Mastering Your Niche: Unleashing Business Growth through Your Area of Innovation
In this episode of Entrepreneurship Simplified, host Mike Michalowicz and co‑host Amy Cortelli explore the concept of an "Area of Innovation" (AOI) as the key to mastering a niche and achieving sustainable growth. They begin with a light‑hearted personal anecdote before diving into the core premise: businesses often fall into the "captive‑customer" or "survival" traps by trying to serve every need of a single customer or by adding low‑margin services that dilute their core competence. The hosts illustrate these traps with vivid examples – Pan Am’s failed diversification into hotels and car rentals, a local landscaper (Ernie) who adds roof‑cleaning and gutter repairs for extra cash, and the inefficiencies that arise from such add‑ons. They then outline three strategic differentiators that constitute an AOI: price, convenience, and quality. For each, they discuss how businesses can dominate – Walmart’s volume‑driven low‑price model, Amazon’s friction‑free convenience, and luxury brands like Mercedes that leverage quality and experience. Concepts such as decoy pricing, the "survival trap" of desperate promotions, and the importance of staying elite within a chosen differentiator are explained with concrete retail and airline examples. The conversation also highlights how unexpected idea pairing—blending unrelated concepts like virtual reality with dining or mixing visual cues with food—can create novel experiences that re‑energize old offerings. The hosts examine sensory augmentation in dining, describing a high‑altitude restaurant in Las Vegas, a pitch‑black eatery in New York, and VR‑enhanced meals that alter perceived flavor. They illustrate how context, storytelling, and price cues (e.g., a sommelier’s description) reshape taste perception, underscoring the psychological levers entrepreneurs can pull. Mike encourages listeners to apply such sensory twists to any service, even plumbing, by adding playful elements like VR or a rubber ducky to elevate the customer experience. They then discuss how entrepreneurs can combine their AOI with a clear platform (books, speaking, etc.) and a unique voice to become a "category of one" – a distinct brand that cannot be easily replicated. Real‑world case studies (Domino’s fast delivery, Apple’s focus on the iPhone, Southwest’s operational simplicity) reinforce the framework. Finally, the episode ends with a call to action for subscriptions and ratings, and a teaser for next week’s discussion on the "Pumpkin Plan"—a strategy for selecting ideal clients and letting go of poor fits. Throughout, the tone remains conversational, enthusiastic, and instructional, aiming to give listeners actionable insight into identifying and owning their AOI for lasting business success.
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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 cl. Napping.
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 six stitches. The practitioning nurse specifically said, these are permanent stitches. Within 10 days or on the 10th day, you should get them removed. Okay, 10th day, when the doctor estate 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. 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 because you'll have to get them removed. Because watch, two weeks from now, if the stitches are still there, you do have permanence.
Well, first of all, 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, 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 them 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 want to welcome our guests to the show. You're listening to Entrepreneurship Simplified. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about the aoi, which is the area of innovation. Join 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.
Thanks for doing that.
Oh, my pleasure.
Our entire office dresses.
Yeah. You have some stylish people on your staff. You included. You included.
Yeah. But I'm the. The least stylish. I think so. I think so. Erin, probably 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 her own style.
Yeah.
But many office environments I go to are just T shirts and jeans or everyone's wearing kind of a homogeneous look that the office is coming about. Like everyone wears the. The jacket with the shirt, but no tie. God for sake. You know, no tie.
No tie.
That makes me so unique. So.
And Mike Mallowitz, 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.
New one coming out. We can't share the title yet. 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 was trepidatious because it was. It's a different environment, but the potential returns salvagely 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. 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.
I never flew on Pan Am.
Now I remember the flight attendants, they had a uniform.
Yeah. Were they the ones that. With the neck scarves?
Neck scarves? The light blue color.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were big time. They were a premier 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.
Yeah.
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 onto your original product. So tell. So let's explore that.
Yeah.
