Mastering Your Niche: Unleashing Business Growth through Your Area of Innovation

Entrepreneurship is hard, but the process can be simplified. You can achieve success faster, sooner, and easier. I'm Mike Michalowicz, and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. My goal for this episode and every episode is to serve you on your journey. Let's start right now on Entrepreneurship Simplified. Oh, I actually clapped a little bit too hard there.

You are prone to injury this week. Got the stitches in the toes and the hard claps. Happening.

I gotta tell you about that. I went to the doctor yesterday to get my stitches removed because when they inserted them, I sliced my foot and I had 6 stitches. The practicing nurse specifically said these are permanent stitches. Within 10 days, or on the 10th day, you should get them removed. Okay, 10th day, I went to the doctor yesterday. He goes, those aren't permanent stitches, those are dissolvable.

No.

I'm like, okay. He's like, I don't know. He goes, but they're not the right color to be permanent. So he's like, let me get another doctor in here. So another doctor came in, they opined in front of me and said, no, that's— those are dissolvable, which is fine. Then either I misheard what the nurse said, right? Maybe she was mistaken, or maybe they're mistaken. So then I said, what if these are different colored permanent? Yeah, is there a problem if they stay for like a month? They go, no, no, it's no problem. He goes, you'll have to get them removed because watch, 2 weeks from now, if the stitches are still there, you do have permanent.

Well, first of all, a little— it's really nerve-wracking to think that one doctor's group did not know what they were talking about.

Yeah.

Either or.

Yeah, one group is like—

Hopefully your home group knows what they're talking about.

Or I misunderstood. Maybe she said, you know, I just want you to know these are not permanent, but you better get 'em checked out in 10 days.

Yeah.

Maybe I misunderstood.

Oh.

I don't know. But that's where we stand. So yeah, I am injury prone. I wanna welcome our guests to the show. You're listening to Entrepreneurship Simplified. And in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about the AOI, which is the area of innovation. Joining the studio, with my friend, co-host Amy Cortelli. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Mike.

You look lovely today. You always dress so professional.

You're so good to me.

Thank you. Thanks for doing that.

Oh, my pleasure.

Our entire office dresses professional.

Yeah, you have some stylish people on your staff. You included. You included.

Yeah, but I'm the least stylish. I think so. I think so. Erin probably is the winner. I mean, she is a fashion designer.

We do have a fashion designer on our staff.

And she has her distinct style. Everyone has their own style.

Yeah.

Many office environments I go to are just t-shirts and jeans, or everyone's wearing kind of a homogenous look that the office has come about. Like everyone wears the jacket with the shirt, but no tie. God, for sake, you know, no tie.

No tie.

That makes me so unique.

So Andy Kartaly. And Mike Michalowicz, the writer, author of many business books, including Profit First, All In, Pumpkin Plan, Fix This Next. It goes on and on and on.

Yeah, and a new one coming out. We can't share the title yet, I've got a new one coming out in 2025.

Fantastic.

Just struck a publishing deal with a hybrid.

Awesome.

The number one hybrid, I would argue, in the country. And I'm excited.

I'm excited too.

I was trepidatious because it's a different environment, but the potential returns, selfishly, financially, are better for us. The flexibility, the control and authority is far superior. I think we can be of even more service to our readers in many ways.

I love it. So I'm looking forward to it. I love it.

All right, what are we talking about today?

Today we are going to lean into your area of innovation to grow into the business of your dreams, to grow your business into the business of your dreams.

Yeah.

So I was doing some research on Pan Am and its collapse. So you might remember Pan Am. You're—

I actually flew as—

You did?

Did you ever fly on it?

I never flew on Pan Am, no.

I remember the flight attendants, they had a uniform.

Yeah, were they the ones with the neck scarves?

The neck scarves and the light blue color.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They were big time. They were a premier international airline, and they diversified into various non-core areas. So they purchased a national car rental company, Intercontinental Hotels, and then started the Pan Am travel agency. That was all high-end travel agency stuff. And then these ventures, combined with operational costs and competition, led to its very sad bankruptcy. I think that was in 1991. So we're talking about that sad mistake of the captive customer fallacy, which is that you have a customer and that customer is gonna— you're gonna integrate that customer and he's gonna buy all your products that you've added on to your original product. So let's, let's explore that.

Yeah, the demise of Pan Am is such a poignant explanation or descriptive of how a business has this fallacy believing that one customer will keep consuming from them regardless of the offering. But what they don't think about is it dilutes the ability to be superior at any single offering. Pan Am dominated the airline space, right? It was international travel. So my mother's from Germany, we would go to Europe with some frequency, and we flew Pan Am. I remember distinctly the smokers. There was literally a smoking section, smoking stuff on the Pan Am flights. Pan Am was not a domestic carrier. I think TWA, remember them? I think they were the big, uh, there was another one, uh, I can't remember the names. People Express.

Oh gosh, no, I don't even remember that one.

People's Express. Yeah, it was similar to Southwest. Yeah, you got a ticket and you grabbed the first—

you got a seat in that.

Yeah, it was bargain basement prices. But Pan Am had an international presence. There was a decline in their international demand, and so instead of shoring up domestic routes and becoming stronger there, they said, oh, we have customers traveling internationally, and while there's fewer doing the international trips, they do have other requirements when they travel internationally. They need to rent a car, they need to stay at a hotel.

