Title: Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
Author(s): Howard Schultz

[Book Donor: Thanks to Rajesh Madan for giving away this book via sharebooks.org]

If due to general economic slowdown, and, now Coronavirus pandemic, your business has taken a hit, you might be wondering, what kind of work one may get into? The Starbucks story offers a simple formula:

DO SOMETHING WHERE YOU CAN POUR YOUR HEART OUT!

Difficult? In a world driven by bottom lines in balance sheets, how do we OPEN UP OUR HEARTS? Well, apparently, adversity is the time when your heart has a chance to show its true colors! Maybe this is the time to unleash all your creativity and originality.

In an earliest post (Book Giveaway #50: Winning (3/4/2020)), we talked about Jack Welch as the typical American Dream – rising from poverty to becoming CEO of GE. Here is another story – about Howard Schultz – who grew up in poverty and now his networth is around 4 Billion USD. He joined Starbucks as an employee and later bought the company from original founders.

What kind of thought processes does it take to build and grow a company like Starbucks?

A few excerpts:

First, every company MUST STAND for something. Starbucks stood not only for good coffee, but specifically for the dark roasted flavor that the founders were passionate about. That’s what differentiated it and made it AUTHENTIC.

Second, YOU DON’T JUST GIVE customers what the customers ask for. If you offer them something, they’re not accustomed to, SOMETHING SO FAR SUPERIOR that it takes a while to develop their palates, you can CREATE A SENSE OF DISCOVERY and excitement and loyalty that will bond them to you.

How this can be achieved is what the book is all about. Time to open up your heart and smile your way to the bank?