Grants Pass in Oregon (population just shy of 40,000) is aptly named – it’s a place most people pass through on their way to somewhere else. It was a stagecoach stop in the 1860s, then a railhead for the Oregon to California line; a journey starting point rather than a destination.
Josh grew up in Grants Pass, went to school there and worked part-time as a barista at Dutch Bros, a small Mom and Pop drive-thru coffee chain founded in 1992. The town was his railhead, his starting point, and when he left for college at Oregon State University and then to study at the Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon he thought he’d put his hometown days behind him.
Years later, when working as an attorney in Portland, Josh received an unexpected call from a hometown friend that changed his life. The friend was GM for Dutch Bros: the drive- thru coffee chain was taking off. Although still very much a family business, its days of operating out of a pushcart near the railroad tracks were well behind it. Franchises had been set up across the West Coast, employees numbered around 50, and the company had its eye on further expansion. A vacancy for an attorney had arisen and the GM wondered if Josh might be interested.
“At that point, the position needed someone who was willing to come in and do it all – the real estate, employment, corporate, and risk management – to be a jack of all trades. It was a genuine generalist general counsel role,” says Josh.
Because it aligned with his career goals and his personality, he took the job: that was 15 years ago.
Dutch Bros’ mission (to make a massive difference, one cup at a time) rings true at a very personal level for Josh. The changes instituted during his years working for the company have been massive. It has since moved away from the franchise concept, and currently owns and operates 1,000 outlets across the US, employing 24,000 staff. It’s been a whirlwind of rapid growth as Dutch Bros have transformed from a small and somewhat scrappy organization to a super- successful one. A privately held family company that took on an equity partner and then went public.
“I wasn’t a capital markets attorney. I’d never taken a company public, never worked for a public company.”
For Josh, the excitement was real – but so were the doubts. “I wasn’t a capital markets attorney, and I didn’t come out of one of the big Manhattan law firms that did that kind of work. I’d never taken a company public, never worked for a public company.”
There was much to work out. For Josh, it was akin to the blind leading the blind. Most people in the company didn’t have any big business experience. A lot of the staff were what he terms “homegrown”, people who had started out in the shops and worked their way up into leadership positions.
“We hadn’t recruited a lot of heavy hitters from large public companies or other companies who had that experience, so it was a learning experience for the entire leadership team. It just so happens that, especially in an IPO, the legal and finance teams have more to do than others with working through that process.”
That pivotal moment, six months after the company went public, was when Josh started to think seriously about his role in the company. How was he performing and what was he contributing? What were the company’s needs and was he meeting them? And if not, what needed to happen to make sure the GC was successfully leading the legal function, helping the leadership team, and ensuring that the company was able to achieve its objectives.
“Times had changed. How were we going to adapt our teams and our leadership? How was I supporting the organization in everything it was going through? When we were a privately held, family-owned business, co-founder Travis Boersma and I would go cycling on Thursday afternoons – because, why not? – and now we were morphing into this publicly traded, larger and more intense business. Was I an impediment?”
Of concern to Josh was that his team of half a dozen attorneys had become a legal department of 20-plus, and added into the mix were staff from other functions such as safety and risk and insurance. The one-size-fits-all role he inhabited felt ill-fitting. Ever since he’d joined Dutch Bros, he’d been a GC work-in-progress, learning on the job, and with his team learning from him. But there was still a lot he didn’t know. With the business becoming a vastly different entity and moving into uncharted territory, he concluded that a more experienced GC could bring more to the table than he was able to offer. Someone who was used to dealing with a board and guiding people through the sometimes-choppy waters of being a public company.
Josh wanted someone who could offer him mentorship and guidance so that he could continue to grow his career – but he also wanted to be able to devote more time to his family. “I’m a father of five and some of them were getting ready to go to college. With the demands of the job increasing in line with the needs of the company increasing, did I want to continue to ratchet up my level of involvement and commitment or did I want to make sure I could protect the time I spent with my family? It was important to me to be with my kids, to be available to go to all their sports.”
Struggling to successfully juggle the needs of his work and homelife, Josh took Travis Boersma out for breakfast to explain his dilemma. “I’ve known him since I was 16 and he was 23, so we have a lot of history – at this point we’d been working together for 12 years – and I told him I thought it was time for us to look for a Chief Legal Officer or GC who could bring us prior public company experience and a fresh perspective. I talked about what I saw to be the needs of the company and the needs of my personal life. We had a great conversation, and he agreed that it was probably time to bring someone else on board.”
Following a similar conversation with the CEO, the company’s Chief Administrative Officer was tasked with recruiting the person who would become Josh’s boss.
Did Josh have moments of angst about whether he was making the right decision to step sideways? Yes, of course. “It felt like the opposite of what I should do with my career. I was General Counsel of a public company, a position I never thought I’d attain when I first took the job at Dutch Bros. The role made me feel important and valuable – significant – and I was going to be giving it up. The idea of not being that person any more was tough to deal with. In a sense I felt diminished.”
“Our CEO took me aside and said it was one of the most impressive decisions he’d ever seen somebody make.”
Despite his misgivings, Josh knew he was making the right decision – for the company, for his family, for himself and, ultimately, for his career. And every person who really mattered to him fully supported his decision. “My wife and kids obviously have more time with me. Our CEO took me aside and said it was one of the most impressive decisions he’d ever seen somebody make.”
In the 18 months since the new CLO was installed, all the things he’d hoped for – the guidance, mentorship, training, and camaraderie – have happened. “As far as my career goes, I’ll end up in a better place because I took the opportunity to take a step back and give someone else the reins.”
These days, Josh is Dutch Bros’ VP of Legal – Employment & Franchise law, and he’s living life on the terms he set out for himself: “Life is not going to happen to me. I’m going to make my life happen.”
