64: Only the Truth Sounds Like the Truth — with Former Starbucks President Howard Behar

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For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am so excited. Today my guest, Howard Behar is here. He's a renowned business leader, author, speaker and mentor. Best known as part of the leadership triumvirate that built the Starbucks brand. Behar is the ultimate servant leader who is known for his work ethic, values based leadership, mentorship and such memorable lessons which we'll get into today as the person who sweeps the floor should choose the room and only the truth sounds like the truth. For 21 years, he led Starbucks domestic business as president of North America and he became the founding president of Starbucks International, opening the very first store outside of North America in Japan. During his tenure, he participated in the growth of the company from only 28 stores to over 15,000 stores spanning five continents. He then served on the board of directors for 12 years before retiring. Howard is the author of It's not about the Coffee, Lessons on Leadership from a Life at Starbucks and his latest, the Magic Cup. Howard, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jenny. Thanks for having me.

It's such an honor to have you here. A testament of my love for Starbucks is I have a little anecdote to share, which is that in 2008 I bought my first and only single company stock other than Google, which is where I worked at the time. And this was like just for fun, I just wanted to buy $100 worth of something and I chose Starbucks because it was the only company that I loved so unconditionally and it was worth a hundred at that time. And now eight years later, I just checked my account today, $700. So hands off to you.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, that's like got pretty lucky. But also it's such a testament to the incred that you helped build and grow over all those years and continue to influence leaders not just within Starbucks, but everywhere.

Well, thank you. It was a wonderful experience. And, you know, it's one of those things that you can't plan for. It kind of just happens. It's kind of like Google, you know, you start out to do something that's interesting, and before you know it, it's a real company.

I thought it was interesting how you described in your interview with Howard Schultz that the place just had soul. There was something in you. Your antenna said, yes, this is where I want to be. How did you know? Like, what gave you that feeling?

Well, I have this. You know, this will probably sound strange to you, but I believe the walls talk, that walls absorb negative and positive energy. And the day that I was interviewing with Howard up in this little tiny office building, it was on a Saturday morning, and I was walking up these stairs, going up to Howard's office, or cubicle, whatever it was, and. And you could just feel it. And as I walked through the place, all these cubicles here were photographs and all sorts of things and everybody's cubicle. And I knew that the place just felt right and that the walls were talking to me and saying that this was a good place. And I was never let down. Once, from the very beginning, it fit me perfectly, like one of those gloves that you can see all your veins through, you know, and you can almost. You can feel everything. And that's what it was like at Starbucks.

That's so amazing. One of the things that really stands out is your emphasis on values. And from both of your books, this really shines through. And no doubt among the people that you know in person, too, you say in the magic cup in the afterword, and I actually would love to read an excerpt for everyone listening to here. But essentially you say that acting on good values is the key to personal fulfillment. And I just want to read the beginning of the afterword. You say, looking back on my life in the corporate world, I realize it's not what position I held, what salary I earned, or which promotion I received that led to a full and satisfying life. What matters was my cup. Was my cup filled to the brim as I lived and worked with good values, or did it drain when I didn't act the way I knew was right? And what really filled my cup, a new car, a bigger house, a promotion, an exotic vacation, no possessions. Never filled my cup. Not one drop.

Yeah, well, it's true. That's the way life is.

It's such a powerful thing to say because you did achieve such high levels of success in your career and no doubt financially. And so interesting to hear you reflect back and say the material things had not one drop to do with it. And I think that's. So many people chase after them and only realize that lesson in hindsight.

Well, you think they do, and you keep doing. Buying more like the person who likes watches. You know, you go from one watch to two watches to five watches to ten watches. And after a while, each watch has less meaning. It's just. It's a case full of watches. You can't wear all those watches, right? I mean, they all do the same thing. They all are there to tell time. That's all they're there to do. And, you know, that's not how we. I don't think how we want to live our life. That doesn't mean I'm not against material things. I, you know, I like doing. I have a nice car. You know, I have a nice house. It's not that. But they don't define me, and they don't define my life. I am Howard with them. I am Howard without them. And when I started Starbucks, I was at Starbucks. I was 44 years old, and I came in as Howard, and I left as Howard. Now, you know, I'm not saying that I didn't get emotionally wrapped up at Starbucks after 21 years. And being there from the very beginning, it was as much my baby as it was Howard's. But all the same, I was still a whole person before I got there, and I was a whole person when I left.

