Building Community and Connection in Business with Heather Neary

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm a little blurry here. I'm noticing my camera, I can't fix that right now. Let's go anyway. So research shows that about 70 percent of Americans are seeking deeper, more personal connections with their brands. At the same time, workplace culture studies also show that most employees say it's important to feel part of a community at work, not just a place where they collect a paycheck. In other words, people are no longer satisfied with transactional relationships. They want to belong, customers want to feel known by the brands they choose, employees want to feel heard and seen, like I want to be seen right now with my camera, and connected to something meaningful. Today, we're exploring what it looks like to build genuine community and connection in business, especially in a growing quick service restaurant brand where millions of small interactions add up to a very big impact. Mike, can you introduce our guest today?

**Mike Liwski** (1:22)
Yeah. I'll let you fix your camera there, Steve, while I do that. So I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Heather Neary to our show today. She's the president and CEO of Taco John's. Now, Heather's joined Taco John's in February of 2024, and bringing more than two decades of experience in the restaurant brand, as well as the franchise leadership business. So before stepping into her current role, she served as the brand president at KBP Brands, one of the largest quick service restaurant franchisees in North America. And prior to that, she led the international pretzel franchise, Auntie Anne's, which we're all very familiar with, as the brand president after building her career there across a number of different roles. And today, Heather is leading Taco John's through its next chapter of growth, really focusing on a topic that we love to talk about, right? Guest experience.
She's also working through franchisee success and the role that Community and Connection play across not just restaurants, right? But teams and even different markets and communities. So Heather, we are so delighted to have you on our show today. Welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

**Heather Neary** (2:42)
Thanks for having me, Michael. I'm glad to be here.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:44)
Yeah.

**Mike Liwski** (2:45)
Now, Heather, maybe just to kick things off real simply, why did you think it was so important to discuss the topic of Community and Connection today? Like, why does that perhaps speak to you or personally important to you?

**Heather Neary** (3:00)
I think in the world that we live in today, connections are so important. And I think the ultimate success for anybody is how they feel connected to the world around them. And I think at the basis of everything, human interactions are all about relationships and making connections with people. I love what you guys are doing. I love the idea behind this. I think there is a lot of strife in our world. And when we can find empathy and find connections in people who may be different than us, it's a huge win for everybody.

**Mike Liwski** (3:30)
Yeah. So key. For sure.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:34)
So Heather, we discussed this Community and Connection a lot. You're leading this very large QSR brand, very competitive landscape. Let's drill down. What does those concepts actually mean in practice?

**Heather Neary** (3:53)
The terms of Community and Connection?

**Stephen Sakach** (3:56)
Yes.

**Heather Neary** (3:57)
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you can say it all you want, but I think it's really about the practice of it, to your point, Stephen.
I think Community is a big part of who we are at Taco John. It's one of the reasons that attracted me to join the brand. We're really fortunate to be a 56-year-old brand, and a lot of our restaurants are in really small, rural towns across the Upper Midwest. So we really have that community piece buttoned up pretty well, and it's important that we take that responsibility seriously. When we are in these small towns, we are a key component of that small town and making sure that we're making those really meaningful connections in the community, is important for our success as a brand, and also for that community success as a thriving small town in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa. I'm missing a lot of them, but you get the idea.

**Mike Liwski** (4:53)
Many of those, for sure.
Maybe diving a little bit further into this topic, because we know that some organizations are definitely falling short, when it comes to the key components of customer experience, and then as well, employee engagement. Steve mentioned that in his intro. You've led brands from multiple seasons of change, from say perhaps maybe some mall-based concepts like Auntie Anne's right, to multi-brand franchise platforms, and now really with your national taco thing. You've had a ton of experience and maybe looking across all of that experience, where do you see say the traditional approaches of customer experience and employee engagement falling short? And maybe whatever some of the keys that you've put in place to try to remedy poor customer experience and improve employee engagement.