CHAPTER ONE
The car door closed and they were alone. As the old man backed down the driveway, the younger man spoke. “Thanks for doing this with me Poobah.”
“It’s what Poobahs are for, Sunshine.”
Nothing else was said until they were on the highway. A billboard announced “Starbucks 12 miles ahead.”
The younger man turned off the radio.
“Why do you call me Sunshine?”
“Because you’re very bright and you give me a warm glow.” The old man looked at him. “Is there something else you would like me to call you?”
The younger man said nothing as minutes passed.
“Starbucks. Next Exit.”
The young man said, “Let’s grab a cup of coffee. It’s going to be a long drive.” Then he smiled. “And by the way, you’re buying.”
“I’m buying? I thought you were making a small fortune.”
The smile disappeared as if the old man had blown out its candle. “I am making a small fortune, Poobah. The problem is that I started with a large one.”
A few minutes later the old man handed a twenty to the server at the window and she handed him two Ventis in return. He passed one over to the younger man and put the other in his cup holder. The server was holding out his change. The old man looked at her and said, “No. That’s for you,” then gave her a smile and a nod as he pulled away.
“I’ve watched you do that my whole life and I’ve never understood it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You always over-tip. Always. Even when you get lousy service. Why? Why do you reward incompetence?”
“Ah. You think the tip is about them.”
“Of course the tip is about them. Who else would it be about?”
“The tip is about me, Sunshine.”
“You give a stranger at a window ten bucks just to prove you’re rich? Hell, she knew you were rich when she saw the car.”
“I surprised her with something she didn’t expect. It makes me feel good to know she’s having a better day right now than she was having 5 minutes ago.”
“Does it make you feel ten dollars good?”
“Easily.”
“You’re nuts, Poobah.”
“Always have been.”
Minutes passed.
Sunshine nested his empty cup inside Poobah’s empty cup.
“Sunshine, you said you were making a small fortune from a large one. I take it you’re talking about the money from the investors?”
The young man nodded.
“Sunshine, tell me what you know about unifying principles.”
“Cells, evolution, genes and homeostasis?”
“Not biology. Business.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Unifying principles bring all the facets of a business into alignment.”
“Diamonds have facets, Poobah. Businesses have departments and divisions.”
“Businesses that sparkle have facets.”
The younger man gave a sigh of resignation. “Okay. Give me an example.”
“George Eastman organized the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881 under four unifying principles:
- Keep the price of the product low so the customer will find more uses for it.
- Always sell by demonstration.
- Be the first to embrace new technologies.
- Listen to what the customer tells you.
Any time there was a decision to be made, the CEO would choose the solution that best aligned with those four unifying principles. In 1976, Eastman Kodak sold 90% of all the camera film and 85% of all the cameras in America. By 1988 they had more than 145,000 employees worldwide and in 1996 they had 16 billion dollars in annual revenues and a valuation of 31 billion.”
“And in 2012 they went bankrupt, Poobah. I hate to be the one to tell you, but Kodak went broke. Dead and gone. Times have changed.”
“Kodak went broke when they abandoned the unifying principles that gave the company it’s vision and purpose and strength.”
“You’re talking philosophy, Poobah. I’m talking bankruptcy. I’m talking facts.”
The old man smiled. “Okay, Sunshine, here’s a fact. Principle number 3 was, ‘Be the first to embrace new technologies.'”
“You’re saying Kodak should have pioneered digital photography.”
“No, I’m saying their own unifying principles say they should have pioneered digital photography. Kodak went broke because they decided they were in the camera film business. They quit listening to the customer.”
“The internet changed everything.”
“Not as much as you think.”
“Poobah, I understand that you’re trying to help and I love you for that, but things aren’t like they used to be when you were my age or even when Mom was my age. Business today is all about metrics, numbers, outcomes.”
The old man looked at him a long moment, then back at the road ahead. “Outcomes and numbers and metrics are generated by actions. Behavior.”
“The customer’s actions and behavior. Yes.”
“But the customer’s actions can be altered by our own actions.”
“I have good people, Poobah. They know what they’re doing.”
“They’re doing what they believe is right.”
“They know what they’re doing.”
“Every action is an expression of a belief. This is true whether you are a customer or an employee or a CEO.
“You’re saying we need better marketing to change what our customers believe about us.”
The old man shook his head. “I’m not talking about marketing. I’m talking about making choices and taking action.”
“Things are different today, Poobah. Things have changed.”
