University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Pour Your Heart Into It
Book

Pour Your Heart Into It

How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang
Hyperion, 1997
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

This book tells the story of Starbucks’ meteoric rise- how a few stores in Seattle grew into more than 1,600 stores worldwide. Starbucks built its brand by putting people, both employees and customers, first and by emphasizing product quality over marketing. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and reporter Dori Jones Yang have written a fascinating, inspiring, and highly readable book. It emphasizes business wisdom over business tips. Schultz focuses on stories that show how enthusiasm, romance, and passion can get the job done. He also talks about he turned a small business into a ubiquitous business that opens a new store almost every day – clearly one of the most amazing business stories in recent years. getAbstract recommends it to consumer product marketers and to entrepreneurs, managers and executives young and old.

Summary

Vision and Process

Today’s over-saturated market has just too many products and not enough consumer money. Therefore, it is important to stand for something authentic. It is also crucial to continually refresh and re-imagine your product. Don’t be afraid to follow your vision. Visions, dreams, passion: These things can’t be measured, and they certainly can’t be taught. They will give your business and your brand the essential uniqueness and integrity needed to stand out in a field that swallows up sameness.

At the same time, make sure you are building the type of infrastructure that will allow your vision to become a lasting reality. If you are a visionary, seek out disciplined system builders. Without them, you will run out of materials; and without you, they will merely jog in place.

If you’re going to grow beyond the size and scope of your competitors, you have to be able to imagine places that no business has ever been before. But, it is not enough to simply imagine. Coffee had never been in a Frappuccino before Howard Schultz imagined it, and then put it there. This is just one example of the desirable offspring of the marriage of vision and process.

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About the Authors

Howard Schultz has been Chairman and CEO of Starbucks since 1987. USA Today has called him the "Bill Gates of coffee." He lives in Seattle, Washington. Doris Jones Yang has worked as a reporter, writer, and bureau chief at BusinessWeek for fifteen years. She lives in Bellevue, Washington.

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