meatball sundae [part two]

Jan 22, 2008

Recently I did an interview of Seth Godin about his new book, “Meatball Sundae”. As Seth described it:

Meatballs are commodity products, built in a factory, advertised all over. Stuff we need. All the same. Average products for average people. Unremarkable, but important. The backbone of our world so far.
The sundae is the new marketing. Blogs and Facebook and google and crowdsourcing and all the stuff that we get excited about. It works great if you’ve got a social object or a purple cow. But put the sundae on a meatball and…

There’s a passage in the book that really got me thinking, all to do with ice cream:

Willie Wonka isn’t dead, but he’s bald
In the heart of the newly hip Union Square neighborhood in New York City is a brand-new landmark: Max Brenner [Chocolate by the Bald Man]. Max (I’m told that’s not his real name) purportedly runs a chain of incredibly expensive chocolate cafés based in Australia. He’s got almost a dozen shops there, with other outlets in Israel, Singapore, and the Philippines. The chain is profitable and growing fast.
This is the place to come if you want to order the Warm Chocolate Soup, which comes with crunch chocolate waffle balls, strawberries, and marshmallows and costs ten dollars. Or, for the ambitious, The Chocolate Mess, which is a warm chocolate cake eaten with spatulas straight from the pan, with a mountain of whipped cream, ice cream scoops, chocolate chunks, toffee cream, warm chocolate sauce, and possibly, toffee bananas. It’s $12.75 for one person or $37 for four.
Max’s is packed, with lines of up to thirty minutes for a table. And most tables are filled with adults, not kids.
Just down the street from a Max’s, you’ll find the much more reasonably priced Sundaes and Cones ice cream shop, which is pretty much empty.
Why?
If I want something ordinary, then it better be cheap. I can get cheap and ordinary by the gallon at Costco. On the other hand, today’s spoiled consumer is willing to pay almost anything for the exclusive, the noteworthy, and the indulgent.
Sundaes and Cones isn’t cheap and it isn’t expensive. The ice cream is delicious, but not revolutionary. They sell a good ice cream cone at a fair price. And that’s no longer enough.

A couple of days ago I wrote Seth the following e-mail:

Suddenly the thought occurs to me, that perhaps there’d be fewer ‘Meatball Sundaes’ out there if the Web 2.0-consultant-guru types spent less time trying to sell lucrative, hot-fudge-and-whipped-cream consultancy gigs to the meatball factories.
[Ice Cream Metaphor:] The thing that made Thomas and English Cut work so well was, well, he’s not selling meatballs. He’s not even selling Baskin Robbins. Heck, he’s selling something that makes even Ben & Jerries look kinda downmarket. And the hot fudge I bring to the table ain’t too shabby, either. On a good day, at least 😉
Your passage in the book about the two ice cream shops in Union Square was totally correct. The trouble is, too many people are locked into the mass-market, neither-cheap-nor-remarkable bracket, so they’re not ready to listen to you properly yet.
I love your ideas, you know that, but I’m guessing it may take twenty, thirty, even fifty years for “Society” to fully absorb the brunt of your message. Luckily you have loads of smart, book-buying people out there who do get it…
We live in interesting times.

Seth wrote back to me the following:

THAT is the entire point of the book.
Phew! Someone got it!

Twenty years? Fifty years? Which is why Seth says what he’s talking about is not evolutionary, but revolutionary. Make of it what you will…

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Adriana

16 years ago

Agree. About a year ago or so, I admitted to myself that it will take a long time for the future to be the way I describe it based on what I see on the web. The main change since 2003 when I started to say things like ‘advertising is dead’ and ‘user rulez!’ is that today people don’t look at me as if I were crazy. Ok, ok, they ask for metrics, which is arguably worse.. but you get my drift. 🙂
The conversations I am having with some people in the business are along the lines – we won on the substance but it’s going to take a while for business and their ways to shift and it’s not going to be pretty. There’ll be corporate Molotovs, mark my words.
So anyone who can package the change (and the hot-fudge) for companies, I’d say – good on you and good luck. I’ll just keep gathering more bottles. 🙂

alan p

16 years ago

Union Square is always where the new new thing is but a few blocks down is something like Johnny Rockets, with meatballs *and* sundaes. Not too well hyped, but the ingenues love it and its always full (um…thinks – not been in 2 years..is it still there 😉
PS best thing about Union Square is the Barnes & Noble