Yeah.

So why don't we start this international I think it was called Intercontinental Hotel Chain. Why don't we start a car rental agency? Hey, why don't we be travel agents ourselves? Because people maybe want a vacation when they're out there.

It sounds very practical. It sounds very logical. It sounds like it should work.

Yes, dude, it's what we're told to do.

Yeah.

Once you have a captive customer, what every single additional offering you have for these customers, you, you and I together, but we, you were watching the Olympics, right? I was watching the Olympics. I didn't see a single athlete who said, or was the best swimmer and the best runner and the best pole vaulter and the best breakdancer. Like, no one was excellent in all categories, right? There was a swimmer, I think it was Ledecky, Amy, I can't remember.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that sounds— Stacy or Amy, I don't know. Now I'm getting it.

Yeah, but she crushed it in swimming sports and I think is the most female gold medal winner in at least US history, but it was all in swimming. Like, I didn't see her out there running, right? But the argument is, well, hey, you're at the Olympics, you're on the field, you have an audience, the same people are watching, why not run too?

Right.

She'd have to devote herself to it. The best providers become extremely effective at what they're doing because of repetition. Second, you start diluting that repetition because you're doing other things, you start losing that cutting edge.

Gotcha.

And that's what happened to Pan Am.

Yeah. There was another story, a guy who was a landscaper.

Oh yeah, Ernie?

Yeah, Ernie, your landscaper.

What was that? We used to live in Mountain Lakes down the street here, and, uh, Ernie was our landscaper. And I'll never forget this, one day he comes to me, it was in the fall season. Do you have a landscaper?

Um, yeah, it's me.

It's a lot of work.

It is a lot of work, especially when your freaking weed whacker keeps falling apart.

You have the weed whacker, and your property, you have how many trees on there? 4 or 5?

4 or 5, yeah. Right.

It's unbelievable how much leaves these things dump.

Yeah.

And so you're backyard, I'm sure, is buried like ours gets with these leaves. We've decided to hire a landscaper. And so Ernie comes with his big blowing equipment and machines and blows all stuff away. And the fall season— you know you're in the fall season when you hear these machines whirring away all day Saturday. Yeah, all day Saturday, Sunday, and during the week. Ernie comes to me— this is many falls ago— and he says, hey, why is blowing the leaves? I can see up on your roof there's a lot of leaves up there. Do you want me to climb on the roof? I'll blow it off the roof. "Clean things." And I'm like, "Absolutely." Now what Ernie's thinking is he has a captive customer, me. He's already providing a service. I already know, like, and trust Ernie, and therefore, why not pay him? And he's like, "You know, I go on the roof, I'll charge Mike an extra $100," whatever we agreed to.

And he's like, "Instant money from a captive customer." He's already paid for the gas to get to your location, so it makes sense. He's there.

He's there. So he goes up on the roof, and What was interesting was he didn't have the right equipment to clean the gutters. He has this blower machine, but he's now hand scooping this out. So there's inefficiency.

Yeah.

He comes down off the roof and he says, "I need to go to Home Depot to get some equipment, I guess, or some scooping devices and stuff." I'm like, "Okay." He's like, "But I also noticed there were some shingles out." He's like, "I'm pretty good at replacing stuff. I did this at my own house a couple years ago. Do you want me to replace your shingles? I'll charge you a little bit more." And I'm like, "All right, another $100." Yeah. And it went on. He's like, "Oh, there's a crack in the chimney. You want me to put some cement in it?" He tripped back and forth to Home Depot. By the end of the day, he had started our lawn that morning. He was still at my house. He had gone back to Home Depot for the 4th or 5th time to get spotlights to have lights to finish out the repair on the roof. Here's the funny thing. So my bill for cleaning the lawn, say, was $500. Well, with these add-ons, I ended up spending $700 or $800. I bet you that night he went out to the bar with his buddies who are also in landscaping said, I just made $800 off this one guy. And the other landscaper said, oh, I only made $500 off of 10 customers today. I made $5,000 today. No additional equipment. They use the same stuff repetitively. They're really efficient at it. They have the protocols down. They don't have to learn anything new. And I would also argue the job they do is likely better than Ernie because that's all they do, right? They're efficient, they're capable, right? Um, Ernie continues to be my guy because I'm loyal to him, right? But Ernie's— that is true, his business is struggling.

Yeah.

And the other landscaper You know Keith, I think. We have him do all of these masonry projects for us.

Right. Construction type projects.

That's all he does.

Okay.

That's all he does. And I was talking to him last time he was out. We were doing some construction and he goes, "How's Ernie doing?" I'm like, "He's great. Great guy, but struggling." He's like, "Yeah, I know." He's like, "I think I'm just going to buy the business because the guy is such a nice guy. He's a salesperson, but God, he does not know efficiency." Yeah.

Yeah. And we talked about, you know, The money he made, okay, he made that much money, but the money he put out getting equipment— He lost money on equipment.

He lost money on equipment. But he only made $700, to your point, with tons of inefficiency. So what did he net per hour?

Yeah.

But the other guy literally did 10 yards in one day. That's $5,000.

Yeah.

So you're getting 1 yard done in one day versus 10 yards is a 10-time amplitude. But the guy that does 10 yards, We'll say it's Keith. He has the same equipment.