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 a. 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 there was another one. I can't remember the names. People. People Express.
Oh, gosh, no. I don't even remember that one.
People's Express. Yeah, it was similar to Southwest. Okay. You got a ticket and you grabbed.
The first you gotta see in the.
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 a customer's 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. 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 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 break dancer. Like, no one was X in all categories.
Right?
There was a swimmer. I think it was Ledecky.
Amy.
I can't remember.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds Stacy or Amy. I don't know. Now I'm getting Ledecky.
Yeah, but she crushed it in swimming sports and I think is the most female gold medal winner in lease 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 reputation, repetition, because you're doing other things, you start losing that Cutting edge.
Gotcha.
That's what happened to Pan Am.
Yeah. There was another story. A guy who was a landscape.
Oh, yeah, my land. Ernie.
Yeah, Ernie, your landscaper.
What was that? We used to live in Mountain Lakes down the street from here. And 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?
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? Four or five.
Four or five? Yeah. Right.
It's unbelievable how much leaves these things d. Yeah. And so you're back garden sh is berry 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. And during the week, Ernie comes to me. This is many falls ago. And he says, hey, why is blowing the leaves you 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.
Right.
He's already providing service. I already know, like, and trust Ernie.
Right.
And therefore, why not pay him? And he's like, you know, I go on the roof, I'll charge Mike an extra hundred dollars, whatever we agreed to. Right. And he's like, instant money from a custom captive customer.
He's already paid for the gas to get to your location. So it makes sense. He's there.
He's there.
Okay.
So he goes up on the roof. And what was interesting was he didn't have the right equipment to clean the gutters. He got. He has this blowering machine, but he's now hand scooping it out. So there's inefficiencies.
Yeah.
He comes down off the roof and he says, I need to go to Home Depot to get some equipment. I guess there's some scooping devices and stuff. 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 hundred dollars.
Yeah.
And it went on. He's like, oh, there's a crack in the chimney. You want me put some cement in there? He tripped back and forth to Home Depot. By the end of the day, he had started our lawn that morning.
Right.
He was still at my house. He had gone back to Home Depot for the fourth or fifth time to get spotlights, to have lights to repair. Here's the funny thing. So my bill for clean the lawn, say, was 500. Well, with these add ons, I ended up spending 700 or $800.
Right.
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. 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.
Ernie continues to be my guy because I'm loyal to him.
Right.
But get Ernie's size. True. His business is struggling.
Yeah.
And the other landscaper, you know, Keith, I think.
Yeah.
He's our. He. We have him do all of these masonry projects, like 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 Keith? How's Ernie doing? I'm like, he's great. Great guy, but struggling. He's like, yeah, I know. He's like. I'm thinking I'm just gonna buy the business because the guy is such a nice guy.
Yeah.
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.
But he only. 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. At five, that's $5,000.
Yeah.
So you're getting one yard done in one day versus 10 yards is a 10 time amplitude. But the. The guy that does 10 yards, we'll say it's Keith is the same Equipment.
Right.
You know, Southwest. Yeah. Southwest only buys, I think it was DC10 airplanes or something. Because all the maintenance was exactly.
I was going to say the. The maintenance guys know exactly what they're working with. There's no.
The stock room 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.
Yeah.
When a problem happens, they swap it out. If one plane goes down, they have a plane and backup that's the exact same seating layout and 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 called. I call the area of innovation.
Area innovation.
Master. One thing. So well, that. That is your differentiator in the market that no one can touch.
Love it. So why do most businesses live check to check and operate panic to panic?
Yeah. Probably because of Ernie's situation. The irony is when you start a business, you don't know who your best customer is. You make your best guest 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 throw spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks.
Yeah.
Do you ever do that?
I have never grown spaghetti against the wall.
You know why people. People throw speed 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.
And by the way, I only throw one strand at a time. I thought you threw at the whole.
There's Mike with a pot of spaghetti.