That's interesting how you say I was Howard when I started and Howard when I left. And I know one of your core values is truth, and that knowing ourselves is the first step to being truthful with ourselves and with others. How did you. And how do you maintain such a strong core sense of self, even through the rollercoaster of growing a company and everything you've done since.

Well, about 40 years ago, a little over four, actually, about 45 years ago, somebody asked a question, and it started me on a journey that has gone on to this day. And the question was, Howard, what do you love more people of furniture? At that time, I was in the home furnishings industry. Now, you know, you think that would be an easy question to answer, but it wasn't so easy, you know, because I thought I loved the furniture business. But the truth of the matter is, when I thought about it, I realized that it was People that I loved. So once I made that statement, then I had to figure out, what did I love about myself? Who was I? Because I really had never thought that much about it. I never really thought about my values or mission statements or my guiding principles or. You know, I always had dreams, but I never had goals. And there's a difference. So I started working on it, and I started writing things down. I started with A list of 300 words that represented human values, and I got it down to eight core values that just drive my life. And then I wrote a mission statement and then what I call my six P's, which are how I do everything. And then finally, you know, I did a plan for myself, and actually wasn't just me. My wife and I did a plan for our marriage, and then we had individual plans for each other, for our own lives. And so, you know, I have a sheet of paper that I call Howard on 50 words or less. And I carry that piece of paper with me all the time. I don't care where I go, I have it. And I have it either on my.

It's on my iPad. It's on. It's in my briefcase. It's somewhere that I can always get to it when I need it. Because what I found is, is that I am incredibly fragile when things are going good sometimes. My. One of my board members, you know those people that talk to you that sit on your. Those little voices that sit on your shoulders, One of them is always telling me, hey, things are going to be like this always. Howard, you're just fantastic. What a great guy you are. And so I have to have these core values to keep me in touch with who I believe I am. And so, you know, I have eight core values that go. These are eight core values. Honest, honesty, fairness, respect for self and others. Responsibility, integrity, trust in self and others, caring and love. And those eight core values drive my life.

And what are your six Ps?

My six Ps are how I do everything. The first P is everything I do has to have a purpose greater than myself. You know, if I just have to be able to attach to something, and that means that it has to be bigger than me. It has to serve somebody. The second P is if you have a purpose greater than yourself, then you darn well better be passionate about it. Tell the world, you know, scream it from the highest mountains to always remind yourself, okay, what your greater purpose is and why you're so excited about it. The third P is persistence. You know, it takes persistence to accomplish anything. There are rocks in the road that all of us face. There are, there are boulders that face us. There are other people that get in our way. But usually what gets in our way is ourselves, you know, our own beliefs, our own false beliefs. And so persistence pays. You've got to be persistent about everything. And then patience, one word that I've always struggled with, I really didn't learn patience until I had grandchildren. But they teach you patience because they're so darn honest, but with everything they say. And then the fifth P is performance. It's a word that we are uncomfortable with. I think it's a big struggle in the United States today, particularly in the education field. You know, we don't. Nobody wants to be measured. Students don't want to be measured. Parents don't want their kids to be measured. Teachers don't want to be measured. Principals don't. Nobody wants to be measured. The facts are we're getting measured every day. Every single day. If you're in a relationship with another human being, you're working at a company, whatever it is, your performance is being measured. You know, if you have a significant other or a spouse in your life, you know, you're getting measured by that person, by how well you live up to your commitments and how you treat them. And it may not come out in a, you know, annual performance review. Although I like to joke about, you know, going home at night and say to your spouse, honey, this is your lucky day. It's going to be your annual performance. You know, so we get measured on all sorts of things. So performance matters. And I don't care what we want to do, we're always going to get measured. Particularly if you're working in an organization, you got to do what you say you're going to do. And then the most important P is being of service to people that, that at the end of the day is all, we're here. That's why we're put on this earth. So that's how I try to live my life. And my mission statement goes like this. I live my life every day nurturing and inspiring the human spirit of myself first and then others. And I say self first because I've learned that if I don't take care of myself emotionally and physically, then it's very difficult for me to do anything for anybody else. So that piece of paper drives my life along with my five year plan.

