(lively background music) - PNC is proud to support "Business Forward", where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in central Illinois.

(dramatic soaring music) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I am your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, a friend of mine, Tony DaDante.

Tony is a C-suite exec and one of the top executive coaches I know; a thought leader.

I love it.

Thank you for coming on.

Welcome, Tony.

- Thank you, Sir.

I appreciate the opportunity, - Well, lets- - more than you know.

- Oh, I appreciate it.

This is cool.

So, you know, you have worked for some really, really big-time brands.

And when you when you talk about some of the, you know, people use the term, Fortune 500, but you've worked for Fortune 100 brands, and at a high level, high positions.

So when you talk about some of the brands like Harley-Davidson and Mattel, I mean, you worked hand-in-hand with both of those companies, didn't you?

- Absolutely.

I started off at Harley-Davidson, in charge of organizational change.

Went on to head up HR.

Got some great stories there for... You know, everybody thinks they're limited by their title or something.

I know, for me, it's like, I think it was like the first three weeks in Harley-Davidson, I was walking the floor.

I'm a real-time biker, you know, one of those one percenter guys, you know, so I just loved the opportunity, what the brand represented.

It's on my skin, everywhere.

So, and I was able to find a $64 million problem that they had not been able to solve for two years.

And I wasn't out looking for problems, but as I'm walking the assembly line, I'm looking at things, saying, "Okay, this isn't, this isn't right.

This business can't meet demand."

So every time they get it wrong, not only does it piss off a current rider, but it pisses off a new rider who's buying a new bike, right?

So I started to look at that and I started, and then all of a sudden I find a huge problem.

Harley had something interesting.

They had a 1600 mile assembly line.

So they built all the fiberglass parts way up in upper Wisconsin.

They shipped those down to York, Pennsylvania, where that particular bike with that particular color fiberglass had, that would meet up with this engine and transmission, and then it would be shipped to York, Pennsylvania, where it got assembled.

So anywhere along that line, if anything on that particular bike was wrong, they would take that bike, which is already sold, and put it in a hospital, to be, to basically steal parts from.

So all that time and effort, 1600 miles, could go away with one fiberglass scratch.

- [Matt] Wow!

- So we had, they, and there was a metric called float.

While I was there, I was able to bring that float number down from 22 a month to one.

So I'm the HR guy.

So now I'm redefining what human resources is, redefining what being a business partner is, and that was the start of my world.

And so every place I've gone into HR, I have been equally as good a business person as the CEO, or the chief marketing person, or the CFO.

And that's how I built agency.

- I think that's what separates you and it makes you unique, because if you think about it, a typical HR person, even in a C-suite, will sit there and worry about, "I've gotta worry about all of the duties related just to that department, including retaining and bringing in new employees, training, and so on."

But that's, you know, and talking to you here, especially in this past month, you did this at every company.

- Every company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- And so, when you were there at Harley-Davidson, I just wanna stick with this brand just for a second, because what I find interesting about a brand like Harley-Davidson is they, just a certain type of person rides a bike like that, or a certain type of buyer, let's say, not person.

So you're buying that type of bike very differently than you're buying someone that's buying a BMW, very differently than someone's buying an Indian motorcycle.

So when you look at that type of branding, did you ever just sit there and, and kind of from a business sense, go, "Man, I just work at a pretty cool place," and think that as you're doing that along your whole career?

- I did at Harley, because when I got there, I'd never realized one thing.

I was a minority.

The real hardcore bikers are few and far between, and they make up a minority, right?

But the real business of Harley-Davidson is in motor clothes.

It's in clothes and accessories and style, because Harley represents a brand where the president of a company can go out, put a durag on, or whatever, and they can pretend they're a badass.

And that's their, and that's what they are.

So they get to do it, they get to live out this thing, they get to ride with the outlaws and the, you know, the real hardcore guys like me, but they got nothing to do with that.

They just wanna party, they wanna be in this little, that that's their hobby.

And Mattel was able to, I mean, Harley was able to, you know, grow that motor clothes thing to almost a third or more of its business.

- Which most people don't think about.

Like, I'm glad you brought that up, because that actually is a piece of business that really drives the whole bottom line of a company like that, which is crazy, but that's the core of how important a brand is.

- Yeah.

I mean, Harley-Davidson, the purpose of Harley-Davidson is not to make the one percenters like me happy.

We love it, we live it.

It's to give everybody a chance to live out a different dream.

And they get to do it, and they get to go places like Sturgis, where a town of 3,000 sees 700,000 motorcycles in a weekend.

I mean, they get to experience that, and it's all about the customer experience.

- Yeah.

And, you know, you also were with Mattel.

And what I think, when I think of Mattel I do think of Hot Wheels and I think of those, you know, what boy didn't have 'em, right?

What kid did not have 'em?

But you were actually charged with that line.

Tell us about that, because that's just a kind of a fun dream job.

- Yeah, I was, I was recruited into Harley, I mean, into Mattel.

My boss, Alan Kay, saw me at a conference, offered me a job at a conference.

He'd just started there.

