KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — When Jimmy Haslam first met Ken Parent 25 years ago, Haslam wondered if his co-workers were playing a prank on him.
“He didn’t have the look he has today. He had big hair, big ears and the largest pair of glasses I’d ever seen,” says Haslam, current chairman of Pilot Co. and owner of the Cleveland Browns football team.
But Parent’s credentials were impressive. He had both petroleum and restaurant experience through Mobil and Taco Bell, respectively. At this time, leaving Mobil for Pilot, a smaller entity, was seen as a step backward for Parent’s career, according to Haslam.
Looking back, Haslam respects Parent’s vision and steadfastness when he left Mobil for Pilot. “I think that says something about the kind of person he is and his patience. He came in and ran 10 stores for us in the Indianapolis area,” he says. “I think that says a lot for his humility and work ethic, because he could see that he could really rise up here, and of course, he ended up as president of Pilot.”
Further, says Haslam, Parent has grown to exemplify Knoxville, Tenn.-based Pilot’s four pillars of its culture: humble, hungry, accountable and commercial.
Humble
James Haslam II, owner and founder of Pilot and father of Jimmy Haslam, does not look or act his 91 years. He saunters into the interview and speaks about Ken Parent with an ever-present smile.
According to James Haslam II, Parent was the “operations guy” who knew how to run travel centers. “We were a pretty small company then, and without Ken’s integrity and hard work, we would not be where we are today. It’s that simple,” he says.
“If we needed help in technology, he’d run technology,” James says. “If we needed help in human resources, he’d run HR. In addition to being a great manager, he could play any role, even while he was the president of the company.”
Parent’s relationships with people were what allowed him to master running the hundreds of convenience stores and travel centers in Pilot’s portfolio, according to James. “I would go visit the stores with Ken, and I was amazed. He knew all of the general managers. He knew a lot of the men and women who were working at the stores. He’d walk in and talk to somebody, it could be the cashier, and he made them feel like they were the most important person at that store.”
Also, “he had so much institutional knowledge.” James says he could name a town where Pilot operated a location, and Parent could tell him everything about the store, including the name of the regional manager, how the store was doing and what was needed to improve the location. “He just had it all, and it was because of his good relationships.”
“He works hard, he has no ego and he is very accountable. ”
Allison Cornish, vice president of store modernization and formerly chief of staff for Parent, agrees. “When you were meeting with him one-on-one, he made you feel like you were the most important thing in that moment, just by the way he listened to you, asked questions and was a really good thought partner,” says Cornish. “ ‘Step back and look at the big picture.’ What are you trying to get accomplished? Really focus on the big things and the things that matter.”
When Cornish started with the company, Parent was the “important guy” running all of operations. When her supervisor at the time couldn’t attend a monthly meeting, he directed her to just deliver a piece of paper to Jimmy and Parent and walk out of the room. It was there that Cornish met Parent, who before this was just a big scary executive, for the first time. Jimmy and Parent asked her to sit down and give formal introductions. “He was very quiet and listened,” Cornish says, relieving any stress she had in meeting a company leader.
“He’s extremely low-key,” says Jimmy. “His EKG is perfectly flat, which made him and me a good working combination, because mine’s not. He’s just an easy guy to work with. He is very humble. You rarely hear Ken say ‘I,’ it’s always ‘we.’ ”
“He and I were a good pair, and our skill sets matched up well,” says Jimmy. Sometimes Jimmy would be ready to take action on an issue immediately and Parent would preach caution. “I think he purposefully stalled me a few times, to be honest,” he says.
“My dad and Ken were a really good pair,” says Whitney Haslam Johnson, chief experience officer for Pilot and daughter of Jimmy. “The strengths they brought really helped grow the company.”
One quality about Parent that Johnson admires is his ability to help direct people toward a career path that suits them and their passions, something he did for her. “I was sitting in my office one day two years after I started. He came in and said, ‘I’ve got an idea for you.’ ”
Parent’s idea was for Johnson to run the creative services department, which specialized in marketing. Johnson was in her 20s.
“It’s what started my career,” she said. “It really helped identify my passion and what I love to do, and that is marketing and brand.”
Johnson says Parent’s empathy and ability to connect with people helped her more times than she can name.
“It’s not easy working in a family business, especially when you’re in your 20s and it’s one of your first jobs,” she says. “You’re not only navigating the business, but you’re navigating where you want to go in your career. Ken really was the person who helped me navigate that. I’ll always be grateful, not only for the leadership skills he’s taught me, but also for helping me find my passion.”
Hungry
“Ken is definitely hungry,” Jimmy says. “He had a dad who was rather hard on him growing up. I think Ken, because of that, has tremendous internal drive to show his dad that he could make something of himself, and he’s obviously done that or we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. He’s got great work drive. You are not going to outwork Ken Parent.”
Jimmy met that tireless work ethic while traveling with Parent. “Ken and I traveled a tremendous amount, and that’s how you really get to know people. A lot of times it was just the two of us.” Haslam was an early riser; Ken liked to start later and stay up later.
“What ended up happening, because of our natural competitiveness, was that we did both. We got up early and stayed up late.
Rarely did we stop to eat. Most nights, we would end up in one of our restaurants, grab a sandwich, grab a cold beer and head back to wherever we’re staying and recap the day until 1 a.m.,” Jimmy says.
At one point, Parent involved Jimmy in one of his road trips remotely. Around 2005, Parent was driving from Indianapolis to Knoxville when he called Jimmy to discuss a recent visit to a Flying J store, then a competitor of Pilot, for the entire five-hour drive.
