I learned this from Starbucks.

For about three months in 2005, I didn’t have a real job. I was a youth pastor, and after that time I became a senior pastor, so I recognize that there will be many that ague that I didn’t not have nor do I currently have a real job, but that is beside the point.

So I spent a lot of time in coffee shops reading and writing. I was somewhat of a coffee drinker. Especially if you loaded it up with sugar, milk, whipped cream, called it a fancy word and charged five times it’s worth.

One of the books that I read was buy a man named Howard Shultz (Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time), who founded Starbucks. Actually, he started another company, who eventually took over Starbucks, but that’s not important for this lesson.

While reading this book about Starbucks inside a Starbucks, one of the Starbucks corporate guys who happened to be in town came over and sat down. We talked for a few minutes about what I was reading, and about why I drove past several other coffee shops to sit in this particular Starbucks.

It was then that I realized that Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee.  They sell kool-aid.

This regional vice president went on to tell me all things that Howard Shultz had been writing about…how Starbucks is trying to become that third-place where people congregate (the other two being work and home) and how Starbucks really sells an experience. I don’t know about the Third Place thing, but I completely buy the experience stuff.

Because Starbucks sells coffee to people who don’t even like coffee. They have created a coffee culture in this country. Directly through the 5,372 chain stores. Even indirectly through the local coffee shops who hate all things corporate and create brochures about about how community trade is better than direct trade which is better than fair trade.

I am convinced that most people don’t really like Starbucks coffee. You drink it because you’re supposed to. You go there because everyone else does. If you  really do buy into the experience, then you’re willing to pay for it.

All the elements must converge to create one overall experience…and it’s that experience that is memorable.  When you go to Disney World, you might remember a particular ride, but chances are, you remember Disney World itself. When you go on a great vacation, you might remember the comfortable bed in the hotel or the nice restaurant downtown, but you probably remember the vacation.

All the individual elements combine to form one emotional experience.

What I’m talking about is the importance of culture. If you want guests to attend your church, you’ve got to create that culture. If you want your office environment to be intense or relaxed, then you have to work hard to create that culture.

In a ton of circumstances, it’s the experience that matters.