr. Mike Lester. You guys all want to say hello? Hello. Hello. How's it going? Hi, everyone. The goal, again, of this podcast is to really reach out, connect with people that are living the walk-on's way out there in our restaurants. Today we're joined by a franchise owner of Walking Tall Brands and our franchisee out in the Tampa market. This is Mr. Mike Lester. Mike, if you wouldn't mind, can you just give us a little bit of your history, where your career has come from this far, a little bit of your background? Sure. First of all, thanks for having me. Happy to be a part of this on the inaugural edition, but my background is a little bit long, so I'll try to be brief. I was going to college at the University of Kentucky for pre-med and worked at restaurants throughout high school and college to pay my way through school and just got hooked on it. Honestly, I got addicted to it and decided that I didn't really want to be a microbiologist, but I should pursue hospitality. The company I was with hired me and promoted me into management and shipped me all over the United States. Then I jumped ship to Outback Steakhouse and was there for 14 years and ran 15 restaurants in Northern Ohio from Toledo to Youngstown. Prior to Walk-On's, just prior to Walk-On's, I was president of Melting Pot Restaurants, which is a franchisor of, at the time, 144 locations in six countries. I've been in the restaurant business for a little bit of time now. Thank you so much. You said you were down to microbiology or restaurants, so what made you choose restaurants? I know that you said that you fell in love with it or became addicted, but what would you say was your moment when you decided that this is what you wanted to spend your life doing? Well, I was working in a research laboratory and we were doing, I mean, this is a long time ago, but this is cutting edge DNA science. We were researching Down syndrome and trying to map. There are three chromosomes that creates Down syndrome. We were trying to map those chromosomes in the DNA and the characteristics that go along with it. Fascinating science, but what I didn't consider when I chose that path was that the lifestyle was not suited for me. I was in a 10 foot by 10 foot room, no windows, fluorescent lights that literally I felt like every day were sucking the soul right out of my body and almost no interaction with people. I would bartend at night to help pay the bills and I just found myself, I was always happier bartending and waiting tables and being in the restaurant than I was anywhere else. Then my manager said, you really like this and you're good at it. You should consider this as your career. And so I took him up on his offer and three weeks later I was managing my first restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. That's awesome. Quite a journey and kind of a, you know, I think a lot of us in the restaurant world, we end up along this path almost unintentionally and we along the way fall in love with it. So, I mean, that's a great story and amazing background. So I've got Lexi Gibbs and Charlie Kelly here with me as well. Lexi is going to ask you a couple of questions about living the walk-on's way. Again, this podcast is intended to really bring to light how people are effectively utilizing our culture to drive really great restaurants out there in the market. So I'll pass it over to you, Lexi. Yeah, definitely. Mike, first of all, you know, great having you on our first podcast. It's really cool to hear this side of your story. You know, I know it's a very small, small chunk of it, but it's really interesting that, you know, you went from microbiology to restaurants. And I think it's really interesting to hear that because you obviously had at some point, you know, be honest with yourself and really look in the mirror like, man, what, you know, what is for me? What's my path going to be? And I think that piece of your story is very, very interesting, you know, when talking about our walk-on's way and like what walk-on's is because, you know, one of our core values, guiding principles, especially what we're talking about this month is living with integrity and kind of being honest with yourself and being honest, you know, in the restaurant and, you know, in all that you do. So I think, I think that's a really, really cool, cool way to tie in, you know, just who you are as a person. And so I'd love to hear, you know, kind of what does that word integrity mean to you when you, you know, when you hear it and when you're around it? Well, we talk, you know, we do talk about integrity a lot and, you know, at walk-ons it says I work and play with uncompromised honesty. And I think the word uncompromised is a critical, a critical piece to that. And with myself personally, you know, I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror every single day and be proud of the choices that I've made. Can I tell you, I've been proud of every choice I've ever made in my life? Absolutely not. You know, like everybody, I'm a human and I have regrets, but what I try to do is at least I learn from them so I don't repeat the same mistakes that I make in the future. So, and you're right, I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, okay, I wasn't happy doing what I was doing, didn't have enough people interaction, didn't have enough excitement. I mean, the science was fascinating. I am a science geek and still am, you know, to this day, but the lifestyle wasn't suited for me. And I like the fast paced lifestyle of the restaurant business. I like working with and helping develop people and helping them grow in their careers. And I like making our guests happy, you know, and giving them, you know, amazing levels of hospitality, you know, fantastic food and service. But, you know, you go back to this word, this word of uncompromised. And I think about this a lot, you know, in the restaurant business, you know, we all have standards, right? Walcons has high standards we all have to live up to and we have to adhere to every single day. But it's beyond just, you know, doing the standard because somebody else is telling us to do the standard. It's, you know, the standards are there for a reason. It's there to protect the brand. It's there to give the guests and the team members the best experience possible. But what happens if you don't follow a standard? Let's say, you know, as a franchisee, I can't tell you that I agree with every single standard that's written in the book. And luckily, you know, we