“Would you like that whip or no whip? Non-fat or soy? Tall, grande, or venti?” Your answer should depend on the size of your metabolism and your wallet, but if that was the way most Americans shopped, our country would be a lot less obese and not nearly as deep in debt.

For those of us in the latte generation, these questions have become an integral part of our culture… and a gradual source of strain on the pocketbook, so gradual that many of us don’t realize where all our money has gone until we see “Starbucks” listed multiple times on our monthly statement. $3.25 for a coffee may not seem like much, but when you multiply that by a couple beverages a day and add that up over the course of a week and a month, our Starbucks expenditures become substantial. The same goes for any temptation’getting your nails done, buying music or books, seeing movies… You know where you tend to rather be a sucker.

By introducing the Starbucks Card, the company hoped to make it easier for people to get that Frappachino without feeling like they were going over budget… and have they ever succeeded. After all, the money is already on the card, so why not spend it and spend it, right? It acts like a debit card, so you never have to worry about overspending. And when you run out, it’s so easy to hand over your credit card and load another $20. Did I mention that you can “save more money” by getting a Starbucks credit card which can serve as both a universal VISA and as a debit card at Starbucks? Now you can earn Duetto dollars with every purchase outside Starbucks and use that money towards your next latte. It’s all about customer service, right? As they say on their website: “A coffee break on a Card: A Starbucks Card is the easiest way for you – or someone you know – to enjoy Starbucks. How can we help you today?”

So you want to still enjoy your coffee or other little self-indulgence, but not hand your entire paycheck over to a Fortune 500 company? No problem. I take a different view on how to use what I like to call the “latte card.” Just follow these easy steps that work for me:

As long as you use your Starbucks card to your advantage and not the company’s, you will have a fatter wallet and a slimmer waistline! My own Starbucks spending has decreased maybe two-fold. I keep thinking, “Mmm, I only have ‘x’ dollars on this card. Maybe I’ll hold off this time.” And I keep passing up Starbucks!

Last week, I found myself critiquing and tisk, tisking the coffee selections at an organic grocery store. I don ‘t even drink coffee!

But I was in the progress of reading, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. I picked up the book to learn about fast-growing startups and found myself picking up a few tips on the best roast and coolest coffee house colors from the Starbucks point of view. So what did I learn (besides the perfect foam spread) from “one of the most amazing business stories in decades”?

There is no more precious a commodity than the relationship of trust and confidence a company has with its employees. If people believe management is not fairly sharing the rewards, they will feel alienated. Once they start distrusting management, the company ‘s future is compromised.

In daily life, you get so much pressure from friends and family and colleagues, urging you to take the easy way, to follow the prevailing wisdom, that it can be difficult not to simply accept the status quo and do what ‘s expected of you. But when you really believe in yourself, in your dream you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No greater achievement happens by luck.

To any entrepreneur, I would offer this advice: once you’ve figured out what you want to do, find someone who has done it before. Find not just talented executives but even more experienced entrepreneurs and business people who can guide you. They know where to look for the mines in the minefield. If they have thought and acted boldly in their own careers, and proven successful, they can help you do the same.

One of the most fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.

Success is not an entitlement. We have to earn it every day. Just because Starbucks has achieved all its goals in the past didn’t mean that we were immune to mistakes. We had to be in a mode of constant renewal and recognize that the future of our company was not based on what we achieved yesterday. We had to preserver, even when our near-term targets seem out of reach.

So would I recommend this book? I ‘m not sure. The first hundred pages were great; I couldn’t stop reading. Of course, I also don’t know if I’ve ever been in an actual Starbucks, so I was seeing the business as more than a conglomerate giant that is consuming America and the world. I saw the company from the personal and passionate vantage point of the CEO. I enjoyed wearing the rosy glasses. And I enjoyed the constant reflections the stuff you and I can gain from in our own lives.

But then the book started to drag on. I didn’t see so much reflection, just a lot of bragging. The rest of the book took me weeks to finish, and I didn’t get much out of it. The last two chapters wrapped up in the typical “we ‘ll keep working to be the best and live happily ever after”. I wasn’t reading Disney, though!

I ran into this little post over at Medallia Blog a few months back and wanted to share the idea with you. A large pharmacy company wanted to tap into the market for aspirin in the middle east. The problem was that many of the people are illiterate so using words is out if they want to go for the maximum amount of people being able to understand the ad.

What they did was place this on many billboards…

After running the campaign for a few weeks, the advertising had no effect whatsoever. After a bit of market research, (Also known as asking people!) the problem dawned on them. Arabic is read from right to left, so the pictures were being read in the wrong order making it look like the medicine actually causes the discomfort.

I just went through all of the links in the ‘discover more‘ section and took out quite a few. These of course were the ones that haven’t been updated in months, changed their content dramatically to something completely unrelated, or in one case completly let their domain expire.

With that, the discover more section has been significantly improved. There are some really good sites on there, and now it is even easier to find the gems.

If you are interested in getting your site added to our blogroll, we’d love to hear from you.