Sonia Simone

16 years ago

My only problem with MS, which I think is terrific and am on my way to rereading for the third time, is that the metaphor implies that the meatball is the product. The meatball is actually the way the company conducts itself.
My day job at the moment is with a painfully MS company. Their product is an incredible social object, entirely remarkable and worthy of a ten-foot tall pile of whipped cream. But they use meatball tactics and they have meatball reaction time, so they are a meatball company.
Being the only person in a 250-person company who knows how the whipped cream dispenser works is not that much fun, to tell you the truth.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

I lost you somewhere.
The Little Tailor (as I think of it) sells ultraluxury goods to the super-rich. OK, I’m not against it in principle – as long as there’s an upper class, there will be people selling to them.
But it’s a teeny-tiny market in a relative sense. We can’t all sell to the BiggestHeads. There’s just not that many of them overall. And it’s far tougher than it looks despite the fables that are told about it.
But this seems like bad advice to me: “today’s spoiled consumer is willing to pay almost anything for the exclusive, the noteworthy, and the indulgent.” – i.e. CHASE THE WHIMS OF THE WEALTHY!
As far I can make out, the whole thing is a bunch of bafflegab wrapped around some pretty tawdry premises, basically telling everyone they can get rich via being a merchant to the already rich. That’s a losing game for almost everyone, mathematically.

jill

16 years ago

So if your product is neither cheap nor remarkable, no amount of marketing is going to make a silk purse out of it?
Which takes us back to the ‘you better make your product remarkable, or you can’t market it effectively’.
Am I getting it? Or just getting confused with analogy overload. I guess I better order the book forthwith.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Mathematically, Seth Finklestein, there’s also Walmart for your suit-buying pleasure. I hear theirs are not quite as flattering on the person, though 😉
In all seriousness to your point, though, Seth Godin’s thesis that the “neither-cheap-nor-remarkable” space is an untenable position to hold, I believe is going to cause HUGE social problems throughout the developed world in the next century.
So “Mathematically”, what alternatives are you offering, anyway? I’m hearing abstract objections, but not real-world solutions, from you.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Indeed, and Wal-Mart is the other extreme – it sells to the masses at a razor-thin profit margin and makes it up on volume. Also very hard to do, by the way. But they are successful at it.
I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that the implicit message – we can all be well-off selling to the multi-moneybags if we just Buy This Book or Read This Blog – is not true, and very manipulative (yes, I know, those words aren’t stated explicitly, but that’s the subtext).

Mark

16 years ago

I’m not sure that ‘remarkable’ needs to be targetted to the top 1% of society. It’s whatever is ‘remarkable’ to the particular community you serve.
I bake bread. Really good bread and the absolute best bread in my small prairie city. But it’s not the best bread in the world — I still make the pilgrimage to northern California to buy from the masters and would love to go to France someday to experience their bread. But my focus is on making the very best bread my local customers have ever had.
There are lots of people who feel it’s not worth the effort to come by my place once a week to buy bread. But there are a good number of people who do and that’s who I’m focussed on.
I think Seth’s point is not that you have to go after the top 1% of society, but being the very best at your niche is the way to go. That or be able to scale huge. 🙂

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Seth, if selling a product that is “neither cheap or remarkable” works for you, I’d say go write a book about it. There are millions of people trying make a living doing exactly that, and given the state of the economy, would love nothing better than to have someone come along and give them a few tips. Especially if they, themselves don’t have to change anything.
But I don’t think you trying to put words in my mouth helps your [lacking in real-world examples] argument.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Mark, I agree, one does not to be in the top 1% income bracket to be “remarkable”. Thirty years ago, French bread was considered remarkable. Heck, McDonald’s was considered remarkable 40 years ago.
Timing is everything, as always.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

