"Slow is fast" - Wade Allen of Costa Vida

In this episode of the Land and Lead podcast, Dr. Josh Elmore interviews Wade Allen, the president of Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill. Wade shares his journey from a non-restaurant background to becoming a skilled leader in the restaurant industry, detailing his experiences at Brinker International and his transition to Costa Vida. He discusses the challenges and strategies involved in leading a brand through change, the importance of listening and building credibility, and the lessons learned from setbacks. Wade emphasizes the significance of open communication and the value of a strong support network for leaders in high-stakes roles.

Transcript

Dr. Josh Elmore (00:00)
Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, and wins, moments of that leaders go through in transition, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. 

Today, we're speaking with Wade Allen. nearly 25 years of experience in the restaurant and retail industry, Wade is a seasoned executive known for driving transformative business strategy innovation and operational excellence. 

He currently serves as president of Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill, where he leads the strategic direction and overall operational management of the brand. In his role, Wade is focused on accelerating growth, enhancing business performance, and delivering exceptional guest experiences. Prior to Costa Vida, Wade spent nearly a decade at Brinker International in several key executive roles, including Chief Digital Officer, Chief Information Officer, Head of Innovation, and Vice President of Marketing. 

His strategic leadership was instrumental in shaping Brinker's digital and innovative agenda, helping to modernize the business and position it for long-term success. Wade brings deep expertise across restaurant and retail innovation, operations, marketing, information technology, cybersecurity, customer loyalty, digital transformation, and advanced analytics.

He is recognized for his ability to navigate complexity, lead through change, and deliver forward thinking solutions that drive growth. Known for his strategic mindset and passion for impact, Wade thrives in roles that require bold thinking and continuous innovation. Welcome to the show, Wade.

Wade Allen (01:33)
Yeah, it's great to be here. That's quite a bio. I didn't realize how long that was, but thank you. That's awesome. Great to be here.

Dr. Josh Elmore (01:39)
Yeah, well, you know when you have a lot of experience across all these different roles and moments of transition as we're gonna be chatting about It's important to give that context. So appreciate that. Yeah So, Wade can you share a little bit about your background and how you landed at Costa Vida?

Wade Allen (01:54)
Sure. I didn't grow up a restaurant guy. That wasn't kind who I was or what I came from. I kind of spent some time after graduate school from Northwestern and kind of bounced around different agencies and did some stuff in some startups and even worked in the grocery sector and mass merchant sector for a while. Found restaurants in about 2014, maybe a little earlier than that, but 14 is when I started with Brinker. And so I had about a 10 year run where I really got the opportunity to get an, I'll call it an education, an amazing education with Brinker. 

I mean, they are the restaurant, they're one of the restaurant institutions or universities, if you will. And ⁓ after spending a decade with them and learning everything under the sun and every department and everything that kind of transitioned, you read from the bio, but I've been all over that brand. I found myself in a position where I was exited from Brinker.

That was a tough situation I found myself in where I was like, okay, here I am, 10 years experience, known for a lot of things in the space and now they're no longer needing me or wanting me and I've got to go do something. Had a phenomenal experience where I, the next week met Sean Collins, who is the CEO of what's called Win and they are an owner of Costa Vida. And I spoke at one of the events that I generally speak at and he approached me and we had a conversation and

It just felt right and there was a series of things that had lined up and a couple months later, I was at Costa Vida. And ⁓ I told them before I came in, hey, I understand that you don't know me and I don't know you. I know the brand. I'm very familiar with the brand. I'm familiar with Salt Lake City and where you're based. Give me some time in a different role, but I'd love to be the president at some point. And they trusted me and within a year I transitioned into the president and haven't looked back. And that's been kind of the role and what happened with me as I kind of moved over to Costa.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:40)
Yeah, and tell me more about that role that you transitioned to. Where'd you start out?

Wade Allen (03:44)
So I had a ton of experience coming out of Brinker with innovation, analytics, marketing, technology, kind of these like hard sciences around using data to drive the business forward. And so I sat down with him and I said, you my skillset would be best utilized as an EVP of strategic growth. And I'll go find these other areas where we as an organization can continue to expand Costa's footprint into these new areas and new areas of opportunity to grow the business.

