[Transcript]
Narrator (00:00):
Hello HR Professionals! Good news! This episode of the Love Your People podcast is valid for 0.5 professional development credits towards SHRM CP, SHRM SCP and HRCI recertification. Stay tuned to access your certification code.
John Duisberg (00:24):
Welcome to the Love Your People podcast. I'm your host John Duisberg, and if you're new here, this is the podcast where we explore how people-first strategies help organizations and their teams flourish. In today's episode, we're diving into the power of leadership, franchising, and building a thriving culture in business. Our guest is Mike McFall, co CEO and co-founder of BIGGBY Coffee, a fast-growing coffee franchise with a unique approach to investing in their people. Mike shares his incredible journey from barista to CEO revealing how BIGGBY Coffee's franchise model isn't just about business growth, it's about empowering franchisees, fostering community, and unlocking the potential of people at every level. If you ever wondered how to scale a business while staying true to a people-first mission, this episode is packed with insights just for you. Let's get started. Welcome everyone for another awesome episode of the Love Your People podcast series.
(01:28):
I'm your host. My name is John Duisberg and I'm super excited today, Mike McFall, co CEO, BIGGBY Coffee. We're going to dive all things, jump into all things his journey, but also talk about the franchise model that Mike has really adopted to scale the business and how that impacts his mission to love their people well. But I'm super excited today for everyone in the audience who this may be your first time or you don't know, you don't have as much background on the Love Your People podcast series. So just to kind of share how we got here, this journey to catch you up. So at ITA Group, we actually design and implement employee engagement recognition programs for organizations all around the world. And through that process, we just get this inside look at what leaders are doing to really invest in their people, to create that sense of connection, community appreciation ultimately to help attract and keep the best people so that they can be successful at business.
(02:38):
And as we started to learn these amazing things that these leaders are doing, we just said, Hey, we need to put a spotlight on this. We want to be able to share these stories. And the whole goal is to help you take ideas and some of these learnings that perhaps could help you inside of your own organization with your own teams as you look to be a people-first leader as well. So that's our hope today is to just really learn from Mike's experiences and his journey that can benefit you and your team and your organization. That being said, we'd love to hear from you, so keep the chat moving. We want to hear questions. We're going to carve out time at the end of our interview with Mike today to give you the opportunity to ask questions directly with Mike. And so we want to make sure this is meaningful you, so keep that chat going.
(03:35):
But without further ado, I'm so excited to introduce Mike McFall, co CEO, co-founder of BIGGBY Coffee. Mike, we've had over the last few weeks got a chance to know you a little bit more, so you have an incredible story. I'm not going to steal your thunder, I want you to share with our audience, but literally pouring coffee on the ground floor, boots on the ground to co CEO bestselling author, and just an incredible vision for how you can invest in people to really be successful at business. So I'm just so excited to have this conversation with you today, but please, for our audience, would love to hear from you, maybe share a little bit about BIGGBY and your journey and how we got here today.
Mike McFall (04:25):
Yeah, thanks John. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, my experience in the world here is in five days. My company turns 30 years old, and so I've been doing this since I was 23. I did start as a barista in our very first store and my business partner, Bob Fish, he owned that first store. I worked for him and then he and I ended up, it's a bit of lore in our world today, but he and I ended up going for about a four hour walk, six months into my engagement working with him. And at the end of that walk, we shook hands and agreed to form a new company, and that company would be the company that we would use to expand and grow our brand. And there were three of us involved at that point. We were all equal partners. We bought out our third partner in 2012, and it's been Bob and I owning the company since where we are today.
(05:31):
Currently we are a franchise company. Our stores, it's a hundred percent franchised. And so our company exists to support our franchise owner in developing their business, in growing the asset, in growing the investment that they put in pursuit and in supportive of them living a life that they love and having that asset available to them to do that. So that's what we do. Our whole company is focused on that right now. We currently have 431 stores open. We're eclipsing, I think someone told me the other day, around 6,000 employees total within the system. And so that's our company. I had a conversation with my mother's best friend the other day who I'm very close to, and she said, Mike, what's amazing is I think BIGGBY might be like the third or fourth most interesting thing you've done in your life. And so we won't be able to get into all the rest of that stuff, but BIGGBY is a pretty interesting story, and it is my life, right? It's what I do and I love it. I love the opportunities it provides me. I love being able, my whole company is built around supporting others and pursuing their dreams, and that's what inspires me.
