If you pour your heart into your work, or into any worthy enterprise, you can achieve dreams others may think impossible.

Always challenge the old ways.

When I returned as CEO in 2008, Starbucks had forgotten that meaningful innovations balance an organization's heritage with modern-day relevance and market differentiation, so we had to reorient. In one brainstorming session, we visited and observed great retailers, then asked ourselves, 'If Starbucks did not exist, what type of coffee experience would we create?

But when you really believe-in yourself, in your dream-you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No great achievement happens by luck.

In anything we do, any endeavor, it's not what you do; it's why you do it

Customers don't always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren't enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call "the third place" ... a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn't know they had.

It's ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I'm proud of that heritage. It's where I'm from, who I am.