@ – But my point is that it’s a simple fact that everyone CAN’T be “the very best at your niche” – by definition, only a small number of people can be the very best. Half of the group is below average. So the manipulation comes in getting the “marks” to buy into some blather to feed a delusion which must be untrue for almost all of them (most people believe they are above average, and they can’t all be right).
@ – It’s about what WON’T work for almost everyone. It seems like you’re missing what I’m saying entirely. I’m telling people they can’t build a successful busines from a few tips – and there isn’t a market to hear that 🙁
Sigh, sorry if I offended you with my gloss above – just trying to get to the idea.
Anyway, you seem to be asking me how to solve social inequality as intensified by globalization.
The few sketchy answers I have, generally are not met with approval by the “Web 2.0” type pushers. For example I just wrote a newspaper column with heavy advocacy of trade unions, even for white-collar professional workers. I do think that’s part of the answer, but it’s not a popular view in certain circles.

Mark

16 years ago

Seth, do you have a link to your article? I’d be interested in reading it.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/03/internet.digitalvideo
“The idea of collective bargaining, of labour forming an organisation to offset the power of the modern corporation, receives such disdain that it shows something revealing under a pseudo-populist mask, and which political interests are really being served.”

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

I’m not asking you solve long-term, geopolitical problems, Seth. I’m just curious how you’d run a small suit business or an ice-cream store, without perforating your own personal brand of Mathematics. I’m not sure if I get how trades union will help an ailing “neither-cheap-or-remarkable” business like Sundaes and Cones… unless, I suppose, you can get enough people to think of buying from them as an act of political comradery 😉
PS I read and enjoy Seth F’s writings in The Guardian a lot, even if we never agree on certain other matters 😉

Kart Upsalo

16 years ago

Only after reading Sonia Simone’s comment above, it struck me that MS also stands for Meatball Sundae.
Wonder if it’s plain coincidence or divine conspiracy.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Hugh, thanks for the compliment, obviously I read your stuff too sometimes :-). Note my point was that in regard to “what alternatives are you offering, anyway”, my reply is *in part* “strong unions”. This indeed doesn’t help the pressures faced by small businesses. Maybe they need some sort of policy as in done in Japan – I’ll leave it at that because it’s a really complex topic and definitely not my area of expertise. I *do* know, however, that it’s evangelist nonsense to tell people to chase the “remarkable”, because that can’t work OVERALL.

Sonia Simone

16 years ago

This goes back to an old Funky Business dictum (and I’m sure someone promoted it before that) to go narrow rather than going wide. Super rich is one way to go narrow, but there are a lot of other options. We can’t all sell to that particular teeny market, but the Web makes it possible to sell something to some interesting sliver that no one else is paying attention to. Once you can do that on a global scale, your market can be pretty damned focused and still work, especially if your company is teeny as well.
I don’t agree that the remarkable can’t work overall. Dry cleaners can be remarkable. Tire stores can be remarkable. Daycare centers can be remarkable. And they’re going to have to be. English Cut is just one of a million examples of how to do it. But every small business is going to need to figure this out in a way that makes sense for it and its customers.

Adriana

16 years ago

@seth well, your point seems to be predicated on existence of ‘mainstream’ or ‘mass market’ and there you’d be right – we can’t all be chasing remarkable. However, that assumption is no more than the industrial age hangover.
Products can be remarkable to someone somewhere, that’s one of the many things internet has demonstrated, in good and bad ways. The trick is finding those who care about your product. I’d see it as similar to making a product or service that you would want to use yourself.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Adriana, Seth F.’s assumption that “only rich people buy our suits” is patently untrue. But I doubt he cares. He’s already got the “class” issue embedded in his argument.
In terms of turnover and profit, we make no more than a lot of small businesses. But because of the $4000 price tag, we need a much smaller customer base than say, the aforementioned Union Square ice cream businesses, or a cocktail bar in the same neighborhood.
But the cocktail bars that stay in business in Union Square, are the ones that other people talk about. The ones that become the social marker. The rest whither on the vine and go out of business, with or without trades union intervention.
This stuff is true whether the stuff you’re selling cost 4 grand or 4 dollars a unit. I’m not sure what Seth’s problem is with that.

