Howard Schultz knows about overcoming obstacles and finding success.
The 71-year-old billionaire is best known for his career growing Starbucks Coffee into the behemoth chain it is today.
What advice would Schultz would give to a budding entrepreneur?
In an interview with Fortune, Schultz said he discourages young people from striking out on their own and becoming founders too early.
“At 22, you would benefit from working for a company that can teach you and demonstrate to you how an organization works—as long as that company has values that are compatible with your own,” Schultz said. “There’s great benefit to being in an organization and seeing firsthand how a company actually operates, and what happens on the inside, before you do this yourself,” Schultz said.
Schultz stepped down from his on again, off again reign as Starbucks CEO last year as part of a planned transition.
Since then, Schultz has made an variety of investments in entrepreneurial pursuits including Oatly oat milk, True Food Kitchen, and most recently Cumulus Coffee, a nitro cold brew home brewing machine developed by Mesh Gelman, a former Starbucks senior leader.
Schultz’s Starbucks success story
Schultz joined Starbucks in 1981 as its director of retail operations and marketing. Inspired by a trip to Italy, he tried to convince his bosses to add espresso to the menu. Schultz's idea was met with skepticism because the beverage wasn't popular in America, and the machines were expensive and complicated.
Schultz left to develop his own espresso-focused line of coffeehouses called Il Giornale. Having successfully tested proof of concept, he returned to Starbucks as CEO in 1987.
It was a grand reentry. Schultz took the company public in 1992, raising $29 million on IPO day.
By the time he stepped down from the CEO role and moved into a global chief strategist and chairman position in 2000, he had opened 3,000 Starbucks stores, including in Asia and Europe.
Over the years, Schultz has returned as CEO twice more, once in 2008 during the financial crisis, and again—unretiring—in 2022. By the time he retired (for the first time) in 2017, Schultz had grown Starbucks from 11 Seattle-area stores to more than 35,000 locations across the globe.
“Starbucks, despite its size, scale and complexity, is still very entrepreneurial,” Schultz told Fortune. “Starbucks has entrepreneurial leadership at every level.”
Today, Schultz is the brand’s chairman emeritus, and he told Fortune there’s no chance he ever returns to the CEO seat. He emphasized he trusts new CEO Brian Niccol completely—and is always available to offer his successor advice or guidance.
Staying true to the mission
Everyone with a bold idea struggles with doubts and anxiety once in a while, Schultz said. “For a 22-year-old person pursuing something, it’s natural to have fear and anxiety; the question is how to use that in a way that doesn’t become such a burden.”
The answer, to Schultz’s mind, is to surround yourself with people who have skills or experience surpassing your own—and who are willing to help.
But what about when the entrepreneurial dream just might be dead in the water? When does a hopeful with a vision need to throw in the towel? It’s a very personal decision, Schultz says.
“Sometimes the difference between winning and losing is just will,” he said, though some practical questions are crucial: How much money is the business burning? How much debt are you in?
Even in dire straits, Schultz advocates for continuing to try. “There were many, many times in the early days of Starbucks where the challenges were beyond comprehension,” he said. “Sometimes you need a little luck.”
Similarly, the worst advice Schultz ever received back in his entrepreneurial heyday was to give up on Starbucks.
“I’m talking about 142 people turning me down when we were raising money in the mid-1980s,” he said. “They thought, we can’t raise the capital, things are not working out, [you should] realize it’s not going to happen.”
Suffice it to say, it happened. Starbucks is 125th on the Fortune 500, with a nearly $109 billion market cap. It’s one of the few food and beverage chains with a truly global presence.
Ignoring the naysayers
His story of early rejection brings Schultz to his second piece of advice for young hopeful leaders: Don’t listen to the haters.
“More often than not, people are going to tell you that your entrepreneurial dream is too big and you should settle for something else—that the risks are too high,” he emphasized. “You don’t want to be 40 years old looking back at your 22-year-old self and saying, ‘I should have really believed in myself and the dream I had.’”
But with that, any young person should maintain a sense of reality about their situation and prospects.
Two weeks ago, Schultz had a full circle moment when went back to Italy to attend the opening of the first Starbucks in Venice.
“It was incredibly gratifying to see Starbucks succeed in the most difficult market in the world for coffee,” he said.
Correction, Nov. 10, 2024: A previous version of this article's headline misstated Howard Schultz's title. He is chairman emeritus.
