The fourth Success Story I would like to share is the story of StarBucks CEO, Howard Schultz.
Schultz was born into a poor family and he saw an escape in sports. In high school, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University.
After graduating, he worked as a salesperson for Xerox Corporation. After that, he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer. In 1981, Schultz visited a client, a fledgling coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle which he joined as the Director of Marketing a year later. On a buying trip to Milan, Italy for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically every block. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also served as meeting places. There are about 20,000 such coffee bars in Italy. But back in Seattle, the Starbucks owners resisted Schultz's plans to serve coffee in the stores, saying they didn't want to get into the restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz quit and started his own coffee bar business, called Il Giornale. It was successful, and a year later Schultz bought Starbucks for $3.8 million. As the company began to expand rapidly in the 1990s, Schultz always said that the main goal was "to serve a great cup of coffee." But attached to this goal was a principle: Schultz said he wanted "to build a company with soul."
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