Business Corpus: Marco's Pizza CEO Jack Butorac Quit Retirement For Stellar Second ActRetirement sounded great to Jack Butorac, 69 — until he actually retired. Butorac, now CEO of Marco's Franchising, the nation's fastest-growing pizza chain, had retired at the age of 55... Read More The post Marco's Pizza CEO Jack Butorac Quit Retirement For Stellar Second Act appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

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Retirement sounded great to Jack Butorac, 69 — until he actually retired.

Butorac, now CEO of Marco's Franchising, the nation's fastest-growing pizza chain, had retired at the age of 55 after a long career in the restaurant industry. He thought it'd be great. Finally, there'd be time to chase after what he thought was his dream — to be a pro golfer. Breakfast with his wife every day was a perk, too.

It didn't take long, though, before he realized three things: He wasn't skilled enough to be a golf pro, golf isn't what really drove him, and his wife was tired of him being home.

"I'd traveled for business all the time before and my wife had the house to herself," said Butorac, who has more than 30 years of experience in the food industry, including stops at Hormel, KFC, Fuddruckers and Chi-Chi's. "She told me, 'You have to find something to do.' "

These realizations put Butorac on the path to a second act. Many people would be happy for their first. Butorac teamed with a group of private investors to buy franchise rights to the Toledo, Ohio-based Marco's Pizza chain in 2004 from its original owner, Pasquale "Pat" Giammarco. The goal? Turn Marco's, which had 123 stores at the time, into a national pizza chain.

The results have been impressive. Marco's Pizza went from being the local pizza shop centered around Northeast Ohio to the fastest-growing U.S. pizza chain in 2017, says industry tracker Nation's Restaurant News. The company posted 17.1% sales growth last year, powered by 15.4% growth in units. Marco's reached 881 stores by the end of 2017. Sales reached $530.9 million last year, says Pizza Today. Meanwhile, Marco's is now opening a new store every three days on average and plans to have 1,500 locations open by 2020.

That level of growth makes some other pizza chains look like they're standing still. Domino's Pizza (DPZ), the industry darling which has seen shares jump 1,600% in the past decade, posted U.S. sales growth last year of 11.1% and a 7.7% increase in total U.S. stores.

"I'm a guy with goals. I like to build. What I've done my whole life is build," he says. "I realized I'm not going be a great golfer, which I'm not, so I looked for the next challenge," Butorac said.

Throughout his career, Butorac sought methods to help him be more successful, which he continues to use today. Those include:

Turn your to-do list into a follow-up tool. Many executives keep to-do lists, but most aren't like Butorac's. His list isn't just a tally of the things he hopes to get done, but a living document he uses to keep his short-term and long-term plans on track. The first thing he does every day is print the list — and it's often two or three pages long. The list shows what Butorac describes as the "big rocks" or the things he has to get right during the day. Anyone who meets with Butorac will notice he brings the to-do list to every meeting. If there's a holdup with any of the goals on the list, he figures out who's accountable for the blockage. If it's him, he writes down what he needs to do and immediately follows up with the person who needs it.

Jimmy Harmon, CEO of restaurant management firm Bennett Management Group, which counts Butorac as a board member, has been at the receiving end of the feedback. After a meeting, Harmon noted how Butorac verbally summarized three things: everything he asked other people to do, things he offered advice on and also new ideas. One of those items hinged on Butorac: He'd offered to help Harmon upgrade some equipment. Not long after the meeting ended, Harmon received an e-mail with a list of equipment vendors Butorac used in the past. "Jack is always taking notes," Harmon says. "He's great with follow-up."

Sometimes it takes just minutes to hear back from Butorac. Scott Shafer, a Marco's Pizza franchisee in Los Angeles, was having trouble with an equipment supplier when opening a new store in 2017. The supplier sent the wrong kind of oven. Knowing he'd get the runaround if he contacted the oven maker himself, Shafer texted Butorac, who was on vacation in Australia. Butorac called him back in five minutes. "He had that fixed so fast it wasn't even funny," said Shafer, who grew up next to the original Marco's pizza location in Ohio and plans to open 10 to 20 more stores in California in the next six years.

