Starbucks cup by cup. Howard Schultz - How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup. Download free book “How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup” by Howard Schultz, Dorie Yeung

Do you like natural coffee?☕ Do you prefer autobiographies and true stories to all other genres? Can't live without good literature? 👍📚 Great - three reasons to read this book have already been found, and read about the rest in our new book review. Pour yourself some coffee and let's go! ☺

“Cup by Cup” tells the story of how Howard Schultz created the Starbucks empire, the world's most popular coffee chain. By age 30, Howard had a stable income and a job at a prestigious company. He gave it all up without a second thought when he fell in love with Italian coffee and wanted to dedicate his life to it.

Note that Starbucks was not a huge empire then, but a small chain of five coffee shops in the city of Seattle - but this did not stop Schultz. “This is crazy, we need to urgently look for a normal job!” - they told him. But he did it his way - and ended up winning. He talks honestly and without embellishment in this book about what it cost him to create a coffee empire. And we found 8 reasons why you should read it immediately.

1. Autobiographical. The book begins with a description of the difficult everyday life of little Howard. The guy grew up practically in a ghetto - a poor area, in a simple family. The ultimate dream of his parents was the desire to give their heir a higher education. What can I say, the future billionaire’s initial data was sad, and he himself admitted that he “started out as a loser.” At the same time, he is not ashamed of his “sources” - on the contrary, it seemed to me, he is proud of the fact that he made himself. This will be close to many readers who, like the author, were not born with a golden spoon in their mouth, but achieved everything through their own labor.

2. Honesty. Success stories of famous people are reference books for many entrepreneurs. But not in every book the reader will find the answer to specific questions about what to do in a given situation. Some biographies are overly polished - from the first page it is clear that the main character is a good boy, and good boys are doing great in life. Howard Schultz honestly talks about his ups and downs, describes in detail how he built a company, fought with ill-wishers, and survived crises. Reveals the “secrets of production”: never take out loans, increase the number of points without a franchise, encourage employees and others. This is probably why “Cup by Cup” is highly regarded among lovers of business literature - many critics rank only Henry Ford’s autobiography higher than it.

3. The book motivates and inspires. According to Howard Schultz, every entrepreneur dreams of coming up with a great idea, finding investors and building a profitable and lasting business. This is nothing less than the great American dream, which Schultz managed to realize 200 percent. Sometimes it seems that he himself did not expect that the implementation plan would be so exceeded - the Stakhanovites never dreamed of it! Today, Starbucks Corporation has more than 24 thousand retail outlets around the world, and the geography of coffee shops continues to expand. Net profit for the first half of the 2016-2017 financial year (from October 1 to March 27) amounted to $1.404 billion. Isn't this inspiring?

4. Literary value. “Cup by Cup” is written in an excellent style and reads like a good novel with a logical plot, living characters - Schultz’s family, friends, partners and enemies, a climax and denouement. Many lines can be parsed into quotes. For example, these words are worth printing out and hanging in your workplace as an incentive for development:

“Take more care than others think is reasonable.
Take more risks than others think are safe.
Dream bigger than others think is practical.
Expect more than others think is possible.”

The book does not let you go, forcing you to read and savor every word. There is no special terminology, everything is simple and clear - the volume can be mastered in a few days.

5. Description of corporate culture and values that must always be respected, without exception, and this is the key to the long-term prosperity of the company. Here are the Starbucks values that I found most important:

1. Treating people with respect and dignity is commonplace, but kindness and humanity never go out of style.

2. Take into account the wishes of clients. At the very beginning of his journey, Schultz saw his brainchild in a completely different way: Italian opera was playing in the coffee shop, baristas were sporting white shirts and bow ties. However, Italian chic did not take root in America, and Schultz had to adapt to the demands of clients.

3. Be decent, do not deviate from principles. When serious uncles wanted to squeeze his still young company from Schultz, he promised himself that he would never do the same. I want to believe that he kept his promise.

4. Believe in success. Together we will do great things - the Starbucks employees say, and in fact they do! Truly corporate spirit is a great thing.

