Remarkable Reading #33: THE STARBUCKS EXPERIENCE: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph Michelli and BOSS LIFE: Surviving My Own Small Business by Paul Downs

The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.

Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself  and belong directly to the author, .  The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.

Two Trends we'll be touching on are:

1.  How a small business comprehends and works with changes in a fast-changing global marketplace.

2.  Starbucks and how it embraces a culture of innovation and invention by strategically working in alliance with emerging global markets.

Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business by Paul Downs is a intricately woven, slow-burning business tale on a very granular prism on how a small business copes, utilizes, fathoms and makes sense of global changes happening to their advantage.

Paul Downs approach isn't the traditional "handbook" approach to social media, but a relaxed, friendly and unpretentious story based on personal experiences and memoirs.  The correlation of technology is minimal, and when Paul does refer to how the Internet is integrated and utilized in his business, it's subtle.  It's a writing style in business I wasn't expecting at the outset, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

Straight-forward and elementary in its approach yet still complex with an impact, Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business is a business book best saved towards the end of the year on your vacation & holiday sipping your celebratory drink.

Few top take-out's include:

Preface - "After globalization and the Internet brought new competition and new opportunity, my company experienced unsustainable growth and, in 2008, a devastating crash.  But we've endured - and even had one very profitable year.  I am a survivor, but not a financial success"

Page 14 - "But it allows access to expertise that can be very difficult to develop in-house.  Note, also, that is an extremely small company, one person can perform all these functions, and probably will when the company is starting up."

Page 16 -. We need to be creative, to be on constant lookout for better ways to do things, or we will be out of business.  Some of my biggest challenges is how to be innovative when my company is composed of non-innovators"

Page 17 - "Sales is a subset of Marketing, but it's critical to the success of the company.  It's the step that connects us to customers, who are a part of all six functions of the business. Design determines what we make for the customers; Marketing tells the customer that we have something for them to buy; Production makes what the customer ordered; Logistics moves the finished goods to the customer; Administration makes sure that the customer's order is defined and completed correctly; and Warranty Service takes care of any customer complaints"

Page 18 - "Nowadays we have wonderful tools - digital photography, Web sites, cheap modelling software, and e-mail - that empower small companies like mine to communicate our ideas at very low cost.  We can inspire the confidence that is required for customers to write us a check"

Page 30 - "Every person who uses a tool ends up with a slightly different result, and it is impossible to duplicate an earlier setup.  A project with  m any steps will start to accumulate errors.  A good craftsman makes adjustments as the job progresses, but it takes great skill to produce complex work successful"

The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary is a spectacularly smashing book.  It very easily reminds us why Starbucks remains one of the most influential new brands  to emerge in the 21st century.  It's a primo example of globalism, and global expansion as one of the absolute pinnacles of 21st century business success.

Joseph A. Michelli is a gifted and very accomplished writer.  His experience shines in his writing, and his ability to understand the innermost extent of why Starbucks is such a sensational & stunning brand is what makes  The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary one of the most inspiring business books in the last 5 years.

Michelli's understanding of localism and globalism is thoroughly competent and skilful.  His apprehension and mastery of the emerging global markets is a must for any business wishing to expand horizons towards another market with adept strategy.

A few top take-out's include:

Foreword: v11 -" How can technology be leveraged to strengthen, not diminish, personal service delivery" If you are fortunate enough to be a manager or leader in a company with a global footprint like the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company or Starbucks, you face the added challenges of constantly  refining your products and services to connect with maintaining operational excellence and the loyalty of your existing customer base"

Page 2  - "Starbucks is consistently recognized as one of the world's most effectively led and beloved brands.  For example, Entrepreneur magazine ranks the company among the 10 "most trusted" businesses, and Fortune magazine places it among  the 10 "most trusted" businesses, and Fortune magazine places it among the "most admired" global brands.  Before delivering an important jobs speech, U.S.  president Barack Obama placed a call to the president, chairman, and chief executive officer of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, because of Howard's leadership on job creation"

Page 6  - "Great brands always make an emotional connection with the intended audiences.  They reach beyond the purely rational and purely economic level to spark feelings of closeness, affection, and trust.  Consumers live in an emotional world; their emotions, influence their decisions."

Page 101 - "The benefits of this listening fuel the entrepreneurial  and adaptive spirit of a brand that could easily have lost its nimbleness as a result of its growth and scale"  In many ways, when leaders demonstrate formal and informal listening, they not only engage employees but also gain access to information that helps them stay relevant to the needs and observations of their team members"

Page 110 - "Cultural anthropologists have been engaged in a long-standing debate between two conflicting perspectives: universalism and cultural relativism.  While the words sound daunting, the concepts are rather straightforward.  Universalism suggests that the underlying similarities among all people are greater than their cultural differences"

Page 182 - "We will explore innovation in both coffee and adjacent categories, and last look at  how Starbucks positions its products to be used where customers want them - and not necessarily requiring customers to come into a Starbucks-branded location"

Page 213 - "In essence, innovation is an applied and marketable phenomenon.  It involves taking an invention and or an existing product or service and improving on it in a way that makes it more valuable to those you serve.  Often leaders have a robust appetite for customer-facing innovation, but at Starbucks, equal attention is directed to improvements that add value to the lives of partners"

Page 58 - "The tea category is exploding right now; it's literally at the point where coffee was a number of years ago"

Page 58 - "This is a particularly relevant opportunity given our commitment to beverage delivery in tea-drinking counties like China and India"

Page 138 - "Given that India has a young population (median age around 25 years) of 1.2 billion people who have been exposed to a growing cafe culture in local coffeehouses"

Page 138 - "[India] is a very complex market to enter.  At one point we thought we could come here alone and we underestimated the complexity"

It was refreshing to read both books back to back. Both reflect similar (global impact of the Internet on marketing) yet different (size of the business represented) issues and the combination is delightfully refreshing.

You can purchase a copy of THE STARBUCKS EXPERIENCE: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary here,  follow Joseph Michelli on Twitter here, visit his website here, and LIKE his Facebook page here.

You can purchase a copy of BOSS LIFE: Surviving My Own Small Business by Paul Downs here, visit his website here, read his blog here, and add him on LinkedIN here.

Thank you,

Praz aka Prashant

Twitter: @internecessity

LinkedIN: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/prashanthari

E-mail: prashanthh2016@gmail.com