Why Your Opinion Becomes An Order When You’re In The Room

Matt Eisenacher (00:00)
I just realized I’m making much more of a mess of this for the team and it’s causing them to rethink things.

especially when it comes to creative, everyone’s got an opinion, we eventually took the creative meetings off of my plate.

if you’re always steering the team towards that, you’re going to lose the creativity in decision making. it is not bad for a team to fail.

Kevin Rice (00:17)
Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Matt Eisenacher, Chief Brand Officer at First Watch, where he’s helped lead the company through an IPO and from 200 to over 500 store locations. Today, we dive into how to be a leader of leaders in the C-suite, and the importance of attuning to the unique needs and personalities of our employees at the office and our kids at home. Matt shares the importance of modeling behaviors we want to see,

the supportive role his wife has played in championing his career, and how youth sports is one of the greatest systems for teaching kids leadership. This is a conversation about resilience, psychological safety, and the importance of being proactive and honest during difficult conversations.

Matt Eisenacher (00:56)
people want to be empowered. They want to know that they have

autonomy and I think the best way to guide that is making sure you set a strong vision.

there were some tendencies

where you’re wearing multiple hats and got your fingers in the dirt and now you have to become a leader of leaders

Kevin Rice (01:24)
Matt, thank you so much for being here today.

Matt Eisenacher (01:27)
It’s awesome seeing you again, man. It’s been a long time.

Kevin Rice (01:30)
It has been a long time. think pre-pandemic was the last time we got face to face. So it’s great to see you and I appreciate you joining.

Matt Eisenacher (01:37)
Well, thanks for reaching out and thinking of me.

Kevin Rice (01:39)
Yeah, so today you’re the chief brand officer at First Watch. This is a company that’s had an incredible run since going public a handful of years ago. But prior to joining First Watch, you and your family lived in Ohio. And last time I talked to you, you were describing life in Ohio as pretty close to perfect. Dream house, family nearby, great neighbors, everything you kind of want in the American dream.

Matt Eisenacher (01:57)
You

Kevin Rice (02:05)
And then you get this opportunity at First Watch and you moved your entire family to Florida. So I want to start there what was that experience like for you and especially for your family? Cause it’s a big transition.

Matt Eisenacher (02:19)
Yeah, I mean there’s been a couple points in my career that have been

big pivot points and transformations. That was definitely one of them. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I was going to be seven years Floridian, I would have told you you were a liar. My wife and I still laugh that we’ve been in Florida now this long. you’re right. We had what we would say is a darn near perfect family life in Ohio. We grew up there. our parents are still there. We have siblings there. And, to your point, we had to

build our dream house. had our families on the other side. Kids had friends in the neighborhood. And I was going through my career and I just decided it was time to move on and try something new. And long story short, I had a friend of mine that said, you ever consider moving your family to Florida? And I was like, ⁓ absolutely not. No, I’m not moving to Florida. It’s like doing an expat assignment, going to Florida. But anyway, he said, well, actually it’s first watch. And I remember just going, man.

I knew Ken, our founder, he was on our board and I knew the tremendous things that were going on at First Watch. it’s funny, we talk about family, right? And I remember when I first told my wife, she had the same reaction. She was like, absolutely not, absolutely not because you’re gonna go there, you’re gonna love it, they’re gonna love you. And what I told them at that time is when I came to interview for the first time, I said, if I’m gonna come the first time, even to meet the team, I want my wife to come. And I’m kind of shortening

the whole story a little bit, but she went out to look at houses and I met the team here and I got back in the car, literally looked right at each other, we both go, shit. Because she had been going look at the beach, but more importantly, and this is kind of the crux I wanted to get to with First Watch, I met the people here and I think you’ve worked in the restaurant industry, it’s not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot of bold personalities in the restaurant industry and sometimes it’s hard to those just genuine people that are kind, work for each

Kevin Rice (03:56)
Thank

Matt Eisenacher (04:16)
other, work as a team. And I mean that one day when I met the team here, I just knew that it was a circumstance that was very rare in the restaurant industry. And that was literally the main reason. And there plenty of other benefits, but that was the main reason we decided to end up making that choice.

Kevin Rice (04:35)
Yeah,

great organization, great leadership team and just really amazing values across the organization, how they truly embody the spirit of hospitality. It’s been quite the rocket ship.

Well, now you’ve been at First Watch for I think about seven years, You mentioned the first year was pretty hard. I imagine kind of moving into a new role, this company that’s growing like crazy. When you step into that next level of a leadership role, it really requires you to change how you carry yourself and how you approach.

the role of being a leader and not just like working harder. So I’m curious, how are you a different leader today than you were kind of on day one at first watch?

