Former Starbucks President Howard Behar "The Leadership Skills Required To Become A Massive Success"

Everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. I'm Jason Wasser, and today I am with the person who is hailed as the hero of conscious capitalism. He's a passionate advocate for leading with purpose and a devoted student and teaching— and teacher of the servant leadership model. Howard Behar's career in business spans over 50 years, and for 21 of those, he's been the CEO Starbucks domestic— let me start that over. For 21 years, he led Starbucks domestic business as president of North America and was the founding president of Starbucks International, opening the first store outside of North America in Japan and then continuing on from there. He served on the Starbucks board of directors for 12 years before retiring. He's written two books, It's Not About the Coffee, which is a guide to leading by putting people first, and The Magic Cup, which is a parable about the power of personal values. He now travels the world speaking to leaders, organizations, and students. And I'm beyond honored to have you as a guest today.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

Took us a while, but we figured it out.

Yeah, well, all good things, right, come with a little bit of effort. So number one, we were just talking before we got on about the history of both of our families, which we both share about immigrants and family business. So can you share with us a little bit about what it was like, right, for your family that were immigrants? They had a grocery store during the Depression. What was some of your memories from that time as a child and some of the lessons that you took out from that, at that, from that point of your life?

Well, you know, it was a neighborhood grocery that had charge accounts. And so my dad trusted everybody. They weren't, they weren't customers. They were his neighbors and his friends and customers too. But probably the single most important lesson that I learned in that, from that experience, I didn't recognize until I was a lot older. But one day I was in the grocery store, I was probably about 8 years old, and my dad said to me, "Howard, go get a couple baskets of strawberries from the back of that store." And so I went and got the strawberries, and the customer was at the counter, and he took those baskets of strawberries and he put them in the customer's bag, and the customer walked out, and I was old enough to recognize my dad hadn't rung them up on his cash register. And And so I said, "Dad, you forgot to ring those up." And he just looked at me and said, "Toward, not everything we do in life do we get paid for, should we get paid for." And these people I know love strawberries, and I also know that they can't afford to buy expensive fruit right now. So it's just my way of helping them out a little bit. And it was such a valuable lesson. You know, not everything you do in life you get to get paid for. And I took that lesson with me. You know, once I figured it out, I was probably about 15 or 16 when I remembered that story and figured it out. And it worked for me my whole life. You know, that's not what we're here— we're not here to get paid for everything we do. I don't just mean monetarily, you know, but— and so a valuable lesson of helping others when they have a need.

And how common do you think that was, right, for all the other businesses? And this was around the time of the Great Depression, right?

Well, this— I was not when that existed.

No, when that happened, when they came over, there was—

Oh yeah, they came, yeah. That, I mean, in those days, I think it was more common because remember most of the small stores, the haberdashery, the dry goods store, they were neighborhood stores, the furniture store, like your, like your family, you know. So you were part of the community and everybody knew you and you knew them and so you were all in it together. I mean, I think that is You know, it hasn't totally disappeared because there are some stores that you go into that, you know, will do anything for you and treat you as a human being, not as a customer. So, but I think more often than not, it's gone, you know, because people are afraid. They're afraid to do things for other people, you know. And at Starbucks, we always try to get away from that. We always say, "You can do anything you want in service to another human being." You can help, you know, if somebody needs something, they don't have— can't pay for their coffee, give it to them.

Which is incredibly uncommon because I know the first many years you guys weren't sure whether you're going to be in business, right? You weren't going to make it and, and grow. And I know one of my favorite stories I actually heard, I was watching one of the videos when you got your award from the Seattle Business Association.

Yeah.

And you were talking about two specific individuals, um, that one was a store manager, I believe, in Santa Monica who got sick, and the other one was an older gentleman.

Right, right. Yeah, that is actually in Seattle. The first one was in Seattle that got AIDS. It was our first experience with AIDS, and, uh, you know, uh, we just took care of him. You know, he— we— he— we wanted to know what he needed, and we said, you know, you can work as long as you feel like you can work, and when you can't work, we'll still pay. And not only that, but we'll cover all your health insurance until the day you die. And we did that. Jim. And the other one was a man named Jim too, who lived in a nursing home across the street from one of our stores, and every day he used to come into our store and he'd get a short coffee and a blueberry muffin. And one day, 2 o'clock comes, 3 o'clock comes, no Jim. So one of the baristas ran across the street to the nursing home and said, "Hey, I've got Jim's short drip and his blueberry muffin. Where is he?" And the person at the counter just said, "I'm sorry to tell you, but Jim passed away in his sleep last night." And so when they used to give him the cups of coffee or the bag with the muffin in it, they'd always write something on that bag. Every day there was some little message to Jim. He was a big-time Pittsburgh Steelers fan. And so, you know, they'd write, "Hey, Jim, the Steelers are going to win." Steelers suck, or jokes, or loving things. And that was over 2 years of time that they did that. And so the day he died, the next day his daughter came into the store and asked the store manager if people in the store could come to Jim's funeral because of how much he loved them. And of course the store manager said, sure, I'll figure out a way, we'll all be there, we love Jim too. So they show up at the funeral home, and here in the very front of the funeral home as they walk through the door, a big 3 round tables, you know, the kinds that you get at banquets where 8 to 10 people sit around. On those 3 tables were all the bags and the cups that somebody had written something to Jim on. You know, who would have ever thought something so little as a little message like that would have affected someone's life so greatly that he kept them all? But that's what it was. And it's the lesson there is it's the little things you do in life, the thing for other people that you don't think that count that really do.