“Some things never change.”
“No one believes that but you.”
“Bezos believes it, too.”
“Jeff Bezos of Amazon?”
“I’ll tell you about Bezos after I tell you about the four people you meet on the ocean of life.”
“Can we skip the ocean of life and go straight to Jeff Bezos?”
“No. It’s a long drive. We have time to talk about both.”
The young man reclined his seat, crossed his arms and closed his eyes as the older man continued.
“There are only four people on the ocean of life and you meet them over and over again. The first person you meet is drifting. The winds and waves of circumstance push the drifter this way and that way and the drifter just ‘goes with the flow.’ You know you’ve met a drifter when they say, “Whatever. It’s all good.”
His eyes still closed, Sunshine smiled and said, “You sounded just like Bobby Marino when you said that.”
“The second person you meet is surfing. Surfers seem to be having a good time, but they never really get anywhere unless it’s by accident. The surfer is just looking for a wave to ride. ‘The next big thing.'”
“Am I to understand that the wind and the waves represent our circumstances and the surfer is an opportunist that’s looking for a wave to ride?”
“Yes.”
The young man’s eyes popped open. “So what’s wrong with that?”
“The surfer isn’t focused on a destination. He’s just trying to stay on top of the wave.”
“But if he’s skillful, he can ride that wave all the way to the end.”
“The danger isn’t that he’ll fall off, Sunshine. The danger is that he’s riding a wave to nowhere.”
“You’re talking philosophy again.”
“The third person you meet on the ocean of life is drowning.”
The young man closed his eyes again and settled back into his seat. His words were softer now. “That’s how I feel.”
“I know, Sunshine. But you’re not a drowner.”
The younger man turned his head toward the window. The old man continued.
“Each of us, if we’re healthy and normal, might need to be rescued two or three times in our life by someone who loves us. It might be financial rescue or emotional rescue or chemical or relational, but we’ll need someone to reach down and grab us and pull us back to where we can breathe. That’s normal. We need rescuing because we’re human.”
Sunshine shifted in his seat.
The old man went on, “But this third person is a professional drowner. You’ve met them. They whine and cry, ‘It’s just been the worst week of my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ So you help them. You get them back on their feet. Then, when you see them again and ask how it’s going, they say, ‘It’s just been the worst week of my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do.'”
“Uncle Todd. Rick the postman. Mom’s friend, Sharon.”
“Like I said, we’ve all met them.”
“So who is the fourth person?”
“The fourth person you meet on the ocean of life is the one that you and I want to be.”
“Successful?”
“They usually succeed sooner or later, but success is an outcome. The reason they succeed is because they’re navigating.”
“A navigator uses numbers, Poobah. Metrics. Graphs. Pie charts.”
The old man sighed. “We look at the numbers to see where we are. Numbers show us the outcomes of all the decisions we’ve made so far. But they don’t tell us where to go.”
“So how does the navigator navigate?”
“A navigator is guided through the darkness by something that isn’t connected to the wind and waves. The North Star has been a guiding light for thousands of years because it’s the only star in our sky that doesn’t move.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“The southern hemisphere has the Southern Cross.”
“So you’re talking about the northern hemisphere.”
“I’m talking about where you and I live.”
“Go ahead.”
“The North Star, Polaris, is located directly above the axis of the earth. Every other star in the sky and the earth itself revolve around that guiding light. It is a unifying principle, a non-negotiable standard.”
“Great story, Poobah. Now tell me about Bezos at Amazon.”
“We’ll let Bezos speak for himself. Google ‘The 20 Smartest Things Jeff Bezos Has Ever Said.'”
A moment later the younger man said, “Here it is. The Motley Fool. Morgan Housel.”
“That’s the one. Now look at number 6 on that list.”
The younger man began to read out loud. “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ but I almost never get the question, ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ or ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
The younger man looked up from his phone and out the windshield.
Minutes passed.
“Sunshine, do you believe that if you take the right actions, the correct results will follow?”
“Why do I feel like you’re sneaking up on me?”
“To change a person’s actions you must first change their beliefs. I’m not sneaking up on you, Sunshine. I am, however, trying to change your beliefs. But I’m doing it openly. There is no sneaking. Now Google, ‘Bezos letter to shareholders. 2010′”
A moment later, the younger man began reading, “In a letter to shareholders in 2010…” His voice drifted into silence then returned to full volume moments later. “‘Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs. To be clear, we take these financial outputs seriously, but we believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time.'”
