By: Vintage Value Investing
Harvest Exchange
October 12, 2017

Investing Lessons from Starbucks’s Howard Schultz

This article was originally published on MastersInvest.com.

It goes without saying that business and investment are linked. To be able to do one effectively, you need to understand the other. And understanding the ingredients of a great business most certainly helps the investment process become great in itself.

“I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.” <strong>Warren Buffett</strong>

While I enjoy studying great investors, I also enjoy learning about great business people and hearing how they’ve developed their companies. One of my favourite podcast series is ‘How I Built This’, hosted by Guy Raz. He’s had some great guests on his show including Southwest Airline’s Herb Kelleher, Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia, Spanx’s Sara Blakely, Whole Food’s John Mackay, 1800-Got-Junk’s Brian Scudmore,

Kickstarter’s Perry Chen and Buzzfeed’s Jonah Peretti to name just a few. In listening to all of these great people, I’ve noticed lots of commonalities around their cultures, innovation, customer focus and management philosophy.

“When investing, we view ourselves as business analysts – not as market analysts, not as macroeconomic analysts, and not even as security analysts.” Warren Buffett

A recent episode featured Howard Shultz, one of America’s most successful entrepreneur’s and the man behind Starbucks. The interview begins with Howard telling the story of growing up in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and two siblings in a housing project in Brooklyn, where a real sense of community and diverse neighbours of like-minded values were prevalent. His dad, a blue collar worker, was injured on the job in the 1960’s, and found himself without healthcare or workers compensation. This incident fractured Howard’s belief in the American dream. However these experiences would play a key role in determining the culture that would ultimately define Starbucks.

Originally Published at: Investing Lessons from Starbucks’s Howard Schultz