Ron Shaich

You misunderstand that the most important thing is to drive the customer experience and the reason they want to come in.

I'll give you an example.

I was involved with a company that remained nameless

They had a little E. coli scare.

Their immediate reaction was to cut labor.

I looked at them.

I said, you're nuts.

If you do that, you're going to destroy what you've been working on for years, which is telling your people that what matters most is running great stores.

In fact, when you run any enterprise, what you do is much more important than what you say.

And so when you focus on very short-term metrics, even though it seems like a desirable thing, it actually costs you far more in the long term.

It just makes sense to me.

I mean, it just seems logical, right?

Like if I want to start out and figure out where I'm trying to be in five years and 10 years, and what's it going to take me to get there?

And that's what we mean by future-backed thinking.

And what seems stupid to me is to do what's short-term expedient and long-term stupid.

I have an expression.

I'm long-term greedy, not short-term stupid.

And I really want to build something of value.

But the way you do that, whether you're talking about a business or a relationship or your own life, is to focus on those things that have meaning and self-respect and those things that when you get down and get to the other side of it, will have touched other people and most importantly, touch yourself.

You can look at the difference between the way Kava went public and Sweetgreen went public.