Yeah. Throw the whole pot up. Like a lot of it's sticking.
Krista's just snarling at you at this point. You're an idiot.
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 I mean, 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 entrepreneur. Yeah. What happened? And this is a. It's 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 hocking 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, 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? And it's a unique way. For me, it was non pandering, highly actionable, highly accessible, female consuming audience. But what most entrepreneurs do is they say, okay, that's good, them too, but let me diversify. Ah, let me also serve this group in 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, 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.
Okay.
And you've positioned yourself to really develop an area of innovation and we'll 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, 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 have 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, and it cost him to do that.
Right.
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 a 50% off and you were not profitable for now, you've lost even more money, you're even less profitable.
Right, Right.
Or you ate into your profit.
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, there's a joke in the industry. There's a business that achieved a million dollars and they say, how do you do it? They said we spent 1.1 million. Right.
Ouch.
Yeah, Y. But that's what a lot of businesses do is they spend more to make less.
Okay. Yeah. Well, let's get back to these areas of innovation.
Sure.
There are three 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. Identify. There's three 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 notice 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's, 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 Kings. The exact same box is radically cheaper at Walmart.
Sure.
So how's Walmart win in this game? Is 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. Kings, who sells maybe a box a day can't compete on price.
Right.
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 the another way compete on price. And Donna Lyons, who is the. The license c. Is that right?
Yeah.
Licensee of. 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, is because they have gold flakes in it and they have these different things. But it's remarkable. And some people buy the thousand dollar.
Hamburger because they say they want to.
Have that because they want to have the hamper.
It's notable. It's.
It's notable. It serves ego. You can brag about it.
Right.
So there is significant value for that too. The problem with extraordinary price is you decrease the volume of demand. It's going to be the exceptional customer. Customer that wants that.
Right. Far and few between.
Far and few between. So usually places that have that extraordinarily high price will have is almost like a trap of some sort. It's a light for mods in that it tracks us in to say I ate that place. Not going to pay $1,000.
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?
Mostly shoprite.
Shop. Right. Okay. Shop. Right. 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 not Campbell's necessarily, but a brand that's considered a slightly progressive. Higher category.
Sure.
Right. Progressive. 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 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 Campbell's or maybe it's a Progresso and say, wow, you know, the Progresso, at least it's not $7 a can, $4 a can and the Campbell's is 325. Decoy pricing is where you have a high price so the consumer has a comparative in their mind. And so that hamburger Joint selling a thousand dollar hamburger is also using as a decoy to make the now $30 hamburger not sound so bad. But if you're normally, normally who would buy a three dollar hamburger?
Right? Yeah.
That's the pricing.
Okay.
Now quality, actually, you mind if I leave with convenience? Quality is okay.
Yeah.
So pricing so high, low convenience usually means accessibility, friction free. The less barriers I have to go through to consume something, the more likely I'm 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 Andrew 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 it come like five or six times a day.
Exactly.
It's unbelievable. 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 the item and now you spend 20 minutes kind of finding like I can't find on the Internet. Where is it? You finally find it. Oh, it is on Amazon. I 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 messages. Every barrier will have us reconsidering. Is it worth the effort?
Yeah.
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.
Right.
And this faster they can compress thought to, to action action, the more likely to win. 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 thru 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 like a thing of if the drive.
Thru'S not working, we're not going to basically, yeah.
Oh my God, I get out of my car.
Yeah.
So we're a drive through society and that's very appealing.
Right.
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 or at least at the top of the category. When I go to McDonald's versus a 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, I prefer the Wendy's hamburger or whatever. There'll be a preference or. Or sometimes 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 got out of the car, get out of the car. It's gonna be time consuming. Now the times I want to go to diner because that's the environment I want to have. We have to be in the top, 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 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.
Right.
You have to get an adequate job done.
Right.
But show up when you say you're going to 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, 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. You have a Mercedes or two.