Howard Schultz - Creator of the Starbucks Empire

6. The book breaks stereotypes. “We are often under so much pressure from friends, family, colleagues to take the easy way out, to follow the accepted truth, that it is sometimes difficult not to give in, accept the status quo and do what others expect, - writes the author. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Especially for those of us who live in the regions, there is the eternal “what will people say?” in practice it can be very difficult to get rid of. The book “Cup by Cup” teaches us not to give in, not to look at others, but to simply do everything possible to make our dreams come true. The most interesting thing is that later the same people will say: “Oh, man, this is cool!” But you most likely won’t give a damn about their opinion.

7. Delicious description of coffee. Have you heard that people are divided into “dummies” and “coffee drinkers”? So, if you are a “coffee drinker,” we promise, you will simply die from multiple literary orgasms! The process of preparing and drinking coffee is described so tasty, so sweet, so savory that you want to immediately drop everything and run for the Turk. The author of this review swears that he has never drank as much coffee in his life as he did while reading this book—and not at Starbucks, but in his own kitchen. Well, if you prefer tea, you will probably ask yourself: is there something in it, in this coffee, since the whole world has been going crazy about it for many centuries?

“I downloaded this book to my phone late at night, around 10:30 p.m., and couldn’t put it down until 5 a.m. I read almost everything overnight - I was so sucked in by this cool, living story. I read and drew parallels with myself: how I moved, developed, fell, solved problems.

Biographies are generally my favorite genre. You can always glean ideas and analyze the patterns of actions of a particular person. From the book “Cup by Cup,” for example, I took away the main idea: we need to partner and partner again, pull up strong people and unite with them.”

Have you read the book “How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup”? Tell us about your impressions! If you have your own reasons to read this or other books, please share with us!

Dorie Jones Yeung, Howard Schultz

How Starbucks was built cup by cup

Translation I. Matveeva

Project Manager I. Gusinskaya

Corrector E. Chudinova

Computer layout A. Abramov

Art Director S. Timonov

Cover artist R. Fedorin

How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup / Howard Schultz, Dorie Jones Yeung; Per. from English – M.: Alpina Publisher, 2012.

ISBN 978-5-9614-2691-5

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Show more care than others think is reasonable.

Take more risks than others think are safe.

Dream bigger than others think is practical.

Expect more than others think is possible.

On a cold January morning in 1961, my father broke his ankle at work.

I was seven years old at the time, and a snowball fight in the backyard of the school was in full swing, when my mother leaned out of the window of our seventh-floor apartment and waved at me. I ran home.

“An accident happened to my father,” she said. - I'm going to the hospital.

My father, Fred Schultz, lay at home with his leg in the air for over a month. I had never seen plaster before, so at first it was something strange to me. But the charm of novelty quickly disappeared. Like many of his social brethren, my father was not paid when he was not working.

Before the accident, he worked as a truck driver collecting and delivering diapers. For many months he complained bitterly about their smell and dirt, claiming that this work was the worst in the world. But now that he had lost her, apparently he wanted to return. My mother was seven months pregnant, so she could not work. The family had no income, no insurance, no union compensation—there was nothing to count on.

My sister and I ate in silence at the dinner table while my parents argued about who they would have to borrow from and how much money. Sometimes in the evenings the phone would ring, and my mother would insist that I answer the phone. If they called about debts, I had to say that my parents were not at home.

My brother Michael was born in March, they had to borrow again to pay for hospital expenses.

Although many years have passed since then, the image of my father - prone on the sofa, with his leg in a cast, unable to work - has not been erased in my memory. Now, looking back, I have deep respect for my father. He didn't graduate from high school, but he was an honest man and wasn't afraid of work. At times he had to work two or three jobs just to have something to put on the table in the evening. He took good care of his children and even played baseball with us on the weekends. He loved the Yankees.

But he was a broken man. He worked from one blue-collar job to another: truck driver, factory worker, taxi driver, but was never able to earn more than $20,000 a year and could never afford to buy his own house. My childhood was spent in the Projects, government-subsidized housing in Canarsie, Brooklyn. As a teenager I realized what a shame it was.

As I grew older, I often clashed with my father. I was intolerant of his failures and lack of responsibility. It seemed to me that he could achieve much more if only he tried.

After his death, I realized that I was unfair to him. He tried to become part of the system, but the system crushed him. With low self-esteem, he was unable to get out of the hole and somehow improve his life.