The old man smiled as he asked, “What did Bezos say was the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time?”
The younger man looked at his cell phone, “‘We believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time.'”
The old man said, “I wonder what he means by controllable inputs?”
The younger man said, “I’m entirely certain you already know and I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell me.”
“As I said, you’re a very bright boy.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Sunshine, do you remember the four unifying principles of George Eastman?”
“I remember one was, ‘Keep the price of the product low so the customer will find more uses for it,’ and another one was, ‘Listen to what the customer tells you.'”
“Jeff Bezos brought those ideas into sharp focus when he said, ‘When things get complicated, we simplify by saying ‘what’s best for the customer?’ And then we take it as an article of faith that if we do that, it’ll work out in the long term.’”
“He actually said ‘an article of faith?’ Those are his words, not yours?”
“His words. Not mine.”
“That blows my mind a little.”
“Sunshine, every company begins with the customer in mind, but then management begins thinking in terms of divisions and departments and before you know what’s happening the company is spending a lot of energy managing internal struggles and battles because the divisions have been given conflicting goals.”
“And unifying principles solve all that?”
“They do if everyone in the company has those principles baked into every action they take.”
“My company has a mission statement.”
“‘We want to provide a pleasant working environment for our employees, deliver exceptional service to our customers, make a fair and honest profit and deliver a healthy return-on-investment to our investors.'”
“Oh! You’ve read it!”
“No, that’s just what they all say.”
“Ouch.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Sunshine.”
“So how are unifying principles different than mission statements?”
“A mission statement is propaganda. Unifying principles are an operating system.”
“Look at you, Poobah. ‘An operating system.’ You used a contemporary metaphor.”
The old man smiled. “Sunshine, if you truly make the customer the center and the beginning of every initiative, you can hardwire that mentality into your company culture. Mission statements and slogans don’t change what people believe, because most people aren’t listening to what you say. They’re watching to see what you do.”
After a silence, the younger man spoke. “I Googled ‘unifying principles, Amazon,’ and ‘unifying principles, Jeff Bezos,’ and neither search came back with anything that looks like what you’re saying.”
“Jeff Bezos doesn’t refer to his deepest beliefs as ‘unifying principles,’ that’s just what I call them. But if you listen to what Jeff is always saying and watch what Jeff is always doing, it’s easy to see that Amazon.com was built on four stone pillars.”
The young man spoke quietly, “To change a person’s actions, you must first change their beliefs.”
The old man said, “These are the four stone pillars of Amazon.
ONE. Customer Centricity.
TWO. Continuous Optimization.
THREE. Culture of Innovation.
FOUR. Corporate Agility.
These are the essence of the Amazon brand.”
“But Amazon isn’t a brand, Poobah. It’s a distribution channel.”
“Amazon is most certainly a brand.”
“I think we may have two different ideas about branding.”
“Google what Bezos has to say about it.”
The young man spoke a few seconds later, “Bezos says, ‘Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.’”
“A brand isn’t what you say about yourself, Sunshine. Your brand is built on your actions. Your performance. And the performance of your products.”
“It’s easy to wow the customer when you don’t have to make a profit. Amazon has never made a profit, Poobah.”
“That’s a popular myth but it’s not true. Amazon became profitable in the 4th quarter of 2001 when they reported a net income of $5 million. In 2003, net revenue grew to $5.26 billion and they had a $35 million net profit. In 2015 they became the fastest company to ever reach $100 billion in annual sales and they also happened to generate $8 billion in free cash flow after all the bills were paid and all the investments were made. Fifty percent of all e-commerce went through Amazon that year and the percentage is going up.”
“Why do you know so much about Amazon’s finances?”
“I bought my Amazon stock back when it was $10 a share after falling from its previous price of more than $100.”
“How did you know it was the right thing to do?”
“When short-term thinkers start selling their stocks in companies with long-term vision, that’s when your Poobah buys stock.”
“Why does everyone say Amazon isn’t profitable?”
“Because TLB’s always have to justify their short-term thinking.”
“TLB’s?”
“Twitchy Little Bastards. Marshmallow eaters.”
The younger man’s face exploded into a smile. He looked down and shook his head. “You’re nuts, Poobah.”
“Always have been.”
“I can see that you’re dying to tell me about the marshmallow eaters, so go ahead. We’ve got time.”
