How Starbucks Saved My Life

A candid, moving and inspirational memoir about a high-flying business man who is forced to re-evaluate his life and values when he suddenly loses everything and goes to work in Starbucks.

Michael Gill had it made. He was educated, wealthy and well-connected. He had a creative and lucrative advertising job, which he loved and which he was good at, and a model family and home life. Then he loses it all. He is fired by a young exec whom he had mentored. He has an extramarital affair that destroys his family and results in a newborn son. Then he is diagnosed with brain cancer. He has no insurance, no income.

One day he wanders into Starbucks and by chance signs up for a job interview. His would-be boss is a young black woman who gives him a job, and sets about training him and mentoring him. What follows is an inspirational eye-opener as Gill experiences a whole new world compared to his former life – with people from completely different ethnic and social backgrounds.

‘How Starbucks Saved My Life’ follows Gill's journey of discovery as gradually he is forced to question his ingrained assumptions, prejudices and habits. Gill emerges from his fall from grace with humility and gratitude. His new-found empathy teaches him how anyone who has lost their way, or made a mistake, can start again.

Reviews

'Articulate, charming'.
The New York Times

‘One great read.’
The Wall Street Journal

‘A great lesson in finding your highest self in the unlikeliest of
places – proof positive that there is no way to happiness – rather, happiness is the way.’
Wayne Dyer

About the author

Michael Gates Gill was born with all the material advantages that America can offer, with an acclaimed New Yorker staff writer for a father, and spent his childhood surrounded by famous intellectuals and socially connected people. After graduating from Yale he was given a job with the help of a classmate as a Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson, the most successful and largest advertising agency in the world. Then after 25 years of devoting his life to work, he was suddenly fired and his life at the top of the American establishment became derailed. He found himself broke, his marriage dissolving, learned he needed a brain operation, and was desperately looking for work to help support his five children. Then he found a job at Starbucks where he still works as a barista.