Episode #363
Reinventing Retail with Ron Johnson, Co-Creator of Apple's Retail Experience
On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with the legendary co-creator of the Apple retail experience, Ron Johnson. He's the author of the new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Let's get started. Podcast Interview with Brian Ardinger and Ron Johnson Ron Johnson’s Journey from Target to Apple [00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Ron Johnson. Ron was the visionary co-creator of the Apple Store with Steve Jobs. He's former CEO of JCPenney, worked at Target, and he's author of a new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius . Welcome to the show, Ron. [00:00:36] Ron Johnson: It's great to be here, Brian. Thank you for having me on. [00:00:39] Brian Ardinger: Hey, Ron. I am super excited to have you on the show. I've been a big fan of Apple and the whole retail experience. We were talking before I hit record about how my kids often joke that anytime we go anywhere in the world, we have to stop at the Apple Store. So I'm lucky enough to have been to a lot of them everywhere from Paris to Hong Kong to London, et cetera. So, love your work. Maybe to get started, for people who may be unfamiliar with your background and your work as being one of the retail leaders out there as far as innovation talk a little bit about your career in retail. How did you get started in it, and how did you get to the place where you created one of the biggest retail empires in Apple and then further from there? [00:01:17] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I'll just go quick. I grew up in the Midwest, like you, outside of Minneapolis. And coincidentally, I grew up two miles from the first enclosed shopping mall in the world that was invented, innovated, and opened the year before I was born. And I grew up loving stores. And I went to Stanford for undergrad as a soccer player. Went to Harvard Business School, got my degree, was going to go onto Wall Street, and I said, Ron, what do you want to do for a lifetime?" And I thought about all the people I admired. They were doing something they loved, whether it was an athlete, an artist, a musician, or a business leader. And I just decided that retail was something I was going to put my head down and learn how to do. And I went from Harvard Business School to unloading trucks in a store, and I worked my way up through a lot of things. Eventually, I got back to Minneapolis to Target and helped really Target during a a big decade. How Target’s Design Strategy Caught Steve Jobs’ Attention The '90s was when Target and Walmart were the big battle, and that was a big retail battle, and Target emerged the winner at that time. Stock went up 12 times. But I had done this big design initiative where we brought design to the masses with a partnership with a guy named Michael Graves. [00:02:32] Brian Ardinger: Yes. [00:02:33] Ron Johnson: That led Steve, who I learned, you were there. Steve had just returned to Apple, had launched the iMac. I know you were at the keynote at that time. Yeah. It was a huge moment that got a lot of attention, but it sold to the Mac faithful. It didn't really accomplish the goal of getting out to the PC owner to switch or a new person to get on the computer. And Steve believed that if he was going to win, he had to control the customer experience. And so, he called me to come out and meet him to talk about leading an effort to create the Apple Store. So that's enough on my background, but it gives you a flavor. I love retail, and I've been doing it my whole career. [00:03:12] Brian Ardinger: I got a chance to read a preview copy of the book that's coming out here in September and loved it. Quite frankly, the, the stories and the insights that you provide are well worth people picking up a copy. But one of the things that stood out is you spent two chapters, I think talking about how love is a strategy. The- book devotes, two chapters to that concept of love is a strategy. Can you break down what you mean by that, and how does that manifest itself? [00:03:34] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I had been at Harvard Business School, and they taught me to manage, and that's where you kind of, you set a goal, you hold people accountable, you have very disciplined processes, checkpoints, and things you do to make sure the business is on track. And that's how most businesses are run. I'm on boards, and it feels that way. But leadership's a very different thing. And when I got to, Target, I realized that I was not a great manager. But I was a great leader. I knew how to inspire people. I knew how to identify a North Star. I knew how to encourage people. And I read a book by Marianne Williamson called Return to Love, and it gave me this vision for how to lead with love. Why Love Became a Leadership Strategy And that's how I grew up in my personal life, my family, my neighbors, my friends. I wake up every day thinking, "How do I secure their good?" And I thought, "What if I brought that to work?" And so, I did that at Target, and it seemed to work quite well. And people always wanted to work on my teams. And when I went to Steve, he asked me a question. We had met for three hours, and he said, "What tell me what our customer service philosophy will be." And I said it's very simple. We're going to love our customers." And he said, "We're going to love our customers?" He said... I said, "Exactly what you do, Steve." He said, "No, I don't. I design great products." I said, "But that's an act of love. When you make something easy to use, that's an act of love. That secures the good of the customer. When you allow mere mortals to create a movie." At that time, they had a app called iMovie where you could take a camcorder and then edit and share. I said, "You're allowing people to do something that's gonna change their life. Those are acts of love, and that's what we're going to do in the store. We're going to close the gap between people's interest in technology, that fear, and being able to do great things, and we're going to do that through loving them." And he said we're the most secular ZIP code in the world. Find another word." So, we ended up saying we're going to enrich lives, which worked great. But it is. And so, the book talks a lot about it because I'm a believer, and I learned this from Marianne. There's two ways to manage, essentially out of love and out of fear. Leading Through Love Instead of Fear Out of love, you help people soar with your strengths. As a manager, you're asking questions all the time like how can I help today? Is there anything I can- you want to share with me that I can, help you with? What do you need? What kind of research do you need to be successful?" Managers say, "Okay, how's this project going? Are you on plan?" Et cetera, et cetera. And the one promotes a little bit of a culture of fear. You're being held accountable. The other is a much more creative culture, one of love, and they go hand-in-hand. And Steve agreed with it. In the book we talk about Steve said, "Ron, the highest form of kindness is telling the truth." And Steve did th...
