Building The Starbucks Empire

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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, each 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 his growth is Howard B. Har and he is my guest here today. I'm so honored to have him.

Howard got into, when Howard Starbucks had 20 some odd stores, now there are upwards of 30,000 companies exploded. And he's got 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 going to learn a great deal from Howard today.

So, Howard, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's so great to have you.

The lessons in the book, you know, I have to say something. I'm familiar with the concept of certain 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. Say we're going to talk about entrepreneurship, leadership in general, scaling at one of the experts of all time here with me today. And I'm going to get everything out of that brain that I can. So Howard, for you, what's the definition of servant leadership from you?

Well, in a 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 that people grow the organization, the organization grows the business. And it's pretty that simple. Our role is leaders to grow people. Everybody says that, but an application, you know, as a company gets bigger sometimes too.

Sure. You can lose that. How did you guys not lose that at Starbucks? Was it structural?

Was it just a culture thing or just systems in place that delivered on that promise? How did you do it? It's just being total focus. You know, it's what matters.

It's Starbucks. You couldn't get fired hardly by missing your numbers. It's Starbucks. But if you mess with the people, it was a quick way out the door or certainly quick way into some very serious coaching.

And if you couldn't make the grade and how you treated people that you work with or the people that report to the organization, you just didn't have a place at Starbucks. It didn't mean you weren't a good person. It's just that you didn't fit in Starbucks. That's what drove us.

And it continues to drive us. Does it dawn on you when I said in the beginning? I mean, I think it's true. There's, you ask an average person, give me five brands in 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, is it dawn on you what you all accomplished there? Or was it just the work and it's like a blur over time? No, I walk into a Starbucks store. I'm almost in one every day somewhere getting a cup of coffee or something.

And I'm always amazed myself. But there were three guys that had responsibility at Starbucks for the organization. I was one of them. Howard Schultz was the other, and a guy named Orn Smith the best way a couple years ago.

Anyway, our job was basically to knock down the hurdles so that people could grow the business. That's what we did. And it was the people 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 person and serving those human beings we call customers. And if you sign on to that, the work was hard. But you know, I mean, it's amazing. I started when they're 28 stores.

Like you said, I retired when they were 15,000. Now there's 35,000. I opened stores, I had responsible open stores in 54 countries. It was the most interesting work.

But it was the people that did it because they believed. You learned 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? Sure. My dad was an immigrant.

And like many immigrants in the early 1900s, they went into little retail businesses. And you know, there were certain people in their neighborhoods. And so my dad had this mom and pop grocery store. So my dad was 51.

I was born. So I, I, I, I flew 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 with the cash register.

My dad was ringing up a customer. And those are the days they had charge accounts. You know, people come in and then you'd write it in their little book and then you'd bill them once a month. Anyway, my dad was ringing up this customer and he was doing it.

He said to me, Hey, how are we going to get me some bananas? Give 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 back and the customer's back and the customer walked out of the store. And I was all enough to realize that my dad hadn't run them up. You know, those days the cash register was all 10 keys across the top 10 keys and you had a hand crank. You know, you pulled down, I still have it actually at home.

And so he didn't bring it up. And I said, Dad, he's ready to ring the bananas up. And he just looked at me and 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 fruits. So I was just saying something, doing something nice for them.

But that's what I always believed in. And so I, you know, eight or nine, I didn't think about it that much. You know, but as I got older, I remember that little incident, you know, not everything we needed, we do like that we need to get paid for. And it 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 like, you know, it's how I got to Starbucks, actually. So Howard Schultz, I said, Howard, when I met Howard Schultz, we went on about a year's dance. And he was looking at somebody with a college degree. And somebody had food service, I had to either.

And so I said, how are I said, let me work in the company for a week, for free. Don't pay me. I just want to work on a company for a week. Here's what I want to do.

I'm working on stores for three days. I want to work on the trucks for a couple days. I want to work on the plant for three days. And so I did that.

And at the end of that, we, I looked at him and 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 need to get something, you know, in order to get something we don't. What a great story.