And does that paper include your values, the six Ps and then your mission statement?

Yeah.

Is there anything else on there?

No, that's all there is. It's less than 50 words. Then I have my plan. You know, that's a lot of words, but this is it right here. It's Howard, right here.

This is a great piece of homework for everyone. Listening to make your little piece of paper that you would carry with you with values, mission, and how you do things. I love it.

It's so easy to forget why we're here and what matters to us. And that's why I believe in carrying it, you know, because those voices, that board of directors that sits on our shoulders, they're trying to influence us all the time. And the greatest challenge in life is to learn how to manage them, not letting them.

It was really powerful to read your evolution in that area because you said, you know, you started out early in your career wearing your heart on your sleeve. And then a manager gave you the feedback. Howard, you're too emotional. And it's interesting to hear you describe, use the word fragile, because there was also a point where I felt I'm too sensitive, it's too much. How did you learn to harness that while keeping the heart in, in you? You know, because you, you decided after that actually not to reject your emotional heart based side and actually to bring it to the forefront. I would love for you to say more about working through that process.

Well, it was a CEO, chairman, CEO of a company I was working at that said those things to me, that I was too emotional and I was too willing to express my opinion. And, you know, it challenged me because I thought that's why they had promoted me at the time. And I struggled with it and I tried to change, I tried to. I did all sorts of little tricks. You know, I used to do something my mother used to say to me whenever, before, you know, she said, howard, learn. Sit on your hands before you say anything. You know, she didn't really mean sit on your hands, but I took that literally. I went to work and when I was in a meeting, I would sit on my hands to make sure to remind myself not to be emotional. And I changed it to bending paper clips until they broke and getting another one or rolling up little bits of paper. And finally I had this little piece of paper that I typed up that said, howard, shut up. And I carried it with me to every meeting, all in an attempt to manage my behavior and manage my emotions. And I went from a guy that loved his work and loved his job to a guy that within two months hated his work and hated his job. Because I was trying to be somebody I Wasn't. And the problem was I didn't know who I was, and I couldn't even have a conversation with that CEO because I didn't know how to start the conversation. And so that process of saying I had to be Howard, this is who I was, that really forced me to do this work about figuring out who I was so that I could defend myself if somebody came and said, howard, you know, you're not good enough, or I don't like the way you're doing what you're doing. You know, he wasn't trying to change the color of my slacks or the way my shoes were or something else, or, you know, teach me how to make better decisions. He was trying to get me to change who I was at my core.

Right.

And so I just said, I'm not going to do that eventually. And I didn't. You know, have I managed it better? Sure. You know, you get older, you learn to manage those things differently and better. I took things to heart and I became, you know, try to become more aware of when. When my emotions weren't productive and, you know, when I talk too much or whatever, but, you know, I'm. I'm.

Howard, what's your biggest or most helpful strategy for when you feel yourself in the grip of emotion or there's something really big that happens?

Well, I have a quote on my office wall. It goes like this. There are no stressful situations, only stressful responses. And I try to always remember that quote that, you know, there's always stressful situations, both good and bad. It's not just when things are going bad, but sometimes the situation can be stressful when things are good and I have to. I try to manage my response, you know, without.

Losing my sense of self.

And who I am. So, you know, I have quotes all over my office wall that coach me all the time, and particularly around like this. I have another quote that I love. Think like a person of action and act like a person of thought. And those quotes really help me.

I love all your quotes. There's so many gems in the books, too. I actually want to come back to one of the quotes and the concept of truth. At one point, an assistant said to you, howard, only the truth sounds like the truth. And I would love to just talk about how you say, beyond knowing our own truths, that you say there is no truth of omission, and that the way when we're faced with uncertainty, honesty and accountability trump everything else. How can we all be more truthful, even when it's difficult or especially when it's difficult.

And why does it matter?

