MELT U Speaker Series Ep. 84: Frank Bracken CEO of Foot Locker

I like the sounds of that. Timing's everything. I was holding off on doing this podcast until we had some good collegiate news to celebrate, so here we are. It's just so great. What an amazing story. Juwan and maybe Harbaugh can take some notes from Juwan. But tremendous story, and we know Michigan Nation is very pleased to see them on the rise and in the Big Dance, albeit it's going to be a different Big Dance this year. But nevertheless, hopefully we're having a Big Dance this year. We didn't have it last year. You've had a tremendous successful career so far, and you're still rising and climbing. But before we dive into any of that, I always like to throw it back to where this passion was originally established for success and for business, maybe through sports, maybe through brand management. You work with some bonded brands: Miller Brewing, Coca-Cola Company, Champs, Foot Locker. Where did your original drive and passion come from? Since I've known you, you've always strived for excellence, no matter what you did, but you never took yourself too seriously either. So where did this passion come from?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is I grew up and lived only 45 minutes from the Ann Arbor campus and didn't spend too much time there, if I'm being honest, until I went to school there. I went to some games and hung out a little bit, but it wasn't until I enrolled and spent time there that I was exposed to that many different people from that many different walks of life. It attracts a very international student body, a very broad domestic one too, a lot of Northeasterners and New Yorkers and Long Island, but also a lot of kids from California and Washington state. Just meeting and being around people who came from different geographies, different nationalities, different income levels was eye-opening. I grew up in a pretty middle-of-the-road suburban suburb of West Detroit, nothing too glamorous and nothing too bad about it. It was a great childhood, but that was my first entree into a bigger world. Then from there, into my first job in consulting and traveling, that obviously opened eyes and took me different places too. But to answer the question, the people, the variety of people, and the different walks of life and exposure, building friendships with people who are different than my friends from Livonia, Michigan and Stevenson High School was number one. And then obviously the academics and the menu of things you could choose from. Being able to build your own courses and your own curriculum, I picked business, but my friends were in engineering, liberal arts, on their way to dental school and law school. It was an amazing opportunity to learn and challenge yourself and see how people responded differently to that.

Yeah, I think that's what attracted me into that career in the first place, and I think it still holds true today that those are great general manager, great CEO prep roles. You're thinking about everything from the P&L and the revenue and the margin, to marketing and acquiring new customers, to innovation and where the future of growth is, and how to get into new channels, new geographies, attract new segments of customers. Between consulting, which I did for six or seven years, and then brand management, those were two of the greatest experiences you could ever ask for because they're so multidisciplinary and challenging. They take you from operations to HR to innovation to technology to marketing. It covers the gamut. I would certainly say that a lot of my success has been through the experiences I've learned and the hard knocks of both brand management and consulting.

Yeah, I don't think anybody could say that they were prepared for what happened a year ago this month. Having said that, retail is an interesting beast. There are surges of activity around things like Black Friday and the big six holiday and Easter holiday that give us a sense of what it's like to be intense for three days or for seven days, whether it's promotions or a surge of traffic in a retail business. To sustain that for 90 days, 120 days, obviously unprecedented. The thing we learned about ourselves is the premium and the value of flexibility, being able to flex your operations and your people in the back of the house to shift gears as quickly as possible. From a business commercial standpoint, we were able to close down our stores within a 48-hour time period, crank up our website, crank up our promotions online, and move the business online. For the most part, we were able to successfully service and transact with those folks. The unintended consequences were the supply chain and freight delivery. UPS and FedEx weren't prepared for all of that, so we got a bit of the whipsaw effect as we went further down into the operations, but the front of the house held up really well. Combine that with people working from home for the first time. Back to the good old days of Coke and Miller, it's the people business. We're big companies, but at the end of the day, we're making people happy, whether it's a Coke and a smile or a cool pair of sneakers. It's about relationships with customers and relationships with your teammates. To not be in their company for a week, four weeks, four months, now a full year, is tough. The other thing I learned is the value of culture, strong corporate culture, and relationships. That pays a lot of dividends, and now we're cashing some of those dividends in because it's been a year since I've seen some of my closest teammates and friends from work. That was another big lesson learned. When you're building your career, think about being more flexible. It used to be, 'I want to be a real specialist, I want to specialize in PR, social media, manufacturing.' I think versatility is really important, not just from a functional technical standpoint, but also from a leadership and management style, being able to flex and accommodate different scenarios and working with different people. That's number one. Number two, pick a company, pick a product, pick an industry that you have some passion for, that you can connect with. You want to work at a place with great ethics, great value, and purpose, but also that work culture because it's so important. You're going to lean on it in the hard times as much as you're going to enjoy it in the good times.

