Michael Gates Gill | How Starbucks Saved My Life

September 4, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. It’s my honor on this show to speak to the New York Times best selling author of How Starbucks Saved My Life, A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. Welcome to the show, Michael Gates Gill.

Michael Gates Gill: Thanks very much.

Dr. Kent: This book has had so much success, how has this been, sort of the rise to media stardom, if you will?

Michael Gates Gill: Well, I don’t know that it’s exactly media stardom, but I think the reason the book has been dong so well as of late is because I think a lot of people want the reassurance, like I was fired from my job, I lost my big house, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and I had a series of things happen to me that you could fear most in life happening to you, and after that series of what you might call disasters, it turned out they were sort of blessings in disguise for me, because, you know, having been fired from my six figure job in advertising I found, at a very big surprise to myself, that I was much happier just in the simple job serving coffee to other people. In the same way, even the diagnosis with the brain tumor has given me a new sense of sort of excitement and also gratitude for every day that I’m just alive, let alone worried about all of those high status toys and all the other stuff I used to do.

Dr. Kent: And it’s such a time for a book like this, and there’s so many people out there that are terrified about what the next month might hold, about whether they’re over their heads in credit card debt or whether they’ve been laid off from a job that they thought was secure, like yours, 25 years in a job, you’d think you’d be secure.

Michael Gates Gill: Right, exactly. And I was really, when they called me out and fired me, to be honest, I literally cried, because I’d spent all those years defining myself, like I was the big advertising hotshot, you know, so when that was taken away, at first I thought my life was over virtually. And I discovered my professional life and I took myself so seriously. But I think the great gift of those kind of shocks, if you will, is it got me out of that thinking, it sort of said, hey wait a minute, life isn’t about the status you have in a big job, but more about who you are a person, and how you, not how you can help yourself to get rich or whatever, but how you can just in the simplest ways help other people.

Dr. Kent: And it’s such a, isn’t that the funniest thing about times like these, I seem to see more and more on television, and I’m connected into Twitter and all of that, and people say, “Here’s how to get rich,” and “The easy way to make cash,” and what’s so wonderful about your book is that it’s a very different take on that same problem.

Michael Gates Gill: Exactly. I mean, when I went through my hard times, when I was struggling and all so hard, I went into bookstores to look for some book about, how do you get fired, how do you lose your big house, how do you get diagnosed with a serious medical condition without any kind of help? But there were not books about how to deal with those kind of sort of daily struggles that I think many people are facing today. But mostly the books are about how to get rich in real estate, like you talk about, or something like that. That’s why actually I wrote my book, because after I started taking a journal, keeping a journal, and after about a year of working as just a simple barista at Starbucks, I went back over my journal, and I’d started it so guilty and afraid and fearful, and I ended up with passion and happier than ever. And as I talk to you right now at this moment I can tell you that honestly that I’m happier than ever because of this simple life I’ve discovered, because along with all that stuff and status and big job and big life, you’re in a sense giving up your life, because you work so hard. I was working 12-hour days, a couple hundred thousand miles of travel, and I didn’t have time, for example, to spend time with my children, or just to take life as it is and enjoy it. I think that’s really the biggest message of my book, which is don’t worry so much about losing all those so-called things you think are so important in life, because you might discover that your own life is the most important thing you can discover in a new way when you have lost all that material, focus on material possessions.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a powerful tale, and what’s neat is that as an author you’ve been able to really get out there in front of an audience. What’s that like?

Michael Gates Gill: Well that’s great. That was actually the biggest gift of the whole experience is going out and talking to people because they tell me, they say, by the example of your life, the three basic lessons that I’ve been told, I’ve been traveling around for about a year now, and I guess I’ve met with thousands of people, but I’ve also heard from emails and stuff and they say, there’s just something about me saying it, but what people have told me is the three basic lessons is, I call them the three L’s now. But the fist question is, when you get stuck, and we all get stuck in life, like in a box, don’t stand there, or sit there with fear, but leap with faith. I think if you leap with faith, because it was only when I said yes to a job which I’d never imagined I would ever be trading my Brooks Brothers suit for a green apron serving Starbucks coffee, but it was only when I leapt with faith that things began to happen. So the real lesson is that any action is better than inaction, and faith is better than fear. The second L is to look with respect at every individual. Because the person who gave me my job was a young, 28-year old African American woman from a totally different background than I had. But if I hadn’t looked at her with respect, and she looked back at me, I wouldn’t have been able to move forward. And the third L I think is the most important, which is you have to listen to your heart. In my 26 years in advertising that didn’t ever come up. I was just chasing these things and I thought I was happy because I had a big house and a big job and all that stuff, and my health. But when I lost those, then it was a good reminder, you better check with your internal heart because we can’t have any effect on whether the stock market goes up or down, or the realty market goes up, but we can have some feeling in our own heart of love and gratitude, and I think its holding on to that, despite the external material stuff that can change every day that is the most important lesson in my life, which is you have to check your own heart, and also try to be as loving as you can. Not only to everyone you meet in some way, and it doesn’t have to be like a huge thing, just in the simplest way. Like smiling at them or helping them get on with their day. And that’s why I think I’m so much happier today than I ever was, because I think I lost that focus on the external and got more focused on just listening to my own heart and trying to share my love of life with others.

