Building The Starbucks Empire w/ Howard Behar

Despite Starbucks employees seeking to unionize, the company prides itself on being a place that deeply cares about the workers. In today's episode, you will meet the man that helped make that happen. How often do you get the chance to tap into the mind of one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL CONSUMER-ORIENTED BUSINESS LEADERS for more than 50 years? Do you want to learn first-hand what it was like to grow STARBUCKS COFFEE from only 28 STORES TO MORE THAN 15,000 stores spanning five continents? This week’s guest, HOWARD BEHAR, has done that and a lot more. He is best known for guiding the Starbucks brand for 21 years as President of North America and as the founding President of Starbucks International. His philosophy of SERVANT LEADERSHIP is memorable for introducing lessons such as “The Person Who Sweeps the Floor Should Choose the Broom” and “Only the Truth Sounds Like the Truth.” If you want to LEAD OTHERS MORE EFFECTIVELY and EXPERT ADVICE on what it takes to grow your current business exponentially, you must listen to how Howard did it using servant leadership and how you can too. Howard and I also discuss why and how the right business CULTURE is a primary driving force of any company’s growth. He reveals some of the policies he implemented to EMPOWER employees to make decisions that put customers first. Part of this culture also involved recognizing employees, making sure they’re paid well, and that their voices were heard daily. Let me leave you with two final (and INCREDIBLE) facts. The systems and practices Howard and others put in place continue to breed success to this day. Although he retired when Starbucks had 15,000 stores, today, there are almost 33,000 STORES IN 83 COUNTRIES WORLDWIDE. Finally, and perhaps the most amazing thing of all, HOWARD SHARED HIS PERSONAL PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL and encourages YOU to reach out and contact him because it brings him joy and purpose. That’s only happened one other time in all the shows I’ve taped, and quite simply one of the most impressive displays of servant leadership I’ve ever seen. If you want to know what success is all about, grab a hot cup of coffee and get ready to enjoy a great hour filled with valuable lessons you can use in your own business and personal life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

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  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:36Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Mileage Show.

• 1:40Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the program, everybody. You know, the last 20 years, if you think about it, there's probably four or five really iconic companies, iconic brands, at least in the United States, worldwide. And you think of a Google, no matter what you think, Google, Amazon, there's a few others. But then there's Starbucks and it's one of the, it's really the brand for me. It's a non-tech brand that's just stood out and grown and just built an amazing company. And the man who's president of that company through the explosive phase of its growth is Howard Behar. And he is my guest here today. I'm so honored to have him. Howard got into, when Howard started with Starbucks, they had 20 some odd stores. Now they're upwards of 30,000. The company's exploded. And he's got

• 2:25Ed Mylett?

  a book called It's Not About the Coffee that I read cover to cover in a day. And if you're on the YouTube here, you can see me. The highlights are all over the book. I learned a great deal from the book and you are all gonna learn a great deal from Howard today. So Howard, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Ed, thanks for having me.

• 2:41Ed Mylett?

  It's so great to have you. I, uh, the lessons in the book, you know, I have to say something. I'm familiar with the concept of servant leadership. I've talked about it myself in my life, but you lived it. And you lived it from a small company, relatively small company, to 100,000 plus employees at one point. So let's just start, today we're guys, we're gonna talk about entrepreneurship, leadership in general, scaling. I have one of the experts of all time here with me today, and I'm gonna get everything out of that brain that I can. So Howard, for you, what's the definition of servant leadership from you?

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Well, in its simplest form, it's that leaders are here to serve, not be served. And our role as a leader is to help people achieve the things that they want out of their lives and help them grow as human beings. And in so doing, they help the organization grow. And I have this little equation I like to think about when I think about servant leadership. You grow the people, the people grow the organization, the organization grows the business. And it's pretty that simple. Our role as leaders is to grow people.

• 3:41Ed Mylett?

  Everybody says that, but in application, you know, as a company gets bigger sometimes too.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 3:48Ed Mylett?

  You can lose that a little. How did you guys not lose that at Starbucks? Was it structural? Was it just a culture thing? Or did you have systems in place that delivered on that promise? How did you do it?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  It's just being total focus. You know, it's what mattered at Starbucks. You couldn't get fired, Harley, by missing your numbers at Starbucks. But if you messed with the people. It was a quick way out the door or certainly a quick way into some very serious coaching. And if you couldn't make a grade in in how you treated people that you work with or the people that reported to in the organization, you just didn't have a place at Starbucks. Didn't mean you weren't a good person. It's just that you didn't fit with Starbucks. That's all. And that's what drove us and it continues to drive us.

• 4:28Ed Mylett?

  Does it dawn on you what I said in the beginning? I mean, I think it's true. There's you. You ask an average person, give me five brands the last 20 years, five companies. I think you'd list a Google or a Amazon. Those are tech companies, so they grew a certain way. But a brick and mortar business, I think first in most people's minds is a Starbucks. At your age now and what you've achieved, does it dawn on you what you all accomplished there? Or was it was it just the work and it's like a blur over time?

• 4:56Speaker 03

  No, you know, I walk into a Starbucks store. I'm almost one in one every day somewhere, getting a cup of coffee or something. And I'm always amazed myself, but you know, there were three guys that had responsibility at Starbucks leading the organization. I was one of them. Howard Schultz was the other and a guy named Warren Smith that passed away a couple of years ago. Anyway, you know, our job was basically to knock down the hurdles so that people could grow the business. That's what we did. And, uh, you know, it was the people that that did it, but we had to convince people that the purpose was bigger than themselves. And that how we wanted to do it by serving people, serving each other first and then serving those human beings we call customers.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  And if you signed on to that, the work was hard, but you know, I mean, it's amazing. I started when there were 28 stores. Like you said, I retired when there were 15,000. Now there's 35,000. I opened stores, had responsibility for open stores in 54 countries. It was the most interesting work, but it was the people that did it because they believed.

