Rob Herold: This is the secret to delegation

**Josh Kopel** (0:00)
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Again, you can sign up for free today just by going to restaurantbusinessschool.com. I'll see you there. Now here we go.

**Rob Herold** (0:53)
But perfection is really an enemy. It's one of my greatest enemies, honestly. Because I want things to be as close to perfect as possible.
That's where delegation really comes in. Because you know you can't do it all. You can't.

**Josh Kopel** (1:09)
Welcome to FULL COMP, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders and innovators. Served up on the house.
What is the most valuable thing you could do for your restaurant is make yourself unnecessary. Rob Herold has operated a single Chick-fil-A in Bowie, Maryland for 17 years. While most operators would chase more locations, he went the other direction. Building a business that runs without him so that he could coach leaders, serve his communities overseas, and climb mountains with his son. In today's conversation, we get into why your time is worth more than you think and how hiring a virtual assistant became the highest leverage decision he ever made. Rob also digs deep into what it really caused operators to insist on doing everything themselves. So if you're drowning in your own business and calling it dedication, this episode is going to change how you see your calendar.

**Rob Herold** (2:20)
So my journey in the food service industry, the way I position it, actually started when I was 15 years old. It was 27 years ago at this point. I was laying on the couch at home, and my mom was like, you are not laying around all summer. Get up, we're going to go get a job.
But with shoes on, we went outside and found myself in a McDonald's dining room and got the job on the spot.
Gave me a uniform, said you start this afternoon.
My second job, about a year and a half later, I was really enjoying the camaraderie that I built with the team members at McDonald's, but I wasn't really making a ton.
I found a place where I can make a whole dollar more an hour, and that was Papa John's. I wasn't old enough to deliver pizzas yet, but I can make them. I thought it would be really cool to learn how to do the little pizza spinny thing where you throw it in the air.
Got hired at Papa John's, walked in, hired me on the spot, said he started this afternoon, and I worked there for a bit, and then my mom came back in the picture, and she thought, all right, I don't like the fact that you're working on Sundays right now. We've got a lot of stuff that we're doing on Sundays, so you need to find something else to do. There's this place opening down the street, and it's called Chick-fil-A. They're actually closed on Sundays. You should check them out.
So I walked in, they weren't open yet. They hired me on the spot. They said, tonight, we're having this dinner. We do this at all of our openings. It's called a dedication dinner. We would love for you to join us. So right away, I knew this place was different. Went to the dinner. It was amazing. There were so many people there that I thought I had known for years that I had just met. And my journey at Chick-fil-A began 25 years ago as a 17-year-old high school student. Now, I really just had no idea what I was going to do with myself after graduating high school. I was getting ready to graduate and I was going to college. I was going to study business.
The owner of the restaurant that I worked at, his name was Eric, he saw something in me. Within just a couple of months of me working at that restaurant, he asked me if I was interested in being a team leader at the restaurant. I said, I'm not sure what that means. He said, you get to do refunds and you get these cool keys. And I said, man, let's do it. So I became a team leader at Chick-fil-A. And then a couple months later, he said, there's a Chick-fil-A opening down the street here and we need people like you that know how to do this to go and help the new team that doesn't know what they're doing. Would you like to go on a grand opening? And I said, absolutely, I'd love to. So at that opening, one of the evenings, Eric took me and a couple of other trainers to dinner. He was asking us questions, just taking interest in us and people. And he said, hey, do you know what you're gonna do after college? And I said, I'm not sure. He said, well, you're studying business. Do you want to own a business someday? And I said, yeah, sounds like it'd be cool. The next question he asked me changed my life, Josh. He said, have you ever wanted to be a Chick-fil-A operator? And now I was 17 years old.