John Duisberg (06:56):
I love it. And I know part of the mission, your purpose through BIGGBY is to love your people, to love the community that you serve and to create joy, create happiness to unlock potential. You mentioned the franchise path. So tell me a little bit more about that. Tell me how does that work? How do you invest in people and try to create, live out that mission when you're essentially one step removed from the people through the franchise? Right.
Mike McFall (07:37):
Well, I think early on the franchise business model was appealing to us because so much of our mentality is about coaching, teaching, mentoring others. And so when you dive into the idea of building a franchise, I always talk about that. That's a really critical mentality to have. And the franchise owner is independent. It's their business, and our job is to support them in building their business. In terms of how we interact with the stores, most of our work is working through the franchise owner. We have some programs in place that we invite the baristas to be involved in for sure. And we are working, we're being very deliberate right now about working on building some other kinds of tools to build the community of baristas that we can play a part in. It's about building a community for them, but that we can be engaged in that and bring value to them, that community.
John Duisberg (08:57):
Got it. And one of the things that, so just my own personal experience, this isn't exactly the franchise model, but it's my own how I'm kind of connecting the dots. So my company was actually acquired by ITA Group just about a year ago, and I went from running a company and having essentially direct guidance on the strategy and actions to having to lead through influence versus having that direct report relationship. And so I kind of think of it as somewhat, there's some similarities potentially there where you're influencing your franchise owners in terms of your mission, your values, your purpose, the model, but ultimately they then need to take it and activate that, right, and implement that and bring it to life on the ground, so to say. Right? But is that a fair kind of how I'm thinking about it or just what are your thoughts on that?
Mike McFall (10:02):
Yeah, absolutely. And we have spent a lot of time and a lot of energy around bringing value to the franchise owner by building community for them as well. And for example, we created what are called forums, and these forums are small groups of franchise owners that we facilitate them coming together. They come together on a monthly basis and think of it as like a support group for owners. But through those mechanisms, we're able to bring them all kinds of our content, our values, the ways that we think about the business, and then they take that and they take that into their world. But more importantly, they work together as a forum, as six to eight member forum to learn from each other, learn from each other's best practices along with ours. And this is the piece of the franchise business model that I think is the most powerful piece of the business model that doesn't get talked about.
(11:22):
And that is a franchise brings you, it brings you a brand, it brings you a product, it brings you a system. But the fourth thing it brings you that nobody seems to talk about so much in the world is it brings you a community and it brings you a whole bunch of people that are doing the same thing you're doing day in and day out that have a vested interest in your success. And so when you're a franchise owner, when you're a franchisee in a system, how actively you engage that community is, in my opinion, one of the more critical factors on whether you're going to be successful or not. And by engaging that community, we're a big part of that community and influencing that community. So that's how we do that, and it's all opt in. The franchise owners opt into that to the work that we're doing and the things that we're doing, but hopefully through influence, we can impact more and more of the leaders in the system.
John Duisberg (12:19):
Yeah, no, it is interesting how you're really leaning into the community part of the pillar there. I know, again, I'm kind of in my mind translating to outside of the franchise world, we've got all these managers who are running different teams, divisions, departments, and so forth. And chances are how I'm handling a situation as a manager might be something that another manager could benefit from or learn from and vice versa. And so how do you kind of tap into that power of community one just, Hey, you got a support system, you got someone you can talk to, but two, to learn and to learn from. So no, that's really interesting. And it seems like, yeah, of course. But you're right, I don't hear people talking about the community aspect and the value from that.
Mike McFall (13:20):
No, and just a quick story. I had a friend of mine involved in another franchise, and he was about five years in. He was doing reasonably well, and he mentioned to me he wasn't going to go to their annual convention. And I said, whoa, hang on. Time out. You're not going to go to the annual convention. He's like, no. I go, I've gone five years in a row. He's kind of the same thing. And I said, well, hang on, let's look at this from a different perspective. Why don't you call your favorite contact at the headquarters and ask them who the five most successful franchisees in the system are? And then what I want you to do is I want you to go to the annual convention, and I want you to become friends with all five of those people, and these five people will teach you more than you could ever want to know about running that particular business. And that's being, you have to be proactive in that engagement, and you have to seek out the right people, the people that are doing it the way you want to, values aligned with yourself and so on. But to me, it's a proactive way to engage. And as a leader, you have to proactively engage. You have to proactively engage other leaders in their learning and learning from you in terms of how you do things. And you don't take it word for word, but it influences your approach to your group.