Dr. Kent: Well, and it’s such a, as someone who also spent a couple years serving people as a cook, it’s a really humbling experience to see kind of both sides. Some people are very gracious for a simple open door, or for a good cup of coffee, or this and that, and some people just don’t want to deal with people, and it makes you think about what people’s lives are like.

Michael Gates Gill: Yeah, I think also that, don’t you think that I’m sure you were kind of the cook that said gosh, one of the most important things, it’s very fulfilling to cook for people, but also you were hopeful that there’d be some, I think what you’re saying is, a little respect back, right?

Dr. Kent: Right.

Michael Gates Gill: And then I think that, that was the other thing, in all my years of advertising we never mentioned the word respect, so I think once those, you know, focus on all the material possessions, big car, big house, drop away, I think that you go back to the most important thing in life, of course, is to respect each other as human beings. Forget about what we’re wearing that day or what we’re driving that day or what kind of house we live in, but just as people who are. Not, you know how we live in America we always say, “What do you do?” to somebody and try to define them by well you know, have you got a great job or what. But whether you’re a cook, or like my case is essentially a waiter serving other people coffee, or any job is worthy of respect and any individual you meet is worth your respect without regard to what they do. And I think it’s not so much what you do, it’s who you are that is really the most important thing.

Dr. Kent: Well, and I really like this book for many reasons, but once great thing about it is your publisher did a beautiful job of, you know, the cover is almost like you know, the wrapper on your nice Starbucks drink, and the paper is recycled, and it’s a beautiful little, simple book that people can pick up and feel good about reading, you know, with a cup of tea in the corner of the room.

Michael Gates Gill: Yeah, that’s a great way to say that. I love that idea, what you’ve, cause you know this is the kind of book I would have liked to have read when I was going through my struggles. Cause it is scary in life to get fired, or scary to be, get some bad medical condition diagnosed. But it was really helpful, what I’ve heard from people is that it’s really helpful to hear (inaudible) cause I had everything in the American dream you could want, and I lost it, but then having lost it all I discovered a new kind of happiness. And quite frankly I never did do this voluntarily. I mean, I was fired, and etc. But having had that experience I can tell people absolutely, irrefutably that my life is witness to the fact that it’s not the external that matters, but the internal. And I would love it, I love the idea that you say of someone sitting down, cause I tried to write it as easily and truthfully as I could, and I think, you know, like it’s the first chapter that starts with a quote from Winston Marsalas, who is a jazz musician, he just says, “The humble improve.” It sure is a gift to me to be humble in life. I realize I’m not a master of the universe, I’m just another person in this universe. And it’s such a relief not to have to carry that illusion. I think that’s another thing, in America we get the illusion we can control all our life. (inaudible) we should be sharing our lives with others.

Dr. Kent: So obviously so much of your story is in this book, but how did you think originally about, you were going to write your story down?

