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Melissa Allison
Guess how @Starbucks cofounder Jerry Baldwin signed memos when he ran the company? "Onward"!
24 Sep
Michael Dougan
I'm one of Starbucks' original employees, I remember Baldwin's "Onward"!
28 Sep
Melissa Allison
Why doesn't Howard honor the heritage of things like J. Baldwin originally signing Starbucks memos "Onward"?
30 Sep
Does anyone else recall Baldwin's Onward memos? Has anyone heard Schultz acknowledge them?
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Jim ... interesting factoid about the origins of Howard's "onward" sign-off.
What I found really interesting in ONWARD was Howard mentioning, at least two times, being the "founder" of Starbucks. Hmm... quite odd.
Posted by: john moore (from Brand Autopsy) | October 06, 2011 at 04:10 PM
Jim...the list of things Howard has not told the real story about is long. This is just a tiny insignificant example.
Posted by: Bdan | October 06, 2011 at 04:31 PM
Vigorously nodding my head in agreement!
Posted by: The Tame Lion | October 06, 2011 at 09:54 PM
For all intents and purposes, Howard founded Starbucks as we know it today, and nobody can deny that. Sure, there was a store called Starbucks before he joined the company and later purchased it, but it wasn't a chain of shops that sold coffee and espresso beverages.
Did Howard makes some stuff up or indluge in his memoirs? I would imagine so, since everybody does. I don't usually read autobiographies for that very reason.
Posted by: Waltie | October 07, 2011 at 04:44 AM
Old Howie baby is one full of s**t guy!
Posted by: burned by the Bux | October 08, 2011 at 10:31 AM
who cares? really. in the scheme of things this is such minutiae. jog your brain, start a real conversation.
Posted by: michelle | October 08, 2011 at 01:25 PM
You wannna know why Howard hasn't credited Baldwin? Because Schultz is a WORLD CLASS douchebag!
Posted by: ncsm | October 10, 2011 at 09:06 AM
Theres more incidences like that in the book where he takes credit for something someone else did.
For example, in I believe Chapter 15, he says something along the lines of "Sometimes I ask our leaders, do we deserve our partners?"
At either the New Orleans leadership conference or the 2011 investor conference, he said that same thing, but credited it to one of the other leaders in the audience, I believe Mark Lindstrom.
In the book though, he makes it sound like he came up with it.
Posted by: Reading Onward | October 10, 2011 at 02:41 PM
A couple years back at a district holiday roadshow, our DM made a big deal about something Howard said in a video, "Be the change you would like to see in the world." A barista in attendance was quick to point out that it was Gandhi who said it first.
Posted by: baristamclane | October 18, 2011 at 02:32 AM
Did Howard use the phrase "Onward"? Did he say he invented the use of the term? If he used it and didn't say he invented the use of the word then there's not really a problem. I don't know if he's required to acknowledge that someone else used it before him. Howard seems to get the same scrutiny Steve Jobs gets. For some reason people care about Jobs' personal life yet they don't know a thing about the personal lives of the CEO's of the other companies they patronize.
Posted by: Mike | October 20, 2011 at 06:26 PM