Do your due diligence — in person. Especially in today's digital age, it's tempting to rely on data and analytics as sole inputs for decisions. That might be fine for some calls, but for the important ones, don't overlook the importance of actual shoe-leather research.

While researching which food business he'd buy coming out of retirement, Butorac and a business partner jumped into an SUV in their hometown of Louisville and drove to Toledo to meet with Marco's management. Along the way, they pulled over and stopped at five different locations and ordered the same food items. Butorac wanted to know if the food tasted good, but he was also looking for something more important: uniformity. At all five locations, Butorac saw the food looked the same, was packaged the same and tasted the same. That's exactly what Butorac was looking for. It told him the company had systems in place, albeit informal, to ensure uniform quality and service. This was a key factor convincing Butorac the basics were there to take the chain national.

Learn from everywhere — and everyone. When you talk with Butorac, it doesn't take long to realize he cobbles together the best ideas from wherever they come. He'll rattle off all the people he's worked with or read about to get ideas to improve things. Inspiration comes from all places, including Marco's founder, who still operates 30 stores, to Ray Kroc of McDonald's. "I've read every book about him," Butorac said of Kroc.

During a fishing outing with business partners at Hormel, several key executives talked about how the food company was able to accelerate business growth. They talked about how a book, "The Oz Principle" was a game changer, Butorac says. The book's key message is that establishing accountability is a key to successful management. Now, all managers adopt this principle at Marco's.

Butorac is not looking for credit, but rather accountability. After buying franchise rights to Marco's, Butorac says the biggest challenge was standing out amid a crowded industry, with more than 70,000 pizza restaurants in the U.S., according to Statista. So he brought in people with skills he lacked and made them accountable. Syl Sosnowki, who had been at Papa John's, helped Marco's settle on what made it different: authenticity. Butorac learned from Sosnowki that the brand's differentiation is built on the fact that Marco's is the only top 10 pizza chain founded by an Italian American. That heritage actually improves its product. For instance, unlike many other pizza chains, Marco's never freezes its cheese or its dough, which is made by hand daily in the stores.

Leaders must be willing to wait — months if necessary — to hire the right person for a role. Getting the right people in the right places is critical, he learned from what he considers one of his professional failures. He bought a Mexican food chain called Tumbleweed in 1995 with the goal to expand it. But some of the key members of the team "had their own agenda" and Butorac's business growth plan didn't pan out. "That is where the bad hire issue surfaced. That was a mistake. A huge mistake," he said. The board decided to sell the company in 1999 instead of making growth the goal. "That's when I decided to retire. I considered it a failure."

Tame the anxiety beast early on — with a system. Butorac was just 17 years old, a senior in high school, when his father died from a heart condition. Butorac himself had heart bypass surgery when he was just 47. Stress was catching up with him, and he knew he couldn't ignore it any longer. So he and his wife signed up for a five-day stress management class. After the first two days of lectures, the instructor asked Butorac what he thought. "I told him this has been the biggest waste of two days. I want to know ways to do things," he said. "You gave us no tools." Butorac says he's a "systems guy" always looking for a step-by-step approach to solve a problem.

That's when the instructor realized the root of Butorac's stress and a way to help him. By his own admission, everything Butorac does is a competition. Golf. Tennis. Even reading is a race with him. Butorac has taken speed reading classes so he can get through 60 pages an hour. "I like that feeling of competition," he said, but "my body doesn't. I need to learn to manage it."

To help him, Butorac needed something to do when he was stressed. The instructor told him that when work became overwhelming, he needed to drive onto the freeway and get into the slow lane — and don't pass anyone for 10 miles. "It worked," he said. Doing that enough times taught Butorac how to calm his mind, to the point he doesn't actually have to get into the car and do that anymore.

Butorac is still intense. He's up every day between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. and checking e-mails. But now, rather than getting into the car, he makes time in the day to bike. "I get exercise. It's not as stressful," he said.

Above all, Butorac stresses that leaders know to focus on winning the big things and avoid sweating over trivial items. Keep your personal goal in front of you on your to-do list. "Each of us has our own definition of success. Some are personal and some are financial," Butorac says. "You just must have milestones you want to achieve. You're never done. You can always build."