Success has nothing to do with money, titles, and possessions; success is only about committing—every day—to becoming the absolute best you can be.

—John Mattone

ANTHONY WEDO IS FAMOUSLY KNOWN as the “Corporate Turnaround CEO” because in the past 30 years he has led the turnaround for companies such as Ovation Brands, once thought to be a lost cause. Transformation isn't easy. What does it take to do it right? The seeds to Anthony Wedo's success were sewn very early on, in a modest childhood in the small town of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. The values of every leader are formed early in life, and Anthony Wedo learned three things early on: work hard, keep a laser focus, and serve others.

The Wedo household, in which Anthony was the youngest of three children, was a busy one. Anthony's father labored tirelessly sometimes at three jobs—certainly never fewer than two. And his mother managed to seamlessly run the home and family and work to help make ends meet. Their dedication was astounding. Even with relentlessly grueling hours and surely tiring days piling up on each other, Anthony never once heard his parents complain. This was important; it crystallized in his mind the value of a good work ethic. Although they had little, and in fact struggled to make ends meet, Anthony learned that a strong work ethic was essential. Absent of all other advantages—be it intellect, privilege, or opportunity—an unwavering dedication is imperative.

Without a strong work ethic one has nothing.

Anthony lived his childhood in an almost mirror image of his parent's day-to-day living. While his father worked three jobs, Anthony worked three jobs as well: school, athletics, and work. His days unfolded the same: awake, chores, school, athletics, working with his dad in the backroom of their restaurant, homework, bed. It was in the restaurant that Anthony began to grasp the importance of putting others before yourself, an essential early lesson that would later give Anthony the leadership advantage. But when he was a kid, it was simply what he did each day. And then the next day would unfold in exactly the same manner, and another, and the weeks turned into months turned into years until, one day, it was time to head to college. His father expected him to take the Wedo values with him, saying, “work is like weight lifting for one's character.” That is, if you choose to have an unproductive life, it will impact who you are as a person.

Anthony Wedo lifted a lot of weight, early.

At Ovation Brands, Wedo took a company that was in dire straits (having filed for bankruptcy twice in five years) and revived it. He kept serving the families who depended on it for their livelihoods at the front of the mission. He succeeded.

Today, Anthony Wedo is a successful entrepreneur and sought-after adviser in the restaurant and hospitality industries, having developed over 500 new restaurants in every major U.S. market.

Wedo began his career at PepsiCo. He went on to become the vice president and general manager of the southeast division of Kentucky Fried Chicken, where he was responsible for more than 1,200 restaurants, 7,000 employees, and $1 billion in revenue. Moving on, Anthony founded Mid-Atlantic Restaurant Systems and grew the company to 160 restaurants in four years, with $250 million in annualized sales. After Mid-Atlantic Restaurant Systems was acquired by Boston Market, Anthony became the chairman, president, and CEO of New World Restaurant Group and successfully turned around the company in three years. Later he served as the CEO of Mainline Capital Advisors, LLC, which provided merger and acquisition assistance, turnaround management, advisory, and executive management consulting services to debt investors and private equity sponsors in the restaurant industry.

Among his many awards, Anthony was named Entrepreneur of the Year; U.S. Small Business Administration's Home Business Advocate of the Year; U.S. Restaurant Industry's Area Developer of the Year; and named to the Philadelphia Business Journal's 40 Under 40 List.

Anthony Wedo is a highly sought-after speaker and has developed a leadership guide, Leadership—The 12 Commandments. Featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Nation's Restaurant News, Anthony also appeared in an episode of the hit CBS TV series Undercover Boss wearing a long blond wig, a moustache, and tattoos to work in several of his restaurants as dishwasher, cashier, and server.

Anthony holds a bachelor of science degree in business from Penn State University, an MBA from Cornell University, and an International MBA from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario Canada. He is also a retired officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. I talked to Anthony Wedo about how his early life shaped his leadership ethics, and how his singular leadership skills led to his unofficial title of Corporate Turnaround CEO.

Now, if you shoot into the group I guarantee you will 100 percent not hit a bird. You have to be able, in a split second, to pick out the bird you're going to drop, to block out any other confusion occurring around you at the time.