Is that where the idea of writing people's names personally on the cups came out of, or this was something that was already happening in Starbucks?

No, it actually started with, you know, part of our goal was to remember 100 customers' names and their drink by heart, every barista, right? And so when you walk through the front door, they, you know, they already said, hey Jack, is that the— what do you want today, short drip or a tall latte, what does he want? That was the goal, and so that's where it came from.

Incredible, incredible. So I know you're very much about values and principles. I know that's kind of what you're, you're in a way you're known for, and there's this Green Apron book, and in fact every therapy client and coaching client that I work with, I know that I can help them in so many different ways, but I can make our process a lot easier if I know their core values. So I actually walk them through a worksheet that helps them have very clear definition of what their core values are, whether it's their individual or it's their relationship or their business. And then from there, we use that as the lens to help them solve.

Right.

So for you, how did that whole values-based decision-making and core values come about as far as your leadership agenda, leadership personality?

It's everything. If you don't know who you are and what you stand for and how you'll have a filter to make decisions with, then how can you possibly lead somebody else? And the first thing I work with people on is doing that. I got to show you this. I'm sorry, I'm going out of the camera.

Oh, good.

But, but so for 40 years, over 40 years, almost for 50 years, I've carried this sheet of paper. And on this sheet of paper are my, my mission statement. I'll read it to you here: to live my life every day nurturing, inspiring the human spirit of myself and others. And then I have my core values: honesty, fairness, respect for self and others, responsibility, integrity, trust in self and others, caring and love. And then my 6 Ps, how I do everything: with purpose, passion, persistence, patience, performance, and for people. And I have carried that around, and I've revised it from time to time, but it drives my life. It's how I live my life, whether at work or at home, it doesn't make any difference. And so, that's what I work with people on. And you gotta, to be a great leader, you better know who you are.

Agreed. Agreed. Well, that comes kind of with like knowing your hat, right?

And knowing your hat, right?

As we had the conversation before, to have a fulfilling life.

You know, I have a quote on my office wall. It says, "If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there." You'd have heard that old quote. It's so true. And so if you don't know who you are, then any path will get you there, you know?

Exactly. Well, it's funny, because it goes back to the conversation we had before. And you're like, well, why aren't you working in the family business? Why did I become a therapist? Because, right, at a certain point, I knew that what I was doing, post-high school, college, working with other people on campus and youth groups and stuff like that, my passion and my purpose started coming out of that, helping people optimize their potential, helping them get through the stressors and the challenges that I went through. And I always have this debate, and my family and I always have this conversation, When you gonna close the practice and come work for us? So I found a way, right? And they're very, very good with the Jewish guilt with that, and I love them and they're incredibly successful what they're doing. And I found a way now using this entrepreneurship lens. I was introduced a few years ago to a gentleman named Rick Sapio who's out of Dallas, who's a capital venture and created a program called Business Finishing School. And then I started getting this entrepreneurship lens of core values that you can run business with a heart, you can run business with, right, and with leverage and doing things that you do, but it has to be values-based. And through that is where I started hearing about conscious capitalism and stuff like that. And I actually met Rand Stagen, who I know is—

Oh, you know Rand, right?

I met Rand and fell in love with everything he said. I'm like, that's, this is everything I wanna be doing.

And I found a way to bring my therapy consult mindset into helping businesses.

So I don't have to be the employee of the business. I can help them as a, as a consultant and as a coach. So merging those two worlds now because I'm finding my hat or I have, I have my hat. So I know, let's talk a little bit more about that. So I know this is really big. So for example, this morning I met with a college kid who I met through a networking event, and I'm trying to help him figure out what he wants to do when it comes to if he wants to go into business, does he want to go into psychology? And I'm trying to create value with him just as a, as a mentor. And he sat in, in a meeting with me with another person I'm partnering with to do a workshop in a conference. Because I want him as a 22-year-old to be giving some voice and value and maybe to figure it out. What are some of the tips and tricks that you've discovered and you've shared to help people figure out what their hat should be?

Well, you know, when I say hat, you know, it's, it basically is who you are, is how you, it's how you live your life. And so I start with this, the idea of let's work on your core values. And it's not easy. You know, you'd think, well, you just spit them out, but you don't. So I have this list of about 300 words that represent human values, you know, from greed all the way to love and caring. You know, just because we say values doesn't mean they're all, you know, what we might think are nice values. Some are not so nice. You know, but some people live their lives like that. My job is not to tell them who they are. My job is to help them discover who they are and then live their life according to that. And, you know, so that's what we start with. And I say, get it down to 50. See if you can get this 300 down to 50, the things that matter to you most. It doesn't mean that there might be 100 that are part of your life in some way or another. But get it down to 50, and then let's get it down to 8 to 10, the things that are really core to you. And from there, we say, we take those words and we define them. What do they mean to you? Because the dictionary definition is not good enough. And so you have to take that, you have to use the definite, you have to create your own definition. So what does honesty mean to me? Well, oh, there it is right there. Good. Yeah, so what does honesty mean to me? Because honesty to me or to you could be completely different. You know, each of us has a white lie we'll tell. You know, my biggest white lie is when my wife comes home after shopping all day and she brings 3 dresses in and she wants to model the dresses, you know. And of course what she's looking for is approval, of course. You know, she says honest opinion, but it's not really what she wants.

No, never give the honest opinion.

