November 26, 2025 • 63 mins
What separates a good brand from a timeless one? In this episode, Coach’s longtime CEO Lew Frankfort joins Danielle to share the lifetime of lessons he documents in his new memoir Bagman. Lew breaks down why an outsider’s perspective can be an advantage, how “magic and logic” shaped Coach, and what scaling a $6 million leather goods company into a $5 billion global lifestyle brand really took: personally and professionally. In this episode, Lew shares:
- How a stroller-ready diaper bag sparked his first entrepreneurial lesson
- Why immersive curiosity must precede data and analytics
- Life lessons he took away from his struggles with a speech impediment as a child, and how they had a long lasting impact
- How being an outsider helped him see the fashion world through a different (and valuable) lens
- The hidden costs of growth—including health, mindset, and family time
- The techniques he used to help him navigate depressive episodes throughout his life and career
- A haunting fear of failure that fueled his drive for excellence but came at a personal cost
- A values-first philosophy on leadership and legacy amid short-term pressures
- What Gen Z is getting right
Follow Lew on Instagram @LewFrankfort
Book recommendation: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Check out Lew’s book Bagman
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe, and each week my guests and I come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And who says?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So? Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's
time to question everything.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hello, I hope you're having a beautiful day and a
really great lead up to Thanksgiving. I am in Portover
to Mexico with my entire mom's side of the family.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So my last living grandmother.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
My Oma, who I think you guys have probably heard
me talk about. She is turning ninety and she wanted
everybody to be together. So we are all at an
all inclusive in Mexico together for Thanksgiving week and next
week I'll report back. You know, I'm not sure we'll
ever get the opportunity to do this again, so I'm
(01:17):
taking it all in. But it's funny having cousins and
aunts and uncles and everybody from all over the country
who aren't always together together at one dinner table every
single night.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's been interesting and fun.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Also, you've probably noticed that there's some ads at the
beginning of the show and in the middle of the show,
and here's what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
For a long time, we didn't have ads.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And the pod is officially part of the iHeartMedia podcast family.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
iHeartMedia is the largest podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Network in the entire world, and I am really excited.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
To be in partnership with them.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
This has been just a long time building and coming,
and so I'm gonna be honest with you. I know
ads can be a little bit annoying, and I thought
about that long and hard. But here's what my sort
of analysis was. I have to recoup some money from
the podcast. So my analysis was, it's better that they
pay us for ads than ask you to pay for
(02:16):
the podcast. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I figured you'd be on board with that. I just
I don't want to charge for the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I love like I just believe in free information and
I want to connect with as many of you as possible.
So that's what that's about. And thanks for growing with me.
You know, sometimes on emails I'll sign off when I
feel it we grow together, and I really believe that deeply,
I hope that I add to your life, and you
(02:44):
add so much to my life, and so thank you
for growing together, for growing with me. So I always
think that Thanksgiving puts people in a reflective mood, right
like I'm sure you go around the table with your
family and ask what everybody's grateful for, or think about
it at least. And so I felt like dropping of
values driven episode right before the holiday gives gives everyone,
(03:07):
including me, something to carry into the holiday. And our
guest today lives his life by his values.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Truly.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Let me explain, every generation has a few people who
remind us that progress doesn't start with power.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
It starts with perspective.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
People who see the world just a few degrees differently,
and in doing so, shift the entire horizon for the
rest of us. Some of them are household names. Okrah
Winfrey turned rejection into a media empire. Steve Jobs transformed
of firing into a new way of imagining the future.
(03:48):
Sarah Blakely reinvented an entire industry with five.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Thousand dollars in a wild idea. Madam C. J. Walker,
who rose.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
From impossibly hard beginnings to become America's first female self
made millionaire.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And then there are quieter innovators too.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Hiroshi Iwatani, a Japanese engineer who felt like he'd failed
as a musician.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So what did he do.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
He built something for people who were afraid to sing,
the karaoke machine, and he changed how the world experiences
nightlife and entertainment and joy. So what ties these people together, Well,
it's not their resumes. It's that they were brave enough
to notice what others overlooked, and they were generous enough
(04:31):
to build something better.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
That's the lineage.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Today's guest belongs to Lou Frankfurt, the former CEO of Coach.
Didn't start out imagining he'd reshape American fashion. He began
as a kid from the Bronx, the son of a
police officer, finding his voice through a speech impediment, learning
early that strength doesn't always look like certainty. Sometimes it
(04:54):
looks like listening, and sometimes it looks like curiosity. U
memoir Bagman traces a path from public service to the
corner office, from leather samples to building one of the
most recognizable brands.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
On the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But what makes Lou's story resonate is not just the
scale of his success.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
It is the clarity of his values.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So I had the north star, which was to really
build a microcosm of the best of America in the
bag and accessories that would represent the values of us
as Americans.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
He coined the term accessible luxury, which is a concept
that didn't just describe a brand, but it redefined an
entire category of fashion.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You need to be able to have bold imagination and
think that you could create something that perhaps did not exist.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
His book is really good. It's really not a business memoir.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Sure there's business in it or business stories in it,
but Lou was courageous enough to share the high highs
and the deeply personal lows. And as I sat across
from him interviewing him, I just kept thinking, what an iconoclast.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
He's such a striver.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
He built the first American luxury bag brand, and he
did it with so much integrity.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So obviously I had a ton of questions.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
But the one I keep coming back to, and the
one I had when I was reading his book, the
one that we're circling today is how do you lead
with values in a culture that rewards shortcuts? And I
guess I'll throw one more in there. What does integrity
look like In an age where everything is a moment,
it's time to question everything with Lou Frankfurt. So, Lou,
(06:50):
the title of your book bag Man. I love the cover,
by the way, thank you, But bag Man is a
nod to your career at Coach. Of course, you notably
took the company from a six million dollar family run
leather goods maker to a five billion dollar publicly traded
brand known worldwide. But there's a little humility and satire
(07:11):
in the title of this book. The bag man is
like kind of known as the unglamorous but essential, like
the operator, the errand guy I wouldn't call the guy
running the show bag man.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Can you tell me?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I'm sure you ran through so many titles. Why did
you land on bagman? What does it mean to you?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well? I do consider myself a bag man because I
built vessels for people to put their things in. And
I was once given the bag with a lot of
cash from a manufacturer in Italy who thought on that
when we mistakenly paid him twice for a shipment of goods,
that the second was a payment that he would give
(07:53):
me when I came. So I handed him back the
bag and there was a brown bag folded with cash
or one hundred dollar bills, and I said to him,
we will take thirty eight thousand dollars off the next invoice.
But bag Man I wanted again as a brand guy,
I wanted to have a title that would be intrusive
(08:17):
and also a title that would be compelling. So bag
Man gets people's attention because of the double meaning. And
I did sell a lot of bags in my life.
And the second is because I thought it would be compelling,
that it would draw someone in out of curiosity, and
it's I really loved the title. It came pretty naturally
(08:40):
to me that I am the Bagman. A few people
in the course of my career have called me the
bag Man.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Was there a runner up or you always knew it
was going to be called Bagman?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I think from the very beginning I settled on bag Man.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, there's something deeply American about it to me, Like
you're saying, I'm not this Wall Street guy and I'm
a kid from the Bronx.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Well, I'm not a Wall Street guy. And when we
talk about building a brand, we talk about selling one
product at a time to one consumer and hoping that
they really enjoy the product, appreciated. My story in many
ways is American story. You're right, and I am living
(09:28):
the American dream, and I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity.
And we don't have a history of luxury brands in
the United States. And shortly after I joined Coach, I
developed a perspective that Coach could be the best of America.
That it's earnest, it's hard working, and I thought to
(09:52):
myself that if we built the right culture and a
right product and a consistent the modeling of of treating
consumers as if they're guests in our house, that we
might be able to build something special.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
When you say the word ernest, I'm curious about that
because I think there's like this this feeling that earnestness
is cringey nowadays. I've always considered myself an earnest person,
and I don't know that I fit into like a
millennial or gen Z ideal because of that quality.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You're not srue, I'm not in I understand when I
use the word earnest that I use it in its
most basic form. When you're earnest, you're authentic, you're real,
You're not putting on as you're not pretending what you
sees what you get and when you go back, when
(10:47):
I go back to the basic Coach original bags from
the sixties and seventies and eighties, it's a hard working bag.
It less for generations. And today you can go on
eBay and pay one thousand dollars for a big that
we may have made and sold for seventy dollars thirty
five forty years ago, because it's still real and you
(11:12):
can continue to get great use out.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Of it, and it's sturdy, sturdy.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Now, I was reading that you had a speech impediment
when you were a kid, and I can imagine that
as a kid, struggling to get words out might make
you feel small. Did you see reverberations from that as
you entered the workforce.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
The short answer is I did not see reverberations. I
became very conscious and I'm still conscious that I can't
say OZ very well, and I sort of work around it.
But growing up with a speech impediment when I was
a little kid, it was tough.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It's sort of interesting because you've built an empire in
many ways based on your voice and your point of view.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
It's hard for me to call it an empire because
I believe we it's a community. If you look at
Coach today and you look at the leadership and the employees,
they all have belief in the brand. They have belief
that we're giving consumers a product that's a great value,
(12:16):
a lasting product, and we do treat consumers customers as
if the guests in our home. And the culture is
a very affirmative culture.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I grew up with a brother who had a speech
impediment as a kid, and I saw him push through it.