have a system where, you know, Walcons as a franchisor listens to us. But my team and my leaders inside the restaurant, our managers inside the restaurant, whether I agree with it or don't, we follow every single standard. Because what happens if we don't? I think it's the message that we send to our team members and our leaders that now every single standard is now negotiable. If we compromise one, every standard is negotiable. Every rule is negotiable. Every characteristic, every principle, every value is now negotiable. And then it's much harder to play judge and jury and say, well, at this time, under these circumstances, we're going to follow our standards and in other circumstances, we're not. The integrity of our culture, the integrity of our standards, the integrity of what we do is called into question every single time. Whereas if you follow every standard and you are, again, to that word, uncompromised with that and how you treat your team and your people and your guests and the community as a whole, if you're uncompromised with that, then it's easy. To me, it's much easier because you're consistent. Everybody knows what to expect. I have this leadership mantra that I read to people that I went to a leadership book camp years ago, but it's something they had me write down. It's like seven, eight hundred words about what I value and what I won't compromise. And one of those things that I tell people is that, you know, we have an uncompromised view of all of our standards and, you know, and that we need to do things by the book every single time because, you know, that's just the way we're wired. And I tell people that, you know, if you do a great job, you're going to love working with me. We're going to have a great time together. It's going to be fun. We're going to work hard. You know, we're going to grow and develop together. But if you don't do a great job, you're not going to like working with me. And because, you know, I am uncompromised. And I think one of the things I always say is I'm predictable because, I mean, now that I've been with the Walk-On for a few years and working with some of our leaders and our restaurants, I mean, they can almost finish my sentences because I'm so predictably consistent on always wanting to follow the standard and do the right thing and be the best that we can be. But the other thing is on uncompromised, it's not just a top-down kind of mentality. I look at it as a way to help our team members and our managers and our leaders grow within the restaurants. Because you think about it, if you allow somebody to compromise a standard and they're not being their best version of themselves, you're affecting their ability to grow and develop. You're actually setting them up to fail. It might feel like in the moment that you're being a nice guy like, oh, yeah, that's okay. We don't have to do that flashlight check out or we don't have to clean the dish area perfect every single night. You might feel like in the moment you're being the nice guy, you're being all flexible and everything. But really what you're doing is you're compromising the standard, you're compromising our values and you're letting, you're setting that manager or that leader or that team member up to fail in the future because you're only going to succeed when you do view these things in an uncompromising way. I think that's awesome. That literally, that really summarizes kind of what that what that word means, especially that uncompromised piece. It kind of gives more of a deeper perspective on, you know, if you live, you know, with that integrity and live by the integrity, you know, within walk-ons, like you're going to be set up for success and you're going to, you know, you're going to fall into those situations where you're on a platform and a pathway to be the best version of yourself. So I think that that's an incredible, incredible piece. Charlie, you have anything? Yeah, I think it was a fantastic response. Clearly, you can see, you know, the the grit and the hard work over your lifetime, especially, you know, going from something as rigid, you know, and arduous to something like microbiology into, you know, hospitality industry. My thoughts here are, you know, and congratulations again on all your success and leadership, you know, both with us and, you know, independently in your life. You're a great role model for us to to follow it and know and learn from. But, you know, I say all the time, you know, our culture is what we do with it. Right. So, you know, you're socially accepted norms and practices, things that way. But, you know, culture is action for us. Right. So my question to you is, you know, being in a very imperfect industry, let's say full of human beings, right? Naturally, we're very imperfect. How would you how would you suggest teaching or coaching integrity? Now, some people say you're born with it. Some people say, you know, you learn what it is. But being in such an imperfect business with so many different kinds of people, how would you suggest teaching and coaching integrity? Gosh, that's a great question. Again, I'll try to be brief on this. I know this isn't an hour long podcast, but I think there's a couple of things that I teach. The first one is silence is acceptance. Right. So if as a as a leader, as a manager, and you walk by something that's not exactly done right or isn't happening according to the way that it should happen, you know, you walking past it and not having that action that you're talking about, Charlie, is acceptance. You've just established a new standard. I don't care how many books or training manuals talk about the standards and things like that. But if you let that team member be in an improper uniform, for instance, and you've allowed it to happen, you walked past it and didn't say anything, you just accepted a new, lower standard in your place of business. So you can't be silent. You have to have activity. You have to have action. The other thing that I would say to you is that we are human beings. We are, you know, put on this earth as fallible creatures and we're going to make mistakes. And so I think, you know, leadership. The other part about silence is as you're leading and you're coaching, you have to use the words of our culture. Right. So when we say live with integrity, it needs to mean I work and play with uncompromised honesty. Right. So it's more efficient just to say the word integrity and everybody knows that it means live and play with uncompromised honesty. So