Sacha: Welcome to the Greatness is Designed podcast, the podcast where we argue great businesses are designed. I'm your host, Sacha Alimchandani, the Managing Director of BrassRock Consulting. BrassRock Consulting is a firm that strictly focuses on helping companies grow or handle succession and transition planning, and we do this through management consulting and fractional CFO services. Our hope is that you, the listener, are able to gain some insights from what we do here at BrassRock and are able to apply it within your business.

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So today we're going to talk about passion and passion within the organization. A lot of times we meet with owners who, they hire this employee, they’re really charged and excited about them, that employee in turn is extremely excited about their job and they contribute lots of ideas and they work really hard, but then over time, you know, they start contributing less ideas and they eventually fall into mediocrity or sometimes end up leaving the organization. And you sort of see this time and time again within organizations.

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So the question really is, well, how do you keep employees passionate and keep them engaged within the organization? So a lot of times people talk about profit-sharing plans or Myers-Briggs tests to help people understand themselves and communicate better with other people or corporate retreats. And you know, those things are all well and good in the right setting, but before you can even talk about those kinds of programs, what we believe you have to talk about is three things, which is purpose, community, and growth.

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So when we're talking about purpose, an individual has to have a purpose and that purpose has to align with the corporation's purpose. They need a place where they can share their common beliefs in regards to that purpose, which is why we talk about community. And then finally, they need growth. So you need all—you need those things to work, and then the organization in itself has to grow and that employee needs to grow within that organization. And that’s what we believe is what keeps people passionate over time within an organization.

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So today we tried to find an example which everyone could understand. We chose a coffee house, because everyone at some point in their life has thought about being a bartender or a barista making, you know, Frappuccinos and cappuccinos and all these lovely drinks. So with me today, I have Rob Oppenheim, Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters. The leadership team of Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters is Rob, then there's also Phil and Sebastian. They started in 2007 in a farmers market. And then in that time till now, they've built six stores, they have their own roaster which also provides wholesale coffee, and then last year they opened up Hoopla, which is their doughnut shop. So Rob, welcome to the show.

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Rob: Thanks, Sacha, appreciate you having me.

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Sacha: So Rob, I guess let's start off with the beginning. So you tell me: there's all these people out there who have these dreams of being baristas and doing great things, but you know, you hire someone and then after, you know, a month or two, do you find that people—their motivation starts to get a little bit less and after they make 300 cappuccinos that, you know, the 301st isn’t as exciting or as passionate?

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Rob: Of course. I mean, that's a great question. I think the thing, you know, our team has really learned over the years is to find the right fit right at the beginning when you're hiring. So, you know, in our company, we're all about specialty coffee—our North Star is about coffee quality. It’s about visiting producers in the countries where the coffee's grown, it’s about buying direct and having that traceability from them, it’s about focusing on quality along the supply chain, including very heavy training for our baristas. Many times we'll train for three to four months with us before they're even making drinks for customers.

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We want them to be coffee experts by the time they're making drinks. So the type of employee we typically attracted, especially in the past, were people that were really passionate about the product, passionate about making great coffee, passionate about learning about how to make great coffee. One of the things we learned is that in doing so, we were almost emphasizing in some cases the wrong type of person for the role in a coffee shop. Because the type of person that's going to succeed longer term is one that is really motivated by the community and giving great customer service.

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And having that passion for coffee is important, but it's not enough. It’ll get you past the first three months of work, but then after that, you need something more. Exactly. And we find the—in our cafes and the retail locations, the staff that really succeed longer term is they really love and embrace that role of giving great customer service, having those regular customers that they have the daily interactions with, and and that’s really, you know, where their pride in their work comes from.

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And so a big part of, you know, maintaining that environment and keeping employees satisfied longer term, it goes right back to the beginning of hiring the people that are the right fit culturally for your organization and also in the role that they're going to be doing. We have some people in our company that are very passionate about the coffee but they don't really like dealing with people. You know, we all—we know people like that—and they might be other areas of our company where they'd be better suited, right, whether it's in our roasting operation, in our wholesale operation, in our logistics and supply chain operation. But when it comes to staff who are facing customers, it's really important that that’s their North Star, that that’s what they care about and that’s what gives them motivation every day to come to work.

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Sacha: Especially if you're training someone for four months to be a barista, you know, I in the back of my head, I wonder if sometimes if their parents are criticizing their career choice to be a barista and they're saying well why are you wasting four months to do this but you could whatever go to university or something.

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Rob: Sure.

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Sacha: But you know, for these people, it’s really an art form and but then taking it and seeing the customer enjoy it has got to be rewarding and if you can repeat that, that’s got to be something spectacular. But to your point, you’ve got to find the right people.