John Duisberg (14:45):
Yeah, that's such a cool story. How are the community there, right? Yeah, no, it makes total sense. And it's maybe easy to forget, but yeah, why wouldn't I want to go learn from the top five leaders? So no, I appreciate that story, Mike. And it is kind of a good segue to the next area that I wanted to just learn more from you about, which is I know that creating joy, happiness, creating fulfillment for your franchisees and the employees of the franchisees is super important. The big question is how do you do that? What are some of the examples or some of the best practices that you found most effective? And I know that the human-centric business model is kind of part of your operating manifesto, so to say. It's how you approach the business. So tell us more about that and just give us more context about how that is done within BIGGBY.
Mike McFall (15:53):
Well, it starts with working hard to make sure that we're aligned with our franchise owners. We call them owner operators in our world. And when we are values aligned with the franchise owner, the world is sort of magical. It all just seems to work really, really well. And one of the things that we did proactively early seven years ago, eight years ago, is my partner and I agreed that I would start to write a book series and that book series way people to engage us, hopefully read the content, and then they decide whether or not they are aligned with how we want to run the business and our values, and then they can opt in or opt out. And so that was a major project. The books are right here. It's Grind and Grow, that's two books. It's going to end up being a four book series.
(16:59):
And so that's really, really important. We also have been really deliberate about developing content that we make available to our community. And so we have a curriculum that we have built, it's part of this, it's called Life Lab, and that curriculum is made available to anybody inside of BIGGBY Nation is what we call it. And these are courses. They're six week courses and they're all free. We don't charge anybody in BIGGBY Nation to go through them and we call them the four pillars of Building a Life you love, and that is our purpose. Our purpose in the world is to support you no matter who you are, if we interact with you in some way to support you in building a life that you love.
(18:02):
The four pillars are, the four pillars are one, it's knowing who you want to be, which is a visioning module. There's one called Exceeding Your Basic Needs, and that is one around personal finance. There's one called Having a Sense of Vitality. And then the fourth one is creating a sense of belonging. And so each one of these modules courses is built that we believe that you have to have these four areas reasonably well ironed out, figured out in your own life in order to really begin to build a life that you love. And so that's something that we do that we're deliberate about that we've been working that now, I think we're in year four of having those courses available to our franchise community. Another thing that we've done is you can see there's a gray book right here behind my head that's something called the Moonshot Guidebook, and that's a visioning tool that we make available to our community as well that that started as an internal tool for our own employees. And then some franchise owners got their hands on it, and we developed that and made it a little bit more consumable from a broader perspective. And then eventually something called Conscious Capitalism Press reached out to us and wanted to publish it as a book. And so that is now available, it's available on Amazon and so on, but it's really meant to be an internal piece for our own community to engage. Visioning and visioning to us is a really important part of our pursuit in supporting people in their pursuit of building lives that they love.
John Duisberg (20:10):
Yeah, so you shared a lot there. No, it's awesome. There's a couple things that jumped out at me that I wanted to touch on. The first. You started with how when you have the alignment with the franchise owner, everything's magical. And I imagine the opposite is you could say when it's not the alignment, whatever, however you want to describe it, it's not magical. And so you put out there your beliefs, your purpose, your mission with the goal to attract individuals who understand what they're signing up for, so to say, they're buying into saying, Hey, that does align philosophically with who I want be and how I want to work right now. And I kind of think of it as you were talking. I'm like, as an organization, as a leader, I want to make sure that every person who's potentially going to come in and work inside of our organization, who's going to be hired, they understand exactly who we are. So we're making sure we're putting our values out there, our mission out there, our purpose out there, that they have a good understanding of what they're kind of joining to make sure that that fit is there. Then when it is, man, it all just feels great, but when it's not, it's everyone's going to struggle. And so it just highlighted to me, wow, as an organization to be really intentional, not just internally, but actually externally, here's who we are as an organization. Here's why we do what we do. Here's our purpose, here's why we exist.
(21:57):
Hopefully the goal being, Hey, I'm attracting people that have that sense of alignment.
Mike McFall (22:03):
Yeah, I call that I've got a keynote that I give, and one of the areas, one of the three areas of the keynote, I call it building. I go through this whole sort of storytelling around when you were a child and building a tree fort and you and all your friends would climb up into the tree fort and everybody would be their favorite superhero. And it's very elaborate, but I talk about in that tree fort, one of the first things that you do with your friends, if you remember back in the days, you pick your finger and it's like a blood bond. And you do that and you talk about the rules of engagement or the code of honor that you have amongst your friends in that tree for it and how you're, so what I talk about as a leader is you have to do that with your team, that you have to have your rules of engagement.
