Howard Behar
speaker
126 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Howard Behar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I retired once. I stayed on the board of directors, but I'd kind of retired. I promised my wife when she finished her PhD, she's an oncology social worker and she finished her PhD. I thought it'd take her eight years. It took her about four. I'd made a commitment that we'd take a year off and just travel. So I went to Howard and Orrin and I said, okay, I'm going to take a year off.
You know, you may not want me back or whatever, but it's okay. And one day I'm at home after we'd finished our year of travel and I'm having a cup of coffee, sitting in the kitchen in my pajamas. And my wife, Lynn, is there. And all of a sudden the phone rings and it was Orrin Smith, who was then the CEO of Starbucks. And he said, Howard, We need your help for a few months.
The guy that was the president of Starbucks North America resigned abruptly. It was the week of September 11th. It was amazing. He just left. I don't know what was in his head, but he just left. So I said, Oren, sure, I'm happy to help out. And I was still on the board. So I got off the phone. My wife said, what did you just agree to? And I said, well, I'm going back. She says, you're what?
So I said, yeah, just to help, just for a few months. Well, it turned out to be almost three years. And when I got back into the job, I realized that it had been about a year and a half. That short period of time, I'd kind of lost touch with what was going on. And they were starting to struggle a little bit. The comparable store sales were starting to flat.
And I couldn't figure out what was going on, what was happening. And Matter of fact, Howard came into my office one day and I was beside myself. I was just angry at myself because I couldn't figure it out. I threw my glasses across the room and I said, I'm failing. I'm not figuring this out. And that night I went home and I said to my wife, I said, I don't know what's wrong.
I'm not in touch or something here. And she said, Howard, just do what you know how to do. Do what you know how to do. So I went in the next day and I called the whole team together. And I just, I said, I don't know what's up here. I'm missing something here. And everybody started talking. And I started to realize the place that I took, I took over the job.
He was a guy that believed in building resumes. And everybody that reported to him realized that in order to get ahead, they had to do something. They had to build their resume. They had to show success. They had to show all this stuff.
Well, it turned from what Starbucks was, which was a we organization, which everybody was in it together, to he kind of built this me organization where everybody was doing it on their own. And all of a sudden I realized that was it. And so I started talking about that. I said, we're not going to get to where we want to go by just focusing on what we get. We're going to have to do this together.
So I'm a goal guy. I set goals for myself. And so out of thin air, I made up this goal. And I said, the team has to increase average unit volume by $100,000 in three years. Now, I didn't know if we could do it or not, but I just set out a goal. I just pulled it out of thin air. And I said, every department and the whole team has got to contribute towards it.
So I said, in three weeks, we're going to get back together. And I want you to come to present to the team what your portion of that $100,000 is going to be. and how you're planning on doing it. So we got together, even human resources, supply chain, everybody came back and had their piece of the action.
Of course, operations and merchandising were gonna have the biggest pieces because they had the biggest leverage. And so that goal, we said all of a sudden, and we'd meet every week talking together how we were doing. how we were doing together. And when somebody was struggling, other team members went in and helped them. And so we did it together. And that brought it back to we.
And not only did we achieve 100, we achieved 150,000. Totally blew the cover off the ball and increased the profits substantially. And it shows you what you can do when it's about we and not me.
Yeah, it's an interesting question as you were talking about that. I was thinking, I've been fired four times. My brother-in-law fired me. My sister eventually made him hire me back, but he fired me. So I had to recoup. And it was not easy always, you know, you get doubts and self-doubts, but, you know, I had to make a living and I've always been a passionate person.
I was never happy working in a place where I didn't connect emotionally. And I was on the home furnishings industry for a long time. So it couldn't be about just selling a sofa. It's what that sofa was going to do for the people that bought it. I was helping them to have a better home. It wasn't a sofa. And so I always had to connect.
And so every time I was struggling, I always looked for the connection. I always looked for that place that would give me the greater purpose and the passion to move forward. And so I did that. But, you know, it was not an easy road. It was not an always easy road. And sometimes, like I said, I had to go back to go forward and I had to get outside my comfort zone many times.
I had to do things that I wasn't comfortable doing. And many times I'd get a promotion I thought I wasn't capable of. At the time, I got the promotion, but I found my way through it. And I just dealt with those things. And I'm always willing to push forward. And I'm not afraid to do things. I'm not afraid to do things other people wouldn't do. Look, I don't have a college degree.
I barely got out of high school. I'm not the smartest guy on the block. Howard Schultz was the creative guy in the company. I was the alchemist. OK, what I mean by that, I just listen to everybody. I've been a people guy since I was five years old. I was the last born. My parents were taking to me and they took me everywhere.
You know, on Saturday night when they'd go to visit relatives and have dinner and I was kind of always at the table. And so I was always listening to what was going on. And I just became a really good listener. So I became an alchemist. I would listen to what people were talking about. And then I'd say, oh, that's interesting. And then somebody else would say the same thing.
And that's what I did at Starbucks. I mean, I had some ideas at Starbucks, but it was the people that had the ideas. I just implemented their ideas. I don't need to be the hero. I'm willing to take the bullets when the bullets are flying. When something goes wrong, I own it. You know, when something goes right, they get the credit.
First of all, you listen to everybody. I have this saying, the person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. And I came up with that saying because I was trying to convince all the leaders at Starbucks that when somebody comes in your office or you go up to them, ask them what they're thinking about. I had three questions that I asked everybody at Starbucks. I still do it today.
Showing 41–60 of 126 · page 3 of 7
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