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Blogging live from the general session at ASAE & The Center's Springtime general session, featuring Joseph Michelli, Ph.D., author of The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary. Here are some of the things I noted from Michelli's address:

Know the difference between being and doing. Being is embodying something, doing something is following a rule. Example: when the kids used to go to their friends house, he'd tell them not to do this, not to do that, and to do this. His kids would follow those instructions, but then would do (or not do) a whole lot of things that weren't covered. The soltion: be good. At Starbucks, they go by the following: be welcoming, be genuine, be considerate, be knowledgable, and be involved.

Anything will become a commodity -- a book, a meeting, anything -- unless it is relevant, it connects (meaning it touches the wants, needs, and desires of members), and it is memorable or transformational. Those are the types of experiences you need to try to create.

Lesson from Starbucks: Involve, engage, and create. Starbucks spends more on product sampling than advertising. One example -- Starbucks started in Seattle. The second market was Chicago. Finally, the third was Los Angeles -- maybe a bit of a challenge for a coffee shop. The LA shopkeeper took a blender in to work one evening and experimented with ice, coffee, and flavoring. The vanilla frappuccino was born -- and is a bigger seller worldwide at Starbucks than regular brewed coffee.