And they loved that idea. I think they had struggled for a while on seating a CMO and seating a CIO and trying to figure out if they were big enough to have C suites at this level. And so I came in and said, Hey, let me roll them all into one. And then let's just go push this forward and stabilize the tech, stabilize the marketing, give people a chance to grow through this, this, this kind of new structure. And, and they really liked it and it worked really, really well. mean, we, the first year we, we did a lot of work the first year with those cross-functional teams.

But really set us up so that as I've taken the president role now, all of those pillars were in place to have the phenomenal year that we had last year and the phenomenal year that we're having this year.

Dr. Josh Elmore (04:48)
Wow. Yeah, I really want to come back to kind of how that initial role played into your transition into your current role and how those impacted one another. But before we get into that, can you tell us more about Costa Vida and the situation when you entered the organization?

Wade Allen (05:03)
Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't know Costa Vida, they're a fresh Mexican grill based in Salt Lake City. got about 100 units. 30, I'll say mid-30s of those are owned by corporate, by this entity. And the other remaining are franchise partners. call them 15 to 20 franchise partners that own the difference. Brand's been around since the early 2000s. It is a kind of a, it's a counter-style, fast casual Mexican restaurant. Fresh food, they do all their own cooking. Everything is scratch.

I mean, we don't even have freezers in our restaurants, right? Everything is just ⁓ really fresh, healthy, good quality kind of Baja flavored Mexican food. When I joined the brand, I'd known the brand because they'd been around for about 20 years, but I joined the brand a couple of years ago when I looked into them. It had been primarily a entrepreneurial passion from both Dave and Sean, who are the two CEOs now, co-owners, kind of now co-CEO.

But they had gotten to a point where they knew that they no longer had the knowledge and the capability of running a restaurant company that had become a bit of an animal. It had kind of taken a life of its own and kind of really moved into an enterprise, though small, but this kind of new small enterprise space once they tipped over to kind of this 95 restaurant to 100 restaurant mark. And so they were actively looking for some assistance. And I don't think they really identified that they needed another president. 

I think what they identified is that, oh, we can still do this, but we just need to get really good people. And what they then had quickly, think they quickly came to the realization was it's not a big enough brand to have deep enough pockets to have 10 chiefs on a group or a big board to run this. And so was kind of serendipitous. But as we met, I think what I proposed to them and what I was telling them about

My skill set what I could bring is was for them is my goodness this could be give us an opportunity to hand it off to a restaurant person still be involved allow him to build the structure that needs to happen allow him to worry about that structure that used to happen to deliver success as opposed to us to try to go and Hire a CMO hire a CIO hire a CDO hire, you know, hire all these chiefs and not being able to afford it. So It was it was a win on both sides. I wanted to come back to the Salt Lake City area

I was born and raised out here. knew this brand. It felt right. They needed somebody even though they didn't know they needed a me. And so I think the first year of that trial run was really healthy. I think it showed them I didn't have the ego to say I have to be paid as a president and have the title right out of the gate. And I was willing to bet on myself. And it gave them an opportunity to court me a little bit to see how I would actually take their legacy forward.

And so that combination was just a great combination because they got really comfortable with me over the year. We got honest conversations. They saw how I led and how I did. They could coach me from a distance if they wanted to. So it was a very natural fit after a year to make that transition.

Dr. Josh Elmore (07:50)
Yeah, and so having all of those kind of across the brand past experiences, a jack of all trades background allowed you to come in and say, look, you can't afford all of these different heads, but I can be a little bit of each as we think about how I could run that broader scope.

Wade Allen (08:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think as I came at it, I decided rather than try to just go in and play the, have to be the president. I have to be the CEO and I have to do this. What can I bring to the brand? What could I bring to the team that was already on the ground? And that was the best position for me.

Dr. Josh Elmore (08:24)
And how did, I mean, obviously you're president now, but how did that first year go of transition and what was the value of, in retrospect, approaching it this way?

Wade Allen (08:33)
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't easy, right? think it was absolutely the right decision. But there were some really tough transitions for me personally, I was prepared for and had the expectation that the team was much more senior, much more capable, much more kind of the doers of the work. And what I got and found out was they outsourced a lot of it to vendor partners.

