Starbucks is one clever company. I have been impressed by their promotions: like donating $5 to create US jobs for every pound of coffee purchased. I have been impressed by their fearless embrace of new technology: like signing up to process all credit card payments with Square. And I have been impressed by how deeply they have climbed into my head: the Starbucks Treat Receipt.

If you buy something from Starbucks before 2 pm, show up after 2 pm with your receipt to get any medium cold drink for $2. Yes, that includes the $4.50 ice cream drinks (aka Grande blended frappuccinos).

Why is this deal so awesome for Starbucks? Who goes to Starbucks twice in one day? Maybe if you are up early, but who goes after 2 pm? It is way easier to convince a paying customer to do it again than it is to get a new customer entirely. They must be crushing it on repeat customers during this promotion.

This deal is extremely appealing – I find myself saving receipts now. I tell myself “well, you might as well hang on to the receipt just in case you want to go later.” Then every time I reach into my pocket I find the receipt and think of Starbucks. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t want a sugary drink in the afternoon. And the iced coffee and iced green tea are cheap enough that the deal wouldn’t really save me any money. But I still save the receipts. I have gone back once for an afternoon treat and they are bound to get me again soon. Probably tomorrow…

There is even more cleverness, so much so that I will switch to bullet points:

• “Treat” receipt. Yes, even the name is encouraging you to get one of those expensive sugary drinks. You deserve a treat. And then you are addicted. And probably pregnant.
• The promotion is limited to one month. This makes it way more appealing. I think to myself, “well Brian, you better take advantage of this now because you won’t be able to later.”
• The hot summer time promotion. You’re hot, thirsty, and have a treat receipt in your pocket. No brainer.
• The oh so close to a rhyme – “treat receipt”. It is music to the ears.

In the spring I sat in on a class at Stanford – “Startup” taught by Peter Theil. I definitely learned a ton, but it wasn’t until I noticed I achieving perfect attendance that I thought I might enjoy taking other classes from time to time just for fun.

A couple weeks ago my latest class began – “Software Engineering for SaaS” (software as a service) offered by Coursera. It is adapted from a UC Berkeley computer science course for seniors. Why am I interested in this? Because it teaches a modern technology stack – Ruby on Rails – that is widely used and incredibly useful. If I were to start a new web application project a month ago, I would have struggled and wasted a lot of time getting started despite all my programming experience.

Why is that? Web programming isn’t exactly covered for most students in the computer science program. Rather, they take the fundamentals they learn and apply them to making websites. Sometimes this can be the same programming language, but often times it is not. I simply haven’t put in enough hours to be very comfortable in this area.

The hours that I have put in are in ancient technologies – PHP (used to power WordPress, and thus my websites) and ASP.NET (used by my old company because they had to use the Windows technology stack for conservative law firms that don’t want anything to do with open sources software (they’d have no one to yell at if something goes wrong!)). The SaaS class covers (or forces me to get experience on my own): Ruby on Rails, GitHub, HAML, EC2, Heroku, RESTful APIs, MVC, Agile, Cucumber, Capybara, and more buzzwords I’m forgetting.

I’m glad I’m getting a formal introduction to these because I believe it will lead to a better education than learning on my own. More importantly, I’m glad that I’m learning now before I have a project I’m trying to push out and cutting corners to get there.
 

I am a competitive guy. Compared amongst Stanford “I must overachieve”rs, I am more competitive than most. Compared to the athletes I have encountered over the years, I am more competitive than most. Even compared to the Stanford athletes crew I roll with, I am more competitive than most. But I am quiet about it and the casual observer might never know.

Why is this? Why do some people show their fire while others keep it inside? More specifically, why am I the way I am? I have a theory.

It involves the demeanor of a favorite and that of an underdog. As a favorite you want to be intimidating. You execute perfectly. You don’t show emotion. Nothing affects you. If you hit a snag, it is simply an expected obstacle on your path to glory. If things are going well, it is as expected and no reason to celebrate. If you are winded or struggling, you hide it in hopes that your opponent will mistake you for a machine.