There was so much perseverance required. And I was reading
that I think forty percent of CEOs have dyslexia. There's
something about the perseverance or the relentlessness that's required as
a kid that must translate somehow it sounds right.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I didn't really feel that way by the time I
was in the fifty sixth grade, so ten or eleven
people buy and large could understand me. It was a
real issue though when I was a young child, and
it caused a lot of embarrassing moments for me.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I love reading about how a diaper bag informed it
was kind of your first connection to a bag.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Will you share that story?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Sure? My wife of fifty years Bobby, who was teaching
at Brooklyn College and very involved in higher education and
also on working with disadvantage children in the community, decided
after the birth of our first child that she was
(13:39):
going to create a bag that would fit on a
stroller as well as be carried over your shoulder. And
fortunately she did have an aunt in Texas who made bags,
and she developed a bag business, and I watched it
grow and I watched it thrive, and that was my
(14:01):
first real experience, even remotely. And I would say in
building something, did.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You take anything that you learned watching her over to
coach when you started after you, because you worked in
the government for ten years and then you went over
to coach.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I was in government. I would occasionally go with her
to make a sales call because she would do calls
on Saturdays and or Sundays, even certain stores that were open.
And she sold largely the specialty stores, and I really
learned the pitch, so to speak. And learning the pitch
(14:39):
when you sell a specialty stores, which were really a
very major shopping channel, is really understanding the DNA of
the founder of the owner, what motivates them, trying to
understand who is the customer within the store, how do
you service them? How do you make an argument that's
convinced and compelling that your product is distinctive from others
(15:03):
so that they're willing to put it on the shelves.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So, speaking of that, we share a big value of curiosity.
I loved reading about that in your book. You ask
the question, who is the Coach customer and how do
I reach them? How does somebody figure out who their
customer is?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's a combination of magic and logic, which is a
term that is used throughout my memoir and it's a
convention that Coach. When I run into people at Coach today,
they tell me that a day doesn't go past when
someone doesn't say we need more magic or we need
more logic. So immersive curiosity, I believe is magic. It's
(15:47):
not logic because there isn't a playbook. You need to
have an open mind with a method of inquiry that
allows you to go left, right, pivot, go up and
down depending on what you hear. And with immersive curiosity,
it's really insatiable. And I know that you're a very
(16:08):
curious person and that has led on you to move
in different directions. Also, from a career perspective. So the
magic is a really is boundless curiosity. It's trying to
grock something to really get to the essence of it. Now,
the logic is using data and analytics to measure behavior,
(16:34):
to measure attitude, and we did that from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Do you think that coming into Coach as an outsider,
coming from government, not having worked in fashion. You said
when you got there, didn't even really care about fashion.
You were looking at data and that's how you made choices.
Do you think coming in as an outsider helped.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It depends on the industry, the company, and the place
where you come in. So I came in as a
protege of the founder, and he actually appreciated that I
did not have a fashion background because he didn't really
believe in fashion. He believed in a great product interesting,
(17:34):
so product was hero. The word fashion was prohibited from
discussing it. He made a great, great product that attracted
a subset of the American public, classic consumers, functional consumers.
And when I joined Coach it was actually at a
(17:55):
time when European luxury brands had only a small press
in the United States and in accessories and bags and
Coach occupied a single lane between mass and luxury, and
I thought to myself, with the growing middle class, that
(18:16):
we would be able to create, perhaps one day a highway.
And it turned out to be a super highway between
mass and luxury. And I originally called a democratized luxury. However,
when we went public, we needed to find a moniker
that investors who are primarily male and understand why we
(18:40):
do invest in a bad company, and we created the
term accessible luxury.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Now I've only gotten to spend maybe thirty minutes total
with you so far in my life, and I can
tell that you are a person who goes out of
their way to make other people feel seen. You are
maybe a unique mix of magic and logic. And I'm
wondering if over the course of your time at Coach
(19:08):
you ever wanted to override the logic part. Did you
ever make decisions based on the magic if the data
said something else?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Okay, See, when you build something, you really need to
start with magic, not logic. So you need to start
with belief and possibilities. You need to be able to
have bold imagination and think that you could create something
that perhaps did not exist, whether it's either and a
clear need, or you believe that you could demonstrate something
(19:42):
where consumers would come to understand that they were missing something.
So I do believe. On the magic side, you need
to have belief. I fell in love with a coach bag,
and I really felt it was everything that an advocate
of the bag would want it to be. It was sturdy,
(20:03):
it was reliable, it did the job, It got better
over time, and as you well know as a bags
are really one of the most important products that a
woman carries. She opens it thirty fifty sixty times a day,
she has her essentials in it. Depending on the nature
(20:24):
of the bag, it could have organization, It could have zippers.
For the person who is more casual, she can dump
everything in the bag. So I had a notion that
we could build something. So you need bold imagination and
you need belief. If you don't start with the purpose,
you can never actually get to a place. So I
(20:49):
had a north star, which was to really build a
microcosm of the best of America in the bag, in
accessories that would represent the value of us as Americans.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's interesting for me to hear that you wanted to
build the best of America in a bag. That's such
a huge thing to say. How did you even come.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Up with that?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I was always value driven. So when I was in
city government, my most significant role was running daycare and
Headstart during a very tough period in the mid seventies
when the city was going through a fiscal crisis, and
I felt at the time almost messianic about my responsibility
(21:36):
to ensure that every eligible child and family would be
able to get daycare and head start services. So I
felt when I was in government that I was in
service of my client. So when I went to Coach,
I naturally gravitated to the customer because I didn't really
(22:00):
know anything else to do. And it seemed to work
if you really focus on your customer. And our customer
loved Coach and when I joined. Prior to my joining Coach,
as an example, I pretended to be a freelance Business
Week reporter and I interviewed buyers and merchants from different Bloomingdale's.
(22:23):
I remember Macy's, Bondwit Teller and a small handbag specialty
store on West seventy second Street in New York City,
and this owner said to me, it has a cult
following and being a product of the sixties and having
a vision in the sixties that my generation would be
(22:44):
able to help create a better world. It was easy
for me to put the dots together and say, Okay,
I'm in business, but I feel purposeful. And when I
looked at our workforce, it was a melting pot, a
microco America, and that made me feel ready, proud and good.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So the number that keeps coming up in all of
these interviews is the five billion dollar number.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
You did an interview with Gary Vee and he was like,
say it again, repeat it.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So six million dollars to five billion through your time
with the brand, it's roughly an eight hundred and thirty
three x growth in revenue. And just for a reference,
I had to look it up. Basically, only Starbucks, Amazon, Lululemon,
and Ralph Lauren have had growth at that level at
some point. What were the hitting costs of growth of
(23:37):
that kind?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, as I said when I spoke with Gary, it
didn't occur overnight, So let's it took thirty five years.
So and whenever we reached a milestone. Because I always
was motivated by a drive for excellence and a concurrent
fear of failure, never get complacence. When we reached a plateau.
(24:04):
I remember when we reached seventy five million dollars. I
think that was around nineteen eighty seven eighty six, we
gave everyone a turkey for Thanksgiving, every factory worker, every
office worker. We had small celebrations as we went forward.
(24:24):
But when we talk about hidden course to really build
a brand that is beloved, which requires innovation, relevance, continual adaptation,
it's twenty four to seven. So it took a toll
on my body. It took a toll on my mind.
(24:47):
It forced me to make difficult choices in terms of
working versus being with family. And I learned as early
as the nineteen eighties that I really needed to listen
to my body, meaning if I had back aches, or
I was feeling like I was an impostor one day
(25:08):
just sitting there, do I really know enough to do this?
Or losing my mojo, or being in a situation where
I had little control and the meant a lot to me.
These fears and worries lack of sleep manifest physically, and
when they manifest physically, you need to pause and pay attention.
(25:29):
And I started to develop a variety of techniques that
I used through today to help me navigate away from
depressive episodes and not allow myself to go into a
bad place. And of course there's pattern recognition, but I
(25:50):
do strongly believe that you need balance and exercise is
one you need. Releases. Meditation is a wonderful way to
give your mind a break and put it on pause,
whether it's for ten or twenty minutes. I massage therapy
(26:11):
from the right therapists who really understand how energy flows
in your body, it can really make a difference. I'm
a strong believer in executive coaching, therapy and the use
of meds when necessary, and I encourage people of all
ages to really be honest with themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You mentioned that your fear of failure. You said you
were driven by excellence and failure.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
And it's still there.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I will say, really, to this day, I still.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Have failure dreams. Now they take differents than they ditch
twenty and forty years ago.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So just so everybody who hasn't read the book knows
you have these failure dreams that are recurring in your life.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Can you explain what they are?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
These are dreams where I wake up remembering snippets and
they generally, like most failure dreams that people have, from
what they tell me, they are similar themes. And in
my case, it's everything from not being prepared for an
(27:35):
exam in college, never attending the class, going in and
winging it. When I was a coach, one of the
recurring failure dreams I had was not being really prepared.
So preparation is really key. And one particular dream, which
(27:55):
I discuss is in my memoir is the it doesn't
This particular dream doesn't occur any longer. But the dream
has me walking down Madison Avenue. I'm walking down Madison
Avenue in my uniform and at the time it was
a three PCE suit. This is the year two thousand
(28:16):
and Coaches now liberated from Sarah Lee, which was a
holding company that I helped the founder identify, which became
my employer for fifteen years, and we were finally on
our own. I'm walking down the street. It's eight am.
I'm about to go into a meeting with prospective investors.
(28:40):
And I look down at my feet and I'm not
wearing any shoes, and I have blue wooly socks and
people are walking past me. No one's looking at my feet.
But I'm saying, oh my god, how am I going
to convince anyone to invest in the company where I'm CEO,
where I don't even have shoes in them, not even
(29:00):
wearing the right color socks. So I stop at a store.