You kind of have to make a commitment to it. And there's lots of arguments about this. As a matter of fact, right now there's a professor at Stanford and a professor at Harvard that are having an argument about this. Should business leaders really. Are business leaders really authentic? And should they be? Which means truthful? And one professor says, well, they're not truthful anyway, so why should we hold them up to that standard? And the other one says, no, being authentic and being truthful and honest is the driver. And I believe that. Look, the minute you start to lie, then what happens? Trust starts to break down. People know when you're lying and you break trust with them. And the minute you break trust with people, it's hard to get it back. What happens if you're in a relationship with a significant other and you lie and you get caught in that lie? What's happened? Trust breaks down and all of a sudden the relationship starts to break down and it causes divorces, it causes all sorts of things. Or partners in businesses that lie to each other. It's the same thing. And all we have in this world is really trust. That's what makes the world go around. Without trust, there's nothing. With trust, there's everything. You know, it's like, you know, I've been married for almost 40 years. It's the one thing that I look at in our life. We love each other, but more importantly than that, we trust each other. We trust that we will look out for each other. We trust that we care for each other, that when push comes to shove, we'll be there for each other. And that's powerful. And that that time when my assistant said, howard, only the truth sounds like the truth. It came about because we were going to the company that I had just become president of. I realized that I was going to have to have some layoffs. I didn't even know what the word layoff meant. I was early on in my career and I'd never been through a layoff before. But I knew that I had to cut some costs. And, you know, we had developed this plan and the human resources executive left it on the copier. And that night somebody saw it and got a hold of it. And then of course, all the phones started ringing it. And about 9 o' clock at night, you know, it was around the company. And so the next morning I called a meeting with all my direct reports. I asked, what should we do? And I got some advice from some people that said, just Deny it. Say that it. That was. That's not really real. But, you know, it's just a maybe. But my assistant looked at me, she said, howard, only the truth sounds like truth. Trust your people. And I did that Monday morning. I called a meeting with the whole company, all the people in the whole company. There's about 1500 people. And there were going to be a significant number of people laid off.

And we went into our meeting room and I laid the whole thing out for everybody. And I apologized to him. And one person stood up and said to me, said, howard, thank you for telling us the truth. I will do anything I can to help you and the company, even if I'm one of the people that might get laid off. And then one by one, everybody stood and everybody started applauding. And that taught me a valuable lesson at a very young age. Tell your people the truth. Trust them. They can deal with it.

Wow. I just got chills while you were telling that story. I didn't realize that second part of it. That's incredible.

Amazing. I love you sharing the book too. This anecdote that it's such a great one, it's almost like a Zen koan, but for modern day, it's that a dad and his kids are driving in the car and the ants in the front seats seat, and she turns around and gives the kids some chocolate. It's before dinner time, and says, but just don't tell your mom. And the dad turns around and says, you can have that chocolate, but please don't have so much that you ruin your appetite. And never lie to your mother. You will tell her that you had this chocolate. And I just thought that was such a great little story to include.

Yeah, well, because everything we talk about here, it doesn't have to do with business. It has to do with life.

Look, yeah, businesses are certain kinds of organizations, just like nonprofits are certain kind of organizations, but families are organizations and we pretty much operate similarly. You know, we have different goals and different things. But, you know, there's economics to families. There's, you know, there's caring and love in families and caring and love in businesses.

It's the same stuff. It's all based on human relationships and building those relationships with caring, love and trust.

I wonder trust before you get trust. You know, I think I've heard a lot of bosses saying, well, you know, I'll trust my people when they earn it. It's the opposite for me. I give them trust and they have to unearn it.

I love that. And, and that has worked. It seems like it does work so well for you.

It works. It works for everybody.

Yes.

You know, and you know, look, Starbucks wasn't my first dance. I'd been to other dances and I saw the way things don't work and the way things do work. And they're pretty. They're the same things. It didn't make any difference where company I was at, the things that work. And the companies, even the companies that were failing Thousand Trails where I worked at, I was. That was when I first became president of a company. That company basically failed. But the people loved it there because they felt respected. And even though we had to go through all those laughs, I still run into people that remind me about that incident and how much they learned from it and how much they appreciated it.

And those values, even the way you describe Starbucks as a human service business, it's not a coffee business, it's a human service business. And that transcendent. That related to how you worked with the partners who Starbucks. All employees who work at Starbucks are partners. And it's so clear that you instilled those values in the organization very early on and that that was a huge part of the success within the company and with customers.