So she says to me, do any of these dresses make my butt look big? Man, that's the trap question, right? And, you know, I used to say never. I used to say, no, honey, not— no, absolutely not. But then over time, I learned she, you know, she really did want an honest opinion. But even though she got mad when I gave it to her, you know, I like that dress.

You know that old joke about the same scenario where the wife over years was asking, does this dress make me look fat? And after a few years, you know, no, no, no, no, no. And then she's like, no, really tell me the truth. He's like, fine. It's not the dress that makes you look fat. It's your fat that makes you look fat.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. So she wanted that, right? She wanted the truth and the answers. So it's so interesting that what you're saying is exactly the process that I went through as far as core values with being in business as a therapist. For many years. And then I went to Business Finishing School. And right off the bat, they're like, we can't help you with anything unless you— we can't help you with your business unless you do these core values. And I'm wondering if we even have the same sheet and if it came from the same, you know, the same community, because it probably is the same community. And what I whittled mine down to, I have my mission statement, my catalyzing statement, my values are compassion. That's how I want to write the care, empathy, sensitivity, and inclusivity, right, to support my clients through their journey. Enthusiasm, using humor, passion, gratitude, open and honest dialogue in a safe and dependable environment. Growth, mind-body integrative medicine, therapy, coaching are what I practice and offer here. And then authenticity and self-awareness, that not only do I have to help and hopefully help my clients do their own inner work, but I have to be held accountable to my own inner work at the same time. Yeah.

And it's an endless journey, isn't it? Endless, right? You think I used to— I'm 75 now. And I used to think that there's going to be this magical day, right, where everything gets clear. There are, you know, no problems. I'm clear about who I am. I don't make any mistakes. I'm so focused on— and it's exactly the opposite. It's just an endless learning experience, you know. And probably the day I die, they'll be putting that last nail in the coffin, and I'll be learning something, hopefully. I'll be dealing with something that I screwed up or whatever.

Well, on the flip side of that, of that perspective is how much you have learned, how much wisdom you have gathered and how much wisdom, the blessing of the wisdom that you've been able to share. Because I wonder, like, I look at most companies and not everybody's taking the place in the stance that you do where you want to go out into the world sharing these principles and values with as many people, right, as possible. And these were the Starbucks— these were your principles. These are Starbucks principles. But you found this mission to be like, this applies to the entire world.

Yes, right. It applies everywhere. This is not a business thing. This is a life thing. And whether it applies in— it really in families most, most of all applies in families, right? I used to have my wife and I have a planning session. We don't do it as much as we used to, but every year we'd go away and we would go in our separate areas and we would have 8 to 10 headings: spirituality, materialist, material, uh, marriage, our children. And then we'd come back and we'd present our goals in those areas, things we wanted to accomplish, you know, in our marriage. Or, and we also had our, our career. We had a career, now we call it our life's work. And, but, and we present to each other and we used to sort out any conflicts in those sessions. But we all, more, most importantly, we knew where each person was and where they wanted to go because we were still two individuals. And so, and we knew each other's values and what our life was about. We even created a statement of purpose for our marriage. So we would never forget.

It's so crazy. And for people who are going to watch the— who are going to listen to the audio version, I have this huge grin on my face. Because everything that you just said is exactly what I do with my clients as a marriage and family therapist. And I think it's such a powerful thing where if you can map out your goals and then combine them, but then make the decisions on does this align with our core values or not?

Right?

That's the yes, no. And it gets rid of so much fighting, so much conflict that we're like, but we agreed on these core values. Will this help our relationship get to where we want to be without aligning and committing to that? Yeah.

Can you hear my dogs in the background?

Happily.

No, I'm there fighting with each other. So I hope they'll be all right. All good.

It's all good. So, right. And I'm sure part of the core values is having pets and having, right. Do you want pets? Do you not want pets? All these things. So At what point in Starbucks when you were there, how much of this was part of the culture at that point?

It was really part of the culture. When I first went there, there were 28 stores, and at that time it wasn't about people, it was about coffee. And I was there, you know, not very long, and I said, this is not about coffee, we're about people, you know. And I coined this phrase that we're not in We're not in the coffee business serving people, we're in the people business serving coffee. And that phrase has lasted throughout all the years, which is amazing, because that was a driving force, right? And our values were a driving force. You had Howard Schultz, who came from— there were 3 guys that had responsibility for running the company: myself, Howard Schultz, and a guy named Oren Smith. We came from different things, but basically All three of us came from not super wealthy backgrounds, matter of fact, not at all. And Howard came from a very poor family, lived in the housing projects in Canarsie, outside of Brooklyn. Oren Smith was— came, five brothers and sisters, father had left the family, and her mother had to raise the kids without hardly any money living in a farming community in southwestern Washington. And me, I came from parents that were immigrants, and who were Depression-era people, you know, survived through the Depression. And so we all three came from that place. And Howard Orn and I said, you know, that we were gonna all, everybody had to be in this thing together. We had to be able to walk down the hallway and look at everybody in the face and everybody know that we weren't some greedy SOB business people that were trying to take advantage. And we did it that way. We didn't have any company boats, any company cars, any company health club memberships, any, accounting fee, anything for officers, you know. We didn't do any of that stuff and that was how we wanted to be. Everybody got health insurance long before it was popular, certainly in the quick service industry. And so, everybody from a barista all the way up and we had the same health insurance. Wasn't like somebody had better health insurance than the other. Everybody got stock options based on their— what they earned each year. And so it was, you know, we just wanted people to have equity, and we wanted there to be equity in the company, and that's how we drove it. But most importantly was how we treated everybody. You know, our first guiding principle is we treat each other with respect and dignity. It purposely was left undefined because everybody would define that differently. And so we had to listen to each other to understand where they were. Incredible.