Laura

16 years ago

This is more of a question than a comment, but I’m curious about your thoughts on how this ‘sell to spoiled consumers’ strategy will hold up as the economy falters. We’ve all been watching the ‘home as ATM’ phenomenon shrivel up, and watching bankruptcy and default rates and credit card balances go through the roof, and I can’t help but think that some of this is due to the insatiable desires of all those ‘spoiled consumers.’ If they can’t buy as much anymore, will business strategies like $12.75 pieces of cake start to shrivel up too? Consumers have so far proven that they’re willing to go into debt to have those expensive pieces of cake, but at some point, they won’t be able to go into debt any farther. What happens then? Does ‘sell to spoiled consumers’ work in a full-on recession?

cmoreno

16 years ago

am in the process right now of convincing a client that she needs to embrace what’s unique about her product, and ignore the mass market cacophony.
…and last week i gave her seth’s book as a gift. i hope she gets it as well.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Hugh, the market for $4000 hand-tailored Saville Row suits is rich people. If that point is in any way contentious, it shows we are in a fantasyland of peddling dreams to the discontented, not the reality of what that market is (which implies who can effectively serve it, and limits how many). If you want to pretend it’s in any way meaningful to try to convert that conversational statement into an absolute of there exists no non-rich person who has ever in history bought a $4000 hand-tailored Saville Row suit, and knock down that strawman, well, it says something about the desperate illusion that needs to be maintained.
My point, made repeatedly, is that mathematically, we cannot all be “remarkable”. That’s worse then trying to all be above average. Any overall solution has to be something else (and as I’ve repeatedly disclaimed, I do not have all the answers).

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Seth, it’s like you’re saying to me, “Selling stuff other people want to talk about [i.e. remarkable] is not a valid strategy because we cannot ALL make stuff like that… because mathematically there’s not enough time available for everybody on the planet to talk about everybody else on the planet’s stuff in an evenly distributed way…”?
Hmmmm… Sounds like it’s the same beef you had with the blogopshere’s “A-List”… in other words, I think your beef is with power laws, not ice cream stores and tailors.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Hugh, I’m saying “Having a business model that requires being “remarkable” is a strategy that mathematically, intrinsically, WILL NOT WORK the vast majority of the time, because the market cannot support it and everyone can’t be “remarkable”. Further, and this may be the core of the disagreement, telling people to pursue such a strategy may do the vast majority more harm than good – especially if an evangelist leads them to make a poor estimate regarding if they even have a reasonable chance.
Now, attack-of-the-strawman, what didn’t I say? I DID NOT SAY “No person in the entire world could ever make such a strategy work”. I also didn’t say “There is something immoral with the businesses who end up making that strategy work” (I’ve specifically disclaimed that sentiment – though I don’t think it’s particularly God’s grace either). It’s *rare*. Not impossible. But *unlikely*.
My beef is the cherry-picking of ice-cream stores as if the idea of chasing providing luxury goods to the wealthy represented some sort of “revolutionary” idea that would take “twenty, thirty, even fifty years” to comprehend.

