Leading with Humility and Audacity
Lessons from Hamdi Ulukaya’s Journey of Building Chobani and Redefining Business
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This article is drawn from an interview originally published on Acumen Founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz’s LinkedIn newsletter, “Moral Leadership.” Read the original interview here and subscribe to the newsletter here.
I met Hamdi Ulukaya at a business conference, but we connected immediately through the poetry of Hafiz. In that first meeting, I realized how unique this founder and CEO was, a giant of giants: not only had Hamdi built a multi-billion dollar company in Chobani, but his enormous capability in business was grounded in an infinite heart for the world.
Hamdi exhibits so many attributes of moral leadership. He walks with a humble audacity. He believes we need a new CEO Playbook (as do I), one that recognizes the responsibilities of leadership and gives back to the community and to the world.Hamdi’s story is deeply authentic to who he is, and it is perhaps his holding on to what is real and true that makes him so grounded, so effective and so inspirational as a leader. Indeed those values have guided how he treats his employees and mobilizes businesses to support refugees around the world.’
You’ve been on a remarkable journey with Chobani. What values have guided you along the way, particularly during hard times?
I grew up in a tribal environment, a nomad in the mountains. We Kurdish nomads tend horses, and for thousands of years, we’ve made butter, cheese and yogurt. We know how to take care of sheep, how to make carpet, how to make a tent. I’m not romanticizing it — it’s rough.
Up in those mountains, if you have a bunch of money, you don’t know what to do with it. You couldn’t do anything except light it on fire. So you have to pay attention to other things. How bright are the stars, the way the water flowed, how people paid respect to each other — and it was not based on what clothes they had. We all had similar clothes. So why did this one have more respect, why did we listen to this person?
My grandfather was the leader of the tribe. They called him Hamdi agha, or chief in Kurd. In some other tribes in the region, if you’re agha, everybody serves you. You own the land. In our case, it was completely the opposite. As chief, you really were serving people, leading them to safety.
The leadership values were non-material. I watched my mom welcoming people to our home, and every person who left our home was elevated somehow. She would make me kiss everybody’s hand. I kind of do the same with my son now. Everything I saw was embedded in my DNA.
When I meet entrepreneurs and they ask me, what is the source of strength, leadership, inspiration and values, I say, Don’t go too far from where you grew up. And remind yourself of all those values you got from it — some of them you don’t even realize — and implement them into your everyday work, and see the magic happen.
We know that as people become wealthier, more powerful, the majority of people lose empathy. They become less able to listen deeply. They’re told by everyone around them how smart they are, how beautiful they are, and many people buy it. What has kept you grounded and how do you make sure you’re listening to the people you serve now?
For some reason, the success did not cross the skin. It didn’t go inside. I’m not trying to minimize it. I see the numbers. I hear what people say. And two seconds later, it just goes away, and I go out and make my tea and eat my cheese with my bread. And I forget about it. So I’m lucky from that perspective that it didn’t materialize in me.
The second part is I was very close to nature in Upstate New York. I grew up in nature. And I realized nature has no price to it. You don’t have to be rich or poor. It’s just there, it’s ours. I was very aware early on that life is precious. I think about the wonders of life that I can go on a journey from a nomadic life in Turkey to Upstate New York.
I was afraid I was going to lose it, because success is a very powerful drug, very seductive. And it can take over.
And as much as the journey has an effect on the people around you, it’s so personal. The ups and downs and cracks and pains and learnings and anxieties that you go through. Through this journey of business, I value that more than the accumulated wealth or accumulated ego. I just look for the next mountain to climb, and see what that does to me. And I was more interested in that journey than what I accumulated.
The second year or third year of Chobani, I brought everybody in the factory to a conference room. And I told them, it’s early and there’s a long way to go but it looks like this company has the potential to climb some mountains and change all our lives and our community’s life in a very direct way. It’s going to depend on how we behave going forward as we accumulate this success.
I said, “if you ever see me act differently than what I normally am, I’m giving permission to every single one of you to hit me, shake me, tell me I’m losing it.” I told them to help me stay the course. I had no wife, I had no kids, I had no mother, I had no close friends, I had no wise teachers. The only people I could rely on to keep me in line were my comrades, the people I work with.
I was young and early in the journey. I was afraid I was going to lose it, because success is a very powerful drug, very seductive. And it can take over.
In the first 7-8 years of my journey, I was always known to have a hat. Even people I worked with didn’t know I had my mother’s scarf inside that hat. I carried it with me. I knew any time I did something wrong, my mother would correct me. And she was my North Star.
And when we gave employees partnership in the company, I said, “You guys think I’m the one who’s making this happen but it’s the person who is my teacher, my North Star.” I took my hat off and showed them the green scarf that my mother had on the day she died. “This is who I rely on.”
It comes down to the people around you. People are going to tell you you’re amazing, you’re this and that. But to have people who truly tell you, “Let’s have a cup of coffee and let’s talk. I have some things to tell you.”
Those friends, those family members and loved ones will correct you. And I wish everyone has people around them like that to keep them in the right place as they are celebrating the successes that happen.
So many of our entrepreneurs struggle with loneliness. They have no money, their parents think they’re crazy. What’s one of the hardest moments of building Chobani and what got you through it?
My family was in Turkey, so I didn’t have any close family here. When you run out of money, you run out of money. And when that happens, your options are limited, and you lose your ability to make an impact. You see opportunistic people show up, and there are moments of desperation.
There was one particularly dramatic moment when I said, “No, I think this is the end of this journey. I’m not going to accept this forced option.” I was ready to take it to bankruptcy. And people said, “Hamdi, why wouldn’t you take that offer?” The offer was a certain amount of money — I’d walk away, and someone else would take over the business. That was the first time I cried for Chobani.
There’s inspiration, there’s learning, and there are other people’s paths we look at, but we have to avoid comparing ourselves to them.
I told myself, if I took that offer, I’d die a little bit every day for the rest of my life. But if I didn’t take it, I’d still have the rest of my life and all the things I’d learned, and I could start something else. I didn’t want to damage myself so deeply that I couldn’t recover. It came down to this: when we make decisions that affect our well-being, our emotional health, our character, we have to know what we can and can’t live with. That’s incredibly important because it guides your decisions. And I knew I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t sleep if I took it. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t function. Maybe I’d become numb to it over time, but I wouldn’t be myself anymore. I’d be someone else.
So, I said no. And after I said no, life opened up, and I found a way to survive. Looking back, there are a few moments I’m really proud of, and that was one of them — the moment I said no. Those critical moments come to test you, and you face them alone. I don’t think you can say, “I passed” or “I didn’t pass.” The journey just continues based on the decision you make. I’m lucky that I was maybe in a good mood or had a good night’s sleep when I made a few of those key decisions, and that’s why things are what they are today.
Looking back now, I tell people decision-making is an art. In business, there are big decisions and small decisions, but there’s no difference. As leaders, we’re making decisions every day, every minute, every hour. The combination of those decisions makes up who we are and what our organizations become. Pay attention to every single decision you make. Check with yourself to see if it’s the right one. You won’t get it 100% right, but check every one of them. Every decision is important. Be an artist of making decisions.