Steve Black on Leadership, Mentorship, and the Future of Grocery Retail

00:04 – Steve Black:
I’m Steve Black, founder and CEO of A Brighter Day Life and author of The Five Rules.

00:09 – Anthony Presley:
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. We’re here at Rafta. Wonder if you would tell us a little bit about your company and a little bit about your background.

00:16 – Steve Black:
Well, so my background would be I’m 47 years in the grocery retail space. Started out with United Supermarkets in Oklahoma, spent about 27 years there, and then moved on to Batolas in Oklahoma City for a couple years and then Bruno’s in Alabama for a couple of years. I was senior vice president of center store at Bruno’s and moved to Phoenix, Arizona with Sunflower Farmers Markets. Came on board and was VP of IT and VP of Marketing and then eventually VP of Operations when Sprouts bought us.

00:49 – Steve Black:
And then so when I went to Sprouts, I was VP of Operations for a few months for the transition and then became CIO and Chief Marketing Officer at Sprouts prior to going public and was there a couple of years and then went to Lucky’s Markets in Colorado where we were growing the natural organic space there around the country. Then from there went to Rouses Markets in Louisiana where we had 64 stores, three states, and I was president and chief operating officer there. Two years ago since I retired and wrote my book on The Five Rules. So I’ve been speaking and coaching, became a certified Maxwell speaker and coach on the Maxwell team. And then so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years.

01:32 – Steve Black:
And I just launched an online masterclass and hadn’t announced it here at this conference with the HR share group and with the CEOs and retailers that are here and then with all the other vendor partners that were here yesterday. So I had three sessions here yesterday. A lot of good, positive response from the masterclass.

01:52 – Anthony Presley:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I sat through one of the three sessions you did and I appreciate that. And you’re very keen on leadership. You talk about it a lot. You certainly are on the LinkedIn with it. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how did, how did that become such an involved piece of your growth, that leadership and you obviously growing leaders beneath you and in your organizations.

02:16 – Steve Black:
Yeah, great question. And, you know, growing up in western Oklahoma in the grocery business, we never talked about leadership. We never went to leadership training or classes or anything. It was all about just getting the job done. Just come to work and do your job. And if you couldn’t get it done in an eight-hour day, you need to work a ten-hour day. And if you couldn’t get it done in five days, you need to work six or seven. And I learned early on that’s not leadership. That’s a bit of slavery—driving people out the door, quite frankly. So I originally started just reading. My goal was to read four leadership books a year. And I did that for over a decade.

02:54 – Steve Black:
And with each one of the books that I read, I picked up from three to four to six nuggets—what I call leadership nuggets—and began to place those into who I was. And what was really cool, and this wasn’t my plan, it just happened, but you start stacking years of that, then decades of that, and you can say 20 years, 30 years, you really get pretty good at leadership. But I can tell you that leadership’s all about people, right? These rules—my rules—are simple. You know, the first rule is do your job. Second rule is be kind, and I think the whole world needs more kindness. And then the third rule is no surprises. So we have to be better communicators. And the fourth rule is no drama. And all of us know what happens when people bring drama to work.

03:43 – Steve Black:
And then the last rule is protect the brand. And we’re the brand. If we work for the same company, we’re the brand. It’s not the logo on the shirt. It’s not the logo on the building. It’s us.

03:53 – Anthony Presley:
Do you find any one of those rules is harder to do than the other?

03:57 – Steve Black:
Yeah, because I originally wrote these for me. I wanted to be a better leader. And these were for my—these were my personal rules of doing my job and being kinder. It’s easy to be kind to kind people. It’s not so easy to be kind to unkind people.

04:15 – Anthony Presley:
Is there any of the rules that people just immediately pick up and that you don’t have to reinforce?

04:22 – Steve Black:
I always talk about, too, on the do your job part is it’s “do”—if you emphasize it’s do—it’s action. I’ve always told my teams in the stores, it’s okay to hurry when you get busy. You can shift gears and hurry, but you have so many people that just have that same pace. But when you’re backed up in the front end or you got two trucks needing to be unloaded or whatever the case is, you gotta be able to shift gears, right? And then do your job. Just worry about your job. Don’t worry about everybody else. I always say we make adult money, so it’s okay to do adult performance.

04:54 – Anthony Presley:
I love that.

04:55 – Steve Black:
Doing your job.

04:56 – Anthony Presley:
I love that phrase. Yeah, that’s way better than “I’m going to give it the college try.” I like that.

05:00 – Anthony Presley:
You’ve obviously, you’ve built a very successful career in the grocery industry. You’ve got a passion for it. I think your five rules are very applicable to other industries, but you’ve, you seem to have lasered in on trying to level up the grocery industry. Do you think—is there a gap, for lack of a better term—would you say there’s a gap in the industry for where leaders are and where they could be or should be? And do you think that there’s an imminent—doom is too big of a word—but is there corporate pressure coming in from outside influence, especially on the independent grocer? Does that make sense?

