Life Lessons I Have Learned from Behind the Green Apron...20 years later...

There is a book of poetry by William Blake, written in 1789. I don’t like poetry, so I’ve never read the whole thing, I do like the illustrations and I love the title: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. I like to think I would have come up with this title myself, had Blake not gotten it first. In a nutshell, Innocence and Experience are definitions of consciousness that examine Milton’s Paradise Lost; i.e. ‘Paradise’ and the ‘Fall’. Why am I even thinking about this dusty tome? I work at Starbucks Coffee Company; and have worked here--(on and off) for over 20 years.

Starbucks is, and has always been, a very visual company. Some things they have done, they have done very well; others, they have faltered. Those experiences are documented, verified, quantified, interpreted and magnified under a lens of media scrutiny, Wall Street analysis and public judgment. They have a solid basis in cold hard facts; scientifically proven, from the likes of Forbes and Bloomberg; whereas the lessons, I am going to share here, have no foundation other than my own personal experience and meandering memories.

Twenty years is a fair amount of time and a lot of life has happened in that span. I’ve had jobs; some good, some not so good. I raised my son as a single parent, I’ve traveled, moved, loved and lost, loved and won, and now as I sit on the edge of my bed on the shady side of 50 , donning the green apron; I am overwhelmed with a sense of, for a better word, nostalgia. Throughout my adult life, Starbucks has always been a touchstone for me, acting as a litmus test, by which I judged many of my professional and personal experiences and struggles. Some might accuse me of romanticizing Starbucks, and perhaps I do; but, I am not sure there is anything wrong with holding tight to positive ideals and thoughts. The world could use a little more of that; and so for me, going back, doesn’t feel like going backwards, it feels like going home.

I started working at Starbucks in the mid-nineties. It was a different company then, in a different world. They had a total of 84 stores. There was no Google; eBooks, Kindles and Nooks didn’t exist; mobile phones were the tools of high end drug dealers and the World Wide Web was just being born. I had graduated college and found myself entering the work force as a young, educated, idealistic, single parent; and it’s this last part—‘single parent’—that defined the course of my life.

Allow me to share a couple of statistics, for the sake of perspective. In 1990, the average entry level salary, for a female college graduate was $28,000.00 (for their male counterpart, it was $39,000)* and childcare was an average of $500+ per month. Labor laws weren't as strict or defined as they are today, so the average work week was between 50-60 hours. Although I had a few jobs after college and tried to make the balancing act work; the math just wasn’t there: costly child care + entry level pay = I was broke. Odds suggested I would remain that way. So, I did what any practical person in my position would. I moved home with my parents; and not to take a dig at my parents, but moving home definitely felt like I was going backwards.

I decided to start my own business, which seemed like a possible way of ‘getting ahead’; but more important, being able to control my schedule enough to be present in my son’s life. It would have to be a very specific kind of business that allowed any modicum of freedom. After much deliberation and Virgo-esque analysis, I decided on a coffee bar, which I called, Brewed Awakening. Brewed Awakening, was a fully contained 9’ coffee cart, with a sink, refrigerator and trailer hitch.

By today’s standards, starting a coffee bar is none too original and the name has certainly been done to death; but, this was in 1990 and the concept was still novel. So, I chased events with my coffee cart; rodeos, cow chip bingo, boat and, RV shows, John Deere tractor expos, filling the cowboys of the north up with ‘Christian Crank’, aka: caffeine. After a few years of hitching my cart to the back of my car and chasing events, I leased a 200 foot piece of concrete sidewalk at the Shasta Factory Outlets, and Brewed Awakening became a mobile fixture.

Somewhere along the roads, maybe in a truck stop, maybe in a rest stop, maybe in an outhouse, I picked up one of the many outdated periodicals that litter the counters and tables of such places, and struck upon an interview with a person, who at the time, I could only describe as visionary. He spoke about the soul of a company as if it was a real thing; he likened entrepreneurship to parenthood and talked about passion, belief and commitment. I loved what I read and in my still soft, 20-something year old brain, I believed that this was how companies, business’ were meant to be operated. If he could really walk his talk, then his idea of expanding his little company was probable, not necessarily imminent; but probable.

When I got home, I pulled out all my resources and let those 120+ college units fly into action. I gathered the yellow pages, newspaper articles, library card, calling card, pen and paper; and wrote him a letter. I told him how inspired I was by his vision and thoughts about business. I also dropped the ‘not so subtle’ hint, that if ever Starbucks expanded to ‘remote markets’; i.e.: where I lived, I would love the chance to work at a store. I think my exact words were along the lines of, ‘if you expand, I am your girl’. Even then, I believed in the power of brevity.

Who knew; there might be an opportunity buried in there somewhere. I had already learned that you have to ask for what you want with commitment, awareness, without fear and no expectations. The counter part of this equation is that you have to be prepared to receive what you ask for, even if the outcome doesn’t look the way you thought it would.

Ask for what you want, and be prepared to get it...

* Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-60, “Money Income of Households, Families, and Persons in the United States,” “Income, Poverty, and Valuation of Noncash Benefits,” various years; and Series P-60, “Money Income in the United States,” various years. From Digest of Education Statistics 2005. For 2009: nces.ed.gov.

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