There wasn't a whole lot of accountability in the ranks. It was a little bit of a, you know, maybe, you know, just kind of entrepreneurial, just kind of maybe come and work. And then, you know, it's the kind of startup mentality. Everything's about fun, but we weren't getting the ball across the goal line, kind of to use that analogy. So we had to get pretty aggressive with, okay, guys, I need more from you.

I need you to help me, I'm gonna help meet me here. This is what we gotta do. We gotta overhaul this tech stack. So the first year we had to overhaul the entire marketing technology stack. And I knew that if we did that, because I'd done that at Brinker, I knew that if we did that, that would continue to bear fruit for years, especially if you got the right providers. But they had all the, in my opinion, they had a lot of the wrong providers selected. And so we had to come to the table, we had to have hard conversations, we had to undo things, there were egos involved in that, there were relationships involved in that. 

But, for the most part, and I say for the most part, meaning pretty much everybody worked on this transition together and stayed on the team and got us back to a really good place. We launched something that struggled when it came out of the gate because I, and I take personal ownership of it, I didn't do the hard thing, which is probably pull one of the providers off and place them with somebody else. After 90 days, after being in a painful launch, I had to go and do that. 

But that first year was pretty bumpy. But once we got through that first year, all of a sudden things started to stabilize. The team trusted me. They knew I was in the ranks with them. I would never ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do first. And our providers actually trusted me because I had the credibility coming in from the space. were excited to see Costa, small brand, start to blossom and grow. And I think they got behind that momentum. So yeah, it was tough.

But I worked with the team, merged the team, I got them to where we needed to, I helped them institute accountability, and then we did a lot of change management around marketing stacks and tech stacks.

Dr. Josh Elmore (10:40)
So speaking to kind of that first year bumpy ride, kind of all of the dynamics that were at play, what strategies did you employ to help make you successful in kind of across these different initiatives?

Wade Allen (10:53)
Well, the first thing I did is I took 90 days to listen. And I just said, I know I have to move quick and we have to make some changes, but I'm going to listen. I'm just going to hear the team and hear the direction for 90 days. I also then said, we're going to find some quick wins along the way, but the big behemoth, like the big changes that have to happen, we're not going to make visceral moves into those big changes. We're going to get little wins along the way. And the little wins did two things for me. 

One, it built credibility with the existing team, listening built credibility with the existing team, and it also built credibility with Dave and Sean, the two CEOs. So, you know, that was strategic. I just knew that, and I had asked a lot of questions about the previous administration, and there had been people that had been kind of in a little bit of a revolving door in senior leadership in and out of this company. And I asked those that had been here and I said, why did they leave? Why were they fired? Why were...

Why did they quit? What happened? And the same reoccurring theme seemed to come up, which was they seem to, they, they pretend to know our brand before they actually get to know our brand. And they just start making moves and cuts and changes. And so that for me, you know, I'm not the smartest guy out there, but I, that one for me, I was like, okay, that's a red flag. Take the time to learn, listen, become part of the group and then make changes from the position of what's right for the brand. Not what you're used to doing because you're in another organization. And that was a huge win, huge win.

Dr. Josh Elmore (12:16)
And so it sounds like listening as a key strategic strategy for informing your change, which is often something that I recommend in change management practices. How did you go about doing that listening?

Wade Allen (12:27)
So with marketing, it was about learning our customer. It was about sitting alongside the marketing team in their daily meetings. It was about going one-on-one with my leader in marketing, really understanding his background, where he came from, what his passion is, what he had done before, what had worked before, what didn't work before, why he thought it didn't work, establishing trust with him, and really helping him understand. mean, so much so that it was outside of work. 

Like, we'd go to lunch. We would go. I take him to an event if I got asked to go to an by one of the vendors, I take him. I did the same thing with the IT team, although the IT team embraced me a lot quicker because they viewed me as someone who came from the IT space. Although I am a classically trained marketer, that's kind of where my background was in education. They viewed me in the industry as being a tech innovation. So they were excited because they felt like they had a voice finally at the table for technology.

Which again, they did and I leaned into that kind of as they mirrored that to me, I mirrored it back to them and said, okay, what do you need to have discussed with Dave and Sean? What are passion projects? And I remember one of the IT guys said, you we need to help with data security and we absolutely need to figure out this whole thing where we had something where people were, a different, they had a different set of criteria if they had a different type of computer and it was causing all sorts of chaos. 

