What's The Big Idea?

An excerpt from
What's The Big Idea?
by Mac Anderson

From a morning latte to a Frappuccino® pick-me-up, a trip to Starbucks is now part of the daily routine for millions of people around the world. For Howard Schultz, the visionary who changed the way Americans drink coffee, it's a Big Idea that became reality for a kid who was raised in a Brooklyn, New York, housing project.

As the oldest of three children in a working-class family, Howard grew up quickly. By the time he was 16-years-old, he had an after-school job stretching animal skins at a furrier in the garment district of Manhattan. A natural athlete, Howard was offered a football scholarship at Northern Michigan University, where he majored in communications.

Find Your Passion...Sometimes It Takes Awhile

Howard became the first in his family to graduate from college. But, unsure of his career direction, Howard worked at a ski lodge for a year before accepting a position in Xerox's sales training program. There, he learned sales, marketing and presentation techniques, and made 50 cold calls a day.

In his book, "Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Build a Company One Cut at a Time," by Howard Shultz, with Dori Jones Yang, Howard recalls that his sales career was great preparation for his future:

"Cold-calling was great training for business. It taught me how to think on my feet. So many doors slammed on me that I had to develop a thick skin and a concise sales pitch..."

"By the Third Sip, I was Hooked"

Looking for more challenge in his career, Howard moved to Perstorp, a Swedish company, and was eventually put in charge of U.S. operations for its Hammarplast housewares subsidiary. It was there he discovered a small retailer in Seattle, the Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice company, that was placing unusually large orders for a certain type of drip coffeemaker. Howard decided to investigate for himself.

"The minute the door opened, a heady aroma of coffee reached out and drew me in...By the third sip, I was hooked."

Howard met with Starbucks' owners, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker, who were managing their business, with the sole purpose of maximizing the quality of the coffee beans they sold to their customers.

On the five-hour trip back to New York the next day, Howard couldn't stop thinking about Starbucks.

"I believe in destiny. At that moment, flying 35,000 feet above the earth, I could feel the tug of Starbucks. There was something magical about it, a passion and authenticity I had never experienced in business."

Despite his passion for the company, it took Howard a year to convince Starbucks' owner Jerry Baldwin to hire him, overcoming objections that his vision and style might clash with the culture of the company.

A Vision is Born

Finally, in 1982, Howard took a huge page cut to become Starbucks' head of marketing and accepted a small equity share as one of its owners.

"My parents could not understand what it was that attracted me to Starbucks. I left a well paying, prestigious job to join what was then a small Seattle retailer with five stores. For my part, I saw Starbucks not for what it was, but for what it could be. It had immediately captivated me with its combination of passion and authenticity. If it could expand nationwide, romancing the Italian artistry of espresso-making as well as offering fresh-roasted beans, I gradually realized, it could reinvent an age-old commodity and appeal to millions of people as strongly as it appealed to me."

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