The mindset of an underdog is different. You want to place a hint of doubt in the head of the favorite. You want to show that you want it more. That you are willing to work harder. That you have luck on your side. You believe that momentum will have an actual affect on the next play, and maximize this momentum with celebration. If you are winded or struggling, you wear it as a badge of honor, in hopes of showing just how far you are willing to go to win.

In my competitive infancy, I was a favorite way more than an underdog (in most cases not due to my contributions, so this list is in no way bragging). In 7th grade I played on a basketball team that rolled through every youth team in the city. My freshman year I played on a football team that went undefeated in an area where football is a big deal. In high school I played on volleyball teams that made it to the LA section championship 4 years straight, in the best volleyball city in the country. My senior year of high school, I played on a volleyball team that won the club national championship in convincing fashion and apparently had the most top 50 recruits of any volleyball team in history.

This was the time that I was developing my competitive nature. In most cases when my team walked into the gym, we were better than you and we knew it. And this formed my demeanor and mindset in competition. To this day I act accordingly, even though I find myself an underdog more than not.
 

Photo: Ryan Policky

A little over a week ago Stanford had its 121st commencement ceremony. The speaker was graduate, former Stanford football player, Rhode Scholar, and current New Jersey major Cory Booker. I first heard about this guy a few months ago when he allegedly juked out his bodyguard to run into a burning building to save a woman. Some versions of the story say he punched out his bodyguard to get by him. Either way, pretty baller.

Here is the whole speech for you to check out. It’s quite inspirational.

For those of you that won’t invest the time in the video, here a couple quotes I felt compelled to get out of bed to write down.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport” – funny how we expect everything handed to us. I suppose if we aren’t willing to do the job of a politician or even participate by doing anything more than voting, we have less of a right to complain. Along the same lines, Booker says most people resort to “sedentary agitation”. Great term!

“Fear is a precondition to discovery” – bam! Think about that next time you’re scared.

And ladies, unlike most of our men featured in our All That Is Man series, Booker is both alive and single. What are you waiting for?
 

There are plenty of things people believe blindly without much evidence. You could consider these people lazy for not gathering enough information to make an informed decision. You could consider these people illogical for jumping to a conclusion immediately. You could consider them stubborn for not listening to contradictory facts. But this conviction to things you believe in can be extremely valuable. What are a couple things I blindly believe and logical reasoning won’t change my belief any time soon?

Capitalism

This is an area I have been thinking about a lot recently. I started a for-profit company in a space where many non-profits are trying to make an impact. When it comes down to it I believe strongly that capitalism is the best way to improve the world. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. Of course there are certain non-profits that are necessary. But if you are providing a good or service of value to a customer that is able and willing to pay, you should collect, even if your primary aim is to help the world. Why? Because I believe it is better for everyone in the long run. I might not have the proof or even a strong argument, but it is good enough for me.

The fiction book Atlas Shrugged provides an entertaining look at the virtues of capitalism. Highly recommended.

The impact of one person

Can one person actually make an impact in a world with 7 billion people? In theory, sure. But can you or I? I have a blind faith that I can and that if everyone believed they could, the world would be a much better place (even if not everyone succeeded).

It just isn’t logical! Considering everyone has more than one problem (Jay-Z has 99 himself), there are billions upon billions of problems in the world – is it logical to believe just one person can make a dent? It doesn’t matter what your mom tells you, she is wrong, you’re not special.

“You do the little job you’re trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.”

“You are not important. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”
-Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

That’s one way to look at it… what a downer. But you know what? People have done it before:
 

Is it reasonable to believe you can make an impact? Nope, but it doesn’t matter:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
-George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Is it illogical? Yes, but that makes it all the more important:
 

 
Do you have any strong beliefs that you don’t care about the lack of supporting evidence or contradictory facts?
 

Shout out to Adamson for blogging Sapolsky’s video a few months ago as well as the Fight Club quote. The whole video is intriguing and definitely worth watching, but only the last 3 minutes are relevant to this discussion.

Shout out to Fenner for getting me thinking about this last weekend.