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Rob: Sure, and just to if I could add one point, Sacha, to your point, which I think is really good, you know, having parents questioning their career decisions—a lot of it has to do with timing and where people are in their life. Like we have a lot of, you know, great staff that are very young, right? They might be 18, 19, 20 years old or in college themselves and they're doing this, you know, on the side to earn money to pay for tuition. They're not necessarily planning on being a barista for the next 20 years, right?

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And some people they do make it a career decision, but the nice thing about our company and because we have these other facets, we do have sort of career-type roles and trajectories that if someone starts with us in the retail environment, you know, as a barista, and they decide sort of as they get older that they want a more, you know, higher pay or more of a career-type job rather than a retail-type job if if that’s how they view it, then there is other opportunities for the people that are motivated and have that desire to still work in specialty coffee but maybe the type of job that made sense for them when they're 22 might not make sense for them when they're 35, you know, and maybe starting a family, for example, and they have different priorities in their life.

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Sacha: And I think that's part of the training. So because if you're looking for someone who's an executive who’s, you know, really passionate about coffee, that’s probably really hard to find. But if you have a barista, you know, or someone who doesn't know anything about coffee and you train him to be a barista and to appreciate what different types of sources of coffee are like and you know, get him really interested in it, there’s it’s probably easier to find to hire within because you’ve trained these people and and they and they know the people who they're working with.

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Rob: Absolutely. And we have a couple great examples within our company of people who started with us at, you know, 18, 19 years old working as a barista in the cafe, and then as they sort of got into their mid-20s, really wanted more, and many of them have been promoted to our roasting operation—our head roaster started with us in the cafes—our logistics people, two of our wholesale sales managers or account managers started with us also as baristas in the cafe and now they're on a I would say more of a career role trajectory within our company and doing, you know, jobs that are probably harder in a sense and with more responsibility that you'd expect sort of as you get older and more maturity and more experience and also that desire to make more money sort of in the long run.

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Sacha: Yeah, it all sort of ties together. With more money comes more responsibility, so you’ve got to know more. That’s just the reality.

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Rob: Exactly, exactly. But I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to offer those opportunities to our staff because, you know, a lot of independent coffee shops or restaurants, they don't have that ability—you know, if it’s like a single location, there’s only so much future growth you can you can offer someone.

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Sacha: Right. Actually, the beauty of it is from high school, you know, they're working in the coffee shop, then they could go to university, get trained in something and actually take those skills and bring them back and work in supply chain or sales or what have you. Right. So we’ve actually sort of right out of the gate already hit the nail on the head that we’ve got to tie individual goals to corporate goals. The company has to be passionate about coffee and where it comes from and the customer experience to how it’s being serviced to customers. And then the individual has to have that same ideology.

So let me ask you: when it comes to the hiring process and you're meeting a stranger for your first time who’s a potential candidate, do you use your own intuition to determine these people or do you bring in other baristas from from the group to interview them? How does that happen?

 

Rob: Thankfully we’ve been doing this now almost 13 years and we’ve done a lot of things wrong. The benefit of that is it teaches you how to hire better, right, and how to learn better. And I think, you know, I alluded to this a little bit earlier, but I think in our early days because, you know, my partners Phil and Sebastian, they are such passionate people when it comes to the product itself, when it comes to, you know, their North Star is how do I find some of the best coffees grown in the world and then how do we make it better? That’s fundamentally what they care about.

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And, you know, at the very beginning, the type of person who we would hire sort of shared that philosophy. And you know, our when we were only running a single cafe, you know, with a small team, you know, at the old Curry Barracks farmers market, you know, you could really, you know, it was just a lot easier because it was just a small group. We were really unique in the city of what we were trying to do, so it really attracted the type of people who were, you know, motivated by, you know, what our founders were doing and what their North Star was and kind of shared that.

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Over the years, we’ve learned that that’s not always the best way to make hiring decisions because as we’ve gotten bigger and we’ve added new locations, we’ve realized that a certain percentage of our customers—that’s also what they care about, they just want the best cup of coffee humanly possible and they’ll go out of their way to get it. But the vast majority of our customers, they come to us for for other reasons and it’s because they trust that we’re making good coffee even if they don't necessarily understand what that means or how that happens. But more than that, they feel good when they come; they're getting a great experience.

 

And a lot of that has to do with the interaction with staff. And it’s also very obvious things that, you know, fast food companies do really well: speed. We early on didn't really care about speed or convenience; we were like, "We’re going to give you a great cup of coffee and you might just have to wait longer for it than you're used to." Right? (laughing)

 

And what we realized over time is that we can't be a successful business unless we also appreciate what the customer comes in for, on top of the product they're getting. And that we have to be faster, right? Speed matters; people can't wait 27 minutes for their coffee if they're on their way to work. You know, so we spent a lot of time changing our processes and changing our systems to value speed.