Incredible. And I know when I read the book and hearing other speaking engagements that you've done, that you've kind of defined yourself as the emotional guy.

And I was— Howard Schultz was emotional too. We were a different kind of emotion. Yeah. He tended to be external focused. I was very internally focused. You know, everything that went wrong, I took, I blame myself. You know, and, but yeah, emotional, strong values orientation, very strong people orientation. You know, my, I felt my job was to help people grow as human beings, and if they grew as human beings, then they would grow as people that worked in the company.

And I find that that's a very contradictory belief to just getting people to do their job, do their work, yet product out of them but not build them up as human beings to get their potential out of them.

Yeah, no, you build them up as human beings, make them better human beings first. And, and, you know, that's what servant leadership is about, is primarily this: that our role as a leader is to help people accomplish what they want to accomplish in their lives, their goals, and in so doing, they'll help us accomplish what we want to accomplish in our organizations. And that's what it's all about. And if you don't go there first, right, you end up on the opposite side. People, people get focused on themselves, right? If you focus on them, then they get focused on the whole. It's the opposite of what people think. And that's what works. I've seen it work so many times now. It's, it's, it's a truth, man. It's, uh, and you see it happening everywhere.

Incredible. I've had this realization over the last 2, 3 years that as I've delved further into this entrepreneurship lens as a therapist, that entrepreneurship as a platform is an incredible healing and therapeutic modality, right? Because we're talking about core values, you're talking about priorities, you're talking about who you're choosing to build your community with, who you choose to partner with. And I tell this joke to people that like, if I have a therapist that I'm gonna be interviewing potentially for a job, and they walk in with a diet soda, There's no interview. Yeah, it's not that I'm going to judge them for drinking the soda, but if I have a brand of my practice as a mind-body integrative alternative—

yeah, well, practice, right?

It's not congruent with my, with my brand. What were some of the things throughout your career that you maybe had to struggle with as one of the executives, one of the leaders, that was either non-congruent with the brand that you had to struggle with? Because I know one of my favorite stories that I've heard about you is you going and having to fight for one of your employees who had this great business idea that, that I guess Howard and some of the board members didn't think was congruent with the—

Yeah, it was Frappuccino.

Right.

It was a young woman who was a district manager, her name was Dina Campion. She's still actually at Starbucks all these years later. And she had the idea for this ice blended drink called Frappuccino. And, and, and so, you know, I had to break the rules of the organization and say, okay, go ahead and try it, but don't tell anybody. And she did try it and it turned out to be a $4 billion business, right? But, you know, we were clear. She was clear about what her accountabilities were. Help grow the business, treat her people with respect and dignity, grow her people, and serve her customers. And that was what she was doing. And, but nobody wanted it. They said, that's not our business. You know, and it turned out to be a huge part of our business. And there were so many things that we said we wouldn't do that we ended up doing. You know, I have found in life, don't ever say what you won't do. You know, just don't say anything. Just think about it, put it away, maybe someday. Because you get in these traps of the things that you won't do in your life or that you won't try. And that was— that was— God, I mean, I think hundreds of times at Starbucks, we weren't going to sell coffee on grocery store shelves. We weren't going to— we weren't going to have semi-automated espresso machines. We weren't going to do this. We weren't going to do that. And pretty much every one of those things we did. And all we did was hold ourselves back and miss opportunities.

And that was self-limitation, not from outside.

Yeah, from outside. And that's the same with our values and our goals in life and our mission in life is, you know, focus on who we want to be as human beings and don't say what you won't do, you know, to help people or whatever it is, you know, If you say that one of your values is to care, then do it. I find that, like that word caring, when you hear executives say that I really care about people, most of the time they're not willing to give up anything to care about people. They just want to say the word, I care. But when push comes to shove and it costs them a little money or a little time, they don't want to do it. And so you gotta, you gotta live up to those things. And, and, uh, you know, you know, you do. Um, I think if I look back at my life, in my early days, I did not have the confidence. You know, I didn't think I was capable. And, um, it's a long story about that, but, and over time, I, I, I learned that I was capable. And it was about trusting myself and understanding that I could have— I couldn't do everything. I wasn't— I didn't have the physical abilities to climb a mountain. I could have probably if I really wanted to, but then I focused on the things that really mattered to me.

And is that kind of how you got into this leadership role? Like what, like as you're starting off, where you were, where were you before Starbucks? You had the furniture store that you started?

Well, I was, I worked for a land development company. Company that was consumer-driven, but primarily I spent 25 years in the home furnishings industry from family businesses to Levitt's to Federated Department Stores to different companies and that's how I grew. That's where I honed my skills. I had a great mentor early on in my career. I was about 25 or 26 and he gave me this pamphlet. It was called The Servant as Leader written by a man named Robert Greenleaf. And that's when my interest in servant leadership tweaked. That was, God, that was almost 50 years ago.

Incredible. So this is one person that came into your life at the right time, gave you this right nugget of wisdom.