So, process procedural stuff we came in and we kind of organized, which was again, huge wins for that team because I listened and implemented. And those things are hard. It just takes a little bit of a firm hand to say, guys, this is the new way we're gonna do it in IT to protect us from security issues or threats or things like that. And that helped those IT guys, all the noise kind of calm down for them, which, you know, for me, I won a lot of credibility by doing that.

Dr. Josh Elmore (14:03)
Yeah. And, you know, that's often the realization for most leaders in transition who are doing listening in a meaningful way. It's this broad opportunity to hit multiple points of impact where you get feedback, the organization feels heard, they see you acting on the input that they've given you, and they start to build that trust.

That is critical and it sounds like you've developed that into your president role. ⁓ Speaking to kind of that kind of the multifaceted benefits you got from listening and in particular kind of like the outcomes as it related to your ability to succeed through change. What did that look like?

Wade Allen (14:41)
Yeah, I mean, I was, you know, some of these actions resulted, again, people, give you credibility, but the results of some of these changes were a lot of the chaos and lack of decision making that was happening because the two co-CEOs were out a lot. It naturally came to me, even though I wasn't the president role, but because I had gone and had these wins with the team, they then would come to me with, advice, direction, decisions that need to be made for the business because they couldn't reach Dave and Sean, but they felt comfortable with what I had established with them. 

And so then I was able to start to make these decisions that I knew would have a material impact. Like let's get data at the heart of everything, every decision that we're making. So, and how's our data held? Wow, let's go get Snowflake or let's go get an environment where we can hold this data so that we can give it and shovel it out in a way using Tableau. You know, I'm just some of these things that we didn't have, or let's replace this technology because we're paying so much money.

All of a sudden, those changes started to bear fruit. We started to make more strategic decisions, which ultimately led to profitability, which then led to, this was a blind spot on all these restaurant leases that we were dragging. Why have we not seen this? Well, let's go sublet these things and let's take that off the P &L. So there started to be, I mean, a whole bunch of these things. Some of the big ones that I think through building that credibility and that change curve and actually getting the trust of the team that we started to move on because they brought decisions to me.

Where we launched that web and app experience, and we were able to over-communicate, not over, but communicate to our customers in a way that we hadn't before. We actually, we decided to make some strategic moves on gift cards, which tremendously helped our first quarter, which we would have never actually seen as an opportunity before, had we not had the data to tell us what to move on. 

Like I talked about, there was some cost reduction stuff from restaurants that needed to be closed, to leases that we were dragging that needed to be sublet that nobody really was worried about because they were so scattered and decisions weren't being made. So all of a sudden we were increasing margin and we were increasing top line and it was in reducing costs. We were doing all the right things and that momentum carried into the president role.

Dr. Josh Elmore (16:42)
Wow, wow. So big boost for listening.

Wade Allen (16:45)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Josh Elmore (16:46)
So, you know, thinking about the kind of broader experience of wins and setbacks. What were, it sounds like we got some wins there. What were some setbacks that you experienced in the transition?

Wade Allen (17:02)
I mean, I think, you know, anybody who's going through an experience like this, there were setbacks in, ⁓ you know, just I'll start from the personal side and then I'll kind of move. My personalist was how I kind of emotionally made this transition, but then also in the business. You know, I had to get my head around that this was a smaller company, that we didn't have the deep pockets, that we were going to kind of make our own. And that sounds fun and exciting. 

But when you've been in an environment and you've come down to that, there's these realization moments of like, hey, do I have the wherewithal to really kind of drive through this? Am I really going to do this or am I going to jump soon? how, you know, there's this thing in people's heads where they make this decision and then there's like this time frame where like, did I make the right decision? Right. And you know, my encouragement is be methodical in making these decisions. And then when you've made the decision, put the decision away and work hard because you know, it's probably going to be a difficult road or a steep learning curve. 

So once, once that got through and once we got over the learning curve, and that setback was behind me, I felt very passionate and committed to Costa and the brand and I was in a good place. The business was still having some struggles and I still hit some setbacks. I hit some setbacks with some franchise partners who, for whatever reason, either didn't like something that I had said or a position I had come in at. 