Oh, yeah, six.
Six. You have a stable.
A stable of Mercedes.
And every time I visit the cartel house, I see all these Mercedes out there and I'm like, wow.
The.
The, the workmanship is extraordinary and the stitch work and all that stuff. Quality is where you are seen perceivably as a superior item in luxury. But also durability is another one. Another one is experientially, meaning 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. A reputation historically of not just being the most friendly place at all. It was like. You ever go to a restaurant?
Yeah.
It's confrontational.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This had reputation.
A lot of restaurants in New Jersey are like this.
Yeah, exactly. It's basically New Jersey. It was basically New Jersey. What they did is they said, we're going to double down. 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 haunted places that come out. October is approaching pretty quickly right now. We're recording this in August. But 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 going to have a heart attack.
Right.
They are using a quality and 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 and. Or your number one strength, the thing you do really, really well and naturally.
Yeah.
Plus add your business and life experience, and that's your sweet spot.
Yeah. Now you're crushing it. So let's 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. So in any category, there could be 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. 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.
Right.
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.
Right.
Ours more is much more self deprecating.
Yeah. Goof.
Goof. He's more sometimes a dry humor or irony. Yeah, it's very good at irony.
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, what is the. What's your. What are you gonna win your gold medal on?
Yeah.
The quality, price or convenience. Secondly, what's the product? Or outline the platform for us as 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 platforms. Books speaking, what we're doing right now, when people hear it, 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 where 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 and they're demonstrating cars, if they like, hey, here's some hot dogs, you know, some wieners down the street. Spray some ketchup on there. And we're have a clown bozo clown yucking around.
Right.
There's an incongruency there. So they're much more Posh. They have white glove service.
Right.
I don't have a Mercedes.
We're dreaming.
If either of us had Mercedes. But that is what it'd be like. My wife does have a BMW. Yeah, BMW. Their tagline is the ultimate driving machine. So their uniqueness, their est is the. 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. It was not Mercedes quality, like it wasn't white glove.
Right.
But everything was around the driving experience. And so you gotta 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 gotta be consistent throughout.
That's smart. All right, well, there's some companies who've done this really well, like Domino's, for example, they've concentrated on delivering pizza quickly and efficiently. And Boon is a testament to this. I mean, we have. I don't know, how many pizza shops do we have? First of all, we're New Jersey and we're a pizza place. The pizza in New Jersey is just exceptional. And Domino's has made it here in Boin 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, 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.
But also literally across the street is Romas. Down street is Pasquales. Yeah, down what?
Bacos.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Then you got Delicious.
Yeah.
Which is maybe half a mile from here.
Yeah.
You got the res. Top of the park, up the streets, three blocks up.
Yeah.
You have Columbia in who's got the thin pizza? I would argue you could within walking distance, 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. Easily, easy, easy. Roma's. I don't know if you ever tried to use her app to order pizza. Oh, my God. It was like, you got. You better call in and you know you're going to be put on a hold. You call Romans. Hey, Romans, give me 10 minutes. And I'm like, okay. And then you bring. They hang up on you half time and you call back ends. Is 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. I do. Yeah.
Six cousins come out of the kitchen to greet you. Exactly.
Some garlic now, we just made them. So I love going to Romas for the garlic knots.
Yeah.
My wife and I though, will go past Domino's. We'll go past Romas to go down to Columbia Inn because the thin pizza.
Yeah.
It's a unique quality delivery. It's the only place in this area that we know has this ultra thin pizza where I can actually have four 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 Shoprite.
Yeah.
And 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 convenient.
Yes.
Because you got to pick it up, you got to heat it, and blah, blah, blah. 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 it's funny thing is the consumer knows, you know, this isn't going to be the greatest pizza in the world, but we just. I like Domino's is pretty good pizza. Yeah, it's.
It's something.
And 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, you have 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 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 so successful is they were the first to blend technology with art. Everyone else was just making the tech. Remember the BlackBerry?
