The Secret Sauce

"Tell me your secret sauce" is something heard a lot in business. Most of the time, this is just another way of saying "show me how to be successful."  The funny part is, knowing the secret sauce and being successful are two totally different things.  

Below is the recipe for Coca-Cola from over 100 years ago. 

"Holy crap!" one might think. "The formula for one of the most addictive beverages on the planet?! We are gonna print money, right?" 

WRONG.  Its online and anyone can have it.

Having the secret sauce gets you nothing.  The question is: how are you going to execute and make it a success?

Sure, you are going to be able to make the exact same flavored brown bubbly beverage.  But how are you going to make that drink into a successful business?  Once you have the recipe, you need the cool logo, the stadium advertising, cool music in the commercials, a famous artist to paint people holding your product, super-models drinking it poolside, and friggin' Santa Clause! 

A successful business happens when you solve a problem and make people feel good -  all while marketing the hell out of it.  Those ingredients had more to do with making Coca-Cola what it is today than the perfect amount of vanilla and nutmeg.

Surprisingly, cocaine was in Coca-Cola until 1903....so maybe I am totally wrong :)

What you can get in Detroit

We used to live in the West Village in an apartment building called the Printing House.  It was an old industrial print factory that was converted into cool loft apartments in the 70's.  I recently heard the values of these apartments have gone parabolic.  

According to StreetEasy, you can buy a lovely 3 bedroom apartment in the Printing House for a cool $4.25 million. This runs for about $1,700 a sq. ft. and comes fully equipped with a doorman and all the luxury a small family could ask for. 

3 Br loft apartment in NYC's Printing House

That sounded like a pretty lofty price to a lay person like me. I wanted to see how far my money could go in Detroit.  In keeping with the "printing house" theme, I was looking for some similar loft apartments until i came across a listing for what is effectively the entire printing INDUSTRY of Detroit:  the Detroit Free Press Building.

The Detroit Free Press Building

You can own this entire historic 300,000 sq ft building for around $5 million right in the heart of downtown Detroit. They are saying it is ripe to be converted into 200 loft apartments. A sale price could come out to about $16 per sq. ft.  Not a lot of downside in this compared with owning real estate priced 100X higher. 

Talk about opportunity!  If only the mainstream media would spend less time focusing on the disaster porn and more time on the people and businesses that are coming up with creative solutions for Detroit. There are several places in the D that have this kind of potential.  Blank canvases - looking for smart and adventurous entrepreneurs who want to build something from nothing.   

     

The Anger Gap

I feel like America is angrier than it used to be. People are upset about jobs, crony capitalism, the government, taxes, the list goes on and on. I was watching the documentary Detropia and a lot of the autoworkers were pissed at corporations for cutting pay and moving jobs to China or Mexico.  I don't mean to sound heartless but what did we expect? We kicked our feet up as a nation and got out innovated and underpriced. We got our collective lunch eaten.  

Speaking of lunch, a few years back I was having lunch with an uber smart guy who builds actuarial models for insurance companies. Somehow our conversation steered toward how a lot of Wall Streeters were angry their compensation dropped. The advent of technology in finance made a lot of people obsolete over the past decade.  

He drew a picture on a napkin that looked something like this: 

(Obviously he didn't have different color pens with him)

The thought is that when a new industry or business is discovered, it's easy to add a lot of value early on.  As time passes, competition grows and folks are forced to innovate. If you aren't the one innovating you might be seeing diminishing returns given the same inputs - creating a gap between expectation and experience.   

The gap between what we think should happen and what actually happens is the ANGER GAP. Trying harder or putting in more time only to get the same, or worse, results...sucks. 

To shrink the gap we either need to lower our expectations, or find new ways to add-value.  Neither is easy. No one likes to "CTRL + ALT + DEL" their expectations (part of the motivation to start this blog). Additionally, finding new ways of adding-value means getting out there and talking to customers, stakeholders, competitors. Figure out all the pain points in your industry and find ways to ease them through new products and services. You will be so busy doing this you won't have time to be angry.      

Exit the "Knowledge Economy"...Enter the "Creative Economy"

I recently heard Gary Hamel speak at the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan) in Ann Arbor.  I had never heard of Gary before walking into the auditorium, and after listening to him for 45 minutes, I wanted to know everything about him.  This guy is good! (http://www.garyhamel.com/)

I took some interesting notes during his talk.  Gary is an expert corporate strategist who specializes in the topic of management, specifically how to "reinvent" management.  The point that resonated most with me was a slide he posted called "Gary's Hierarchy:"

Essentially, Gary argues that intelligence is pretty much par for the course in today's economy and the real way to differentiate is through creative ability.  You can outsource all of the technical skills we were told would take us deep into the 21st century (programming, engineering, finance, etc.).  He believes that business is more turbulent today and companies are not able to mitigate the turbulence fast enough.  Modern management styles are no longer modern (most taught management styles are from the beginning of the 20th century). Couple this with a faster business cycle and you too may see the need for more agility and creativity from leadership.

Listening to Gary, I immediately took pity on the millions of Americans who are making one of the various paths through higher education their own.  It seems like an all too common solution for the current recession we are in is to go back to school...and universities know this so school is not getting cheaper anytime soon.  Is all of the money spent on tuition to get a certificate and get "smart" worth it when the more applicable skills come from unlocking creative ability?