The more I've got, you know, the more I get to know super successful business, whether it be entrepreneurs, the role you were in, this culture thing, it's not just an item on a list. It's the thing. And it's, I don't think most entrepreneurs completely get this. Like that was, that's the main driving factor you're telling me because obviously the coffee's good.

There's systems in place. There's what you're doing. That's the main driving force of this company that's failed so massively over that. Yeah, without a question.

Look, anybody can roast coffee and buy coffee. When I started, there were 21 other company companies that were actually larger than we were at the time. 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. 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 are and how important are actions and decisions you make in your life. And it's pretty much that simple. So culture's a direct reflection of leadership.

Period. You can't fake culture. If you're a jerk, you know, then you're going to have a lot of jerks working in your company. Right?

If you care about people, that's what matters to you, then you're going to have people that care about people working in your company. There's no escape. There's no escape. You wouldn't think I learned about Starbucks and prepping for this, which surprises me before you're a rival.

They think entrepreneurs have to be open to is pivoting and going into verticals. I didn't know this. Starbucks first up wasn't founded by a bunch of coffee gurus. Oh, and number two, they weren't even serving coffee in the very beginning.

It was a bean company, correct? Isn't that incredible? We are a retail company. We sold beans and chocolate and tea and cups and coffee makers never sold a cup of coffee until Howard Schultz.

He saw the opportunity and he was on a drove it. The two hours really moved that organization is so fascinating to study it. I want 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 in the world of multiple businesses. It's not often that I'm highlighting this much in a book. The third one is interesting to make is that someone I've struggled with, which is that you want people thinking independently. And you have this great analogy about the broom that I'll let you share.

But this is something for a lot of entrepreneurs who's work control freaks, right? Business owners work 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?

It's so interesting, right? Entrepreneurs are independent thinkers usually, right? They have 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 charge team that accomplishes things, it's great. And it's always trying new stuff accelerating failures as much as they celebrate success, then you know, that you got to hire people that not like you, 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. It's like made up this little quote, the person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. We go out and we hire people that 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 a handbook and a 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?

Well, we should be saying, here's what we're trying to do here. Here's our greater purpose. We're not trying to just build thousands of stores. We're trying to do something unique.

We're trying to use Starbucks stopping to build a bridge among people. So in 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 you hire the person to come in and they work for two weeks and have to two weeks to get together with them and just say, so what do you think?

And the guy is so excited. He can hardly hold himself together. He says, you know what, I just love what I'm doing. But you know, I think I can increase four sweeping productivity by 10%.

If I only had this room that I saw on the internet the other night, you know how many leaders say, hey, just do it. I just sweep the floor. Don't talk to me about a new room and purchase and get partners notorious because they'll say, this is the room we use use it. You know, when we're really what we want people to do is be creative and find new ways of doing things.

So I got to tell you, that shocks me. And the reason that shocks me is I've always used Starbucks as this regimented, systematic operation that didn't allow for a lot of creativity. And to be honest with you, I've sort of taught that from time to time. So you're saying, but maybe the truth is how we're creative wrong.

If the systems are so strong, yeah, actually, that that allows creativity from the people where the systems are weaker, then that creativity could create kind of a looser environment. If you have strong structures and systems in place that allows people to be creators more often, maybe that's true. That is absolutely true. Look, just about any of this before from other companies, just about every great new product that's introduced in Starbucks came out of the field, breakfast, sandwiches, warming ovens, we put in frappuccino came out of the field.

Everything we have done is come because of an idea that somebody thought up in the field. And then, you know, we helped execute. But yeah, absolutely, that's the way that it is. And you can't, you got to have strong systems, you know, in processes.

But the things that matter most are human interactions, right? There's no system for that. I remember I retired once and I came back from retirement and I walked the store and I was looking all over. And in the background, background, there was this poster, it said, be nicely, fast, be clean.

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?