Right.

Southwest, is it Southwest? Yeah, Southwest only buys, I think it was DC-10 airplanes or something. Because all the maintenance was exactly the same.

I was going to say, the maintenance guys know exactly what they're working with.

The stockroom has the equipment just for the DC-10. They don't have to worry about the Boeings and all the other Lockheeds and all the different airplanes. When a problem happens, they swap it out. If one plane goes down, they have a plane in backup that has the exact same seating layout that they can pull up, right? There's no question they have the most efficient turnaround. Why? Because, because they do one thing really well, and that becomes what I call the area of innovation. Master one thing so well that that is your differentiator in the market that no one can touch.

I love it. So why do most businesses live check to check and operate panic to panic?

Yeah, probably because of Ernie's situation. Yeah. The irony is when you start a business You don't know who your best customer is. You make your best guess at it, but you don't know who it is. In the very beginning, you have to figure out what works. There's that saying, you know, throw spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks.

Yeah.

Do you ever do that?

I have never thrown spaghetti against the wall.

Do you know why people throw spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? Because it shows how well done it is.

Okay.

I didn't know that.

I might have known that. Okay.

Yeah. So, um, And by the way, only throw one strand at a time. I thought you threw it the whole—

there's Mike with a pot of spaghetti.

Yeah, I'm like, oh, throw the whole pot up. Yeah, like a lot of it's sticking.

Chris is just snarling at you at this point.

Well, when it comes to check, check survival, in the very beginning you have to try things out, see if it's cooked enough, if it's working. We have to go in with our assumptions, but they're not necessarily right. So an example, when I became an author and wrote The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur I thought the consumer would be college students, particularly male, young college students, white male, because that's who I was when I came out of college. I started a business, right? So that's who I'll market to. I started marketing to that group, getting the word out, going to business events and so forth for— at colleges. And while these people were listening, they weren't consuming. It ended up being— I'm not shocked— female entrepreneurs. Yeah. What happened, and this is a wild story, I got a call in the office from a woman who said, "My son brought home this book called The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. I was hawking him in the back of the room and he didn't take it back to school to read it. And I was like, 'This is such a bizarre title. What is it about?'" And she said, "When I started reading it, it's like, oh, this is about entrepreneurship. And my God, here is a white male author who's not pandering to a female audience." Like, that's a weird thing. I actually feel empowered. She goes, I followed your book and it's serving me. It took me a few more of those type of calls to realize, oh my gosh, I had written a book and it's resonating with a different community. That's the community I got to speak with.

Right.

So in the beginning, we go with this kind of check-to-check survival because you have to figure out what's working. And in the beginning, you got to survive. So sell what you can.

Okay.

But then you have to transition your mindset to say, Who's the community I can serve and how am I serving them in a unique way? For me, it was non-pandering, highly actionable, highly accessible female-consuming audience. But what most entrepreneurs do is they say, yeah, okay, that's good, them too, but let me diversify. Ah, let me also serve this group and that group. And we continue to check to check survival because we don't— we fall into Ernie's trap. We don't become masterful at any one thing.

Okay.

The essence to becoming an authority in a space, uh, finding your innovative area is to cater to a space. Because what one community needs will be different, slightly or significantly, from a different community. So cater to one community in one way, and you've positioned yourself to really develop an area of innovation and will get out of that check-to-check survival.

Okay. What about things like running promotions and cutting pricing? Are those problems too, or?

Yeah, yeah. Well, of course. Yeah. So that is, I call the survival trap. When I'm not making, you know, there's a saying, when desperate people do desperate things. When I'm not making money, I will take more actions to make money. And there's a confusion with entrepreneurs that the source of money income results in profitability. And there's not a direct translation. So Ernie made $700. He charged $200 more than he would've charged me otherwise. And so his mind's like, I made $200 more. But the reality is, and you pointed out, he went to Home Depot for the 5,000th time. He went through all these things, these inefficiencies. It cost him to do that. Another costly method is these promotions. 50% off.

Yeah.

People are buying more. I'm selling more volume. Yeah, but all that, if you're at 50% off and you were not profitable before, now you've lost even more money. You're even less profitable. Or you ate into your profits.

Gotcha.

So promotions to instill or inspire more sales, if it doesn't have a model that is efficient, replicatable, where you can dictate a margin on, you're saying you're not profitable. So, so don't sell just for the heck of selling. That's a desperate move. Okay, we, we— I'd love to do promotions, maybe a discount for what we're really efficient at and make a lot of money at. Yeah, but whatever it is you're doing to market it, it can't cause you to lose money. It's funny, there's a joke in the industry. There's a business that achieved $1 million. They say, how do you do it? They said, we spent $1.1 million. Right?

Ouch.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. But that's what a lot of businesses do. They spend more to make less.

Okay. Well, let's get back to these areas of innovation. So there are 3 types: quality, price, and convenience. Can you walk us through those?

Yes. Okay. So when I was doing research, this originally started in The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and I've expanded on in other books, identified there's 3 ways that a business can distinguish itself. So first, we'll start with price. Price is very obvious. You can be the cheapest provider price-wise on something, and you will get noticed for that. That's why Walmart exists, right? We can get items and products anywhere, but we know if we go to Walmart, it's likely for that category of product will be the least expensive, right? Usually it translates into its durability or quality is lowered, right? Right. But in some items, you buy a box of cereal at Walmart or you buy it here up the street at King's, the exact same box is radically cheaper at Walmart.

