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From Homeless to Successful CEO

2015-11-23T12:47:37+00:00

When Dave Sandoval was 17 years old he decided to move out. “I couldn't live in a house without food anymore,” I made myself homeless, I walked away, and it was a better life than the one I had."

Sandoval, now 53, has mostly good memories from his year as a homeless, like sleeping on the beach and being the first person to catch a wave in the morning, or pretending to be drunk at parties so the hosts would offer him their couch for the night. "When you're that young, you're used to acting defiant," Sandoval says. "And making myself homeless was a way of proving to the world that I didn't need a home."

The carefree and entrepreneurial-minded man spent the next 35 years jumping from job to job. He worked at a bowling alley, sold stereos, fixed golf carts, worked at an oil factory, washed trucks, sold real estate, and eventually sold stocks. He got fired from every single one of those jobs, "not because I wasn't there on time, but because I kept telling the boss 'We could do this better or cheaper,'" Sandoval says.

In the early '90s, after hearing that his aunt died of multiple sclerosis because of the way she ate, Sandoval went to work for a Japanese pharmaceutical company to promote healthy living. However, he soon learned that the company was not in fact selling organic and unpasteurized products. "I said, 'Who the hell is going to do something just because it's right? Why does everything have to be driven by somebody's self-interest?'" Sandoval says.

That's when he started making 100% pure products out of his home in 1994, and he now has 100 pharmacists and almost 30,000 salespeople around the world working for his company, Purium Health Products - which hit $47 million in revenue last year and is expecting to hit $75 million in revenue this year - a 276% growth in just three years.

He says there are three important lessons he's learned during his lifetime that helped him get to where he is today:

1. Don't place blame on others.

If Sandoval could tell himself one thing at age 17 when he left home, it would be: "Do not blame my parents for my situation."

He says he was angry at them for a while because they didn't do the things for him that his friends' parents did for them. "That was a mistake," Sandoval says. "The only thing they have to do is give you the opportunity; it's up to you after that."

While you may be born into a less-than-ideal situation, he says you can't focus on that — you have to make decisions based on how you can move forward today. Blaming others won't get you anywhere. If anything, the negativity and bitterness that come along with pointing fingers will hold you back from succeeding.

He says you should go even one step further and take responsibility for your actions and decisions. Just own them. It'll pay off in the end.

2. You have to be willing to work hard.

When Sandoval was in seventh grade, living in Bellflower, California, his father was working at a trucking company that helped ship Hershey's chocolate. Sandoval figured a can or two of the chocolate wouldn't be missed that much so he started making chocolate Rice Krispies treats with it on the weekend to sell at school.

At $0.50 a piece, the treats brought in about $80 a week - more than his dad was making with all of his side jobs, including wrapping newspapers, cutting copper out of wire, and collecting bottles. "I thought, 'Wow this is pretty cool,'" Sandoval says. "Every entrepreneur has a story like that."

3. If you want to succeed, you have to gain people's trust.

The single most important lesson Sandoval has learned, he says, came from a coworker during his time as a stereo salesman. Sandoval says he had always been the best salesman at any job he took ... until he worked with Mike.

Mike sold the most stereos every week, even when he was on vacation, that’s because people trusted him. Sandoval had been trying to sell stereos by describing all of its features, but Mike just walked up to potential buyers and said, "Oh my god you're gonna love the way this sounds with that other stuff I sold you! This is just fantastic!" And they would go, "Okay Mike, I'll take it" because they trusted him.

Sandoval says this was the No. 1 lesson he took with him to Purium Health Products. "When I started my company I said the number one thing that I'm selling is trust." He knew if people trusted him, then they would believe him when he said, "These products are 100% pure."

Later, after he had started his company, Sandoval became a regular guest on different radio shows in New York. He says when listeners called in, the radio station would often ask them, "Why do you listen to this show?" and they all said one thing: "Because we trust Dave."

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The incredible story of Howard Schultz

2015-10-23T11:19:25+00:00

Against all odds - The rags-to-riches story of Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz.

Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz says he drinks four to five cups of coffee a day.

Thirty years ago, Howard Schultz got into the coffee business with one goal in mind: to enhance the personal relationship between people and their coffee.

He's now responsible for Starbucks, one of the world's most beloved brands, and worth at least $3 billion as chairman and CEO of the Fortune 500 Company. But it wasn't an easy path to the top.

How did Schultz, who came from a "working poor" family in the Brooklyn projects, overcome adversity and grow a quaint Seattle coffeehouse into the largest coffee chain on Earth?

Schultz was born on July 19, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said growing up in the project exposed him to the world's wealth disparity.

He experienced poverty at an early age. When Schultz was 7 years old, his father broke his ankle while working as a truck driver picking up and delivering diapers. At the time, his father had no health insurance or worker's compensation, and the family was left with no income.

