In this episode of Culture From the Heart Podcast, hosts Larry Levine and Darrell Amy are joined by Joe Thornton, CEO of Scooter's Coffee. They explore how Thornton infuses empathy, love, integrity, and humility into the workplace culture, impacting both employees and customers. The discussion highlights the importance of storytelling, authentic leadership, and creating an emotional connection in driving business success. Thornton shares practical strategies for maintaining a heart-centered culture across a franchise network and emphasizes the role of store managers in sustaining these values. Listeners are encouraged to lead with their hearts to build thriving, authentic workplace cultures.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Leading with empathy, love, and authenticity creates a powerful, heart-centered culture.
• Simple, memorable core values (integrity, love, humility, courage) help scale culture across large organizations.
• Emotional connection at the store level is the true differentiator—great managers can overcome strategy gaps.
• Consistency in customer experience, even in brief interactions, builds loyalty and community.
• Leaders must be master storytellers and invite feedback to inspire and align teams.
• Local ownership and community ties deepen loyalty and cultural impact.

QUOTES

• "You must be a master storyteller as a CEO."
• "A great store manager can make up for a bad strategy, a bad owner, a bad district manager, a bad whatever, because that's where the emotional connection happens."
• "I want people to bring their whole self to work, flaws and all."
• "Love is a strong word. Most companies don't even dare use the word love. We lean into it."
• "When love is present, you don't have to say it as much because people feel it."
• "We always try to solve these world problems and forget that the root cause is often the person who is running the store."
• "Grow big and stay small."
• "Culture is the heartbeat of every organization."

Learn more about Darrell and Larry.

Darrell's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellamy/

Larry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrylevine1992/

Connect and learn more from Joe Thornton.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerobertthornton/

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