Sure.

So how does Walmart win in this game? It's a volume play. Walmart, they know if they can churn hundreds of thousands of boxes of cereal every year that they can lower the price. King's, who sells maybe a box a day, can't compete on price. So if you want to compete in the price game, you've got to be able to win in a volume game. Very few small businesses can, can, can do it, can do that. Now, another way to compete on price Donna Lyons, who is the licensee of the Pumpkin Plan, also pointed out you can be the highest price. That also becomes exceptional. So the lowest price we realize, but the exceptional price— there's a place in New York City that sells hamburgers, a hamburger for I think is $1,000. And the reason is because they have gold flakes in it and they have these different things. But it's remarkable.

And some people buy the $1,000 hamburger because they say they want to have that.

'Cause they wanna have the hamburger.

It's notable.

It's notable. It serves ego. You can brag about it. So there is significant value for that too. The problem with extraordinary price is you decrease the volume of demand. It's gonna be the exceptional customer that wants that.

Right, far and few between.

Far and few between. So usually places that have that extraordinarily high price will have, it's almost like a trap of some sort. It's a light for moths in that it attracts us in to say, I ate at that place. I'm not going to pay $1,000 for a hand.

You're never doing that again.

But I will pay, you know, $40.

Right.

There's a technique specifically called decoy pricing. Where do you food shop?

Um, mostly ShopRite.

ShopRite. Okay. ShopRite is famous for decoy pricing. Next time you go to ShopRite and buy soup, look at the soup cans and what you'll see usually eye level will be, uh, not Campbell's necessarily, but a brand that's considered a slightly higher—

Progresso.

Progresso. Yeah. Higher category. Sure, right? Progresso. Look at the pricing, then look below, and you'll see that whatever price is below the Progresso on the shelf, the next shelf down, will be less. And you'll also see some in the Progresso shelf to be extraordinarily high. Those cans, they don't expect to sell. But what they want you to do is look at that price, and then you look at maybe what you may lean toward, right? Campbell's, or maybe it's a Progresso, and say, wow, you know, the Progresso at least is not $7 a can, it's only $4 a can, and the Campbell's is $3.25. Decoy pricing is where you have a high price so the consumer has a comparative in their mind. Ah. And so that hamburger joint selling a $1,000 hamburger is also using it as a decoy to make the now $30 hamburger not sound so bad.

Right. Normally.

Normally, who would buy a $30 hamburger?

Right.

That's the pricing.

Okay. Now quality.

Actually, do you mind if I leave with convenience? Yeah. Quality is—

okay. Yeah.

So pricing is high-low. Convenience usually means accessibility, friction-free. The less barriers I have to go through to consume something, the more likely I am to lean toward it. Amazon, hands down, is the best definition of it.

Yeah.

Do you buy a lot from Amazon?

I do.

Okay. I was thinking about making a meme. I actually told Andrea about this. The meme goes something like this. Over the last week, Amazon came to my house twice per day. And then I was gonna write, phew, I'm buying a lot less nowadays. Because usually they come like 5 or 6 times a day.

Yeah, exactly.

Unbelievable how often that truck comes up. And I'm like, why am I buying so much from Amazon? Because it's single click.

Yeah.

You think of the item, you see it on Amazon, and you click, and it is at your home that day. That day.

Yeah.

Or the next day.

Right.

It's instant manifestation.

Right.

With very little friction. Could you imagine you had thought of the item and now you spend 20 minutes kind of finding it? Like, I can't find it on the internet. Where is it? You finally find it. Oh, it is on Amazon. I'd like to buy it. Click on buy. It says, well, what's your address? You type in your address. What's your credit card information? It goes through all these machinations. Every barrier will have us reconsidering, is it worth the effort? Amazon measures not how quickly you find the item to clicking to buy it. They measure how quickly you think of an item before you buy it. And the faster they can compress thought to to action, action, the more likely to win. Wow. So the goal here, if you want to compete on convenience, is how do you make it as accessible, as easy as possible? We have— we are a drive-through society, right? It's absurd. People— and when I say people, I mean Mike McCallum— is not willing to get out of his car to go into that fast food restaurant and say, I'd like a thing of French fries.

If the drive-through is not working, we're not going. Basically, yeah.

Oh my God, I have to get out of my car. So we're a drive-through society, and that's very appealing, right? Um, so as a small business, we can choose to innovate there. I do want to argue, if you choose to lead on price or if you choose to lead on convenience, you have to be the best in the category, um, or at least at the top of the category. When I go to McDonald's versus Burger King versus Wendy's They're all identically, or they're all very similar in their categories. Now my differentiation doesn't become convenience. It's like, oh, I prefer the Wendy's hamburger or whatever. There'll be a preference. Or sometimes it still is convenience. That's the closer store and they're basically all the same.

Right.

So I'm not saying you have to be the world leader, but you have to be in that elite category. If it was McDonald's, Burger King, and a diner, McDonald's and Burger King, clearly I can get my food within minutes or seconds. A diner, oh.

Got out of the car.

Got out of the car. It's gonna be time consuming. The times I want to go to the diner because that's the environment I want to have. We have to be in the top echelon if it's just going to be our area of innovation.

