Every week, Built. Not Born. explores timeless leadership principles and practical frameworks to help you build better teams, stronger organizations, and, most importantly, a life by design.

For years, Wall Street analysts had a complaint about Costco: they paid their people too much.

Think about that for a moment. Here was a public company taking money that could have flowed to shareholders and instead paid higher wages to the people stocking shelves, working registers, and pushing carts across parking lots. Analysts periodically argued that Costco was being too generous, leaving money on the table and sacrificing margin.

And then there's the hot dog. Costco has sold its hot dog and soda combo for $1.50 since 1985. By the conventional business scoreboard, decisions like these shouldn't make much sense.

Except Costco keeps winning.

Its employees stay at remarkable rates for retail. Customers remain fiercely loyal. And the business has created extraordinary value for shareholders over time.

So maybe Costco isn't making a mistake. Maybe we're measuring the wrong thing.

I've spent thirty-five years walking into companies and getting into the gears of how they actually operate. One belief I've carried with me throughout that time is simple:

Somewhere along the way, however, we started treating that idea as soft. Caring for people became something a company could afford when business was good—the cultural equivalent of a nice office or an employee perk. When margins tighten, the "people stuff" is often among the first things questioned.

We say, "People are our greatest asset," and paint it on the lobby wall. Then the spreadsheet gets tight, and our actions reveal what we really believe.

I understand the pressure. I've sat with the CFO who needs to make a number. I've been responsible for results myself. But I think the reflex to treat people primarily as a cost is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of how great businesses actually work.

Taking care of people and producing exceptional business results aren't competing ideas. In many of the best organizations, taking care of people is part of how exceptional results get built—and sustained.

Here's what the traditional scoreboard has trouble seeing.

When people believe the organization views them primarily as an expense, eventually they begin behaving accordingly. Discretionary effort disappears. The person who deeply cares about the work and the person doing just enough to get by can look surprisingly similar on a spreadsheet—until the person who cares gets tired of carrying the load and walks out the door.

Then the real costs begin.

You replace them. You train someone else. Institutional knowledge disappears. Customer relationships change. Standards become inconsistent. Eventually, the organization begins paying for the same knowledge over and over again.

That's the hidden tax of poor leadership.

I've come to believe one of the most underpriced advantages in business is something much less exciting than the latest technology, growth strategy, or competitive differentiator.

It's continuity.

There's enormous compounding power in people who stay long enough to master their work, understand the customer, carry the culture, and teach the standard to the people coming behind them.

But continuity isn't something you can buy. You earn it by becoming the kind of organization people believe is worth staying for.

There is decades-old research behind something good leaders seem to understand intuitively. The service-profit chain, developed by researchers at Harvard Business School, connects internal service quality with employee satisfaction and loyalty, which then influence the value customers experience, customer loyalty, and ultimately revenue and profitability.

I tend to say it more simply:

Take care of your people, and they'll take care of your customers. Take care of your customers, and the shareholders will be taken care of.

The sequence matters.

It's easy to reverse it. We start with the shareholder and ask what the business needs to produce. Then we work backward until eventually the people doing the work become another lever we're trying to optimize.

But look at companies known for creating unusually loyal employees and customers. Costco, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out, and H-E-B have made very different business decisions, but they share something important: they've been willing to invest in people in ways their industries haven't always considered economically rational.

That doesn't mean taking care of people guarantees success. It doesn't.

I've watched terrible leaders get rich, and I've watched good people run businesses into the ground. The market does not reliably reward virtue, and being a good person isn't a substitute for sound strategy, financial discipline, or execution.

The argument is more nuanced than that.

People can help create the difference between winning and winning durably.

There’s another side to this that I think matters even more.

The moment a leader decides, "I'm going to take care of my people because the research says it'll improve profitability," something changes.

People know.

They can tell the difference between a leader who genuinely values them and one who has read the latest management study and decided to run the play. Caring used purely as a business tactic has a very short shelf life because eventually a difficult quarter arrives. When the spreadsheet says cut, the leader who only saw people as a lever will pull it.

That's why the order matters so much.

You take care of people because you've decided that's the kind of leader you're going to be. The business benefits are the consequence, not the motive.

That's the paradox.

Virtue is difficult to fake, difficult for competitors to copy, and often slow to produce measurable returns. Those characteristics can make it look inefficient in the short term.

They may also be exactly why it compounds for so long.

Take a look at one decision you're facing right now involving your team.

Maybe it's a budget decision, a difficult conversation, a performance issue, a deadline, or simply someone who needs more of your time than you feel you have to give.

Ask yourself:

That doesn't mean avoiding hard decisions. Caring about people doesn't require lowering standards. In my experience, it's often the opposite. When people know you genuinely care about them, you've earned far more credibility to set a high bar, expect excellence, and have difficult conversations when they're necessary.

Caring isn't weakness. And it isn't altruism. It's what allows high expectations and humanity to coexist.

This week's newsletter explores an idea that has shaped much of how I think about leadership: putting people first isn't separate from building a high-performing organization. The two are deeply connected.

In episode #5 of On the Shoulders of Giants, we go deeper into why caring for people is often dismissed as "soft," what the business evidence actually tells us, and why some of the most durable organizations have built their success by refusing to treat people as disposable.

Whether you prefer to watch or listen, we'd love to have you join the conversation.

🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

📺 Watch on YouTube @HighAchieverLeadership.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, we'd love to welcome you to the Built. Not Born. community.

Every week, we explore timeless leadership principles, practical frameworks, and first principles designed to help you build better teams, stronger organizations, and a life by design. If this week's idea made you think differently about the relationship between people and performance, forward it to someone who leads people. These are exactly the kinds of conversations we believe more leaders should be having.

For years I’ve said: Poor leaders hurt people. Great leaders change lives. .

The more time I spend coaching leaders, the more convinced I become that those aren't simply statements about character. They're statements about how organizations work.

Putting people first doesn't mean lowering the bar. It gives you the foundation to raise it.

It doesn't mean choosing people instead of performance. The best leaders understand that people are how sustained performance gets built.

Caring for people isn't soft.

It's good leadership.

And as it turns out, it's pretty good business too.

Until next week, keep building.

- Jeff Wells

Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025; James Heskett et al., "Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work," Harvard Business Review, 1994; Anthony Rucci et al., "The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears," Harvard Business Review, 1998; Alex Edmans, "Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices," Journal of Financial Economics, 2011; American Customer Satisfaction Index (Restaurant 2025, Retail 2026); CBS News (Costco pay and retention). Firms of Endearment (Sisodia, Wolfe & Sheth) and Great Place to Work stock analyses are directionally supportive but curated and non-causal and are treated here as suggestive rather than proof.