What does it take to build one of the biggest franchise companies in restaurant history? Discipline and a perpetual focus on the bigger picture, Greg Flynn says.

The firm added 937 Pizza Hut and 194 Wendy’s restaurants. It now owns and operates more than 2,300 restaurants generating more than $3.5 billion in annual sales—and Flynn gestured upward when asked this March for his updated sales forecast. “We are meaningfully outperforming in both systems,” he said, declining to name numbers. “Quite meaningfully.”