Matt Eisenacher (05:16)
So much has changed. It’s a really, really good question because

I would view myself as very different and I have had to accommodate my role in my leadership style differently. When I first joined, we were in a place where we were kind building the traditional marketing function, so a lot had to be built and we had to grow the team. so I had my fingers in the dirt, a lot of things. I worked at Piatta Itai and Street Food before and great brand. I joined their 16 restaurants, so was basically a startup. And when I came here,

there were some tendencies

that where they’re kind of the same where you you’re wearing multiple hats and you’re got your fingers in the dirt you’re doing a lot of the stuff I think fast forward now to your question and now you have to become a leader of leaders

and I feel super blessed that a lot of those people we brought on the team are still with us we have really really great tenure here at First Watch and on our team as well and a lot of those people now have been here for a long time they know the stuff not even better than me they just know everything so much better they’ve gone

through so many reps, they know First Watch they’re super talented and I think it’s starting to learn that your role becomes about one being a leader of leaders and letting them thrive and really decide what’s best for their area and number two your job becomes much more about setting the vision and maybe not the fun side of accountability as well. So you you have to be able to create a picture for people that inspires them and make them excited. If you have the team where you have really capable leaders well then it’s just

about

kind of I always say I try to say it as much as I can is what can I do to help? they don’t need you to do it but every once in a while they might need a little bit of like hey I just need to talk through this you know you hear a lot okay cool but the last thing you need to do with really capable people to say well this is the way it should be done because that’s not very motivating for them so as we grow the team to a pretty considerable size it’s something that I’ve had to learn

Kevin Rice (07:08)
Yeah, what are some of the things you’ve had to let go of? So as you continue ascending your career, there’s new responsibilities, new approaches, but you also have to start letting go of some things like bad habits or maybe more tactical things. what are some things you’ve had to let go of to allow yourself to grow as a leader?

Matt Eisenacher (07:25)
I hope my team hears this because they’ll get a good laugh out of this. like, you know, on the marketing side, I love creative. You know, I love, we used to have these meetings where we’d all come together and review the creative for different campaigns or whatever we’re doing. It was like a once a week meeting. just, that was like my thing. You know, kind of riff and get the opinions out there. You’re kind of evolving things. And then eventually

I just realized like I’m making much more of a mess of this for the team and it’s causing them to have to rethink things.

some thought into things. In my opinion, especially when it comes to creative, like everyone’s got an opinion, there’s not always a right one. So I had to realize, you know, we eventually took the creative meetings off of my off of my plate.

So that’s the one that comes to mind the most. But they’ll get a good laugh out of that.

Kevin Rice (08:10)
That’s funny.

at some point you just have to completely remove yourself. If you know yourself well enough and you’re like, there’s no way I can sit in this meeting without giving input and without getting involved, especially with your title. when you give an idea or suggestion, sometimes it can become a directive when you don’t actually mean it to be you’re just giving some feedback, but then all of sudden the rest of the team says, well, this is the most senior person in the room. We got to take what they say and do it.

and that can kind of mess up the flow of the brainstorming.

Matt Eisenacher (08:42)
It’s totally true. I’m thinking of a couple of particular meetings that come to mind that I realized that once I opened my mouth, then the meeting becomes about you. Because to your point, everyone thinks, this person has to be happy. And it’s the absolute worst thing that you can do. so definitely along with that idea of empowering the leaders is learning when to speak up and when to not. And the other thing I think is really important as you become a leader is realizing that it’s OK. Your team does need to

fail at times. There were times you will be certain that you know the answer.

But if you’re always steering the team towards that, you’re going to lose the creativity in decision making. it is not bad for a team to fail.

you know, there have been different times as you bring new people in and there’s maybe, you know, silos or people being a little protective, which is natural. When that happens, encouraging them to go work it out. And sometimes you need

get involved but I think not always seeing yourself as the solution but you’re more the enabler for your team.

Kevin Rice (09:44)
Yeah. How

do you, how do you create that like psychological safety for your team to feel like it’s okay to try new things and fail, but at the same time, this is a business. there are certain things that need to be done right. So how do you give them the guard rails and freedom to try new things fail? But then what do you say? This is something we can’t fail.

Matt Eisenacher (10:06)
I think the times when like in my mind I’m sitting there thinking,

I really think this is wrong. think I really think you need to be a little heavier handed. My approach would be less to go sit down at a table and be like, no, I think you’re wrong. We’re going to do it this way. It all ultimately, I think it’s better the more people you bring in the decision. Cause ultimately if you create a forum where people are allowed to challenge one another, someone else in that room is going to challenge that thing where you can start to get to what is best for the team. And I think one of the things I’m proud of in the way we’ve built this

team

is that try really hard not to have super hard reporting relationships. Now of course we do, you know, of course we do. making sure people realize that in marketing, I don’t have to belabor the fact that it’s like completely changed over last five and 10 years and the amount of different specialties and platforms and algorithms. You have a person on your team that’s an expert in all of those. And so whatever your challenge is, you take that different specialist

skill set and you layer them over one another depending on the challenge that you have to achieve and so I get really excited because we have some remote people and I see people on screens you know teams and you always see different people in part of different scrums depending on what they’re trying to do and I think once you create that kind of culture it doesn’t just become about well this part of the team says this and that’s you know against this silo over here it’s just personalities that

are representing different lenses of the marketing universe. And I think that coupled with the idea of being willing to challenge and have disagreements, ultimately the things get to where they need to go, if that makes any sense.

Kevin Rice (11:52)
Yeah,

sure. And I feel like there’s a lot of natural overlap or transition between what you just talked about in how we create safety, give people space, allow them to learn from each other. That’s also something I’m hearing from you. And there’s a lot of commonalities of how we try to show up at home for our kids, thinking about when to let them fail when the stakes are too high and you have to give them more directive. how does

this all show up for you as a dad raising three kids. So maybe tell us a little bit about your family and then kind of how do you incorporate this thinking into how you are raising your children?