Okay.

The nice thing is there's a lot of industries where convenience isn't there right now. We just recently had an electrician come to our house after 15 calls and frustration and like, "I'm coming," and then no one shows.

Right.

That's the antithesis of convenience.

Right.

If you want to crush it in your industry, look at what your competition's doing. And if they're like that electrician experience, be the convenient electrician. You don't have to be a better electrician. You have to get an adequate job done. But show up when you say you're gonna show up and respond very quickly and you'll start being differentiated. You'll be the first McDonald's, if you will, of your industry.

Gotcha. I love that.

Okay. Now the last one is what, quality?

Quality.

I wanted to do quality last because this is a kind of a broad term. The most common translation, quality is translated to luxury. So we think of like Mercedes, uh, you have a Mercedes or two.

Oh yeah, six.

Six. You have a stable of Mercedes.

A stable of Mercedes.

And every time I visit the Cartelli house, I see all these Mercedes out there and I'm like, wow, the, um, the, the workmanship is extraordinary and the stitch work and all that stuff. Quality, um, is where you are seen perceivably as a superior item in luxury, but also durability is another one. Another one is experientially, meaning it is so distinct and different that stands out. Yeah, basically quality becomes a catch-all if you're not competing on price, you're not competing on convenience. The last one is to pick a quality, meaning a category. So I'll give you an example. In Florida, there's a restaurant called Dick's Last Resort. It's a restaurant. Okay, this restaurant had a, uh, a reputation historically of not just being the most friendly place at all. It was like, you ever go to a restaurant where it's confrontational?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This had a reputation.

A lot of restaurants in New Jersey are like this.

Yeah, exactly. It was basically New Jersey. It was basically New Jersey. What they did is they said, we're going to double down on it. We're going to be the least friendly, most aggressive restaurant. So you go there, you're going to be insulted. They're going to make fun of you. They're going to be frustrated with you. They lean into it. Now that place has people queued up out the doors. Why? Because it's a unique, different experience.

Interesting.

If I call it the -est, which is the superlative of something, you can be the fastest or the slowest. Yeah, there's these, uh, haunted, uh, places that'll come out. October is approaching pretty quickly right now. We're recording this in August, but, uh, the haunted mansions and the haunted houses will present themselves. You will see that some of them will say the scariest in the United States, you know, sign this waiver that you— because you may be so frightened you're gonna have a heart attack, right? They are using a quality, an S, the scary yes.

Okay.

The beautiful thing is this category, you can pick anything. Our goal in the work we do is to be the simplest. So we're going for a quality category. The simplest path to entrepreneurial success is our path, right?

I love that. I love it. So I have a note here. You combine your, your AOI with your unique offering, um, and/or your number one strength, the thing you do really, really well and naturally.

Yeah.

Um, plus add your business and life experience, and that's your sweet spot.

Yeah. Now, now you're crushing it. So let's say you talk about the business product, and when I talk about business, I mean the product. So for us, it's books. You're speaking as a part of it, but books is our core one. So now we have a quality area of innovation of being the simplest. We're not the only company that makes things simpler. Uh, so in any category, there could be, uh, folks that are making things simpler. Maybe in the educational space, there's someone that makes cooking simpler, right? So, so they could be the simplest, but we are the simplest in the entrepreneurial space. So now we've reduced the number of people that we're considering. And that person for cooking could be the simplest in the cooking space. So who's the category you're serving? Don Miller, famously, he has Business Made Simple. He's in the same space as us.

Yeah.

And he makes it very simple. His books, his work is fabulous.

Right.

It's fabulous. And we make it simple. And I, I'm proud of the work we do. And I think it's fabulous, too.

Me, too.

But one thing that Don has that we don't, and one thing we have that Don doesn't have, is our own story, our own style. So we come to it with our own unique of humor and approachableness and relatability. Don comes to it with a position of authority and different elements. But he's a humorous guy, very different sense of humor. Ours is much more self-deprecating.

Yeah, goof.

Goof. More sometimes a dry humor or irony. He's very good at irony. So when you look at the combination of elements, now we become a category of one of one. And that's what all business owners need to do.

That's what they're aiming for.

Yeah. Blend your area of innovation. What are you gonna win your gold medal on?

Yeah.

The quality, price, or convenience. Secondly, what's the product or outline of the platform? For us, it's books, but also in speaking.

Right.

It's another one of our platforms we choose. And then what is your unique story or voice behind that? And now you become this category of one and you become unstoppable.

Right, right.

So you know you're nailing it is when any of your product platforms, books, speaking, what we're doing right now, when people hear it and they say, oh my God, that's the same voice. When I saw Mike speak or I read Mike's book or I saw the podcast with Amy, that's the same brand. And it doesn't have to be for a personal brand. We're a personal brand, but It could be a product brand. We're talking about Mercedes.

Yeah.

When, when you buy a Mercedes car, the quality is a sense of luxury, right? When you go to a Mercedes event, they're demonstrating cars. If they like, hey, here's some hot dogs, you know, some wieners down the street, just spray some ketchup on there and we're gonna have a clown, Bozo the Clown, yucking around, right? There's an incongruency there, right? So they're much more posh. They provide white glove service, right? I don't have a Mercedes.

We're dreaming.