• 5:59Ed Mylett?

  You learn this from your mom and dad. There's this great story. By the way, I do my research on you. Right. There's this great story of your parents in the grocery store with the family with the bananas. And I just think this articulates, I think it just explains the concept that in a real world application that you're describing, would you share this awesome story with my audience?

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Sure. My dad, my dad was an immigrant and like many immigrants in the early 1900s, you know, they went into little retail businesses and, you know, they were serving people in their neighborhoods. And so my dad had this mom and pop grocery store. So my dad was 50 when I was born. So I, I, you know, I'd fool around and I'd sweep the floor. I'd just watch my dad or whatever it happened to be. And one day I was up at the cash register. My dad was ringing up a customer. And those are the days they had charge accounts, you know, he'd, people would come in and then you'd write it in their little book and then he'd bill them once a month. Anyway, my dad was ringing up this customer and he, and as he was doing it, he, he said to me, hey, Howard, will you go get me some bananas?

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Get me about six or eight bananas. And so I went back in the back of the store and I got the bananas. I brought them up. My dad put them in the bag and, and the customer's bag and the customer walked out of the store. And I was old enough to realize that my dad hadn't rung them up. You know, in those days, the cash register was all 10 keys across the top, 10 keys, and he had a hand crank, you know, he pulled down. I still have it actually at home. And, and so he didn't ring it up. And I said, Daddy, you forgot to ring the bananas up. And he just looked at me and he said, Howard, not everything in life do we need to get paid for. Some things we do just to help other people. And I happen to know these people aren't just our customers. They're our neighbors and our friends and they can't afford to buy fresh fruit.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  So I was just saying something, doing something nice for them, but, but, and that's what I always believed in. And so I didn't, you know, at eight or nine, I didn't think about it that much, you know? But as I got older, I remembered that little incident, you know, not everything we need to, we do in life do we need to get paid for. And he was so right. And as I got older, I tried to practice that and realize that that you don't need to get paid for everything in life, you know? It's how I got to Starbucks, actually.

• 8:10Ed Mylett?

  How so?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Howard Schultz, I said, Howard, when I met Howard Schultz, we went on about a year's dance. You know, he was looking at somebody with a college degree and somebody had food service experience. I had neither. And so I said to Howard, I said, let me work in the company for a week for free. You don't pay me. I just want to work in a company for a week. Here's what I want to do. I want to work in the stores for three days. I want to work on the trucks for a couple of days. I don't want to work in the plant for three days. And so I did that. And at the end of that week, I looked at him and I said, if you extend an invitation to me to join Starbucks, I would love to. And he did. And, you know, it was a valuable lesson. Too often in life, we think that we, we need to get something, you know, in order, in order to get something. We don't.

• 8:54Ed Mylett?

  What a great story. The more I've, God, you know, the more I get to know super successful business people, they're beyond entrepreneurs, the role you were in. This culture thing, it's not just an item on a list. It's, it's the thing. And it's, I don't think most entrepreneurs completely get this. Like that, that was, that is the main driving factor you're telling me. Cause obviously the coffee's good, there's systems in place, there's, but you're telling me that's the main driving force of this company that scaled so massively over the last few decades.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, without a question. Look, anybody can roast coffee and buy coffee. Every company, when I started, there were 21 other coffee companies that were actually larger than we were at the time.

• 9:37Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  And all of them focused on the coffee. We focused on the coffee too, but we primarily focused on the people first. You know, it was, it was, I used to say, we're not in the coffee business serving people, but we're in the people business serving coffee. And that little saying has lasted to this day. And it's absolutely true. Culture, you know, it's a funny word because we think it's a program. It's not. Culture is who you are. It's what your values are and how those values inform your actions and the decisions you make in your life. And it's pretty much that simple. So culture is a direct reflection of leadership. Period. You can't fake culture. If you're a jerk, you know, then you're gonna have a lot of jerks working in your company, right? If you care about people and that's what matters

• 10:22Speaker 03

  to you, then you're gonna have people that care about people working in your company. There's no escape. There's no escape.

• 10:27Ed Mylett?

  You want to think I learned about Starbucks and prepping for this, which surprised me. This is before your arrival. The thing I think entrepreneurs have to be open to is pivoting and going into verticals. I didn't know this. Starbucks, first off, wasn't founded by a bunch of coffee gurus.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 10:41Ed Mylett?

  And number two, they weren't even serving coffee in the very beginning. It was a bean company, correct? Isn't that incredible?

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Right. We were a retail company. We sold, we sold beans and chocolate and tea and cups and coffee makers. Never sold a cup of coffee till Howard Schultz. He saw the opportunity. And he was the one that drove it.

• 11:00Ed Mylett?

  The two Howards really moved that organization. It's so fascinating to study it. I want you to get the book. He has in the book, kind of like these 10 principles. And as I said, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur. I built multiple businesses. It's not often that I'm highlighting this much in a book. The third one is interesting to me because it's something I've struggled with, which is that you want people thinking independently.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:20Ed Mylett?

  And you have this great analogy about the broom that I'll let you share. But this is something for a lot of entrepreneurs because we're control freaks, right? Business owners, we're control freaks. It's sort of letting people think for themselves and trusting people to make decisions as well. So can you elaborate on that and give them that analogy also?

• 11:36Speaker 03

  That's so interesting, right? Entrepreneurs are independent thinkers usually, right?

