Episode 2: Leading with Service and Humility, with Ari Weinzweig

 Today’s guest is Ari Weinzweig — writer, thinker, and co-founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ari’s story isn’t just about building a beloved local deli into a nationally admired family of businesses — it’s about creating a community rooted in purpose, humility, and genuine care for people. From his early days behind the counter to his decades of writing on leadership, vision, and meaningful work, Ari has become a voice for leading with authenticity and heart.

Episode Transcript

Nancy (00:03):
Welcome to PurposeCast..
inspiring stories and science tohelp you live for what matters
most.
PurposeCast is hosted by Dr.
Vic Strecker, world-renownedspeaker and author, professor
and researcher at the Universityof Michigan, and creator of
Purposeful by Kumanu, ascience-backed app for living a
healthier, happier, morepurposeful life.

(00:24):
Today’s guest is Ari Weinzweigwriter, thinker, and co-founder
of Zingerman’s Community ofBusinesses in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
Ari’s story isn’t just aboutbuilding a beloved local deli
into a nationally admired familyof businesses it’s about
creating a community rooted inpurpose, humility, and genuine
care for people.

(00:45):
From his early days behind thecounter to his decades of
writing on leadership, vision,and meaningful work, Ari has
become a voice for leading withauthenticity and heart.
And now—Dr.
Vic Strecker.
Ari, welcome to thisPurposeCast.
Thanks for having me on.
You know, I was trying to thinkback to when I first met you,
and honestly, I can't remember.

(01:06):
I do know that in the earlyeighties, I was a graduate
student at the University ofMichigan, and I lived just a few
blocks away from Detroit Streetand you open this little deli
about the size of my home officeand you were selling pretty
amazing food at the time, youand Paul Saginaw in this little
place.
And even back then I was justkind of rocked by the quality of

(01:28):
the service and the attentionand the people who paid
attention to me, a lowly gradstudent with almost no money
really helping me out at everyturn.
So I love that.
It seemed to be in your DNA atZingerman's this family of
businesses that you really havespawned.
Now that you have, I believeit's over a$50 million business

(01:50):
from that little hole in thewall.
And yet when I'm at Zingerman'sRoadhouse and I'm eating this
unbelievable fried chicken,which I always order every time,
I see you walking by with thewater and you pour water and you
ask whether the french fries arewarm enough and whether I need
anything else.
And I feel very special becauseof that, but I realized that
everybody ends up feeling reallyspecial because you pour the

(02:12):
water.
So I'd love to get your take, onhow you think about service.
Well, I wrote a lot about it.
I can't say I really grew upwith it particularly.
No one in my family was inbusiness.
So I really had no concept atany kind of conscious level of
what it would be.

(02:33):
But what I would say now is thatleadership is service.
There's more to it than justservice.
Just like everything, it'scomplex and there's multiple
factors that are at play andwe're trying to do as many of
them moderately well as we canall the time.
But service is at the core ofit.
And whether that's just literalcustomer service, which we were

(02:53):
doing in a somewhat unconsciousway when you were in grad school
and just trying to wait on youthe way it seemed like people
should be waited on, or if it'sin the, the construct of the
little book I wrote on customerservice, Zingerman's Guide to
giving Great Service where weactually put trainable,
teachable steps into play thatwe share with all our staff and
through ZingTrain our trainingbusiness, we teach all over the

(03:15):
place.
Or whether it's through servantleadership, which comes from
Robert Greenleaf's book from1977, which really says that the
leader's primary responsibilityis first and foremost to serve
the organization, not the otherway around.
So I think in multiple ways,it's really embedded into our
organizational life and wouldsay in a positive way, so much

(03:39):
of what we do, it becomes who weare.
So to your point about beingauthentic, like we're all trying
to be ourselves, we're impactingthe surroundings around us and
the surroundings around us areimpacting us simultaneously.
And so it just becomes a way oflife.
It's not just like a mask to puton when you go to work.
But do you think that everyoneis authentic?

