Howard Schultz: From a Brooklyn housing project, through 217 noes
He grew up in public housing in Brooklyn and sold office equipment door to door. When he wanted to open Italian style coffee bars, he says 217 of the 242 investors he asked turned him down.
Bayview Houses
Howard Schultz grew up in the 1950s and 60s in the Bayview Houses, a public housing estate in Canarsie, Brooklyn. A sports scholarship took him to Northern Michigan University, the first in his family to go to college.
Selling
After college he sold office machines for Xerox, cold calling up and down office buildings, and then worked for a Swedish housewares company. In 1982 he joined a small Seattle coffee bean seller, Starbucks, to run its marketing.
The noes
On a work trip to Milan in 1983 he saw espresso bars full of regulars and wanted to bring the idea home. The owners did not want to run cafes, so he left to start his own, Il Giornale. In his telling he pitched 242 investors and 217 said no.
What came of it
Il Giornale opened in 1986. A year later, with his backers, he bought Starbucks from its founders and turned it into a coffee house chain.
Selling door to door taught him to hear no and make the next call. Most applications and pitches are turned down; the job is to keep a list and keep going.
Where the facts come from: Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang, Pour Your Heart Into It (1997); Company history, stories.starbucks.com.
