Todd Sattersten is the nerdiest business book nerd I know. We’ve been friends since the early business blog days. In blog posts and conversations, we bonded over biz books, debated the merits of biz books and formed a friendship that’s lasted over 20 years.

When Todd and Jack Covert published THE 100 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL-TIME in 2009, I took issue with them for not including the biz book that sparked my love for the game of business strategy. THE DISCIPLINE OF MARKET LEADERS (Treacy & Wiersema, 1995) became my “Rosetta Stone” and opened up new understanding to me for how a business must focus on one discipline (operational excellence, product innovation or customer intimacy) to find lasting success.

Of course, I decided to write the missing chapter to Todd’s book to make it the 100 & 1 BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF ALL-TIME. (Read the “missing chapter” highlighting THE DISCIPLINE OF MARKET LEADERS here.)

It’s 2025 and much has changed. I’m no longer a biz book junkie. However, Todd has flourished in the business book world. He’s now the head honcho at Bard Press and has published a new book, 100 BEST BOOKS FOR WORK & LIFE.

In this book, Todd brilliantly makes the correlation between business books and self-help books. He understands the best business books guide readers to manage companies better but also to become better versions of themselves.

Todd has identified 25 essential topics including creativity, mindfulness, leadership, purpose, influence, generosity, motivation, habits and more. Under each topic, he shares a few of the best books he’s read to help us do work and life better. With each book summary, Todd explains core concepts to help us think smarter about doing work/life differently to bring about better results. 100 Best Books for Work & Life is an incredibly useful guidebook.

HOWEVER… he didn’t include a motivation book that perfectly combines the biz book and self-help genres. THE WAR OF ART: Breakthrough the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (Pressfield, 2002) changed my life.

When I left the corporate marketing world of Starbucks and Whole Foods to become a self-employed marketing consultant, I suffered from massive bouts of doubt. I became stagnant and reluctant. From reading THE WAR OF ART, it became clear to me that I had become shackled by the invisible force known as “Resistance.” Pressfield put a label on what I felt and reprogrammed my mind to help me fight past my bouts of doubt to get shit done.

Consider the following the “missing chapter” from the renamed 100 & 1 BEST BOOKS FOR WORK & LIFE…

I’m still thinking about my first brand love, Starbucks. Layoffs have happened, promises to reduce menu complexity are in place, and their ceo recently told partners (employees) they need to step it up and take more responsibility to turn the company around.

I revisited the love letter I wrote to Starbucks in 2006. That love letter was my book, TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture. I was hoping to find perspective to better understand what went wrong for Starbucks.

I found something interesting in TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE that gives context to Starbucks ceo Brian Niccol pinning part of the blame for the brand decline on the drive for hyper-efficiency when he said, “We spent a lot of time trying to cost-save our way to a very efficient drink and not enough time on what is the experience that Starbucks provides.”

In my dusty book, Tribal Truth #24 is: TOUCHOLOGY TRUMPS TECHNOLOGY. (Yeah, cringy and cheesy title.) In this chapter I discussed the importance of delivering beautifully inefficient customer experiences through high-touch means.

Howard Schultz once explained the blueprint for developing a loyal customer base by saying, “If we greet customers, exchange a few words with them, and then custom-make a drink exactly to their taste, they will be eager to come back.”

Delivering great customer experiences through touchology requires companies to trust their employees to be themselves when connecting on a personal level with customers.

Unfortunately, too many companies are reluctant to place that much trust and responsibility in the hands of employees when interacting with customers.

Instead of trusting their employees to be human, most companies attempt to replicate personal interaction through high-teching their business with technology.

Those last three sentences were lifted directly from page 96 of TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE and it helps to explain how mobile ordering today has siphoned away the personal touch of what was the Starbucks experience.

Today, it’s more of a grab-n-go experience because technology and efficiency have been the business focus. Here’s another snippet from my love letter that has parallels to today’s Starbucks choosing hyper-efficiency over beautiful inefficiency.

