Success is empty if you arrive at the finish line alone.

My passion. My commitment. This is the most important thing in my life other than my family.

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

Success is something that has to be earned every day.

Early on I realized that I had to hire people smarter and more qualified than I was in a number of different fields, and I had to let go of a lot of decision-making. I can't tell you how hard that is. But if you've imprinted your values on the people around you, you can dare to trust them to make the right moves.

Despite the fact that Starbucks has grown to be a large company. We've always played music in our stores and has always acted as an opportunity to create a mood in our stores. And customers started asking, "What song are you playing and can I buy that?" . And we said "No." And that was kind of the catalyst for beginning to look at music. We started out with our own compilations and after the success of that. We had the courage to say, "Let's produce our own record." and the first record was with Ray Charles before he unfortunately passed away.

While we are a coffee company at heart, Starbucks provides much more than the best cup of coffee—we offer a community gathering place where people come together to connect and discover new things.