• 11:40Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  They many times go against the grain, but they forget that they also need to have independent thinkers on their team. Why, why do they think that the people they hire should be different from them? If you want a high-charged team that accomplishes things, is creative and is always trying new stuff and celebrating failure as much as they celebrate success, then, you know, you gotta hire people that are not like you, but, but that can do things. So I have this saying that I used to say to everybody in the company. The person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. And it started with, I said, everybody should get to vote. Right, but I wanted something that was more meaningful. So I made up this little quote, "The person who sweeps the floors should choose a broom." We go out and we hire people that

• 12:25Speaker 03

  come in the organization and we hire them because we want them to help us grow and we want them to help us be better. But as soon as they get in the organization, we start telling them what they can't do. You know, we give them the handbook and the handbook says, "Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this." And if you do that, you're out of here. Right? What we should be saying, here's what we're trying to do here. Here's our greater purpose. Not here, we're not trying to just build thousands of stores. We're trying to do something unique. We're trying to use Starbucks coffee to build a bridge among people. So, and your role in that, why we're hiring you is to do X, Y, and Z. We want to have our cleanest floors in all of retail. So,

• 13:06Speaker 03

  you know, you hire that person, they come in and they, they work for two weeks and after two weeks you get together with them and you say, "So what do you think?" And the guy's so excited, he can hardly hold himself together. He says, "You know, Howard, I just love what I'm doing, but you know, I think I could increase floor sweeping productivity by 10% if I only had this broom that I saw on the internet the other night." You know how many leaders say, "Hey, just do it, just sweep the floor. Don't, don't talk to me about a new broom." And purchasing department's notorious because they'll say, "This is the broom we use, use it." You know, when really what we want people to do is be creative and find new ways of doing things.

• 13:46Ed Mylett?

  I gotta tell you, that shocks me. And the reason it shocks me is I've always viewed Starbucks as this regimented, systematic operation that didn't allow for a whole lot of creativity. And to be honest with you, I've sort of taught that from time to time in my career. So you're saying, but maybe the truth is, Howard, correct me if I'm wrong, if the systems are so strong,

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:05Ed Mylett?

  structurally, that that allows creativity from the people. Whereas if the systems are weaker, then that creativity could create kind of a looser environment. But if you have strong structures and systems in place that allows people to be creators more often, maybe that's true.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  That is absolutely true. Look, just about, and you've heard this before from other companies, just about every great new product that's been introduced in Starbucks came out of the field. Breakfast sandwiches, warming ovens that we put in, frappuccino came out of the field. Everything we have done has come because of an idea that somebody thought up in the field. And then, you know, we helped execute. But, but yeah, absolutely. That's, that's the way that it is. And you can't, you gotta have strong systems, you know, and processes. But the things that matter most are human interactions, right? There's no system for that. If, I, I remember I, I retired once and I came back from retirement and I walked to the store and I was looking all over and in the back room, back room, there was this poster. It said, be nice, be fast, be clean.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  I ripped that thing off the wall and I said, who put this up here? And it didn't make any difference. I said, how about just a sign that says be human? Cause that's all we really want, right? And that is not a system.

• 15:17Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Right?

• 15:19Ed Mylett?

  I, I'm surprised by that, Howard. I, I shouldn't be because obviously I know that that's the only way a company can scale and get bigger and really have this bigger vision, bigger dream, which is also one of your principles. But for some reason, I don't know why, in my own mind, when it came to Starbucks, I'm thinking, okay, it's coffee. You gotta get someone in there, out of there. We want the right music playing all. But when I'm starting to read your book, I'm like, my gosh, no. Turns out these principles apply to everything, including Starbucks, except you took it to a whole different level. When I ask you about this, about servant leadership, recognition. So I start reading and I'm like, wait a minute, I never knew this, but these aprons the baristas wear are actually a form of, but almost no one in the world knows this.

• 16:03Ed Mylett?

  But the aprons actually the baristas wear actually are a sign of recognition based on their designation or achievement or expertise. Is that not true?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  They have a black apron. We have these black aprons. These are for coffee masters. And yeah, they're a recognition of, of who they are. You put on that apron and you are, you know, you're somebody inside the organization and it's meaningful. And, you know, it wasn't the driving force. Recognition comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I used to send company birthday and anniversary cards to never be in the company. Told by we had about 10,000 people. I used to take them on airplanes, sign everyone, put a note in. I didn't know all the people, but I put personal notes and I signed each one by hand. And then as I, when I retired, then they took it on with the company. I don't know if they still do it, but people did it. But, but it was a way of saying, thank you and acknowledge them that they were real people

• 16:56Speaker 03

  and they had value. They weren't just some number, you know, and I can't tell you how many people had, still have those birthday cards. I've been retired for over 10 years, still have the birthday and anniversary cards and have kept them all these years.

• 17:09Ed Mylett?

  You serious?

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:12Ed Mylett?

  What about this idea of pay? So we talked about recognition, we've talked about culture. Pay matters, right? And there's this story in the book that you have about where you wanted to get pay above minimum wage. You wanted to make sure people were paid better. There's a little bit of a miscalculation, I think, that happened there. But so I want you to just tell that story a little bit for us and then, because entrepreneurs are listening to this, right? And they're, they're making decisions every day on meeting payroll. How do I treat people better? What about recognition, culture, all these other decisions? So I know this isn't the core of the book, but it was interesting to me because it ended up working out okay. But talk about the pay increase there and your focus on it and why you want to do it. I think it comes from, you truly cared so much, you wanted these families to be rewarded and they felt that.

• 17:56Ed Mylett?

