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September 9 - October 13, 2019
I’d encourage everyone to dream big, lay your foundations well, absorb information like a sponge, and not be afraid to defy conventional wisdom. Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
No great achievement happens by luck.
good luck, it seems, comes to those who plan for it.
There is no more precious commodity than the relationship of trust and confidence a company has with its employees.
the best way for an entrepreneur to maintain control is by performing well and pleasing shareholders,
It’s those who follow the road less traveled who create new industries, invent new products, build long-lasting enterprises, and inspire those around them to push their abilities to the highest levels of achievement.
“It appears to me that people who succeed have an incredible drive to do something,”
the single most important thing you do at work each day is communicate your values to others,
If you want to build a great enterprise, you have to have the courage to dream great dreams.
Word of mouth, we discovered, is far more powerful than advertising.
Big opportunities lie in the creation of something new. But that innovation has to be relevant and inspiring, or it will burst into color and fade away as quickly as fireworks.
When companies fail, or fail to grow, it’s almost always because they don’t invest in the people, the systems, and the processes they need.
Without romance and vision, a business has no soul, no spirit to motivate its people to achieve something great.
There is much to be gained by enlisting partners and colleagues who are committed to the same goals.
I began to read even more widely. I consulted experts. I got to know other CEOs and entrepreneurs. I hired managers who had done it before. I picked the brains of everyone I met: reporters, analysts, investors, store managers, baristas, customers.
being a dreamer isn’t enough. If you want to achieve something in life, you need a different set of skills to set those dreams in motion.
one of the greatest responsibilities of an entrepreneur is to imprint his or her values on the organization.
We put the Starbucks brand only on best-of-class products that take advantage of our recognized expertise in coffee.
I keep pushing to make sure that Starbucks thinks of the Next Big Thing before it has even crossed anybody else’s mind.
Overall, we were in a better position than many specialty coffee companies because we are vertically integrated: We buy and roast all the coffee we sell, rather than purchasing pre-roasted beans from independent roasters.
Which is a more acceptable risk?”
plan, insisting we could find the answer in our backroom. We could make up for the increased green-coffee cost by becoming more efficient and taking advantage of economies of scale. He called it the “profit improvement plan.”
He transformed the crisis into an opportunity to begin to manage the company in a more systematic, professional way.
What does it take to achieve 50 percent annual growth in both sales and profits for six years in a row? What enabled Starbucks to do that was a combination of discipline and innovation, process and creativity, caution and boldness that few companies have mastered.
We never set out to build a brand. Our goal was to build a great company, one that stood for something, one that valued the authenticity of its product and the passion of its people.
we spent less than $10 million on advertising, not because we didn’t believe in it but because we couldn’t afford it. Instead, we’ve been product-driven, people-driven, values-driven.
At Starbucks, the value was there from the beginning, in the coffee itself.
When your average sale is only $3.50, you have to make sure customers come back. And ours do—on average eighteen times a month.
If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to a brand.
The number-one factor in creating a great, enduring brand is having an appealing product.
Starbucks spent more on training our people than on advertising our product.
Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don’t try to fit the system. If you do what’s expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.
Pleasing customers and thinking ahead of the curve are much more relevant to a company’s success than who opens a store across the street.
If there’s a problem, we try not only to fix it but to create something innovative and elegant in the process.
One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.
“Exceptional leaders,” he wrote in 1991, “cultivate the Merlin-like habit of acting in the present moment as ambassadors of a radically different future, in order to imbue their organizations with a breakthrough vision of what it is possible to achieve.”