The day he died (of lung cancer), in January 1988, was the saddest day of my life. He had no savings or pension. Moreover, being confident in the importance of work, he never once felt satisfaction and pride from the work he performed.

As a child, I had no idea that I would one day become the head of a company. But deep down I knew that I would never leave a person “overboard” if it depended on me.

My parents couldn't understand what it was that attracted me to Starbucks. In 1982, I left a well-paying, prestigious job for what was then a small chain of five coffee shops in Seattle. But I saw Starbucks not as it was, but as it could be. She instantly captivated me with her combination of passion and authenticity. Gradually, I realized that if it grew throughout the country, romanticizing the Italian art of espresso and offering freshly roasted coffee beans, it could change the perception of a product that people have known for centuries, and appeal to millions as much as I loved it.

I became CEO of Starbucks in 1987 because I acted as an entrepreneur and convinced investors to believe in my vision for the company. Over the next ten years, by assembling a team of smart and experienced managers, we transformed Starbucks from a local business with six stores and fewer than 100 employees into a national business with 1,300 stores and 25,000 employees. Today we can be found in cities throughout North America, in Tokyo and Singapore. Starbucks has become a recognizable and recognized brand everywhere, allowing us to experiment with innovative products. Profits and sales grew more than 50% per year for six consecutive years.

But Starbucks is not just a story of growth and success. This is a story about how a company can be built differently. About a company completely different from the ones my father worked for. This is living proof that a company can live by its heart and nurture its spirit—and still make money. This shows that the company is able to provide sustainable returns to shareholders over the long term without sacrificing our core principle of treating employees with respect and dignity, because we have a leadership team that believes this is the right thing to do and because this is the best way to do business. .

Starbucks touches an emotional chord in people's souls. People make a detour to have their morning coffee at our cafe. We have become such a signature symbol of modern American life that the familiar green siren logo is often featured in television shows and feature films. The 1990s brought new words to the American lexicon and new rituals to society. In some neighborhoods, Starbucks cafes have become a “third place”—a cozy gathering place away from work and home, an extension of the porch leading to the front door.

You can see correctly only with your heart.
What is important is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
A little prince

S tarbucks, as she is now, is really the child of two parents.

One is the original Starbucks, founded in 1971, passionately committed to world-class coffee and dedicated to bringing customers what great coffee is.

The second is the vision and values that I brought to it: a combination of competitive drive and a strong desire to help each member of the organization achieve common victory. I wanted to mix coffee with romance, try to achieve what others thought was impossible, fight challenges with new ideas and do it all with elegance and style.

In truth, Starbucks needed the influence of both parents to become what it is today.

Starbucks had been thriving for ten years before I discovered it. I learned about the history of its early years from the founders and will retell this story in the second chapter. This book will tell it in the order in which I learned it, starting early in my life, since many of the values that defined the company were formed in that crowded apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

Humble Origins Can Motivate and Instill Compassion

I I noticed one thing about romantics: they try to create a new, better world away from the dullness of everyday life. There is such a goal and at Starbucks. We try to create an oasis in our coffee shops, a small place next door to your home where you can take a break, listen to jazz and reflect on world and personal problems or conceive something eccentric over a cup of coffee.

What kind of person do you have to be to dream of such a place?

From personal experience, I would say that the more humble your background, the more likely it is that you often develop your imagination, being carried away into worlds where anything seems possible.

In my case this is exactly the case.

I was three years old when my family moved from my grandmother's apartment to the Bayview in 1956. The block was located in the center of Canarsie, on Jamaica Bay, fifteen minutes from the airport and fifteen minutes from Coney Island. At that time, it was not a place that terrified everyone, but a friendly, spacious and green area with a dozen brand new eight-story brick houses. The elementary school was right on the block, and there was a playground, basketball courts, and a paved school yard. And yet it never occurred to anyone to be proud of living in this quarter; our parents were what are now commonly called “working poor.”

Still, I had many happy moments as a child. Living in a poor neighborhood gave me a well-balanced value system, as it forced me to get along with a wide variety of people. About 150 families lived in our building alone, and they all had one tiny elevator. All the apartments were very small, and the one our family started living in was also cramped, with only two bedrooms.