Matt Eisenacher (12:32)
It’s funny, Kevin, I honestly did not make that parallel till you just said it is so true. Like each person on your team is motivated and works differently and it couldn’t be more true when it comes to kids. So yes, I have three. I have a 17 year old, a 15 year old, a 12 year old, and two girls, a boy in the middle. And holy moly, as anyone would say, are their personalities so incredibly different? so I guess we view

them and their growth. It’s like we try to just keep them off the couch. Our evenings, like a lot of parents are on some different sports field. I could go through all the different things that they’re involved in, but ultimately when you see them go through really intense competition, which they all do, you see so much about their personality and you have to start to realize that you can challenge them. But sometimes when you challenge too hard, they’ll just give in. And I’ll give you an example of my son recently. He played tennis.

in middle school and it was newer sport to him, right? And he was going to high school and he found out there was a varsity tennis team and he was gonna go try out and at the last minute he started he started saying well, wait a minute I’m a freshman. I’m never gonna make the tennis team. I’ve only been playing for two years Well, he goes he goes and he he actually made the varsity tennis team and it was a lesson and kind of said to him like look you were you were gonna give up and here you are now he’s super into it.

He’s super competitive. He puts in a ton of the work off the court. But it’s one of those things really fulfilling to watch him learn. And so I think sports is a natural model for them to learn leadership and how failure isn’t always a bad thing.

Kevin Rice (14:11)
Yeah. I

mean, that’s something I try to work with my son on. he quit two sports. quit soccer. He quit basketball. He’s trying baseball right now and he just hasn’t really found his thing. And so one of the things I’ve trouble, my oldest son is nine. And so I always struggle to find that right blend of like allowing him to just try new things, to find his own passion.

Matt Eisenacher (14:21)
How old is he, Kevin? Okay.

Kevin Rice (14:31)
But then also do I need to push him to try a little bit longer before he gives up? But at the same time, I don’t want to force him into something that he just doesn’t enjoy doing, which then prevents him from finding something he does enjoy doing.

Matt Eisenacher (14:45)
Well, there’s still hope because you literally just said the…

the journey for my son, he was always very talented in sports, but he would start out really strong and then as the competition got fiercer, he’d kind of pull back a little bit. He kept wanting to try different sports. And ironically, here he was, he made his way into football for the first time in eighth grade. And Kevin, he had one coach who absolutely, his first goal was to teach him how to be a man and how to never give up and to put in the discipline. And my son worked his butt off. really saw him start to become a leader.

and it completely transformed him. And it was just very cool to see that he had one coach who made a difference with him, not teaching the game of football, which he did, but the amount of discipline and the bar he held them to is now what I see kind of infiltrate my son in the rest of his life. And when we go watch him play tennis now, his coaches all marvel at the competitive nature that came from that experience in football. So you never know, just give him a couple more years.

Kevin Rice (15:45)
Yeah. Well, and that’s great

that he got that perspective from another, male authority figure, right? Like as parents, we bring so much to our kids, but at the same time, it’s really great to get another perspective because you can’t be everything to everyone. so whether it’s coaches or teachers or, different

activities that they do, Or maybe it’s even it’s your friends who are active in your kids’ lives. getting different perspectives is so important for shaping them more holistically.

Matt Eisenacher (16:16)
It’s similar with my oldest Ashley. so Ashley has played lacrosse since second grade. Her mom was a D1 lacrosse athlete and so her mom was always her coach until she got to high school and then she had to have other coaches and it’s been a great experience for her but it was without a doubt a shift because different expectations. You can’t roll your eyes like you do with your mom on the way home and you have to listen to the coach and whether you like the

rules are not, their rules are their rules since they’re the coach and so there was definitely a learning experience in there so I think that’s a really good point.

Kevin Rice (16:52)
Yeah.

Have you had any instances where you knew something that your kids were going to do wasn’t going to work out, but you had to just sit back and let them fail anyways? do you typically step in and give them the guidance to say, like, hey, this isn’t going to work the way you want it to? how do you balance that?

Matt Eisenacher (17:11)
No, mean, my wife and I are not like that. especially when it comes to if there was something dangerous, There’s been several instances of that where we had to be a little bit more overt on, look, this is not going to happen and here’s why. And the most important thing your kids can do is the friends that they choose. That one to me is a little different when it comes to, things like sports and confrontation. I just think so much of your growth is about dealing

with adversity and again not to go back to the Florida thing that introduced a ton of adversity into their lives in a variety of different ways. Whereas I know that if we would have stayed you know where we were their lives would have just been much easier but I think the adversity is so important for them in these years before they start to go out on their own.

Kevin Rice (17:58)
So when you were making this transition, what did that actually look like behind the scenes? were your kids nervous? Were they anxious? Did you get pushback? How did you support your whole family through this big transition?

Matt Eisenacher (18:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Push back is an understatement. I remember, this is why you always have to rely on listening and follow your wife’s advice because she warned me that it was going to be left field a little bit. And I remember my son had just come back from like two or three birthday parties. He was like all sugared up. He was exhausted. And Kevin, I’m not kidding. When I told him, because we split, she talked to my oldest and I talked to my son, my middle one. And I told him, and he just literally melted down. I had to end up calling for reinforcements.

and calling for help from Brooke and my oldest had her best friend live next door. So it was a big shift and going back to the role that my wife plays, I think anyone can testify to your spouse being such a rock and even your professional life. I don’t think because of the shifts that we saw with our family, both our parents, our kids, everything, I don’t think I could have made the call. In fact, I remember I’m a very decisive person, but

I stalled out on the decision and it was my wife that actually pushed me and she said, I remember saying, look, I know you, I know what fulfills you and I know what you’re capable of and that’s not happening right now. And she was the one that pushed me and I give her a lot of credit because I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years, I’ve worked some multinational brands where people would go, is that perhaps overseas and they talk about it being a formidable family.

experience absolutely was the same with this that the things we learned as a family and how close it requires you guys to come together with a move like that. And by that was a year before COVID too. So you went through that together too was probably one of the coolest experiences now in retrospect for our family. Maybe not the easiest, but one of the coolest.