(04:01):
Because John Paul Sartre talkeda lot about fake people, and I
think so many people are donningthose masks.
We're trained to do that.
I mean, that's Rollo May saidthe opposite of courage is not
cowardice.
It's conformity.
And there's enormous pressure oneverybody, all the time, and
it's just having the wherewithalto figure out which are the

(04:22):
things that are true to who youare, which is easier said than
done.
Thelonious Monk famously said"Agenius is a man most like
himself." I would say that isequally applicable to
organizations.
It's easy to say it, it's hardto do it.
And so I got my mother's voiceover here.
I got Paul's voice, my partner,over here.
I got all the key players in mylife going at the same time, and

(04:46):
then trying to sort through allof that is the life's work.
It would be disingenuous to saylike, when I feel fear at work,
which is frequent, that I don'twant to just flee out the back
door when no one's looking.
I mean, that's, you know,happens every day.
It's really just whether I canmanage myself and all of these
conflicting emotions andconflicting pressures to be able

(05:08):
to come up with something thatis true to who I am and as an
organization that's true to whowe are as a collective.
In the summer I asked you whatyou were reading and you said,
well, I'm reading this biographyof Thelonious Monk, and you had
mentioned that and, andwonderful.
'cause I love jazz music.
And so really, really exciting.

(05:29):
And he said, I'm reading anotherbook by James Baldwin.
And that's fascinating.
So I started looking and readingthat and one of the quotes from
James Baldwin and, and youactually cited him, I think this
week"you learn how little, youknow." And I love that quote to
the point that I actually put itunder my signature in one of my

(05:50):
emails.
Hmm.
To me it really relates tohumility.
Mm-hmm.
And being humble that we don'tknow everything and it takes a
long time actually to startlearning more.
And as you learn more, you startlearning that you don't know
everything.
I'd love to have you just talkabout humility a bit because I
view you as a very humble persongiven everything that you've

(06:13):
done.
Yes.
Humility?
Yes.
So this is, it's a subject Ididn't know anything about
really until two and a halfyears ago I got an invitation to
speak at a symposium on campusat U of M about humility.
And your reaction was what Ijust said.
"I don't know anything abouthumility" and I would've said

(06:34):
no.
But the woman who asked JamieVander Brook used to work for us
and she's super nice and herhusband still works for us,
Isaac Vander Brook, and he'ssuper nice.
And I just didn't have the heartto say no.
So I said yes, and then I waslike, okay, I got four months or
whatever to figure out what I'mgonna say.
I better start studying.
It's the only thing historymajors really know how to do.
And so I started reading abouthumility and trying to figure it

(06:56):
out.
And it ended up, pretty muchanything, one starts to study my
belief you're gonna find it'sinteresting.
So three years ago I read a bookon the history of trains.
Never knew anything about it.
Turns out bookstores becamepopular to help people get on
trains'cause they had nothing todo.
Like, I would never have knownthat so many of the big
bookstore chains in Europe camefrom places that would sell to

(07:20):
train riders, right?
So anything we study in my mindbecomes interesting and humility
the same.
And what I've came to realizehumility, it is a key skill of
life.
It's a key skill inorganizations.
Patrick Lencioni, who writesgreat books and speaks very well
on leadership stuff, had a bookcome out a couple years ago

(07:41):
called"The Ideal Team Player."He distilled his research down
to three key skills that oneneeded to be a great team
player, humble, hungry, whichmeans pursuing greatness, and
smart.
Adam Grant, wrote about humilityand its importance on teams.
It's universally, Jim Collinstalks a lot about level five

(08:02):
leaders.
They all have humility.
So I realized that, and then I,I've continued to study it, and
I wrote quite a bit in thepamphlet about my own learnings.
I sort of shifted my mindsetaround it.
So I used to have this notuncommon belief that humility
was sort of like this charactertrait.
Like you were tall or short, oryou were humble or not humble.
But I have come to view itdifferently in many ways.