  But I'd like you to talk about it.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Well, you know, when I first got there, we were paying the minimum wage, basically. And I thought, geez, you know, is this really who we want to be? I mean, you know, Howard, by the way, Schultz, you know, he was the one that he, he brought healthcare into all part-time workers. No company had ever done it. Everybody got the same healthcare, from the CEO down to the barista, as long as you work 20 hours a week or more, which 90% of the people did. So everybody got healthier. Everybody got equity in the company. We weren't public. We were private and everybody got stock options, someday hoping we might go public. And I said, what goes along with this, the daily pay, we can't be a minimum wage payer. And so I said, how do we get at least a dollar an hour over minimum wage?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  And, and how do we raise wages when they, when they, as they attain certain things? And so I put it in a wage increase into place, into place. And I figured out how we were going to pay for it. Only we blew the number. We, I was totally made a mistake on what it was actually going to cost. I thought it was going to cost us one point, one percentage point increase. It ended up costing double. So I'm on vacation when the P and L's come out for that first month where it was implemented. And I get this call from Schultz. He says, what the hell happened? And I said, I don't know. I'll get back right away. I went back from vacation. I went in and I figured we'd be just, we'd made a mistake. And, and instead of Howard being mad, he said, okay, how do we fix it? I said, I'll fix it. And we did. And I had to rate, make some adjustments,

• 19:27Speaker 03

  raise some prices here and there. And I fixed it. But, you know, we've tried to stay with that. It's gotten harder because, you know, what's happened to the state of Washington that I live, minimum wage now is, is, you know, getting way up there in the city of Seattle, way up there. You know, so it's hard to stay with it, but you do it and you try to make the difference if you can. But it makes a difference. I mean, pay is, pay, you know, is, is not the most important thing. You don't keep, you don't keep people just because you pay them well. You keep people because you treat them well, because you care about them, you treat them with respect and dignity.

• 20:02Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. More and more surveys tell us more and more companies also want to be a part of a co- people, but rather want to be a part of a cause. They want to be, they want to believe that their work has meaning.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:12Ed Mylett?

  And was that part of your culture as well? The charitable, the, the social stuff that you guys would do? And also just how people would feel by having the experience of walking in the store gave meaning to people. I can tell you, when I walk into Starbucks, for the most part, I mean, obviously there's variances everywhere. There's people everywhere. People seem really happy that are working there.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are.

• 20:33Ed Mylett?

  They do. I mean, that's

• 20:35Speaker 03

  It's not a perfect place, you know that.

• 20:37Ed Mylett?

  Of course. No, I've walked into ones where there aren't, but vast, the vast majority of the time. I think one thing entrepreneurs lack that they forget, humans forget, is you're always making people feel something.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:49Ed Mylett?

  Right. You're always making them feel something. So just being intentional about what it is they're going to feel matters. Is that something you had always thought about yourself?

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Always, always. I had to have, I have, I live my life according to what I call my six Ps. Everything in my life has to have a purpose greater than myself, right? It has to be, you know, it's gotta be bigger than me. The second P is if I have a purpose greater than myself, then I damn well better be passionate about it. Scream it from the highest mountain tops. You're a guy like that. You have a lot of passion, right? The third thing is persistence. You know, the river of life has a lot of rocks in it. Some of the rocks we see and we hit anyway. Some of the rocks we don't see and we slam into, and then some rocks we put there ourselves, right? But the key in life is getting over, under, around, or through those rocks. Every great entrepreneur I've ever known, that's one word I would use to describe them. They don't know from no.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And the fourth P is patience. Nothing comes always in the time that you want it to come. You know, you wanna be, you're practicing a skill, you wanna become a great piano player, you want it fast. You wanna become rich, you want it to come fast. You wanna develop some money, you want it to come fast. You want your employees to come faster, you know, to get it faster, you know? But the truth of the matter is, it's life takes a little bit of patience. You got, sometimes it takes longer than you think it should take, but you gotta stay with it. That's where persistence and patience come together. Then the fifth P is performance. We don't like to be measured. Human beings don't like to be measured. It's just the nature of the human base, beach, you know?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  But we're getting measured all the time. You're married, you know this, you got kids, your wife is measuring you all the time. She may not give you a performance review every day, right? Maybe she does, I don't know. But, but she is measuring, and so are your kids, right? When you say, "I'm gonna be at the soccer game," you better damn well show up, right? When you say, "I'm gonna be home for dinner," you better be there. If you agree to have a monogamous relationship, then you better live up to that. You know, and it's the same way at work. If you say to your boss, look, I'll get this done, then you better get it done, or you at least better be early in telling them you're not going to get it done on time, or whatever it happens to be. And can you have some help? The performance matters in this life. And then the six P, the most important P is people. Everything we do in life is about serving another human being. I don't care what your

• 23:10Speaker 03

  job title is. There's only one reason God put us on this earth, and that's to serve other human beings. You're a widget maker that makes widgets, going to a printing press that the publishing company buys and produces a magazine or newspaper that gets delivered to somebody's door to inform or entertain them. The lowly widget maker's greater purpose is to help people have a better life. But so often, we don't understand that those connections. And it's up to us and our leadership to help us find those connections. Because that's the key in life. Purpose greater than ourselves.

• 23:43Ed Mylett?

  You're remarkable, Howard. I'm enjoying you so much. I'm grateful I'm sitting here listening to you, just candidly. This is really an honor for me. You're a good listener. And you say that that's one of the things that you believe great leaders do well.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:58Ed Mylett?