If either of us had Mercedes, but That is what it would be like. My wife does have a BMW. BMW, their tagline is the ultimate driving machine. Their uniqueness, their est, is the ride itself is going to be the best ride you've ever experienced. You feel it in the vehicle, but when we went to an event, it was all around the experience of driving. Yes, it was well done, but it was not Mercedes quality. It wasn't white glove. Everything was around the driving experience. You've got to hit that area of innovation, your stylistic approach to it, regardless of the product you're selling. In that case, it was a driving experience as opposed to buying a car. It's got to be consistent throughout.

That's smart. There are some companies who've done this really well, like Domino's, for example. They've concentrated on delivering pizza quickly and efficiently. Booton is a testament to this. We have, I don't know, how many pizza shops do we have? New Jersey, and we're a pizza place. The pizza in New Jersey is just exceptional. And Domino's has made it here in Booton because they are focusing on these factors. So they've got delivery that's efficient. The company has continually refined its ordering process, delivery logistics, and menu offerings to excel in the area. So I think they're one example of a company that's really doing it well.

And you and I can say that I can speak on your behalf. Their pizza ain't that good. No, it kind of sucks.

Not compared to everything else we have in town.

And here they are still thriving because we're New Jerseyans and we can say that.

They— that really speaks to that whole idea of no barriers. I mean, they single-click ordering and—

correct. Yeah, correct. So there's a Domino's Pizza one block from here.

Yeah.

Um, but also literally across the street is Roma's. Down the street is, uh, Pasquale's.

Yeah.

D— what?

Baco's.

Oh yeah, then you got Delizia's, uh, which is maybe half a mile from here. You got the Res, top of the park, up the street, that's 3 blocks up. You have Columbia Inn, who's got the thin pizza. I would argue you could, within walking distance, um, sometimes a long walk, but you can get an extraordinary pizza here. How can Domino's still be in business? And the reason is, is, you know, Domino's will kick everyone else's ass on getting it to you fast. Yeah, easily.

Yeah, easy, easy.

Roma's— I don't know if you've ever tried to use their app to order pizza. Oh my God, it was like, you got— you better call in and you know you're gonna be put on hold. You call Roma's, hey, Roma's, give me 10 minutes. And I'm like, okay. And then you're— they hang up on you half the time. And you call back, Enza's amazing.

She's great.

And I'll tell you why they win. They have quality of family. Yeah, you go to Roma's, hey, Mike, how you doing?

Yeah, 6 cousins come out of the kitchen to greet you. Exactly.

Here's some garlic knots. We just made them. So I love going to Roma's for the garlic knots.

Yeah.

My wife and I though will go past Domino's, we'll go past Roma's to go down to Columbia Inn because the thin pizza.

Yeah.

It's a unique quality. It's delivery. It's the only place in this area that we know has this ultra thin pizza where I can actually have 4 slices without getting diarrhea.

Exactly. That crust is so good. It's like a little thin cracker. It's so good.

But Domino's, if you need it in the next 20 minutes, You're going to—

you're going to Domino's. Exactly. And they hit that price point.

Yeah. And they also— they have a lower price point, but I would argue they don't compete on price.

Yeah.

You know who competes on price is, uh, ShopRite.

Yeah.

And, um, uh, Acme down the road, because you can get frozen pizza, throw in your oven, and it'll be about half the price of Domino's. But inconvenient.

Yes.

Because you gotta pick it up, you gotta heat it, and blah blah blah.

Yeah.

So Domino's, yes, it's a lower price point than Roma's But they are competing on price. You want something quick, go with Domino's. And the funny thing is, the consumer knows, you know, this isn't gonna be the greatest pizza in the world, but we just— I like Domino's, it's pretty good pizza.

Yeah, it's something.

It's all these Jersey Italians here except for Domino's. I know, like, no one, no one there has an Italian accent. No, everyone else is like, hey, you got Domino's, like, what do you want? You want a pizza? 30 seconds, I'll be done.

Yeah, exactly. Here's another company that's doing it right. I think Apple has been highly successful by focusing on the iPhone. They offer a range of products, but they're putting their money basically and their innovations into their iPhone and sticking with that.

And it's quality. My argument for why Apple and the iPhone is so successful is they were the first to blend technology with art. Everyone else was just making the tech. Remember the BlackBerry?

Did you have a BlackBerry? I had a BlackBerry. It was my first— Yeah, it was my first.

I love my CrackBerry. And then the Apple comes out and what everyone else was doing, this is the biggest fallacy of innovations. We see our competitor doing something and say, oh, we can beat them by being better. So everyone saw your BlackBerry, my BlackBerry. And I remember that company came out with it. It was a phone that had a screen, but you slid the screen up and this whole QWERTY keyboard popped out. You remember that?

Yeah, Will had, that was Will's first phone, yeah.

Yeah, they basically said, oh, the buttons on the BlackBerry are why people love it. We need more buttons.

That—

I don't know who that was, Sony, whatever. It's— it ain't in the market, right? How come Apple dominated? Because Apple said, what is unique to us— now this is a true story— Steve Jobs had a phobia of buttons.

Really?

Yeah, I looked it up once. It's like commaquamphobia or something. There's a real word for this. Okay, so if you look at him, he always wears a turtleneck, it's buttonless, and he ain't wearing button-clad jeans.

I always wondered about That mystery solved.