Kevin Rice (19:59)
Yeah,

really being able to bond going through like a difficult time together ultimately can bring you closer

Matt Eisenacher (20:04)
Yeah, I mean, we lived in a

very wonderful part of Ohio. It a little bit of a bubble. And we moved down to Florida. said, Florida’s a unique place. ⁓ even my kids, as they started to move into sports, sports is a really big deal, especially baseball, football in Florida. And even them having to make that shift from this comfortable bubble to really competitive and just a different world,

They have grown so much since we did that. And so I can’t say enough that if you ever contemplate a move with your family like that, you might focus on the things that it’ll change negatively, but man, it has a lot of really cool effects on the other side as well.

Kevin Rice (20:49)
Yeah,

so for somebody who’s listening that’s maybe considering a big opportunity that affects their whole family, what should they be thinking about? What questions should they be asking themselves before they decide yes or no?

Matt Eisenacher (21:01)
I mean…

Ultimately, it comes back to complacency and comfort. I mean, we were comfortable where we were. And I think we asked ourselves, we’re trying to be better. We’re always trying to get better. And I think going back to what my wife said, she knew there was more and that I wasn’t fulfilled. And that was a very selfless thing for her to look at and say,

that it’s going to make her life more difficult, but there was growth to be had. ⁓ don’t be afraid of changing things if there’s growth on the other side.

Kevin Rice (21:38)
that’s beautifully supportive of her to know you that intimately to know that this is the right move for you. It sounds like she could kind of see something that maybe you were having a hard time seeing in the moment and being able to give you that nudge because it was the right thing for you, even though it might add more stress to her plate. So that’s amazing.

Matt Eisenacher (21:57)
She has had

several times throughout my career, I can think of several, where sometimes you think you know yourself, but you may not always be honest with your tendencies. Your spouse can be, because they’re on the outside looking in, and there are several big decisions that I’ve had to make where she was the one that kind of helped pull it apart and helped me do what I knew was right, and I just wasn’t willing to pull the trigger on quite yet.

Kevin Rice (22:43)
What about at work, Have you had any situations where maybe there was a campaign being developed or some sort of initiative and you knew it wasn’t going to go exactly as planned, but you had to sit back and let the team kind of learn through their mistakes anyways.

Matt Eisenacher (23:00)
Definitely, I probably shouldn’t go into specifics on it, but it is one of those where you have to be really upfront with your opinion. Oftentimes, what I’ve learned in the side of managing people is that first time as a manager that you had to have a hard conversation with someone and all you want to do is avoid it at all costs and you kind of want to be nuanced around it. I just learned really early on that you have to be very upfront with people about where you stand on things.

Some of the best conversations I’ve had with people, whether it’s development or not, have been things that were very difficult conversations and those are times I can think of several where that person might come back to you

years later and thank you for being willing to have that conversation. So I mean if there’s people that are younger in their career that’s definitely something I would say is you can be really kind but really upfront and honest too and even if it’s an opinion for your team to understand where your opinion is allows them to evaluate the level of their certainty as well.

Kevin Rice (24:01)
Yeah,

that’s something that I struggled with. if I look back half of my time when we were building Hathway, I was under 30 years old. I was still very young. we sold the company when I was 36 and so I, spent a lot of time developing my leadership skills, but there were certain things that was immature about, right? So I thought my job was to make sure everybody

Matt Eisenacher (24:14)
No way.

Kevin Rice (24:24)
avoided the potholes. And if I saw something that was coming, I was very direct and I would be very commanding of like, no, we’re not going to do that. And here’s why I didn’t really give them a chance to fail. I didn’t give them a chance to learn from mistakes. I can remember one instance where I pushed forward an internal initiative, despite my

VP saying it was a bad idea. I knew it was the right thing to do. So I pushed it forward anyways, but I lost him. I lost the relationship. I lost his spirit of taking initiative. So while I took the project forward and we needed to do it, I completely lost all the motivation and kind of go get her attitude from this employee. And honestly, if I look back, it wasn’t worth it.

Matt Eisenacher (25:17)
Yeah,

people want to be empowered. They want to know that they have

autonomy and I think the best way to guide that autonomy and to give them that is to be going back to the idea of making sure you set a strong vision.

I mean, if I can think back over my career where I felt like I had to step in a lot, it’s easy for you to look and say, it’s because those, doesn’t know, but it’s actually, either you’re not leading the right way by setting the right vision or they don’t understand it, or there’s a skill and will gap on the other side of things. And so, ⁓ yeah, I think you might feel better that those are the

you’re making the right decisions, but long term you’re not strengthening the leaders in your team.

Kevin Rice (25:57)
Yeah, that’s

cool.