“Culturally, that accountability of always being there for you was a big part of why I’m at Pilot today.”
One arena where co-workers have felt the sting of Parent’s competitiveness—sports.
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Jimmy, “he’s highly competitive. He played college baseball at San Diego State. He’s highly driven. Despite that, he’s really good with people, and he really cares about people. Our people were extremely loyal to him because they saw how hard he worked and that he treated them fairly.”
“Ken’s a great golfer and a great athlete. Whenever I play [golf] with Ken, he outdrives me all the time, and the way he measures how much he outdrives me by is the size of a Pilot store,” says Shameek Konar, CEO. Pilot has small-format Pilot stores and the large-format Flying J stores. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’d hear from Ken, ‘Oh man, it’s a Flying J between me and you again.’ That’s one of my favorite memories with Ken.”
Konar is determined to put a Flying J between himself and Parent on the golf course soon. “Ken’s just an awesome person to work with and be around,” he says.
Parent’s competitiveness goes beyond the golf course, according to Beverly Miller, executive director and vice president, American Heart Association (AHA), Knoxville, Tenn.
“He’s very competitive. From day one when he started chairing the Heart Ball, he said, ‘How do we make it bigger? How do we make it better?’ ” Under his leadership, the AHA enacted a campaign through Pilot Co. through which store employees ask customers to donate to the association. “It has now become the biggest consumer donation program in the AHA,” says Miller.
Accountable
Miller first met Parent in 2016 through another volunteer who thought Parent and his wife Leslie would be good partners with the AHA. At first, Parent said not now, when Miller approached him about getting involved in the group, but Parent found himself chairman of the Heart Ball just one year later.
The black-tie event takes place in Knoxville each February to celebrate the association’s accomplishments. The Parents chaired the event in 2018 and 2020, which placed them in charge of fundraising and planning the ball.
“He has been such an instrumental part of the American Heart Association. He says all the time, ‘We put itty-bitty Knoxville on the map,’ but we really did because of his leadership,” says Miller. “For as busy as he is, he still has time to serve the community. He’s chairing a board. That certainly sets him apart from others.”
“For as busy as he is, he still has time to serve the community.”
Jimmy Haslam feels Parent sometimes takes on too much. “In terms of accountability, I think he took it to a fault and put too much burden on his own shoulders as opposed to sharing it with others, but that also was a tremendous strength.
“There was no problem with Ken taking and owning accountability, particularly when things didn’t go so well. We all want to be accountable when things are good. That’s easy. When things didn’t go so well, Ken stood up and said, ‘That was my fault. I should have done it better. I should have known and communicated better.’ ”
Parent would often talk business fundamentals with him, Jimmy says. “Operations is about doing the same thing every day how it’s supposed to be done. It sounds easy, but to get that done when you get as big as we became was difficult, so on the key items, we would talk about ‘Wear-Me-Out University,’ and that means you would continually talk the individual or individuals or team out on those items, and we would wear each other out on them too.”
“Accountability is the biggest part of Ken,” says Konar. “Ken used to always tell me and others, ‘I’ve got really broad shoulders, so I am here for you.’ Ken would always make you feel like you were not alone. You were part of a team, and he was going to stand by you. Culturally, that accountability of always being there for you was a big part of why I’m at Pilot today.”
Commercial
“We’re in business to make money, and Ken gets that,” says Jimmy. “Numerous times, he came up with small and big ideas to help Pilot be a more successful enterprise. He fits our four pillars to a tee, and he is as responsible as anybody for the culture that exists at Pilot today.
“All the way back when he was a regional manager, Mountain Dew was a big seller, and Ken came up with the idea of one, having two doors rather than one. I remember this was more than 20 years ago, so we didn’t have the data we have now. Two, he came up with the idea to not only have two doors but to have green tape around one of the doors” to differentiate it.
“What Ken’s really good at is seeing something that will work and then wearing it out,” Jimmy says with a laugh. For example, Pilot took Ken’s idea of marking the entrance door to help the flow of foot traffic from a test at 10 stores in Indianapolis to the entire company.
“You are not going to outwork Ken Parent.”
Parent’s penchant for finding solutions has also been at play in Pilot’s annual General Manager’s Leadership Conference, which invites every store manager in the Pilot network to attend a meeting to discuss company goals.
“The General Manager’s Conference literally started at my grandfather’s house more than 30 years ago with 30-ish people and now is in convention centers with more than 12 million people,” says Johnson.
In planning the event, Parent marries the idea of fun, energy and excitement with making the three-day conference as educational as possible, says Johnson. “He did a really good job of honing in on exactly what to teach our general managers each year,” she says. “It’s three days of intensity, but tons of energy, excitement and fun.”
“Ken set the theme for it every year. The goal was to get the general managers to go back to their stores fired up and to tell everyone at their stores what the goals of the company were, what we were doing well and what we had to improve. Plus, he made it a lot of fun,” says James Haslam II.
Past keynote speakers at the conference have included former President George W. Bush, Terry Bradshaw and Peyton Manning. Since last year, Parent has continued to bring his leadership and expertise to Knoxville, Tenn.-based Pilot and the industry while transitioning from president of the company to special advisor.
James speaks about CSP’s recognition of Parent as if it is a matter of course, as it should be for someone who has worked so hard and changed the convenience retail and truck stop industry in profound ways. “He works hard, he has no ego and he is very accountable, and that’s why he has been chosen as the 2022 Retail Leader of the Year.”
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