Because that's all we really want, right? And that is not a system. Yeah, right? I'm surprised by how I shouldn't be because obviously I know that's in a 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 am I old mind when it came to Starbucks and think, okay, it's coffee, you got to get someone in there out of there, want the right music playing on. But when I'm starting to read your book, I'm like, gosh, no, turns out these principles apply everything, including Starbucks, except you took it to a whole different level. I'll ask you about this about certain leadership, recognition. So I start reading, I'm like, wait a minute, I never knew this, but these aprons, the baristas where are actually a form of almost no one in the world knows this, but the aprons actually the baristas where actually are a sign of recognition based on their designation or achievement or expertise.

Is that not true? They have a black ape, we have these black aprons, these are for coffee masters. And yeah, they're recognition 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 everybody in the company told that 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 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 it was a way of saying thank you and acknowledge them that they were real people and add value. They weren't just some number. You know, and I can't tell you how many people still have those birthday cards.

I've been retired for over 10 years. Still the birthday anniversary cards and have kept them all these years. Serious. Yeah.

What about this idea of pay? So we talked about recognition. We talked about culture. Pay matters, right?

I mean, there's a 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 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 a 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 why you want to do it. I think it comes from you truly cared so much. You want these families to be rewarded. And they felt that.

But I'd like you to talk about it. Well, you know, when I first got there, we were paying that on wage, basically. And I thought, geez, you know, just 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 brought health care into all part-time workers.

No company had ever done it. Everybody got the same health care from the CEO down to the bar east of the week. It was largely worked 20 hours a week or more, which 90% of the people did. So everybody got healthy.

Everybody got equity in the company. We weren't public. We were private. Everybody got stock options.

Somebody helping me might go public. And I said, when it goes along with us, 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 a minimum wage? And how do we raise wages when they, as they attain certain things?

And so I put it in a wage increase into place. And I figured out how we were going to pay for it. Only we blew the number. 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 females come out for that first month where it was implemented. And I get to school from Scholte, he says, what the hell happened?

And I said, I don't know. I'll get back right away. I went back on vacation. I went in.

I figured we'd be just, we made a mistake. And instead of being mad, he said, okay, how do we fix it? I said, I'll fix it. And we did.

And I had to make some adjustments, raise some prices here and there. And I fixed it. But we've tried to stay with it. It's gotten harder because what's happened in a state of Washington that I live in a wage now is getting way up there in the city.

Seattle way up there. 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 is not the most important thing. 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. More and more surveys tell us more and more companies also want to be a part of a cause, but rather want to be a part of a cause. They want to believe that their work has meaning. Right.

And was that part of your culture as well, the charitable, 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 ask when I walk in Starbucks for the most part, I mean, obviously there's everywhere, but people everywhere. People seem really happy that are working there. Yeah, they do.

I mean, it's not perfect place. You know that of course, no, I've walked into ones where they aren't. But the vast majority of the time, I think one thing entrepreneurs lack, but they forget, humans forget is you're always making people feel something. 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 would always thought about yourself? Always, always.

I have to have, I live my life according to what I call my six feet. Everything in my life has to have a purpose greater than myself. Right. Has to be, you know, it's got to be bigger than me.

The second P is if I have a purpose greater than myself than a damn little bear 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.

They don't know from no. And the fourth P is patience. Nothing comes always in the time that you wanted to come. You know, you want to be, you want to be practicing skill, you want to become a great piano player, you want to fast, you want to become rich, you want to come fast, you want to develop somebody, you want 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 life takes a little bit of patience.

You got sometimes it takes longer than you think it should take, but you got to stay with it. That's where persistence and patience come together. And the fifth P is performance. We don't like to be measured.

Human beings don't like to be measured. It's just a nature of the human beings from the beach, you know, but we're getting measured all the time. You're married. You know this, you get kids, your wife is all the time.

She may not give you a performance review every day, right? Maybe she does. I don't know. But like she is measuring and saw your kids, right?

When you say I'm going to be at the soccer game, you better down while I show up, right? When you say I'm going to be home for dinner, you better be there. If you agree to have an obvious 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 at least better be early until I'm not going to get it done on time or whatever happens to be, and can you have some help.

The performance matters at this life. And then the sixth P, the most important P is people. Everything we do in life is about serving another human being. I don't care what your job title is.

There's only one reason God put us on this serve, and that's to serve other human beings. You're a widget maker that makes widgets going to a printing press, publishing company buys, and I produce a magazine or newspaper that gets delivered to somebody's door to inform and 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 in those connections.

And it's up to us that our leadership to help us find those connections, because that's the key in life. Purpose for everyone ourselves. You're a Markable Howard. I'm joining you so much.

I'm grateful I'm sitting here listening to you. This is candidly. This is really an honor for me. You're a good listener.

And you say that that that's one of the things that you believe great leaders do well. You 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 then you want to do interviews. 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? You have to work out it. No, I didn't work out it. I've been in particular problem solvers.

You know, my wife had to come home. She wanted to talk about her day. She's an oncology social work. So she's doing people who are dying of cancer.

And she wanted to talk and she said this problem. I mean, 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, full of compassion, but empty of solutions, right? So that means you got to be, you got to look 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 listening is a critical skill. I remember I worked for somebody in my early days and my early 20s.

And I was managing furniture store for him. And he used to say, Howard, after he closed the door and you lock the door, I want you to sit in the middle of the showroom for 15 or 20 minutes. I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to just listen.

I thought his name was Sid. I said, what are you talking about? Listen, there's nobody in it. And he said, listen to what the walls are saying.

Listen up with the walls are saying. And you know, it took me a long time to tune into the walls, but I did. And you get feel what's going on. I used to get like a walking to a store and I talked to anybody and just feel it, you know, you feel the energy, you know, and it's it's, we have it inside of us to do this, but we don't know how to listen with our whole cell.

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 it. I said, 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 by emotional now so bizarre. This was years ago about 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, the office next door. And it just gave me a gratitude and an appreciation and ability to listen, even to them when they were present.

I just wanted to share that with 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. The energy is there. There's no question.

What did you ask you 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 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 and preparing for this. I hadn't seen someone ask you that before. 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, I haven't changed in 30 years of being in business, I'd be sort of strange. Is there something you used to believe, maybe it's a tough one, that you don't anymore, that you change your belief systems about?

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 come with a conclusion that where 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, or 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.

Our primary role is to add value to the world. And in the end, so doing, we make a living, we make some money, you know, we can buy a nice house, we help our kids, we help 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 theory doesn't hold any water. And if you think about it, if it was always about maximizing profits, and what's the great, if that becomes a greater purpose, the organization, then there is no purpose, because the purpose is about you, you know, and like Starbucks, you know, we had that, you know, Jim Collins, who Jim Collins is good to write until the last, right? So when we were a young company, we had about 200 stores, we're kind of, you know, you're going to bounce even at 200 stores and you're trying to figure out who, all of a sudden, you've got to lose track sometimes, while 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 it'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 beehack, which turned into kind of our thriving force. And it goes like this, we want 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? No, for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit, not a damn thing about how much coffee we're going to sell profits, anything like that. No, for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit. And that drives us today.

Truth is, it drives my life by plagiarizing that that became my mission statement. Every day, I want to nurture and inspire the human spirit, beginning myself first and then for others. And that's how I live my life. 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 didn't, you know, I didn't know, I 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, you can become more of something. So if that's not all of you right now, right, that there's not a 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? Sure.

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 the other one is I love myself unconditionally.

How old are you 77? 77 years old. And you're telling me that you still say that to yourself every single day? Every single day.

Every single day. And I've done it for 50 years. My very day before I go to bed, I have this little habit. I go look in the mirror and I say, how hard how did you do today?

And it's how I did against my mission, against my values, right? Against my six P's. And then I also have a five year plan and when 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, but we do and we have it against all the, all the passes for life, spirituality, material, economic growth, what we used to call career and how we call life's work, our marriage, our children, our grandchildren, travel, personal growth, you know, and then we go and we set goals underneath each one of those headings.

Some of the goals are personal, for just for me, some of them are just for her, but our marriage, we have goals together. What kind of house do we want to have? What do we want to live? We have goals for that.

And then, you know, we work towards those goals. Aspires the heck out of me right there. Now, I listen for what people don't say also. And I just want to go back on that.