“When automation is implemented solely for the benefit of the company’s bottom line, customers realize it. They notice the subtle, yet perceptible shift away from them and toward the business. And today’s customer doesn’t appreciate being short-changed. They will put up with it if they have little or no choice, but given another choice, it’s not difficult to predict what they will do.”

The old school Starbucks ethos was about high-touch human interaction more than high-tech mechanisms. Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” turnaround plan is placing a renewed importance on finding the better balance between touchology and technology.

Starbucks was my first brand love. It’s where I earned my marketing chops and learned that passion with purpose can fuel business success. Today, the Starbucks brand is going through a mid-life crisis. Sales are sluggish. Corporate layoffs are happening. Mobile ordering has upended everything. And, the Starbucks experience has lost its personal touch.

Brian Niccol, new Starbucks ceo, has pinned part of the blame on the drive for hyper-efficiency by saying, “We spent a lot of time trying to cost-save our way to a very efficient drink and not enough time on what is the experience that Starbucks provides.”

The Starbucks experience was once beautifully inefficient but many of the “cost-save” approaches have come at a huge cost — the cheapening and commoditization of the Starbucks brand.

72% of Starbucks store sales today come from its mobile order and pay app, delivery apps, and drive-thru purchases (source). Stores have removed seating and tables to encourage a grab-n-go mindset. This watering down of the Starbucks experience has turned the customer experience into a systematic and soulless mess.

Efficiency is absolutely a business necessity. However, empathy is also a business necessity. The tension between efficiency and empathy is real. AI and mobile apps are enabling any business of any size to become hyper efficient. However, there is a dark side to the upside of hyper efficiency — a massive lack of empathy.

Businesses that lose their empathy lose their ability to understand, acknowledge, and address the emotions, perspectives, and needs of customers (and employees). Businesses that find the balance between efficiency and empathy become “beautifully inefficient.”

Becoming beautifully inefficient is a core component to Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan to turnaround the brand by emphasizing handcrafted beverages, menu simplicity, and personal touches to improve the customer experience.

Customers can once again personalize their drinks with just the right amount of cream and sugar at the condiment bar. Baristas back to are writing names on cups again to add a personal touch. Baristas are encouraging customers to get their drinks in a porcelain mug and linger longer to bring back the community coffeehouse feel. Starbucks is choosing to add the inefficiency of empathy to foster better connections with customers.

All companies have a choice between hyper-efficiency and purposeful empathy. It’s a balancing act to manage when/where to be efficient and when/where to be empathetic. Starbucks is in the process of rediscovering when/where to be beautifully inefficient to bring the soul back to the brand.

How does the Price of a Product Affect the Marketing Plan for the Product?

The price of a product doesn’t necessarily affect its marketing plan. Objectives still need to be set. Strategies must be identified. Tactics need to be developed. Constraints (budget & timing) must be listed. None of that changes with low-priced or high-priced products.

What does change are the strategies and tactics needed, relative to how a product is priced given its competitive landscape.

As mentioned earlier, high-priced products need a rich story behind it in order to justify its premium price. That story needs to come through in the strategies and tactics used to gain customer attention in hopes of earning a purchase.

How a product is priced relative to its competition will significantly affect its marketing plan.

The more competitors a product has, the more difficult it will be to gain customer attention.

The more similarly priced competitors a product has, the more difficult it will be to earn a purchase.

The onus is on the marketer to create imaginative strategies and tactics that breakthrough the cluttered competitive landscape.

Fast food retail marketers face this conundrum every day. Prices are similar across the board for fast food retailers. Every fast food retailer competes on price from Taco Bell to Burger King to Subway.

To standout from all their competitors, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Subway need to be more imaginative in what they say, when they say it, how they say it, and whom they say it to.

Taco Bell continuously shows creativity with its “Think Outside the Bun” marketing.

Burger King continuously tries to be more uniquely creative than McDonald’s in its marketing efforts. (Doesn’t always work for Burger King.)

Subway continuously, and with sharp focus, shows its creativity in marketing its affordable foot long sandwiches and in telling its eat healthy story.

The simple fact remains, a brand, no matter if its priced high or low, must be interesting to get customers interested. A marketing plan needs to follow through on the “be interesting” positioning.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

What Role can Marketers Play in Pricing Strategy?

