Was Howard Schultz the founder of Starbucks?

No. Starbucks was founded in 1971 and Schultz joined later as an employee, as director of retail operations and marketing. The company sent him to a trade show in Milan in 1983, where he took the idea of Italian coffee bars. The founders turned it down because they sold beans and did not want to run cafés. He left in 1985 to start a competitor called Il Giornale, and bought Starbucks in 1987 when the founders decided to sell.

Does travelling abroad make you more creative?

Not on its own. Across five studies published in 2009, Maddux and Galinsky found that time spent living abroad tracked with creativity while time spent travelling abroad did not. What appeared to matter was adaptation, how far somebody had actually adjusted themselves to a different place, rather than how many countries they had visited.

How old was Ray Kroc when he came across McDonald's?

He was 52 and selling Multimixer milkshake machines. A single burger stand in San Bernardino ordered eight of them at once, which was unusual enough that he drove out to look at the operation himself. He went on to franchise the McDonald brothers' system and bought them out in 1961.

What has to be in place before a business owner can work from another country?

The parts of the operation that depend on the owner being at a desk have to stop depending on it. That means the recurring work, the follow ups and the things that quietly get dropped run on systems rather than on presence, so consulting and product work carry on when the location changes. DETGAAO works with owners on that kind of setup.

How long do you have to stay somewhere for it to change how you work?

Long enough that it stops being comfortable. The research points to adaptation rather than exposure, and a two week trip does not produce it. A practical marker is the point where the novelty wears off and the place becomes ordinary, when remarkable weather stops being remarkable and turns into just the weather.

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It's not just about the coffee or long dead gurus

Ray Kroc was 52 and selling milkshake machines when a burger stand ordered eight at once. Howard Schultz was an employee whose bosses told him no. We file both under inspiration now. Nobody used that word at the time, and none of them had the ending yet.

July 31, 20265 min readMichael Fellner

Ray Kroc was 52 and selling milkshake machines. One day a burger stand in San Bernardino ordered eight of them. Eight. Most places bought one, and the ones buying two were doing well for themselves.

Made no sense to him, so he got in the car and drove out to look. You know how that one ends.

Think about it. A man in his fifties, sales job, driving across the country because a hamburger order looked odd. Nobody watching him pull out of that parking lot thought "ah, he is inspired". The words someone would have used would probably have been a bit less flattering.

A guy quitting over cappuccino

Howard Schultz wasn't the founder of Starbucks, which still surprises people. He was an employee. In 1983 they sent him to a trade show in Milan, he came back with an idea about coffee bars, and the founders said no. They sold beans. They didn't want to run cafés. So he left, started a competitor called Il Giornale, and bought Starbucks in 1987 when they finally decided to sell.

Told as a story about Italy, that's charming. Told as a Tuesday in 1985, it's a guy with a good job quitting his cushy job over a cappuccino disagreement, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in his life said exactly that to his face.

There are others. Stefan Sagmeister shuts his design studio for a full year, every seven years, and has done since 2000. On purpose. Income: off. Anita Roddick opened a shop in Brighton in 1976 to feed her two daughters, while her husband was off trekking across the Americas. Steve Jobs was 19 when he went to India for seven months to find a teacher who, it turned out, had died the year before. He came home unrecognisable to his own parents, Apple didn't exist yet, and wouldn't for another two years.

Every one of these stories and quite a few more are parked in this 'little' section of my brain. Indexed: inspiration. At the time, each one was somebody 'crazy' doing the thing you're not supposed to do. The kind of thing that would make a pretty sizable part of the LinkedIn recruiter community place your resume on the "hell no" pile.

They didn't know what would happen

The retelling always implies the ending was inevitable. They knew somehow ... no they didn't! Kroc's drive is a good decision because McDonald's happened. Schultz quitting is brave because Starbucks happened. Take the ending off and you've got a fifty-two-year-old chasing a hunch and a marketing guy who threw away a job. Let me be clear, that doesn't make their decisions less impressive, in fact quite the opposite. They 'went' for it, the people around them told them to cool it or rooted for them to crash and burn. They did it anyway.

None of them had it on the morning they decided. They had a hunch, and something that felt wrong about staying.

To be clear, I fully realize that nobody talks about the thousand others making 'crazy' decisions that don't end up being a multi billion dollar company, we talk about the ones that paid off. Great stories for a history book. Lousy way to inspire personal decisions.