(23:04):
You have to have that moment when you prick your finger and take the blood oath. But what you have to do as a leader, articulate what that is. And to me, that is your values and the values that you prescribe in the world are the rules of engagement that your team is all agreeing to when they come on board. So when leaders talk about values, it's like that is such an important part of being a leader, is making sure that you have values alignment and no time spent on that is wasted time. The more you do that, the better.
John Duisberg (23:53):
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I'm getting excited. I get passionate about this topic as well. Another thing that I wanted to highlight, going back to the human-centric business model, is this idea that every person brings a unique skillset, a unique perspective. They bring their passion in their own way. And as a leader, part of maybe one of my most important jobs or roles is to unlock that skillset that person brings and then allow them to have that impact for the team, for the organization. And that just stuck with me in our conversations. I thought, wow, that's what I need to be doing, is unlocking the potential of our team and having that impact. So tell us more about that stories. How do you go about that? I was so attracted to that when I heard you share it.
Mike McFall (25:01):
Well, I call that, how I referenced that is that everybody comes to you with a toolbox, and everyone has certain tools in that toolbox. And oftentimes I feel like leaders think that everyone should have a full toolbox and that all the tools should be sharp and ready to be used. But the fact of the matter is people come to you and they've got certain tools in their toolbox that are really well honed and they're really good at using them, and then they've got other tools in their toolbox that are rusty, 20 years old, and haven't been touched. And what we need to do as leaders is we need to understand one, that the expectation can't be that everybody has a full toolbox, but what we need to do is we need to identify what people's tools are that they're good at using, and then we need to incorporate those into the team in a way that the team can use those tools and everybody understands what everybody's tools are so that we can work together as a team in an effective way.
(26:09):
How this is done in many ways is through the personality tests and the strengths and weaknesses and all. There's a lot of different tools out there to be used, but you should be using some one at a minimum. And a lot of times organizations will be using two or 1, 2, 3 different kinds of tools because the more we begin to understand each individual team member's strengths, the tools that they bring, the better we can leverage those as leaders. And that when you are using the tools that are strong for you that you're good at using, you're more powerful in the group as well. And so for me, as an example, if I fall apart in my world when it comes to execution, really getting a program, managing a program, working through the details, that's not what I do well. And so if the team's going to depend on me to do that, we're probably going to struggle. But I have certain things that I bring as well that if we leverage those and the team understands that, that's what I'm good at and that's what the team expects from me, that I can live into that and then I can be really powerful inside of that team. And that's essentially what we want, and that's unlocking people's superpowers, is what I call that, right? Unlocking their superpowers so that we as a team can leverage each individual's superpower.
John Duisberg (27:48):
I love it. Just for our audience in the chat, if there are examples of how you unlock your team's superpowers, would love to hear more about that. That is awesome. I had imagine when that occurs, you build confidence, you build a sense of appreciation, fulfillment, all of these things, and then it just grows and then all of a sudden I'm starting to use other tools and I'm starting to have a greater impact for the team overall.
Mike McFall (28:25):
Yeah. I mean, for example, one of the things that I've, most recently we've been working through a personality profile. I'm blanking on the name on it right now. It's terrible. And one of the things that I'm very good at or that I enjoy, I should say, and that I'm good at is galvanizing. And so there are moments when people in teams and groups and the organization need to be galvanized. Well, that's a moment that you're going to call on me maybe to step into that. And then that's really fulfilling for me. And so people have different, I mean, there's people that are very sort of methodic thinkers, and they may not be as strong at, let's say, galvanizing. They're a little bit more cautious. They want to think through things a little bit more. And they're really good for me in helping me sort of slow down and not blast off into the world at 300 miles an hour and helping me think through how all of it's going to work and the blind spots that I don't see, because basically I'm charging forward with things.
(29:46):
And so it's really, and then you have people that are just so good at ideation, really thinking and ideating through. And that is just such a powerful, powerful skill, such a powerful tool. It's a superpower. And so when we're into that kind of work, that's the person that's going to step up. That's the person that's going to step in, and they're going to feel great about that, but we need to know who those people are, and then we need to call on them at the right moments. And leadership, to me, one of the most important components to leadership is it's your job to know this about each one of your people. You're the one that's supposed to know. And the only way you can know that is by being super intimate with people and understanding them and understanding what makes them tick and understanding what tools they have. So that to me is leadership.