The old man raised an eyebrow. “I’m not dying to tell you anything. If you want to know, you’re going to have to say, ‘Please, kind Sir, tell me about the marshmallow eaters.'”
“Please, kind Sir, tell me about the marshmallow eaters.”
“It’s good to see you smile, Sunshine.”
“Marshmallow eaters.”
“Back in the late 1960s, a couple of psychologists at Stanford conducted an experiment on a bunch of 4 and 5 year-old kids.”
“They experimented on kids?”
“About 600 of them.”
“They couldn’t get away with that today.”
“It was harmless. They took each kid into a room and put a marshmallow on the table beside them and said, ‘You can eat this marshmallow if you want, but if it’s still here when I come back, I’ll give you a second marshmallow and then you’ll have two marshmallows to eat.”
“They were testing the kid’s patience.”
“The experiment was supposed to be about instant gratification versus deferred gratification.”
“So how did it turn out?”
“Most of the kids ate the marshmallow.”
“How long was it before the adult came back with the second marshmallow?”
“About 15 minutes.”
“I’m not sure what I would have done.”
“You’re not a marshmallow eater, Sunshine. You’ve just been trying to make a bunch of marshmallow eaters happy.”
“I’m not sure I see the point of the story.”
“That’s because it’s not over.”
“Please, kind Sir, finish the story about the marshmallow eaters.”
“So they had the names of all these kids and video footage of each one sitting next to a marshmallow until the kid finally gave in and ate it. But that’s not the interesting part.”
“Please, kind Sir, tell me the interesting part.”
“Several years later, they decided to track these kids down to see how each of them turned out.”
“And?”
“The longer the kid was able to wait before eating the marshmallow, the higher they scored on the SAT in high school.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I promise you I’m not. They also had lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills and higher scores in a wide range of behaviors that psychologists call ‘executive function.'”
“The ant looks to the future but the grasshopper doesn’t. That’s why the grasshopper dies in the winter.”
“I’m surprised you’re familiar with that story.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t think anyone told it any more.”
“It was a bedtime story when I was little.”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
The old man smiled. “Did I tell you there was one kid who waited the whole fifteen minutes and never ate the marshmallow?”
“Just one kid?”
“Mark Zuckerberg.”
“You made that up, right?”
“Only the part about Zuckerberg. The rest is completely true. You were asking me why people claim Amazon isn’t profitable. Have you figured it out yet?”
“Let’s see. It sounds like you’re saying people trash-talk Bezos and claim Amazon isn’t profitable because they’re ‘Twitchy Little Bastard Marshmallow-Eating Grasshoppers’ who have no stomach for delayed gratification.”
“Forget the TLB’s, Sunshine. They’re mosquitoes.”
“Mosquitoes are hard to ignore.”
Warren Buffet ignored mosquitoes. So did Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz, Julius Rosenwald. Jeff Bezos plowed Amazon’s profits into R & D because he was unwilling to make Kodak’s mistake.”
“So if Jeff Bezos had been CEO of Kodak, we’d all be carrying cell phones filled with Kodak technology right now?”
“Badda-bing, badda-bang…”
“Badda-boom. I think you might be right.”
“Kodak was a technology innovator for nearly 100 years before they began to think of themselves as a camera film company. ”
“Just how much does Bezos spend on R & D?”
“I remember one year – I think it was 2013 – when Bezos was pouring money into Amazon Web Services and refining the Kindle and expanding his robotics in the warehouses and investigating deliveries by drone, he spent nearly as much on R & D as Google and Apple combined.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“I do mean that. Bezos spent $15.4 billion. Google spent $9.8 and Apple spent $6.6.”
“They were the 3 big spenders?”
“More or less. IBM spent $9.7 billion. Alibaba spent $8.9. Lilly Pharmaceuticals spent $4.7. FaceBook spent $3.7. I can’t remember more than that.”
“I’m blown away that you can remember all those numbers. I never thought of you as a numbers guy.”
“I pay attention to the numbers that matter.”
“You’re saying R & D numbers matter?”
“I’m saying innovation matters. Experiments matter. Thinking ahead matters. Companies who think ahead and experiment are the ones who innovate. These are the brands that continue to impress us.
“I’m beginning to see why you say a brand is built on actions more than words.”
“Again, that’s why I call you Sunshine.”
“Do you believe that any tech company can brand like Amazon?”
“It has nothing to do with tech. Even a lemonade stand can brand like Amazon. If you don’t eat the marshmallow, you can build anything you want on those four pillars.”