I’m working on a book. It’s called the executive guides of parenting. but I wrote an entire chapter about skill versus will And in the book, I translated it to how you would use that model with kids and with kids, it’s not quite skill and will

the way I reframed it was around kind of emotional regulation and connection. Cause if your kids aren’t connected with you, are they really gonna listen to you? If they’re not emotionally regulated, they’re definitely not gonna listen to you. And so I would take that same quadrant and figure out, where are they right now? Do I need to help them calm their nervous system so they can hear me and then teach them the lesson?

So there’s just another example of like, love all of the career frameworks and strategies and being able to apply them. Cause that was the only way I could figure out how to be a better parent for my kids.

Matt Eisenacher (26:45)
It’s the hardest thing. know you know this, but going home at night when you’re going, going, going and having your brain.

make that shift and the biggest thing I have to do, my wife reminds me of this, is like a lot of times your kids just want you to listen. You know, my tendency at work is decisions, man. They’re coming at you, you’re making them and you almost pride yourself on the efficiency of how fast you can make them. Your kids really, they might like bring something up that like they want your opinion. They really, really don’t. And it is something that I definitely need to work on where sometimes you just gotta be quiet and listen to it and listen to

Kevin Rice (27:20)
Listen.

Matt Eisenacher (27:21)
to

because they just, they’re unpacking the day. And the other thing I’ve learned is oftentimes the best place to let them unpack is not when it just happened. Like it was just last night in the car, we were driving home for football practice. My son was overwhelmed and he was yelling at me and I said, you know what? I can tell you’ve been at school for 12 hours. You’ve just been through intense practice. I’m just going to let you chill. And then we got home, he sat down to eat and then, you know, ⁓ about everything that happened. So you just got to give them a little space and you got to just let

Listen.

Kevin Rice (27:52)
Yeah,

that’s where in career, productivity, efficiency, kind of rule. But when you get home, those things can actually be a liability. my son, whenever he wants to talk about something that’s emotional for him or sensitive, it’s always at like nine o’clock after he’s already supposed to be in bed. And so I have to turn off

my logistics and scheduling part of me so that I can just be present because if he needs to open up about something that’s difficult for him, even if it’s nine o’clock at night and he should be in bed, I probably want to be in bed too. You just got to create the space for it because otherwise you’re just going to keep shutting them down and then they’re never going to open up.

Matt Eisenacher (28:39)
It is so funny when you say that I’m smiling because…

My oldest does the same thing. So she stays up a little bit later, then my wife will go to bed. And what I’ve learned is when my wife goes to bed and my oldest is on the couch, maybe she’s watching something on TV. If I just go sit next to her, but it’s always right before we’re going to bed, that is when she starts sharing everything. So I intentionally stay up at night past my wife because that’s just when my daughter decides that’s when she’s willing to share stuff.

Kevin Rice (29:07)
That’s amazing.

That’s really beautiful that you do that. Cause my bedtime is sacred for me. but when my son needs to talk and it’s usually something pretty hard for him. Cause, ⁓ he hasn’t had his biological mom in his life for a long time. And, so it’s usually nine o’clock at night and he wants to talk about,

why his mom’s not in his life. And as he gets older, he wants more information about it. And so it’s, it’s always a very difficult subject to talk about. And to your point earlier, I naturally want to problem solve, but this is an instance where I have no solution. It’s not up to me. I have no way to influence this. And I just have to sit there and listen and just kind of support him and tell him that.

Matt Eisenacher (29:38)
Totally.

Kevin Rice (29:52)
The way he’s feeling is understandable and there’s nothing we can really do about it, but he’s loved and yeah, you just gotta kind of create the space for it.

Matt Eisenacher (30:05)
Yeah, our job as parents isn’t always to solve every problem. It’s to encourage them to really explore how they would solve it or what they think is right. Give them a moral compass and teach them how to work hard. And they’ll, more often than not, after a couple failures, they start to make the right decisions.

Kevin Rice (30:24)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so moral compass, I wanted to talk to you about values, cause I look at a organization like first watch and there’s just really strong, values around people. curious, what are your values that you carry into work and are those different or do they, are they similar to how you are looking to, instill values in your own children?

Matt Eisenacher (30:48)
No, I don’t.

I think there’s shades of the same. So our number one core value here, and it was really etched out by our founder Ken, is to just be kind. And that’s that feeling I had when I first met this leadership team back in 2019 was exactly what I felt.

not gonna act like I’m perfect, of course I’m not, I’d say two main things for me, and the first is honesty. I think it goes back to being very upfront with people about how you feel, and do what you say you’re gonna do, because the first time that someone notices that you aren’t being honest, they’re gonna question everything else that you do And the second thing,

think it’s the midwesterner in me is I just tend to be a little bit of a grinder, hard work. And we do that with our kids. actually Chris, our CEO, he’s actually my next door neighbor. He was always laughing at me, like doing my yard work. And I just, I just grew up that way. It’s my family and still like, you know, you work hard and

your work ethic is really important. And I can say that about First Watch, but it’s definitely probably the number one thing that my wife and I preach with our kids is that you’re not gonna just sit on a couch and watch things go by. We want you out there doing it. And the more you’re out there doing, the more you have a chance to fail. And the more you fail, the more you’ll learn.

Kevin Rice (32:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, anything in life worth having is going to take some work. you know, grit resilience. Those are some of the really important values that I try to teach my kids. cause I found them in my, in my career. but it was the thing that allowed our company to keep growing. we would have these major setbacks and it was just the organization got so resilient and kept pushing it forward. And so.