You have to only see the one target. Because the immature impulse, the impulse of a child is to think, there's a bunch of birds I can shoot with shotgun, because a shotgun is a bunch of spray and spray powder.

But gunshot doesn't work that way. The ideal way to achieve success is to practice that laser focus, blocking out all distractions and getting to the heart of the matter. You must be able to not be distracted during situations in which many other people would likely be highly distracted.

You have to have a compass, and know where true north is, and you have to stay on it no matter how many things distract you. Being politically correct, for example, is extremely distracting.

Everybody wants to be trendy and politically correct. But the speed in which things are transitioning in the United States is astronomically fast. And being a slave to trends is a losing game. The impulse to meet the fashion, taste, style, and impulse of the day distract from the mission.

That's a problem today. People don't want to tell people they're wrong—so in that reality everybody's right. Every politician thinks they have to say yes to everybody and everything to get reelected. This kind of thinking forbids you from judging people. In the end, you always have to say no to somebody.

In the short term they provide their investors—and the market if it's a public company—with the impression that they're making progress; however, all they did is create a short-term destruction of the enterprise by in essence creating an ever bigger gap between revenue and cost. Reinvention is a far cry from that kind of short-term solution.

Yes, you have to be efficient—you must begin to carefully and thoughtfully remove cost, all the while with eyes looking forward so you don't damage the enterprise while you're re-inventing. At my very first board meeting, the first slide I presented was an image of the Grand Canyon.

But herein lay the secret: it's not drama. It's the assignment, it's the mission, it is a vision for the goal on which we're embarking and I'm asking for your support.

The problem I see with a lot of my co-CEOs out there is they don't realize that that's what's happened until it's too late.

They must realize that any action they take is an addition or a depletion of their stated culture. Oftentimes it's a failure of vision: I've seen a lot of CEOs state that they want culture X but in reality what wanted was culture Y. That's when having the maturity to correct and admit the mission is going in the wrong direction becomes crucial.

I was a Navy officer. That's a long commitment, one that keeps your situational leadership well oiled. If you are on the battlefield and bullets are whizzing by your head, you have a different command control of behavior than if you work in the Pentagon.

It's a reinvention of a franchise. The trick is to not let the front of your army get too far ahead of the rear of your army.

With all the skills in your toolbox, you have to counterbalance them with—I believe—a deep sense of humility. Talk to me about your philosophy regarding being both a strong CEO and a humble individual, and how the two inform one another.

So in order to ensure that self-importance doesn't creep in, I stress the notion of service. There is nothing narcissistic about true service when you're doing it out of a deep sense of obligation and responsibility, not to show the world what a great person you are.

If you have a passion to serve others, you'll be a long-standing part of my organization. If you have a compulsion to serve yourself, you'll likely be sniffed out early and not last long.

If you don't fit the method, you don't fit the culture. This is nonnegotiable; you don't negotiate over elements of behavior.

I always choose the latter not the former.

Writing code is a skill, so you can replace the code writer. The need for talent directly correlates with the needs of an organization. Yes, you must have the skills you were hired to execute, but you must also have the agility to step out of your skill set to meet the needs of the organization.

And that is absolutely a safe way to deal with a challenge: Everybody keeps their job, nobody gets fired, and you have an abundance of data to back up your decisions.

But I don't have that luxury. To reinvent, one must embrace rapid innovation. One must be willing to take risks, to not be incremental in your behavior.

So companies, because of their lack of courage from the leader of that company, will be incremental in their reinvention because it's safe.

When you talk about what reinvention is, it is the fundamental move away from the cause of self-preservation. It's using your business judgment to move the organization faster because saving the organization is more important than you being right as the CEO.

And it will catch up to them eventually. It may happen so slowly that they don't know what happened. But I can tell you what happened—they were physically in their chairs but they weren't engaged, they weren't leading.

I have one more question, Tony. What would be some messages for the young leaders who have the potential to be future CEOs? Leadership is a noble profession if you practice it well. How would you advise those who want to be exceptional leaders?

I really am concerned about the direction of this country. It is no longer cool to be seen as a young person striving to achieve and to serve others.

Take politicians—they receive a lot of media attention. So our children are seeing these individuals and they assume they are a good role model. One of my missions is to figure out a way to increase the size of my megaphone in order to get the right message out for these kids because they are our future.