And he was the one that taught me to, to, to do affirmations, to set goals, to derive, to define my values. Yeah, I mean, he, he got me to think differently about Howard. And then once he opened that door, then I just ran through that door. And it was hard. I'm not going to tell you that it was easy. It was not easy. And it's still not easy, truthfully. But I had direction to my life. And I wanted to have— I didn't want to have a happy life. I wanted to have a fulfilling life. And that means you got to experience all the things. You got pain, suffering, joy, happiness, You know, all the different things that you need to experience in life to have a fulfilling life. And he helped me do that.

Incredible. So if people out there who are listening are going to define their core values, and I'm actually going to leave in the show notes the worksheet for them to do that. And, um, and then they define the categories of life, the priorities of life, right? And then they define how they want to be, um, in service in whatever way that's fitting for them to be service. What else is some of the missing pieces of the puzzle to have that fulfilling, meaningful life?

Uh, you know, one thing that I struggled with when I was young, because I had a mother that came from pogroms, right, is no trust. She didn't trust anybody. And, and I fought against that. You know, it was something wrong with that. And I, I finally got to to the point in my life where I, I, I give trust before I get trust. I give love before I get love. And I think it's a critical element of personal growth and of organizational growth, of family growth. You have to, you have to trust until the trust is broken. And even when trust is broken, you have to do everything you can to mend it. And, and you have to give love even sometimes when you might say that love isn't deserved. And I found, for me anyway, that has worked, and that, that's a big part of life. And in most business organizations, using the word love, god, that's an anathema, you know. You wouldn't— but love in business is important. You need to love your people. You need to love the people that you're serving, you know. And it's not the same love as you have for your wife, your kids. I understand that. Different, little different, but it, but it's pretty damn close. And, and then you have to trust until the person has broken trust, and then even then you have to try to trust some more and, and help that person, you know.

Part of that building up the trust in yourself, to trust yourself to make those right decisions, to allow the right, the right people in. And I remember like one of my— I was talking to a buddy of mine, his name is Matt Manero, and he's connected to Rick, and he knows Rand and all those guys. He's a very big. He's in financing in the trucking industry in Dallas. And he also has like a book called You Need More Money. And he's doing a lot of speaking engagements. And I had one of my clients who works in the automotive industry. I was trying to get him to see bigger than what he was already doing. And I got him addicted to Matt's podcast. So they got married a year ago while I happened to be at one of the programs for Business Finishing School. And I grabbed Matt and I'm like, hey, Would you mind doing me a favor? It's their wedding this weekend. Would you just send a quick video with me as a wedding gift for them? Not expecting it. And the advice he gave was really, really so simple. And he goes, we've been married for 20-something years and we realize the success to a marriage is that both people shouldn't give up on the relationship on the same day.

Yeah, right.

Right.

That's a good one. I've never thought about that. That's a really good one.

Right.

So that's what it requires. It requires one to be supportive or at that point in time to hold it together, and it might be the other person the next time.

And isn't that part of teamwork and leadership and all that stuff anyway? So going a little bit more from the, from the concept of servant leadership, a lot of people aren't familiar with conscious capitalism, especially newer people. So I grew up here in South Florida and I'm the scholarship kid. Thankfully, I had like this really awesome community in the Jewish community here that helped me fundraise for scholarships to go from public school to private school and to do youth group stuff and camp stuff. So I had this really big blessing. But I grew up in a world where I'm like, wow, these kids are getting Land Rovers at 16 years old in the '90s. And I'm like, I don't even know how I'm paying for like, you know, X, Y, Z. And so I had this mindset that like people in business are going to turn out to be a-holes and all they do is care about themselves and all they want to do is show off their stuff. So it wasn't until a few years ago until I got introduced to this program where I started seeing this whole other side of like, like you said before, business with a heart, entrepreneurship with meaning and values and priorities. So can you just give a quick breakdown of the idea of conscious capitalism and your involvement in that community?

Well, you know, conscious capitalism, the term came from a guy named Raj Sisoda, and he is a professor at somewhere, one of the schools in Northeastern. And he and John Mackey from Whole Foods really drove it, along with Rand, you know, Steagall and Levy, I forget his first name, and there was a group of them. And I came along for the ride. I was a servant leadership guy, and I heard conscious capitalism, I said, "That's it, that's a great term." And of course I read the book. How I really got introduced, I was giving a speech in Seattle on the seeds of compassion. It was a whole program, 4 days, that was put on in Seattle for business leaders, for all kinds of organizational leaders, or just individuals. And one of the speakers there was the Dalai Lama. And so he was there, and then Raj Sisoda was there. He wrote the book on Conscious Capitalism, and he got up and he gave a speech, and I just looked at him. He's talking, he took my speech. Right, and I got up and gave a speech, and then we started to compare notes, and we were coming down the same track. And that's the first time I'd ever heard of conscious capitalism. And then I just got involved, and I'd go to their meetings. I haven't done that for a while, but, but, uh, but, you know, basically it's, it's, they, they almost, uh, we're going to use the term servant leadership versus conscious capitalism, but they wanted something different. And, but they're basically come from the same place. Is the idea of we're all in business to serve others. This is what we do. I don't care what your title is, I don't care what your role in this life, from psychiatrist to furniture seller to coffee seller to lawyer to doctor to fire chief, only one reason any of us exist, and that's to serve other human beings. And that's where conscious capitalism comes from and servant leadership comes from.

Well, I love the context in the book, in the, um, it's not about the coffee, book that you talk about the quote from Rabbi Hillel from the Ethics of Our Fathers, right? And the quote is that if not me, who? And if not now, when?

Right?