Mystery solved. There's other idiosyncrasies. I mean, he could have worn different shirts. He always wore the same black turtleneck, but he had a button phobia. As a result, he leveraged his idiosyncrasy and said, "When we make the iPhone, I want it buttonless." The first iPhone did have one button, but it was sunk down. It was called the home button.

Yeah, I remember that.

But it was basically invisible so Steve wouldn't freak out. Today, they were the innovator on buttonless phones. Now, others have emulated that.

Right.

But they were all second to market. They're all the ones that said, "You know, BlackBerry has a lot of buttons. Let's add buttons." Once Apple did this, everyone else started copying it. But Apple has like 70% of the market. I have an iPhone. You have an iPhone.

I have an iPhone. Everybody in my family has an iPhone.

Wouldn't you want an iPhone too? I want an iPhone. Right?

Yeah.

And they can charge a ridiculously high price. I don't know what we paid for our phone. $1,000? $900?

Yeah. Something like that. A lot of money.

But I see so much value in it. I'm like, it's a steal. Yeah, look how easy it's to use, etc., etc. Yeah. So when you dominate in one space, in their case it's a quality of, of physical appreciation, looks. It, it is representative of who I am, right? And they do have this intuitive interface. I would argue that intuitive interface, which would be a convenience play, is not They're a leading differentiator. I would argue if the Apple product said, "We're only gonna do black products. We're not gonna give multiple colors. We're not gonna allow you to customize. It's only gonna be this one way," they would start losing market share really quickly. The fact that I can make it an expression of who I am, that's the biggest factor. You have to compete in the other spaces if it's important to your customers. So they have to have an interface that makes sense and is convenient.

Right.

You can never, never compromise your area of innovation. That's when you start losing it. Like Pan Am, like how you started us out.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mike.

You're welcome.

That really—

Did we crush all the topics for today?

I think we did.

How much time did we spend so far?

We're at 38 minutes.

38 minutes. We hope we still have our listeners.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now what we do is we have another section. We want to hit on current or not current news topics, just interesting news topics. What do you got?

I kind of love this one. There is a— okay. The headline was, "Best friends build a village of tiny houses in the middle of nowhere." So you and 3 of your best friends basically go buy a plot of land and build tiny houses and live together in a small little community.

So spouses, right? Husband and wives?

Yeah, spouses.

I looked up that article. Texas?

Yes, on the Llano River or something like that. Yeah. So friendship-focused, 4 couples, longtime friends found that suburban life was hindering their ability to cherish their friendships and family time. They had a shared vision that they decided coming together and creating a unique living arrangement inspired by the tiny houses movement to live more intentionally would be the answer. And that's what they did. I think this sounds so awesome.

Does it, Amy? It does.

It doesn't—

don't say their names, but I want you to think of your 3 or 4 closest friends. I can picture some of them, some of them, and their spouses. Okay, would you those 3 people, those 3 couples, and you and Chris want to move to a location where you see each other all the time? Honestly, I think so. Really? Okay, I would say F no.

Tell me, who the hell are your friends?

Yeah, no, I love spending time with my friends.

Yeah, but wait, Mike, I'm one of the friends on the river, right?

I know you are. That's the first person I thought of. How do I say it with meaning? There's a certain point where that, for me, the time apart makes the time together more cherished. I think there can be an excess of time with other people. Benjamin Franklin famously said, both guests and fish stink after 3 days.

Yes, that's pretty— that's pretty good. So, but what if you're separate enough? Like, what if you have, you know, what if you're each on half an acre? You're not right on top of each other, but you're right, right?

You have the air. Yeah. And that's what is interesting. When I was looking up this, I looked at this building. So each of them has a house. They have a communal cooking space. So they don't have their own, and there's a communal living space.

Oh, that changes things.

Yeah. So it wasn't— that's what I thought initially. I was like, oh, this is interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. I would love to be able to walk over to my neighbors or on a day I choose not to, to not, and vice versa.

Yeah.

They're basically 4 different bedrooms that are their own bedrooms. But everything else communal. So I thought that was excessive.

Yeah, that might be. That might be. Especially— well, I don't know, especially for us now as families that have been established for a long time, to like go back to sort of like that college dorm, you know, or your college apartment type setup, basically.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, I did love the college days, but I don't know if I'd love the college days in a married situation with family, like with family. Yeah, it's different.

I don't know, they don't mention kids here, do they? It's just about adults.

Uh, I didn't see the kids.

I don't think there's kids involved, so that might be a whole other—

that might be— yeah, it might be another part of it. But here, what was interesting, they turned into a business opportunity. They're Airbnb-ing it now. Yeah, I wouldn't mind for 3 days, like you and Chris got a place, me and Chris, uh, Kelsey brings Para. Hey, let's, let's do this.

Yeah, um, fun.

Yeah, well, we do with our retreat.

Yeah, and I love that.

I love it because there is something special in our business when we do a retreat and we all get up in the morning and we, we gather in the kitchen. And now it's like 7 or 8 in the morning, people are firing up coffee, and yeah, there's a different form of communication and respect and understanding and enjoyment of each other as opposed to just this business environment. So that's true. That's an interesting concept.

I know.

Any other articles?

Yeah, there's, um, there's one. A woman named Maria Gutierrez started with a food truck called El Fusion in Los Angeles. Yes.

So she's, um, even that's a fusion.