(08:25):
And one of them is I switchedthe language.
So as you know, language ispowerful.
And for some reason, when I waswriting one day, I said, you
know, what about humbleness in,so instead of humility, and it
turns out humbleness is actuallya word, it's just nobody uses
it.
And when I started to reframe itin my head as humbleness, then I
could close the gap betweenhumbleness and mindfulness

(08:46):
because it's clear like no one'smindful all the time.
None of us are, no matter howhard you work at it, we're all
sliding back and forth.
Sure.
And so in that context,humbleness was very mentally
eye-opening for me because Irealized like we're all..
I want praise and, andrecognition and compliments just
like everybody else.
And like 90 seconds after I getone, I can slide completely to

(09:10):
the other end of the continuum.
Like, I'm worthless, I'mterrible.
Zingerman's sucks.
I suck.
The books suck.
So it's this constant back andforth and like humbleness is
trying to stay, likemindfulness, in the middle.
And, and that it's, it'sneither, clearly, it's not about
being full of yourself andegotistical, but equally, it's
also not about thinking ill ofyourself.

(09:32):
So humbleness is sort of agrounded thing.
And then I, I also realized ithumble comes from humus from the
earth, right.
And so in the Bible Adam, AdamMa in Hebrew is Earth, the first
man.
And that I realized when we'rehumble, we're really at our most
human.
We're vulnerable, like youbrought up earlier, but we're

(09:54):
also not completely retreatingfrom ourselves, and fear.
So there's a lot to it.
And I've come to realize, it's acritical skill in life, and
something that I didn't know,but we actually were teaching in
unconscious ways in ourorganization, and now we can
start to teach it more actively.
I'm wondering, how do you manage, cope?

(10:16):
'Cause a lot of people fromaround the world who are
listening in right now aresuffering.
Do you have any advice for them?
Well, I wrote about that too.
A lot of people were asked,well, still they asked me, but
people were asking like, whatare you doing to take care of
yourself?
I've just tried to construct Idon't know, a set of habits,
routines, touchstones, whateverword you want to use that help

(10:37):
me to reground because.
I'm as unstable as anybody else.
I just need regular ways toreground.
Right.
So I journal every morning.
I wrote about that in the e newstoo, back in the spring.
A great tip.
I've been, I've been doing itfor like 30 years.
A reflection.
Yeah.
So that's a piece people cantake a look at.

(10:57):
I run every day.
I'll be out there in anotherhour by the time we're done.
I don't really like running inthe morning.
I like later in the day'cause itbreaks up my day.
And then, Tammy, my significantother, and I cook dinner every
night and that's just what I do.
And then in between, I mean,it's just learning to manage
energy.
My friend Anise Kavanaugh, whoyou might actually have on here,

(11:19):
would be a greatconversationalist for you.,
Taught us about energymanagement and we adopted it.
Adapted it at Zingerman'sprobably 15 years ago to make it
a job expectation.
And we teach people how tomanage their energy through the
day.
And so that contributespositively, both to my own life
and then as I manage my ownenergy in the, in the context of
this talk, it's a service to thepeople around me, because we all

(11:41):
know, and we can all do it likeI've done it.
If we slip in our own energymanagement, we're dumping our
anxiety on the people around us,which is the opposite of
service.
Wow.
Right.
And so it's.
It's, it's putting people at adisadvantage, right?
We're trying to get'em to giveservice to the guests, but we've
actually detracted from theirday, pulled them off of their

(12:01):
game, and then yell at them fornot doing a good job after we do
that.
So that model is completelyunsustainable and unhealthy.
If I can manage my own energybetter than it allows people to
be in a better space to wait onyou when you come in to get your
fried chicken.
Wow.
So we are starting to close upand, and these PurposeCasts are

(12:24):
purposefully short, you know,just trying to have these neat
discussions.
I'd love to turn to some of yourown habits that I've noticed.
One is when I go into the Delior the Roadhouse, you're often
sitting there having a cup oftea or coffee and you're just

(12:44):
writing something.
You write a lot of pamphlets.
You've written six books.
They are part of my personallibrary and I've read them and
learned a great deal from them,so there's a lot of wisdom in
these.
You call me every once in awhile and it's kind of out of
the blue, it's like, hmm, Iwonder what Ari would like and
what does he need, or, you know,what question does he have?