What do you see from where you started off in corporate America, specifically with Starbucks, to today's society that's maybe missing, that you would like to maybe empower people more on, or would just like, if they can get this, if they can understand this concept, if they can learn this idea, this would radically change their lives?

Well, I think that, you know, what do I think here? Well, I want to go back to that word trust. There's such a lack of trust in organizations, of trust of the boss trusting their people to do the right thing, and so they create all these what I call rule books instead of tool books. You know, and they want— you know that old saying, "We're going to get along fine just as long as you don't surprise me," right? Except when a guy comes or a woman comes in with a million-dollar order that they didn't think they were going to get. They like that surprise. They just don't want the other kind of surprises. But in life, you get it all. You get the good, the bad, and the ugly. And great leaders understand that, and they deal with those three things always the same. Right? And so the lack of trust in organizations, I think, is killing us. Look at our country right now. There's such a lack of trust between us, you know, whether you're right, left, in the middle, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, whether you're, you know, born again, whether you're, you know, there's just a complete lack of trust. And in organizations, it's killing us. It's just killing us. And you have to build trust in your organization. And that means that you have to care like you really mean it, not just when it's convenient.

Or if they think like you.

Yeah, or if they think like you. And that's what it takes. And you have to do it consistently, you know, you have to do it, you know, all the time. Anytime that you break trust, you better clean it up fast. Right?

Well, I see it as emotional muscle memory.

Once you break it, it takes forever to get it back. Right.

It sounds like this idea of emotional muscle memory. Dr. John Gottman, who's actually out in Seattle, I'm not sure if— Yeah, he lives in Seattle.

Yes.

So, so he has this, this idea of positive versus negative sentiment that for every— how many deposits do you need to put into your emotional bank account with people before you do one debit, right? So it's like, is it $10 for every $1 you take out? And people on average are kind of like, I don't know, it's like, you know, 2 to 1, 4 to 1, 10 to 1. The numbers are— what do you, what do you think? Or what do you know about that? Like, what do you think the numbers are?

I know they're in the hundreds.

Yeah, it's like between 60s and 90 positive interactions before you take away one for every one negative interaction.

And if you take— when you take away that one, it's amazing what damage it does, right? And that's the way that it is. If, if, you know, you keep putting rocks on that positive scale and then all of a sudden you take one off, right, and trust is broken, it takes forever. Starbucks, you know, not a perfect place. We broke trust many times and it took us forever to get it back. And, but we worked on it, we stayed with it, and we, we were honest about it.

Was that part of the whole accountability thing that we are going to acknowledge if we mess up on something, we're going to take ownership over it, and then we're going to put a plan into action about how we're going to repair it and make it better?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Is that— I think, like, I feel like in a lot of ways, this accountability— and I want to dog the, the young professionals, like the millennials that everybody's making fun of, because as I had this conversation with this 22-year-old today, He really— we were talking about like why his friends are already 22, 23, 24 years old, already on their second or third job. And he finds that like they don't bring— they don't feel like they're valued, which is very different than people are like, nope, I'm going to my job to do my paycheck. I don't care if I'm valued. I just need to get my paycheck at the end of the week. So culture has changed with that. Have you seen that in Starbucks and other places that you've talked to and other friends?

Yeah, younger people today want more purpose in their work. And they're really clear about that. And so, that has to really be defined in the organizations and has to be lived up to. And I also find a little bit that they're in a rush. If one thing goes wrong, I want a divorce, you know.

Lack of patience.

Yeah, lack of patience. And patience pays. I used to say to my kids, look, patience pays. Sometimes you don't get what you want in the time you want to get it, and you got to have patience about things and keep working at it. And, but, but I find, you know, I think young people today, they're not so different. Yeah, you know, we want to make it all every generation, you know, it's part of that, part of the psyche of the country, of the world. Oh, we're all different, you know, each generation. No, we're not. We all want to love and be loved. We all want to be treated with respect and dignity. We all want to grow as human beings. You know, we all want to learn. We all want to have more for ourselves and our families. I mean, and that's global, right? You used to say the cultures are different. Yeah, there are things that are different. Yeah, no question about it. But the primary things in life are the same. And it's treating young people with respect. It means you got to listen. You know, what is it that's bothering you right now? What can I do to help you?

And it's interesting because we're not looking at it from a forward thinking, because if this is gonna be the next generations of leadership and business and family and culture and religion, we have to be at the leading edge of— it's not that they're entitled or they're whining or complaining. It's that the needs are evolving. The evolution of this is evolving. And it's funny for with my clients and when I'm teaching and I'm working with that age bracket, I call it the Veruca Salt syndrome. And some people don't get, right, depending on their age, they won't get the cultural reference, but it was the girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I want the world and I want it now, right? So I wonder like that patience thing, and this is very much in alignment with what I share with my clients, and I know Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this, that like these 22 or 23-year-olds, they want their, They want to be established in the career where their bosses— why aren't I getting what my boss is getting? Why aren't I making the $200,000 a year? Why don't I have the nice apartment or the nice car ready? Versus what do you got? What's the slow, long marathon you have to do?

Yeah, to get there, to get there.

And I wonder how much that's being not necessarily talked because thank God for entrepreneurship. Thank God for social media. Thank you for technology. This is the new world now.

It's the world we live in, like it or not.

Like it or not.

I think it is, you know, there— I struggle with it as a 75-year-old, you know, I struggle with some of the stuff. Like, I'm not on Facebook. I will not go there. My wife loves it, you know, she's— we're about the same age, you know, but it's not my deal, you know. I'm willing to share, just not that much.