There was a shoe store on forty fourth and Madison.
I see someone inside, someone who's cleaning, and I knock
on a window and he goes like this. I lift
my foot and he just shrugs, and whether I do,
I say, well, I got to go forward. So I
(29:22):
walked into the building. It has one of these turnstile,
and not turnstile, it has one of these revolving doors.
And I wake up and I'm soaked my clothes and
whatever I'm sleeping is soaked, my pillowcase. Like no different
than most people who have failure dreams. You wake up nervous,
(29:43):
you wake up on sweating, and I still have those
dreams of but they of course have different forms.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So I mean, you've done years of therapy. Have you
figured out the root of where these come from?
Speaker 3 (29:58):
It's a great question. I haven't really worked extensively with
Freudian therapist, although I've read some and it goes back
to my early childhood. I'm told to my speech impediment
to what you were saying about your brother, that I
(30:20):
needed to overcome adversity. And I lived in constant fear,
and when I overcame it, I was now longer conscious
of it. But it was in my DNA.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
When you started finding big financial success public success with Coach,
did you feel weird about people treating you differently? Because
there's a quality in your book that is so obvious,
which is great humility.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Many people that I worked with when Coach was a
division of Sarah Le, who were CEO and sometimes founders
of their own public companies, had little interest in Lou Frankfort.
When Coach became more successful in a public company, suddenly
they had more interest in me. Yeah, I did not
(31:15):
have any interest in them. And I've been asked, actually
by Gary about my values, and I had not reflected
on the exact question he asked me until that Sunday evening,
which was how have you changed? I feel I'm fundamentally
the same person I was forty or fifty years ago.
(31:38):
I still believe in the American dream. I'm thankful for
everything I have. I'm terribly worried about our country and
what it's going through and what it means for my children,
my grandchildren and their children.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I want to ask you about that. There's a few
people who blurbed your book. Scott Galloway's one of them.
And I was listening to his podcasts recently and it
was right after Jimmy Kimmel had been pulled off air unexpectedly,
and he said, Bob Iiger. I'm paraphrasing, but he said,
Bob Iger is going to have to make a hard choice.
Is he going to do what's right by his shareholders
(32:15):
or is he going to do what's right by America?
And I look at so many business leaders in America
and I think they have a very similar hard choice
to make. Our values are more intertwined in politics now
than ever.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Absolutely, what do you.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Think of things like that?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And what is someone like me who's not in business
in that way not understand about making those choices?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
First, it's not easy if you're in a bob Ey
your type of situation. You have multiple constituencies. You know,
you have your shareholders, you have your customers, you have
your employees, you have your community, and you need to
really weigh on a relative absolute basis where you place
(33:03):
your values most and I do believe there's been way
too much compromise subordination of values in a way that
doesn't reflect well on many people or on the many
large companies, many of the companies that are backbones of America.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
It seems to me like it's decisions made for short
term gain, because when I think about people like Bob
like legacy must come into play for him. That's why
I think part of the reason he went back to Disney.
And if you don't make a value driven decision, how
can you think about legacy.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I think most people who don't make a value based
decision rationalize it very well, and generally they have their
posseas around them that we.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Force it well said.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
And I generally believe that one of one of the
things that successful leaders do, and certainly Bob Iger's on
the top of of many lists, is they're able to
hold antithetical views in their mind at the same time
and make choices between them, and in looking at different choices,
(34:24):
values do come into play. It's when you're a public
company sometimes it's very hard not to look at the
short term because you get a report card every three
months or every day when you make an announcement, And.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Do you think you were able to obfiscate that because
Coach was on it? Well, you had Sarah Lee at.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
One point, well, when Sarah Lee was my employer, and
they want to me to make decisions that I felt
were not in the interests of the Coach brand or company,
I declined to do it. So when they wanted me
to sell JC Pennies in order to get another Haines
(35:15):
hosiery into a much more dominant place, I said, our
customer doesn't go there. It's going to take away from
the imagery of our brand. And I declined to do it,
And of course they had the option of letting me go,
but they were just angry.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So you mentioned dark periods earlier and how you navigated
depressive episodes. Do you think success comes because of those
lows or in spite of them?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I think if you can avoid the lows, if you're
constituted in a different way, and if you can see
warning signals, and much better off than going into a
low place and having to lift up, because that takes time, effort,
modification of a lot of things you do. And I
don't think you need to have depressive episodes to be successful.
(36:13):
I will say that my fear of failure and drive
for excellence always motivated me. And typically when I went
into a dark place, it was because I felt I
was failing or I felt I wasn't I didn't have
enough control over something that was important to me. And
(36:35):
I don't do well in situations where I feel that
I'm watching something occur and I'm not able to influence
or control the outcome and it's important to me. I
think that's a human condition that many people have.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I thought it was really cool in the book how
you didn't just share how you did something, how you
accomplish something. You sh shared how it felt to do it.
And I think that's rare in a business memoir. Memoir
is one of my favorite genres of books, and I
read a lot of them, and I think in the
nineties and even early two thousands, there was this business
(37:15):
memoir that was very intense. It felt like punctuated and
tough and gritty and here's how you push through and
get it done. And I think we're in this new
phase of business memoirs that I've seen where people are
talking about the personal impact of running such a huge business.
(37:36):
Why was it important for you to share the personal
part of the professional.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I wanted to tell an authentic, true story. I don't
say earnest, yes, ernest. I wanted to gritty tell a
story that I felt would resonate with readers. And I
also thought telling a story about building a great brand
(38:01):
in and of itself is a very good story. But
to add what it took and how I felt would resonate,
particularly with Coach employees, many of them are gen z
and most of the rest are millennials. It would resonate
with Coach fans. It might even resonate with people not
(38:25):
connected to Coach. And my children actually urged me to
tell a real story because they lived through my ups
and downs, and while I shared them with a handful
of other people, I was not public about it. Since
I've retired from Coach, I've been working with founders and
(38:50):
senior teams in early stage businesses, and there I'm very
focused on their total self and that does include mental health.
And I'm coach in excuse the no pun intended, but
I coach people to really look for balance. Enough I
see if I see people going into a place where
(39:15):
I'm they may be losing their confidence or feeling uncertain
I might I would stop in one on one, I
would probe them what's going on and if I in
Most people, particularly younger people, are very honest about their
ambivalence about things, and I tell them you're not alone.
(39:38):
Life is not a ball of cherries, even if you
make it to what appears to be the top.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Was there a moment at work over the last thirty
five years that you think crystallized your values or showcased
who lou Frankfurt was.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
In the first part of the year two thousand, when
we were going public and we were going to have
actual Coach shares, I pushed Sarah Lee to allow me
to give stock awards to every single employee in the company,
including factory employees. And part of my motivation has to
(40:23):
do with what I really believe in is in America,
which is I have an egalitarian view. I believe in
a meritocracy. I believe everyone should participate. And Coach was,
as I'm told, the first American brand to provide also
(40:44):
annual stock awards all the way down to store managers
and below, and that continues through today. And giving ownership,
real ownership to people who actually operate a store, who
are and I think of a store in the old
fashioned world. You go into a store, they're shopkeepers. And yes,
(41:06):
they may be part of a national brand, and yes
there may be guidelines for visual merchandising, but they run
an ecosystem and we wanted them to participate in whatever
wealth accumulation would occur. And I'll just go one step further.
(41:26):
One of my favorite treats is when I as a CEO,
when I would travel around the world and I would
meet store managers and sales associates and others who would
tell me how coach changed their lives. They were able
to buy a house, get rid of a mortgage, go
(41:48):
through a rough economic periods, and a child to a
private school or camp. And that meant as much to
me as anything else.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing when a company or a culture
that you create, like the gifts are so far reaching.
There seems to be this I guess one of the
things I'm struck by is your love of the brand,
because you just don't see people nowadays align themselves with
(42:20):
their companies, with their work the way that maybe in
the fifties I would read about I think young people.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
I mean, at least me.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I get to work for Hello Sunshine, which is Reese
Witherspoon's media company, and it's a value driven company, and
I'm like, I drank the kool aid, Like I feel
lit up. But I think that's a rare experience today.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Unfortunately, I think that you're right. At the same time,
you and other young people are really looking for purpose.
And I will say Coach has a workforce of gen
Z and millennials who really believe in the brand and
love the product. And one of the joys for me,
(43:07):
coincidental with the release of my book, is a Coach
in its eighth decade is reaching new heights and sales
in a number of customers and the love for the
brand is real and it is part of the American landscape.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, you guys had this resurgence a few years ago,
I would say with gen Z there were some new
brand ambassadors. What was the strategy behind that.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I will say that this was a strategy that Todd
the CEO and Stewart On the chief creative officer, developed
to really focus on strengthening coaches relevance for the new
population coming of age. And the reality is that there
(43:57):
are twenty five million girls turning eighteen every year in
the countries where Coach has significant business, and that excludes
Africa and India. So in the world where Coach is
a market leader, twenty five million people are becoming eighteen.