(13:05):
And I asked that and he goes,well, I'm just calling you just
want to get in touch and youhave this habit, of going
through your phone and justcalling people and as a result,
I started doing that.
I found myself, if I had freetime, if I was in the car
driving somewhere at a distance,I would just start calling
people almost randomly that wereon my phone.

(13:26):
And almost always some new storycame up and some new interesting
concept or idea.
So where did that come from?
And why?
Well, you could invert it andjust say why not?
I mean, there's any number ofreasons.
I wrote an essay on timemanagement that's in part three,
which is that green book.
I have found over the years,many people complain regularly

(13:48):
about a shortage of time, butthen when I look, many of us
don't use our time particularlywell.
So, I'm fortunate to live in AnnArbor, so I don't spend a lot of
time commuting.
It's 10 minutes from 12 minutesfrom one end of the town to the
other.
But, but the reality is thatit's still 12 minutes that I can
use for something cool, whichcould be calling you or any
number of a hundred other peoplethat I really like and learn

(14:10):
from.
And I can sit in the car and donothing, or I can pick up the
phone, right.
And I just try to get my brainready for who I'm gonna call
before I get in the car I loadthe number, and then I just hit
dial.
And it's really not that hardand it benefits everybody,
right?
Which is the point of all ofthis.
So, it's awesome that it helpsyou.
The truth is, it helps me toojust because this is why

(14:32):
therapy's therapeutic in oneregard, is just the act of
conversing, sharing struggles,hearing other people's
struggles.
And I wrote yesterday in e newsthat just came out about
creativity and a big piece ofthat work is to be able to
connect, if you seek outinformation in interesting ways
and then are able to connectthat in ways you might never

(14:54):
have thought of, cool thingscome from it.
Right.
And just from our casualconversations, like every time
we talk, I mean, you're doinginteresting work.
I don't know, I know a littleabout it, but you're always
uncovering things too.
So what you've uncovered mighttrigger something completely
different in my work or itmight, might trigger something I
never even thought about, right?

(15:15):
So there's, there's emotionalconnection, there's intellectual
connection, there's, there'spositive energy going out into
the universe and.
I mean, honestly, especiallyright now when there's so much
pressure out in the world, andeverything that's going on in
the US and really around theworld, it's comforting to talk
to other people.
And I wrote a piece about thephone calls too, I think back in

(15:37):
June or July just because Irealized it's this thing I just
take for granted.
But like you said, most peopledon't do it.
And when I call people andthey're like, so great that you
called, I'm like I just pushdial and here we are.
And they're like, well, no oneelse ever calls.
And I'm like, it's really not.
And everybody's emailing melike, can we set up a time of
time?
I'm like, why don't you justcall me?

(15:59):
Ari I guess we're outta time.
I could go on for hours with youand I wanna express my deep
gratitude.
It's just such a privilegeknowing you and continuing to
work with you.
Thank you so much for taking thetime and hopefully helping some
of the people who are on thispodcast.
Ari, thanks again.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Vic.
My email directly [e-mail].

(16:21):
If people wanna reach out.
The books are onzingermanspress.com and the
pamphlets.
But please reach out.
I'm sure we've provoked as manyquestions, if not more, than
we've answered, so people arewelcome to reach out'cause I'll
learn from whoever emails me.
I just wanna thank you so much.
Honored to be here.
Take care, Ari.
Bye-bye.
Thanks for joining us onPurposeCast.

(16:42):
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