77 years old, you said about 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 want to ask you about because I've got a lot of entrepreneurs become sort of obsessed with their competitors or one of the competitors are doing or are measuring themselves against them. And you don't talk about that. And so I don't either. I have a reason why I don't.

But I want to know why you don't. Because that just you just didn't care. It just your energy. It didn't matter why.

I mean, we cared. It wasn't that we didn't pay attention. We did. But it wasn't the driving force.

Look it 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 to we want to be better than we are. You know, and that's the key and that never ends by the way.

77 years old. I'm still trying to grow. I'm still trying to learn. You've never stopped people think you get to some point and you're like, it's not because the excitement in life is growing.

It's being better. You know, it's being better. I read all about you. I'm thinking to myself, guys, why didn't I ever get those weights?

You know, and so you know, you want to be better than than you. That's anyone to keep on. You can't measure yourself against others. It's just a waste of time.

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 hate to play for all my friends and family. You're always asking me, why are you going to stop? Why don't you stop?

You know, 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. In other words, 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. There's some confidence knowing I can grow. There's some humility knowing I need to. Yeah, exactly.

You know, we should always be pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Yeah. That should never stop. You know, be curious, be inquisitive, struggling against some things.

That's good for your soul. Yeah. You know, I don't want to stop that. That's why, you know, everybody, I want to introduce by them.

Sure. Most of the things I do in life are tiny little things. Pick up a piece of paper off the street. You know, and sometimes I get opportunity like being with you.

But most of the things I do are not that is talking to something on the phone. Before we get up, I'm going to do it right now before we get too close. So I want to get my phone number on my email address to everybody. So my phone number is 206-972-7776.

My email address is hb at HowardBhard.com. 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 I get to everybody because I think that fills my soul and I hopefully can help other people a lot of way.

The president of Starbucks for multiple decades just gave you his phone number. And by the way, it's printed in other places. This man is incredible. You know, it'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, you're the other one was C Wozniak. Oh yeah, he's co-founder of Apple. It's amazing that, you know, he was one of the driving force by Apple.

You're one of the ones behind Starbucks and it's the only other person ever sitting doing it. I'm going to conference with Wozniak. You'll say, I want to get everybody my phone number. What 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 I know that. I know that.

I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that.

I know that. It doesn't mean that doesn't mean that you shouldn't hear it and that it shouldn't express because it is what it is, is really gratitude. And I read enough about you, even my introduction. I read Howard.

Don't give him. I'm the same way. When I get introduced on stage, which we said, just say here's at my left, 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 there's a tough time and you write about this in the books.

I'd like you to talk about it. Hey, Howard, this treaty people think 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 got to eat. Right now, it's stressful. Right now, there's been economic pressure put on my business and you talk about this in the book, pretty lengthy pace.

What would you say to that person who says, all that sounds good and I want to do it. But right now, I got to make a buck. You don't have to think that. You can't do it.

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 treaty people with respect and dignity button, what's going to happen with the people that work with you? Right?

They're going to pop up and they're going to say, please treat me well. I want to treat him well. If you go the opposite way, what do you think button's going to pop up? Well, if he's all ahead for himself, then why should I be all of it for myself?

There's no escape from that. So look, treating people with respect and dignity or servant leadership, it's not this soft, gentle, mushy stuff. Servant leadership is about performance. You have to perform.

And so leaders have a responsibility to set high expectations. But we get performance not on the backs of people but with people. Not on the backs of people but with people. And look, certainly, leadership is not the only leadership way style.

And treating people with respect and dignity, a lot of companies don't do that. I go down the list of Uber, the guy that founded Uber was not exactly treating 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, we all are streamers abusers, not physical abuse. But if you came with ID, they didn't like, they just call you stupid. I mean, really use those words.

They basically lost 10 years of performance because of it. And they put the guy that had been there a long time, it's right, every name right now. But who's now CEO? You know what, if you look at their performance by the past seven or six, seven years since he's been in it, it's been unbelievable.

People that were leaving Microsoft now want to come back. Why? Because he really changed the company. It's not that they're there.