  Talk a little bit about that. And also, was that something you were naturally already good at? Or did you have to start, did you have to be intentional about when you were with people? I don't think you would struggle with this, but some leaders have this tendency to think they're the smartest person in the room all the time. And they don't listen to listen, they listen to hurry up and get their response out very quickly. And even when I do interviews, I'm trying, I'm trying to be very conscious of just listening to somebody when I'm in their presence. So how important is listening as a leader? And was that something you were naturally good at? Or did you have to work at it?

• 24:30Speaker 03

  No, I had to work at it. Men in particular are problem solvers. You know, my wife would come home, she'd want to, she'd want to talk about her day. She's an oncology social worker. So she's dealing with people that are dying of cancer. And she'd want to talk, and she said this had this problem or that problem. Immediately, I want to go into solution mode, you know? And one day I was reading this book, and in the book was there's this little quote, and it's a two word quote, compassionate emptiness. Compassionate emptiness, full of compassion, but empty of solutions. Right? So that means you gotta be, you gotta, with compassion requires you to listen, not just with your ears, but with your eyes and with those little antenna that we don't see, but they're actually there in our heads. And so

• 25:12Speaker 03

  listening is a critical skill. I remember I worked for somebody in my early days, in my early twenties, and And I was managing a furniture store for him and he used to say, Howard, after you close the door and you lock the door, I want you to sit in the middle of the showroom for fifteen or twenty minutes. I want you to close your eyes and I want you to just listen. I thought, his name was Sid. I said, Sid, what are you talking about? Listen, there's nobody on. And he said, listen to what the walls are saying. Listen to what the walls are saying. And you know, it took me a long time to tune into the walls, but I did. And you can feel what's going on. I used to get so I could walk into a store, not talk to anybody and just feel it. You know, you feel the energy, you know, and it's,

• 25:55Speaker 03

  it's, uh, it's, we have it inside of us to do this, but we don't know how to listen with our whole self.

• 26:02Ed Mylett?

  You just reminded me of something that I used to do, but since our new working dynamic was Zoom, I haven't done. You know, I used to do, I used to, in my office, I used to like to stay after everybody had left. And I would, I loved walking the office when no one was there. And I love just walking, but I'm getting emotional now. It's so bizarre. This was years ago, but I would walk by someone, just stand with them even though they weren't there. And just take some time and be with them even though they weren't present and think about their families and think about what they were going through and what they wanted and what their dreams were and what they were gifted at. And then I do that again, you know, with the office next door. And it just gave me a gratitude and an appreciation and a ability to listen even to them when they weren't

• 26:46Ed Mylett?

  present. I just wanted to share that with my, my audience, just sometimes just sitting in reflection about the folks that you're so blessed to lead and just giving yourself some mental and emotional time to think about them. I just feel like that energy is felt by them even if they're not present.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  It is. Energy is there. The energy is there. There's no question.

• 27:06Ed Mylett?

  What did you, I'm gonna ask you a crazy question, one maybe you haven't been asked before. So you're at the, you know, I'm 50 years old, you're ahead of me a little bit. And so you're, you're in the, you're in the third or fourth quarter of life. And I'm wondering if there's something you used to really strongly hold as a belief about business or leadership at any point that you no longer believe that's evolved or changed. You've changed your mind about. And I've watched a lot of interviews with you in preparing for this. I hadn't seen someone ask you that before. I get asked, I got asked that about a year ago and it stumped me a little bit. But it was good because it caused me to really think through. There are, I have changed my thinking about certain things. I mean, there's got, can't, if I haven't changed in 30 years of being in business, that'd be sort of strange. Is there something you used to believe? Maybe it's a tough one, that you don't anymore?

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  You changed your belief systems about?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, in my early days, I thought that businesses were there to make profits. You know, and they're there to maximize their profits. And over time, I have come to the conclusion that we're, businesses are around for much, much more. We're there to optimize profits, which means that we have to take in the whole universe, the whole, our communities, our, you know, we call them stakeholders, but I don't like that word. You know, it's the people we work with, the communities in which we live and operate, the world in which we live and operate. You know, if we're not adding value to the world, then we're not being a good entrepreneur. We're not being a good business person. We, our primary role is to add value to the world. And in the, and so doing, we make a living, we make some money, you know, we can buy

• 28:38Speaker 03

  a nice house, we, we help our kids, we, we help the people that we work with, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it's what counts really is making a better world. And that required us to think holistically about the world in which we live. It's not about maximizing profits. That, that theory doesn't hold any water. And if you think about it, if it was always about maximizing profits, then what's the great, if that becomes the greater purpose of the organization, then, then there is no purpose. Because the purpose is about you, you know, and Starbucks, you know, we had, you know, Jim Collins, who Jim Collins is good to great, build the last, right? So when we were a young company, we had about 200 stores, we're kind of, you know,

• 29:21Speaker 03

  you're growing fast, even at 200 stores and you're trying to figure out who, all of a sudden, you kind of lose track sometimes of why you're there, you know? And it's like when you're married a long time, you lose track of why you got married, right? And that's why you have to remind each other why you got together. Well, it's the same thing in business. And so Jim Collins helped us create our BHAC, which turned into kind of our thriving force. And it goes like this. We wanted to be one of the most well-known and respected organizations in the world. Now, remember 200 stores, and we said in the world, that's a big dream, right? Known for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit. Not a damn thing about how much coffee we're going to sell, profits, anything like that. Known for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  And that drives us today. Truth is, it drives my life. I plagiarized that. That became my mission statement. Every day, I want to nurture and inspire the human spirit, beginning with myself, first and then for others. And that's how I live my life.

• 30:18Ed Mylett?