Michael Gates Gill: Well, actually that’s a very good question. And what happened was that I was going in a month, after I’d been fired and I got divorced too, and then I, as I said, I go the brain tumor diagnosed. My daughter Annie said you know, cause she knew I was having trouble sleeping and I was really stressed out. She said, “Why don’t you just keep a journal every night?” So I started a journal and then after about a year I looked back in it and said you know, this is a very simple story. And you said, you could read it sort of in an afternoon with a cup of coffee or tea. She said, “This could be helpful to someone else in your position.” So that’s really why I published it, and that’s why I called it How Starbucks Saved My Life because, well it wasn’t just Starbucks, but it was, any job is better than no job. Any kind of service for other people is better than just sitting back with fear like I had been. So I sort of wanted to get that story out so that other people would look at this and say ok, I’m not even fired, or ok, I might have had some serious medical problems, but there is life, maybe even a happier life after those things happen. And writing it then was sort of a gift to me because I was able to share what happened to me and I’ve heard from other people that it’s really been helpful to them. By the way, I think that’s why Tom Hanks is going to, he said he wanted to play me in the movie, is because he said in America we get involved in this idea that we can define ourselves through success by the material possessions. And the story I tell in this book is how you define yourself through not the external possessions, but how internally you can share your love for life with others.

Dr. Kent: So I’m back in here on Sound Authors. It’s been a day of technical problem after another, but it’s been a real honor speaking with the guests that have been on the show today. At the beginning of the show, of course, we were talking to Jill Starachevsky. We talked to Michael Port a little bit later, and we’ve been speaking to Michael Gates Gill. I don’t believe that, we might get Michael Gates Gill back here on the line. We’ve been speaking to him about How Starbucks Saved My Life. It’s really a wonderful book. It’s so beautiful, small size, feels like you’re holding a Starbucks coffee cup in your hands. It’s How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. We’ve been having such a great conversation, we’re still trying to get back in touch with him after our technical difficulty, so I’m going to play a little commercial here while we’re waiting for him.

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Dr. Kent: Well, welcome back to Sound Authors. It is my pleasure again, after a load of technical problems there to speak with Michael Gates Gill again about his book How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. And it’s such a beautiful book, I was just saying that. And it’s one that everyone can pick up and almost put in your pockets. I’ve got big pockets, I’m a tall man, so I can put it in my pocket and take it with me to the park and read it there, it’s that kind of book.

Michael Gates Gill: Yeah, I’m glad to hear you say that, cause that was really the way I was hoping it would be, just sort of in a sense a book you could slip into your pocket and take with you and go somewhere, you said like a park, or have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and just read it, and also hopefully be reassured by it, cause it’s basically a story of my, I started with virtually everything you could want in the American dream and then ended up with all the external gone, but found the internal happiness I never would have imagined if I hadn’t lost it. Sort of like, you might call it a story of losing and finding. And the losing was the old, material things I thought were so important, and finding was the new kind of internal happiness and love and gratitude for life that I never had felt before.

Dr. Kent: And it’s, so what’s, because Starbucks is so prominent on the cover, did Starbucks pay you millions for putting this book out?

Michael Gates Gill: No, no and actually that’s an important story I think for any author, I think is that I knew that it was going to be hard for me to tell the truth, so I didn’t want to get involved in submitting it into the corporate, the stomach of the corporate beast where it would be masticated I’m sure if it was the best one in the world, no matter what, there would be 20 people looking at it with 20 good ideas, but it would turn into mush. So I wrote it, well I told Starbucks what I was doing, but you know, they were so wonderful about it. Compared to most corporate people I know in my former advertising life, they were so relaxed. They just sent back word saying we encourage partner, where everybody works (inaudible), we encourage partner creative efforts.

Dr. Kent: Wow.

Michael Gates Gill: I didn’t check a word with them before I published it. I wanted to also make sure that I took responsibility, cause I didn’t get every sort of technical thing, the way you describe the drinks and everything right, but also I wanted to make sure that I could tell the truth about my life, you know. That it wasn’t so much an approved book about Starbucks, so much as the way I experienced Starbucks.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and it’s such a, it’s such a beautiful book that I couldn’t imagine that Starbucks isn’t thrilled by the PR that this book has generated for them.

Michael Gates Gill: Well, I think their main, I think they’re happy. I mean, they haven’t, it hasn’t been more extensive, but I think it’s really a remarkable company, and some of the things I did learn there were just working with the partners, if you went on a shift, is one of the things we talked about earlier. They say respect, and to me they’re just little things, but before they asked me to do anything, this is before I first started and my specialty was going to be cleaning, like cleaning toilets or the floor. Say someone had spilled some coffee. The manager of the store, she happened to be named Crystal, but she’d always just take a few seconds to say, “Mike, would you do me a favor, would you get a mop and help clean up?” But you know, my former life in advertising I would order people to do something. I would sort of drive a fear base, but it was such a different environment, just to have your so-called boss in a way, call and just say, “Would you do me a favor,” to, not to order you, but to ask you. That was just symbolic of the whole culture of Starbucks, which was so different. I mean, in advertising you’re really driven by fear and at Starbucks I think without exaggeration you have to say there’s a kind of love because when you’re serving your drinks and coffee ad food to people, it’s not, it’s trying to have everyone have an enjoyable experience on both sides of the bar

Dr. Kent: And it’s such a powerful thing because, and I think you know, honestly the reason so many people have connected to this book is because, is the same reason that so many people go to Starbucks. It is a place that makes you feel like you’re at home, and it’s not because of the company, it’s because of the people that work there.