In high school, Schultz played football and earned an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University. By the time Schultz started college, he decided he wasn't going to play football after all. To pay for school, he took out student loans and worked at various jobs, including working as a bartender and even occasionally selling his blood.

After graduation in 1975, Schultz spent a year working at a ski lodge in Michigan waiting for inspiration. He finally landed a job in the sales training program at Xerox, where he got experience cold-calling and pitching word processors in New York. The work didn't fulfill him, so after three years he left to take a job at Hammarplast, a housewares business owned by a Swedish company called Perstorp.

There, Schultz ascended the ranks to vice president and general manager, leading a team of sales-people out of the US office in New York. It was at Hammarplast that he first encountered Starbucks. The coffee shop had a few stores in Seattle and caught his attention when it ordered an unusually large number of drip coffeemakers.

Intrigued, Schultz traveled to Seattle to meet the company's then owners, Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. He was struck by the partners' passion and their courage in selling a product that would appeal only to a small niche of gourmet coffee enthusiasts.

A year later, Schultz then 29-year-old finally persuaded Baldwin to hire him as the director of retail operations and marketing. At the time, Starbucks only had three stores, but they were selling pounds of coffee for home use, Schultz said.

Schultz's career as well as Starbucks' fate changed forever when the company sent him to an international housewares show in Milan. While walking around the city, he encountered several espresso bars where owners knew their customers by name and served them drinks like cappuccinos and cafe lattes. Schultz had an "epiphany" the moment he understood the personal relationship that people could have to coffee.

In 1985, Schultz left Starbucks after his ideas to cultivate an Italian-like experience for coffee-lovers was rejected by the founders. He soon started his own coffee company: Il Giornale (Italian for "the daily").

In order to get Il Giornale off the ground, Schultz had to raise more than $1.6 million. "In the course of the year I spent trying to raise money, I spoke to 242 people, and 217 of them said no," he wrote. "Try to imagine how disheartening it can be to hear that many times why your idea is not worth investing in. ... It was a very humbling time."

Schultz spent two years away from Starbucks, wholly focused on opening Il Giornale stores that replicated the coffee culture he'd seen in Italy. In August 1987, Il Giornale bought Starbucks for $3.8 million, and Schultz became CEO of Starbucks Corporation. At the time, there were six stores.

America swiftly took a liking to Starbucks. In 1992, the company went public on the NASDAQ; its 165 stores pulled in $93 million in revenue that year. The world eventually caught on, and by 2000 Starbucks had grown into a global operation of more than 3,500 stores and $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

Starbucks' success made Schultz rich, and in 2001 he demonstrated his growing love for Seattle when he bought the Seattle Supersonics for $200 million. But the investment turned sour as the team struggled and Schultz feuded with players. In 2006, he sold the Sonics to a group of investors that moved the team to Oklahoma City, severely damaging his popularity in Seattle. He later called owning the team "a nightmare."

Running Starbucks came with set-backs, too. In 2008, Schultz temporarily closed 7,100 US stores in order to retrain baristas on how to make the perfect espresso. Over the next two years he led Starbucks' massive turnaround, with profits tripling from $315 million to $945 million by 2010.

As part of the overhaul, Schultz announced that Starbucks would aim to hire 10,000 military veterans and their spouses by 2018. Last year the company announced it would pay for employees' college tuition.

Throughout his career at Starbucks, Schultz has always prioritized his employees, who he calls "partners." Largely because of his father's experience when he was injured, Schultz offers all his employees (including part-time workers) complete health-care coverage as well as stock options.

In the last 28 years, Schultz has grown the coffeemaker to include more than 21,000 stores in 65 countries (ironically, there are none in Italy). "I've always been driven and hungry," Schultz said. "Long after others have stopped to rest and recover, I'm still running, chasing after something nobody else could ever see."

Schultz has parlayed Starbucks' extraordinary success into two books: "Pour Your Heart Into it: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time" (1999) and New York Times bestseller "Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing its Soul" (2012).

As Starbucks has continued to grow — it now has annual sales of more than $16 billion — so has Schultz's fortune. His net worth is estimated to be $3 billion. He revealed in "Pour Your Heart Out" that his tremendous professional success is a tribute to his late father, who "never attained fulfillment and dignity from work he found meaningful."

Do Won Chang

2014-12-04T17:04:42+00:00

What’s his story? As founder and chief executive of Forever 21 Inc., Do Won "Don" Chang oversees one of the world's fastest-growing fashion retailers, with 457 stores in 15 countries. From his office near downtown Los Angeles, he oversees an army of more than 20,000 employees ringing up sales of the season's trendiest designs from Chiba (Japan) to Chico (Calif.).

