月４ Unit 10 Lesson A Audio Scripts

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Unit 10: Entrepreneurs and Innovators Lesson A Audio Script

Listening: A Presentation about a Success Story Track 3.21 B.C. Page 186-187

Hello. Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to speak at the fourth annual Innovations in Business
conference. It’s a pleasure to be here. My topic this morning is something that is—I can see—very relevant to
many of you. Many of you have paper cups in your hands right now. It’s coffee—and a little company called
Starbucks that all of you have heard of. And although the company isn’t actually “little” anymore, it did start out
that way. I’d like to talk to you today about the man who started the company—Howard Schultz—and about
some of the things he’s done along the way that have led to the company’s great success. Perhaps these same
ideas could lead to more success for your companies as well.

In the early days, Schultz was like every entrepreneur. He had a strong motivation—to bring the coffee
culture of European countries to the United States—but of course, he needed money to get started, so he needed
to find investors. But it was quite difficult for Schultz to find those investors for two main reasons— First, they
didn’t understand why anyone would pay extra for a fancy cup of coffee, and this created a lot of uncertainty
about the whole idea. Would they eventually get their money back? Now, of course, it seems like the world was
just waiting for a good café latte to come along. I’ve certainly bought my share of fancy coffee drinks. OK, the
other reason for the uncertainty among possible investors was the fact that Schultz kept talking about using his
company to do good things. That was unusual, since the main focus of most businesses is making money. If you
ask me, focusing only on making money is a great way to make a business fail, but I suppose a lot of people
would disagree with me on that.

So what is Starbucks’ model for success? To begin with, valuing employees is an essential part of the
Starbucks business model, and it’s an idea that many businesses could learn from, I think. In fact, I really
shouldn’t use the term employees to refer to the people who work at Starbucks, since they’re actually called
partners. As you know, partners in a company are equals, so I guess Starbucks wants to show its employees how
important they are to the company. A well-known quotation from Schultz is that, “Success is best when it’s
shared.” and Starbucks does share its profits with its employees—sorry—with its partners! Not only are
Starbucks wages a little higher than in other service jobs, partners who work enough hours can receive stock in
the company. I mean, how great is that?! If Starbucks has a good year, their employee stockholders also have a
good year. Now, let’s think back to a younger Howard Schultz trying to convince investors that instead of
keeping employees’ salaries as low as possible— you know, in order to make a bigger profit—he was planning to
pay his employees more in order to make their lives better. It must have been a difficult idea for the investors to
accept. Well, Schultz was persistent, and he had confidence in his ideas—And in light of how quickly Starbucks
grew, that persistence clearly paid off.
 Another important aspect of the Starbucks business model has been to treat the customers as individuals
and to value them as people. It’s no accident that your name is hand-written on your coffee cup and that the
coffee can be customized in any number of ways to suit your taste. According to the company website, “Our
mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

OK. As long as we’re trying to learn lessons from Schultz and his company, it’s important to point out that
Starbucks has experienced some failures along the way. Schultz has given up his position as CEO on more than
one occasion over the years. The first time was in 2000, and the company experienced some major problems as a
result. Those problems were caused by the company moving away from Schultz’s original vision. Instead, after
Schultz quit, they moved away from being a company that cared about its employees and focused on making as
much money as possible. And though every company evolves over time, this was not the kind of change that
Schultz wanted. Starbucks’ sales were down, and some stores had been closed when Schultz returned to the
company in 2008. So in the hope of turning the company around, he outlined a set of plans for social
responsibility—buying coffee only from ethical growers, doing community service, and making Starbucks stores
more environmentally sustainable. And although he quit the job of CEO again more recently, he stayed on with
the company in a new position, his goal now being the same as it was in the beginning—to have a successful
company that also does good things. And this is where we can find a valuable lesson to take away from the
Starbucks story. Customers have supported this company for many years now and made it a success, and that’s at
least partly because customers are willing to spend a little more to buy products from a business that has strong
values and that acts responsibly. They want to feel good about the companies they buy from, and any company
that wants to be successful needs to keep this in mind. Thanks, and we do have a few minutes for questions.
*****End*****