Pricing tells a story. There is always a story behind the reasons marketers choose to price a product no matter if the pricing strategy is high or low.

The common story behind many low-priced products is the company buys in bulk and passes on the savings to customers. A valid story, but an uninteresting one.

A more interesting story behind a low-priced product is told by IKEA. Customers get high design AND low prices at IKEA.

When it comes to charging high prices, having a great story is mandatory. The rule of thumb is: the higher the price, the richer the story needs to be.

The role marketers must play in pricing strategy is telling a story to match the price.

Apple is the poster child brand for telling rich stories to match its rich prices. Apple devices are never the cheapest on the market. Thus, Apple must tell a more interesting story in how its devices improve one’s life.

For lower priced products, the story doesn’t need to be all that interesting. (Ahem, Walmart.) But high-priced products must always deliver an interesting story to justify the higher price.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

Is Sampling the Best Way to Drive Trial of a New Product?

“Give, and you shall receive.” It’s an old and overused proverb. And for good reason… it works.

The more kindness we give others, the more kindness we receive. The more knowledge we share with others, the more knowledge we personally receive in return. The more generous we are, the more generously we profit.

This principle of generosity applies directly to sampling and to Starbucks. It can be argued the Starbucks business was built on sampling generously.

To find success during its high-growth years, Starbucks had to dramatically and demonstratively change people’s understanding of what coffee could (and should) taste like.

Back when Starbucks was a small company acting big, sampling of coffees and espresso drinks happened all day log. When you visited a Starbucks, chances were, there would be a taster-cup sample of a just-made drink ready for the tasting. Sampling became ingrained as part of the Starbucks business culture as the more customers tasted, the more they believed that coffee should taste just like that.

Tasting is more than believing at Starbucks, it’s also sales-driving. I remember an internal company study that revealed for every five beverages Starbucks sampled to customers, it triggered a purchase. That’s an impressive 20 percent conversion rate.

What other form of marketing has a 20% conversion rate? None come to mind.

It would be short-sighted of me to say sampling is THE best way to drive sales of a new product. However, my experience at Starbucks tells me sampling is highly effective in creating awareness which leads to trial and can result in higher sales.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

How Valuable are Loyalty Programs?

Most marketing activities from companies seeking to build customer loyalty are designed more to entrap customers than to enrich customers.

Loyalty cards from supermarkets entrap us into being labeled “loyal customers.” These customer loyalty schemes are based upon offering customers lower prices to gain greater loyalty.

But lasting loyalty isn’t earned by offering the lowest price. Businesses that gain sales solely by low prices are only as good as their latest, cheapest offer. As soon as a competitor can beat the price, all those “loyal” customers will chuck their loyalty cards and shop elsewhere.

Loyalty programs reverse the logic of great customer service: they ask customers to sign up for a card or buy a certain amount of product before they can enjoy the benefits of being part of the club. Do you really want to create two classes of customers? One that gets the “good stuff” at a good price, the other that gets a raw deal?

I’ve always viewed loyalty programs as either transaction-based or relationship-based.

Frequent flyer programs from airlines are an example of a transaction-based loyalty program. It’s designed to get you to buy a round-trip ticket in order to receive frequent flyer miles. However, it’s less about customer loyalty and more about customer entrapment.

The only reason I am loyal to an airline is because I’m trapped. I have too many miles on one airline not to use them. I use them not because I think they do a good job. I use them because I’m trapped.

However, I am a fan of loyalty programs that recognize customers with special attention more than reward customers with special discounts.

For example when the barista at your neighborhood espresso shop knows exactly how to make your drink, that’s is a relationship-based loyalty program. It’s the high-touch, low-tech way to developing customer loyalty because it requires a personal connection between the employee and the customer.

Customer loyalty works both ways. If you want customers to stay loyal to you, stay loyal to your customers—treat them as people, help them as individuals, offer them something extra, and they’ll come back for more.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

At the Retail Level, What do Effective In-Store Campaigns Look Like?

