Pour Your Heart Into It (3 page)

By the time I got to high school, I understood the stigma of living in the Projects. Canarsie High School was less than a mile away, but to get there I had to walk down streets lined with small single-family homes and duplexes. The people who lived there, I knew, looked down on us.

Once I asked out a girl from a different part of New York. I remember how her father’s face dropped in stages as he asked:

“Where do you live?”

“We live in Brooklyn,” I answered.

“Where?”

“Canarsie.”

“Where?”

“Bayview Projects.”

“Oh.”

There was an unspoken judgment about me in his reaction, and it irked me to see it.

As the oldest of three children, I had to grow up quickly. I started earning money at an early age. At twelve, I had a paper route; later I worked behind the counter at the local luncheonette. At sixteen, I got an after-school job in the garment district of Manhattan, at a furrier, stretching animal skins. It was horrendous work, and left thick callouses on my thumbs. I spent one hot summer in a sweat-shop, steaming yarn at a knitting factory. I always gave part of my earnings to my mother—not because she insisted but because I felt bad for the position my parents were in.

Still, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the American dream was vibrant, and we all felt entitled to a piece of it. My mother drummed that into us. She herself had never finished high school, and her biggest dream was a college education for all three of her kids. Wise and pragmatic in her blunt, opinionated way, she gave me tremendous confidence. Over and over, she would put powerful models in front of me, pointing out individuals who had made something of their lives and insisting that I, too, could achieve anything I set my heart on. She encouraged me to challenge myself, to place myself in situations that weren’t comfortable, so that I could learn to overcome adversity. I don’t know how she came to that knowledge, because she didn’t live by those rules. But she willed us to succeed.

Years later, during one of her visits to Seattle, I showed my mother our new offices at Starbucks Center. As we walked around, passing departments and workstations, seeing people talking on the phone and typing on computers, I could tell her head was just spinning at the size and scope of the operation. Finally, she edged closer to me and whispered into my ear: “Who pays all these people?” It was beyond her imagination.

During my childhood, I never dreamed of working in business. The only entrepreneur I knew was my uncle, Bill Farber. He had a small paper factory in the Bronx, where he later hired my father as a foreman. I didn’t know what work I would eventually do, but I knew I had to escape the struggle my parents lived with every day. I had to get out of the Projects, out of Brooklyn. I remember lying in bed at night and thinking:
What if I had a crystal ball and could see the future?
But I quickly shut out the thought, for I realized I would be too frightened to look into it.

I was aware of only one escape route: sports. Like the kids in the movie
Hoop Dreams
, my friends and I thought they were the ticket to a great life. In high school, I applied myself to schoolwork only when I had to, because what I learned in the classroom seemed irrelevant. Instead I spent hours and days playing football.

I’ll never forget the day I made the team. As a symbol of that honor, I got my letter, the big blue
C
that identified me as an accomplished athlete. But my mother couldn’t afford to pay $29 for the letter jacket, and asked me to wait a week or so till Dad got his paycheck. I was devastated. Everybody at school had been planning to wear those jackets on one agreed-upon day. I couldn’t show up without a jacket, but I also didn’t want to make my mother feel any worse. So I borrowed money from a friend to buy the jacket and wore it on the appointed day, but I hid it from my parents until they were able to afford it.

My biggest triumph in high school was becoming quarterback, which made me a Big Man on Campus among the 5,700 students of Canarsie High. The school was so poor that we didn’t even have a football field, and all our games were away games. Our team was pretty bad, but I was one of the better players on it.

One day, a recruiter came to scout an opposing player at one of our games. I didn’t know he was there. A few days later, though, I received a letter from what, in my frame of reference, sounded like another planet, Northern Michigan University. They were recruiting for the football team. Was I interested? I whooped and hollered. It felt as good as an invitation to the NFL draft.

Northern Michigan eventually offered me a football scholarship, the only offer I got. Without it, I don’t know how I could have realized my mother’s dream of going to college.

