Travis Leach is a Starbucks employee who credits his job with turning his life around. He had a difficult childhood: his parents were heroin addicts, and both died when he was a teenager. Unable to cope with the stresses of everyday life, he got and lost a series of low-wage jobs until he landed at Starbucks—where the employee training program taught him key habits, like willpower and social skills. Duhigg uses Leach’s life story to illustrate the importance of willpower, as well as how organizations can spread good habits throughout their structures.
Travis Leach Quotes in The Power of Habit
The The Power of Habit quotes below are all either spoken by Travis Leach or refer to Travis Leach . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
Starbucks has taught him how to live, how to focus, how to get to work on time, and how to master his emotions. Most crucially, it has taught him willpower. “Starbucks is the most important thing that has ever happened to me,” he told me. “I owe everything to this company.”
Related Characters:Charles Duhigg (speaker), Travis Leach (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
130
Explanation and Analysis:
After a difficult upbringing, full of chaos and conflict, Travis Leach started working at Starbucks. His heroin-addicted parents taught him poor social and emotional skills, which were inadequate to deal with the day-to-day challenges he faced at work. But whereas his previous jobs all fired him, Starbucks took a different approach: it trained him—like it does all its employees—in order to help him develop the skills he would need to thrive there. Thus, Starbucks essentially substituted for Leach’s family, at least in the way it contributed to Leach’s emotional development. This explains why he calls it “the most important thing Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et
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Travis Leach Character Timeline in The Power of Habit
The timeline below shows where the character Travis Leach appears in The Power of Habit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Starbucks and the Habit of Success: When Willpower Becomes Automatic
Travis Leach ’s parents were erratic but outwardly functional heroin addicts. When Travis was nine, his father...
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Starbucks’s extensive training program has taught Travis Leach all sorts of essential life skills—including, most of all, willpower. Numerous studies show that willpower...
(full context)
Like Travis Leach , Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz grew up in a troubled family. His father struggled to...
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Travis Leach was 16 when his mother admitted that she thought about getting an abortion instead of...
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