“Mom, can you make me a PB&J??”
“Why can’t you do it yourself!?”
“You just make it better!”
Countless high stakes sandwich negotiations started this way. Was I lazy? Sure. But it was something more. Mom really did make the best PB&J.
And now that my kids do the same thing to me — actually, to my wife — it got me thinking.
What products and services have me saying, “You just make it better!”?
What could I be doing on my own but don’t?
What companies do it so well, they can tell you how they do it, and then immediately take your order?
People pay personal trainers, they subscribe to Peloton or Apple Fitness, and I’m almost positive they know how to walk and put down the potato chips.
So, what gives?
What’s inside:
LMNT is an electrolyte drink mix created by Robb Wolf. It’s also a future Recommengine award winner and blog sponsor (Robb, call me!).
It’s mostly salt, the mineral that is both vital for survival and shamed by boomers with hypertension.
Wolf was eating well but his performance was not where he wanted it. His coaches told him to increase his electrolytes, specifically his salt intake. Wolf didn’t listen. He salted his food like most of us and felt that was enough.
But the research was clear. Most people don’t get enough salt from their diets.
Finally, he caved and gave salt a shot. He noticed an immediate improvement in his performance. And that started him on the path to creating a new type of electrolyte drink mix. One with actual electrolytes.
You see, most of the electrolyte drinks are peddling sugar water. A sugar water secret recipe, a “proprietary blend,” is kept under wraps for a reason.
Funny how it all works, but Gatorade now sells water, just water, probably Florida swamp water, with electrolytes. So, we’ve come full circle, but that is a story for another day.
LMNT does something that other businesses can follow.
They post the LMNT recipe on their website. You can make your own.
Here is their recipe for a “Raw Unflavored” LMNT.
I’ve made it.
I can use their recipe, make the mix at home, and get the same benefits. They are daring me to do it.
Here is the scaled up measurements I use:
- 254g Sea Salt
- 60g Potassium Citrate
- 37.5g Magnesium Malate
Just mix it all in a blender on high to make a powder that will dissolve more easily in your swamp water.
But guess what?
I still buy LMNT.
They just make it better.
It mixes better, tastes better, and they have great flavors.
What other products or services just open the kimono like that? Coca-Cola certainly doesn’t. Neither does KFC.
Both have held their secret recipes close for generations. But that’s not what’s making them successful.
Mystery is not the moat.
I know exactly what my yard guy does. The recipe is simple. It’s a ton of work, so I hire it out.
What’s inside part two:
“What’s inside that S&P 500 Index Fund?”
“Oh, that one? That one has all the companies in the S&P 500.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Nothing proprietary?”
“Not even close.”
“Couldn’t I do that myself?”
“Totally.”
“Okay, I’ll take the Index Fund. I’ll take a whole 401K’s worth. Thanks.”
We know what is inside and we still choose to have someone else manage it for us. Why?
The ETF is easy and cheap. It’s also better. Nothing mysterious, just like Mom’s PB&J.
Rx Bar got more transparent. And it became their differentiator.
When they were struggling to get noticed in the crowded energy bar category, they decided to put their ingredients list on the front of the package. It helped them stand out. If you want to try and DIY it, go right ahead. It’s just egg whites, nuts, and dates.
If you want to build project management software with Ruby on Rails, have at it. You can find open-source white papers online. But if you decide to spend your time on something else, like the actual project, the team at 37Signals will gladly sell you Basecamp.
Mystery is not the moat:
At this point, everyone knows the way up Mount Everest.
Most golfers could explain how to shoot par at Augusta National.
But it’s the doing that is so damn difficult.
Success is much more than knowing how. It’s the service, not the secret sauce.
The things we choose to buy, time and again, are the difficult, not the mysterious.
Even Free Isn’t Cheap Enough:
Jensen Huang is the founder and leader of NVIDIA, an overnight AI success story, thirty years in the making.
When asked about the competitive landscape in technology, he said “We have more competition than anyone on the planet. Not only do we have competition from competitors we have competition from our customers.” What he means is, despite the fact that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are his largest buyers, they are also actively trying to kill him off. They buy NVIDIA GPU’s and rip them apart to see what’s inside. They hope to figure out the secret recipe.
Jensen has every right to keep his next move close to the vest, but that is not how he handles the competition.
“I show them not only what my current chip is, I show them what my next chip is, and I’ll show them what my chip after that is.” He feels that explaining what they are building, what NVIDIA is working towards, is the best way for them to understand how valuable they are. “And so, we’re completely open book in working with just about everybody in the industry.”
Can customers try to make it on their own? Sure. And it might even work. But like my home-brewed LMNT, they’ll be left wondering if it’s worth the effort.
It’s a little like magic
When David Blaine is correctly identifying the 8 of Spades as the card you pulled from his deck, you might say “I know how you did it!”
But that’s not the magic part. You can read a book on how the trick is done, anyone can, but the magic is in doing it. Polishing it, performing it, and getting a reaction from the crowd.
And in reality, it’s the fellow magicians, the ones who have tried, that really appreciate what Blaine is doing.
Huang supplies the roadmap. The book of magic. He says, “If a customer can do something that’s more cost effective, quite frankly, I’m surprised by that. Our performance, our utilization, our flexibility, our total cost of operations, is so good that even when the competitor’s chips are free it’s not cheap enough. And that that is our goal. To add so much value that the alternative is not about cost.”
What is a moat?
Sharing what you do and how you do it, showing the “no duh” benefit that your company brings to the table, should be the goal. If you can do something in the daylight for all to see, and they still want and need you, that is more of a moat around your business than any secret recipes.
More often than not, it’s like having your mom make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The best moat to your business is just doing it better than everyone else.
You’ll know if your business has a moat, because customers will understand what you do, how you do it. And they’ll still make the order.
Why?
Because “you just make it better.”
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