Well, you're easy to find on social media, I think.

Yeah, I mean, YouTube.

I mean, as far as like YouTube videos and stuff like that.

Yeah, I'm there.

Yeah, and your website and all those other things. So if the next chapter of your life is going to involve— I know you're doing a lot of speaking and, you know, again, I'm very thankful for the time you're sharing with me. What would you say like is the next big goal for you over the next—

Funny you should ask that because we're right in the middle of this. My wife Lynn and I, I was looking at— so, you know, we just both came off of— my wife had bladder cancer, was diagnosed this year, and I got really sick with the sepsis. And had to have a pacemaker removed and put back in. And so all of a sudden it was a real clarifying time in our lives. And so we said, we, it's time for us to sit down and say, what does our next 10 years look like? Whether we get 10 years or not, what do we want our next 10 years to look like? And so that's what we're doing. And I'm going through that. Uh, you know, I, I think that what I want— the things that are important in my life are my wife, my kids, my grandkids, right, my personal growth. I need to be productive in my life, so I have to find ways of integrating all of that better than I've done before, and that's what I'm working on is how do I— I've always believed there's this whole, right, that it's that It's not— there's no balance in your life. It's integration is the better word. How do I integrate it all? And so I'm going through that process again. How am I going to integrate this change, my age, my— what I want to do, how do I be productive, but yet spend a lot more time with my wife and my grandkids and, you know, than I've done before. And it's just a change, you know, it's part of getting older and, you know, people go through it and still I've got to do things like this. I have to do this. This feeds my soul and I still mentor 6 second-year MBA students every year. I do, you know, lots of individual coaching for people that ask and so I still want to continue doing that, you know. My role is to serve others, you know, whether it's my wife or my grandkids, you know, that's where I'm— that's Something that will always be part of my life.

So how do you find that work-life balance at this point? Because like you said, the highest priorities are your wife, your children, your grandchildren. Where does that fit for you at this point versus where it was maybe 20, 30 years ago?

Well, I didn't have balance 30 years ago. You know, shit, I was gone all the time. I, you know, it's when I started at Starbucks, which is almost 30, it was 30 years ago. You know, I was on an airplane, you know, 4 days a week. And when I started Starbucks International, I'd be gone for 2 and 3 weeks at a time. Fortunately, my wife was— got her undergraduate, got her master's and her PhD during a lot of that time, so she was busy. And, but, you know, I didn't do it, and I don't want balance. I never wanted balance, you know. I really didn't. I think sometimes you can fight too hard for balance, and it really isn't. Sometimes you got to spend 80% of your time with your spouse because that's what's needed at that point. There's no balance. Or sometimes it's the opposite, it's 80% at work. And, and so, but I always try to figure out how to integrate it all. I used to take my kids on business trips so they would understand when I was gone what I was doing. I'd include them in the meetings and my wife would come with me, you know, on the business trip. So she would, and I would go to her things, you know, she's a social worker. And so I do that. And it's just finding that way to bring it all together, I think, that makes for a fulfilling life.

Well, I think that's the going theory these days, that the work-life balance is a myth. And I think the answer that you just said is the integration of all parts of you, the whole person theory, right? Yeah, yeah. And go in. And I think people talk about like, when you ask someone how they are, like, oh man, like hectic, or whatever. Like, that's just because maybe they're not prioritizing whatever they need to prioritize. But I like finding the feeling for me that if I go to bed completely exhausted, I must have done something right that day.

Yeah, right. Right.

And that I just pushed and I pushed, not because— not that I'm doing something in an unhealthy way, but I came home last night and I didn't leave my office until 9. I was supposed to do— I'm training for the Fort Lauderdale half marathon at the end of the month. And I was going to do a run group and I didn't make it. So it was 9:30, 9:45, 10 o'clock. I'm like, All right, I got to do my run. And I got to get in 6 or 7 miles. I literally leave outside my condo, and it starts raining. And I'm like, oh, this is like ridiculous. How am I going to fit it all in? How am I going to balance everything? Like, well, we have a gym, let me go on the treadmill. I don't know the hours of my building.

Yeah.

And I'm there. And 90 minutes later, I got my 7 miles in. And I'm like, but I still need to be up and I have 2 meetings this morning. I want to make sure everything's okay with Howard and all these because this is my highest priority of like the month. And, but it like, it all fit when I'm like, I'm gonna go all in on this. I'm gonna go to bed, I'm gonna shower, everything will fit. I didn't even eat dinner last night, but I wasn't starving either.

No, right. You'd eat if you really were starving.

Exactly. Or if I really needed it. So I'm seeing that mentality shift that when I go all in on what I need to go in through those priorities.

Yeah, you do. And that's what makes it all, that's what makes it all work. Yeah, the struggle over trying to balance everything, it's never going to work. And I know it's hard. Look, I am aware, you know, young people with kids, young kids, and they're both working. I mean, how do you do all that? I don't know. I didn't have to worry about that, so I can't speak from their point of view, you know.

Right, right. So can I throw you one more curveball question?

Yeah, sure.

And this is something that comes up a lot, and I'm really trying to collect the wisdom from people that I really trust and that I really respect. How does someone decide or determine what they want to do should be a hobby versus which that they should make that their career?