(44:21):
And if you can capture their heart and their mind
at eighteen, there's a good likelihood if you continue to
listen to them, anticipate where they're traveling, and be there
when they get there, they will be loyal for twenty
and thirty and forty years. While they only represent fifteen
(44:43):
percent of accessories spend today, that's gen Z. They will
represent forty percent in ten and fifteen years. And we
all know that parents and older siblings and grandparents of
gen Z are influenced by that taste and gen Z
they're really focused on values and culture.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, would you consider entrepreneurship with spiritual experience?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Absolutely? When I think of that really goes into my
magic bucket. You need to have belief, and belief is
abstract because you're looking at the future and you're looking
at possibilities and they don't exist in real products or
(45:36):
services today. But you have a notion that if you
build the right product and build or create the right
service and it's in tune with the values and interests
of the consumers. You're attracting men and women. You can
create something special. And I think entrepreneurs, you really need
(46:00):
to have belief. And I being old school, I do
believe at the heart of a great brand is a
great product and that product has images and associations and
that's how you one builds a great brand to bring
those images and associations to life and storytelling.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
What have you learned about collaboration that you think other
leaders get wrong.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
I consider collaboration really on the logic side and not
on the magic side. And the reason I say that
is because you need to have a mindset that it
takes a village to build something and that you can
get the best out of people if you create a
(47:02):
learning environment where they will share their thinking and as
a community, with thinking of antithetical ways to approach things,
align on a path and take that path. And extreme
collaboration is a way of life.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Coach, you talk about it more than most people. That's
why I was curious.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Well, I do believe in collaboration in the same way
I believe in separation of powers and checks and balances.
You get the best out of people who are connected
to the business, whether they're part of the supply chain,
they're doing customer service, working in stores, designers and so forth.
(47:56):
And getting a team aligned and finding the right way
for people to express themselves and giving them the right
opportunities to grow can best occur through a collaborative environment.
Now everything fortunately is automated in the digital age, and
(48:17):
the software that shows the entire world within the company
what's going on, and that's very helpful in connecting the dots.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
I had an interesting conversation the other day. There was
a businessman who died, and people were saying, wow, look
at what he created and look at the success. And
I'd known his family personally, and I said, I don't
know if I think that was a successful life. His
(48:47):
daughter is struggling because I think he wasn't around and
didn't instill a lot of confidence in her. I don't
know that he spoke to people kindly. We were having
a debate on what success is because I guess in
some ways maybe I was being judgmental because success to
me looked different than what it did to these people.
(49:09):
I'm curious about what success is for you, how do
you look at it.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
When I think of success, I think of life's journey.
I don't think of the endpoint. I think I think
of purpose and relationships. And when I say purpose, it's
being motivated to do something that you have belief in,
and belief is very important purpose. And when I think
(49:36):
of relationships, I think of authenticity and I think of genuineness.
And I do believe in life's journey. Those of us
who are able to live above a Maslow's hierarchy, above
the place where we pay just pay our bills. My
parents worked so that I could live the American and dream.
(50:00):
They work really hard to pay the rent and to
put food on the table, like so many of our grandparents,
that great grandparents, and those of us who have the
opportunity to go to college and to dream and to
actually live a more purposeful life beyond just shelter and
(50:24):
food and clothing need to really be thinking about on
moments in life. So I do believe special moments are
important because and I think the more special moments one has,
the more memories and the more growth we have.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
When you say special moments, do you mean weddings, celebrations,
or do you mean creating special moments every week or
every day.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
When I think of special moments, it's something that is
out of the ordinary that you will remember for a
long period of time. I mean, it could, for me,
be a visit to the San Juan store and coach,
where I saw four generations in the store at the
same time. It was my only specific situation. There was
(51:13):
a great grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, and this seventeen
year old great granddaughter. They were all carrying coach and
they were buying coach. And that was a moment for me. Now,
that was a work moment. Personal moments are at least
as important, and you need to navigate your life so
(51:34):
that you can enjoy both simultaneously. In hindsight, I wish
I had more. I smell the roses more on the
way up, and people have asked me, what would you
do differently? And I'm not sure that I would have
been able to do too much differently because it was
(51:54):
so demanding twenty four to seven on. When you're building
something that has hot, it's hard to let go.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
I think about that because most highly successful people I interview,
their reflection is I should have stopped and smelled the
roses along the way, but I'm not sure it's possible.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Well, see, for me, I tended to compartmentalize to smell
the roses on weekends, on scheduled vacations. But even on
the weekends scheduled vacations, so many of us, not just CEOs,
but leaders at all levels were preoccupied with the problems
that we left on Friday. And I encourage people to
(52:44):
really do a good job compartmentalizing, and I talk about
compartmentalization a lot of my book on these are things
I learned over the decades.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Did your kids understand? Did your wife understand? The demand?
Was that tenuous?
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Was that tenuous? There were moments where it was tenuous
in the sense that I would be away longer than
on perhaps I should have been because I would be traveling,
and there was a lot more efficient if I was
traveling to the other side of the world to stay
there and not come back for a Saturday or Sunday.
(53:23):
But my family did understand and were very supportive and
continue to be.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
You dedicate the book actually to your parents, who you
say always believed in you. There I quote this in
the podcast a lot, but there's a book I love
this woman interviewed successful people and the one common denominator
was that they had a parent, usually a mother, who
believed in them.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yes, and my mother certainly believed in me. And I
tell a story in the bag Man that I remember
like it was yet yesterday, and in fact, when we
were celebrating my mother's life after her passing, I shared
this story with family and friends, and it occurred when
(54:11):
I was in the ninth grade. I went to a
junior high school in the Bronx Boys and Girls Public School,
and I had a guidance counselor by the name of
mister Schmother, and I remember the yes Schmuttor. I remember
exactly what he was wearing the day I went into
(54:32):
his little office with my mother and he was sitting
behind his desk. He had two chairs and he had
some paper, and he looked at me and my mother
and he said that he thought I should go to
a vocational high school. And he went on to say
he thought I should go to the High School of
New York High School of Printing, because printing was becoming
(54:54):
a very major industry. And my mother looked at him
and said, my son's going to college, and stood up
and said Lewis were out of here, and I sat
there a little bit bewildered because he was authority, and
my mother stood up and I sheepishly left afterwards. But
I knew when I left the room I was going
(55:16):
to college.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
It's a beautiful story.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
And my mother, I will say, when I no one
understood me. She painsteaked. When I was five and six
and four, She painstakingly worked with me to help me
pronounce more letters correctly, or to compensate by finding synonyms
that wouldn't have this sticky combination the letters that would
(55:43):
come out like garbage when I would say.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
It, when you think about that belief, because it must
have been really important for you to say that in
the dedication.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yes, my parents, like so many of our parents, were
very filial oriented. They lived their lives so that their
children could have a better life. And while my parents
were not immigrants, their parents came to the US just
(56:18):
a handful of years before they were born, so English
was not spoken regularly in the home when they were
growing up. And I do believe the best of America
is our diversity, is the notion that we are a
motivated group of people that come from anywhere in the world.
(56:39):
And I will also say whenever I traveled to other
parts of the world, whether it was in the eighties
of the oughts, regardless of whether who was president and
whether the country leadership was popular, everyone knew someone who
was living the American dream. And they all talked proudly
(57:02):
of New York City and the energy and the grit.
Going back to a word, and I do think on
that the best of us, best of America is because
we are a melting pot.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
You have, over the course of your career, met with
and know closely some really great leaders in your experience,
what makes a great leader?
Speaker 2 (57:29):
What are the key mix of ingredients?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Interestingly, as you asked the question, I gravitate to political leaders,
not business leaders. And I think of Winston Churchill one
of my favorites, because he was a person of real
belief and purpose and he knew that England would not
(57:53):
fall to Nazism, and that unswerving belief and that courage
resonated with the British people and it was miraculous how
they held their line. I also think of great presidents
like Obama and Clinton who cared about people. I think
(58:18):
having empathy is a key requirement for a great leader.
There can be leaders who are autocrats, and there were
leaders who can conquer the world, but if they don't
care for people, it's hard for me to consider them great.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
You said you coach people pun intended this time. What
do you see young leaders struggling with.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Many different things. I think one is how they make
sense of their place in the world and how they
define success and ambivalence towards putting in the amount of
effort that's required and leading a more balanced life. And
I think that's a struggle that they need to be
(59:06):
conscious of because we're only here one time. So when
I talk about enjoying life's journey, I encourage people to
search within themselves what really gives them fulfillment, what really
drives them, and they should really and to the extent
their value driven. And I've not seen a generation more
(59:29):
value driven than Gen Z other than my generation the sixties.
They are driven by a feeling of purpose. They are
they are concerned with the climate, They are concerned with sustainability,
war and peace, diversity, and I think that they're carrying
(59:54):
a lot on their shoulders in a highly fluid world.
It's moving so quickly at warp speed so I struggling
with priorities where to spend their time. When I came
of age, and when people went to work, and where
they were thirty years old, eight years out of college,
(01:00:17):
say they generally had one job or one point five
jobs on average. Now it's six or seven jobs. It's
remarkable when I look at a resume and for a
thirty five or forty year old and they had twelve gigs.
And when I probe, why haven't you stayed around longer? One?
(01:00:38):
Fortunately they were able to find other things, so they
were living at a higher level than just focusing on
shelter and clothing, but also because they weren't feeling fulfilled.
It's fulfillment is a holistic sense, and today young people
(01:00:58):
are looking for that in disproportionate ways to their parents
and grandparents.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
What's something you wish young people knew about building something
that lasts?
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
That when we say building something that last, it's really
first belief in what you're doing. Second is building a
team of like minded people and creating an environment where
they can thrive and feel purpose and be rewarded appropriately
(01:01:33):
along the journey.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Well said, if some rapid fire questions, right, Okay, is
there something that you think is a common threat between
successful people, relentlessness. What's one trait you see in every
great leader.
Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
You've met, empathy?
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Who did you think of when I asked that question.
Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
I actually thought of Bill Clinton, and I thought of Obama.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Yeah. What's the smartest decision you've ever made?
Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Joining coach?
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
One thing that everybody should try.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Once recreational drugs.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
What's a book you've read that changed your life, something
that everybody should read.
Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Stranger in This Strange Land by Robert Heinlen, written in
nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
And what's something that you wish people could see about
you that they don't see at first glance.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
There isn't anything that comes to mind. I believe that
I am who I am, and I project that from
the first moments that I'm there earnestness.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yes, lou, thank you for your time.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
I've enjoyed this thoroughly.
Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
I appreciate that me too. Okay, you know what time
it is. Today's a good day to have a good day.
Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
I'll see you next week.
No one has all the answers, but when we ask
the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Danielle Robe, and each week my guests and I come
together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And who says?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So? Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's
time to question everything.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hello, I hope you're having a beautiful day and a
really great lead up to Thanksgiving. I am in Portover
to Mexico with my entire mom's side of the family.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So my last living grandmother.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
My Oma, who I think you guys have probably heard
me talk about. She is turning ninety and she wanted
everybody to be together. So we are all at an
all inclusive in Mexico together for Thanksgiving week and next
week I'll report back. You know, I'm not sure we'll
ever get the opportunity to do this again, so I'm
(01:17):
taking it all in. But it's funny having cousins and
aunts and uncles and everybody from all over the country
who aren't always together together at one dinner table every
single night.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's been interesting and fun.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Also, you've probably noticed that there's some ads at the
beginning of the show and in the middle of the show,
and here's what that's all about.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
For a long time, we didn't have ads.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And the pod is officially part of the iHeartMedia podcast family.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
iHeartMedia is the largest podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Network in the entire world, and I am really excited.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
To be in partnership with them.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
This has been just a long time building and coming,
and so I'm gonna be honest with you. I know
ads can be a little bit annoying, and I thought
about that long and hard. But here's what my sort
of analysis was. I have to recoup some money from
the podcast. So my analysis was, it's better that they
pay us for ads than ask you to pay for
(02:16):
the podcast. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I figured you'd be on board with that. I just
I don't want to charge for the podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
I love like I just believe in free information and
I want to connect with as many of you as possible.
So that's what that's about. And thanks for growing with me.
You know, sometimes on emails I'll sign off when I
feel it we grow together, and I really believe that deeply,
I hope that I add to your life, and you
(02:44):
add so much to my life, and so thank you
for growing together, for growing with me. So I always
think that Thanksgiving puts people in a reflective mood, right
like I'm sure you go around the table with your
family and ask what everybody's grateful for, or think about
it at least. And so I felt like dropping of
values driven episode right before the holiday gives gives everyone,
(03:07):
including me, something to carry into the holiday. And our
guest today lives his life by his values.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Truly.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Let me explain, every generation has a few people who
remind us that progress doesn't start with power.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
It starts with perspective.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
People who see the world just a few degrees differently,
and in doing so, shift the entire horizon for the
rest of us. Some of them are household names. Okrah
Winfrey turned rejection into a media empire. Steve Jobs transformed
of firing into a new way of imagining the future.
(03:48):
Sarah Blakely reinvented an entire industry with five.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Thousand dollars in a wild idea. Madam C. J. Walker,
who rose.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
From impossibly hard beginnings to become America's first female self
made millionaire.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And then there are quieter innovators too.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Hiroshi Iwatani, a Japanese engineer who felt like he'd failed
as a musician.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So what did he do.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
He built something for people who were afraid to sing,
the karaoke machine, and he changed how the world experiences
nightlife and entertainment and joy. So what ties these people together, Well,
it's not their resumes. It's that they were brave enough
to notice what others overlooked, and they were generous enough
(04:31):
to build something better.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
That's the lineage.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Today's guest belongs to Lou Frankfurt, the former CEO of Coach.
Didn't start out imagining he'd reshape American fashion. He began
as a kid from the Bronx, the son of a
police officer, finding his voice through a speech impediment, learning
early that strength doesn't always look like certainty. Sometimes it
(04:54):
looks like listening, and sometimes it looks like curiosity. U
memoir Bagman traces a path from public service to the
corner office, from leather samples to building one of the
most recognizable brands.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
On the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But what makes Lou's story resonate is not just the
scale of his success.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
It is the clarity of his values.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
So I had the north star, which was to really
build a microcosm of the best of America in the
bag and accessories that would represent the values of us
as Americans.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
He coined the term accessible luxury, which is a concept
that didn't just describe a brand, but it redefined an
entire category of fashion.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You need to be able to have bold imagination and
think that you could create something that perhaps did not exist.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
His book is really good. It's really not a business memoir.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Sure there's business in it or business stories in it,
but Lou was courageous enough to share the high highs
and the deeply personal lows. And as I sat across
from him interviewing him, I just kept thinking, what an iconoclast.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
He's such a striver.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
He built the first American luxury bag brand, and he
did it with so much integrity.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So obviously I had a ton of questions.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
But the one I keep coming back to, and the
one I had when I was reading his book, the
one that we're circling today is how do you lead
with values in a culture that rewards shortcuts? And I
guess I'll throw one more in there. What does integrity
look like In an age where everything is a moment,
it's time to question everything with Lou Frankfurt. So, Lou,
(06:50):
the title of your book bag Man. I love the cover,
by the way, thank you, But bag Man is a
nod to your career at Coach. Of course, you notably
took the company from a six million dollar family run
leather goods maker to a five billion dollar publicly traded
brand known worldwide. But there's a little humility and satire
(07:11):
in the title of this book. The bag man is
like kind of known as the unglamorous but essential, like
the operator, the errand guy I wouldn't call the guy
running the show bag man.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Can you tell me?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I'm sure you ran through so many titles. Why did
you land on bagman? What does it mean to you?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Well? I do consider myself a bag man because I
built vessels for people to put their things in. And
I was once given the bag with a lot of
cash from a manufacturer in Italy who thought on that
when we mistakenly paid him twice for a shipment of goods,
that the second was a payment that he would give
(07:53):
me when I came. So I handed him back the
bag and there was a brown bag folded with cash
or one hundred dollar bills, and I said to him,
we will take thirty eight thousand dollars off the next invoice.
But bag Man I wanted again as a brand guy,
I wanted to have a title that would be intrusive
(08:17):
and also a title that would be compelling. So bag
Man gets people's attention because of the double meaning. And
I did sell a lot of bags in my life.
And the second is because I thought it would be compelling,
that it would draw someone in out of curiosity, and
it's I really loved the title. It came pretty naturally
(08:40):
to me that I am the Bagman. A few people
in the course of my career have called me the
bag Man.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Was there a runner up or you always knew it
was going to be called Bagman?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I think from the very beginning I settled on bag Man.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, there's something deeply American about it to me, Like
you're saying, I'm not this Wall Street guy and I'm
a kid from the Bronx.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Well, I'm not a Wall Street guy. And when we
talk about building a brand, we talk about selling one
product at a time to one consumer and hoping that
they really enjoy the product, appreciated. My story in many
ways is American story. You're right, and I am living
(09:28):
the American dream, and I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity.
And we don't have a history of luxury brands in
the United States. And shortly after I joined Coach, I
developed a perspective that Coach could be the best of America.
That it's earnest, it's hard working, and I thought to
(09:52):
myself that if we built the right culture and a
right product and a consistent the modeling of of treating
consumers as if they're guests in our house, that we
might be able to build something special.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
When you say the word ernest, I'm curious about that
because I think there's like this this feeling that earnestness
is cringey nowadays. I've always considered myself an earnest person,
and I don't know that I fit into like a
millennial or gen Z ideal because of that quality.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You're not srue, I'm not in I understand when I
use the word earnest that I use it in its
most basic form. When you're earnest, you're authentic, you're real,
You're not putting on as you're not pretending what you
sees what you get and when you go back, when
(10:47):
I go back to the basic Coach original bags from
the sixties and seventies and eighties, it's a hard working bag.
It less for generations. And today you can go on
eBay and pay one thousand dollars for a big that
we may have made and sold for seventy dollars thirty
five forty years ago, because it's still real and you
(11:12):
can continue to get great use out.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Of it, and it's sturdy, sturdy.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Now, I was reading that you had a speech impediment
when you were a kid, and I can imagine that
as a kid, struggling to get words out might make
you feel small. Did you see reverberations from that as
you entered the workforce.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
The short answer is I did not see reverberations. I
became very conscious and I'm still conscious that I can't
say OZ very well, and I sort of work around it.
But growing up with a speech impediment when I was
a little kid, it was tough.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It's sort of interesting because you've built an empire in
many ways based on your voice and your point of view.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
It's hard for me to call it an empire because
I believe we it's a community. If you look at
Coach today and you look at the leadership and the employees,
they all have belief in the brand. They have belief
that we're giving consumers a product that's a great value,
(12:16):
a lasting product, and we do treat consumers customers as
if the guests in our home. And the culture is
a very affirmative culture.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I grew up with a brother who had a speech
impediment as a kid, and I saw him push through it.
There was so much perseverance required. And I was reading
that I think forty percent of CEOs have dyslexia. There's
something about the perseverance or the relentlessness that's required as
a kid that must translate somehow it sounds right.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I didn't really feel that way by the time I
was in the fifty sixth grade, so ten or eleven
people buy and large could understand me. It was a
real issue though when I was a young child, and
it caused a lot of embarrassing moments for me.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I love reading about how a diaper bag informed it
was kind of your first connection to a bag.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Will you share that story?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Sure? My wife of fifty years Bobby, who was teaching
at Brooklyn College and very involved in higher education and
also on working with disadvantage children in the community, decided
after the birth of our first child that she was
(13:39):
going to create a bag that would fit on a
stroller as well as be carried over your shoulder. And
fortunately she did have an aunt in Texas who made bags,
and she developed a bag business, and I watched it
grow and I watched it thrive, and that was my
(14:01):
first real experience, even remotely. And I would say in
building something, did.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You take anything that you learned watching her over to
coach when you started after you, because you worked in
the government for ten years and then you went over
to coach.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I was in government. I would occasionally go with her
to make a sales call because she would do calls
on Saturdays and or Sundays, even certain stores that were open.