05:41 – Steve Black:
Yeah, probably. The way I’d answer that is that gap is because we’ve had just a huge amount of people retire over the last two or three years, and that tribal knowledge of 30, 40, 50 years in the business walks out the door. And then you got somebody that’s in their 20s or 30s that just doesn’t have that tribal knowledge or experience. And so that is a huge gap. And I think we need more mentors that are willing to mentor young people and young leaders coming up. And then I think it’s important that we also try to balance the leadership roles, not just across diversity in race, but in diversity in age. You know, and obviously we have a huge imbalance in women in CEO roles.

06:26 – Steve Black:
And I did a podcast with the WGA—Women Grocers Association—and I talked about we have to balance the boardroom. But at the CEO role, it’s 90% men and 10% women. Well, that’s an imbalance. And the only persons that can fix that is the 90%.

06:42 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

06:43 – Steve Black:
So it has to be top of mind for my peer group to balance that boardroom and look for candidates that are qualified—but look very positively for candidates of diversity, right? In age and in sex and in race. And nothing encourages the teams more when they know they have a leader that’s near and dear to them. Because that gives them hope and encouragement to—you know, like we’re talking about is: do you care for me, can you help me, and can I trust you? Well, I can help you get where you want to get to as a leader in one of the diversity groups, but you have to put in an effort, right? And I’ll be glad, more than glad, to coach you. I need you to be kind and coachable.

07:25 – Steve Black:
And if you have those two qualities, I will work with you all day.

07:29 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

07:30 – Steve Black:
But if you don’t have those two qualities, and you gotta have both—

07:34 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

07:35 – Steve Black:
You can be kind, but you don’t listen.

07:38 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

07:38 – Steve Black:
You know. And you can be unkind and you’re coachable. But that combination doesn’t work. You have to be kind and coachable.

07:46 – Anthony Presley:
Right. I have a friend that says that coachability is actually the leadership superpower.

07:52 – Steve Black:
Yes. Would you believe—I absolutely, 100% believe that’s true. Because I’ve unfortunately had to let some people go in my organizations because they weren’t coachable, they didn’t listen, they didn’t tell the truth, and they weren’t coachable. And that’s really what true leadership is. Leaders create other leaders, and they live what they preach. And I’ve had people—and I’ve always given my team and my family permission to call me out.

08:17 – Anthony Presley:
Yeah.

08:18 – Steve Black:
If you think I’m breaking a rule, call me out.

08:20 – Anthony Presley:
Yeah.

08:21 – Steve Black:
Because trust me, these rules—I wrote them and they were near and dear to me, but they were a lot of the things I struggled with.

08:27 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

08:27 – Steve Black:
Right?

08:28 – Anthony Presley:
So what else—any other bits of advice we might want to leave here for either grocers or wholesalers?

08:35 – Steve Black:
Well, I definitely believe that we need a post-COVID culture reset across the planet—in all businesses, and quite frankly, a lot of families. Because a lot of families and businesses were completely destroyed, turned upside down, or will never be the same since COVID and the supply chain issues and the employee issues. And I think everybody just needs a timeout. People are—we’re everything with our people and we’re nothing without our people—and then turn around and treat them terrible, expecting them to work 100-hour work weeks and round the clock, 24/7. It’s okay for people that when they get off at 5, they should be able to be off.

09:12 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

09:12 – Steve Black:
Not check their emails, not text them. And so I never did that as a president of a company. I didn’t send emails at night, I didn’t call people at night, I didn’t text them at night. I’d do it during the business day because everybody feels compelled to answer the boss.

09:25 – Anthony Presley:
Whenever he calls.

09:26 – Steve Black:
But shame on the boss.

09:27 – Anthony Presley:
Right.

09:28 – Steve Black:
I mean, if there’s a fire, that’s a whole different conversation. I don’t think you’re ever perfect at communication, but I do think you can get better at it. Yeah, and the way you get better at it is—it’s kind of like: what’s it feel like to be on the other side of me? And I tend to have—I have a strong voice anyway. I can come across as very harsh and stern, but it’s just my voice. So I’ve really had to learn to try to soften it up a little bit. And then always—I’m always looking at who I’m talking to in the eyes, because the eyes will tell you everything you need to know if you’re communicating well.

10:00 – Anthony Presley:
Any last departing thoughts here for—

10:02 – Steve Black:
No, I appreciate you having me. And yeah, I think this journey of leadership growth and how we all get better together is really where we all need to be in our business world and in our lives.

10:16 – Anthony Presley:
Thank you very much.

10:16 – Steve Black:
All right. My pleasure. You bet.