If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from '87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.
Interpretation
The success of Starbucks in Vancouver was pivotal for its global expansion and profitability.
This quote by Howard Schultz highlights the importance of the Vancouver Starbucks location in the company's trajectory. It suggests that the success achieved there was not just a local victory but a crucial foundation for the brand's significant international growth and financial success that followed, emphasizing how specific moments can have far-reaching impacts on an organization's future.
In practice
In a motivational speech about business strategy.
The rules of engagement around building a brand have changed significantly over the past 10 to 15 years. Where companies at one time could spread their message through traditional marketing, consumers now seek an enduring emotional connection with the companies they patronize. The foundation of that connection is the most important characteristic of building a world-class brand: trust. Trust with your people and trust with your customers.
The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.
Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.
While their service is ending, our responsibility is just beginning!
In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity or you can pick yourself up and say listen, I have to be responsible for myself.
When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.
If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches.
Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.
Corporations hope that the right concept will turn things around overnight. This is what you might call the crash-diet approach: starve yourself for a few days and you'll be thin for life.
The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.
The greatest change in corporate culture - and the way business is being conducted - may be the accelerated growth of relationships based... on partnership.
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