Hamdi Ulukaya: The Billionaire Shepherd
It’s been a week! I hope that you’re well. If you’re feeling like you need a wry smile, you’ll love Reza Farazmand’s dry sense of humour.
While parts of the world were being weird about South Africa’s scientific excellence, the Southern Guild Gallery represented cutting-edge African creativity at Design Miami, winning Best Gallery Presentation for their showing of work by Andile Dyalvane, Zizipho Poswa, Fani Madoda and Chuma Maweni.
Those links should have you smiling and inspired. And whilst we’re on a roll, if you’re looking for children’s books by African authors for holiday reading, this will help you.
This week I start working with Abdul Khan and Sibusiso Masuku, who were the winners of my free coaching offer. I am looking forward to it.
Strategy
Keeping with the themes of smiling and inspiration, let me introduce to you Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of the $2 billion yoghurt manufacturer, Chobani. I discovered his story thanks to the 10X Bolder podcast hosted by Halla Tómasdóttir, CEO of the B Team. The B Team describes its mission as redefining the “culture of accountability in business, for our companies, communities and future generations, by creating and cascading new norms of corporate leadership that can build a better world.”
The highly abbreviated version of Ulukaya’s story is that he comes from a rural Turkish family, so grew up with shepherding, cheese, and yoghurt as part of his universe. In his early twenties, he goes to the USA to learn to speak English. He ends up spending 18 months working on one of his English lecturer’s farms. Whilst doing this he notices that many speciality shops are importing feta cheese, and he becomes convinced that drawing on his heritage, he could make better quality feta at a better price. He does and builds a moderately successful business. In early 2005, a flyer crosses his desk. Kraft was selling a yoghurt factory. Ulukaya immediately realised that the price was a fraction of the value of the machinery and went to see the factory. The factory was run down, dilapidated, but the machinery solid and the people had an 80 year heritage with the business.
He made the decision to buy and, again, drew on his heritage deciding to make a Greek-style yoghurt, a type that was not on the shelves of American supermarkets. It’s name, Chobani, means shepherd.
His 10X conversation and his widely acclaimed TED Talk focus on the principles with which he approaches business, and we’ll come to those because they’re inspiring. However, his address at the Cornell Entrepreneurship Summit, reveals some insights into the nuts and bolts of his approach. They’re strategically important.
He draws on his knowledge of the market. He sees possibilities for his products. With both the feta and yoghurt businesses, he is laser-focused on acquiring distribution and customers, in doing so he ensures that he has strong cashflow. At the end of the Cornell address he is asked what has stayed the same as his business has grown, he answers, “Never take your eye of the product. The consciousness of your product can never go away, the minute that goes away, what makes you amazing is gone.”
In brief, the essence of building a business – identify opportunity, build channels to customers, convert into sales, and never take your eye of your product.
Self
His TED Talk is entitled The Anti-CEO Playbook. In it he says that “the anti-CEO playbook is about responsibility. Today’s playbook says, that businesses should stay out of politics. The reality is businesses, as citizens, must take a side. When we were growing in New York and looking for more people to hire, I remembered that in Utica, an hour away, there were refugees from Southeast Asia and Africa, who were looking for a place to work. ‘They don’t speak English,’ someone told me. I said, “I don’t really, either. Let’s get translators.” Someone else said ‘They don’t have transportation.’ I said, ‘Let’s get buses, it’s not a rocket science.’ Today, in one of America’s rural areas, 30 percent of the Chobani workforce are immigrants and refugees.”
His relentless focus on finding solutions to do what is right is inspirational. Throughout our leadership journeys we are confronted with choices, it is up to us whether we chose to make a difference or go with the flow.
Soul
In his TED Talk, Ulukaya recounts that when he went to buy his first factory, he met the production manager, who was the third generation of his family to work in the factory, and now it was closing.
Ulukaya reflects on that conversation saying “What hit me the hardest at that time was that this wasn’t just an old factory. This was a time machine. This is where people built lives, they left for wars, they bragged about home runs and report cards. But now, it was closing. And the company wasn’t just giving up on yogurt, it was giving up on them.”
It’s a powerful way to think of a business. It is not just work, it is a place that people become themselves, where they build their families and their communities.
He goes on to say that business is about community and advises “Go search for communities that you can be part of. Ask for permission. And be with them, open the walls and succeed together.”
When he took over that first factory, the first thing he did was to repaint the factory with everyone. In doing that he says that renewed hope and got to know each other. From around the 42nd minute in the 10X Bolder podcast, he describes those early days. He says that they were captured with the idea that they would fix the factory, that they would fix the community, that they would ‘tell the children you deserve better and you’re worth it.’ He comments that “these were powerful emotions that we were surrounding ourselves with… and when they’re channelled with intelligence, hard work and passion and good people, some amazing things can happen.”
He describes how they kept focussed on having an impact in the community, and for their customers, saying that “Once you get into living this way of operating then it’s the most joyful thing to do…you don’t have to write anything down, because if you’re in the mindset, the ‘soulset’, those things are automatically going to happen because you already know whoever touches the process, will touch it from a positive perspective.”
I love that idea. When you’re clear about your purpose, your people arrive with a clear soulset, they seek the best solution.
Ulukaya arrived in the US with $3,000 dollars in his pocket, today he is a billionaire. He is also a prophet for the power of purpose and meeting people in the ‘commonplace of humanity.’ He ends his TED Talk saying, “if you are right with your people, if you are right with your community, if you are right with your product, you will be more profitable, you will be more innovative, you will have more passionate people working for you and a community that supports you.”
That’s it for today. Two more letters until I lay down my ‘pen’ for the year. See you next week. Thank you for reading!
Karl
PS: You can learn more about my coaching practice here and connect with me on LinkedIn. If this is the first time you’re reading strategy, soul, & self, you can subscribe here.
(this letter was first published on 5 December 2021)