Anybody was smarter is he started treating people with respect. And it became more people centric and it totally changed the organization. And that's all he basically did. I mean, yeah, maybe had some ideas about some different direction.

But you know, that wasn't what changed it was how he treated his people. Look, you treat people well, they want to do well. I believe that's a simple. I look at Microsoft and I think he'll get jobs, jobs sort of known as sort of a ruthless, very difficult, demanding guy.

But he was honest about it. And they knew who he was. And he acknowledged who he was. See, the worst doubles are the ones that say, we're people so we care about people here, right?

People are most important asset. Whenever somebody say people are most important assets, they don't get it. You know, people are not assets. You own assets, assets are trucks, computers, you don't own people.

I'd ask it always gives you what you expect. You go to turn the engine on and the truck, it starts up. People never give you what they expect. That's the point 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 and the ones that have done a good job have been successful. I think I would add too, is that usually those leaders who don't have a certain leadership mentality either burn themselves out or burn out their welcome at their own companies. And the 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 here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. No, it's exactly is really exactly that way.

Look, 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 an excuse expression. 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, right. You know, care about people.

We know football coaches that are abusive. Yeah. And you know, and some players like to be in those kind of environments to be wherever fits you. That's not my style.

But but then maybe somebody else's actually think Pete Carroll's a great example because you look at him and he's the oldest coach in the NFL. And I know that I think one of the reasons he still has the energy and is still welcome there as he has many servant type leader. The guys tend to burn themselves out or leave my polyfamer's leave them late in their career. That's all I say about that.

But you gave your phone up rather a couple more questions Howard. And thank you for this. This is a masterclass and I've enjoyed it so much. I know my audience has well, I can feel people sharing this everywhere.

But you gave your phone a brought your email out. And so you're known as a great mentor. What does 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 that I need to bring to the table?

If I'm looking for a mentor, it's not easy to say, please help me, please mentor me. No matter what environment you're in, there's accountability and responsibility on my end is the person being mentored as well. What would you say to that person? Number one, be curious.

Don't come in with you. You think you know what you don't. Right? The second thing is be humble.

The third thing is a tremendous desire to improve yourself, to be all you can be. And then maybe the one that I said, love yourself unconditionally. But the most important thing I think is that are those three things. You've got to be curious.

You've got to want to grow as a human being. And just because you have a mentor doesn't mean everything a mentor says doesn't mean it's right for you. You have to have discernment. Here's the thing for me.

The first thing you should do when you're working with a mentor 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 you know, those all represent things that you're about. But get it down to each and these are the most separate 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 four values, honestly, 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? 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 to get your little life with intention. So those are the important things in being having mentee mentor relationship. I enjoyed today so much.

I don't want it to end. I know my eyes going to keep going. But the fact is there are time constraints on these things. 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. If you if I ran into you in a Starbucks, it's interesting Howard, in all my interviews, most of them at the end I say to my guests, I say, so if someone met you in a Starbucks, that's actually what I say.

And they got two or three minutes with you. And they said, 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 at my life and think, you know what some of my work matters, build a pretty good family. I've built a decent life. I've helped some people 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 someone had a couple minutes with you and you just said, well, this is what I would tell you.

What would what would some of your experience, which is you've got to see 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 say to them? I'm going to show you something here. Okay.

Reaching into my briefcase. Excuse me. Sure. So on this piece of paper right here, I'm showing him.

Yep, you are sharing it with me for for let's see, I'm 77. I started doing this when I was about 26. So it's 50 years. And this picture of Howard and 50 words or less.

Right? It has my core values on it, my mission statement and how I do everything my six piece. So this tells me about how when I I'm under stress, I'm just like every other human being or I don't want to know under stress when I have tremendous excitement or something. I just track sometimes of me.

And I need to remind myself. And so I have this here to remind myself. I know every word on the stage. But whenever I get to a point where, oh, I just pick it up and I just read it real quick.

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.

Joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, disappointment, a 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 he overdosed. And my daughter was just beside herself, right? Because he was so close to him.

And I was on my boat maybe about a hundred miles away. And I got on my boat and had a sea plane come pick me up and leave close 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 them all along, right, all along.