Matt Eisenacher (32:10)
Yeah.

Kevin Rice (32:30)
There was a lot of things I like learned in my career and I actually wrote out mission, vision, values for my family. And my kids are still pretty young. It doesn’t quite land for them, but I’m just trying to plant some seeds and I can kind of reference back to it. And, you know, when they’re struggling, I can be like, Hey, remember one of our family values is grit. how do we work through this? How do we push past it? And, I’m just hoping

Matt Eisenacher (32:41)
the

Kevin Rice (32:56)
those little seeds get planted over time and we can kind of build that culture in our family as they get older.

Matt Eisenacher (33:02)
Kevin, I have to tell you one story alone.

The idea of hard work just happened yesterday and it just sticks in my head. I share a wall with Laura, our Chief People Officer, and I see her walking around with a student in the hall. And all of a sudden she comes into my office and then introduce, I hope this guy’s listening, his name’s Caleb. This guy Caleb, who I think he was visiting someone here in Florida, but he went to college in Virginia and he was doing a capstone class and they chose to do their project on First Watch.

I forget how he said he I think he was driving by or he knew he was visiting and he knew First Watch was in this part of Florida and he decided because he wanted for his project to talk to someone and I was one of those people to better inform his project so he sat in our lobby downstairs and there’s a couple other businesses in this building and asked everyone that came by do you work for First Watch do you work for First Watch until he met Laura our chief people officer and his whole goal was he was he had so much energy and he was so motivated to do this project

that he just came and sat down with me wanted to ask me a bunch of questions. And the reason I bring this up is, know, we’re in the world, like AI and everything becomes easier and easier to access. And here was here was the student that was like so motivated and willing to go the extra mile. And I was just so enamoured I just don’t feel like I see that as much anymore. I don’t mean to sound like the old guy, but I guess my point when you said it’s, you know, differentiate to it really does like this kid’s he stuck out to me.

Because of the lengths he was willing to go to to do a really good job on his project So anyway, I just thought it was cool story that just happened

Kevin Rice (34:38)
That’s great. Right. mean, he could have otherwise just sent a hundred passive emails or messages to a bunch of different companies, but he knew the organization he wanted to study and he made the effort to show up in person. Yeah. think with so much digit, I mean, we’re on camera. It’d be so much nicer to be in person having this conversation. So kudos to him for taking the initiative. Yeah.

Matt Eisenacher (35:02)
Good on you, Caleb.

Kevin Rice (35:06)
Earlier you mentioned, you have three different kids, three different ages. And we’ve talked, about how you parent them differently. and you kind of made the connection of, all my employees are all my team members. I need to consider them differently too. So has having different kids and kind of recognizing how you need to parent them individually.

Like how does that translate at work? If we could go into a little bit more detail, like how do you work with one employee versus another, just kind of in generalization.

Matt Eisenacher (35:35)
I think

anytime you have a new working relationship or especially when people get promoted, a lot changes with them. And I think just taking the first few months, the time to observe, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is that people are motivated by different things. Some, it’s career, some it’s money, some it’s all about work-life balance. And I think you could easily ask them those things early on, but sometimes they don’t know either. And I think giving yourself the space that like,

when you have a new working relationship or someone new to your organization, that first, whatever the period of time is, three, six months, your job is more to observe than it is to get things solved because ultimately the path to the end is gonna be different with each person. to me, it’s like it’s just a trial of working with that person and observing what their work style is, how you communicate with them is very different, especially now with all the different digital means or in-person.

There’s some people you need to go stand next to their desk and talk with them because they feel better when you’re in person. Sometimes there’s other people I can think of where they sometimes just call them and say, hey, I just want to check in on you. I haven’t heard from you in a while. And that means a lot to them because they’re looking for a lot more of connection with people than they are problem solving. So I guess I don’t know necessarily how I do it. I just realized it’s definitely one of the things about me that I constantly think of is

who needs a lot of help right now, not with the problem itself, but just working. Who needs acknowledgement? That’s another thing that really motivates people. Different personalities require different things.

Kevin Rice (37:17)
Mm-hmm.

You’re making me

think of the book Love Languages. There’s probably like a translated version of employee, how they receive gratitude languages.

Matt Eisenacher (37:30)
Actually, I’m reaching in here because I actually in my drawer right here I have we do disk assessments.

And we actually are pretty active in discussing this. And I have the wheel with my entire team of where people are plotted. And I can tell you, There’s some people that really have to sit with problems and think through them. I’m a ready fire aim type approach. But I realize at times, you can’t do that because they almost can’t keep up with you because they have to sit with it and work through it themselves. And so while it’s not love languages, we do use

disk.

Kevin Rice (38:04)
Yeah,

yeah. How does that kind of thinking show up for you as a dad? your kids kind of similar in that they need different things from you. How do you assess their personality types and support them each individually?

Matt Eisenacher (38:16)
Yeah, I mean like my oldest is, she is very strong, very strong mentally. She has a strong sense of self.

And so the last thing I should do is tell her, let’s say she comes off the lacrosse field and for me to say, did this wrong or this could be better run for the Hills. But, but you let a day or so go by and you show her other examples and, and you kind of leave them with her. Like, you know, I do use Instagram a lot with her where I’ll, I’ll send her DMs of like inspirational things or examples of other players in lacrosse And she can sit with it in her own space

and process it and put it in place for herself. My son, a little bit more of a feeler, and so he needs a whole lot more encouragement and really trying to make him realize that he’s definitely able to accomplish anything he wants to. And then my youngest right now she’s building her identity and making sure that her older two siblings who are both very strong don’t define her self-image and making sure that she has

the ability to explore what’s right for her, whether it’s the same as her brother and sister or not. So they’re all right, you know, right there. It’s just three very different stages and very different personalities.