And she sold largely the specialty stores, and I really
learned the pitch, so to speak. And learning the pitch
(14:39):
when you sell a specialty stores, which were really a
very major shopping channel, is really understanding the DNA of
the founder of the owner, what motivates them, trying to
understand who is the customer within the store, how do
you service them? How do you make an argument that's
convinced and compelling that your product is distinctive from others
(15:03):
so that they're willing to put it on the shelves.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
So, speaking of that, we share a big value of curiosity.
I loved reading about that in your book. You ask
the question, who is the Coach customer and how do
I reach them? How does somebody figure out who their
customer is?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's a combination of magic and logic, which is a
term that is used throughout my memoir and it's a
convention that Coach. When I run into people at Coach today,
they tell me that a day doesn't go past when
someone doesn't say we need more magic or we need
more logic. So immersive curiosity, I believe is magic. It's
(15:47):
not logic because there isn't a playbook. You need to
have an open mind with a method of inquiry that
allows you to go left, right, pivot, go up and
down depending on what you hear. And with immersive curiosity,
it's really insatiable. And I know that you're a very
(16:08):
curious person and that has led on you to move
in different directions. Also, from a career perspective. So the
magic is a really is boundless curiosity. It's trying to
grock something to really get to the essence of it. Now,
the logic is using data and analytics to measure behavior,
(16:34):
to measure attitude, and we did that from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Do you think that coming into Coach as an outsider,
coming from government, not having worked in fashion. You said
when you got there, didn't even really care about fashion.
You were looking at data and that's how you made choices.
Do you think coming in as an outsider helped.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It depends on the industry, the company, and the place
where you come in. So I came in as a
protege of the founder, and he actually appreciated that I
did not have a fashion background because he didn't really
believe in fashion. He believed in a great product interesting,
(17:34):
so product was hero. The word fashion was prohibited from
discussing it. He made a great, great product that attracted
a subset of the American public, classic consumers, functional consumers.
And when I joined Coach it was actually at a
(17:55):
time when European luxury brands had only a small press
in the United States and in accessories and bags and
Coach occupied a single lane between mass and luxury, and
I thought to myself, with the growing middle class, that
(18:16):
we would be able to create, perhaps one day a highway.
And it turned out to be a super highway between
mass and luxury. And I originally called a democratized luxury. However,
when we went public, we needed to find a moniker
that investors who are primarily male and understand why we
(18:40):
do invest in a bad company, and we created the
term accessible luxury.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Now I've only gotten to spend maybe thirty minutes total
with you so far in my life, and I can
tell that you are a person who goes out of
their way to make other people feel seen. You are
maybe a unique mix of magic and logic. And I'm
wondering if over the course of your time at Coach
(19:08):
you ever wanted to override the logic part. Did you
ever make decisions based on the magic if the data
said something else?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Okay, See, when you build something, you really need to
start with magic, not logic. So you need to start
with belief and possibilities. You need to be able to
have bold imagination and think that you could create something
that perhaps did not exist, whether it's either and a
clear need, or you believe that you could demonstrate something
(19:42):
where consumers would come to understand that they were missing something.
So I do believe. On the magic side, you need
to have belief. I fell in love with a coach bag,
and I really felt it was everything that an advocate
of the bag would want it to be. It was sturdy,
(20:03):
it was reliable, it did the job, It got better
over time, and as you well know as a bags
are really one of the most important products that a
woman carries. She opens it thirty fifty sixty times a day,
she has her essentials in it. Depending on the nature
(20:24):
of the bag, it could have organization, It could have zippers.
For the person who is more casual, she can dump
everything in the bag. So I had a notion that
we could build something. So you need bold imagination and
you need belief. If you don't start with the purpose,
you can never actually get to a place. So I
(20:49):
had a north star, which was to really build a
microcosm of the best of America in the bag, in
accessories that would represent the value of us as Americans.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's interesting for me to hear that you wanted to
build the best of America in a bag. That's such
a huge thing to say. How did you even come.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Up with that?
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I was always value driven. So when I was in
city government, my most significant role was running daycare and
Headstart during a very tough period in the mid seventies
when the city was going through a fiscal crisis, and
I felt at the time almost messianic about my responsibility
(21:36):
to ensure that every eligible child and family would be
able to get daycare and head start services. So I
felt when I was in government that I was in
service of my client. So when I went to Coach,
I naturally gravitated to the customer because I didn't really
(22:00):
know anything else to do. And it seemed to work
if you really focus on your customer. And our customer
loved Coach and when I joined. Prior to my joining Coach,
as an example, I pretended to be a freelance Business
Week reporter and I interviewed buyers and merchants from different Bloomingdale's.
(22:23):
I remember Macy's, Bondwit Teller and a small handbag specialty
store on West seventy second Street in New York City,
and this owner said to me, it has a cult
following and being a product of the sixties and having
a vision in the sixties that my generation would be
(22:44):
able to help create a better world. It was easy
for me to put the dots together and say, Okay,
I'm in business, but I feel purposeful. And when I
looked at our workforce, it was a melting pot, a
microco America, and that made me feel ready, proud and good.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So the number that keeps coming up in all of
these interviews is the five billion dollar number.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
You did an interview with Gary Vee and he was like,
say it again, repeat it.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So six million dollars to five billion through your time
with the brand, it's roughly an eight hundred and thirty
three x growth in revenue. And just for a reference,
I had to look it up. Basically, only Starbucks, Amazon, Lululemon,
and Ralph Lauren have had growth at that level at
some point. What were the hitting costs of growth of
(23:37):
that kind?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, as I said when I spoke with Gary, it
didn't occur overnight, So let's it took thirty five years.
So and whenever we reached a milestone. Because I always
was motivated by a drive for excellence and a concurrent
fear of failure, never get complacence. When we reached a plateau.
(24:04):
I remember when we reached seventy five million dollars. I
think that was around nineteen eighty seven eighty six, we
gave everyone a turkey for Thanksgiving, every factory worker, every
office worker. We had small celebrations as we went forward.
(24:24):
But when we talk about hidden course to really build
a brand that is beloved, which requires innovation, relevance, continual adaptation,
it's twenty four to seven. So it took a toll
on my body. It took a toll on my mind.
(24:47):
It forced me to make difficult choices in terms of
working versus being with family. And I learned as early
as the nineteen eighties that I really needed to listen
to my body, meaning if I had back aches, or
I was feeling like I was an impostor one day
(25:08):
just sitting there, do I really know enough to do this?
Or losing my mojo, or being in a situation where
I had little control and the meant a lot to me.
These fears and worries lack of sleep manifest physically, and
when they manifest physically, you need to pause and pay attention.
(25:29):
And I started to develop a variety of techniques that
I used through today to help me navigate away from
depressive episodes and not allow myself to go into a
bad place. And of course there's pattern recognition, but I
(25:50):
do strongly believe that you need balance and exercise is
one you need. Releases. Meditation is a wonderful way to
give your mind a break and put it on pause,
whether it's for ten or twenty minutes. I massage therapy
(26:11):
from the right therapists who really understand how energy flows
in your body, it can really make a difference. I'm
a strong believer in executive coaching, therapy and the use
of meds when necessary, and I encourage people of all
ages to really be honest with themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You mentioned that your fear of failure. You said you
were driven by excellence and failure.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
And it's still there.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I will say, really, to this day, I still.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Have failure dreams. Now they take differents than they ditch
twenty and forty years ago.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So just so everybody who hasn't read the book knows
you have these failure dreams that are recurring in your life.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Can you explain what they are?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
These are dreams where I wake up remembering snippets and
they generally, like most failure dreams that people have, from
what they tell me, they are similar themes. And in
my case, it's everything from not being prepared for an
(27:35):
exam in college, never attending the class, going in and
winging it. When I was a coach, one of the
recurring failure dreams I had was not being really prepared.
So preparation is really key. And one particular dream, which
(27:55):
I discuss is in my memoir is the it doesn't
This particular dream doesn't occur any longer. But the dream
has me walking down Madison Avenue. I'm walking down Madison
Avenue in my uniform and at the time it was
a three PCE suit. This is the year two thousand
(28:16):
and Coaches now liberated from Sarah Lee, which was a
holding company that I helped the founder identify, which became
my employer for fifteen years, and we were finally on
our own. I'm walking down the street. It's eight am.
I'm about to go into a meeting with prospective investors.
(28:40):
And I look down at my feet and I'm not
wearing any shoes, and I have blue wooly socks and
people are walking past me. No one's looking at my feet.
But I'm saying, oh my god, how am I going
to convince anyone to invest in the company where I'm CEO,
where I don't even have shoes in them, not even
(29:00):
wearing the right color socks. So I stop at a store.
There was a shoe store on forty fourth and Madison.
I see someone inside, someone who's cleaning, and I knock
on a window and he goes like this. I lift
my foot and he just shrugs, and whether I do,
I say, well, I got to go forward. So I
(29:22):
walked into the building. It has one of these turnstile,
and not turnstile, it has one of these revolving doors.
And I wake up and I'm soaked my clothes and
whatever I'm sleeping is soaked, my pillowcase. Like no different
than most people who have failure dreams. You wake up nervous,
(29:43):
you wake up on sweating, and I still have those
dreams of but they of course have different forms.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So I mean, you've done years of therapy. Have you
figured out the root of where these come from?