That's a tough decision because I've seen a lot of people that have had hobbies that have turned into great careers and great businesses. I think it's You know, I'm going to put it in a more mercenary way that, you know, if you can't make a living and support yourself with it, right? If that— and you can't support your family at whatever level you need, I think you need, then it's a hobby, right? It's— you've got to be able to support yourself. And I'm not just— I mean, it's not being rich. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the basic supply, the basic needs that you have. And there are some things that you don't do and that you're not committed, really committed to, you know, doing it, you know, like, you know, some people love photography and they love to do it, but they, you know, they don't have what it takes to make a living at it, or they're not committed to, but they love going taking pictures.

Or they don't have the business acumen.

They don't have the business acumen to do it. To do it or whatever it happens to be. But I think you have to, you know, it's, are you really committed to drive, driving through it to figure out, and it does, does, does the, do you think that the world will allow you to make enough of a living at this to do it? So, you know, now having said that, who would ever thought you could make a living selling $3 cups of coffee? You know, you know, you don't, but people thought I was nuts when I went to Starbucks. You know, they said, how are you going to do— what are you going to do there? How much coffee do you think you can sell? You know, but I was a believer, you know, I worked in the company for a week. It's a tough question. I would never ever discourage anybody from trying, from giving it their all and seeing if they can do it. And there's a point in time where you'll come to the conclusion one way or the other. This is something that I'm just committing to, or this is something that's a hobby and I'm not you know, it's not going to make, fulfill my life. Sometimes you do both. Sometimes, you know, many people have worked at Starbucks to make a living, but they had another life outside of it, and that turned into a career. I've seen that happen hundreds of times, right? And so you don't know. I think, you know, that they don't, don't judge it until you've tried it.

I love it because I'm actually one of the local baristas here around the corner from my office. We've become friendly And we were talking about my podcast. I'm like, you know, and I was, you know, just walking through why it's great leverage for my, for my brand and why I love doing this is that I get to have really great conversations with people who inspire me. And I get to bring that back to my practice and share this wisdom with my clients. And he's like, oh yeah, well, I was thinking about becoming a psychologist. I'm looking into a graduate program. And I'm like, well, you're so perfectly positioned. You can have this incredible job working at Starbucks, get your insurance paid for, right?

You're—

he's in a managerial role. Right. And you can still go back to school and have this incredible, incredible— you don't have to go into debt. You can probably pay off your loans right off the bat.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, that's it. And, you know, you go for it in life. That's all I have to say about it. It's just, you want to do it, give it your all, go for it, and don't let anybody tell you it can't be done. And, uh, just go do it and you'll figure it out, whether it's a hobby or it's a You know, but you got to be honest with yourself. Exactly. There's a point in time where you're going to have to fish or cut bait, you know. And, and, um, so, you know, there's no good answer to that. There's—

right, there's just what's going to fit for you.

How many people just started writing, right? And, and all of a sudden they write a book, they never expected it to be a bestseller, and it blows the COVID off of of it, right? They were doing something they love to do. And, you know, or whatever it is.

So we quoted Rabbi Hillel before. So now I want to quote Rabbi Akiva, which is, right, if you can teach me everything on one foot.

Yes.

Right? So this is my on one foot question. And this is what I like wrapping up with is that if we can take everything that you've either already shared with us today or stuff that you haven't yet shared, with people and with us in this conversation, but we can distill it down into this one thing that if you're meeting someone and you maybe will share this thing with them and maybe you'll never have the opportunity to speak with them again and you want to kind of impart your, you know, the macro wisdom that you have, what would that be?

It goes back to the very first piece of our conversation. If you don't know who you are, you don't have a chance on deciding where you're going to go. And so everything starts and ends with that, that work, right? And I don't care whether you're 12, whether you're 15, whether you're 80. You can begin this work anytime. I prefer that younger people do it or people do it earlier in their life because it makes a huge difference. But figure out who you are and what your values are, how those values will help you make decisions and take actions in life. And be specific about it. You got to write it down. If you don't write this stuff down, it's worthless. So, you know, and that's where I, I say start. And when you get that done, then start working on your mission statement, right? Yep. And basically on what you want to do with your life, which— and how you want to do it, and all that. Not how much you want to earn. Those are goals. Yeah, right. Not what kind of job you want to have. But who you are and how you want to live your life, no matter where it is. Find out what your hat is.

Yeah, and I think through that core values, it's not only does it allow you to rule out what that shouldn't be, but you can also see how many more possibilities you might have had that align with those core values that may not be in the vertical that you originally thought, as long as it is in alignment with that.

I used to say, you know, people, if you're an asshole At least be an honest asshole. Be conscious about it and recognize it's who you are.

So is that the breakaway of conscious assholism from conscious capitalism?

Yeah, conscious asshole-ism. Yeah. I mean, I just think that, you know, better to be honest. I know a lot of bosses that are just assholes, but they lie. They say, "I really— people are our most important asset. I really care about—" No, they don't. And that destroys organizations and most importantly, it destroys them.

Amen, brother. So thank you. First of all, there's so much incredible stuff, and I know that we could probably spend hours and hours more. I want people out there who are listening to this, please, please, please not only do yourself a favor, but his book It's Not About the Coffee is an incredibly easy read. It breaks down the, right, the Green Apron concept, and it's such an incredible book. But check out all your incredible YouTube videos of your speeches and your workshops, and they can find you at Howard Behar.com, right? B-E-H-A-R.com. And I'm sure there's other speaking engagements coming up. Yeah, sure, that people can see. And again, I want to thank you again so much for spending this time with us.

Thanks, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.