Speaker 1: Charles Coke turned his father's small business into one of
Speaker 1: the most profitable private companies in America. Now he's heavily
Speaker 1: focused on giving back to his community. On this episode
Speaker 1: Appear Appear, Charles Coke and the head of his philanthropic endeavors,
Speaker 1: Brian Hooks, sit down with me to discuss how they
Speaker 1: are applying to his philanthropic work the principles that made
Speaker 1: Charles so successful in business. Charles and Brian, welcome to
Speaker 1: our show. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks, David, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Now both of you have co authored a new book
Speaker 1: called Believing People. You are, Charles eighty five years old,
Speaker 1: and most people who are business people are eighty five
Speaker 1: years old are not writing books about social entrepreneurship or philanthropy.
Speaker 1: They're doing other things. Why did you decide at this
Speaker 1: age you wanted to write another book with Brian? Well,
Speaker 1: actually it's uh. I started on this book or doing
Speaker 1: the research probably sixty years ago with these ideas and uh,
Speaker 1: and then I started writing at five years ago. And
Speaker 1: my gifts, whatever they are, are mainly in abstract concepts, math,
Speaker 1: other abstract concepts. So the book was mainly about theory
Speaker 1: and history. It wasn't measuring up in the meantime. Under
Speaker 1: under Brian's leadership at Stand Together, we were using these
Speaker 1: ideas to empower more people, to actually show how it
Speaker 1: works today and transforms people's lives. And so I said
Speaker 1: at the end, I said, Brian, I don't have a
Speaker 1: book that I believe will do what I want. You
Speaker 1: need to come in and help me finish it, get
Speaker 1: it re re restructured. And that's what he did. The
Speaker 1: reason I wrote it is and I started on it
Speaker 1: five years ago, is is I wanted to help everybody
Speaker 1: have the benefit of the ideas that transformed my life
Speaker 1: and enabled me to achieve more than I ever believe
Speaker 1: possible and have done so for many others. And those
Speaker 1: are basically what I call the principles of human progress.
Speaker 1: And those start with recognizing that everyone has a gift,
Speaker 1: everyone has something to offer, which they will do if
Speaker 1: they're empowered to do so. The essence of your philanthropic
Speaker 1: philosophy and your life philosophy, if I could put it
Speaker 1: in my words, is that it's bottom up, not top down.
Speaker 1: In other words, empower people at the bottom and let
Speaker 1: them make decisions and let those filter up as opposed
Speaker 1: to people the top, telling people to bottom what they do.
Speaker 1: Is that more or less correct? Well, it's yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's I mean, this starts with with recognizing that everyone
Speaker 1: has something to offer and if they're not and they're
Speaker 1: not contributing, we need to work with them and we
Speaker 1: can to empower them so they all the institution in
Speaker 1: society need to be focused on that rather than telling
Speaker 1: them what to do, in limiting them and stifling them. Okay, Brian.
Speaker 1: In addition to writing this book together, how have you
Speaker 1: two work together over the years. Well, I've I've worked
Speaker 1: with Charles in one way or another for twenty years now,
Speaker 1: and so Stand Together is a philanthropic community. We work
Speaker 1: with several hundred business leaders and philanthropists to try to
Speaker 1: improve our effectiveness and helping empower people to live better lives. Now,
Speaker 1: running Stand Together must be uh not easy. But you
Speaker 1: have no gray hair? How come I hide it? Well?
Speaker 1: Hide it well to say, it's been twenty years and
Speaker 1: they've been productive, but long years. He gets to work
Speaker 1: with me, David, that's I mean, that keeps it. I
Speaker 1: I have all the gray hair. Well, it's like me,
Speaker 1: My hair is dark, but I diet grace. So I
Speaker 1: look more mature, Brian. Let me ask you a question. Um,
Speaker 1: I've been involved a bit in philanthropy myself, and when
Speaker 1: I decide I want to give money away to somebody,
Speaker 1: I call him up and they usually are only to
Speaker 1: take it or something like that. Why does somebody need
Speaker 1: your organization to help them give away the money that
Speaker 1: they already have. What do you do for somebody that
Speaker 1: they can't do themselves? Well? The whole thesis of Stand Together,
Speaker 1: and what we've learned over the last twenty years or
Speaker 1: so is that as effective as individuals can be on
Speaker 1: their own, we can all be more more effective. We
Speaker 1: have a greater impact when we pool our knowledge and
Speaker 1: we combined our resources. So give you an example. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the issues that we've worked on a lot
Speaker 1: is criminal justice reform and and criminal justice system, which
Speaker 1: is you know, full of terrible tragedies, has been kind
Speaker 1: of stuck in a rut for at least a generation,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of good attempts to try
Speaker 1: to make progress, but they tended to be kind of
Speaker 1: narrowly focused. And the real breakthrough and criminal justice came
Speaker 1: when we combined a whole lot of different projects, A
Speaker 1: whole lot of different programs, and it was that combination
Speaker 1: that allowed us to kind of unstick the system and
Speaker 1: now make some real progress. So let's talk about racial
Speaker 1: related issues. The Black Lives Matter issue has brought racial
Speaker 1: inequality to the forefront. How has your company tried to
Speaker 1: address this by being more inclusive or dealing with the
Speaker 1: problems that often people who are African American might have
Speaker 1: in our society, not only the company, but but stand
Speaker 1: together in our views on this is is we welcome
Speaker 1: this conversation about that about racial in qualities and what
Speaker 1: I look at the situation today, it's a case of
Speaker 1: the sins of the fathers being visited on the suns
Speaker 1: for seven generations. I mean, you look at at what
Speaker 1: what this country practice. I mean slavery reconstruction with horrors,
Speaker 1: uh separate, not but equal, separate but unequal. And so today,
Speaker 1: whether there's racism in it or not, we have institutional
Speaker 1: bias that is holding Black Americans back. And so that's
Speaker 1: why we're working on criminal justice reform, on changing the
Speaker 1: educational system, changing regulations such as occupational licensure, which keeps
Speaker 1: people who start with nothing from competing, and so on
Speaker 1: through through the through all the institutions in society. We're
Speaker 1: working to change those to bring that into UH, into
Speaker 1: true system of equal rights and mutual benefit. Now, the
Speaker 1: truth is most people in the world do not know
Speaker 1: Charles Coke for being a gigantic philanthropist. They know you
Speaker 1: for running this gigantic privately owned company. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about how that came about.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in You were born in Kansas,
Speaker 1: which which dot Kansas? Yes, you grew up there. Your
Speaker 1: father was a person who didn't say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pamper you and I want you to have a nice,
Speaker 1: spoiled life. He made you work pretty hard. Is that right? Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, is that true. No. He he announced to
Speaker 1: me early that he didn't want me to be a
Speaker 1: country club bum. He wanted me to amount to something.
Speaker 1: So he had me work at in all my spare time,
Speaker 1: starting at age six. This is hard to believe, but
Speaker 1: but we have photographs of me doing it. So you
Speaker 1: ultimately went off to um m I T a pretty
Speaker 1: good school. What did you want to be when you
Speaker 1: went down my T? I had no idea. Well, I
Speaker 1: knew the reason I went to M I t is
Speaker 1: the language was math rather than English, and I was
Speaker 1: so much better at math than English that I thought
Speaker 1: I'd have a better chance of succeeding there. And so
Speaker 1: so I started taking different courses, and I took so
Speaker 1: many different ones, trying to find something I was good at,
Speaker 1: how I could apply this gift to help me contribute
Speaker 1: and succeed and uh, and I took so many that
Speaker 1: I couldn't get a degree in any specific subjects. So
Speaker 1: I got it in general engineering, and then I said, well,
Speaker 1: I need I need something more specific. So I thought
Speaker 1: nuclear was the wave of the future and I would
Speaker 1: have entrepreneurial opportunities in the future from that. When I
Speaker 1: got in it got my degree, my master's degree in
Speaker 1: nuclear engineering, I learned that no IT people are really
Speaker 1: worried about safety, so it's going to be so controlled
Speaker 1: and regulated. I don't I won't have those opportunities. So
Speaker 1: I went back and got a master's in chemical engineering. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the last thing you wanted to do was to
Speaker 1: go back to Kansas and work for your father, I assumed,
Speaker 1: since he was a little bit of a hard task master.
Speaker 1: So you went to work for Arthur D. Little, which
Speaker 1: is a consulting firm in the Boston area. Is that right? Right?
Speaker 1: I got in management consulting, and I got to consult
Speaker 1: on things that were abstractions, like strategies and innovation, and
Speaker 1: I said, wow, this is this is it. I need
Speaker 1: to be an unch pin and and and so there
Speaker 1: are a lot of companies coming out of m I
Speaker 1: t from professors and students I knew. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I want to join one of these startups
Speaker 1: and invest some and and start a career as an entrepreneur. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how did your father lure you back from the
Speaker 1: Boston area to Kansas to work for him, which you
Speaker 1: didn't think was probably gonna be that much fun? Well,
Speaker 1: I told the first time he asked me, I said,
Speaker 1: I said, pop, no, I got, I got my career
Speaker 1: ideas and I want to be independent. And and so
Speaker 1: he called me back and he said, son, uh, as
Speaker 1: you know, my health is poor. It's so poor that
Speaker 1: I'm not really able to lead the company anymore. And
Speaker 1: it's not doing well, and I don't have long to live.
Speaker 1: So either you come back to run it, or I'll
Speaker 1: sell it and I'll let you run this business that
Speaker 1: that you already own an interest in that makes fractionating trades. Uh,
Speaker 1: any way you want to start with, and the only
Speaker 1: thing you need my approval on is to sell it.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I don't wow. I said to myself,
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm going to get a better opportunity
Speaker 1: than this. So I came back and he was absolutely
Speaker 1: true to his word. He totally turned it over to
Speaker 1: me and then got me and the other businesses, and
Speaker 1: I was able to contribute from the beginning, but I
Speaker 1: still didn't feel whole. So everybody who's watching this will
Speaker 1: want to know, how do you take a twelve million
Speaker 1: revenue company to roughly a hundred and twenty billion revenue
Speaker 1: company withoutgoing public? What is the key secret to doing that? Well,
Speaker 1: the secret was that that I was, as I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel I was fully using my capabilities. It's
Speaker 1: what what Maslow said, if if you're not fully developing
Speaker 1: your capacities and realizing your potential, you may be externally
Speaker 1: success full, but you will be deeply unhappy because you
Speaker 1: won't be fulfilling your nature. As he said, what you
Speaker 1: can be, you must be. And I hadn't read Maslow then,
Speaker 1: but that caused me to read Maslow and to search
Speaker 1: for these principles of human progress. So I read everything
Speaker 1: I could from all different all relevant disciplines, all different
Speaker 1: perspectives to find principles that I could use and apply
Speaker 1: in the business and my life to enable me to
Speaker 1: believe in myself. And and I started apply them in
Speaker 1: business and they worked. They weren't beyond my belief and
Speaker 1: beyond anything I hoped for, and that absolutely transformed my life.
Speaker 1: And so my whole life has been looking for principles
Speaker 1: that enabled me to contribute or improve the principles were
Speaker 1: implying and better apply them. And and so every day
Speaker 1: is like I'm reborn, okay, And you've said, over your
Speaker 1: dead body, with this company ever go public? Is that right?
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that literally, but every you're not intending
Speaker 1: to take in public? Right? No? Absolutely, no, it's uh.
Speaker 1: I don't We couldn't have done what we did if
Speaker 1: we were public. I don't believe. Um. I don't know
Speaker 1: your company really that well. It seems to be in
Speaker 1: the oil and refining businesses, but things like that, a
Speaker 1: lot of technical things. But one of the companies you bought,
Speaker 1: the biggest acquisition you ever made, was Georgia Pacific. And
Speaker 1: when I read that in the newspapers, I said, what
Speaker 1: are they buying a forestry company for? And it seems
Speaker 1: I've worked out extremely well from reading the newspapers. Um,
Speaker 1: what was your thinking about Georgia Pacific? I was just
Speaker 1: curious as a business matter, Well, are what drives us?
Speaker 1: And what's made successful is we started UH by understanding
Speaker 1: and applying UH the principles of human progress, and then
Speaker 1: we we we took those and codified them into a
Speaker 1: management framework that we call market based management, and that's
Speaker 1: has five dimensions, and then we use that to create
Speaker 1: virtuous cycles of mutual benefit, which, as I say, starts
Speaker 1: with building capabilities that will all enable us to create
Speaker 1: value for others. So we've never considered ourselves as industry bound.
Speaker 1: We consider ourselves capability bound. So we're constantly trying to
Speaker 1: build new capabilities that will open new opportunities. And then
Speaker 1: when we get UH getting a new opportunity, then that
Speaker 1: leads to us building new capabilities, which leads to new opportunities.
Speaker 1: And that's why we're all these things. And the only
Speaker 1: place where we're in producing UH fossil fuels is in refining.
Speaker 1: We're out of all the others. And that's now just
Speaker 1: a fraction of our total business, whereas a decade ago
Speaker 1: it was like half. Now you point out in your
Speaker 1: book that you're a large producer of ethanol, refiner of
Speaker 1: ethanol which were used as corn and and so forth,
Speaker 1: but that you're against the subsidies the federal government is
Speaker 1: giving to ethanol. Now doesn't that cause you some problems
Speaker 1: in your business world when you're against the subsidies but
Speaker 1: you're actually doing a lot of the ethanol production. We
Speaker 1: oppose all subsidies, all all restrictions on competition, innovation, or
Speaker 1: are providing opportunities to people who start with nothing we're
Speaker 1: we oppose all those and and and it's not just ethanol,
Speaker 1: Like we opposed the border adjustment tax, although that would
Speaker 1: make us a lot of money by raising the price
Speaker 1: of our consumer goods for our customers. And because we believe,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not outruistic. It's because we believe we
Speaker 1: succeed by creating value for others. I mean, we want
Speaker 1: to be the preferred partners of all our constituencies, everybody
Speaker 1: in every group that's important to us. And the way
Speaker 1: you do it is by creating value for them applying
Speaker 1: mutual benefit. So, Charles, Um, you are a teenager by
Speaker 1: the standards of some people who are running companies. Warren Buffett,
Speaker 1: I think it's just celebrate his ninetieth birthday. So you're,
Speaker 1: you know, five years younger than him, and so I
Speaker 1: assume you could keep doing this for quite a while.
Speaker 1: Do you have any plans to make certain that the
Speaker 1: company will be can continued to run by a family?
Speaker 1: Your father started the company, You've been running it for
Speaker 1: a long time. Uh, your family have any interest in
Speaker 1: running it or you're gonna eventually turn it over to
Speaker 1: a professional managers. We have multiple people who could lead it,
Speaker 1: and but I won't be the one deciding that it
Speaker 1: will be the board of directors. And my son wouldn't
Speaker 1: want it unless he felt that he was the best
Speaker 1: one who could make the most company most successful in
Speaker 1: in in continuing to apply these ideas to create value
Speaker 1: in society. So a number of years ago, Um, you
Speaker 1: decided to get involved a little bit more than you
Speaker 1: had been in politics by supporting candidates or so forth,
Speaker 1: And as a result of that, your image became very
Speaker 1: much let's say right wing and let's say anti democratic
Speaker 1: in some respects. Some people might say, how are you
Speaker 1: now trying to change what you did a number of
Speaker 1: years ago getting involved in in political causes or so forth.
Speaker 1: Well I was. I started in this work uh nearly
Speaker 1: sixty years ago, and for the first fifty I wasn't
Speaker 1: involved in politics at all. And then we we decided
Speaker 1: we needed to get policies as well as these has
Speaker 1: worked with these other institutions, uh that will empower people,
Speaker 1: that will move as closer to a system of equal
Speaker 1: rights and mutual benefit. And so we got into it,
Speaker 1: uh by some uh in a partisan way in in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten. That was the first election we
Speaker 1: we got in and so we tried that for a
Speaker 1: few years and it wasn't that successful and it was
Speaker 1: many ways counterproductive. So now are our work in in
Speaker 1: politics is is on a nonpartisan basin. We're looking for
Speaker 1: champions who will who will advocate for policies that will
Speaker 1: empower people rather than get try to get power over them,
Speaker 1: which stifles people. The thing about it is, and as
Speaker 1: we go into in the book, you know, at any
Speaker 1: given time, politics has never been more than ten percent
Speaker 1: of all of the efforts that we've been involved with.
Speaker 1: But has taken an outside uh view in terms of
Speaker 1: people's understanding of our work. When when we did get
Speaker 1: involved in politics, we learned quickly that partnership works a
Speaker 1: whole lot better than partisanship. And so, as Charles says,
Speaker 1: that's the approach we're taking now in public policy and politics.
Speaker 1: Not doesn't matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
Speaker 1: If you've got a vision for policy that can improve
Speaker 1: people's lives, we want to partner with you. And we
Speaker 1: found that that works really, really well, even under some
Speaker 1: pretty challenging circumstances. Obviously, most people like to be liked
Speaker 1: by other people. I think that's the case. And so
Speaker 1: for a while when you were involved in politics, you
Speaker 1: were the ogre for some people on the deft Democratic
Speaker 1: Party side of the left side. Did that bother you?
Speaker 1: And are you trying in any way to change the
Speaker 1: image that you got or you basically saying I'm doing
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do and I don't care about the
Speaker 1: image so much. Well, I mean, we need to we
Speaker 1: need to attract support, so we want that. But as
Speaker 1: I've said, my main driver through my life is to
Speaker 1: believe in myself, and so I have to do what
Speaker 1: I think is right. What what will allow me to
Speaker 1: to fully develop my capabilities and use them to contribute.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I do. And but I when
Speaker 1: we have criticisms, and I to me, that's Carl Popper's
Speaker 1: uh scientific method. Develop a proposition or innovation and then
Speaker 1: not go around and find things to support it, but
Speaker 1: find challenges to it, encourage challenges to it, to find
Speaker 1: the flaws in it. So when when when we're criticized
Speaker 1: and attack, we look at, Okay, what are we doing wrong?
Speaker 1: And then part of what we saw, well, we're approaching
Speaker 1: this in a partisan way. That's wrong. We've got to
Speaker 1: approach this in a in a nonpartisan way. So Charles,
Speaker 1: let me ask you. Um, I noticed from politics, reading
Speaker 1: the pet papers that you were not involved in a
Speaker 1: Republican campaign for president. But President Trump you were not
Speaker 1: in involved with his campaign as far as I can see,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and um, so you you know you've
Speaker 1: distanced yourself from that Republican president supposed to new were
Speaker 1: president elect, uh Joe Biden were to call you and say, look,
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear your views. I want to buy partisanship,
Speaker 1: what would you tell him he should do and would
Speaker 1: you be willing to consult with him? Oh? Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: we hope to find ways and and we were we
Speaker 1: believe there are number of ways that uh, that we
Speaker 1: can find common ground on. Uh. And that what I
Speaker 1: would say, Okay, let's uh, we can help you when
Speaker 1: when you're pushing policies that that show you believe in people,
Speaker 1: that you want to empower people so so they so
Speaker 1: they can contribute and succeed and and and when you're
Speaker 1: when you have policies that we believe will stifle people
Speaker 1: and and keep them from realizing their potential, then we'll
Speaker 1: oppose that. And that's what we've done with with every president.
Speaker 1: But I've I've never I don't think I've never talked
Speaker 1: to or met a president elect or a president. I
Speaker 1: have met him before and after they were presidents, but
Speaker 1: never when they were So that's not what I get
Speaker 1: engaged in. Given your wealth, given your prominence, I would
Speaker 1: have thought by now some presidents would have invited to
Speaker 1: a state dinner or asked you to come and advise them.
Speaker 1: So you know, Ronald Reagan or George Herbert Walker Bush
Speaker 1: or George W. Bush, they never invited to the White
Speaker 1: House for a state dinner and or you didn't want
Speaker 1: to go, or you just don't have been invited. But
Speaker 1: I've asked the question, not duringly with the President, of course,
Speaker 1: but I've asked the question, well, what is it. Are
Speaker 1: we gonna talk about substance? Or is this just meeting
Speaker 1: and greet and and show? And it was it's for show,
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm not interested in show. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in getting something done. So I have not gone
Speaker 1: to any of them. I don't think I've ever been
Speaker 1: in the White House in fact, So you have any
Speaker 1: interest of President Biden invited you just to come and
Speaker 1: take a tour of the White House. You wouldn't want
Speaker 1: he interested in that just to see what it looks like. No,
Speaker 1: I would. If he wants to talk about how to
Speaker 1: empower people, boy, I would be there in a nanosecond.
Speaker 1: If you had a chance to talk again to your
Speaker 1: father and say, look what I did. What do you
Speaker 1: think he would say to you? Was he proud of
Speaker 1: what you did? You want him to be proud? Would
Speaker 1: you want to be proud of what you did? I
Speaker 1: think he would be blown away, just as I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I can't believe it that we've done
Speaker 1: and I haven't done him What's what's accomplished this or
Speaker 1: these ideas? Are these principles? So I just I happened
Speaker 1: to learn them and be turned on by him, and
Speaker 1: and then they applying them and everything we do and
Speaker 1: and then the people do it. That's the key. No
Speaker 1: one person can do all this. You do it by
Speaker 1: powering people, empowering your employees, and empowering people through society
Speaker 1: so they can contribute, they can innovate. So if somebody
Speaker 1: is watching this and they say, our Charles Coke as
Speaker 1: a leader in philanthropy, he's a leader in business and
Speaker 1: so forth, I would like to be like Charles Coke?
Speaker 1: What is it the meaning of leadership? You? How do
Speaker 1: you become a leader? A true leader is someone who
Speaker 1: makes the people around him better, around her better, and
Speaker 1: so so what you have to do is find what
Speaker 1: you're good at, what your gift is, and focus on
Speaker 1: that and then partners partner with those who with him
Speaker 1: you share vision and values and have complementary capabilities. And
Speaker 1: that's what I've done. So I have a narrow range
Speaker 1: of abilities, and I've where I've succeeded is when I
Speaker 1: partnered with people who were good at all the other
Speaker 1: things that needed to be done that I wasn't good at,
Speaker 1: and I focused on that and then and then to
Speaker 1: draw on their knowledge and empower the people around you,
Speaker 1: so you get the benefit of everybody's knowledge and ability.
Speaker 1: That's what a leader does, and you focus on not
Speaker 1: what is good for you, but good for the overall
Speaker 1: organization and good for society. Charles and Brian, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you very much for interesting insights into your
Speaker 1: business life, your philanthropic life. Congratulations and all the philanthropic
Speaker 1: things you've done. And I'm going to try to take
Speaker 1: some of your business secrets and see if I can
Speaker 1: apply to my own business. I don't think I can
Speaker 1: do as well as you have done, but congratulations, Thank
Speaker 1: you David. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen.