Success Quote by Howard Schultz

“Risk more than others think safe” is executive pep talk with a calibrated edge: it doesn’t glamorize recklessness, it reframes caution as a social consensus problem. The key word is “others.” Schultz isn’t arguing that risk is inherently noble; he’s arguing that the crowd’s definition of “safe” is often just inertia dressed up as prudence. In corporate life, safety is a committee decision. It’s what survives a meeting.

The line fits Schultz’s Starbucks-era mythology: a businessman selling not only coffee but a story of scale-through-belief. Starbucks expanded by turning an everyday habit into an aspirational ritual and by betting on pricey real estate, brand consistency, and employee benefits that many rivals would’ve labeled unnecessary overhead. That’s the context where “safe” becomes a trap: if you only do what competitors already validate, you inherit their ceiling.

Subtext: risk is a branding strategy. In tech-and-consumer capitalism, the founder who takes the bolder bet gets credited with vision, while everyone else gets described as “disciplined.” Schultz’s phrasing offers a moral license to push past skepticism from analysts, partners, even friends. It’s also a quiet power move: if you’re the one urging more risk, you position yourself as the person qualified to define what’s truly safe.

But the sentence has a built-in blind spot. “Others” can be wrong; they can also be the people absorbing the downside. The quote works because it flatters agency. It’s less a rule for life than a reminder that consensus often confuses familiarity with security.