Jake

16 years ago

Heh. Interesting stuff guys, thanks.
I opened up the comments thread with a question similar to Laura’s in mind, namely, isn’t going for ‘remarkable’ products dependent on selling only to the ultra-rich during an economic boom?
After all, there’s nothing like a bit of negative equity to focus the mind and make you think you can eek out your Marks and Spencer’s off-the-peg suit for another few months.
I found Adriana’s comment, “Products can be remarkable to someone somewhere” really helpful to get my head round this.
Come rising taxes and rent, hell even if I got made redundant, I reckon I’ll still pay out for a remarkable cup of coffee from my local Italian deli. I wouldn’t buy them so often, sure, but when I did spend money on going out for coffee there before buying coffee anywhere else.
For me, the coffee place is about value;what matters to me. I like the me that drinks, eats and chats there.
Though I also think it is about authenticity: tapping into something genuine that hasn’t been ruthlessly engineered to meet some lazy brand consultant’s understanding of my “needs”. Unlike the Starbucks 400m away from it, the deli was there before I started working in the neighborhood and will be there if my demographic has no disposable income in the coming years.

Paul

16 years ago

Got to love it Hugh! You can really get the juices flowing. This thread was so delightful, so many great points Sonia and Adriana. I nearly burst out laughing when I realized Hugh was using the definition of ‘remarkable’ 1- worth noticing or commenting on; and Seth was using 2- unusual or exceptional – Encarta World English Dictionary.
Before the duel should we agree on the definition of ‘sword’?

Kim Klaver

16 years ago

Seth – agreed that obviously, everyone can not be remarkable. Nor can they all be lower end. But more people probably could be remarkable, than what are right now, think? So the more people work at becoming remarkable, the more might attain it, or at least improve their offering and maybe enjoy the very process of getting better – even kick-ass good.
“Remarkability” is also a function of the times and luck…better for people to strive at getting really good at what they do than not, think?
Makes life better for the rest of us average types, who can at least benefit from the remarkable ones, and buy a Mac, an iPhone or chocolate soup.
P.S. I have bought hand made taillored suits since my first business. I was not rich – I just went light elsewhere in my life.

Kim Klaver

16 years ago

Seth – agreed that obviously, everyone can not be remarkable. Nor can they all be lower end. But more people probably could be remarkable, than what are right now, think? So the more people work at becoming remarkable, the more might attain it, or at least improve their offering and maybe enjoy the very process of getting better – even kick-ass good.
“Remarkability” is also a function of the times and luck…
Even if only others are remarkable and say, I am not, it makes life better for the rest of us average types. At least benefit from the remarkable ones, and buy a Mac, an iPhone or chocolate soup.
P.S. I have bought hand made taillored suits since my first business. I was not rich – I just went light elsewhere in my life.

John

16 years ago

It depends on your neighborhood.
For some of us, ice cream from Wal-Mart is the cheap route while ice cream from Dairy Queen is a treat (we don’t have to wash the dishes).
In my mid-western town, anyone who spent $4,000 on a suit would be seen as an extravagent fool and would loose all credability. On the other hand, when I travel to New York to meet with investment bankers, I can see they have to wear tailored suits to keep credability in their world. Few people will take advice on how to invest billions of dollars from someone in a Wal-Mart suit.

Sonia Simone

16 years ago

I categorically reject the idea that not everyone can be remarkable. Not everyone is willing to be remarkable. Many people are afraid to be remarkable. But everyone, including people with all manner of limitations, can be remarkable. In fact, everyone already is, but they may not be acting on it or they may not be communicating it effectively.
Understanding that and taking action on it is the key to surviving the economic asteroid that is hurtling toward us right this minute.
In my inestimably humble opinion.