He came over from IBM, and he needed somebody who understood global HR.

So I had been working around the world, living around the world, and he hired me.

And Mattel at time had a huge business problem, which was Wall Street was saying to them that 70% of their revenue was coming from the United States, when it needed to come from across the ponds.

So I was given the job, "How are you going to work that, Tony?"

So that is a much different orientation than any other HR person.

So I went on the road in all these different countries, and I did executive assessments in every country.

We ended up letting go a lot of good people, but not the level of the quality of athlete that I was used to.

And then we brought in people with no toy experience.

So in other words, I went out and found the best finance person from the best company out there, the best Sigma company, best Sigma person from GE, or the best marketing person from Nestle.

And I brought them in because they had superior knowledge of their world, and they knew the country that they were gonna go take over.

Here's what's interesting.

Eleven months later, after doing this and implementing this culture process, which I still use today, by the way, there, is that 70-30 split reversed in 11 months, and the stock took off.

So I got a lot of credit for that.

Not only that, but I got credit for creating the links of communication between each country and the home office, which never was there before.

In the past, like it is with most companies, by the time information gets from the bottom to the CEO, it's 70 to 80% diluted.

- [Matt] (chuckling) I believe that.

- Because people, people don't wanna be embarrassed.

They don't wanna feel like they're failing or anything.

So I put in a cultural audit process, which basically said, "We're gonna change that overnight and we're gonna create the mechanism for you to talk to each other," and I would give them the topics.

And then, over time, that became perfect.

Like, it wasn't a meeting.

It's like you needed to talk to this person in Brazil, otherwise you could never explain your business to a customer.

And as soon as Walmart and our big customers started to grow and grow and grow, we all needed to be on the same page in order to leverage the brand strength.

And I was able to do that.

So they, when I was at Mattel, and I had virtually done every job in HR, including some huge M&A deals, they offered me to go run this thing in the NASCAR world, which I knew nothing about.

But here's one of the tenets of organizational change that people forget, Matt, is that change happens on the periphery much better than it does in a home office.

So I was gonna be 3,000 miles away from the home office, and I could get away with a lotta stuff.

So as I sat there rethinking my strategy, I said, "You know what?

I don't know anything about NASCAR, but I sure know a lot about football."

I know how to be a general manager in football, so I went at it with a general manager mindset, and I start recruiting drivers, doing my homework on drivers, and then going out and cutting big deals with the best owners.

So within the first four years, Mattel, who had been spending unbelievable amounts of money and getting very little return on it, now saw two world championships come on board.

And those two world championships brought agency to the brand, with Walmart, with Target, and all of a sudden, Hot Wheels fit, the brand definition fit.

We're in NASCAR, we're kicking butt, we're winning championships.

You know, all these things they never even dreamed of.

All this cross-branding and cross-marketing branding, everything happened, and I'm at the heart of it.

So I'm so thankful for my bosses at Mattel for giving me that opportunity.

- So let me ask you this.

I'm gonna switch gears here, because a lot of people talk about Steve Jobs, and they know him from Apple.

And then, but I'll tell you something interesting.

He actually had a quote about you.

And so I was really wanting to talk about culture, but we are kinda talking about culture, because with Mattel, you changed culture in a very short period of time, 'cause typically they say three to four years for culture, or whatever it may be.

You did this, you did the same with Harley.

But Steve Jobs says, "Tony helped me get tuned into the balance necessary between people, talent and technology."

Steve Jobs!

So that's, that's pretty impressive.

'Cause you, I'd be honest with you, I don't read much about Steve Jobs talking about anybody other than Steve Jobs.

- Yeah.

So the way this happened is I had a good friend, he's passed away now, a CEO of a company.

And he knew Steve.

He was in the technology business and he introduced me, and he said, "I just want you to meet Steve, and I just want you to listen to him."

And that's all.

It started with that.

It didn't involve anybody else in his company, it didn't involve his HR people, it involved nobody, just him and I meeting offsite and having some of the most incredible, frank discussions you can ever imagine, right, especially with someone as bright as Steve.

And so the thing that I helped Steve Jobs with is that it's okay to be brilliant, it's okay to want brilliant people, but it's better to be competent.

I call it the ABCs, right?

It's better to be competent as a leader, believable as a leader, connected as a leader, and dependable.

Those are your ABCDs of leading.

That's what I taught Steve.

So, are you competent?

Well, you're competent as far as innovation and, but are you competent in leading people?

What are your, and I used to ask them this, "What are your derailers?

What are the things you refuse to admit, but people say to you?"

And he'd go over it, and I would give him executive coaching, like you and I would normally do with anybody else.

And pretty soon, it became more of a friend issue.

Like, "Do you see that behavior in me?"

And I'd say, "Yes."

And he'd tell me to f off, and I'd say, "Okay, let's get, we're going back to square one," right?

And so, you know, the ABC's, competent, believable, connected, dependable, got him on the same page at the same time to be able to listen to great examples in coaching.

And I loved the guy.

- That's interesting.

- I never worked for him.

I mean, I never, you know, went to work at Apple or anything.