 

Sacha: I would 100% agree with you. I mean, it’s it’s about understanding that product and making sure it’s delivered in such a way that the customer is happy when they when they walk out that door. You know, to dovetail it to winemaking, it’s actually no different. Because you can go to, you know, certain wineries where or even wine shops for that matter where the you know, where the sommelier is very arrogant and is like, "You need to buy this $200 bottle of like whatever," when most people the reality is they can't tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200—like they can't. And so there’s a good group of solid wines that have realized that I don't have to make the best cab on the planet. I can make one that’s really good at an affordable price that my customers when they serve it to their guests, you know, over Thanksgiving dinner, it’ll be a reputable, tasteful wine that is not corked.

 

Rob: That’s one thing we’re never going to change; we’re always going to be extremists in terms of our product quality, but the customers don't need to see that as arrogant. The person they're dealing with is like warm, comforting, helpful, and and giving good customer service and the rest will take care of itself if we’re doing a good job in making sure the the quality is really high.

 

Sacha: So you’ve actually dovetailed right from individual and corporate goals being aligned to now talking about community. So as I was saying in the introduction, part of the success of people staying passionate within an organization is they have to have these individual goals that tie to corporate goals but they have to have a community of other people who have similar type goals with a similar North Star.

 

Now dovetailing this into the people that you're hiring, because they realize at the outset that the customer experience is so important, do you find that it’s your staff that is helping you figure out how to increase serviceability, how to increase speed? You tell me if I’m wrong, but it’s not Phil, Seb, and Rob who are saying "these are all the things we have to do to increase speed and increase customer service." I imagine they're throwing ideas out to you.

 

Rob: Sure. Yeah, and that’s a great point. I think it’s the key really is the communication flowing both ways. If these guys come from head office and tell you like, "Be faster," you know, that’s not really going to increase service times. Because there’s a reason why things take a certain amount of time. Sometimes it’s process. Does require some not necessarily the person who’s on the espresso machine making the drinks; it requires someone to almost take a step back and see the big picture of the flow of what’s happening in a cafe and say, "You know, because of the way we do things, it’s really slowing down our process and how could we maybe change some of the things in the design of the process to speed it up?"

But a lot of those ideas will come from the front-line staff for sure or the individual managers at the cafe because they're seeing it. That communication has to go both ways and good ideas can come from anywhere.

 

Sacha: With that sense of community, they're always contributing ideas. I imagine you're always reiterating the purpose of the organization and why you're doing it or do you even have to do that?

 

Rob: I think it’s in everything we do. It’s really important not just to say things, but to actually do things. I mean, any parent knows this, right? You can tell your kid whatever you want, but if they see you doing the opposite, that’s what they're going to believe is the right thing to do. You know, the old expression, you know, "do as I say, not as I do"—I think that’s really relevant when it comes to trying to foster a corporate culture. And if we say the most important thing to us is quality and then, you know, we go and talk to our staff and say, "Actually, you know, we don't in this case just rush it because speed is is the most important thing," you know, if you start giving those mixed messages, that really clouds the culture, right? People don't know—do they say they're doing this, but do they really do it?

 

Your staff will be with you and they'll trust you if you’ve been honest with them and they’ve seen you putting your money where your mouth is. I think that’s the number one thing I’ve seen and complaints I’ve heard from when we have staff come from other—whether it’s coffee shops or or other industries or whatever—the number one complaint people have about their previous employer is that they were promised something and it wasn't delivered. And I’d much rather lower expectations in my promises to be able to exceed them than have the the opposite situation occur.

 

Sacha: You’ve touched on something, you know, really, really big, which is integrity and credibility, which results in bringing turnover down. So every month when we’re with clients and we’re working on strategy, you know, every year we’re always revisiting a five-year strategy, right? And we’re always adjusting it, right? Some stuff we explored, didn't work out. Other stuff was very promising and happened sooner and some stuff we’re working but it’s not on the exact same timeline that we hoped for for a myriad of different reasons.

 

But every single month we’re working on executing on those things and we’ve told the employees that this is what we’re achieving. And I think by by by just the sheer effort and the sheer gestures that you're actually trying to execute on that vision, that’s what makes them want to be part of that story. I think if you’ve to your point earlier, if you’ve hired the right people, I mean, let's be frank, they don't really care whether it you said, you know, 15 months and it’s 18 months and you know, you didn't see an aluminum tariff coming or like they're smart individuals regardless of their educational background. Everyone, you know, everyone knows what’s happening in their respective industry.