My parents came from working-class families who had lived in the eastern borough of Brooklyn for two generations. My grandfather died young, and my father, who was then a teenager, had to quit school and go to work. During World War II, he was an army medic in the South Pacific, New Caledonia and Saipan, where he contracted yellow fever and malaria. As a consequence, he had weak lungs and caught colds often. After the war, he changed a number of jobs related to physical labor, but never found himself, did not define his plans for life.

My mother was a powerful woman with a strong character. Her name was Elaine, but everyone called her Bobby. She worked as a receptionist, but when we, her three children, were small, her energy and care were entirely devoted to us.

My sister, Ronnie, who is almost my age, went through the same ordeal as me as a child. But I was able to somewhat protect my brother, Michael, from the economic difficulties that I myself experienced; I led him in a way that his parents could not guide him. He accompanied me wherever I went. I called him Shadow. Despite the eight-year age difference, Michael and I developed a very close relationship, and where I could, I was his father figure. I watched with pride as he became an excellent athlete, a strong student, and finally succeeded in his business career.

As a child, I played sports games with the kids from neighboring yards from dawn to dusk every day. My father joined us whenever he could, after work and on weekends. Every Saturday and Sunday, at 8 am, hundreds of children gathered in the school yard. You had to be strong, because if you lost, you were out, and then you had to sit around for hours watching the game before you could get back into the game. So I played to win.

Luckily, I was a natural athlete. Whether it was baseball, basketball or football, I would rush onto the court and play hard until I achieved good results. I organized baseball and basketball games national teams, which included all the children of the district - Jews, Italians, blacks. No one ever lectured us about species diversity; we experienced this in real life.

I have always had an unbridled passion for everything that interests me. My first passion was baseball. At that time, in all areas of New York, every conversation began and ended with baseball. Relationships with people and barriers between them were created not because of race or religion, but according to which team they supported. The Dodgers had just moved to Los Angeles (they broke my father's heart; he never forgot them), but we still had a lot of baseball stars left. I remember returning home and listening to detailed match-by-match radio reports coming from the neighbors’ open windows.

I was an avid Yankees fan and my dad, brother and I went to many games. We never had good seats, but that didn't matter. Our very presence took our breath away. My idol was Mickey Mantle. I wore his number, 7, on every jersey, sneaker, everything I owned. When playing baseball, I imitated Mickey's postures and gestures.

When Mick retired from the sport, it was impossible to believe that it was all over. How could he stop playing? My dad took me to both Mickey Mantle Days at Yankee Stadium, September 18, 1968 and June 8, 1969. Watching him being honored and bid farewell, listening to his speech, I was plunged into deep melancholy. Baseball is no longer what it used to be for me. Mickey was such an integral part of our lives that many years later, when he died, old school friends who had not been heard from for decades called me and offered condolences.

Coffee played a minor role in my childhood. Mom drank instant. For guests, she bought coffee in a tin and took out an old coffee pot. I listened to his grunt and watched the glass lid until the coffee flew into it like a skipping grain.

But I didn't realize how limited the family budget was until I was older. Occasionally, we would go to a Chinese restaurant and my parents would start discussing what dishes to order based solely on how much cash was in my dad's wallet that day. I was filled with anger and shame when I learned that the summer camp I was sent to was a subsidized camp for underprivileged children. I no longer agreed to go there.

By the time I started high school, I became aware of the mark that a person living in a poor neighborhood bears. Canarsie High School was less than a mile from the house, but the road there led along streets lined with small one- and two-family houses. I knew that the people who lived there looked down on us.

I once asked a girl from another part of New York on a date. I remember how her father’s expression gradually changed as he talked to me:

Where do you live?

“We live in Brooklyn,” I replied.

Canarsie.

Bayview Quarter.

There was an unspoken opinion about me in his reaction, and I was annoyed to sense it.

As the oldest of three children, I had to grow up quickly. I started earning money quite early. At twelve I was selling newspapers, later I worked behind the counter at a local cafe. At sixteen, after graduating from high school, I got a job in the shopping district of Manhattan, in a fur store, where I had to stretch animal skins. The work was terrible and left thick calluses on my thumbs. One hot summer I worked for pennies at a knitting factory, steaming yarn. I always gave part of my earnings to my mother - not because she insisted, but because my parents’ situation caused me bitterness.