Kevin Rice (39:34)
Yeah.

I can see how like attuned you are to your children, just by the way you describe them, and kind of where they’re at in their stage of life and what they need. How do you manage to stay so connected and understanding of where your kids are at, given the significant role that you play at first wash, the career, the travel, how do you stay present and how do you stay attuned with your kids?

Matt Eisenacher (40:00)
I have to give 100 % of that credit to my wife. I will admit, I do struggle with the, again, I already said it, you come home and you’re all business. My wife’s the one who’ll be like, she just needed you to listen. And I’ll take a pause, be like, you’re right. Or Matt, he just came off the field and you jumped into the solution too fast. It’s 100 % my wife, and she’s a coach too, so she’s really good at it, but she is very good going back to the decision we made

for my career she’s very selfless and understands that and others so I think it’s probably me watching her do it more than it is something that I’m a know an A plus at you know so I’m appreciative to her for that.

Kevin Rice (40:43)
That’s it.

Yeah, I mean, that’s amazing having a really strong support system like that. But you got to give yourself some credit because, you know, she couldn’t have told you all those things. Like you obviously have a really deep connection with your kids or you wouldn’t know all those things about them. I’ve talked to plenty of parents who don’t even know their kids’ friends’ names. So you’re doing something right there.

Matt Eisenacher (41:09)
the friends are the most important thing. That’s what we always, always focus on.

Kevin Rice (41:13)
Yeah. last time we talked, you were telling me a story about how you like left a company conference early to get to, I think it was like a football finals or something like that. ⁓ and then somebody on your team later told you that kind of watching you make that choice gave her permission to prioritize her own family. Cause our teams, they don’t listen to what we say.

they follow what we do, right? We model and they’re going to take on the same behaviors as we do. what did that moment teach you about kind of the example that senior leaders need to set?

Matt Eisenacher (41:50)
That was, thank you for bringing that up. I forgot about that. it seems simple, but it was an aha moment for me because I was just thinking, I just finished presenting at our company conference. had to go across the state. I’m just thinking, I’m going to go to my son’s football game. And to her, it meant more than that because she, family was really important, is really important to her. And I think she said, you know, first watch always says family is important, but seeing you do that said to me, this is okay. And that, that was,

the thing where I guess the lesson is model the behavior you want. And I’ll even take that back to failure, which you asked about earlier. Like part of the reason you empower people and get to the right solutions and not be afraid of failure is if you don’t hide your own failure. There’s plenty of times that I have had strong convictions of things and I’ll tell the team and then unfold. And I try to be like, hey, I was absolutely wrong.

seasonal menu item right now that I said I didn’t think the US was kind of ready for it yet and it’s the number one selling seasonal item we’ve ever had I was blatantly wrong and so I tried to make sure I’m overt with those things to basically say like hey I was wrong and I’m okay with saying that so you’re gonna be wrong at some point and that’s okay too because something right will come after it.

Kevin Rice (43:10)
Yeah,

I appreciate the, how concise model, the behavior that you’re looking for. And that. Couldn’t be more true across both worlds. I remember when I plugged midway through my tenure at Hathaway, I was telling my team, Hey, don’t work evenings. Don’t work weekends. I don’t want you to, but then at the same time I was emailing them and I was telling him, Hey, don’t worry about emailing me back. I’m not expecting a reply till Monday, but I’d still email them.

And so I’d be telling them one thing, but then they would, they’d be replying to me over the weekend. And I was giving them a very mixed message of what I wanted, which I actually didn’t want them to be replying over the weekend. I just needed to get it out of my brain and into their inbox before I lost the train of thought. but that wasn’t helping the situation because I wasn’t modeling the behavior that I was looking for a better way to do it. Probably just be take some notes and

Matt Eisenacher (44:03)
very true.

Kevin Rice (44:05)
send them first thing Monday or set a scheduler to send the email Monday morning. But those are some of the things that, I just needed to learn the lessons through the school of hard knocks.

Matt Eisenacher (44:16)
I have that tendency at times too. I always have that thing where at the last second you stop yourself and like, do I really need to send this right now? Probably not.

Kevin Rice (44:23)
also like a great example with your kids, right? If you want your kids to learn how to be resilient, but you never try something new, how are they going to see you model that? Right. I, I consciously have to pick up certain things that I know I’m not going to be good at, like skateboarding. I didn’t grow up skateboarding. Both my kids kind of casually skateboard. And so I’ll get on skateboard and I’m pretty bad. And then I’ll show them, I’ll work on it for 20 minutes and get a little bit better. I’ll be like, look, I made some progress. I usually fall in my butt a few times, but,

haven’t broken anything yet, so that’s good. But same thing with kids, right? we have to model how to be a beginner because that’s where our kids are at. And if all we do is stay in our own lane, things that we’ve been doing for 30 years that we’re good at, they’ll never see us failing and never see us getting back up.

