Build-A-Bear’s CEO started her career working at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Now she leads a $486 million toy empire
Your local McDonald’s could be an incubator for the next generation of C-suite executives.
Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously credits his teenage experience flipping burgers as a short-order line cook in the 1980s with instilling many of the management lessons he’s still serving up across his businesses today.
He’s not alone. From former Vice President Kamala Harris to playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda to pop icon Pink, an estimated one in eight Americans have worked at McDonald’s in their lifetime, according to the fast-food chain.
And Build-a-Bear Workshop chief executive Sharon Price John is part of that figure.
As a teenager in Tennessee, she fondly recalls her time behind the drive-thru window coordinating orders and hand delivering burgers and french fries to customers.
“I was a master, and I loved it because I had the headphones,” John tells Fortune. “So in the drive-thru, you get to order everybody around, so that was definitely about my speed.”
After her stint at McDonald’s, the future executive tested out a variety of jobs in her hometown of Fayetteville, honing her floral arrangement skills at a local florist, selling tickets at a theater, waitressing at a restaurant, and more.
“[I] learned a lot that I still use to this day, believe it or not,” she says.
Her hustle continued after college as a young University of Tennessee graduate eyeing a prestigious ad agency job in New York City. John told Fortune that in order to net her big break, she dedicated a week of vacation time from her ad agency job in Knoxville to fly to Manhattan and schedule 15 interviews–three per day–with top agencies.
John booked one final interview on the Friday of that week with ad titan DDB Needham–and was offered the job on the spot.
“There's a lesson in there about how beneficial it is sometimes to not know your odds,” she says. “When you don't know that your odds are ridiculously impossible, you believe in the possibility, and with that very belief, you actually tip your odds in your own favor.”
Turning around Build-a-Bear
For John, the odds have been good. Now, a toy industry veteran, the 61-year-old worked her way up the corporate ladder with stints at Mattel and Hasbro before she accepted the top position at one of the most iconic plush toy brands: Build-a-Bear.
When John arrived at the retailer in 2013, she was immediately tasked with a tall order: Maneuvering a $49 million profit loss after the retail apocalypse of the 2010s killed Build-a-Bear’s brick-and-mortar business.
“The world had changed leading up to me coming in 2013, and there really wasn’t a going back,” John told Fortune.
Orchestrating a massive turnaround wasn’t new to John.
After netting a role working on the Barbie brand for Mattel, John was offered the opportunity to move to Paris in the ‘90s.
“I was literally sent over there with no budget, no people, no plan,” John recalls. “You kind of learn how to bootstrap under those circumstances.”
John applied this mindset to Build-a-Bear, writing in the company’s 2013 annual report that her top goals included optimizing the company’s real estate, resetting the consumer value equation, and rationalizing expenses.
It paid off. In 2015, just two years into her journey, Build-a-Bear recorded $377.7 million in revenue, according to financial filings. A BMO Capital Markets toy analyst even hailed John’s leadership as “a breath of fresh air” after the company’s stock price rose 220% between the fiscal years of 2013-2015, and proclaimed she achieved “the holy grail of retail.”
Over her decade of leadership, John has built up the business by targeting teens and adults, demographics that Build-a-Bear says now make up 40% of its customers. The company has tried to tap into nostalgia with plush toys collaborations with Pokémon, Harry Potter, and the new Wicked movie, and has introduced an online store–the Bear Cave–that only customers aged 18 and up can access.
In March, Build-a-Bear reported its fourth year of consecutive growth with $496.4 million in revenue.
But there may be trouble on the horizon with impending tariff increases from the Trump administration. During a fourth-quarter earnings call, the company said it is monitoring the current geopolitical climate, but still has high expectations for its 2025 revenue.
“While we acknowledge some uncertainty, we believe we have the plans in place to again deliver record revenue and solid profits for the coming year,” John told investors.
Build-a-Bear CEO’s advice for future leaders
Through the company's ebbs and flows, John is still enthusiastic about “learning and leaning in,” something she credits as crucial to her success as a CEO. To show her appreciation for colleagues, John carves out an hour of her schedule every Friday to write thank-you notes, a practice she believes “helps the momentum” of her business.
“It only takes a few seconds to text somebody,” John tells Fortune.
John emphasizes that future leaders should hold themselves accountable, too.
“There is a complete misnomer that everything you do must be perfect for you to excel, and that is not the case,” John says.“Hold yourself accountable to doing a good job and being present and in the moment.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com