That’s a meaty question. Let’s simplify this and focus on the importance of communicating to two audiences to make a retail marketing promotion successful.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from my retail marketing days at Starbucks is that marketing has two audiences: Customers AND Employees.

Most retail marketers focus solely on the customer experience in designing and delivering effective in-store retail campaigns. My Starbucks tribal knowledge tells me otherwise.

The most effective in-store campaigns also think of the front-line employee as a customer to be marketed to.

Do you think all the posters, banners, brochures, and other marketing signage you see in Starbucks are meant solely for customers? Think again as marketing at Starbucks impacts more than just customers—it also impacts employees.

Starbuck understands marketing signage can be used to inform and inspire employees, which can better influence purchase decisions by customers.

Sure, Starbucks uses its in-store signage to promote seasonal beverages, whole bean coffees, and pastries with hopes of triggering impulse purchases from customers. However, customer focus groups have told Starbucks they do not necessarily rely upon the marketing signage to influence their purchase decisions.

Instead, customers rely upon the opinions of baristas behind the counter to influence which beverages, beans, and pastries they buy.

With that understanding, Starbucks uses its in-store signage to influence the opinions of Starbucks baristas.

For example, the many brochures Starbucks displays at the condiment bar are noticed more by employees than by customers. Customers rarely read these brochures, which range from descriptions of whole bean coffees to marketing promotions to Starbucks environmental efforts. But all employees at some point read these brochures—whether out of company adoration or break-time boredom.

Even the banner sign, which is strategically positioned in the pathway of customers walking to the counter, has a greater impact on employees than customers. Starbucks employees see that banner sign every day of every week they work and automatically know the product focus of the current marketing campaign.

In-store marketing programs can be used to inform and inspire employees, which can better influence purchase decisions by customers. And when customer decisions are positively influenced, the more effective an in-store retail campaign will be.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

How Connected should PR efforts be to Marketing efforts?

Public Relations plays a role in marketing efforts as it relates to awareness, influence, and credibility.

Let’s be clear, for the most part, retail brands view Public Relations as Media Relations. Brands seek to use traditional media (print, television, radio) and non-traditional media (digital, blogs, social media) to generate brand awareness, influence brand consideration, and add brand credibility.

Every Starbucks retail marketing promotion we did included a Media Relations activity to build awareness and to influence customers. For example, with every Holiday promotion, Starbucks revved up its publicity engine by getting national media and local media to run stories about the return of Egg Nog Lattes to Starbucks.

Starbucks would send Baristas to television stations and radio stations to do on-air tastings of holiday coffee drinks. Newspaper journalists would be treated to special tastings inside a Starbucks. This was in addition to any standard media release highlighting new news going on at Starbucks during the holidays.

Today, Media Relations activities include digital journalists and raving Starbucks fans who blog and tweet about Starbucks online.

All of this activity is to drive awareness of new Starbucks news with the hopes that the media will share this new news with their readers and viewers. If the media shares this news, then readers and viewers will be influenced to consider visiting Starbucks.

Traditional and non-traditional media have significant influence in getting a brand into a consumer’s consideration set because of greater credibility. The power of a third party endorsement almost always outweighs any marketing activity a business can do.

People expect a commercial and print ad from a brand to be boastful. When any boastful claims come from a third party source, people are much more apt to believe it because it’s a message from a third party and not directly from a brand’s marketing department.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive

What Role does Promotion Play in Effective Marketing?

Absolutely everything. For marketing to be effective, that is making the cash register ring, a business must promote its products and services.

Promotion isn’t limited to hard sell activities like widespread couponing, aggressive discounting, and over-the-top marketing stunts.

Promotion is any marketing activity that seeks to increase awareness & appreciation, make a customer emotional connection and sustain top-of-mind consideration. (Sound familiar? It should.)

A website is promotion. Maintaining a Facebook page is promotion. Customer service is promotion. Radio advertising is promotion. A brochure is a promotion. Discounting is promotion.

Absolutely every marketing activity a business does to increase awareness & appreciation, make an emotional customer connection, and sustain top-of-mind consideration is promotion. It’s best to make the most out of every promotion for a business to achieve success.

REVISITING THE BASICS | archive