What were they again? I’m going to write them down.
The old man smiled. “Customer Centricity. Continuous Optimization. Culture of Innovation. Corporate Agility.”
“Give me the deep dive on those.”
“Happy to, Sunshine.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Turn around and go back to that Starbuck’s, Poobah. They’ve got Wi-Fi and I want to use my laptop.”
The old man took the next exit, looped under the overpass and headed back the way they had come. “Do you want me to start the deep dive now or wait for your scuba tanks?”
The younger man never looked up from his cell phone. “I’d like to show you the information I’m looking at and I can’t do that while you’re driving.”
“I’m going to stop at Walgreen’s before we go to Starbuck’s.”
“Are you taking medicine?”
“No, Sunshine, you are.” He smiled. “And frankly, you’re doing it rather well.”
The old man walked out of Walgreen’s, opened the car door and tossed a bag of jumbo marshmallows into the lap of the younger man who pretended not to notice. The old man smiled as he closed the car door. Putting the car into reverse, he said, “The first of the four pillars is customer centricity. Bezos says, ‘If you’re truly obsessed about your customers, it will cover a lot of your other mistakes.'”
The younger man looked up from his cell phone. “But Jeff Bezos didn’t invent customer centricity, Poobah. Sam Walton was customer centric before Jeff Bezos was even born.”
“And Cornelius Vanderbilt was customer centric before Sam Walton’s grandfather was born.”
“Talk to me about that.”
“Vanderbilt noticed that all the little boats hauling passengers and freight between Staten Island and Manhattan were making their customers wait until they had a full load before they would make the trip across New York Bay. So he borrowed a hundred dollars from his Mom to buy a little boat, then he posted a schedule of his departure and arrival times on both sides of the river. Vanderbilt stuck to that schedule no matter whether he was carrying one passenger or a boatload of freight and people. It didn’t take long before Vanderbilt had everyone on board.”
“Is he the one they called ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt?”
“They started calling him ‘Commodore’ when he began hauling passengers and freight up and down the east coast on steamships. Commodore Vanderbilt made his name and his fortune by leaving on time, arriving on time, and not losing your luggage.”
“Isn’t that how Herb Kelleher built Southwest Airlines?”
“You read his book?”
“Didn’t know he had one.”
“It’s called Nuts. Vanderbilt and Kelleher were the same guy. They just had different haircuts. ”
“I thought the Vanderbilt fortune was built on railroads.”
“No, the Vanderbilt fortune was built on customer centricity.”
“But didn’t he buy a bunch of railroads?”
“Sure. When all the railroads were going broke, Vanderbilt spotted their problem, bought several of them with his steamship money, and then did what he always did.”
“Leave on time, arrive on time, and don’t lose the customer’s luggage?”
“Badda-bing, Badda-bang…”
“Badda-boom. Same guy with a different haircut.”
“By the way,” said the old man, “when Vanderbilt died in 1877, he was worth a hundred million dollars. That was a lot of money back then.”
“It’s a lot of money now, Poobah.”
“Is it?”
Minutes passed as the old man drove. The car was silent as the younger man’s fingers flickered across the screen of his cell phone. The old man spoke, “A little while ago you said, ‘Sam Walton was customer centric before Jeff Bezos was even born.’ How did you know that?”
“When you were in Walgreen’s I read where Sam Walton said, ‘There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.'”
“Were you able to identify Sam’s unifying principles?”
“That was easy. He called them his Ten Commandments.”
“Read them to me.”
“Sam Walton’s 10 Commandments:
1. Commit to your business.
2. Share your profits with your associates and treat them like your partners.
3. Energize your colleagues.
4. Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.
5. Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
6. Celebrate your success.
7. Listen to everyone in your company.
8. Exceed your customers’ expectations.
9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
10. Blaze your own path.”
“Has the company remained true to those principles since Ol’ Sam passed away?”
“Well, Poobah, it looks to me like they’re all about #1 and #9, but everything else has sort of fallen by the wayside.”
“And now you know why I don’t own any Wal-Mart stock.”
“But they’re still America’s largest retailer.”
“Before them, Sears was America’s largest retailer. And as long as Sears remained committed to the principles of Julius Rosenwald, they were the financial juggernaut of America. But Rosenwald died in 1932. And battleships like Sears and Wal-Mart can coast for only so long before they start to sag and creak and groan.”
“What made Rosenwald special?”