  I can see that. I can see it on your face. I can feel it in your spirit. And I'm sure that when people are around you, that that was infectious. I do feel it. I didn't, you know, I didn't know, I'd read your writing, I had read interviews, but now listening to you and observing you, that's so obvious to me that that's who you are. And by the way, everybody, when you're listening to this, because you could become more of something. So if that's not all of you right now, right? There's not the totality of what bleeds out of your, you know, sweats out of your pores every single day. When you begin to focus on something like this, these elements of you grow. I'm sure you're more this way now than you were at 42 years old. True?

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Sure. You know, I've been a believer in affirmations my whole life, right? And I still do affirmations every day. Probably my most significant affirmation is I am enough, I have enough, I do enough. You know, and, and the other one is I love myself unconditionally.

• 31:15Ed Mylett?

  Seventy what years old? How old are you?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Seventy seven.

• 31:19Ed Mylett?

  Seventy seven years old, and you're telling me that you still say that to yourself every single day?

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Every single day, every single day, and I've done it for 50 years.

• 31:28Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my God.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Every day before I go to bed, I have this little habit. I go look in the mirror and I say, Howard, how did you do today? And it's how I did against my mission, against my values, right? Against my six Ps. And, and, and then I also have a five year plan and Lynn and I have done it together. My wife and I have always done a plan together. We just updated it. Now at 77, that started to get pretty optimistic, you know? And, but we do, and, and we have it against all the, all the facets for life. Spirituality, material, economic growth, uh, what we used to call career. Now we call life's work. Our marriage, our children, our grandchildren, travel, uh, uh, personal growth, you know? And then we go and we set goals underneath each one of those headings.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Some of the goals are personal. They're for, for just for me. Some of them are just for her. But in our marriage, we have goals together. Uh, what kind of house we want to have? Where do we want to live? We had goals for that. And, and then, you know, we work towards those goals.

• 32:29Ed Mylett?

  That inspires the heck out of me right there. Now I listen for what people don't say also. And, uh, I just want to go back on that. Seventy seven years old, you just set up a five year game plan with your wife again with all of the detail and specificity in there. You're making me evaluate how struck, you know, how focused I am right now. But I listen for what you don't say. You weren't measuring that stuff up against your competition. And in the book, there's no reference really anywhere to the competition. And I, I want to ask you about it because like a lot of entrepreneurs become sort of obsessed with their competitors or want to know what their competitors are doing or, or measuring themselves against them. And you don't talk about that. And so I, and I don't either. I have a reason why I don't,

• 33:12Ed Mylett?

  but I want to know why you don't. Is that just, it just, you just didn't care? It just depleted your energy? It didn't matter? Why?

• 33:18Speaker 03

  I mean, we cared. It wasn't that we didn't pay attention. We did, but it wasn't the driving force. Look, you compete against yourself to be all you can be. If you start competing against somebody else, then you're, you can only be as good as they are. I want, we want to be better than we are. You know, and, and that's the key. And that never ends, by the way. Seventy-seven years old, I'm still trying to grow. I'm still trying to learn. It never stops. People think you get to some point in your life, ah, that's it. It's not ah, because the excitement in life is growing, is being better, you know, is being better. I read all about you. I'm thinking to myself, God, why didn't I ever get those weights?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  You know, I'm sure, you know, and, you know, and so, you know, you want to be better than, than you. That's it. Anyone to keep growing. You can't, measuring yourself against others is just a waste of time.

• 34:12Ed Mylett?

  I so agree with you. And you inspire me because I'm looking at my future. By the way, this last part of the interview, I get to play for all my friends and family who are always asking me, when are you gonna stop? When are you gonna stop? You know, I'm like, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't know how to live without trying to get better or trying to grow. And I also think it takes an element of humility to want to grow.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:31Ed Mylett?

  In other words, I, I know I'm not where I could be or should be, and I know I can make a bigger difference. And I'd like to think that that comes from some place of humility, also a place of confidence, believing I can grow. So there's this nuance between the two. If there's some confidence, knowing I can grow, and there's some humility, knowing I need to.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. You know, we should always be pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Yeah. That should never stop. You know, being curious, being inquisitive, struggling against some things, that's good for your soul. And, you know, I don't want to stop that. That's why, you know, every day I want to nurture and inspire the human spirit. Most of the things I do in life are tiny little things. Picking up a piece of paper off the street, you know, and sometimes I get opportunity like being with you. Yeah, but most of the things I do are not that. It's talking to somebody on the phone. Uh, before we get off, I'm gonna do it right now before we get too close. And so I want to give my phone number and my email address.

• 35:23Ed Mylett?

  Unbelievable.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  To everybody. So my phone number is two oh six nine seven two seven seven seven six. My email address is [email protected]. I will talk to anybody at any time. If you write me, you're going to get a response. I may be a little slow, but, but, you know, I get, I get to everybody because I think that fills my soul and I hopefully can help other people along the way.

• 35:48Ed Mylett?

  The president of Starbucks for multiple decades just gave you his phone number, everybody. And by the way, it's printed in other places. This man is incredible. You know what's amazing to me? I have to just share this with you. Only two people have ever done that with me that I thought, oh my gosh, give me the phone. You know, the other one was Steve Wozniak.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:07Ed Mylett?

  He's co-founder of Apple. It's amazing that, you know, he was one of the driving force behind Apple. You're one of the ones behind Starbucks and it's the only other person I've ever seen do it. I'm in a conference with Wozniak. He goes, hey, I want to give everybody my phone number. I went, are you, oh my gosh, really? And same exact, it's just, it's such a great inspiring lesson for me. And now I think some people may be listening to this. I'm just so struck by you, Howard, and I know that you don't like that. I know that.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  I hate that.