Right. It was absolutely true. That's what drove the business. At the end of the day, that's what made start. What made Starbucks is that it wasn't the coffee. The coffee was good, but it was different. In the early days, they used to call us charbucks. Not everybody liked Starbucks.

Oh, I didn't know that.

But over time, people used to drinking a better cup of coffee and coffee that tasted like coffee. But what drove the business wasn't the coffee. What drove the business were the people. That's who made it great. And it was that idea that, you know, we're in service to other human beings. They're not really customers, you know, they're human beings. You know, when we talk about people as customers, we see them with dollar bills pasted on their forehead. And if we just treat them in the right way, we'll get that dollar bill. When you treat people as human beings, you don't care.

You're there to serve them whether they give you their dollar bill or not.

Yeah. You mentioned in your 6P's about serving people and that that's the driving purpose of your life. And I feel the same way. And sometimes I wrestle with this and I wonder, do you think that for all people they can adopt that purpose to serve others or that some people are born with that Calling and some aren't.

Look, it's not always in the same way, you know, it's in different ways.

It could be.

A widget maker makes a widget and the widget gets sold to a company that makes printing presses. And the printing press company sells a printing press to a publisher and a publisher prints a newspaper or magazine or books that get delivered to people's homes to inform or entertain them. That's being of service. So the widget maker, you'd think, well, a lowly widget maker, A lowly widget maker has a huge responsibility in serving other people. And it behooves us to make those connections in our lives because all of us, that's the only thing we will ever do in our lives. You know, it may not be in a work environment. Maybe it's in a home environment, maybe it's in a nonprofit, maybe it's just relationships, friends. But we're here to serve each other. That's our role in life. And we do it through the things that we do and the things that we make. And that's about what it is. And it's unfortunate that there's a lot of people in this world that don't get that. And they would have a lot happier life and a lot more rewarding life if they did get it.

On that subject of purpose and people who, I think, yes, there are many who feel some sense of angst, like maybe they're not making that connection or they still feel, feel very uncertain. How do you guide or mentor or coach people toward finding the thing that lights them up?

Well, you know, you do it by trial and error. You know, you have to, you try things and you experiment and you work here and you work with one boss and you work with another boss and you learn from it. And over time, you know, you start to identify what makes you feel most deeply alive.

And there's no shortcut to it. Some people do. I mean, I've known some 16, 15 year olds that latch onto something and they. The rest of their lives, that's what they do. And they love it every day. But that's not the majority of us. You know, the majority of us experiment, we try things. It's, you know, it's like having relationships. You know, we meet somebody, we like, we fall in love and you know, a month later we say, oh, this, this person leaves their socks on the floor or this person doesn't eat poorly, whatever it is that, you know, and then we fall out of love and then we go again and then one Day, you know, if we're lucky, we meet our soulmate, you know, the one that even through thick or thin, through all the battles, all the fights, all the things that can go wrong in a relationship, you're. You stick together and you're there together, and you don't know sometimes, but you find them. And that's the same thing. And finding the things that, that. And you know what I call. I don't call it career anymore. I call it life's work. What is our life's work? And that's what we're trying to get to. And, you know, it's hard sometimes for people because we have the conflicts of having to make a living. We got to put food on the table, you know, and, you know, the best of all worlds is when you're able to put food on the table and what you do with your time, rewarding emotionally and rewarding economically, and it fills your soul.

I love renaming it to life's work because I agree. I think the word career is sort of phasing out in a sense, just given how many more changes people are going through now. And what is your life's work is such a great way to frame that question.

Yeah, I think it makes a difference because you start to ask questions in a different way. I coach and mentor a lot of college students, and I'm always amazed at the fear factor of not being able to get a job. And I say you better choose your jobs carefully because you know, you're in charge of your own life. If you work in figuring out what your values are, if you. If you create a piece of paper in 50 words or less of Jenny, for example, then that becomes how you judge things, how you evaluate. Because values aren't words. They're actions. There are things that you believe in and they inform your decisions that you make in your life. So if you're say honesty is important, and all of a sudden you find yourself working for a dishonest company or dishonest boss, do you really want to stay there? You know, that would be a hard one for me. I couldn't do it. You know, I might stay for a little while if I had to put some food on the table because I had kids or something. But I want to get out of there as quickly as I could because I don't want. I don't want to live a life of lies to myself.