Evan Donn

16 years ago

Seth – I think you’re confusing the terms ‘remarkable’ and ‘best’. Obviously there’s not room for more than one ‘best’ business in any specific niche, but that does not mean there isn’t room for multiple ‘remarkable’ businesses – being the best is just one way to be remarkable.
For instance, given Mark’s bread making example above – “the absolute best bread in my small prairie city” – if I want to open a bread making business in his town I don’t need to attempt to dethrone him in order to be remarkable. Maybe I can start a bread making blog and give weekly bread making seminars at my shop, so I become known as the place to go to learn about what makes really good bread ‘really good’. I not only become ‘remarkable’ but I also grow the local market for fine breads by educating customers – which improves not only my business but also Mark’s. As the local market grows there’s room for other ‘remarkable’ bread makers to start up – maybe one specializes only in whole grain breads from organic ingredients sourced locally, another makes the best sourdough – I don’t know much about bread making but I’m sure someone who does could come up with many more ways to be ‘remarkable’ within that niche, without having to be the overall ‘best’. But if you can’t come up with a way to be ‘remarkable’ – you just want to open a bread store – lower prices won’t be enough to pull customers away from the others because price isn’t what draws customers to them… unless maybe your prices are ‘remarkably’ low.
“Half of the group is below average” doesn’t apply here – that assumes a homogenized commodity market where we can make absolute measurements to determine where a given product falls in some quality continuum. The problem is that In order to make that kind of measurement you have to disregard all of the aspects which make one product or business distinctive from another in the same niche – which means you can only accurately determine if a business is above or below average if it is, in fact, completely unremarkable. And I think that’s the point here – if you can find something to make your business remarkable you pull your business out of that homogenized comparison matrix.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Paul – Good insight on the two definitions of “remarkable”. And I’d go further and say there’s an implicit issue as to whether there’s a confusion between “1 – worth noticing or commenting on” and “2- unusual or exceptional”. That is, like the different between notoriety and fame – one might naively assume they’re both good, but that’s not always so in reality.
Kim – Sadly, it’s not so simple. It’s like “self-improvement”. Can everyone improve themselves? Sure. But there’s a very big market in selling the *idea* to people, and too many times all that happens is that a con-man gets richer and a sucker gets poorer. I think a big problem is that there’s not nearly as much money in selling real self-improvement as superficial self-improvement. The catch is that “work at becoming remarkable” is NOT COSTLESS, and sometimes it’s a lot more probable that all that will become remarkable is someone’s else bank balance.
Evan – It think it’s not quite “best” but more like “in the very upper reaches”. Only 1 person can be number-one, but only 10% can be in the top ten percent, so there’s still a mathematical issue. If you have a system which is very lopsided (per niche), where most of the rewards go to a tiny elite (per niche), telling everyone (interested in the niche) to try to get into the elite (per niche) isn’t workable overall. Alternately, if you have a model of a diversity of niches – and that’s a common utopian dream – it’s really important to ask how realistic and workable it is given the market. And the answer to that is deeply complicated, often involving broad government industrial policy (people do not like to hear this point, but it’s a simple truth). Evangelists peddle it as roughly a fantasy of positive thinking, which is nonsense. Everybody can’t stand out from the crowd, somebody has to be the crowd.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

Remind me never to let you near any starfish, Seth 😉
http://muttcats.com/starfish.htm

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

How did the guy in the story make a living so he could walk on the beach all day messing with starfish? And was there someone running around to conferences giving talks on how citizen-starfish-throwers were revolutizing beach maintenance? Did they have a book like “The Starfish – the five-armed path to business success by going with the flow and depending on the kindness of random intervention”? So much left out of the story … 🙂

Hrishi Mittal

16 years ago

Seth, the guy saved fish on weekends (he did server maintenace for the labour union blogs on weekdays). If you want to attend this year’s Beach 2.0 conference, email me. Then, I’ll also put you on my ‘permission list’ to send you my starfish ebook before I release it for the ‘average’ people.
Mathematical analysis of a beautiful story?
Remarkably prosaic.

Sonia Simone

16 years ago

Hrishi, you made me laugh, thank you.
The starfish story has been passed around enough that it’s lost some of its power, but I still find it a very useful thing to keep in mind.

Carman Pirie

16 years ago

“Everybody can’t stand out from the crowd, somebody has to be the crowd.” – Seth Finkelstein
I think we’ve arrived at a rather elegant solution to this whole debate… Hugh, Seth Godin, and others (many of whom likely read gapingvoid) can focus on making stuff / doing stuff worth talking about. Seth, you and whomever else wants to join you can play the part of ‘the crowd’ / ‘the average’. We can regroup in 10 years and see how it has worked out for all involved.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Carman, the answer to “everybody can’t be above average” isn’t “OK, *I’ll* be above average and *you* can be below average!”. Or rather, you might think it’s an aswer, but it’s missing the point, while at the same time proving the point (in that people tend to think they rank higher than they really are).
I shouldn’t do this stuff. It doesn’t do any good :-(.

