#4: Birthday Reflections and the Howard Schultz Story

Today, we're taking a slight detour from our usual antics. Guess what? Tomorrow's my birthday, and I'm turning the big 4-2!

Birthdays always get me in a reflective mood, making me ponder over the past year and my entire 42-year journey. Do you ever find yourself questioning everything around this time too? Maybe it's a "super unemployable" syndrome—never really satisfied, always pushing for more.

To celebrate, I want to dive into the life of one of my favorite super unemployables: Howard Schultz, the mastermind behind Starbucks. Inspired by his story on the "Acquired" podcast, we'll explore how a mere "three" in a job review propelled him to greatness.

So, grab your favorite drink, get comfy, and let's chat about the highs, lows, and endless pursuit of fulfillment. Oh, and if you have a story to share, I'd love to hear it! Reach out to me on LinkedIn—I'm Dean Horsfield, and I'm eager to connect with fellow super unemployables. 🎙️

Here's to all of us with birthdays on the horizon—may we find happiness and growth in our journey. Thanks for tuning in!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
32 jobs, 10 times being fired, and 22 times leaving under suspicious circumstances.
I am the Super Unemployable. Welcome to my podcast.
So today we're going to take a little bit of a different approach.
Usually I would tell you a story about a time that I was fired,
or I quit, left in the middle of the night, some sort of rando thing that happens

(00:23):
when you're super unemployable.
But tomorrow is my birthday. I'm turning 42. two.
And there's something that always seems to happen around my birthday.
I feel like I just go through this phase of reckoning.
I try to make sense of the last year. I try to make sense of the last, in this case, 42 years.
And I try to figure out where it is I came from, what I'm doing today and where I'm going.

(00:48):
And for some reason, no matter how successful I am, I find myself questioning everything.
And I don't know if this happens to the rest of you as well.
Maybe Maybe it's a syndrome of the super unemployable. We're never really satisfied, are we?
It's kind of what leads us to start businesses, to work rando jobs,

(01:09):
to get fired constantly, to quit a lot.
I don't know what it is. But so, you know, in honor of my birthday,
I'm going to talk about one of my favorite super unemployables,
and that is none other than Howard Schultz.
Now, for most of you, you'll recognize that name. He is the founder of Starbucks, as we know it today.

(01:30):
And I was just listening to one of my favorite podcasts on the planet.
It's called Acquired. Many of you probably already listened to this podcast.
And Howard Schultz was on the podcast talking about his life before Starbucks.
And in his story, he started, like many of us, working in a pretty killer job,

(01:52):
but yet at finding himself constantly dissatisfied with his current position.
It didn't really matter though, because it was a good job. He was working at
Xerox, but this is, you know, there, there were other jobs before,
but this is where I'm going to catch you up.
He's working at Xerox and he's a sales manager, territory sales manager or something.

(02:12):
He's basically doing cold calls, which isn't that far away from what entrepreneurs
end up having to do when you start your own business, but he's doing it for Xerox.
And he said, this is back in the days before, you know, people were using emails
and, and there were no security at the front desk.
And he would literally go to the top floor of an office building,
his work, his way down trying to sell, what was it? Word processor systems or something like that.

(02:38):
Anyway, he gets to the end of the year and he'd worked his ass off days,
nights, weekends, and his manager was tasked to give him a qualitative review
of his performance on a scale of one to five.
And when he sat down with his manager, his manager gave him a three.
A three. Imagine, you know, at the time, Howard Schultz, he thought he was doing a really good job.

(03:04):
He thought he was good at it. It was prestigious.
Xerox of the time, back in the 70s, was the equivalent to saying you work at Google today or open AI.
Like it was cutting edge stuff back in its day.
Not that I know, but this is what they told me on the podcast.
Anyway, Anyway, he sat back and, you know, for a lot of people,

(03:27):
they would look at it and say, well, I've got a prestigious job.
I make good money. So what? I'm a three.
For a lot of people, they would be happy with that. They would just coast.
But you know, the thing is with the super unemployable, this is how you know
you are super unemployable. You would never be happy with a three.
Now there's lots of people who aren't super unemployable, who wouldn't be happy
with a three, but here's where we diverge.