BlackBerry. I had a BlackBerry. It was my first. It was my first idea.
Right. I love my CrackBerry.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah. Will had. That was Will's first phone. Yeah, yeah.
They basically said, oh, the buttons on the. 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, comma, quam phobia 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 buttons.
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 sunk down. It's called the home button.
Yeah, I remember that.
But it was basically invisible so Steve wouldn't freak out. And 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. Once Apple did this, everyone else started copying it, but Apple has like 70 of the market.
Yeah.
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?
Right? Yeah.
And they can charge a ridiculously high price. I'm. I don't know what we paid for our phone. A thousand dollars? Nine hundred.
Yeah, something like that. A lot of money.
But I see so much value in it. I'M like it's a steal. Look how easy it's to use, et cetera, et cetera. So when you dominate in one space, in their case, it's a quality of physical appreciation. Looks it is representative of who I am. 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 products said we're only do black products, we're not going to give multiple colors, we're not going to customize, it's only going to be this one way. They would start losing market share really quickly. The fact 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.
But 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.
Do we crush all the topics for today?
I think we. I think we did.
How much time do we spend so far?
We're at 30, 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, so the. The headline was best friends build a village of. Of tiny houses in the middle of nowhere. So you and three 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 raise husband and wives.
Yeah, spouses, spouses.
I looked up that article Texas there.
Yes. On the Lana river or something like that. Something like that, yeah. So Friendship Focus 4 Couples Lawn. 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 house's 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 doesn't.
Don't say their names, but I want you to think of your three or four closest friends. I can picture some of them. Some of them and their spouses.
Okay.
Would you. Those three people, those three 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? 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. How do I say it with? Maybe 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 three days.
Yeah, that's. 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. So you have the. 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 was. That's what I thought initially. I was like, oh, this is interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah. I would love to be able to walk over my neighbors or on a day I choose not to. To not, and vice versa.
Yeah.
They're basically four 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.
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.
I didn't see the kids.
I don't think there's kids involved. So that might be the whole other.
Yeah, it might be another part of it. But here was interesting. They turned into a business opportunity. They're Airbnb it now.
Yeah.
I wouldn't mind for three days. Like, you and Chris got place. Me and Krista Kelsey brings para. Hey, let's. Let's do this.
Yeah.
Fun. Yeah. Well, we do it 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 and 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 again?
Yeah, there's, there's one. A woman named Maria Gutierrez started with a food truck called El Fusion in Los Angele. So she's even.
That's a Fusion. El Fusion 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, 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 one plus one equals none. What I mean by this is two 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, AJ 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.
Yeah.
He devotes one year to living things. So I said, he comes up with such an innovative idea to say, how do you do it? Because, 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 he 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 This. 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. 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 bottom, which.
Was always wearing a tutu.
Exactly. Right, Exactly. You read the same books.
Give me one more.
All right, let's do one more. 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 an 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 carve out for that person, and you go up 100ft in the air. So a crane pulls you up and you're eating in the sky.
Whoa.
The High dining experience. 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 a. Is a. 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, you know, there'll be hints of. Of leather in the beginning, and then it'll end with a. A touch of raspberry explosion. And you drink it like, oh, my God, there's leather beginning and a raspberry explosion. I didn't even know the 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. Yeah. And a day or two later, when I forgot the story, it doesn't taste that way. And then when I see the price in 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 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 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 this, when people take a bath next, they feel more comforted.
Right.
And they think the plumbing experience or product was better because of that. I just want people to think of those ideas. We better get the heck out of here.
Yeah, we better.
All right. You just listen 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 shows great, get it. You can do that to give us honest rating. That 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 plan.
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. They're just a bad fit. We're going to talk about how to cherry pick between those two to really move your business forward. Help.
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 I'll serve you for next week. All right, we'll see you next week.
Bye bye.