Yeah, 100%. I picked up on that too. It's hard to tell folks who are early in their career, who have been successful academically, in sports, in social circles, to have patience, number one, and let your career develop over time. Take advantage of opportunities and learn skills, take those horizontal moves to build a skill or give you an experience rather than just look to always climb the ladder. That's a hard message to process and follow. Secondarily, you're right, adversity builds character, it builds experience, it builds calluses, it builds your ability to deal with situations. This one no one asked for, no one predicted, but clearly there's a silver lining. I think it's how you adapt, how you form relationships, how we're communicating in different ways and being productive as a company. You're an agency, my company is a retail company, both digital and stores. There's a lot of good to come out of it from that standpoint. That's what I would suggest to folks coming out of school or earlier in their career: take those lessons to heart, take stock and reflect a little bit. What did you learn? What did you get better at? What did you learn about yourself that you want to change in the next 12 or 24 months? Put a plan together and attack it. You've got to be very intentional about how you manage your career for the things you can control, and also be super adaptable for the things you can't.

Yeah, more than ever, you're looking for somebody that has the right attitude and the right values right off the bat. You mentioned it: what have you done for the last 12 months while COVID has shut us down? If you were out of work, what were you doing to make yourself better? Were you exercising and doing home workouts? Were you studying online? Did you read books to get up to speed on a topic you weren't as familiar with? Those things matter. Anybody who thinks they're entitled to anything in today's world is going to be sadly disappointed because of the competitive nature of a global economy and an increasingly diverse workforce where women and people of color have a better chance. We've got a hell of a lot of work to go, by all means, but that is only going to make the stakes and the competition that much more intense. That's fantastic. People have to challenge themselves and raise their game and show what makes them different and what they bring to the table, whether that's skills, attitude, a new perspective, an innovative perspective, a diverse perspective. Those things matter a lot. As you think about building teams, you want to have the right chemistry of ingredients. We were talking about Michigan basketball. I think that's one of the things Juwan Howard has done very well. He's assembled a lot of talent, but he's allowed to build a culture and a chemistry and a brotherhood where those guys support and believe in one another. That's what you want to do in a corporate setting as well. It's a little bit different, of course, but the same principles apply. You want to have a common goal, a common vision, you want to have leadership, you want to have people with different skill sets that are complementary, and you want people to get along and have a good time doing it and support one another. There are a lot of parallels. That's probably why you and I are in the businesses we're in, from sports into business. Some of the things that made me successful, I lean on a lot of them that go back to those early days as a kid and a teenager playing sports and team sports, understanding the role of the coach and the role of your teammates and how you can be not just a winner but a good teammate at the same time.

Yeah, I think, look, one, you've got to have some level of skill set. Whether your skill set is selling and relating to people and being on the sales floor, whether you understand data science and higher math concepts and can do data modeling and advanced algorithms and help predict where consumers are going, or whether you have an operational and engineering background and understand how to design warehouses and how to move a box from point A to B to C, you've got to have some level of expertise there. And then it's definitely the softer skills. You've heard that theme come up many times. It's right: what's your point of view on leadership? What's your point of view around being a teammate? How well do you communicate? How well do you live up to the things you said you were going to do as a teammate? Are you consistent? How's your character? Those things matter. The more you can show those things, whether it's a cover letter, an interview, or sometimes fortune can shine on you and you bump into somebody, or you hold the door for somebody and say hi, and strike up a conversation. Lo and behold, 'Hey, I'm out of work' or 'I'm interested in doing this' or 'I've got a son who needs this.' 'Hey, have them give me a call.' Those circumstances, you never know. To your point, you can put out 500 or 5,000 cover letters that are generic, but you could have one personable, intimate interaction with somebody, and good circumstances bring it together, and the rest is history.