(03:49):
Those who are not super unemployable will look at that three and they will spend
the next days, weeks, months, years working as hard as they can to become a five at that company.
The super unemployable look at that three and they say, F this.
I'm better than this. I can do more than this. I will become more than this.

(04:13):
And that's exactly what Howard Schultz did.
That three was the turning point in his life.
That set him on a course to Seattle, ultimately to join the Starbucks company,
then to buy or acquire the Starbucks brand and build it into what we know of it today.
I'd really definitely recommend listening to that podcast on Acquired.

(04:37):
It was just recently released.
We're just at the end of May. I believe that's when it was released, May, 2024.
In listening to that story, how many of you out there feel the same?
Where life is handing you threes.
I kind of feel that way today.
I don't know why. I mean, I kind of know why. I'm hitting this crux whereby

(05:00):
my businesses are doing well, but they're not spectacular.
There's a level I want to achieve and I don't feel like I have yet.
My wife will tell me I'll never achieve that level because every time I achieve
something, I always want more. I'm sure you can relate.
That is just something inside of us to never be satisfied.

(05:21):
I'm working on some really fantastic new projects. I've got a beautiful daughter
who's a toddler now. I've got a baby on the way.
By all measures, I should be more satisfied than I am.
But again, in listening to the super unemployable, in listening to Howard Schultz,
the only time in the story that he ever mentions that he is truly happy was

(05:45):
when he was growing his own company.
And that's the measure. That's the true measure of happiness for us.
We have to be growing something of our own. And I think that might be why I'm
feeling a little dissatisfied right now.
My main company is a digital marketing company. We have an AI marketing company
as well called 57th street.

(06:07):
And that company is doing really well, but we're marketing for other businesses.
And so yes arguably this is my venture that
i built to serve others and i'm very happy
doing it and actually to be fair i love what i do but it's not giving me all
the satisfaction and fulfillment that i'm looking for i've got a few other projects

(06:28):
underway one of which is very exciting called eros eros being an ai software
that will empower entrepreneurs a sass product product,
but that's quite a ways away from finishing.
And I have no idea if it's going to be successful.
I think what I'm getting to here is that I just literally do not know what is next.

(06:49):
I have so many things going on, but I don't know what's going to be that next
big thing that's going to take me to where I dream that I want to go.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe that is what will keep me living to 110 is getting
up every day, searching for that next path, never being satisfied, never giving up.

(07:14):
As I sit here doing this podcast, I can't help but wonder, will the 50-year-old
version of myself, eight years from tomorrow, will he be just as dissatisfied?
Or will he look back at this 42-year version of myself and say,
damn, you have no idea what's coming for you in the next eight years.

(07:36):
And I suppose that's the most exciting part. You know, one of the best pieces
of advice I ever got was that success is not linear.
It goes up and it goes down, goes back up again, and it comes back down again.
And it's these times when we go through the down that it's really hard to fathom
that things will turn up.
And when things are going really well, it's really hard to fathom that things will go poorly again.

(08:01):
That just seems to be the human condition.
And yet just as quickly as things can turn negative, they can turn positive as well.
You just have to be open to it, receptive.
And that's what I'm going to try to be tomorrow. I'm going to try to remind
myself when I get up in the morning that I live for me.
That, well, I might feel like a three. That is a three that I gave myself.

(08:26):
Nobody put that label on me and nobody was in a position to judge my future or my success.
To be super unemployable is to have full control of your life.
And I will tell you that is the greatest present that you can have on any birthday.

(08:47):
I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for listening.
I would love if you would share your stories with me.
I'm not sure I've even ever shared, but my name is Dean Horsfield.
You can find me on LinkedIn. There aren't that many of us.
Reach out to me. I'd love to have you on my podcast.
I want to hear your story, whether you're just finding out you're super unemployable,

(09:09):
whether you've known for a really long time, whether you've started so many
businesses This is because you literally had no other choice and you never even
knew what label you had for yourself.
But join me on my podcast. Let's share that story because there are so many
others out there just like you who could benefit from a super unemployable story.
To all of you with a birthday coming up in the next 365 days,

(09:34):
I wish you much happiness and much soul searching as you look towards your next
great self. Thank you for listening.