Growing up in South Korea, Chang worked in coffee shops. So when he immigrated to California in 1981 at age 18, he figured hot Joe would be his ticket to the American dream. Flashy Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs changed his mind. "I noticed the people who drove the nicest cars were all in the garment business," Chang said.

Chang opened his first store in L.A.'s Highland Park neighborhood in 1984, calling it Fashion 21. As sales took off and the clientele grew beyond the Korean American community, he changed the name to Forever 21. Other stores soon followed in the U.S. and overseas, including one in the Seoul neighborhood of Myung-Dong, where Chang grew up.

The economic downturn forced Chang to make some cuts. The company ended 2009 with seven fewer stores than the year before. Still, revenue is climbing. In the last fiscal year, Forever 21 posted $1.7 billion in sales. It projects revenue of $2.3 billion this year. Much of that is from aggressive expansion — Chang is eyeing Israel and Hong Kong, for example. Equally important is a broad lineup. In addition to Forever 21, the chain has seven other formats, each serving distinct breeds of mall rats, including XXI Forever, which focuses on higher end couture lines, and Heritage 1981, featuring vintage-styled clothes.

Chang opened his first store with his wife, Jin Sook, and has run the privately held company as a family business ever since. Daughter Linda heads marketing. His other daughter, Esther, is in charge of visual elements of the chain, such as graphics and window displays. "It's important my daughters learn from the hard work my wife and I put into this company," said Chang, who said a stock offering isn't likely any time soon. "Who better to look out for your best interests than family?"

Chang is proud to have added his chapter to an American classic: the immigrant success story. "Forever 21 gives hope and inspiration to people who come here with almost nothing," said Chang, who lives in a $16.5-million home in Beverly Hills and never went to college. "And that is a reward that humbles me: the fact that immigrants coming to America, much like I did, can come into a Forever 21 and know that all of this was started by a simple Korean immigrant with a dream."

Making it big in the shmatte business isn't easy. Chang tells young would-be entrepreneurs that they need perseverance, and they better know their stuff. "You can't go into business thinking that success will come to you in just one or two years," said Chang, who insists that a deep understanding of business and legal culture was key to his success. Retail, he said, "is like a marathon, not a 100-meter dash."

A religious man, Chang dedicates much of his free time to spiritual pursuits. He and his wife run the Chang 21 Foundation, which donates money to churches and other faith groups. He travels to perform missionary work and cites the Bible as his favorite book. For Chang, stylish tops, skinny jeans and cut-rate accessories are just tools to help him "travel to places in Third World countries that desperately need aid." Every Forever 21 shopping bag has a citation for a Bible verse printed on the bottom.

Chang occasionally plays racquetball or unwinds in front of the TV, watching his beloved Lakers. How focused is Chang? He hasn't uploaded a single app to his smart phone.

Success didn't come without struggle. Chang's company has been accused of copying high-end designer garments and sued several times over copyright issues (the matters were settled out of court). But Chang says that the biggest challenge is the sheer speed of change. "Everyone wants something different, and they want it immediately," he said. "You have to be very fast because other retailers are right behind you."

What about today? Do Won Chang owns the clothing retail store Forever 21 and is worth around $5 billion.

Howard Schultz

2014-09-18T13:51:09+00:00

What’s his story? Howard D. Shultz was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 19, 1953. His family was poor and they had to move to a housing project when he was 3.

Schultz was a natural athlete and was a great basketball and football player. He got a football scholarship to Northen Michigan University in 1970.

He graduated with a degree in communication in 1975 and started working as salesman for a company that sold European coffee makers in the U.S. He was rising through the rank and eventually promoted to director of sales in 1980.

He noticed that he was selling more coffee makers to a small operation in Seattle, Washington, known then as the Starbucks Coffee Tea and Spice Company, than to Macy's. "Every month, every quarter, these numbers were going up, even though Starbucks just had a few stores," Schultz later remembered.

Howard Schultz still distinctly remembers the first time he walked into the original Starbucks in 1981. "I had never had a good cup of coffee. I met the founders of the company, and really heard for the first time the story of great coffee”.

A year after meeting with Starbucks' founders, in 1982, Howard Schultz was hired as director of retail operations and marketing for the growing coffee company, which, at the time, only sold coffee beans, not coffee drinks.

In 1983, while traveling in Milan, Italy, he was struck by the number of coffee bars he encountered. An idea then occurred to him: Starbucks should sell not just coffee beans, but coffee drinks. Eventually, he became CEO and chairman of the Starbucks.

In 2000, Schultz publicly announced that he was resigning as Starbucks' CEO. Eight years later, however, he returned to head the company.

What about today? Howard D. Schultz is best known as the chairman and CEO of Starbucks, and is worth $2 billion.