During spring break of my last year in high school, my parents drove me to see this unimaginable place. We drove nearly a thousand miles to Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We had never been outside New York, and my parents were caught up in the adventure of it. We drove across wooded mountains, through vast stretches of flat fields, past huge lakes that looked like oceans. When we finally arrived, the campus looked like an America I had seen only in the movies, with budding trees, laughing students, flying frisbees.

I was out of Brooklyn at last.

By coincidence, Starbucks was founded that same year in Seattle, a city even farther beyond my imagination at that time.

I loved the freedom and the open space of college, although I felt lonely and out of place at first. I made some close friends my freshman year and ended up rooming with them for four years, on and off campus. Twice I sent for my brother and he flew out to visit. One year, for Mother’s Day, I hitchhiked back to New York, surprising her.

It turned out I wasn’t as good a football player as I thought, and I ended up not playing after all. To stay in school I took out loans and worked part-time and summer jobs to pay for my expenses. I had a night job as a bartender, and I even sold my blood sometimes. Still, those were mostly fun years, a time with little responsibility. With a draft number of 332, I didn’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.

I majored in communications and took courses in public speaking and interpersonal communications. During senior year, I also picked up a few business classes, because I was starting to worry about what I would do after graduation. I maintained a B average, applying myself only when I had to take a test or make a presentation.

After four years, I became the first college graduate in my family. To my parents, I had attained the big prize: a diploma. But I had no direction. No one ever helped me see the value in the knowledge I was gaining. I’ve often joked since then: If someone had provided me with direction and guidance, I really could have been somebody.

It took years before I found my passion in life. Each step after that discovery was a quantum leap into something unknown, each move riskier than the last. But getting out of Brooklyn and earning a college degree gave me the courage to keep on dreaming.

For years I hid the fact that I grew up in the Projects. I didn’t lie about it, but I just didn’t bring it up, for it wasn’t much of a credential. But however much I tried to deny them, those memories of my early experiences were imprinted indelibly in my mind. I could never forget what it’s like to be on the other side, afraid to look into the crystal ball.

In December 1994, a
New York Times
article about Starbucks’ success mentioned that I had grown up in the Projects of Canarsie. After it appeared, I received letters from Bayview and other blighted neighborhoods. Most came from mothers, trying to guide their kids, who said that my story gave them hope.

The odds on my coming out of the environment in which I was raised and getting to where I am today are impossible to gauge. How did it happen?

The sun shone on me, it’s true, as my brother, Michael, always tells me. But my story is as much one of perseverance and drive as it is of talent and luck. I willed it to happen. I took my life in my hands, learned from anyone I could, grabbed what opportunity I could, and molded my success step by step.

Fear of failure drove me at first, but as I tackled each challenge, my anxiety was replaced by a growing sense of optimism. Once you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, other hurdles become less daunting. Most people can achieve beyond their dreams if they insist upon it. I’d encourage everyone to dream big, lay your foundations well, absorb information like a sponge, and not be afraid to defy conventional wisdom. Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

I can’t give you any secret recipe for success, any foolproof plan for making it in the world of business. But my own experience suggests that it
is
possible to start from nothing and achieve even beyond your dreams.

On a recent trip to New York I went back to Canarsie, to look around Bayview for the first time in nearly twenty years. It’s not bad, really, except for the bullet hole in the entry door and the burn marks on the buzzer sheet. When I lived there, we didn’t have iron gates on the windows, but then we didn’t have air-conditioners either. I saw a group of kids playing basketball, just as I used to, and watched a young mother pushing a stroller. A tiny boy looked up at me, and I wondered:
Which of these kids will break out and achieve their dreams?

