Successful Business Strategies

  As an entrepreneur myself, I realize the importance of an successful business strategy to infiltrate the market and surpass the competition by offering products and services where needs are not being filled. In this series of blogs, I will take you through many different entrepreneur's that held down their strategies, and rose to the top.  Not only will I focus on a series of large corporate being's but also the small little dainty ones that you may pass by along your path.

 I have a firm belief that everyone was placed in your life for a reason and there is much to be learned from just about anyone.  My own grandfather taught me things that I still consider and respect to this day.  The first person that I would like to talk about is Howard Schultz.  Who is Howard?  If you like coffee(like I tend to on a hot steamy day) you may pass by one of his coffee shops, also known as Starbucks.

I became interested in Howard Shultz and his company strategy back in 2004 when I attended as small community college a couple of years out of high school also known as Beal College.  I had a passion for understanding how organizations work, and his book called "Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company, one cup at a time" also co authored by Dori Jones Yang.

Howard discovered in travels throughout Europe and especially Italy, the vast amount of small Barista's  that offered sensational smelling coffee.  He admired the romance of the coffee shop atmosphere and how those things brought together the community in the country.  His thoughts were swarming of how to bring that atmosphere back to the United States by the masses without loosing quality.  He developed this centralized system of management that has allowed the company continuous growth for years.  At once point he had left the company, but shortly returned as CEO to bring it back to life.  The internal issues were resolved by closing doors to many shops and reorganizing the company.  This strategy worked and the stock prices soared once again!

Some of the things that I gathered from Shultz's book included:

1.  Have a vision and passion.  This vision must be the big picture of where you want your company to be long term(5-10 years), medium term(2 years), as well as short term (1 year).  This vision can be broken down into many smaller steps which will be the goals for the organization.  The goals need to be measurable.

2.  Treat your employees well.  Howard wanted to ensure every employee felt a part of the overall vision.  He understood the concept of caring for them and gave them all health benefits.  Some of the most critical advice one can give is to learn to ask for help when it is needed and understanding one can't do it all by themselves.  Attached at the end of this blog is a short interview with Howard Shultz which explains how he started the company and gave much of his glory to his employees.

3.  Understand Change.  Change is crucial to the success of any company and in the words of John C. Maxwell in the book Developing the Leader Within You "Change the leader, change the organization"!(pg. 49).  Everyday other companies strategies change, new emerging technology as well as governmental policies can interrupt the daily flow of activities.  A leader in any industry must initiate the change, foresee the future, and anticipate how it is going to affect the organization.

4.  Care for your community.  Howard not only provided a service, product, and atmosphere for the community but in efforts to give back Starbucks built water projects, immunized children, and built schools.  These selfless acts of social responsibility shows the true dedication of Starbucks.  You not only see the results of Howard's efforts but you can see and hear his sincerity in caring for those around him.

I hope that you enjoyed this tidbit of information on this company which I have been curious about for years.  His book is well worth the read, and we can learn much from his business strategies to implement within our own company.