But I loved the guy because I developed a relationship that I don't think many people had.

- Well, I mean, I've read his book.

I've read certain things about him over the years.

I mean, I can attest just by reading that not too many people got to even have a conversation with him.

So that, that's pretty interesting.

Now let's go onto the next thing.

You've got so many interesting avenues I just feel like I'm skipping around, but I think they're all important, because each one of 'em that we're talking about has to do with people.

And now, now you're dealing with another brand, Ritz-Carlton.

(chuckling) You built a Ritz-Carlton themed pet hotel.

What is that about?

That's cool and crazy at the same time.

- Well, here's what happened.

So I'm in Charlotte, and Mattel at that time was having a problem with its products being knocked off in China.

And they made a decision to sell the licensing for what I was doing to NASCAR itself and get out of that whole thing.

So not sell the brand, but just the licensing.

And I was offered a job to go back to home office, which I didn't wanna do, I'd already done everything.

So I'm sitting there in Charlotte, and I looked at Judy and I go, "What do I love?

I mean, I've been working, traveling 90% of the time.

I mean, what do I love?"

She said, "Your dogs."

So at that moment, I thought of the idea of, "You know what?

I wanna build something that not anybody can get into."

Anybody can be a dog walker, but not anybody can build a Ritz-Carlton for dogs.

(Matt laughing) So I looked around.

I looked around, and found the place right next to Lowe's headquarters, who has 7,000 pet owners in it.

And I lived in a Donald Trump subdivision, so it was very ritzy, it was only a six minute drive away.

So what did I do?

I took off, I took off everything else.

I put on, I became the milkman of old.

I wore a tie up here, and I got a little van, and I decorated it like a NASCAR, and it had all the dogs.

And all I did was keep driving in this six mile radius, every day, every day, no advertising spend or anything.

And all of a sudden, it got out.

And when it got out, and people said, "You have AstroTurf for the dogs?

You have massage for the dogs?

You have beautiful places for the dogs to play?

You don't let in every, you actually do an interview of the owner and the dog before you let 'em in?"

All of a sudden, people came, right?

All the NASCAR friends came, all the doctors came, all of those came.

So now I'm doing the six o'clock in the morning, pick up everybody's dog.

So if you can imagine driving through this real ritzy neighborhood, all the spouses come out in their nightgowns, hand me their beautiful dog.

I put 'em in the back, and I take 'em over to the staff that I trained.

And how did I train 'em?

I took 'em to the Ritz-Carlton for lunch and I had 'em watch, "What do you see the people at the Ritz-Carlton doing that are making $15 an hour, just like you?"

And I took them through an intervention.

That's how I trained them.

I trained them how to upsell and how to be incredibly Ritz-Carlton-esque in customer service.

And pretty soon, I started getting calls about, "Would you like to sell your business?"

"Would you like to sell your business?"

And I couldn't add onto my business, so five years later, I sold it for 10x, right?

And the reality of that decision was, every metric for that industry, just like the hotel industry, heads in the beds, was the metric, right?

So 39% was the average occupancy.

It is for most hotels.

I had 95% occupancy.

- Wow.

Wow.

- Even during the off seasons.

So I took my MBA and my experience running a brand and I just leapfrogged it into this thing.

- Yeah, it is very cool.

I mean, you go back to what you were saying about driving around.

I mean, you're talking about, you're talking about a guy who works for brands and knows branding.

I think that's what's interesting about you, Tony, is, is, and I wonder, in today's age, if there's if they've changed the way they kind of title people, like even in the C-suite level, right?

Because you did CEO work, COO work, the Harley-Davidson example of the 64 millions CFO work, or comptroller work.

Then you're over here doing branding and marketing.

Anything with Mattel I'm guessing has to do with marketing.

I mean, you're sitting here and you're thinking all the time, "How do I sit here and expand the brand," and everything else.

So I think that's pretty interesting about you.

And as a coach now, I mean, people can look you up, and look you up on LinkedIn, and Anthony DaDante, D-A-D-A-N-T-E, and read your profiles, because I think what's interesting about your profiles, and then what you post, is there's a lot of knowledge in there over the years, and people can get something out of it.

So I appreciate you coming on and talking about these brands, because a lotta times, you don't get too many people that... You get somebody on that has worked with one brand, or maybe two.

But I mean, you go on to so many other companies that I think it's pretty cool stuff, including Honeywell.

Honeywell's another brand.

Didn't even mention that.

- It's a great, it's a great brand, you know, but there's a commonality here.

The commonality is you can't do anything on your own.

Steve Jobs is a perfect example.

You have to hire people who are better than you.

So in every one of these businesses were people better than me, right?

And I was okay with that, because I was, you know, you've known me now for a long time- - But you're always- - I'm gonna learn.

- You're that guy.

You are that guy.

So thank you, Tony DaDante, for coming on the show.

What a great show.

We could keep talking.

I appreciate it.

I hope the weather's good there in Georgia.

And thank you so much for coming on.

I'm Matt George, and this is another episode of "Business Forward".

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