Yet in the 1950s and early 1960s, everyone lived the American Dream, and we all hoped for a piece of it. Mother drilled this into our heads. She never finished high school herself, and her greatest dream was a college education for all three of her children. Wise and pragmatic in her own rough and stubborn way, she instilled in me enormous self-confidence. Again and again, she gave great examples, pointing to people who had achieved something in life, and insisting that I, too, could achieve anything I wanted. She taught me to challenge myself, create uncomfortable situations, and then overcome difficulties. I don’t know where she got this knowledge, since she herself she did not live by these rules. But for us, she was hungry for success.

Years later, during one of her visits to Seattle, I showed my mother our new offices at Starbucks Center. We wandered around its territory, passing through different departments and work areas, watching people talking on the phone and typing on computers, and I could just see how dizzy she was from the scale of this action. Finally she came closer to me and whispered in my ear: “Who pays all these people?” It was beyond her comprehension.

Growing up, I never dreamed of owning my own business. The only entrepreneur I knew was my uncle, Bill Farber. He owned a small paper mill in the Bronx, where he later hired his father as a foreman. I didn't know what I would end up doing, but I did know that I had to escape the struggle for survival that my parents waged every day. I had to get out of the poor neighborhood, out of Brooklyn. I remember lying at night and thinking: what if I had a crystal ball and could see the future? But I quickly pushed this thought away from me, because it was too scary to think about.

I knew only one way out: sports. Like the kids in the movie Hoop Dreams, my friends and I believed that sports were the ticket to a better life. In high school, I only took classes when I had nowhere to go because everything I was taught in school seemed unimportant. Instead of studying, I spent hours playing football.

I will never forget the day I created the team. As a badge of honor, I was given a big blue “C”, indicating that I was a full-fledged athlete. But my mother couldn't afford the $29 jacket with that letter on it, and she asked me to wait a week or so until my father got his paycheck. I was beside myself. Every student in school planned to wear such a jacket one fine, predetermined day. I couldn't show up at school without a jacket, but I didn't want my mother to feel even worse. So I borrowed money from a friend for a jacket and wore it on the appointed day, but hid it from my parents until they could afford the purchase.

My greatest triumph in high school was becoming a quarterback, making me an authority figure among the 5,700 students at Canarsie High School. The school was so poor that we didn’t even have a football field; all our games took place outside its territory. Our team was not of a high level, but I was one of the best players.

One day an agent came to our match looking for a striker. I didn't know he was there. A few days later, however, a letter arrived from a place that seemed like another planet to me—Northern Michigan University. They were recruiting a football team. Was I interested in this offer? I rejoiced and screamed with joy. This event was as lucky as being invited to an NFL tryout.

Northern Michigan University ended up offering me a football scholarship and that's all they offered me. I don't know how I would have been able to achieve my mother's college dream without her.

How Starbucks was built cup by cup Howard Schultz, Dorie Yeung

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Title: How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup
Author: Howard Schultz, Dorie Yeung
Year: 2012
Genre: Industry publications, Popular about business, Foreign business literature

About the book “How Starbucks was Built Cup by Cup” by Howard Schultz, Dorie Yeung

Howard Schultz became CEO of Starbucks in 1987 and over the ensuing years transformed Starbucks from a small operation with six coffee shops into an international business operating in 50 countries. But the story of Starbucks is not just a success story. This is the story of a team of people passionate about coffee who built a huge company based on values and principles that are rarely found in the corporate world, while maintaining an individual approach to each employee and each client.

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Parents of a newborn do not sit and think: what is our mission on this planet? What values do we want to instill in a child? Most young mothers and fathers are occupied with a simple question: how to survive until the morning?

Likewise, many entrepreneurs cannot afford to look too far ahead. They are too preoccupied with the problems that are right under their noses. That's exactly what happened to me.

As a parent and entrepreneur, you start passing on your values to others from day one, whether you realize it or not. Once children or company employees have imbibed these values, it is unlikely that their view of the world can be changed by an ethics lecture.

It is difficult to change the established culture of a company. If you've made the same mistake in running a business for five years, you can't put a new layer of value on it overnight. By that time, the well is already filled with water, and you have to drink.