I had to ruffle some feathers with changing to reducing our menu down to core items because we had a whole bunch of different core items out in the marketplace that were all kind of different in different regions. And that's not success. It looks like Costa Vida is the same in Washington state to Florida. And so I want it to be the same. 

And that set was some setbacks, right? Our franchise partners didn't love that because they felt like they had had some wins in these spaces and they didn't make a lot of sense. But the data was driving those conversations. ⁓ I had setbacks with with certain members of the team. You know, they just resisted change. They didn't want to be, there was a, I often call it the resistance, was a group that for whatever reason, ⁓ and you can sense it, just didn't want to change, didn't like the change. They knew that they were going to be held a little bit more accountable, that the level of the bar was going to be raised. And that really scared them. And because of that, they pushed back more than they accepted. And so to work through that, had to just, you know, unfortunately, a few of them didn't make the cut.

But most of them, was conversations with helping them understand that I was there to not create problems, but to alleviate problems that they were dealing with on a daily. Once we got through that resistance, man, it's like everything just started going. The water started flowing again and we started to make some serious momentum.

Dr. Josh Elmore (19:23)
Yeah. And thinking about those setbacks and the wins that you have, in that retrospect, what would you do differently as it relates to, right? You had all these other wins and ways with which you were successful, and you used some strategies to make those things happen. And then you had these setbacks. What would the next round, what would be the way you'd go about managing those areas?

Wade Allen (19:49)
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that one of the setbacks was my, actually forgot what had benefited me for the wins. And I think it's because I felt so comfortable with what I had done and that it was going to bear fruit that when people came and complained about something that was going on about it or that there was a problem with it.

I deflected and kind of dismissed. And the tangible example there is we launched this web and app experience. In the first 90 days, it was really rough. And rather than being open and addressing those issues head on and understanding that it wasn't perfect coming out of the gate, I kind of pushed aside some of the negative feedback and some of the things the guests had said and some of the things that the team members had said and some of the things that the franchise partners had said. 

And after 90 days, or in that 90 day period, it took me time to kind of change my temperature to say, okay, we have to make a change, right? And then we made that change. If I could do it again, I would have been a much more proactive listener like I was when I first came into the organization eight months before that I think that created some frustration and some struggle. But once I turned the corner there, it was fine. 

But that's definitely something, you know, a tangible example of I probably didn't listen as well as I should have or probably didn't give as much credibility to those that were telling me that there's something not quite right with this new proverbial cake that I had just baked.

Dr. Josh Elmore (21:13)
Thinking about your time in your president role, how long have you been in the president role? Okay, so you're two years in, one in the EVP, one in the president role. And if you contrast those early kind of rough moments of that EVP with your president role, what...

Wade Allen (21:21)
It's been a year now.

That's right.

Dr. Josh Elmore (21:35)
about you transitioning into a president role was a challenge and what was a, , something that was kind of just a natural flow from all the work that you had been doing.

Wade Allen (21:45)
Yeah. The challenge was the role was pretty different. I mean, I had been making a lot of the decisions kind of, you know, dressing for that role, if you will. I was kind of being prepared for it. But once I got into the role and it became mine, a lot of the personnel issues that I hadn't addressed before as EVP of strategic growth, a lot of the cultural issues that we were dealing with became more visible.

And I was aware and I was the one that had to solve them or had to be strategic to solve them. A lot of the resistance to change in new things that we were adopting became part of me trying to champion and kind of move There was a lot of things that changed in that, just in the role set that I became a much more shallow but a much more broad kind of leader. A hard place to be because what people really want from a president is they want time.

They want time with the president. want them to know them. They want to get to get to be around them. They want to be in the room and they're making decisions. And every small office politics to health care issues to, you know, the color of a wall or what we can hang on a wall somehow makes it to my desk now. And that's that's a lot different and a lot harder. 

I think the thing that was the same were kind of whether I was prepared for it in the EVP role or if it was just kind of was a natural flow was the focus on continuing to deliver strong business metrics of the importance of growing top line, protecting margins, driving the business forward. That was always kind of part of my remit. And so for me, that was just, that's where I naturally go back to. That's my native language, right? 

