Everyone Thinks Being CEO Means Having All the Answers. Kevin King Thinks Differently.
- Katherine LeBlanc
- Mar 23
- 3 min read
I've interviewed a lot of franchise leaders. And one of the most persistent myths I run into - in boardrooms, in development conversations, in the way brands talk about their own leadership - is that the CEO is the smartest person in the room. The one with the answers. The one who sets the direction and then pulls everyone along behind them.
Kevin King, President and CEO of Donatos Pizza, sat down with me at IFA and dismantled that idea in about thirty seconds.
His description of the CEO job: set the mission and vision, then get out of the way of the smart people you've hired to make it happen. Not as a management philosophy he read in a book. As something he has had to actively learn, remind himself of constantly, and build systems around because it doesn't come naturally to him either.
"Some things are going to be better without me involved," he told me. "It's learned behavior."
That kind of honesty from a CEO is rarer than it should be.
The Lone Genius Is a Story We Tell Ourselves
There's a version of franchise leadership that looks like one brilliant operator at the top, making the calls, setting the tone, and carrying the brand on their back. And sometimes that works for a while, at a certain scale, under the right conditions.
But the franchise brands that actually scale? The ones that build something lasting across dozens or hundreds of locations? They almost always have something else behind the headline name. A team of people who are trusted, developed, and genuinely empowered to lead.
Kevin put it simply: all of us are better than me.
That's not humility for the sake of sounding humble. That's a growth strategy. When you are the bottleneck, when every decision runs through you, when your franchisees are waiting on headquarters and headquarters is waiting on you, you have capped the potential of your entire system at the limits of one person's bandwidth.
But when you build a team of leaders, when you create the culture and the programs and the trust that lets people make decisions and take ownership, you have something that can actually move. A team rowing the ship instead of one person paddling it.
What This Means for Franchisees
The storied CEOs, the ones behind the brands that franchisees actually want to be part of, almost always have that team of rowers behind them. It just doesn't make the press release.
And the ripple effect goes all the way down to the franchisee level. When a CEO builds intentional leaders at the support center, those leaders show up differently for franchisees. They are not just enforcing the playbook. They are coaching, communicating, building trust across the network. They are rowing in the same direction.
Kevin talked about this directly. His primary responsibility as CEO is to create leaders across the business. Not managers. Leaders. People who can get things done without needing him in the room.
That shift, from managing franchisees to leading them, is one of the most important moves a franchise brand can make. And it starts at the top.
The Communication That Has to Come With It
Here's the part that often gets missed. Kevin was clear that his job is not just to set the vision once. It is to communicate it. Repeatedly. Consistently. In every format, through every channel, to every person in the organization.
Mission and vision don't land in a memo. They land through repetition, through story, through the channels your people are actually paying attention to.
That's the work. And it never really stops.
Kevin's full conversation is live now on the Franchise Leader Spotlight Podcast. If you lead a franchise brand or you're building toward that seat, it's worth your time.
This conversation was brought to you by My Podcast Host.