Yes. I think so often what comes up around what you just mentioned, around not just truth and authenticity and integrity is fear. In the book you quote Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, and that he used to say, turn your fear into faith. And you then say, I love that. Fear blocks the doorway to the future, the place where possibility begins. What we fear controls us. What we face frees us. How do you. I would just love to hear your thoughts on turning fear into faith, what that means to you.

Well, we all have fears, right? And I'll go back to my board of directors. So I have one member of my board of directors that is afraid all the time. It's just constant. It creates anxiety in me. And you know, that that person, you know, actually was my mother. But. And I caught my mother's name was Jenny, just like yours, only spelled differently. But. And she was always fearful and that got driven into me and that. So one of my strong voices, one of my board members is, is Jenny. And she is always saying, howard, don't take on too many risks. Don't take on too many chances. You know, guard yourself. And there's a reason she was that way. She came, she was an immigrant. She was Jewish. If you ever saw the movie Fiddler on the Roof with the dirt floors and the Russian Cossacks, she lost two brothers to Russian Cossacks. And so she had a lot of fear because of that, you know, of outside world and other people and outside of her family. And that, you know, that tried to get transferred into me, and I had it for a while and I said, I don't want to live my life like this. And so I had to learn to start managing it. So when fear came up, you know that little quote that by Ray Kroc, it came along at the most perfect time, turn your fear into faith. And I just start reminding myself when I start to get that anxiety and that fear, I start repeating that over and over to myself, and it just goes away.

What does the faith part mean to you? So the fear is, don't take that risk. Think everything could go haywire. And what does that mean when, specifically.

When you turn it into faith, no matter what happens, it'll all be okay. That, you know, you're not betting, you're not betting your life here and everything will be okay. And, you know, and so that's what I try to do. I turn it into faith that then I'll figure out how to make things work or at the very least, I'll learn something from it.

I love how you describe that. That actually our work and our careers really a series of challenges. That it's challenge itself that comprises our life and Our careers. And I often say that too, that we would be bored without it. If our next move was easy. If the college grads that you're mentoring knew exactly what they were doing, many of them would probably be bored.

They would be bored. Look, and I'll bring it right back to relationships. You know what happens when you meet somebody new for the first time. It's the fear, right though will I be rejected? And it's the challenges that we face in trying to figure to build a relationship to find out if this is a, if we're a match, you know, and we face those challenges every day with, with interpersonal relationships. And so it's, it's the thing that makes us tick, it's what makes worthwhile. And yet behind that challenge. Right. It's kind of exciting, right?

Yes. That it's that inherent edge of vulnerability that is what makes it reward and a growth experience.

Exactly.

You talk about too the human condition, that it involves challenge, crisis and catastrophe. And of course we can't always prevent catastrophe or even crises sometimes. So often in life things happen to us. Losing a loved one, for example. But do you think that there is a way for people to manage challenges so that they don't become full blown crises?

Well, you know, that old. No stressful situations, only stressful responses. It's trying to manage the response.

So that you don't make it a catastrophe. Sometimes catastrophes happen, you know, like I got a call at 3 o' clock in the morning from our regional Vice President, Washington D.C. one day and you know, three o' clock in the morning, my time, you know, when I get a call like that, I know something's up. And his name was Dean Turinga. And Dean said to me, howard, we've had a catastrophe. So I'm thinking, okay, we've had a fire. What, what's happened? And. But the next word is. I wasn't prepared for the next words out of his mouth because it really was a catastrophe. We had. Three of our young people were murdered in our store, one of our stores in Georgetown, over a bungled holdup. And that was a catastrophe. But we responded to it quickly. You know, we couldn't bring those young kids back to life, but we could try to do everything we could to help their families. We could try to help the community and the people that worked in our stores. And we did everything to try to do that. So, you know, but it was a catastrophe. It was. I never in my wildest imagination did I ever think that over a cup of coffee, over coffee, somebody would lose their life.

Right. There was such a devastating event that happened. And like you said, like something like that, it just shakes you to the core that that's even possible, that that's now in the realm of even possibility for the rest of your employees at that time. It's really scary.

Now it became possible now. Now we had to start saying, okay, what did we do wrong? Where did we miss, you know, what was our closing procedures like? Did we have, you know, all the things? And so we started to self correct, say we have to do everything we can so this never happens again. Knock on wood. So far, we haven't had it happen.