At this point you think you know where this post is going. I bet you are wrong. (1 dollar, 2:1 odds)

Two weeks somewhere warm doesn't do it

Alright, one more study, then I'll stop.

Maddux and Galinsky, 2009, five of them. Living somewhere else tracked with creativity. Travelling somewhere else didn't. What counted was adaptation, how far somebody had actually adjusted to the place, not how many stamps they collected. As a friend of mine once said, you don't know a city until you've worked there for over a year, regardless if you spend every other week there, it's not the same.

It is annoying, because the two-week version (you know the two weeks US employees get in vacation time, and most of them don't even use) is the one that would make this all so much easier. A nation of inspired individuals. Reality is, you have to stay long enough that it stops being comfortable. Long enough that even paradise shows flaws, when 'what amazing weather' turns into 'it's hot'. Do I love that, not really, but "what's love got to do, got to do with it?"

The sensible path isn't the safe one

A bit over two years ago I decided to stop chasing something most people would have called irrational. For me it was a dream. At the time I thought I traded it for sensible and grown-up, then I spent two plus years caring more about someone else's future than they cared about their own.

That's not a story with a moral, it's just what happened. Now, operation 'let's do this thing' is back on, no more brown eyed distractions.

But if we're doing lessons, mine is that the sensible, grown-up path isn't the safe one people make it out to be. As one of my coding agents would put it: it fails quietly. Over a longer stretch, and nobody writes it up for posterity, nobody writes a blog post about it.

No, I don't have a plan - or do I?

The flights are booked. The work travels with me, which sounds like a line but isn't one. George and the rest of the fleet run the parts of my life I'd otherwise drop, and they don't much care what continent I'm on. The consulting carries on, helping companies actually adopt AI rather than announce they're going to. Building my own product and shipping it carries on, because that work doesn't stop either.

The rest has nothing attached to it. Getting out of my shell, collaborating with people I haven't met, putting my face and my opinion somewhere other than a laptop screen. What does that turn into? No idea. Which is sort of the point. Cappuccinos and burgers, remember.

This isn't me looking for applause or a cheer. Let's be real, a good number of the people who follow this (me) will be here to see whether I fall on my face. Fair enough, that's most of why any of us follow anything. (Wow did I just write that tongue twister? I keep it, it fits the mood).

Some of it I'll share here, the rest on travel.jizo.ch - the good bits and the parts that don't work.

So now you know where to look if you want to find out if it was just boring old burgers and cappuccino or something more.

As for the bet above: Venmo me!

A leather passport wallet and a Swiss international driving permit propped against a laptop running Fleet, whose briefing panel lists the booked and still-unbooked legs of the trip beside a six-days-out countdown.

Frequently asked questions

Was Howard Schultz the founder of Starbucks?: No. Starbucks was founded in 1971 and Schultz joined later as an employee, as director of retail operations and marketing. The company sent him to a trade show in Milan in 1983, where he took the idea of Italian coffee bars. The founders turned it down because they sold beans and did not want to run cafés. He left in 1985 to start a competitor called Il Giornale, and bought Starbucks in 1987 when the founders decided to sell.
Does travelling abroad make you more creative?: Not on its own. Across five studies published in 2009, Maddux and Galinsky found that time spent living abroad tracked with creativity while time spent travelling abroad did not. What appeared to matter was adaptation, how far somebody had actually adjusted themselves to a different place, rather than how many countries they had visited.
How old was Ray Kroc when he came across McDonald's?: He was 52 and selling Multimixer milkshake machines. A single burger stand in San Bernardino ordered eight of them at once, which was unusual enough that he drove out to look at the operation himself. He went on to franchise the McDonald brothers' system and bought them out in 1961.
What has to be in place before a business owner can work from another country?: The parts of the operation that depend on the owner being at a desk have to stop depending on it. That means the recurring work, the follow ups and the things that quietly get dropped run on systems rather than on presence, so consulting and product work carry on when the location changes. DETGAAO works with owners on that kind of setup.
How long do you have to stay somewhere for it to change how you work?: Long enough that it stops being comfortable. The research points to adaptation rather than exposure, and a two week trip does not produce it. A practical marker is the point where the novelty wears off and the place becomes ordinary, when remarkable weather stops being remarkable and turns into just the weather.

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