David Bloom Of Capriotti’s Sandwich Shops and Wing Zone On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business

An Interview With Ken Babcock

Process — I like to say that great processes turn good people into consistent performers, good performers into great performers, and allows your top performers to hit it out of the park on a consistent basis. Putting a disciplined strategic management platform in place is step one to organizing your resources, your teams and focusing their activities around common goals and objectives.

Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing David Bloom, Chief Development and Operating Officer of Capriotti’s and Wing Zone.

David’s early career in the restaurant and hotel industries included working with and for some of the most iconic brands and leaders in their respective industries where he learned how to strategically accelerate sustainable brand expansion. Having grown up in the restaurant industry in and around NYC, David’s entrepreneurial career began as a large multi-unit franchisee and serving as the SVP of Brand Expansion for Quiznos, growing it from a small regional brand of 18 restaurants to opening over 5,000 locations in 28 countries. Subsequent senior roles included the rapid growth of numerous enterprises including; Clockwork Home Services with system wide revenues in excess of $2.5 billion, Bridge International Academies based in Nairobi, Kenya, now the fastest growing education company in the world, Famous Brands International with approximately 900 franchised restaurants in over 30 countries and as President of Office Evolution, a high growth franchise brand in the shared work space sector. Today, David is responsible for all aspects of franchise development and operations for Capriotti’s and scaling a recently acquired fast casual concept Wing Zone to new heights.

Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

I started my career in restaurants at a very early age growing up in and around New York, being exposed to some amazing people that taught me what was possible in life and how to achieve that through work hard. I moved from New York to Las Vegas to attend UNLV because I thought it was great place to pursue my interest in the hospitality industry and be able to work so that I could pay for my education. Throughout my career, I’ve been incredibly blessed to work for and with many great leaders and people that have invested themselves, their time, energy and resources into me. I also have to give an incredible amount of credit to my wife and family for having relentlessly supported and sacrificed their own interests for my business and entrepreneurial ventures in so many ways all along the way. Without them I would be nothing!

You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?

I decided early on that I would go wherever and do whatever needed to be done in order to achieve my goals and what I believed I was capable of. That has meant that my family and I have moved about 18 times over the years having worked from Kenya to Canada and everywhere in between. It has allowed me to take on a wide variety of challenges and opportunities to meet and work alongside some incredibly bright and talented people along the way. In addition, I have had a lifelong personal commitment to learning and growing by reading literally hundreds and hundreds of biographies, books on world history, great literature and I read the bible every day and have done so for years, which I believe has given me firm foundation of faith on which to stand during those inevitable difficult times we all face.

What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?

While I’m not sure I would call it an initiative per se; investing in, coaching, mentoring and building long lasting friendships and relationships with other like-minded professionals has been the most consistently rewarding thing that I am the proudest of throughout my career. I’ve had numerous people that I haven’t seen or spoken to or seen in years tell me what a difference I made in their careers and lives without my ever really knowing I was doing it. Giving of yourself to others that share your passion, commitment to learning, growing and sacrificing to reach their own personal and professional goals to change their lives and the lives of many people around them is the most rewarding and most meaningful thing I am most proud of over the years. Things don’t last, businesses come and go, but your investment in people and the difference you can make in their lives can go on for generations.

Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?

The reality of any successful career is that it’s almost never a straight line upward and to the right. While I have fallen way short of my hopes and expectations many times over the years, those experiences and challenges led me to be the person I am leading the life I have today, for which I am incredibly grateful. By the way, I’m sure that I’ll continue to make even larger mistakes in the future, will learn and grow from them, and maybe even turn some of them into great successes.

How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?

Mentorship and coaching are the ways you let people know you believe in them and care about their success. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am that so many leaders that I greatly admired saw something in me worth investing in, and gave of themselves so generously. Mentoring and coaching others is actually one of my passions, which I get to indulge in through giving seminars at UNLV, speaking at industry events, podcasts, industry events and even in taking the time to have coffee with someone or write an article like this. Today, I get to work with and for a very sophisticated group of incredibly bright and successful individuals who believe in me, and I have the privilege of learning from them on a constant basis.

Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?

I have read countless biographies of incredible leaders throughout history over the years, and have been inspired by many of the people I have had the opportunity to work with and for. My leadership style has been formed over time by emulating the thinking and approach of these world class leaders to become the best version of me I can be each and every day. I am one of those people that is actually motivated by fear versus being paralyzed by it. Therefore, I often put myself in situations and seek out challenges where I am over my head, knowing that this intellectual curiosity is what drives and motivates me to continue learning and growing.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.