Speaker 3 (29:58):
It's a great question. I haven't really worked extensively with
Freudian therapist, although I've read some and it goes back
to my early childhood. I'm told to my speech impediment
to what you were saying about your brother, that I
(30:20):
needed to overcome adversity. And I lived in constant fear,
and when I overcame it, I was now longer conscious
of it. But it was in my DNA.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
When you started finding big financial success public success with Coach,
did you feel weird about people treating you differently? Because
there's a quality in your book that is so obvious,
which is great humility.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Many people that I worked with when Coach was a
division of Sarah Le, who were CEO and sometimes founders
of their own public companies, had little interest in Lou Frankfort.
When Coach became more successful in a public company, suddenly
they had more interest in me. Yeah, I did not
(31:15):
have any interest in them. And I've been asked, actually
by Gary about my values, and I had not reflected
on the exact question he asked me until that Sunday evening,
which was how have you changed? I feel I'm fundamentally
the same person I was forty or fifty years ago.
(31:38):
I still believe in the American dream. I'm thankful for
everything I have. I'm terribly worried about our country and
what it's going through and what it means for my children,
my grandchildren and their children.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I want to ask you about that. There's a few
people who blurbed your book. Scott Galloway's one of them.
And I was listening to his podcasts recently and it
was right after Jimmy Kimmel had been pulled off air unexpectedly,
and he said, Bob Iiger. I'm paraphrasing, but he said,
Bob Iger is going to have to make a hard choice.
Is he going to do what's right by his shareholders
(32:15):
or is he going to do what's right by America?
And I look at so many business leaders in America
and I think they have a very similar hard choice
to make. Our values are more intertwined in politics now
than ever.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Absolutely, what do you.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Think of things like that?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And what is someone like me who's not in business
in that way not understand about making those choices?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
First, it's not easy if you're in a bob Ey
your type of situation. You have multiple constituencies. You know,
you have your shareholders, you have your customers, you have
your employees, you have your community, and you need to
really weigh on a relative absolute basis where you place
(33:03):
your values most and I do believe there's been way
too much compromise subordination of values in a way that
doesn't reflect well on many people or on the many
large companies, many of the companies that are backbones of America.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
It seems to me like it's decisions made for short
term gain, because when I think about people like Bob
like legacy must come into play for him. That's why
I think part of the reason he went back to Disney.
And if you don't make a value driven decision, how
can you think about legacy.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I think most people who don't make a value based
decision rationalize it very well, and generally they have their
posseas around them that we.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Force it well said.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
And I generally believe that one of one of the
things that successful leaders do, and certainly Bob Iger's on
the top of of many lists, is they're able to
hold antithetical views in their mind at the same time
and make choices between them, and in looking at different choices,
(34:24):
values do come into play. It's when you're a public
company sometimes it's very hard not to look at the
short term because you get a report card every three
months or every day when you make an announcement, And.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Do you think you were able to obfiscate that because
Coach was on it? Well, you had Sarah Lee at.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
One point, well, when Sarah Lee was my employer, and
they want to me to make decisions that I felt
were not in the interests of the Coach brand or company,
I declined to do it. So when they wanted me
to sell JC Pennies in order to get another Haines
(35:15):
hosiery into a much more dominant place, I said, our
customer doesn't go there. It's going to take away from
the imagery of our brand. And I declined to do it,
And of course they had the option of letting me go,
but they were just angry.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So you mentioned dark periods earlier and how you navigated
depressive episodes. Do you think success comes because of those
lows or in spite of them?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I think if you can avoid the lows, if you're
constituted in a different way, and if you can see
warning signals, and much better off than going into a
low place and having to lift up, because that takes time, effort,
modification of a lot of things you do. And I
don't think you need to have depressive episodes to be successful.
(36:13):
I will say that my fear of failure and drive
for excellence always motivated me. And typically when I went
into a dark place, it was because I felt I
was failing or I felt I wasn't I didn't have
enough control over something that was important to me. And
(36:35):
I don't do well in situations where I feel that
I'm watching something occur and I'm not able to influence
or control the outcome and it's important to me. I
think that's a human condition that many people have.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I thought it was really cool in the book how
you didn't just share how you did something, how you
accomplish something. You sh shared how it felt to do it.
And I think that's rare in a business memoir. Memoir
is one of my favorite genres of books, and I
read a lot of them, and I think in the
nineties and even early two thousands, there was this business
(37:15):
memoir that was very intense. It felt like punctuated and
tough and gritty and here's how you push through and
get it done. And I think we're in this new
phase of business memoirs that I've seen where people are
talking about the personal impact of running such a huge business.
(37:36):
Why was it important for you to share the personal
part of the professional.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I wanted to tell an authentic, true story. I don't
say earnest, yes, ernest. I wanted to gritty tell a
story that I felt would resonate with readers. And I
also thought telling a story about building a great brand
(38:01):
in and of itself is a very good story. But
to add what it took and how I felt would resonate,
particularly with Coach employees, many of them are gen z
and most of the rest are millennials. It would resonate
with Coach fans. It might even resonate with people not
(38:25):
connected to Coach. And my children actually urged me to
tell a real story because they lived through my ups
and downs, and while I shared them with a handful
of other people, I was not public about it. Since
I've retired from Coach, I've been working with founders and
(38:50):
senior teams in early stage businesses, and there I'm very
focused on their total self and that does include mental health.
And I'm coach in excuse the no pun intended, but
I coach people to really look for balance. Enough I
see if I see people going into a place where
(39:15):
I'm they may be losing their confidence or feeling uncertain
I might I would stop in one on one, I
would probe them what's going on and if I in
Most people, particularly younger people, are very honest about their
ambivalence about things, and I tell them you're not alone.
(39:38):
Life is not a ball of cherries, even if you
make it to what appears to be the top.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Was there a moment at work over the last thirty
five years that you think crystallized your values or showcased
who lou Frankfurt was.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
In the first part of the year two thousand, when
we were going public and we were going to have
actual Coach shares, I pushed Sarah Lee to allow me
to give stock awards to every single employee in the company,
including factory employees. And part of my motivation has to
(40:23):
do with what I really believe in is in America,
which is I have an egalitarian view. I believe in
a meritocracy. I believe everyone should participate. And Coach was,
as I'm told, the first American brand to provide also
(40:44):
annual stock awards all the way down to store managers
and below, and that continues through today. And giving ownership,
real ownership to people who actually operate a store, who
are and I think of a store in the old
fashioned world. You go into a store, they're shopkeepers. And yes,
(41:06):
they may be part of a national brand, and yes
there may be guidelines for visual merchandising, but they run
an ecosystem and we wanted them to participate in whatever
wealth accumulation would occur. And I'll just go one step further.
(41:26):
One of my favorite treats is when I as a CEO,
when I would travel around the world and I would
meet store managers and sales associates and others who would
tell me how coach changed their lives. They were able
to buy a house, get rid of a mortgage, go
(41:48):
through a rough economic periods, and a child to a
private school or camp. And that meant as much to
me as anything else.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing when a company or a culture
that you create, like the gifts are so far reaching.
There seems to be this I guess one of the
things I'm struck by is your love of the brand,
because you just don't see people nowadays align themselves with
(42:20):
their companies, with their work the way that maybe in
the fifties I would read about I think young people.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
I mean, at least me.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I get to work for Hello Sunshine, which is Reese
Witherspoon's media company, and it's a value driven company, and
I'm like, I drank the kool aid, Like I feel
lit up. But I think that's a rare experience today.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Unfortunately, I think that you're right. At the same time,
you and other young people are really looking for purpose.
And I will say Coach has a workforce of gen
Z and millennials who really believe in the brand and
love the product. And one of the joys for me,
(43:07):
coincidental with the release of my book, is a Coach
in its eighth decade is reaching new heights and sales
in a number of customers and the love for the
brand is real and it is part of the American landscape.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, you guys had this resurgence a few years ago,
I would say with gen Z there were some new
brand ambassadors. What was the strategy behind that.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I will say that this was a strategy that Todd
the CEO and Stewart On the chief creative officer, developed
to really focus on strengthening coaches relevance for the new
population coming of age. And the reality is that there
(43:57):
are twenty five million girls turning eighteen every year in
the countries where Coach has significant business, and that excludes
Africa and India. So in the world where Coach is
a market leader, twenty five million people are becoming eighteen.
(44:21):
And if you can capture their heart and their mind
at eighteen, there's a good likelihood if you continue to
listen to them, anticipate where they're traveling, and be there
when they get there, they will be loyal for twenty
and thirty and forty years. While they only represent fifteen
(44:43):
percent of accessories spend today, that's gen Z. They will
represent forty percent in ten and fifteen years. And we
all know that parents and older siblings and grandparents of
gen Z are influenced by that taste and gen Z
they're really focused on values and culture.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, would you consider entrepreneurship with spiritual experience?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Absolutely? When I think of that really goes into my
magic bucket. You need to have belief, and belief is
abstract because you're looking at the future and you're looking
at possibilities and they don't exist in real products or
(45:36):
services today. But you have a notion that if you
build the right product and build or create the right
service and it's in tune with the values and interests
of the consumers. You're attracting men and women. You can
create something special. And I think entrepreneurs, you really need
(46:00):
to have belief. And I being old school, I do
believe at the heart of a great brand is a
great product and that product has images and associations and
that's how you one builds a great brand to bring
those images and associations to life and storytelling.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
What have you learned about collaboration that you think other
leaders get wrong.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
I consider collaboration really on the logic side and not
on the magic side. And the reason I say that
is because you need to have a mindset that it
takes a village to build something and that you can
get the best out of people if you create a
(47:02):
learning environment where they will share their thinking and as
a community, with thinking of antithetical ways to approach things,
align on a path and take that path. And extreme
collaboration is a way of life.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Coach, you talk about it more than most people. That's
why I was curious.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Well, I do believe in collaboration in the same way
I believe in separation of powers and checks and balances.