So in times of crisis, people always go back to a particular place. I quickly go down as the business successful is it I let's hunker down, you know, I look at those metrics, whereas a lot of the cultural stuff's a little bit harder for me, or lot of the other things tend to be stuff that I have to really try hard to get my brain around as opposed to just naturally fall into.

Dr. Josh Elmore (23:33)
Yeah. And if you're thinking about the strategies for skilling up in those areas that, know, in that first year you were an expert in building out a tech stack and you could kind of play that role. And now you have to be kind of that, the leader across all things. How do you ⁓ skill yourself up?

Wade Allen (23:50)
Yeah, I spend, I have a nest group in the industry and I spend some time with those individuals once a month and every couple of months and there are other CEOs and other presidents. I have some good friends. have a close friend who is the CEO of Brinker for years. I have a close friend who's the CEO of Denny's now. She was the president of Brinker. 

I have several close friends that have now migrated into roles of leaders and my phone is constantly texting or calling or asking for advice on how they manage that. And the great news is, is when I got into this role and it was just, you know, this outpouring of love from the industry, most of these individuals came forward and said, when this happens, because it will happen, text me. I'll give you the rundown because nobody was there or very few people were there or this guy was there for me. I want to be that person to help you through this. And so that network has come

Dr. Josh Elmore (24:30)
Hmm.

Wade Allen (24:38)
full circle for me because I was providing some of that to people who had gotten into CIO roles or head of innovation roles. And now I'm getting an outpouring from the industry, from this nest group and from others that say, hey, here's how we want to help. Always text me if you got something going on. 

There's a guy by the name of Jeff in the industry who's just a close friend. And when I got into this role, he just basically said, it doesn't matter what time of night, doesn't matter what's happening. You call me, you text me, I'll give you some advice on how to work through that stuff and that stuff's invaluable, right, as a president.

Dr. Josh Elmore (25:06)
Super powerful. And for folks that are transitioning to roles and maybe don't have that kind of support, that network, what advice would you give them for building that for themselves? 

Wade Allen (25:16)
I think that that's where I would take the time and attend your industry events and spend time in the space, shaking hands, going to these events, being around people, going to the happy hours, doing what you can do to network because they become the lifeline that is so invaluable to have. You know, industry trades and publications and information and all that stuff is great, but when you really need it is when you're in a situation where you've never experienced before and

it looks like either decision, this binary decision, yes or no, is going to be wrong either way. And that's when you really just need to have the experts to help you. industry, for me, industry events and connection, even just, know it's painful to take the time two, three times a year, but it is so worth it because it creates that Rolodex of people that you can reach out to.

Dr. Josh Elmore (25:59)
Great. So kind of getting close to the stage of thinking about kind of this full scope that we've chatted about. In the 1980s, John Gabarro ran a few studies focused on general managers and presidents as they pursued new roles and wrote the results in the book, The Dynamics of Taking Charge. Gabarro explained that an executive has fully taken charge when they have mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be managing the organization as efficiently as the resources, constraints, and the manager's own ability will allow. So thinking about that definition of taking charge, where 100 % is having fully taking charge, what percent would you say you are at now and what do you need to work on to to that next stage?

Wade Allen (26:43)
Yeah.

It's an interesting question. think I would say I'm probably at 85 or 90 % in charge, right? And that's because I still have two deeply embedded, and I say deeply embedded because they are the culture owners who are And I love them dearly. They're fantastic business partners as we go through this.

I think they are taking the time very slowly and methodically to give back that 15, 10, and 5 % over time. But there are still some decisions that they assist with. One, because they just had the intellectual capital for years of this business and what they've created. But two, because I've been so focused on certain parts of the business that they felt like, hey, this marginal aspect, I'm just going to handle. I'm just going to take care of this for now.

So yeah, for me, I do feel really comfortable, but I do think I'm probably in that range somewhere in that 90 % range of managing most of it. There are still those aspects and I am super appreciative. And again, this is interesting because I love this theory as we talk about this because I think it's exactly right. I've asked Dave and Sean in particular to remain close on certain things and continuing to manage certain things because one, I think they feel validated and still have a passion for this business.