Glenn

16 years ago

Re: “Everybody can’t stand out from the crowd”. The crowd can keep elevating itself (the entire crowd) and getting better and better. In fact one could claim that this has been happening to civilization since the beginning of time and at an ever accelerating pace.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

I kinda see “Remarkability” in much the same way as one sees the traditional Christian concept of”Sainthood”: We each have within ourselves the capacity to attain it, whether we achieve it eventually or not.
And in my opinion, this has a lot more to do with how we choose to govern ourselves when certain events occur, rather than some abstract law of mathematics.

Lady Sonia

16 years ago

Now I Get It, Finally Saw It Lady Sonia

Lady Sonia

16 years ago

I shouldn’t do this stuff. It doesn’t do any good :-(.
Now I Get It, Finally Saw It Lady Sonia
I kinda see “Remarkability” in much the same way as one sees the traditional Christian concept of”Sainthood”: We each have within ourselves the capacity to attain it, whether we achieve it eventually or not.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Glenn, yes, economics growth rocks – however, it’s still a pretty slow process overall on a year-to-year basis. It’s little comfort if you’re unemployed, to hear that civilization is marching on. Note there are times – recession, depression, the Dark Ages – when the direction goes backwards for a while.
Hugh – but that’s very much my point here from the opposite side, that there’s a confusion between a kind of moral personal state (“Remarkability” or “Sainthood”), and having a successful niche business. And this is very manipulative and deceptive at heart. Because there’s no way everyone can have a successful niche business. But confusing it with internal quasi-moral qualities then generates the response that people who don’t make a niche business work, failed because they weren’t good enough people – and of course the obvious solution is to buy even more stuff from the guru and follow the guru’s preaching with greater vigor. To reduce it to the bare minimum: It’s like being told that you didn’t win the lottery because of negative thinking, and you need to think happier thoughts to win it (and here’s how …).
Attack-of-the-strawman: What DIDN’T I say? I DID NOT say that individual effort has absolutely and utterly no effect on business success. I said it’s a mathematical fact that everyone can’t have a successful niche business.

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

I agree with you, Seth. Like I said, that’s why there’s Wal-Mart.

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Sigh … I can just repeat what I said a few messages ago: “the answer to “everybody can’t be above average” isn’t “OK, *I’ll* be above average and *you* can be below average!”. Or rather, you might think it’s an aswer, but it’s missing the point, while at the same time proving the point (in that people tend to think they rank higher than they really are). I shouldn’t do this stuff. It doesn’t do any good :-(.”
By the way, Wal-Mart is supported by industrial policy that disfavor niche business. That’s not a mathematical fact, but a deliberate political choice, see
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans
“And I tell about a man named Jim Weaknecht who owned a little store in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. He sold fishing tackle, hunting gear, stuff like that. And the way he made his living in his little tiny store, enough that he was able to have his wife stay at home and raise their three kids full time, was by charging less than a company called Cabela’s. Well, then Cabela’s came to town. This little city of 4,000 people made a deal to give Cabela’s $36 million to build a store. That’s more than the city budget for that town for ten years. It’s $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in that town to have this store. And even though he charged lower prices, he was pretty quickly run out of business”
BUT HE MUST NOT HAVE BEEN “REMARKABLE”! 🙁

Pag

16 years ago

Seth, you’re right about one thing: a blog that would evangelize “Create average products, sell them at an average price and do average marketing and you’ll get average sales!” wouldn’t be very popular. People don’t want to learn how to get average results, they want to know how to get great results. Especially when average results means going bankrupt, as is often the case in entrepreneurship.
If you saw a great artist’s blog who was telling readers techniques to make great paintings, would you write comments about how “Not everyone can be an above average artist, so stop giving advice on how to make great art”? Ultimately, not everyone can be great but you sure won’t become great if you don’t even try.
Anyway, what would be your advice to that Jim Weaknecht you mentioned? Pray to the men of Washington to give him special laws to protect his business? That’s not likely to happen. Offering average products at a low price obviously wasn’t enough for him, so what should he have done?