You get the best out of people who are connected
to the business, whether they're part of the supply chain,
they're doing customer service, working in stores, designers and so forth.
(47:56):
And getting a team aligned and finding the right way
for people to express themselves and giving them the right
opportunities to grow can best occur through a collaborative environment.
Now everything fortunately is automated in the digital age, and
(48:17):
the software that shows the entire world within the company
what's going on, and that's very helpful in connecting the dots.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
I had an interesting conversation the other day. There was
a businessman who died, and people were saying, wow, look
at what he created and look at the success. And
I'd known his family personally, and I said, I don't
know if I think that was a successful life. His
(48:47):
daughter is struggling because I think he wasn't around and
didn't instill a lot of confidence in her. I don't
know that he spoke to people kindly. We were having
a debate on what success is because I guess in
some ways maybe I was being judgmental because success to
me looked different than what it did to these people.
(49:09):
I'm curious about what success is for you, how do
you look at it.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
When I think of success, I think of life's journey.
I don't think of the endpoint. I think I think
of purpose and relationships. And when I say purpose, it's
being motivated to do something that you have belief in,
and belief is very important purpose. And when I think
(49:36):
of relationships, I think of authenticity and I think of genuineness.
And I do believe in life's journey. Those of us
who are able to live above a Maslow's hierarchy, above
the place where we pay just pay our bills. My
parents worked so that I could live the American and dream.
(50:00):
They work really hard to pay the rent and to
put food on the table, like so many of our grandparents,
that great grandparents, and those of us who have the
opportunity to go to college and to dream and to
actually live a more purposeful life beyond just shelter and
(50:24):
food and clothing need to really be thinking about on
moments in life. So I do believe special moments are
important because and I think the more special moments one has,
the more memories and the more growth we have.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
When you say special moments, do you mean weddings, celebrations,
or do you mean creating special moments every week or
every day.
Speaker 3 (50:50):
When I think of special moments, it's something that is
out of the ordinary that you will remember for a
long period of time. I mean, it could, for me,
be a visit to the San Juan store and coach,
where I saw four generations in the store at the
same time. It was my only specific situation. There was
(51:13):
a great grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, and this seventeen
year old great granddaughter. They were all carrying coach and
they were buying coach. And that was a moment for me. Now,
that was a work moment. Personal moments are at least
as important, and you need to navigate your life so
(51:34):
that you can enjoy both simultaneously. In hindsight, I wish
I had more. I smell the roses more on the
way up, and people have asked me, what would you
do differently? And I'm not sure that I would have
been able to do too much differently because it was
(51:54):
so demanding twenty four to seven on. When you're building
something that has hot, it's hard to let go.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
I think about that because most highly successful people I interview,
their reflection is I should have stopped and smelled the
roses along the way, but I'm not sure it's possible.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Well, see, for me, I tended to compartmentalize to smell
the roses on weekends, on scheduled vacations. But even on
the weekends scheduled vacations, so many of us, not just CEOs,
but leaders at all levels were preoccupied with the problems
that we left on Friday. And I encourage people to
(52:44):
really do a good job compartmentalizing, and I talk about
compartmentalization a lot of my book on these are things
I learned over the decades.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Did your kids understand? Did your wife understand? The demand?
Was that tenuous?
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Was that tenuous? There were moments where it was tenuous
in the sense that I would be away longer than
on perhaps I should have been because I would be traveling,
and there was a lot more efficient if I was
traveling to the other side of the world to stay
there and not come back for a Saturday or Sunday.
(53:23):
But my family did understand and were very supportive and
continue to be.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
You dedicate the book actually to your parents, who you
say always believed in you. There I quote this in
the podcast a lot, but there's a book I love
this woman interviewed successful people and the one common denominator
was that they had a parent, usually a mother, who
believed in them.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yes, and my mother certainly believed in me. And I
tell a story in the bag Man that I remember
like it was yet yesterday, and in fact, when we
were celebrating my mother's life after her passing, I shared
this story with family and friends, and it occurred when
(54:11):
I was in the ninth grade. I went to a
junior high school in the Bronx Boys and Girls Public School,
and I had a guidance counselor by the name of
mister Schmother, and I remember the yes Schmuttor. I remember
exactly what he was wearing the day I went into
(54:32):
his little office with my mother and he was sitting
behind his desk. He had two chairs and he had
some paper, and he looked at me and my mother
and he said that he thought I should go to
a vocational high school. And he went on to say
he thought I should go to the High School of
New York High School of Printing, because printing was becoming
(54:54):
a very major industry. And my mother looked at him
and said, my son's going to college, and stood up
and said Lewis were out of here, and I sat
there a little bit bewildered because he was authority, and
my mother stood up and I sheepishly left afterwards. But
I knew when I left the room I was going
(55:16):
to college.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
It's a beautiful story.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
And my mother, I will say, when I no one
understood me. She painsteaked. When I was five and six
and four, She painstakingly worked with me to help me
pronounce more letters correctly, or to compensate by finding synonyms
that wouldn't have this sticky combination the letters that would
(55:43):
come out like garbage when I would say.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
It, when you think about that belief, because it must
have been really important for you to say that in
the dedication.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yes, my parents, like so many of our parents, were
very filial oriented. They lived their lives so that their
children could have a better life. And while my parents
were not immigrants, their parents came to the US just
(56:18):
a handful of years before they were born, so English
was not spoken regularly in the home when they were
growing up. And I do believe the best of America
is our diversity, is the notion that we are a
motivated group of people that come from anywhere in the world.
(56:39):
And I will also say whenever I traveled to other
parts of the world, whether it was in the eighties
of the oughts, regardless of whether who was president and
whether the country leadership was popular, everyone knew someone who
was living the American dream. And they all talked proudly
(57:02):
of New York City and the energy and the grit.
Going back to a word, and I do think on
that the best of us, best of America is because
we are a melting pot.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
You have, over the course of your career, met with
and know closely some really great leaders in your experience,
what makes a great leader?
Speaker 2 (57:29):
What are the key mix of ingredients?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Interestingly, as you asked the question, I gravitate to political leaders,
not business leaders. And I think of Winston Churchill one
of my favorites, because he was a person of real
belief and purpose and he knew that England would not
(57:53):
fall to Nazism, and that unswerving belief and that courage
resonated with the British people and it was miraculous how
they held their line. I also think of great presidents
like Obama and Clinton who cared about people. I think
(58:18):
having empathy is a key requirement for a great leader.
There can be leaders who are autocrats, and there were
leaders who can conquer the world, but if they don't
care for people, it's hard for me to consider them great.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
You said you coach people pun intended this time. What
do you see young leaders struggling with.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Many different things. I think one is how they make
sense of their place in the world and how they
define success and ambivalence towards putting in the amount of
effort that's required and leading a more balanced life. And
I think that's a struggle that they need to be
(59:06):
conscious of because we're only here one time. So when
I talk about enjoying life's journey, I encourage people to
search within themselves what really gives them fulfillment, what really
drives them, and they should really and to the extent
their value driven. And I've not seen a generation more
(59:29):
value driven than Gen Z other than my generation the sixties.
They are driven by a feeling of purpose. They are
they are concerned with the climate, They are concerned with sustainability,
war and peace, diversity, and I think that they're carrying
(59:54):
a lot on their shoulders in a highly fluid world.
It's moving so quickly at warp speed so I struggling
with priorities where to spend their time. When I came
of age, and when people went to work, and where
they were thirty years old, eight years out of college,
(01:00:17):
say they generally had one job or one point five
jobs on average. Now it's six or seven jobs. It's
remarkable when I look at a resume and for a
thirty five or forty year old and they had twelve gigs.
And when I probe, why haven't you stayed around longer? One?
(01:00:38):
Fortunately they were able to find other things, so they
were living at a higher level than just focusing on
shelter and clothing, but also because they weren't feeling fulfilled.
It's fulfillment is a holistic sense, and today young people
(01:00:58):
are looking for that in disproportionate ways to their parents
and grandparents.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
What's something you wish young people knew about building something
that lasts?
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
That when we say building something that last, it's really
first belief in what you're doing. Second is building a
team of like minded people and creating an environment where
they can thrive and feel purpose and be rewarded appropriately
(01:01:33):
along the journey.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Well said, if some rapid fire questions, right, Okay, is
there something that you think is a common threat between
successful people, relentlessness. What's one trait you see in every
great leader.
Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
You've met, empathy?
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Who did you think of when I asked that question.
Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
I actually thought of Bill Clinton, and I thought of Obama.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Yeah. What's the smartest decision you've ever made?
Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Joining coach?
Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
One thing that everybody should try.
Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Once recreational drugs.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
What's a book you've read that changed your life, something
that everybody should read.
Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Stranger in This Strange Land by Robert Heinlen, written in
nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
And what's something that you wish people could see about
you that they don't see at first glance.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
There isn't anything that comes to mind. I believe that
I am who I am, and I project that from
the first moments that I'm there earnestness.
Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yes, lou, thank you for your time.
Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
I've enjoyed this thoroughly.
Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
I appreciate that me too. Okay, you know what time
it is. Today's a good day to have a good day.
Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
I'll see you next week.
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