• 36:33Ed Mylett?

  I know, I know.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  I had a little voice on my shoulder saying, Howard, don't listen to this BS.

• 36:38Ed Mylett?

  I know, but, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't hear it and that it shouldn't be expressed because what it is, is really gratitude. And I, I've read enough about you, even my introduction, you know, I read Howard, don't give them, I'm the same way. When I get introduced on stage, what should we say? I say, just say, here's Ed Mylak. But I don't like big introductions or anything like that either because most of them are exaggerated in the first place. But I think people may be listening to this and they're in a tough time. And you write about this in the book, so I'd like you to talk about it. Hey, Howard, this treaty people thing great is great. This inspiring and nurturing the human spirit. I like it a lot. I'm going to get around to it when I'm out in this difficult time. Right now, I gotta eat. Right now, it's stressful. Right now, there's been, you know, economic pressure put on my business. And you talk about this in the book, pretty, at a pretty lengthy pace.

• 37:23Ed Mylett?

  What would you say to that person who says, all of that sounds good and I want to do it, but right now, I gotta, I gotta make a buck. You know, a lot of people think that.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  You can't do, you can't go that way, look, and make a buck, right? When you push a button down, another button is going to pop up. I don't care what button you put down, push down. If you push down the treat people with respect and dignity button, what's going to happen with the people that work with you? Right? They're gonna pop up and they're gonna say, "He's treated me well, I wanna treat him well." If you go the opposite way, what do you think Button's gonna pop up? Well, if he's all in it for himself, then why shouldn't I be all in it for myself? You know, there's no escape from that. So, look, you know, treating people with respect and dignity or servant leadership is not this soft, gentle, mushy stuff. Servant leadership is about performance. You have to perform.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  And so, leaders have a responsibility to set high expectations. But we get performance not on the backs of people, but with people.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Okay, not on the backs of people, but with people. And, you know, look, servant leadership is not the only leadership way, style. You know, and treating people with respect and dignity, a lot of companies don't do that. I can go down the list of Uber. The guy that founded Uber was not exactly treated with respect and dignity. I live in a city in Seattle, right, close to Seattle. Microsoft was not exactly a nice place to work. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were yellers, screamers, abusers. Not physical abuse, but, but, you know, if you came in with an idea that they didn't like, they'd just call you stupid. I mean, really, use those words.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  They basically lost 10 years of performance because of it. And they put the guy, a guy that had been in it a long time, I'm sorry, I can't remember his name right now, but who's now CEO. You know what, if you look at their performance over the past seven, six, seven years since he's been in there, it's been unbelievable. People that were leaving Microsoft now wanna come back. Why? Because he, he really changed the company. It's, it's not that there, there anybody was smarter, it's he started treating, treating people with respect. And, and it became more people-centric, and it totally changed the organization. And that's all he basically did. I mean, yeah, maybe he had some ideas about some different direction. But, you know, that wasn't what changed it, was how he treated his people.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Look, you treat people well, they wanna do well.

• 39:49Ed Mylett?

  I believe that's

• 39:50Speaker 03

  So simple.

• 39:51Ed Mylett?

  I look at, I look at, you're talking about Microsoft and I even, you look at Jobs, Jobs is sort of known as sort of a ruthless, very difficult, demanding guy.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  But he was honest about it and they knew who he was and he acknowledged who he was. See, the worst devils are the ones that say, we're a people, we care about people here. Right? People are most important asset. Whenever I hear some, somebody say people are most important asset, I say they don't get it. You know, people are not assets. You own assets. Assets are trucks, computers. You don't own people. You know, an asset always gives you what you expect. You go to turn the engine on in the truck, it starts up. People never give you what they, what you expect. That's, that's the fun of life. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but you know, it's, yeah. But you go, I mean, I can almost go down the list of companies that abuse their people and show you where they are, you know, and today.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  And the ones that, that have done a good job have been successful.

• 40:46Ed Mylett?

  I, I think I would add too, is that usually those leaders who don't have a servant leadership mentality either burn themselves out or burn out their welcome at their own companies. And he, Jobs was transparent about that, but he also had a guy who was in and out all the time with like was, who's the kindest soul that's ever walked the earth.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, he had him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, it's exact, it is really exactly that way. Look, I, I don't say this is the pathway for everybody. I would never say that. Look, if you're an asshole, then go to work for a company full of assholes, excuse the expression.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  Right? Better to be honest about who you are, right? And what you want and be there. Look, every football coach is different, as you know. Look at Pete Carroll, what is he like? He's a supporter, yeah, raw, you know, cared about people. We know football coaches that are abusive. You know, and, you know, and some players like to be in those kind of environments. So be wherever it fits you. That's not my style, but that may be somebody else's.

• 41:48Ed Mylett?

  I actually think Pete Carroll is a great example because you look at him and he's the oldest coach in the NFL. Most people don't know that and I think one of the reasons he still has the energy and is still welcome there is he has been a servant-type leader. These other guys tend to burn themselves out or leave, have Hall of Famers leave them late in their career. That's all I'll say about that. But you gave your phone number out earlier. A couple more questions, Howard, and thank you for this. This is a master class. And I've enjoyed it so much. I know my audience has as well. I can feel people sharing this everywhere, but you gave your phone number out, your email out. And so you're known as a great mentor. What does, what should, what should someone expect from a mentee? In other words, if I want to be mentored by somebody, what should the expectations be of me?

• 42:30Ed Mylett?

  That I need to bring to the table if I'm looking for a mentor. It's not easy. I have to say, please help me, please mentor me, no matter what environment you're in. There's accountability and responsibility on my end as the person being mentored as well. What would you say to that person?

