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03/13/2018

How Being Values-driven Rather Than Profit-driven Helped Make Starbucks More Profitable

Founder Howard Schultz tells their story

When you build and scale a massive business, you're going to have a massive impact on the world. So when should you start thinking about whether that impact is for good or for ill? For many companies, “social responsibility” is a nice-to-have that founders and CEOs only consider when the business is established and profitable.

In contrast, the founder of one particular small, money-losing retailer decided that his first priority was to provide health insurance and stock options to his blue-collar, part-time workers. That founder was Howard Schultz, and that small, money-losing company is Starbucks.

In this week's episode of Masters of Scale, Howard Schultz joins me to talk about the challenge of achieving both financial success and social impact — what Howard calls “the fragile balance between profit and conscience.” 

Please select this link to read the complete article from LinkedIn.

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