 

And so there’s that compassion and there’s and there’s that trust that your employer is working their hardest to grow this firm, which actually brings us to our third point in this, which is to keep these people, the organization has to be growing. Let me ask you this: so as we’ve talked about earlier, yes you have an organization where people can people get internal satisfaction because they can grow their career from being a cashier to a barista to working in the wholesale division and all that. But do you not also find that there’s people there who they could do five cappuccinos a minute and now they can do ten cappuccinos a minute and their growth, their excitement—like they're now able to contribute ideas and that allows them to be faster and quicker with the same amount of quality—like do these people exist in your organization? Does that happen or no?

 

Rob: Yes, of course. I think it’s also important to recognize that there is a time when some employees should go on. I think it’s a misguided notion that every single person in your company you have to provide future career opportunities that’s exactly what they want in their life and where they need to go. You know, we have a very strong core team and we’re all marching in the same direction and we try and hire people that want to be part of that team and relate to us and want to be part of our community and find meaning in their jobs and in their careers.

 

But sometimes those people go in a different direction. Right? Maybe they thought they wanted to work in coffee and then they graduate, you know, university and they're like, "Actually I want to be a social worker." And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, and so sometimes you have to accept, and I think this is part of the the ongoing process, but sometimes it’s good when people leave, even good people. You know, and we’ve all if you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve had great staff members that you would have liked to keep but that at a time in their life it made sense for them to work in your company and then they get to a point where it doesn't make sense anymore.

 

And for the people where it makes sense and they just need more growth and more opportunity within the company, yeah, absolutely, you need to be growing to provide that opportunity. If your business isn't growing, it’s very difficult, right? Unless because unless someone else quits or gets fired or retires, you know, it’s just a game of musical chairs for a company that’s not growing. But if you're growing, you can actually create more opportunity for the individual staff member that want to grow with your company in different areas.

 

You want people who are there who want to be there. Almost as simple as that. If you want them there and they want to be there, chance are it’s going to work out. Right? At least for the time being.

 

Sacha: Hit the nail on the head, right? Because if they want to be there and you and you want them there and and your North Star is the same, I mean,

you can never you can never predict the future but that’s your best probability to succeed, just—

 

Rob: And I will add one point to that of the North Star being the same. I actually think you could have a little bit of diversity there, which is a good thing. So I’ll give you an example: like just amongst our leadership team, you know, Phil and Sebastian themselves are actually electrical engineers; that’s how they met, they were studying engineering and became friends. But they're definitely, you know, motivated through perfecting a cup of coffee. Myself, what motivates me is to build a great business and to mentor a lot of young people in the process. That’s what excites me and gets me up every day.

 

Even if our North Star's the same, I think it’s actually good to have some diversity of it’s not just diversity of skill set; I actually think it’s diversity of what motivates. You know, one of your previous podcasts you were interviewing a hockey General Manager, right?

 

Sacha: Bob Louckes, yeah.

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Rob: Yeah, and one of the thing he said that really resonated with me is everyone plays a role.

 

Sacha: Oh, no, you know, 100%. You need a common shared belief system that you want this organ—I mean, like look, the reality is the reason why BrassRock is brought into client organizations is because there’s some transition that needs to be happening in the sense that the company needs to, you know, get its business to grow in a different direction or they need to transition to kids. But owners are typically extremely passionate about the products or services they're delivering, and they bring in BrassRock because we’re really passionate about building businesses because that’s all we do every day and, you know, we get excited by strategy and cash flow statements and forecasts. And let's be honest, 95% of the population doesn't.

 

Rob: It’s riveting stuff, those spreadsheets, yeah.

 

Sacha: But the reality is to actually get that business to get to that next level, you need that management discipline and you need that financial discipline. So I 100% agree with what you're saying. You need people with a common purpose, which is to get that business to grow, but then everybody’s got to bring their individual passions and somehow apply them within that business.

Getting back to what we were originally starting about, a lot of that comes back to making sure staff has individual purpose, a corporate purpose, there’s a shared community, and then finally there’s growth within the company. So Rob, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. We wish you the absolute greatest success.

 

Rob: Thanks Sacha, this was fun.

 

Sacha: That was Rob Oppenheim of Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters explaining how to maintain a sense of passion in employees for the long term. You need to have independent purpose tied with corporate purpose, there needs to be a fit, shared sense of community, and overall the organization has to grow. My name is Sacha Alimchandani. Thank you for listening to Greatness is Designed. If you want to listen to other episodes, go to brassrockconsulting.com/podcast or wherever you source your podcasts.