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Number one, be curious. Don't come in with you think you know it all. You don't, right? The second thing is be humble, right? The third thing is a tremendous desire to improve yourself, to be all you can be. And, and, and then maybe the one that I said, love yourself unconditionally. Try to love yourself unconditionally. But, but the most important thing I think is that, are those three things, is that you've got to be curious. You've got to want to grow as a human being and, you know, just because you have a mentor doesn't mean, everything a mentor says doesn't mean it's right for you. You've got, you have to have discernment. Here's the thing for me.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  The first thing you should do when you're working with a mentor, a mentor should do with you is to help you figure out what your core values are in life. And they should be written down, right? And you can go on the internet and find 300 words that represent core value, human values. You'll get it down to 50 pretty easy. And, and, you know, those will all represent things that are, you're about, but get it down to each and these are the most sacrosanct things that really matter to you. And then write a sentence about each. What do those values mean? If you say I'm honest, what does honesty mean to you? My first core value is honesty. What does it mean to me? You know, so you have to decide what, what you're going to do. And those core values drive your life. And then have a mission for yourself. Where are you going?

• 44:11Speaker 03

  What do you want to leave behind? You know? And then, you know, have a plan, set goals. You know, if you don't know where you're going, any path will get you. Live a life with intention. So those are the important things in being, having mentee mentor relationship.

• 44:25Ed Mylett?

  I, uh, enjoyed today so much. I don't want it to end. I know my eyes going, Ed, keep going. But the fact is there are time constraints on these things. So I'm going to ask you one last question and I just want to say thank you in advance. I've enjoyed this tremendously. I'm curious, um, if you, if I ran into you in a Starbucks. It's interesting, Howard. In all of my interviews, most of them at the end, I say to my guests, I say, so if someone met you at a Starbucks, that's actually what I say. And they got two or three minutes with you and they said, because I think you just answered some of it now, but, and I want to be somebody. I want to be happy. I want to be 77 years old and I want to look back on my life and think, you know what? Some of my work mattered. I've built a pretty good family. I built a decent life. I've helped some people.

• 45:07Ed Mylett?

  I still want to grow and I don't want to go get to 77 years old and look back with a bunch of regrets in my life. And, you know, I'm not exactly sure where to begin or what to think. And I appreciated this entire conversation today, but if someone had a couple of minutes with you and you just said, well, this is what I would tell you. What would, what would someone with your experience, which is you've got a seat to the world and to a company and a business that almost no one's ever had before and to a life, frankly, what would you, what would you say to them?

• 45:34Speaker 03

  I'm going to show you something here.

• 45:37Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Reaching into my briefcase, excuse me.

• 45:40Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  So on this piece of paper right here, I'm showing in front of you.

• 45:46Ed Mylett?

  Yep, you are showing.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  With me for, for, let's see, I'm 77. I started doing this when I was about 26.

• 45:52Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  So it's 50 years. And this is a picture of Howard in 50 words or less. Right? It has my core values on it, my mission statement, and how I do everything, my six Ps. So, it tells me about how, when I'm under stress, I'm just like every other human being. Or even when I'm not under stress, when I have tremendous excitement or something, I lose track sometimes of me.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  And I need to remind myself. And so I have this here to remind myself. I know every word on this page, but whenever I get to a point where, oh, I just pick it up and I just read it real quick, and it reminds me. So, you know, if you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there. So have a path, have a plan. And then, most importantly, if you want to have a fulfilling life, you've got to be open to experiencing everything in life. Joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, disappointment, the thrill of accomplishment, the thrill of failure, the disappointment of failure, everything. I remember one time my daughter had a best friend, a young guy that had a drug and alcohol problem, and

• 46:59Speaker 03

  he overdosed. And my daughter was just beside herself, right? Because she was so close to him. And I was on my boat, maybe a hundred miles away, and I got off my boat and I had a seaplane come pick me up and flew us to where my daughter was. And I went into the hospital where this young man was sitting. And I just sat on the bed with him, all alone.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Right? All alone. And I watched him die. And I said to him, "It's okay to go. You know, you've been a good person. You've lived an okay life. Don't be sad." And as I watched him die, I realized I'd never experienced that before in my life. And I have never forgotten that experience of being there with that young man, and tears coming down my face as he was leaving us, and realizing, you know, that he had struggled, just as many human beings struggle. And so you have to be able to experience that as well. Everything, the goal in life is not happiness. It's not to be happy. Happiness is part of life. It's little pieces of happiness that

• 48:07Speaker 03

  come into life. The joy when you see how your kids play sports, my kids, my granddaughter is a great soccer player, right? She loves soccer. And to watch her do an assist or a goal, God, it's so much fun. But, you know, also to sit with her when she's in tears about something. Got to experience it all to have a fulfilling life. So try to live a fulfilling life and you won't be disappointed.

• 48:30Ed Mylett?

  This has been a fulfilling conversation for me. Really fulfilling.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thanks for the great questions. I love it.

• 48:37Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. What a great conversation. I hope you guys all just saw that this man's got, it's like laminated with all of who Howard is and who Howard is is remarkable. And it's uh, I get Starbucks now. And so the book, guys, is not about the coffee. I know you're all gonna go get it. You're probably texting Howard right now and emailing him. But today was so fulfilling for me. Howard Behard, thank you so much for today, brother.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  God bless. Thank you very much.

• 49:02Ed Mylett?

  All right, guys. Share the show with everybody. Fastest growing show in the world for a reason. And I think today's just another unbelievable example of how blessed we are to have remarkable people share their wisdom with us. Max out, everybody. Take care.