Yeah, well, yeah, it was really touching to read about the response. And there again was a great example of the human side that you mentioned. Like no one on the leadership team, you weren't worried about legal issues about how to respond or what to say, that the team just jumped into action.

Right. Were humans by the press. And Howard Schultz, CEO was there. And you know, most CEOs would, you know, their attorneys would tell him to don't talk. But Howard was sat on TV and talked to everybody and he tried to answer every question as openly and honestly as he could. Yeah, makes a difference.

Absolutely. Absolutely. As you kind of look to what's next for you in your life's work, what's on the horizon?

Well, you know, at my age, I've learned that I have to focus, that I don't have the advantage of a lot of time. I've got time, but I don't have the advantage of a lifetime of time or at least potential of that. So I just focusing on what I'm trying to do, which is help people. And I want to change how leaders lead. I think that we've spent way too much time in autocratic leadership and not trusting people. And I think that I am an advocate of the servant leadership model and I believe that works. And so I just try to, I go around the country, I go around the world talking to leaders and trying to get them to look at how they lead in a little different way. Because at the end of the day, you know, it's one by one we change the world.

You're a great example of, I think there's retirement is sort of a misguided notion. And there are so many people, I call them impactors, who when they turn, just because they turn an arbitrary age, like 65, they have no plans to stop their life's work. You know, ideally people have financial security, but for you, even after you retired from Starbucks, You've continued doing your life's work.

It wasn't easy, you know, it wasn't easy making that change. I got depressed, actually, after I left Starbucks because I was on such a fast track for so long. All of a sudden, you know, that rule I had that I wasn't Starbucks and Starbucks wasn't me. The truth of the matter is, I let that Starbucks creep into me, and which is what you do. So, you know, I had to figure out who I was after Starbucks. And I. Through that depression, some words came into my head that my life's work was still my life's work. And I started repeating that over and over to myself, and my life's work is still my life's work. What I was doing at Starbucks was helping people to grow. And that's how we built the business, how we built the organization, and that's what I end up doing right now, doing the same thing.

I love it. Last question. Since we talked about relationships and your wife, I'll pivot our nature of our conversation. Where did you meet your wife?

On a blind date.

Really?

I was 20 days out of a marriage, you know.

I wasn't interested in dating anybody. I didn't want to meet anybody. I didn't want to do any of that. And I had a friend that kept saying to me, howard, there's somebody you ought to meet. And I said, I'm not interested. And he kept pushing, pushing, pushing, until finally we went on a blind date, and that was it.

And did you know from the first date that, oh, there's really something here?

No, no, no, I didn't. She says she did, but she'd been divorced for six years before that, so she was probably more ready maybe, you know, I wasn't in my. Emotionally, I wasn't ready. It was difficult to leave somebody that I'd grown up with, and it was really hard. And I had had a little girl, and I just wasn't ready. But it was a blind date, and we worked through all sorts of stuff over a period of time, and she changed my life. She's a brilliant woman. She's got a PhD in social work, and she's not. We're an oncology social worker, and she just finished the leading textbook for oncology social all around the world, and she's an amazing human being, and she has taught me so much and changed my life for the better.

That's so amazing. Thank you for sharing. Howard, thank you so much for being here on the Pivot podcast. I'm just soaking up everything that you've shared. I'm really grateful for you and the work that you're doing and your perspective. Thank you.

Thanks, Jenny. Thank you so much for having me and have a great rest of your summer.

Thank you. You too. And where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

My email address, I have a website, howardbeehar.com and but they can reach me at hbhowardbehar.com and I always respond to everybody, so I have a. That's one of my rules. I never, if somebody writes me, they're going to get a call back or response. Wow. They take me away. But I do it.

I love it. Amazing. Amazing. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Howard. And thanks everybody for listening.

Take care. Bye. Bye.

All right, that wraps up this episode of the Pivot Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And Pivot is officially out, so grab your copy wherever books are sold. Even better, tell a friend and leave a review on Amazon. Reviews help other readers decide whether to purchase a copy, and it helps build a lot of momentum in these early days of the launch. Thank you all so much in advance. I couldn't do this without you.

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Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.