Matt Eisenacher (45:09)
Alright, so now you put one in my brain. So my son’s gotten really big into skimboarding and then like I every time like, ⁓ man, I’m getting too old. I shouldn’t do it. Now you’ve given me a challenge. Now I got to get on the skim board. So I don’t know. It is, but I now I feel like I have to I have to do it so.

Kevin Rice (45:13)
Okay.

Get careful, skimboarding can be dangerous.

⁓

you gotta get some wrist guards before you do.

Matt Eisenacher (45:33)
It looks hard, so that’s why I haven’t done it, but you’re right. You’re right. They’re watching. They’re always watching.

Kevin Rice (45:39)
Yeah. Well, that’s a great example of just like a boundary you put in place, right? if you’re saying I have a boundary where I’m not going to miss important games, right? Have you ever had any instances where maybe you’re family boundaries, cost you professionally. Cause I think that’s a lot of what people are scared of if I set a boundary that after hours, I’m not available. Am I going to get criticized by peers or bosses?

have you had any issues where that’s kind of come up for you?

Matt Eisenacher (46:05)
I really can’t. I’m fortunate to work for a place that really does walk the walk. I feel very blessed that a lot of what our moving to Florida did was the place where you can do all of that stuff and for people not to look down on you because they’re all parents too. So I’m very happy to say no, really nothing comes to mind where I feel like I’ve had to make that trade-off. No.

Kevin Rice (46:32)
Yeah, well, you are very blessed. That’s a great thing to be able to respond like that. What would you say to a leader who does want to prioritize family, but maybe is worried that it’ll make them look less committed to the organization?

Matt Eisenacher (46:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

You just have to know what you stand for. If it’s important to you, then life’s…

Life’s full of decisions, right? And there’s always a trade off. There’s always an implication. maybe that means, if you’re going to go to the games, you’re going to have to work that much harder. but you just have to decide what you stand for. I mean, we, we have a thing where we always want one of us to be at their games. And so there are some times where like we’ll be in two different geographies or kids are in two different places, whatever. We want them to,

to always have a parent there ready to support them. That’s a thing for us that we’re not willing to give on. so, sometimes decisions in life like moving to Florida are difficult, ⁓ but you make the decisions and you make the best of them.

Kevin Rice (47:32)
so Matt, you’ve built

brands, you’ve built teams, major campaigns across different chapters of your career. I think one of things I’m always thinking about is my kids aren’t going to remember any of that. They’re going to remember what it was like to be a child in the world that I’m creating for them.

I imagine you’ve spent a lot of your career thinking about how people will feel when they walk into your restaurant. how do you want your wife and kids to feel when you walk into the house?

Matt Eisenacher (48:02)
I said this about my youngest, but I mean it about all of them, I want them to have a very confident, strong sense of self and that their parents were willing to right wrong, even when maybe they weren’t excited about what we were saying, can look back and understand what those decisions were helping them build in terms of their identity. And an example, I keep mentioning friends, because my oldest is 17, went through the, you know, that phase, that’s the phase she was going through. man,

mean, between that and technology, there were some pretty tough parenting decisions and I shouldn’t say decisions, conversations that we had to go through. And as my daughter navigated that moment and we were behind the scenes, there were some hard limits and then there were some, hey, this is what you should really think about for yourself. And, she went through a couple of those learning moments, but now I come out of that and I see her have a stronger sense of self and confidence. And I can tell she

now knows a little bit more of what she stands for and may look at other people that maybe one time looked popular and very cool and now has made that decision herself. So it’s not like as a parent saying no we forbid you to see that person, it’s the constant conversations about what we’re cautioning against and then that happens and she then pieces that together and I think she’s more confident. Going back to most of the examples I gave you,

It was all around that. We’re talking to them a lot. We monitor a lot of their technology, not to restrict it, but to understand what they’re going through, especially at a younger age. It’s just helping them find their own sense of identity versus them feeling like their parents are washing it on them or forcing it on them.

Kevin Rice (49:49)
Yeah. It’s like when they’re young, there’s more boundaries where it’s firm. Nothing’s going to change this. And there’s maybe some what I would call it guard rails where it’s like, okay, I’m going to give you some guidance on this, but ultimately you’re going to make the decision. And as they get older, there’s less boundaries because they have so much more freedom. They have a car, they can drive where they want. their, curfew extends and it starts to become more guard rails of

You might want to watch out for this, but ultimately I trust you to make a decision. And that’s a big kind of transition as a parent that I haven’t gone through yet, but it’s something that I’m foreseeing coming in the next few years.

Matt Eisenacher (50:27)
man, it’s again not to like get into the whole technology thing, but it’s tough. we’re really kind of the first generation for our kids to go through their lives with technology as long as they can remember. And so they, don’t know how to moderate as much. And so doing that with a high schooler that is learning, themselves, their friends, how to navigate issues, how to avoid certain situations. Like it’s real thing. I think with the progression you just gave is one that is very,

accurate that you have to you have to be maybe more overt upfront and have a lot more conversations upfront because you eventually have to ease that off towards the end and you have to hope at that point that you’ve instilled those values and those lessons you know from from the last few years so that is the job that is the job

Kevin Rice (51:14)
That’s the job. We do the best we can. Well,

Matt, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Matt Eisenacher (51:20)
Course.

Kevin Rice (51:22)
thank you for sharing your experience and the reminder that our kids don’t always need quick fire solutions. Sometimes they just need us to listen. You’re an amazing father, balancing both work and family with a lot of presence, thought and care. I truly appreciate you being here today.