Michael Gates Gill: Right, and I think you notice when you go into an ordinary Starbucks store that the people seem happier and they connect with you more. I think a lot of it is because this guy Howard Schultz, who really sort of had the inspiration for Starbucks, say, like let’s have a cup of, like Italians seem to have great cafes, why don’t we have great cafes? But his idea was that the most important thing are the people working for you, even before the customers, and he said, so he gives all of us, we have free health care. We talked about the fact that I didn’t have any health care when I went there. So today I have free health care, just as a part time person working there. And in addition, you get stock, you get everything else, in other words he treats every person who works with Starbucks and works at Starbucks with respect. I think that’s why you get a sense that they’re happy to see you. And the other thing I think is what happened in America with this big expansion of suburbia and malls is malls are great and suburbs are great, but we lost the sense of just having a little community connection. Some places you go they knew you and you could sit down and you could just chat with somebody and then I’ve had people in my store, sometimes I’ll be chatting with a minister about an upcoming wedding. Sometimes they’ll be there about a job interview. Sometimes they’ll just be working on a novel. There have been several novels written in my little Starbucks store. I think the reason is, I’ve heard from people that it’s not so intimidating as working in a library or so, you know, it can be confusing to try and work at home. But Starbucks is sort of a convenient, did you say home away from home. The people feel very comfortable.

Dr. Kent: And so here’s my last question for you, I’ve been speaking to Michael Gates Gill, the author of How Starbucks Saved My Life. My last question is do people show up at your Starbucks, like pilgrims of a sort, do people come to see you there?

Michael Gates Gill: They do come, I don’t know whether they would be called pilgrims, but I think there is a feeling, I have people do come in quite often when I’m working my shift that usually, I think it’s just to make sure, it’s like, is this real? You know, for example when I was getting book reviews and I know you know more about the book business than I do cause I live, you know, I’m just sort of a neophyte to this thing. But book reviews are very important. But some of the best ones I got, like there was a guy from the New York Post who gave me a very positive review, but he said that he’d run into me working in my New York store before I’d written the book. And he said it was here that I was so happy And I think that is a big surprise for people, is to say hey, this guy is really enjoying what he does, because we have this false idea in America that if you don’t have a big title and a big salary then maybe you shouldn’t be enjoying your life. But I can tell you irrefutably, it’s so much more fun to serve coffee to people, and also another aspect of it is it’s a part time job. In my previous life I was working so hard and so focused on the crazy way that I didn’t have half a life. And now I open at 5:00 a.m., but I can walk out of the store at 12:00 or 1:00 in the afternoon, and my life is mine. So what I say is it’s a part time job for a full time life. So I would recommend to everybody if they can someway manage it to focus less on the title and the salary and more on something that you really love to do. And then also have a more balanced life where your work, so called, does not define your life.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such an honor speaking to Michael Gates Gill. He’s the author of How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. It’s been a real blast to speak about it. And who knows, people tuning in right now might show up and get their tall cup of coffee from your Starbucks just to see if it was really, if it’s really you.

Michael Gates Gill: Well it would be an honor to serve them, because you know, it’s a great gift to be able to make anyone happy, and usually it’s a lot easier to make someone happy with a good cup of coffee than it ever was in my previous life running silly ads.

Dr. Kent: Well exactly, and honestly this book has made a lot of people happy, and that’s the wonderful thing about that, too. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Michael Gates Gill: Thank you, and thanks for all your good work you’re doing in the whole, you know, book area.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. And we all have to pick up a copy of How Starbucks Saved My Life because we all need to slow down a bit, and I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned for everybody. So thanks for speaking to us.

Michael Gates Gill: Ok, well, great, and here’s to having a good day for everybody who’s listening right now.

Dr. Kent: Amen to that.

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