Editor

hugh macleod

16 years ago

OK, in order keep Seth F. happy, your product can be:
1. Cheap and remarkable.
2. Cheap and unremarkable.
3. Remarkable but not cheap.
4. Neither cheap or remarkable.
Feel free to pick one of these mathematically sound, all-inclusive options.
That’ll be $3,000, please 😉

Seth Finkelstein

16 years ago

Pag, I think it’s more like if I saw “Learn how to be a great artist” blog, which was telling people they could be great artists if they bought the latest book “Elvis Michelangelo”, about how you should be a Michelangelo free spirit in an Elvis world. Oh, and possess transcendent insights into the human condition, as that’s what makes a great artist. I might say that while one can certainly hone talent, it’s dubious that you can learn to have transcendent insights, especially from a hustling blogger, it doesn’t work that way.
Repeat: “The catch is that “work at becoming remarkable” is NOT COSTLESS, and sometimes it’s a lot more probable that all that will become remarkable is someone else’s bank balance.”
Regarding the guy squeezed out of his niche business by policy favoring big business, I think it’s sometimes better to admit I have no idea of how to solve a problem for someone in specific, than to give “advice” that’s highly likely to be wrong and do more harm than good, and has a flavor of blaming people for their economic troubles. Do note, by the way, there were *special* *laws* to favor the big competing business, which makes it very silly to argue the other direction is beyond the pale.
(Do I need an attack-of-the-strawman pre-emptive rebuttal here? This is too long already)

steve

16 years ago

Coming to the party this late means most everything has been said. But I don’t think I saw this point. Though Adriana went in this direction.
Different groups of people will find different things remarkable. So the taste will be remarkable to one person who is willing to pay $8 for a coffee or ice cream. Location will be the remarkable thing for someone else who can walk 30 seconds to a shop next door to get coffee, not as good, not as expensive, but much more convenient. Cheap will be remarkable for someone making minimum wage. Service and familiarity may be the factors that matter for others. Knowing your customers by name is another type of remarkability.
I haven’t read MS (but have read Scoble) and went to the comments to figure out what exactly the original post was saying. If selling to the ultra-rich by being remarkable (quality and cost) is the premise, well, that’s fine for those who can pull that off. But it seems in that context Seth F makes sense. But since I live in Anchorage, it doesn’t matter how good the ice cream or coffee at Union Square is.
But I still can go to Alan p’s favorite store, even in Anchorage.
So, as Seth F. says, only a tiny percentage can be ‘remarkable’ (as in the best’) in taste or choice ingredients. But those who are average or below average in taste or fit, can be best at price, location (lots of room here – John’s bakery takes advantage of this), service, decor, free parking, atm, wifi, familiarity (MacDonald’s and Starbucks), etc.
But if a business has nothing (not even location) that is remarkable to anyone, then they probably will go out of business. But even if someone is remarkable, but not good with the books, they will also go out of business.

Kathleen Lisson

16 years ago

This is a great discussion!
I agree with Steve that different groups of people will find different things remarkable.
I am a wine educator, and while every seat in my recent class on wine and food pairing was taken, there were tens of thousands of people in Albany who had something more important to do. No, I’m not targeting the super-rich, but I am remarkable to people who enjoy wine and food.
I also think there can be many remarkable products without decimating the ‘crowd.’
Each remarkable product can have its own niche. There is a customer that needs to buy a highly priced wine, there is a customer that needs a low cost wine that someone else tells them tastes good, there is a customer that wants to be inundated with information and become their own expert.
Maybe wine is too easy, its a pretty remarkable social object all on its own.
Kathleen Lisson

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