“Rosenwald was quick to help when he saw good people struggling.”
“So he was a lot like Sam Walton.”
“Same guy, different haircut. Except one was a Protestant from Oklahoma and the other was a Jew from Chicago.”
“Sam Walton was Jewish?”
“A person might think so by the way he treated his people. When Sam Walton was alive, Wal-Mart was customer centric and Sam’s Ten Commandments about partnering with your employees could almost have been taken from the Talmud.”
“Tell me more about Rosenwald.”
“Google ‘Julius Rosenwald’. Look for the reference that comes up from the Sears Archives.”
“Got it.”
“Click it.”
“Julius Rosenwald was born, blah, blah, blah…” The younger man went silent, then spoke again. “Rosenwald insisted that the company’s primary goal must be responsibility to the customer. He established the ‘satisfaction guaranteed or your money back’ pledge and conducted his business dealings by the creed ‘Sell honest merchandise for less money and more people will buy.’ Under Rosenwald’s direction, the business positioned itself as a direct extension of the farmer’s eyes, ears and wallet, making purchasing decisions in the best interests of the farmer. After Rosenwald stepped down as Sears president in 1924, he devoted most of his time to philanthropy. Over the course of his life, he donated millions of dollars to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, Jewish charities and black institutions. Of all his philanthropic efforts, Rosenwald was most famous for the more than 5,000 ‘Rosenwald schools’ he established throughout the South for poor, rural black youth, and the 4,000 libraries he added to existing schools. The network of new public schools subsequently employed more than 14,000 teachers. In 1927, Rosenwald received a special gold medal for Distinguished Achievement in Race Relations for his contributions to the education of black youth.”
“That was Julius Rosenwald, Sunshine. He cared about his customers. He cared about his suppliers. He cared about helping people so much that he occasionally had to borrow money to pay his own living expenses.”
“Why did he have to do that?”
“He would literally give everything he had. You see, Rosenwald was so spectacularly wealthy that he was often worried that his children would never experience the joy of pushing, working, struggling to reach a goal. And he was a huge promoter of the YMCA back in the days when it was a major force for helping lift people from difficult circumstances.”
“The Young Men’s Christian Association? Are you sure this guy was Jewish?”
“Jews have always been like that, Sunshine. Have you ever looked at the percentage of Nobel Prizes that are awarded to Jews?”
“I’ve always wondered why so many of your friends are Jewish.”
“They’re customer centric and they don’t eat the marshmallow.”
“You’re not going to start talking religion now, are you?”
“We’re talking about people – customers and employees – and we’re talking about making the world a better place, Sunshine. We’re talking about business.”
“Okay, tie all that together for me.”
“Moses ben Maimon was a Rabbi who lived about a thousand years ago. He’s usually called Maimonides, or Rambam. Anyway, he said there were 8 different ways to help people and all of those ways were good, but some were better than others.”
“Okay, I’m starting to see a little bit of a business application. Keep going.”
“He said the least effective way to help someone is to hand them the cash they need.”
“Why did he consider that to be ineffective?”
“Two reasons. Number one, it’s not sustainable. Number two, a person needs money because there is a problem. If you really care about them, you won’t just hand them the cash and walk away. You’ll get involved and try to find a long-term solution. Traditional Jewish thinking is all about sustainability. Always has been. That’s why they’re such amazing business people.”
“Okay, what did this Rabbi Moses-whatever say was the best way to help?”
“Take a guess.”
“Give them a job? Or maybe help them start a company, so they can also give jobs to other people?”
“You’re more Jewish than you realize, Sunshine. Now tell me how that connects to what Bezos has been saying.”
“Well, Bezos said, ‘We believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time.’ In other words, he believes in making investments that will yield long-term results, year after year. Julius Rosenwald believed in the long-term benefits of a ‘no questions asked’ return policy and the long-term benefits of education. Neither one is a TLB.”
“Okay, what else?”
“Bezos is all about taking action, doing experiments, and looking toward the future. He said, ‘I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ but I almost never get the question, ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ Bezos said the second question is the more important of the two. He’s all about things that don’t change. Rosenwald was all about things that don’t change. They’re navigators, staring at a star that never moves, constantly turning the rudder and adjusting the sails to stay on course and accelerate the journey.”
The car pulled into the parking lot at Starbuck’s. The old man opened the bag of marshmallows, put one in his coat pocket and said, “Can you handle another Venti?”
“Let me grab my laptop.”