Knowing that helping others by teaching & sharing information is key to personal and professional success, let’s talk about what is a key essential component for super success & it’s a personal favorite topic: the “Secret Sauce” of business.
Occasionally, something in the news will spark us to re-iterate how important it is to have one aspect (or more!) about your business that is not easily copied by competitors. Your secret sauce can be a certain technology, or combination of technologies or another aspect of your biz model that is not easily identifiable or readily apparent to outsiders. One of the most extreme examples of Secret Sauce would be the Coca-Cola drink formula; outside of two people at one time, the syrup recipe is supposedly not known by anyone else in the world. Yet even the idea for Coca-Cola has long been disputed to have been stolen from a Spanish company already winning awards for their product, Kola Coca.
What went wrong in Kola Coca’s case? Right, he should have not disclosed what ingredients were in the formula.
Secret Sauce can be a certain way that systems run or the way products, clients or consumers are handled that can make your company Sauce not easily dupicateable. At the very least, things such as consistent, optimal customer service can set your company shoulders above any complacent competititors. We saw this innovation with Zappos’ free merch returns. A customer perk that took Zappos to the top early in the online shopping surge.
The article linked below prompted this post today. Of course, it’s all conjecture on my part but it’s not unheard of for one company partner learning about how the other company does something ends up duplicating what they learned apart from the partnership. With Walmart & Google Express it could also be the cut Google takes for their Express service (btw, what all entails G-Express is anyone’s guess 🤔). And while we’re here, let me mention a similar but different sneaky move that I call “The Murdoch”. This is when an entity, aka company 1, invests in company 2 with the secret intent of acquiring company 2, either by stock leverage or other “surprise” legal manuevers. The art of war, indeed.
At Synchronicity.co, Inc., we value transparency, honesty, *responsibility* and above average customer service. But it’s our core technology that is the sweet sauce. Our aspirations and abilities sprang from belief & hard work, sure but also from creative imagining. Added to that a dash of bucking the “way its always been done” and that created a special foundation from which to build. The point is that anyone can initiate a similar philosophy at any time. It does take some grit to break out of the cookie cutter ways we’ve been taught, but imagining your way into seeing things differently is worth the time. And it does just boil down to that. Taking the time to do it. It’s time well spent, however and can help create your own personal or professional Secret Sauce.
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https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-pulls-products-off-google-express/546908/