You know, they're not ready to go out to pasture and play golf or, you know, do whatever they're to do, go to Lake Powell or whatever. have a passion for business. And so for me, it's a way to keep that passion fire lit and still keep them close enough to the brand while still giving me the autonomy to make the decisions I need to. And so it's worked really well. It works well if you're strategic about it and you don't have an ego big enough to mandate that you have to have a hundred percent in charge. And I knew that coming in.

I didn't have to have that title and I didn't have to have that So it's been a really benefit for me on that.

Dr. Josh Elmore (28:30)
And so thinking about like the idea of, know, oftentimes folks will come into a CEO role or a president role and their predecessor will move up in the ranks or become a chairman of the board. And so you have to navigate that dynamic of making change while also maintaining what exists. How do you balance that?

Wade Allen (28:49)
Yeah, I always call it managing up, right? So it still exists for sure. I manage it delicately. I also always tell them, you know, in these conversations, hey, it's your business, but it's my business as well. You know, if I was the owner and I kind of am an owner here as I'm driving this conversation, here's what I would do. And I would do it for this particular reason. And so I'm never totally married to an idea. I'm passionate about ideas.

But I also understand that their passion runs for 25 years. My passion for this brand runs for a couple of years, right? So, and I can still learn a lot. So, having the humility to one, be teachable, but two, be passionate about your ideas, but don't be so over the top that you're willing to die on the sword if it's not just because it's not your idea. it does take time. I have one-on-ones with them all the time. 

We have a, and it's not a one-on-one, it's a one-on-two, right? It's every week we meet the two of them and me and we just talk openly and we openly communicate. And as long as I'm very open with my communication of what's happening and how it's being navigated and what's going on and where the struggles are, one, they feel connected and two, they comfortable with the decisions I'm making because they always know they have this timeframe that they could either help course correct or give advice or provide some feedback. And so it's gone really well.

Dr. Josh Elmore (30:04)
That's powerful. It's definitely a delicate dynamic. So kind of wrapping up here, what advice would you share with leaders who are currently entering a new high stakes role?

Wade Allen (30:14)
So I would tell them slow is fast, right? And what I mean by that is everybody has the pressure of coming into a new role and wanting to be successful and wanting to show their leaders that they are the right selection or the right hire for the job. I think while as much as that's important and that's gotta happen, they need to be very methodical about it's gonna feel a lot slower.

before change happens, but if they will take the time to listen, to make strategic moves that will provide quick wins, but not make huge impactful change that will rock the organization, their ability to succeed will be much greater. I think the other thing I would tell them is make sure you openly communicate. 

Don't leave any room for people to think that you have some nefarious or political motivation that's not being told. You just need to come kind of, cards face up and just say, look, my whole intent is to do the right thing. And here's the experience I bring and here's why I think these decisions are the right decisions. Because if you'll do that, people will drop their guard and they'll stop creating a narrative that the new guy is trying to politically change the organization for his own benefit. So communication, go slow, not fast. Listen.

And then, you know, I think at that point, you've got the communication down and you've got that transition, you'll be in a good place.

Dr. Josh Elmore (31:34)
That's great. Yeah, and it sounds like contending with past predecessors who didn't necessarily fit the bill made it to where that was critical to build that trust and make people feel like you were really on their side. Super powerful. Well, Wade, thank you so much for joining. I know everything that you just shared is going to be really powerful data for other leaders entering new roles.

Wade Allen (31:47)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Josh Elmore (31:57)
Before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to share as it relates to the business or personal or anything you got going on?

Wade Allen (32:03)
Yeah, I I want people to know Costa Vida. I love this brand. I really think we're at a point in our growth that we're about to kind of, I feel like it's a little bit of a rocket ship or a coiled spring. So if you haven't had a chance to get out, try Costa Vida. It's a great product. It's fresh. It's scratch kitchens. And you can always find me on LinkedIn. That's kind of the platform. You my kids always give me a hard time. They're like, dad's TikTok is LinkedIn, right? But it's kind of what I do. It's who I am. And I love this industry and I love.

I love the aspects of being in the restaurant space and a leader in the restaurant space. You can always hit me up on LinkedIn. And yeah, that's probably it. Our brand and communicating on LinkedIn.

Dr. Josh Elmore (32:40)
Love it. Thanks, Wade. Thanks for listening to the Land and Lead podcast. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders on transitioning into high stakes roles.