Fully answering this question would easily take an entire book all on its own. No two business that I have had the opportunity to scale on a global basis over the years has required the exact same approach. One over simplified way that I can consolidate my approach is what I have often referred to over the years as the “5 P’s: People, Plan, Process, Performance and Profit”:

• People — Before you can do anything, you have to have the right people in the rights seats, or you are building your business on a weak foundation that will crumble when the first major challenge comes along. Great things are accomplished first and foremost by great teams. Therefore, I spend a significant amount of time building those teams through networking, building our brands reputation, telling our story, speaking on panels and taking every opportunity to get to know other leaders throughout our industry. The higher you move up in your career, the larger you want top scale your organization, the more your reputation and these long-term relationships will mean to you and your ability to scale.
• Plan — You have to have the right strategy in place for that particular time and place, know your competitive advantages and disadvantages, and be able to significantly differentiate yourself from the competition. This sounds simple enough, but putting in the work to test your assumptions up front can save you considerable time, energy and resources later on. I can’t tell you howe often someone has told me that their business plan simply involves getting into a billion-dollar industry, and all they have to do to be successful is to capture 10% of it. Nothing is ever that simple or that easy!
• Process — I like to say that great processes turn good people into consistent performers, good performers into great performers, and allows your top performers to hit it out of the park on a consistent basis. Putting a disciplined strategic management platform in place is step one to organizing your resources, your teams and focusing their activities around common goals and objectives.
• Performance — You have to have actionable information and data in order to be able to make well-reasoned decisions. How else can you determine if you are on plan and performing at levels that will achieve you plans, budgets and goals. Having real time scorecards throughout the organization that measure the key business drivers will provide the actionable insights your teams need. Every single person in the organization should know and be responsible for at least one key deliverable that everyone else on the team is depending on them to execute in order to reach the shared goals.
• Profit- Successfully scaling any business requires first establishing a repeatable strong return on investment model. Successfully scaling a business, especially into new markets with an unknown brand requires having a proven playbook that consistently produces the desired financial returns. The other critical caveat of the profit program is everyone must win. If it’s just about shareholder value, or just about the desires of the employees, or interests of senior management than you will never get the commitment required throughout the entire organization to truly scale your business.

Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?

I have seen many companies rush to growth without ever really proving that their economic model works in a variety of locations beyond their home town or even their region. Secondly, it is highly possible to expand yourself right into negative cash flow if you don’t have a solidified capital plan to support that rapid growth. Lastly, there is a big difference between a fad or investment opportunity that may come and go rather quickly or a business requiring a long-term growth plan typically requires very different approaches.

Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?

Establishing your core values, vision and mission before building your teams and then hiring based on core value alignment first and foremost is essential for creating a sustainable business that can meet and overcome any challenge. There are lots of talented and highly successful people you can partner with along the way, but if you are not aligned from a value perspective first and foremost, you will eventually hit a wall, often at the worst possible time when the challenges and obstacles are the greatest.

Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?

Fortunately, there is a plethora of tools and platforms available along with great coaches to help you implement them. Finding out what best in class resources are available for your industry, and consistently investing in and mastering them ahead of growth is key. So many companies seem to always be playing catch up when it comes to adopting these tools and resources. Knowing what you have to be great at to reach your long-term goals, and then making sure you have the resources required along the way to make you extraordinary at it is a good starting point.

What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?

I would recommend speaking with those companies you admire and aspire to emulate versus those that are at the same level you are at to determine what is going to suit both your current and future needs. The problem for a lot of emerging companies is that they “don’t know what they don’t know”, and therefore make snap decisions or form partnerships that may not serve them well long term. Getting a sense of the future needs and demands of your company will help you think through and prioritize what to invest in today. I would rank picking the right partners to grow with as one of the very top priorities and most important decisions for an aspiring high growth company.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be?

You never know what your ideas or investment in others can trigger. I’m a huge believer in personal freedom and entrepreneurship. Having lived and worked around the world with so many incredible people at every level, from aspiring entrepreneurs to global business leaders, I know that there is a very bright future out there for those willing to work hard and give it everything they have. Globally, personal freedom is generally preceded by achieving a certain amount of economic freedom. The universal desire to provide and care for one’s family is timeless. Achieving that goal through the pursuit of an education, entrepreneurship or a combination thereof means people often just need a hand up and someone to believe in and coach them along the way. My wife and I have been investing with numerous organizations both domestically and globally that provide emergency relief for those in need, education and health resources, small business ventures and opportunities for many years. We have had the privilege of knowing and investing alongside the founders and leaders of these organizations. These are people that could do and achieve literally anything they set their minds to in the business world, yet at some point decided to dedicate their lives to helping others. These are the people that I find truly inspirational and of long-lasting influence.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I’m quite active on LinkedIn and often write for a variety of trade publications and speak at industry events. I live and work in Vegas which is often a very convenient place to meet up with people during the many industry events that come to Vegas.

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.