I stopped by Canarsie High School, where the football team was practicing. In the warm autumn air, the blue uniforms and play calls brought the old exhilaration flooding back over me. I asked where the coach was. From the midst of the hefty backs and shoulder pads a small red-hooded figure emerged. To my surprise, I found myself face to face with Mike Camardese, a guy who had played on the team with me. He brought me up to date on the team, telling me how the school finally got its own football field. By coincidence, they were planning a ceremony that Saturday to name the field in honor of my old coach, Frank Morogiello. For the occasion, I decided to make a five-year commitment to help support the team. Without the support of Coach Morogiello, where would I be today? Maybe my gift will allow some Canarsie athlete, driven as I was, to rise above his roots and achieve something no one could ever imagine.

I’ve heard that some coaches face a curious dilemma. The world-class athletes on their teams—the players with the best skills and experience—sometimes falter when it comes to crunch time. Occasionally, though, there’s a player on the team, a blue-collar guy whose skills and training are not quite world-class. Yet at crunch time, he’s the one the coach sends out to the field. He’s so driven and so hungry to win that he can outperform the top athletes when it really matters.

I can identify with that blue-collar athlete. I’ve always been driven and hungry, so at crunch time I get a spurt of adrenaline. Long after others have stopped to rest and recover, I’m still running, chasing after something nobody else could ever see.

E
NOUGH
I
S
N
OT
E
NOUGH

Every experience prepares you for the next one. You just don’t ever know what the next one is going to be.

After graduating from college in 1975, like a lot of kids, I didn’t know what to do next. I wasn’t ready to go back to New York, so I stayed in Michigan, working at a nearby ski lodge. I had no mentor, no role model, no special teacher to help me sort out my options. So I took some time to think, but still no inspiration came.

After a year, I went back to New York and got a job with Xerox, in the sales training program. It was a lucky break, since I was able to attend the best sales school in the country, Xerox’s $100 million center in Leesburg, Virginia. I learned more there than in college about the worlds of work and business. They trained me in sales, marketing, and presentation skills, and I walked out with a healthy sense of self-esteem. Xerox was a blue-chip pedigree company, and I got a lot of respect when I told others who my employer was.

After completing the course, I spent six months making fifty cold calls a day. I knocked on doors of offices in midtown Manhattan, in a territory that ran from 42nd Street to 48th Street, from the East River to Fifth Avenue. It was a fantastic area, but I wasn’t allowed to close sales, just drum up good prospects.

Cold-calling was great training for business. It taught me to think on my feet. So many doors slammed on me that I had to develop a thick skin and a concise sales pitch for a then-newfangled machine called a word processor. But the work fascinated me, and I kept my sense of humor and adventure. I thrived on the competition, trying to be the best, to be noticed, to provide the most leads to my salesmen. I wanted to win.

Finally, I succeeded: I became a full salesman in the same territory. I got to be pretty good at it, wearing a suit, closing sales, and earning good commissions for three years. I sold a lot of machines and outperformed many of my peers. As I proved myself, my confidence grew. Selling, I discovered, has a lot to do with self-esteem. But I can’t say I ever developed a passion for word processors.

I paid off my college loans and rented an apartment in Greenwich Village with another guy. We were rolling, and having a great time. During one summer, eight of us rented a cottage in the Hamptons for weekends, and it was there, on the beach, July Fourth weekend, 1978, that I met Sheri Kersch.

With her flash of long wavy blonde hair and unflagging energy, Sheri attracted me with her impeccable style and class. She was in graduate school studying interior design and also spent summer weekends with a group of friends at the beach. She was not only beautiful but well-grounded, with solid midwestern values, from a close and loving family. We were both starting our careers, without a care in the world. We began dating, and the more I got to know her, the more I realized what a fine human being she was.

By 1979, though, I was restless in my job. I wanted something more challenging. A friend told me that a Swedish company, Perstorp, was planning to set up a U.S. division for its Hammarplast housewares subsidiary. It seemed like an exciting opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a growing company. Perstorp hired me and sent me to Sweden for three months of training. I stayed in the charming little cobblestone town of Perstorp, near Malmö, and explored Copenhagen and Stockholm on weekends. Europe overwhelmed me, with its sense of history and joy of life.