John Duisberg (30:46):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It's inspiring me as a leader to want to have more of those conversations with my people. Like, Hey, where do you see yourself going? What's important to you? What's your next step from a career? All of these things. So I love that. And you mentioned life lapse as this workshop, and there's visioning, so you're having some of these conversations, but do you open this up? So is this just for your franchise owners? Is this for employees? Is this for who is this available to help us understand that? I'm thinking of a workshop internally at an organization created. Does anyone participate? How do you organize
Mike McFall (31:36):
That? Anybody that's associated within BIGGBY Nation is invited and there's no charge. I think we do invite outside people to attend if they want to. I think, I can't remember. I think it's a hundred dollars. It's pretty nominal. Whatever pays for
John Duisberg (31:54):
The coffee maybe.
Mike McFall (31:58):
But we do make it available to anybody in the system that wants to engage.
(32:05):
And the workshops are, what's so cool about them is I've been involved in workshops where you have a franchise owner that owns seven stores and has been in the business for 12 years. And then you also have in that very same workshop, you might have a 19-year-old barista. And because the content is content that I don't see anywhere in the world, where do you have a course that you can take on personal vitality? And so it's not like taking a seminar on some business like finance or some HR policies or something like that. These are courses that a 19-year-old can be in a course with a 50-year-old person and they're kind of talking about the same stuff. And to me, that makes them incredibly powerful.
John Duisberg (33:08):
Yeah. No, that's really cool. So Mike, this has been great. I really appreciate you just sharing a few of the key ways that you approach, you've approached building BIGGBY and the why behind why what you do. I will always remember the, Hey, it's my job to unlock the superpower of our people. So I mean, that's just going to stick with me forever. So thank you. But as we wrap here and you're thinking about, hey, some of the things that you're going to be focusing on through the remainder of the year, how do you love your people? Well, how do you continue to unlock that superpower? Is there one or two key priorities or key lessons learned that learn that you can share with our audience as we close out today?
Mike McFall (34:06):
Well, I think for me, big picture, I'm really starting to work hard on the differentiation between leadership and management. And what I mean by that is that if you're the manager of a business, you're the CEO of an enterprise, and you look at your job as a leader, that your job is to make that business profitable and to return on the equity value of that asset for the owners. To me, that's management and leadership is about having impact on the world, having positive impact on the world. And so this is where things like purpose come into play, that you as a leader, you are identifying what the purpose of the organization is in order to have powerful positive impact on the world. But then the magic of that in terms of unlocking people is that people want to know that their life's work when they show up to work and they're engaged, that they're contributing to something that is having a powerful and a positive impact on their community and on the world.
(35:30):
And so what I'm in the middle of is figuring out how to have that conversation with leaders, which is your job as a leader is not to make the owners of your enterprise richer. Your job as a leader is to have, if you're going to be a true leader, your job as a leader is to have impact on the world. And if you do that, your people will find their work so much more fulfilling. There'll be so much more bought into, I didn't know this, but one in five families can't afford diapers in the world. And a friend of mine learned about this and decided, you know what that's going to do as an organization, we are going to impact that. And so they are on this quest to make diapers free in the world or clothes. And so people show up to work and it's like, yeah, we're just trying to make sure that that diapers are available. And so it doesn't have to be this quest, this leadership quest to improve the world. It doesn't have to be like colonizing Mars or ending world hunger. It could be something small in your community or something very specific in your community, but that's what we have to do as leaders, is we have to impact the world in a positive way.
John Duisberg (36:56):
I love the distinction between managers and leaders. That was very well put in a perfect way for us to wrap here. Mike, this has been just a wonderful episode of Love Your People Podcast. I can't thank you enough for just investing into our community with the goal to just continue to elevate the employee experience and to help leaders become worth following, right? And be that people-first, help them create that people-first organization. So thank you. My pleasure, John. Thank you. As we wrap up today, remember this, the insights you've gained are only as valuable as the action you take leadership and culture transformation. Start with each of us. At ITA Group. We help people and brands thrive together because creating a workplace where people feel seen, valued and inspired is how we drive meaningful change. For more strategies, tools, and insights to help you lead with purpose and build people-first organizations, visit itagroup.com/insights. Thank you for joining us, and until next time, keep leading with your heart and making a difference as a people-first leader worth following.
Narrator (38:19):
Thank you for listening to the Love Your People podcast. As promised, this episode is valid for 0.5 professional development credits toward your SHRM CP, SHRM SCP and HRCI recertification. To claim your SHRM credit, please visit itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast. For your HRCI credit, visit itagroup.com/hrci-podcast. Complete the quick form to receive your certification codes. Again, that's itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast, and itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast.