INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building World-Class Customer Experiences with Ron Johnson

Summary

Podcast Summary: Travis Makes Money

Episode: INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building World-Class Customer Experiences with Ron Johnson

Host: Travis Chappell

Guest: Ron Johnson

Date: July 31, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Travis Chappell welcomes retail and customer experience legend Ron Johnson, best known for creating the Apple Store and serving as CEO of JCPenney. The two dive deep into Ron's unique career path, his insights into building world-class retail experiences, and the essential role of human connection, design, and standards in making more money and building lasting businesses. Ron also shares behind-the-scenes stories from working directly with Steve Jobs and discusses his new book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Lessons in Selling & Human Connection

• Ron’s First Experience Selling:
  • As a kid, Ron was tasked with selling cookies outside a grocery store for his Little League team. He realized the importance of passion and courage in approaching people:
    • "Making money is about finding a way to connect emotionally with other people...all making money starts from that human connection." (02:38)
• While his parents were not entrepreneurs, Ron’s early work ethic and skill in connecting with people became foundational for his success.

2. Unconventional Career Path to Retail

• Decision to Enter Retail (vs. Consulting/Banking):

  • Despite attending Harvard Business School (HBS), he chose retail over more lucrative careers, aiming for mastery and passion rather than immediate payoff.
    • Only 8 of 800 HBS grads entered retail:
      • "I'd say it was pretty atypical at the time." (05:38)
  • Ron started at the bottom, working in stores and learning every aspect of retail to truly understand the business.

• Advice for Young Professionals:

  • "Making money is a great thing, but I think developing skills, knowledge, and finding out who you are…those are the most important things you gotta learn in your 20s." (05:59)
  • Chappell reiterates the exponential value of learning over earning early in one’s career (07:04).

3. Lifelong Learning & Developing Your Inner Voice

• Ron emphasizes continuous learning, sharing that at 67 he's still taking up new skills (like tennis and writing a book).
• The role of self-education and developing an authentic inner voice becomes vital, especially in the age of AI:
  • “The only thing that matters is what you can think through on your own...you have to develop your own inner voice.” (07:59)
• Warns against relying only on external input—even from constant podcast listening (07:59).

4. The Apple Store Origin Story

• How Steve Jobs & Ron Connected:
  • Steve Jobs, impressed by Ron's design focus at Target (notably, the high-profile Michael Graves collaboration), sought him out to help launch Apple Stores.
    • “He [Steve] saw what I was doing at Target with design and he asked a recruiter, find out who's doing that design stuff at Target, I want to meet him.” (11:56)
  • After a 3-hour meeting, Ron immediately knew he wanted to work with Steve:
    • “He is the most inspiring, intelligent, thoughtful guy I've ever met.” (11:56)
• Design & Experience Focus:
  • The Apple Store brought "form and function" to mass retail spaces, a strategy widely emulated since.
  • Ron and Steve’s complementary strengths—Ron’s retail expertise and Steve’s technology/design vision—were key.

5. Launching the Apple Store—Vision, Risks, and Customer Experience

• Minimalism & Space:

  • The first Apple Stores were spacious but had only four products on display. This was both a practical constraint and a deliberate design to highlight customer experience and hands-on interaction:
    • "Because we had so much space, we created an experience… Stores became a place to belong." (19:33)

• Experiential Retail:

  • Introduced concepts like the Genius Bar, in-store theaters, and community tables, focusing on creating a sense of belonging.
    • “We created a store you go to experience things, and the stores became packed with people.” (19:32)

• Taking Big Swings:

  • Ron highlights relying on instinct/internal voice for bold moves—not just data or conventional wisdom:
    • “If we had had AI back then...they would ask how many products you have...but we knew we had to do something different.” (22:14)
  • Draws parallels to Elon Musk and Picasso as examples of trusting an inner creative vision.

6. Working with Steve Jobs—Leadership Lessons

• Steve’s Influence:

  • Ron worked with Apple for 12 years, leaving shortly after Jobs’ passing.
    • “My last day was three weeks after Steve passed away.” (23:56)
  • Steve never rushed products or store launches:
    • "You get one chance to do something great. Don’t be in a hurry." (26:58)
    • “You weren’t going to launch the product until it was ready.” (26:58)

• Personal Reflections:

  • Ron describes Steve as unwavering, fully engaged with work through his illness, and exceptionally high-standarded.
    • "Steve worked till his last breath doing what he loved." (25:33)

7. Crafting Enduring Excellence & Standards

• Pursuing excellence means iteration and patience, not shipping before it’s ready—even in publishing:
  • "It took three years to write the book. I can’t tell you how many times...we rewrote chapters...but I think that really conveys what I want to say." (28:11)
• Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, endorsed Ron's book, affirming the shared values of quality and standards.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Making money is about, you know, finding a way to connect emotionally with other people … all making money starts from that human connection.”
  — Ron Johnson (02:38)
• “The only thing that matters is what you can think through on your own, which is what learning teaches you … you’ve got to develop your own inner voice.”
  — Ron Johnson (07:59)
• “We created a store you go to experience things, and the stores became packed with people, eventually becoming a place to belong.”
  — Ron Johnson (19:33)
• “If we had had AI back then … they would have said, ‘You need a thousand square feet,’ … but we knew we had to do something different.”
  — Ron Johnson (22:14)
• “You get one chance to do something great. Don’t be in a hurry.”
  — Ron Johnson (26:58)
• “Steve worked till his last breath doing what he loved.”
  — Ron Johnson (25:33)

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Important Timestamps

• Early selling experience & human connection: [02:38]
• Choosing a retail career over high-paying alternatives: [05:32]
• Focus on learning vs. earning in your 20s: [05:59] – [07:45]
• Role of self-education and developing an inner voice: [07:59]
• Target’s design shift and meeting Steve Jobs: [11:56] – [13:22]
• Creating and scaling the Apple Store: [16:04] – [19:33]
• Taking risks and following instinct in business: [20:07] – [23:04]
• Steve Jobs’ leadership and standards: [23:53] – [26:58]
• Excellence and iteration in launching Store/book: [26:58] – [28:11]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare look into the mindset and decisions behind some of the most significant innovations in modern retail—from Target's designer collaborations to the Apple Store’s iconic experience. Ron Johnson’s reflections and lessons distilled from working with Steve Jobs are both insightful and practical, emphasizing patience, standards, and the courage to do things differently. For anyone interested in business, retail, or personal growth, this conversation is brimming with actionable wisdom and inspiration.

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“Money only solves your money problems. But it’s easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let’s start there.”
— Travis Chappell (end remarks)

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast.

[A]

What's going on, everybody?

[B]

Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend. It is the Apple Store creator himself, Ron Johnson. He's a sought after speaker, board member and author of the new book Shop Different How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. He also founded Enjoy, the first mobile retail store and served as the CEO of JCPenney. He's best known for creating the Apple Stores, working directly for Steve Jobs while serving as a member of Apple's executive team. And this is just teeny bit of the things that Ron has done inside of his career. So I'm really excited to have him on the show today. Ron, what's up man?

[C]

Welcome. Hey, thank you, Travis. Thank you for the Nice introduction, and it's a pleasure, of course.

[B]

Yeah. Happy. Happy to meet you as well. And I'm. I'm stoked to jump into the conversation here with you, Ron. Let's first off, go back in time, if you. If you'll indulge me for just a second here. Tell me. Tell me about the first time that you ever made a dollar that you were shocked or surpr to buy. You were excited, like somebody paid you money for something, and you just could not believe that somebody was actually willing to pay you to do this.

[C]

Well, I remember as a kid, I was a little league baseball player, and we had to sell something, like cookies or something outside of a grocery store. And I remember accosting. We were in our uniforms, and everyone coming in, I would stop them and get them to buy. And I was shocked how easy it was if you had passion and courage to approach someone to sell something, you know, And I realized that, you know, making money is about, you know, finding a way to connect emotionally with other people. And I was really good at it, you know, and my whole career, I've been pretty good at. I don't know if it's making money, but getting people to buy into something, buy into an idea, buy into a product, buy into something. And I think that's where all making money starts from. It starts with that human connection. Yeah. The.

[B]

The articulation of the value that you provide in a way that gets people on your side. Yeah. To see your perspective. Yeah.

[C]

Tell me, what were your parents entrepreneurial, Ron? What did your parents do? No, no, my. My mom was the nicest person in the neighborhood. You know, she was just a super kind person. She was wonderful. My dad was kind of into politics when he was younger, but then he went to a big company called General Mills and ran their strategic planning department.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And helped him grow. And. But they weren't entrepreneurs, and I don't. I don't think I was an entrepreneur until I got into my retail career and realized I love creating things. You know, I was a Target for years, and I brought design to Target with a vision on how to. Good design doesn't have to be expensive. And that was. It was so fun to create something new. And that's where going to Apple was super fun. Were you.

[B]

Was that the career path that you were eyeballing even in high school?

[C]

And things like, how did I buy stores? But when I was at Harvard Business School, I had to make a big career decision. And, you know, everyone was going into investment banking and consulting because it Paid three times the money.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But I kind of decided, you know, that now it's time. I'm 25 years old. What I want to do for a lifetime, I gotta be great at something, you know. And I decided I'd try to become a great retailer. So I went to work at a store in the San Fernando Valley of la, in the stock room unloading trucks. And I decided if I'm going to be a great retailer, I got to learn how to do it. And so I was in the stock room, I was on the sales floor, I was straightening clothes, I was checking people out. Eventually got to buy, which is a big job in retail or be a buyer, became a head merchant. And that led me to Steve Jobs who said, how would you like to create the Apple stores? But I put my head down for 15 years before Apple just learning retail.

[B]

How atypical is that path? Like, I mean, like you said coming out of Harlem, my class in Harvard,

[C]

800, about 800 kids graduated. Eight of us went into retail. So one out of a hundred. I'd say it was pretty atypical at the time. Yeah, no kidding.

[B]

Well, it's not often you find a Harvard Business school grad who's willing to go fold clothes and stock shelves in the back of a retail storeroom.

[C]

Yeah, but the reality is more people should do it. You know, when I was on Stanford trustee, we talked a lot about, you know, airport's going to live longer now, life expectancy is getting longer now even today people are working into their 70s. Well, the people are in their 20s, like my kids, they're probably live to be a hundred. Well, so what's the hurry up at age 25, the question is what are you going to do for a lifetime? And if you find something you're passionate about, you're really good at it, you'll have a long time to do it. So where do you invest? When do you have to make money? Making money is a great thing, but I think developing skills and developing knowledge and finding out who you are and what turns you on, those are the most important things you gotta learn in your 20s. And so many people short circuit that by doing what they, what provides short term returns, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Well we buy into the fallacy that we have to have life figured out by the time we're 25.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? And so you see all your other friends from college go get these prestigious jobs and they're making six figure salaries and driving their BMWs and wearing their, you know, armani suits and stuff like that. And then it's, it's, it's hard as a kid to look at that and go. And not internalize the idea like, well, I'm behind, I'm behind. You know what I mean? I gotta, I gotta go do this other thing. I gotta catch up. And you start realizing, I think the older that you get that the more that you prioritize learning over earning when you're a young person, the more exponential your own earning power becomes when you're in your 30s and 40s. Right. Like,

[C]

that's actually true, obviously, in this AI world, because general knowledge is a query away, you know, and that's the beauty of AI. It lets you get answers in conversational form quickly.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So the only thing that matters is what you can think through on your own, which is what learning teaches you to do. It's back to what Steve, you know, the inner voice is the most important thing we have. You know, and that's the problem I have with so many people just listening to, even like podcasts, all. You know, you're listening to other people's voices. Yeah. You got to find a way to develop your own inner voice. What do I uniquely believe? What do I want to bring to the world? And that's, I think that's where the value is going forward. Were. Were you a big.

[B]

Were you a big self education guy in 2025?

[C]

Person wants to learn, learn new things. You know, I'm. I'm actually 67 now, but I've picked up the tennis racket again. I love learning to play tennis, and I can play better tennis than I have my whole life. I love to play golf. I still know my handicap's going down. I'm constantly learning different things. Writing the book was. I've never written a book, you know, Writing a book was a learning experience, you know?

[A]

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[C]

How do you tell a story? How do you. That was a real great experience. So I think we're hopefully we're lifelong learners if you love, you know, growing.

[B]

Let's talk a little bit about the book. The book is Shop Different How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. And I'm sure you go through this story a little bit in the book, but tell me exactly how this initial conversation with Steve Jobs came about. So you're working at Target at the time?

[C]

Yeah, I had. Steve had it started with Steve. Steve had come back to Apple in 97. You know, he had famously been kicked out of the company, brought Back he created this hip product with Johnny I've and others the imac. And it sold really well to the installed base but it didn't move the needle for Apple. And Steve concluded if he couldn't improve advocacy for the Mac at point of sale, he could never win. So he decided he had to open his own stores. And that was counterintuitive because the Internet was just exploding in 2000. That was the start of the dot com. It was the bubble and Dell was winning selling PCs online. People wondered why app would open stores. But he saw what I was doing at Target with design and he asked a recruiter, say find out who's doing that design stuff. Target, I want to meet him. And I flew out and I spent three hours with Steve one night and I got on the plane to go back to Minneapolis and I said I've got to work with this guy. He is the most inspiring, intelligent, thoughtful guy I'd ever met. And so I came to Apple as the first retail guy at the company and retail person and with the task of creating the Apple Store.

[B]

Tell me more about what you mean when you say this simple design idea with Target. What about that stood out to somebody like a Steve Jobs?

[C]

Well, up until then the products that were sold at large retail were very functional. You know, they were meeting a functional need. Right? A toaster had to make toast, a coffee maker had to make coffee. But in the, in the 90s design was happening and design is where you bring form and function, where up until then all products were function. And I went out and found a designer, a guy named Michael Graves who was a great architect to create products for Target. And we didn't just put out a few products. We launched with 140 SKUs. We went to the Whitney Museum in New York and made a big deal out of it. And it was really the first collaboration between a retailer and a designer which are very commonplace today. And it got a lot of attention. It put Target on the map. Target stock price went up 12 times during the decade. I was there. It was just a very visible and it was a thing that was highly unexpected. Why would Target win on design? That's usually you find design at very high end boutiques and now it's at a mass merchant. And Steve saw the packaging and the marketing and he said I want to meet that guy. Because Steve understood the value of design as well. And when we sat down, you know, we could complete each other's senses. We thought very differently about the world. But I had retail knowledge. He didn't have. And he had technology knowledge I didn't have. And so we became a good pair to create the Apple Store.

[B]

So what year was this that you went and started working for Apple? And how long was this? Sorry, 2000.

[C]

2000.

[B]

2000. Okay. And then how long was that like sort of dating period before you decided to make the jump? Like it was a pretty immediate decision for you.

[C]

It's immediate. You know, I met Steve on, on a Monday in November. He said, when can you come back? I said, two weeks. I came back the day after Thanksgiving. I walked into his office and he said, I'd like to offer you the job. I met him once for three hours and the same day I met before I saw him at five. I met people on the leadership team like Tim Cook and Fred Anderson, who was the cfo, and. But I don't think it mattered. Steve wanted to hire me, you know. Yeah, no kidding, you know, but we, we really connected and, you know, you have this instinct, I want to do something, but I really want to do people I can be inspired to work with. And I was inspired to work with Steve and I think Steve was similarly inspired to work together with me.

[B]

Tell me about those, like that first couple of stores. I mean, you're obviously, it's sort of one of those like all eyes on you moment, especially in a condensed area like Silicon Valley at the height of the dot com era. Were you nervous? Day one?

[C]

Oh, hey, we're going to open your store. I talked on the book. You know, you only get one chance to launch a store. And we had spent. I joined in January. It was exactly 17 months later. We opened our first store. We had put a lot of energy into Steve, put a lot of energy into it, but you never know how it's going to do. It's probably like writing a book or launching a movie. You never know how it's going to do. And I was nervous before it opened because we didn't market it, you know, I said, you know, our real estate's our marketing, but we're to open a store. And 30 minutes before it opened, Steve called me. I said, steve, I'm nervous. I think I blew it. Nobody's here. He said, be patient, they'll come. The Apple people always show up. And by 10 o' clock, there were 1,700 people outside the store, lined up down the hall into the parking lot. They had come from all over the world to experience an Apple store opening. Wow, that's cool. And I knew at that time that Apple had this Unique connection with its customer. But as good as the stores were on the opening day, they didn't do very well because the Apple faithful already had the product. We had to figure out how to reach out to a non Apple customer, someone who owned a PC or the half of the world who didn't own a computer yet. And that took us time, but eventually, you know, the stores became the most productive stores ever created, and they still are.

[B]

And when you first opened that first version, is it basically just imacs? Like because it's all pre ipods, Right?

[C]

Literally. We had four products. Yeah, we had two. Two portable computers and two desktops. That's all. And we bought stores the size of a Gap. We had huge stores. But is that successful?

[B]

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Yeah. Was that sort of a decision made out of the constraint of not having enough product? Like the minimalist design of the Apple store has obviously become. I mean, those, those two words have become synonymous. Minimalist and Apple. Was that really intentional at that time?

[C]

Or was it just sort of like,

[B]

hey, more products in here eventually, you

[C]

know, yeah, no, no, we'll get more products. But we wanted a big store. Because I told Steve, how big is the brand? Is it bigger than the Gap? He said, much bigger. And the Gap at that time was the most, probably the highest performing, most blood specialty store. And they had stores over 6,000 square feet. And I said, well, if people are going to think we're a relevant company, we ought to have a storefront that's like the Gap. And we bought into that. But our product line, we could fit on a conference room table so we could create these uncluttered, minimalist stores. And we wanted two things to happen. Everyone who came into an atmosphere, we wanted them to get their hands on a product and talk to an employee. And if we did that, we would win. Because so many stores you go and you're just overwhelmed with merchandise and you don't know where to go. We wanted to make sure everyone came in, experienced a Mac and met a really great person. And then because we had so much space, we filled the half the store with products and half with what would become support for people who bought the products.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And we put in things like genius bars where you can get technical help and theaters where you could attend classes and tables for kids to just kind of hang out and play games. And because we had the luxury of space, we created an experience. And that was very unique in retail. Cause stores were largely transactional up until that time. Right there really wasn't an online business. So you went to stores to buy things. We created a store. You go to experience things and the stores became packed with people, eventually becoming a place to belong.

[B]

How do you know in the business when to take a big swing like that? Maybe you got a little bit of insight from Steve too, from his desire to do this because obviously like you, you, you, Apple could have scaled a retail footprint rather easily through something like a, like with, with Radio Shack style space. You know what I mean? You only have a few products. You could, you could get away with a thousand square feet and, and open, you know, a hundred of those stores much faster than opening five of these massive, you know, Apple facilities.

[C]

How do you know how to take that? You know, there's no answer to what you're saying, Travis. It's your inner voice.

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[C]

And that's the lesson I apply today. Because if we had had AI back then and went to Claude or, you know, ChatGPT and said, tell us how big a store should we build? They would ask how many products you have? Enterprise had a thousand square feet, because that's what people had done.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But we knew that we had to do something different to get someone to experience a Mac. And that was the beauty of Steve. He trusted his instincts. You know, I trusted my instincts. My whole career so far had been whatever I willed, I believed I willed to success. You know, no one thought design at Target work. It changed Target. No one thought the Apple stores would work. They changed Apple along with the great products we had. And it's hard to imagine Apple now without its stores, you know.

[B]

Yeah, it's a major part of the

[C]

experience, but you didn't know it at the time. But I just think that's where, you know, the great leaders, they have such faith in what they're building that they get it done. Elon Musk is a perfect example. I mean, look what Elon's done with electric cars, with SpaceX. That's all unbelief. You know, no one could prove that that's the right way to go. Yeah. But he trusts his inner voice that leads him in that direction, you know, and that's what all the great leaders of all. That's the great artists do. That.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

That's what Picasso did. Right. And you learn by doing. You don't learn by thinking. You learn by doing. Yeah. So I don't know.

[B]

How long were you at Apple and what was it like working with Steve?

[C]

I was 12 years. I stayed till I left. My last day was three weeks after Steve passed away.

[B]

Oh, wow. Wow.

[C]

I had made a decision that summer that I was going to leave Apple to go try to turn around J.C. penney. And when I told Steve about it, he called me back to the house three days later. He said, ron, I got to tell you something you can't tell others, but I've got about six months to live and I'd love you to stay if you could. And I then I called up, we were announcing my going to JCPenney three days from there. And I told him I couldn't come. And so we announced that I was coming, but said I'd be coming, you know, kind of about the holiday season. And I stayed till Steve passed and then I left.

[B]

Did you did you experience any sort of shift in culture around that time or any sort of shift in how Steve operated with that new knowledge?

[C]

No, no. Steve. Steve had lived with cancer from 2004, I think it was.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[C]

So he had had a battle with cancer for a number of years and, you know, several times Tim would take over as interim CEO and. But Steve was engaged with Apple the whole time. You know, he might have been working a little more from home and, you know, had to pare down a little bit his responsibilities, but he was highly engaged all the way, and it didn't change. I remember the last ET meeting he came to one day and he walked in and he was very frail and he had, you know, an IV tube hooked up, but he sat there and led the meeting, you know, so Steve worked till his last breath doing what he loved.

[B]

For sure.

[C]

Doing what he loved. Yeah.

[B]

So you were there from the inception of the Apple Store all the way through some of Apple's, like, biggest.

[C]

All the biggest. You know, if you look back, the transformational decade for Apple was 2000 to 2010, for sure. That's when we went from the Mac only to the ipod. The ipod took about three years to really become great. When it went to Windows in 2004, 2007, we launched the iPhone, coincidentally, three years after the ipod became successful. We launched the iPod in 2010, three years after that was kind of steep. You know, when Steve was at Pixar. We're going to do one movie a year. You know, every studio goes pounding out movies. He goes, nope, we can only do one great movie a year. And he wanted to do great things. Yeah. Same with products and. But you look back, we also launched the App Store during that period, all of the great applications like iphoto, imovie, itunes, you know, that changed the way we experience music and photography of mere mortals can make movies and all that. Yeah, yeah. You know, so that was a big decade for Apple and I was really lucky to be a part of it. Yeah.

[B]

What were some of the. What were some of the lessons you took away from working for someone like Steve Jobs into, you know, being CEO of JC Penney and then doing everything you're doing now? Writing the book.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. The most important thing is you get one chance to do something great. Don't be in a hurry. You know, we never had, you know, products. There were product roadmaps, obviously, but you weren't going to launch the product till it was ready. You know, our store, we were going to open November, we opened it in May, seven months later, after we redid it again. You know, a lot of people thought we'd never open a store, but you learn you just got to do your very best and you don't bring something out till it's ready. And that's what makes Apple great. You know, so many companies, especially in the software world, just throw shit out there. Pardon my language, throw stuff out there and then they change it. I think that's a terrible way to create a great company, to make money, to create a great product, you gotta have standards. And so like the book. It took three years to write the book. I can't tell you how many times me and my co author rewrote the chapters. How much is left on the cutting room floor, if you will. But I, when I read the book now, I go, well, I, I think that really conveys what I want to say.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So Steve, I really get a lot of credit for that. And I was proud. Lorene wrote the book. Steve's wife read the book and she actually endorsed the book and thought it was a beautiful story. And I, I know she shared Steve's standards and you know, you know, but I learned that from Steve, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

The book is shop Different. How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Go pick up a copy of Ron Johnson's new book. Whoever books are sold. Ron, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're really busy guy. Do not take that time for granted in the least. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Face.