 CHILDHOOD: Howard D.

Schultz was born on July 19, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, in a family of
a former US Army trooper and later truck driver Fred Schultz, and his wife, Elaine. The family
had three kids and was poor, even though the parents worked hard to give a decent future to
their children.
The childhood of the future billionaire was spent in the neighborhood of the houses for low-
income families, where there was nothing but the basketball court. Most of the people over
there were extremely poor and it is evident, that the children from this area were considered
quite ordinary. That is why Howard always knew how difficult it would be for him to break out of
this poverty. However, his dream of becoming successful was stronger than any obstacle.
When Schultz was 7 years old, his father broke his ankle while working as a truck driver picking
up and delivering diapers. At the time, his father had no health insurance or worker's
compensation, and the family was left with no income.
 EDUCATION: At the age of 12, Howard got his first job. First, he was selling newspapers and
then working in a local cafe. The boy faced rather hard experience when he turned 16. He was
working at the fur store, where he had to deal with stretching the leather. This exhausting job
only made Howard stronger and firmed his wish to succeed in future. Being physically strong,
Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan
University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Communications in 1975.
By the time Schultz started college, he decided he wasn't going to play football after all. To pay
for school, the communications major took out student loans and took up various jobs, including
working as a bartender and even occasionally selling his blood.
 Career: After graduation in 1975, Schultz spent a year working at a ski lodge in Michigan waiting
for inspiration. He finally landed a job in the sales training program at Xerox, where he got
experience cold-calling and pitching word processors in New York. The work didn't fulfill him, so
after three years he left to take a job at Hammarplast, a housewares business owned by a
Swedish company called Perstorp.
There, Schultz ascended the ranks to vice president and general manager, leading a team of
salespeople out of the US office in New York. It was at Hammarplast that he first encountered
Starbucks. The coffee shop had a few stores in Seattle and caught his attention when it ordered
an unusually large number of drip coffeemakers.
Intrigued, Schultz traveled to Seattle to meet the company's then owners, Gerald Baldwin and
Gordon Bowker. He was struck by the partners' passion and their courage in selling a product
that would appeal only to a small niche of gourmet coffee enthusiasts.
A year later, the then 29-year-old finally persuaded Baldwin to hire him as the director of retail
operations and marketing. At the time, Starbucks only had three stores, but they were selling
pounds of coffee for home use, Schultz said.
Schultz's career — and Starbucks' fate — changed forever when the company sent him to an
international housewares show in Milan. While walking around the city, he encountered several
espresso bars where owners knew their customers by name and served them drinks like
cappuccinos and cafe lattes. Schultz had an "epiphany" the moment he understood the personal
relationship that people could have to coffee.
In 1985, Schultz left Starbucks after his ideas to cultivate an Italian-like experience for coffee-
lovers was rejected by the founders. He soon started his own coffee company: Il Giornale (Italian
for "the daily").
In order to get Il Giornale off the ground, Schultz had to raise more than $1.6 million. "In the
course of the year I spent trying to raise money, I spoke to 242 people, and 217 of them said
no," he wrote. "Try to imagine how disheartening it can be to hear that many times why your
idea is not worth investing in. ... It was a very humbling time."
Schultz spent two years away from Starbucks, wholly focused on opening Il Giornale stores that
replicated the coffee culture he'd seen in Italy. In August 1987, Il Giornale bought Starbucks for
$3.8 million, and Schultz became CEO of Starbucks Corporation. At the time, there were six
stores.
America swiftly took a liking to Starbucks. In 1992, the company went public on the NASDAQ; its
165 stores pulled in $93 million in revenue that year. The world eventually caught on, and by
2000 Starbucks had grown into a global operation of more than 3,500 stores and $2.2 billion in
annual revenue.
Running Starbucks came with set-backs, too. In 2008, Schultz temporarily closed 7,100 US stores
in order to retrain baristas on how to make the perfect espresso. Over the next two years he led
Starbucks' massive turnaround, with profits tripling from $315 million to $945 million by 2010.
Throughout his career at Starbucks, Schultz has always prioritized his employees, who he calls
"partners." Largely because of his father's experience when he was injured, Schultz offers all his
employees (including part-time workers) complete health-care coverage as well as stock
options.
In the last 28 years, Schultz has grown the coffeemaker to include more than 21,000 stores in 65
countries (ironically, there are none in Italy). "I've always been driven and hungry," Schultz said.
"Long after others have stopped to rest and recover, I'm still running, chasing after something
nobody else could ever see."