Whatever the culture, the values, the guiding principles, you must take steps to ingrain them early in the organization so that they form the basis of every step, every hiring decision, every strategic goal. Whether you're the chairman or the lowest level employee, your most important daily responsibility is communicating your values to others, especially new hires. This is the key to the company's long-term prosperity.

The mission is one for all

When planning the opening of II Giornale, I did not write a mission statement or create a list of values that the company should embody. However, I had some good ideas from my time at Starbucks. I observed what was good and what was bad, and drew conclusions, applying it to my future company.

It seems incredible today, but just when I most needed help to articulate the company's values, the perfect person came into my life. Perhaps this is fate.

One day, at the end of 1985, I was sitting at my desk, engrossed in creating the opening script for II Giornale. I had already left Starbucks, but I was still using the office, and the floor was littered with draft menus, charts, floor plans, and design elements.

The phone rang. This was a man I had only met a few times: Dave Olsen. Starbucks employees spoke of Dave with respect bordering on reverence, because he knew so much about coffee. A tall, broad-shouldered native of Montana with long wavy hair and eyes sparkling through small oval glasses, he ran an unusual establishment - Cafe Allegro, located in the University District. Students and professors loved to spend time there, studying philosophy, discussing United States foreign policy, or simply drinking cappuccino. In some ways, Cafe Allegro was the prototype for what Starbucks would later become, a neighborhood gathering place, although its style was more bohemian and did not sell coffee beans or coffee accessories. Nor were those early city employees who took their coffee to-go served there. The place was more reminiscent of European cafes, and not the Italian espresso bars I saw in Milan, where everyone stands.

I heard that you are planning to open some coffee shops downtown,” Dave said. - I was thinking about looking for a place in the center myself. Need to talk.

“Great, let’s do it,” I replied, and we agreed to meet on one of the following days.

I hung up and turned to Dawn Pinod, who was helping me prepare the opening of II Giornale.

Don, I said, do you have any idea who called just now?

She stopped and looked at me questioningly.

Dave Olsen! He might want to work with us!

We are very lucky. Although he now jokes about it, saying that he was just a guy in jeans who ran a small cafe for his own pleasure, I knew that Dave's presence would mean for II Giornale an originality and sophistication in the field of coffee far beyond my own acquired knowledge for three years. And his modest manners, precise phrases, deep thoughts and loud laugh will make our cooperation very pleasant.

On the day of the meeting, Dave and I sat on the floor in the office, and I began laying out plans and drawings and expressing my thoughts. Dave understood everything immediately. For ten years he wore an apron, stood behind the counter, made espresso. And he knew firsthand how enthusiastic people could be about espresso, both in his cafe and in Italy. I didn't have to prove that the idea had great potential. He felt it to the core.

This synergy was too good to be true. My strength was being externally focused: articulating a vision, attracting investors, raising money, finding real estate, designing coffee shops, building a brand, planning for future growth. Dave was better at the internal side of the business: the smallest details of running a cafe, hiring and training baristas, selecting the best quality coffee.

It never occurred to us to become competitors. Although Dave was trying to find ways to further grow and develop, after seeing what I was planning, he decided that it would be better if we joined forces and brought the ideas of II Giornale to life together.

With cash still tight, Dave agreed to work twenty hours a week for the paltry salary of $12,000 a year. In fact, he had a full-time job, and more, from the very beginning. His efforts were later rewarded handsomely as his options increased in value. But Dave wasn't interested in money. He became a member of the team because he believed in winning. He was intrigued by the Italian approach to setting up an espresso bar, and he also wanted to do everything possible to ensure that the coffee we offered was the best. He became the coffee conscience of the company.

Even today, as Starbucks' first vice president of coffee, Dave says he doesn't consider himself an employee, a director, or a founder, but rather a "hungry, passionate, and successful contributor." looks like a mountaineering expedition. Yes, fortunately, I get paid. I wouldn't do everything I do for free. But I probably would have done almost everything then.”

If Starbucks has a memory, Dave Olsen occupies a central place there, where its core purpose and values converge. When I see him in his office, that alone is incredibly stimulating to me.

When you build an organization, you quickly begin to realize that you cannot do it alone. The company will be much stronger if you can find a colleague you can absolutely trust, who can bring together the strengths in yourself and others, while sharing your values. Dave gets excited at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Basketball turns me on. He can spend hours raving about the rich taste of coffee from the island of Sulawesi, I can light a fire in the hearts of an entire room with my sincere dedication to the future of the company.

Dave and I belonged to different worlds. He grew up in a quiet town in Montana, and in his Levi's, T-shirts and Birkenstocks, he was already running a small cafe when I was working in telephone sales for Xerox in midtown Manhattan. Dave's love affair with coffee began in 1970, when He was visiting a friend in Berkeley and while walking around town came across Peet's, then a remarkable coffee shop on Vine Street. He bought a small coffee maker and half a pound of black Italian coffee from the Dutchman and began to conjure. The espresso he brewed that day impressed him so much that he began experimenting every day, trying to achieve the perfect taste.

His military service brought him to Seattle, where he worked as a carpenter. One day in 1974, he quit his job, loaded his things on his bicycle, and rode to San Francisco, almost a thousand miles away. There he found the North Beach cafes, Italian restaurants with an upscale, bohemian, loud, eclectic, stimulating atmosphere. They treated espresso making as a form of Italian art. Dave would park his bike in front of restaurant windows and talk to the owners about food, wine and coffee.

Many people dream of opening a coffee shop. Very few people make their dreams come true. But that's exactly what Dave Olsen did when he returned to Seattle in the fall of 1974. He rented space in the University District, in the garage of a former morgue, on an alley just across from the busiest entrance to campus.

Cafe Allegro became a temple to espresso, with a gleaming brewing machine at its center. In those days, few Americans knew what caffe latte meant. He created a similar drink and called it cafe au lait in French. Dave scoured Seattle for the best coffee beans and quickly discovered Starbucks, which in those days only sold coffee by weight. He met the founders and roasters and tasted coffee with them. He was looking for a coffee roast that suited his taste, just a little blacker than most of Starbucks' other beers, but a little lighter than the darkest coffee they offered.

This roast, found specifically for Cafe Allegro, is still sold in coffee shops today and used in all the espresso blends we offer. That's how deeply ingrained Dave Olsen is in Starbucks history.

When Dave and I opened II Giornale in 1985, we undeniably had one thing in common: a passion for coffee and what we wanted to achieve by bringing it to our customers. We played different roles, but no matter who we were talking to or what situation we were in, we each tried to convey the same message in our own way. Two voices, one opinion. This kind of connection, coherence, common purpose is rare in both business and life.

When I met Dave, he only had a sports jacket, and that was because his wife worked for an airline where relatives of employees were required to wear a jacket and tie because they also flew on free passes. Today, he is just as shocked as everyone else that he works for a billion-dollar company while remaining an artist and inventor at heart.

Starbucks would not be what it is today if Dave Olsen had not joined us during II Giornale. He helped define its values, bringing to all aspects of the business a strong, romantic love of coffee, unwavering integrity, disarming honesty and originality. He shared my belief that everyone should leave their ego at the door and take on the task as a member of a unified team. He freed my hands, allowing me to grow the enterprise, because I did not need to worry about the quality of the coffee. Dave is the rock and part of the company's foundation.

When starting a new business, you don’t realize how critical all the first decisions are not only for the formation of the company as a whole, but also for laying the foundations for its future. It is impossible to predict which solutions will become cornerstones. Each one turns out to be very valuable later on, but at the very beginning you don’t realize it.

If you are given the chance of a lifetime, don't waste your time.

Ron, I said, we need a pro forma account and a full private placement package to go to investors. We need to get all the financial documents for Starbucks. Can you handle it in a week or two?

He was a gambling guy, and we got down to business, racking our brains as to how to raise enough funds to buy the company and also get some capital for expansion. After agreeing on a credit limit with local banks, we prepared a prospectus with an offer to purchase shares for distribution to all investors of II Giornale and several others whom I had the opportunity to meet recently.

At the company's board of directors, I explained my plan. The picture did not leave the slightest doubt about victory.

What to do if they try to take your loot

One fine day everything almost disappeared. Before I even got Starbucks, I almost lost it.

While we were executing the deal, it became known that one of my investors was preparing his plan to acquire Starbucks. His idea did not involve an equal distribution of shares among the shareholders of II Giornale, but provided him and several of his friends with a larger share than others. This man wanted to turn me from the founder and main shareholder into a simple employee, to force me to manage the company on behalf and on behalf of the new board of directors, which he would lead. I also felt it was unfair to some of my old investors, people who had entrusted their money to me and II Giornale.

This man occupied a leading position in the business life of Seattle and probably already had the support of leading businessmen. I feared that my influential supporters would agree to his plan, leaving me no choice. I went to Steve Greenburg, and together we approached one of his senior partners, Bill Gates, the father of the founder of Microsoft. This gentleman, six feet seven inches tall, was a prominent figure in Seattle. We prepared a new strategy and agreed to meet with the investor. Bill Gates agreed to support me.

The day we met is one of the most difficult and painful in my life. It was unclear how everything would turn out, and the whole thing was on the line. Entering the hall, I felt like the Cowardly Lion, shaking with fear in anticipation of meeting the great Wizard of Oz. My opponent sat importantly at the head of the negotiating table, keeping control of the entire room. Without even allowing me to speak, he began to vilify me.

“We gave you a chance that people don’t get every day,” he shouted, as I remember. - We invested in you when you were nothing. You are still nothing. Now you have the opportunity to purchase Starbucks. But it's our money. Our business. So here's how we're going to do it, with or without you.

He sat down again, then issued an ultimatum:

If you do not agree to accept the terms of this deal, you will not work in this city. You will no longer be able to collect a single dollar. You will be trampled and crushed.

I was terrified, but his words angered me. Should we really turn back and reconcile ourselves?

“We have nothing to talk about,” he replied. The rest of those present were silent or spoke out in support of him.

When the meeting ended, I walked out and burst into tears, right there in the hallway. Bill Gates tried to convince me that everything would be fine, but he was also stunned by the outburst of passions.

When I came home, I decided that life was over.

There is no hope, I told Sheri. - I can’t imagine where to get the money. I don't know what else we can do.

This was a turning point. If I agreed to the conditions set by the investor, I would have to say goodbye to my dream. He could fire me at any time, and he would certainly dictate his will regarding the atmosphere and values of Starbucks. The passion, commitment and dedication that made Starbucks thrive would be gone forever.

Two days later, with the support of Steve Sarkowski, I met with several investors and presented my proposal to them. Each II Giornale investor had the opportunity to invest in the purchase of Starbucks. The plan was fair to everyone. They supported me, as did almost all other investors. In a matter of weeks, we managed to raise the $3.8 million needed to buy Starbucks, and since then everything has changed.

You must always remember your ideals. Be bold but fair. Don't give in. If you are surrounded by the same holistic individuals, together you will win.

Just when, due to an unexpected turn of fate, you take a sharp turn, you can miss your chance. But no matter what heights I reach, no matter how many people I have under my command, it is impossible to imagine that I would treat anyone the way I was treated that day. The words about “treating people with respect and dignity,” later used in Starbucks' mission statement, make skeptics chuckle. They believe that this is empty talk or purism. But not everyone lives by these rules. If I feel that a person lacks integrity or integrity, I end all relationships with him. As time shows, this is the right approach.

Those early investors who believed in me were richly rewarded. They supported me through difficult times and relied on my integrity. And I did everything to ensure that under no circumstances did I abuse this trust.

By August 1987, Starbucks was mine. This was both exciting and frightening at the same time.

That same month, early one morning, I woke up and went for a long run. I had already begun to realize the enormity of the task and the responsibility that lay on me. I had a chance to make my dream come true, but I had the hopes and fears of hundreds of people on my shoulders. Running through a lush park, I saw a long, winding road that disappeared into a thick fog that reached the crest of the next hill.

Today's Starbucks Corporation is actually II Giornale. Founded in 1985, it acquired the assets of Starbucks in 1987 and changed its name to Starbucks Corporation. The company that Jerry and Gordon started was called Starbucks Coffee Company, and they sold us the rights to that name. Now their company is known as Peet's.

At the age of thirty-four I stood on the threshold of a great adventure. What kept me going on this path was not the number of shares I owned, but my deep-seated values and a strong commitment to creating a business that would provide lasting value to our shareholders. At every step, I tried to underpromise and overdeliver. After all, this is the only way to ensure stability in any job.