El Fusion.

That's Spanish-English right there.

And it evolved into a chain of high-end fusion cuisine restaurants with multiple locations across California. So that's like truly the, uh, the American dream happening there. And she offered a blend of Mexican dishes and then with modern culinary techniques and global influences, she created all of these different fusion influences featuring items like Korean barbecue tacos and Indian spiced enchiladas. I'm really hungry right now all of a sudden.

I have two insights already.

Yeah.

So first is I like that she started with a test environment, the food truck, right?

Right.

We were talking earlier in today's episode that I was selling to one community, young white males, and didn't realize it was the mothers of these young white males, and then it became a much broader community. Women entrepreneurs, minority entrepreneurs I spoke to. And that's really where I got my legs for my books and expanded beyond that. So I like that she started small.

Yeah.

And she's testing. The other thing is I have a saying that 1 1 none. What I mean by this is 2 things put together can equal something never done before. That's what I mean by none. Like none before have done this. Okay. And I'm the first to do it. And I don't think we do that enough. I have a friend, A.J. Jacobs. He wrote a brand new book that's come out called The Year I Lived Constitutionally. He's famous for a book that's The Year I Lived Biblically. He devotes one year to living things. So I said, he comes up with such innovative ideas. I say, how do you do it? He goes, oh, I spend every day 30 minutes doing brain exercises around these what-if scenarios of adding two things that don't go together. So I said, what if a snowman was the spokesperson for burning coal. Oh, he's like, and he just ponders these ideas. I love that. And by adding two things that unexpectedly are matched, sometimes you find there is a link or connection. Yeah. And I don't know if he linked or connected those. I just remember him sharing an example. That's really cool. And so she just started taking things and blending them, and now you create something that's none have done before, right?

I love that. I love that. Reminds me of those books when we were kids where that top half of the book could be flipped separately than the bottom half of the book. Oh yes, and you could like different matches. Yes, you could put the polar bear's head on top of the hippopotamus's bottom, which was always wearing a tutu. Exactly, right? Exactly. You've read the same books.

All right, give me one more.

All right, let's do one more. Um, oh, there is another one. This one: virtual reality dining experience merging virtual reality with meals. So I was like, what, what? I don't understand this. Are they actually eating things? And yes, they are actually eating things, but the goggles and the colors and all of the things that they can superimpose, it make it a completely different experience. It's really, really cool.

Something old can become new again by adding these little twists. Yeah. There is a restaurant, I think it was in in Las Vegas. It's called like the High Dining Experience. Not high as in weed, but high as in elevation. And what you do is you get on this seat where you're strapped in and they— there's a table and there's a server in the center, so there's a carafe for that person. And you go up 100 feet in the air, so a crane pulls you up and you're eating in the sky. Whoa. It's the High Dining Experience. Um, there is another restaurant in New York. This one creeps out Krista.

Where it's pitch black. Oh, I've heard of this.

Yeah, so you're served food without any visual cues, and she's like, I don't know if I like that. But this kind of is another variant of that. Yeah. And what's so interesting is when it comes to consumption of food, but this is many aspects, is highly influenced by the other variables that are actually going on. If you ever Get a glass, a bottle of wine, and there's a sommelier who says, "Oh, there'll be hints of leather in the beginning and then it'll end with a touch of raspberry explosion." And you drink it and you're like, "Oh my God, there's leather in the beginning and a raspberry explosion. I didn't even know that thing existed." I can drink that exact same glass prior to that and have no— No, I'm like, "Oh, this tastes like grape juice." And a day or two later when I forgot the story, It doesn't taste that way. And then when I see the price on the bottle, that was a $100 bottle. Oh my God, it's amazing. Yeah, I love it because I guarantee the food flavor changes because of the other inputs going on in our brain during that.

Well, they were saying like if they superimpose a spiky image in your goggles while you're eating something, you will translate— your brain will translate those spikier images into more bitter flavors or more spicy. Yeah. Or And it's so wild how much play there is there for those kind of changes.

I hope for one of our listeners that they just got an idea, said, oh my God, you know, I, I don't know, I provide plumbing services. Can you integrate some kind of external stimuli like a VR, right? Or maybe a plush toy when you show up? And people— maybe you're the plumber who shows up with a rubber ducky, and now because you— this— when people take a bath next, they feel more comforted And they think the plumbing experience or product was better because of that. I just want people to think of those ideas. All right, we better get the heck out of here. Yeah, we better. All right, you just listened to Entrepreneurship Simplified, and we hope we gave you some ideas and some strategies that you can use in your business. I do have a big ask for you. Would you please subscribe to the show and give us an honest rating? If you think the show sucks, I get it. You can do that. But if you think the show's great, I get it. You can do that too. Give us an honest rating. Helps us spread the word. As always, thank you for joining us. We'll see you on next week's episode.

Do you know what we're talking about next week? Yeah, next week we are talking about pumpkin planning.

Oh, the pumpkin plan. Yeah, you're right. It's really distinguishing your clients, and the term firing clients is a little bit aggressive, but some clients are unfit for you. Not that they're bad clients, just a bad fit. We're gonna talk about how to cherry-pick between those two to really move your business forward healthily.

Can't wait.

You do need this foundation of area of innovation though, so make sure you're understanding this and deploying this in your business because that'll serve you for next week. All right, we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.