Yeah, one, you want to see some passion come through, whether it's an email, a conversation, a Zoom call, or, God forbid, we can all get together again and you have an interaction. You want to see some passion and some energy. Two, you want to see, you hit it on the head, some attention to detail. 'Hey, I did a little bit of homework and I read this or I heard this or I thought that.' Show that you demonstrated that you thought about this conversation, this interview, this interaction we're going to have. And then third, just come prepared and have a story. People love a good story, whether it's a story about your career and how you got to this day or a story from your childhood about one day back in the summer. People love a good narrative and a good story. Be a good storyteller. The other thing you reminded me of, you hit on a great term, is just overall this idea of emotional intelligence is so important these days. Education has become standardized. Everybody's got a college degree, everybody's done their four years, everybody's got certifications. But the differentiator now is emotional intelligence: being able to read a room, read a relationship, read a conversation, and understand what's being said without being said, or what body language means. Or, 'Hey, Frank said he liked that, but no, the tone wasn't there. I think I need to double back and do a little bit more homework and come back and make sure I have this support.' Those are the things that impress and distinguish and differentiate people over time. You can pick up on it. My youngest daughter, who's only nine years old, her emotional intelligence is off the charts because she reads me and plays me like nobody's business. She's got that life skill, God love her. But there are others who are brilliant, they literally are brilliant people, but just don't have that ability to interact with others or interpret or communicate. I've seen people at very high levels, including my own company, who are no longer here because they just didn't have that ability to network and connect and communicate and get on with others. That's the key differentiator these days because through outsourcing and technology, if I need engineering or coding or IT, I can go to India, Hong Kong, China, a lot of places. But you can't replace personality, you can't replace connectivity and emotional intelligence and passion.

No, sir. No, sir. Being vulnerable and showing sensitivity or even weakness in a moment is not a bad thing. Oftentimes, it's a very good thing because it goes back to connecting with people. Saying, 'Hey, I didn't quite understand that' or 'I'm having a bad day.' With all that's happened in the last year, people have plenty of built-in reasons to not have had a good day or to be off their game. I think being honest and authentic about that is really important because you can fake it, but that only lasts you so long. Some of the best conversations and the most meaningful relationships are formed through tough conversations, whether that's adversity or having a challenging situation that you all have to work through together. Those interactions can form really strong bonds over time that pay dividends. You and I, we didn't always see eye to eye back at Coke when we got started, but we worked it out. Here we are, 16, 18 years later, chopping it up and talking about the last two decades of our careers. That's a good thing. So I totally agree that having vulnerabilities and being able to be sensitive and react to things and be flexible is super important.

Yeah, sometimes 'no' is no, and sometimes 'no' just means 'not yet' or 'maybe just not yet.' Having that perseverance, if you've got a strong point of view or conviction about what you're pushing, whether that's yourself for a job or an idea at work to your boss, maybe the first answer is no, maybe the second answer is no. Take the feedback, take the input, go back, rework it, spin it into something different and better, and then come back to the table and pitch it again. I think people, whether or not that idea itself gets approved, are going to be very impressed with you saying, 'Hey, that person had the fortitude and the perseverance to go back, rework it, the humility to rethink it, take my feedback, very intelligent, came back with solutions and ideas that address that.' That serves people very well too, that adaptability and responsiveness.

Yeah, I think that's great, especially in the broader context of what's going on in politics and media and the world writ large. It's a fairly divisive time, it has been for the last several years, and it's easy to get torqued up and get aggressive and double down on your point of view. But showing some humility and some understanding and empathy for the other side is super important. It goes back to those soft skills you need to develop. I can remember many times early in my career running hot, sending an email, making a call, even a message that now I look back and I'd be embarrassed to read.

Yeah. You find a way to channel that energy and passion and be more productive with it in terms of playing the long game and just learning to be a little more calm in situations and take a breath. Like you said, you don't know if a no or a yes is coming out, but you've got to be prepared for both outcomes and handle both with the same temperament and the same humility and the same graciousness. That's really important too. You brought up this thing of understanding that no today doesn't mean it's going to be no tomorrow. I go back to this idea of persevering and finding solutions and finding other doors that you can open to get to a yes. That may be a different company, a different interview, or a different product concept that you're pitching. But certainly don't give up. If you have that attitude that if you're turned down or run into a wall, you're just going to throw your hands up and pout, that obviously is not good for you, your teammates, or anybody. Early on in a career, it is easy to let your passion for a project get mistaken and convert it into negative energy. You've got to just be careful and manage that.

Yeah. You asked earlier about patience, just having patience in your career and how much success to expect and how quickly. It's very easy to get romanticized with this idea that if I just start a company, start an agency, start a new retail company, success is going to come because it is so easy. You can write up an LLC, put your website up, and start doing business tomorrow. It doesn't mean you've got a great business plan. Professor Scott Galloway at NYU has written some books recently around the big four, the big five tech companies and their future dominance. He also shared this idea of financial wisdom: the best way to get rich is time, diversification, and compound interest. I think that principle applies to your career as well. Time, diversity of experience, and let those experiences compound over time and get better over time. It goes back to the theme of patience. You can be deliberate in terms of the experiences, the education, the places you take your career, but also be open to the opportunities that present themselves, both good and bad. Learn through those experiences, get better, and over time it compounds into something really powerful.

Well, certainly the fact that there are three vaccines out there now and the supply seems to have improved in the last 30 days or so gives us a little bit of hope and optimism. I'm not a prognosticator in that regard, but there will be a point in time when it gets back to normal. I think it is going to be a new normal. I live near New York City in Hoboken. The life experience in New York City and Manhattan is going to be different than it is in Sarasota, Miami, or Dallas, Texas. That's going to influence it too in the short term in terms of do you commute on a train or a bus, do you take a car into work, or do you just end up staying home and working virtually? I'm an optimist at heart. I think all of us are; that's what keeps us in the game and keeps us going. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I think it's going to get better certainly by the end of the year. If it does sooner, then I'll be the first one to be out there shaking hands and making relationships again.

Yeah, big time. We have a brand called East Bay, which I'm sure you must have grown up with as an athlete, something from the East Bay catalog. We're digital now, you'd be happy to know. Just in the last sort of 60 days alone, easy triple-digit growth in all of our fitness and training and equipment categories: devices, weights, exercise bands, compression apparel, sports bras. All of those categories are up easy triple digits, which is just a reflection of people not necessarily going out to the gyms but finding a new home fitness routine closer to home.

Well, Peloton is our business neighbor on 34th Street in New York, so I'm fond of them, and I like the story of their branding. The thing they've done extremely well is they built a community and that digital connectivity through their monthly subscription service and all the classes they've developed and the celebrity trainers who get you fired up. They've woven in music, energy, and culture into it. Where we were 10 years ago, it would have been an unconnected or just a physical piece of machinery. Now it's a connected digital device that's part of a lifestyle and a movement. I like their chances.

Oh yeah. I think that brand is going to scale into probably other devices. I don't follow them or have any insider information, but I'm sure they're trying to innovate and figure out whether it's a wristwatch or a sport watch. They did acquire something, treadmills, right? So they've gone from bikes to treadmills. I don't know what the next natural extension is, but I'm sure their engineering and innovation teams are working on it.

Yeah, I think we've had two major trends that have helped us. One is the fitness one you talked about, that people are reinvigorated and wanting to work out mostly at home, so they're buying and having product shipped to their home or they're still coming out to the stores. The other is just the casualization of work from home. You and I, I'm looking at you on screen right now, you're wearing a nice tracksuit and a polo shirt. People aren't wearing formal pants and dress shoes and button-downs. They're wearing t-shirts. I'm wearing a Nike Dri-FIT right now and a pair of compression shorts. That was good for our business, not to mention the sneaker side of it.

No, what is it?

Yeah, so there's that perspective. I tend to believe that once you get comfortable and once you find a new lane, it's kind of hard to give that up. I kind of like the idea of casualization and the comfort of people. There's definitely going to be innovation within that. Even sneakers, if you look at the sneaker business, some of the shoes we sell are spaceships, quite literally, with automated lacing mechanisms and incredible sole technology and comfort and performance and design. Back to your point about Men's Wearhouse or Jos. A. Bank, that's a case study in just the business model and not reading the trends. I'll forgive them for no one predicted COVID, but certainly you saw the casualization and the increase of fitness and sneaker culture and being more comfortable, and not responding to that through your assortment of merchandise was clearly a big mistake.

Well, you're a sneakerhead, Vince, you just don't know it yet. I'm going to get your size and send you a cool pair of sneakers after this call.

Absolutely. We tested a lot of people. A lot of great Coke alumni are doing a lot of great things across the country now. Todd Smith at Traeger, William White at Walmart, Maurice Cooper at Target. I look back at my fellow alumni from that era, and it is very impressive to see where these folks are. It is literally crazy. Representing Coke as long as I have, talking about the value of maintaining your relationships, most of my business leads and any of my businesses are from the Coke alumni network. Maintaining touch, maintaining trust, maintaining credibility. One of the biggest wins we had in our history was athletic, and it was Shannon Watkins who ran Powering. You forwarded me that NIL athlete newsletter, and I forwarded that on to my team and said, 'Yes, we need to have a point of view there. The earth is changing beneath our feet as we speak, and we've got to have a point of view and understand what the opportunity is.'

Yeah, well, I think the biggest opportunity is for the Michigan football team to win a natty and bring that home to Ann Arbor. But maybe both of those statements can be true.

I'm working on it. They're smart, so they know to tease me about the Buckeyes already. They know where my buttons are.

Hey, I'm not saying no just yet. My best to you, my best to your son Carter. I can't believe he's a sophomore in college. That's incredible to think. Hey, that's awesome for you guys. My best. It's good to see you healthy and happy. Love to catch up anytime.