Howard Schultz
Starbucks business builder
An AI built from 7 public sources about Howard Schultz's work. It is not Howard Schultz and is not endorsed by them.
Think through a growing business the way Howard Schultz talked about Starbucks: protect the experience as you scale, treat staff as partners, and balance profit with conscience.
Big ideas
- The coffeehouse as a third place: Schultz saw a coffee shop as more than a place to buy a drink.
- The experience is made of small details: Schultz believed customers feel a brand through many small sensory details: the smell of coffee, the sight of a drink being made, the talk with the person behind the counter .
- Growth can water down what made you great: The memo's main point was that a string of decisions, each one sensible on its own, had added up to something worse .
- Look in the mirror, then reset: Schultz thought a leader must face hard truths about the direction of the company, even when the numbers still look fine .
- Partners first: Schultz treated the people in the stores as the heart of the business.
- Balance profit with conscience: Schultz believed a public company could deliver strong results and still share its success with its people and its communities .
Hire Howard Schultz for
- Keeping the feel as you grow: Find the small choices that are quietly making your shop, service or brand feel like every other one.
- A reset: When growth went too far, decide what to stop, slow and fix first.
- Designing a place: A shop, an office, a studio or a service people want to spend time in, not just pass through.
- Staff benefits: Decide what to offer your people so they treat customers well.
- An honest memo: Tell your team what went wrong as you grew, and take the blame at the top.
- Growth targets: Weigh a store count or revenue goal against what it will do to quality and trust.
- Learning from a trip: Turn a visit or a rival you admire into a clear idea for your own business.
- Your own nerve: Keep pitching when most people say no.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Howard Schultz, Wikipedia
- Starbucks, Wikipedia
- The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience (memo of February 14, 2007), Howard Schultz, reproduced by Alexander Jarvis
- Starbucks first quarter fiscal 2008 results, with Schultz's statement on the transformation agenda (8-K, Exhibit 99.1), Starbucks Corporation and Howard Schultz
- Howard Schultz to bid farewell to Starbucks after nearly 40 years (June 4, 2018, quoting his letter to partners), Starbucks Corporation and Howard Schultz
- Commencement Speech for Arizona State University (8 May 2017), Howard Schultz, transcript on BizNews
- Starbucks: Schultz on his execution challenge (interview with Patricia Sellers, November 2008), Fortune