we use the words of our culture when we are coaching and leading our people. And also when it's not just about correcting behavior, it's also about, you know, recognizing positive behavior and catching people doing things right. And, you know, when somebody puts up a fantastic looking plate on the window, you have to tell them, you know, that's a great looking plate. Why is that important? Right. Tell them it's important because of the team, our commitment to our guests and to our team members to provide the best possible experience. That's just about the guests getting a great plate of food, but it's also about the team members getting a great place to work. Right. Because who wants to work in a restaurant where the shifts are always bad and the food's coming out inconsistent and the service standards are inconsistent and the guests are griping? You know, we're never going to attract the top tier talent in our industry if we don't run our restaurants with the best possible ability. Right. And follow our standards. So we want to attract the best people. And then we want to create an environment where they thrive. So coaching them and telling them exactly like, you know, working at a walk-in should be an open book test. Right. The answers are all in front of us. And they are because they're part of our culture. Right. Our team members should know exactly how to approach every single problem. They may not have ever seen that problem. Maybe that issue wasn't in a training manual somewhere. But because they know our culture, they should know how to approach that with confidence. And, you know, maybe we can coach them to do a little bit better the next time. But at least they've gotten it, you know, mostly right because they're familiar and and they know our culture. So I think getting to getting to that piece where, you know, yes, mistakes are going to happen. I always tell my people, if you're going to make a mistake, be vocal about it. Make sure you tell us about it so we have the opportunity to fix it before it compromises the experience of our guests or our team. You know, but if you're silent about it, then we can't do anything. Maybe we don't notice. Maybe in the moment it gets lost. We're not able to recover that experience for that for that guest or team member. But, you know, it's just about, hey, we embrace you. I once made a commitment in a restaurant that I was a general manager of years ago. And I said, if you tell me about a mistake that you've made, I promise you I won't fire you if we can if we have the ability to fix it before anything bad happens. And I made it. I made that commitment. Let me tell you, Charlie, it was tough following through on that commitment because I had some real doozies come my way. But, you know, what happens if they don't tell you about it? They don't have that that that comfort and that security knowing that you're going to support them and help them get through that. Well, the mistakes are still happening. You just don't know about. So you're not helping that team member thrive. You're not helping fix that team member or guest experience that may have been compromised. People are going to make mistakes. There always are. And I think that what we want to do is create an environment where they feel pretty safe about, you know, telling us about. Fantastic, man. Very, very, very good response, thank you for that. Welcome. Yeah, that was absolutely awesome. And just to kind of wrap up here today and really kind of some key takeaways and things that I've heard through this conversation. And thank you again, Mike, so much for for sharing with us today is, you know, I love the silence is acceptance. You know, it's kind of an axiom to take away from this conversation and certainly a quote that I think will definitely drop into our newsletter, because when we're talking about living with integrity and the uncompromised and honest approach in which we take towards everything on a daily basis, it allows you to build that culture of accountability. And, you know, based on what you said, you know, that it starts with it starts with us. It starts with the leader and the uncompromised and honest approach in which we take and the consistency that it's derived from that and allows for people to be open, honest and accountable in everything that they do. And I really appreciate you bringing so much clarity to that because you're you're absolutely right. And that's that's absolutely about what Charlie's talking about in culture, being in action. That's that's how we take something from being something that could potentially be theoretical and we make it actionable and we make it practical and we bring it to life in our restaurants every day. That's absolutely awesome. So thank you. Thank you so much. And and, you know, on behalf of of Charlie and Lexi, you know, thank you again, Mike, so much for being with us and in our first wow cast here and sharing your words of wisdom and things that have undoubtedly helped you be as successful as you've been. So, again, thank you so much. I kind of leave it up to you for for final words here, my friend. No, I'm just happy to be a part of it. I just go back and reiterate the part where I said that, you know, sometimes in the moment it feels good to compromise. You feel like you're being a softie, you're helping somebody out, you know, the late at night after a long shift, you know, doing a flashlight checkout for your servers, you know, when they're ready to go and they want to they want to get home or they want to get, you know, to meet up with their friends and they're anxious to get out the door. It doesn't always feel good when you're holding them to that standard and you're making them clean their sections the best way possible. And they might grumble about it in the moment. But what happens is, you know, next week or a month from now, when they talk to their friends and their family about where they work, they're going to talk about it with pride because they know you're up and coming. They might not necessarily appreciate it in the moment, but overall, they're going to be happy and more fulfilled in an environment where they know that the scene isn't. Absolutely right. That's that's how the pride is is built, for sure. So thank you again, Lexi, Charlie, any any parting thoughts? That was the best way to end it, love that last little bit, Mike, thank you so, so much again. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing the time with us, sir. Pleasure to be here.