Tag Archives: Business and Economy

December 22, 2017 · 11:14 am

What An Egg Roll Tells You About Business

Foodie Friday has arrived at last. This will be the final “new” food-themed screed of the year. Next week’s posts will be the annual review of the most-read posts of the year and the most read food post will be next Friday. While I hope you’ll continue to read next week, thank you for doing so today and throughout the year. Happy 2018!

While I like to think of myself as a fairly worldly person when it comes to knowing about food, I learned of a regional specialty here in the US just the other day. If you’re from the Detroit area you’re going to roll your eyes, but I just found out about Corned Beef Egg Rolls. I’ve lived in and around one of the world’s greatest multicultural food centers (New York City) my entire life until recently and had never encountered such a thing. It’s exactly what you’d think: a pile of thinly-sliced corned beef inside an egg roll wrapper that’s then rolled and fried. There is usually cheese involved (some gooey, white, mild stuff) and sometimes sour cabbage. Apparently, these rolls are quite popular in the Detroit area and they are spreading into adjacent areas. Coming soon to a deli near you?

So what does this have to do with business? It serves as a gentle reminder of a few of the things we’ve discussed this year. First, like many great dishes, this one was born as a sort of happy accident. Just as buffalo wings were the result of using up some food a bar has around, so too was this roll the result of a thrifty employee not wanting to toss out a bunch of corned beef scraps. Begin Vietnamese, he did something very typical in his culture – he made a roll out of them.

This reminds us that if you make content or products, there is no garbage can. Beyond content, if you have an idea that doesn’t quite do what you had planned, don’t toss it. Think about how what you have can serve another purpose. You miay have the right answer to another question you or your customers haven’t asked yet.

Second, it’s a blending of two iconic dishes from very different cultures – Jewish and/or Irish corned beef (see this post on THAT subject) and a Chinese/pan-Asian fried roll. This is a great reminder that the business world has become a very small place. There is a huge value in understanding how to communicate to and with different cultures, both with respect to language, values, and practices. If we isolate ourselves by failing to tailor our messages and products, we’re really going to be missing out. What are we doing in business today if not trying to blend a lot of cultures into a more coherent market?

Finally, I suspect that the Corned Beef Egg Roll will mirror what happened with the Coney Dog which also came from Detroit. There are places all over that serve a hot dog with thin chili and onions (The Roast Grill has been in business here in Raleigh for over 75 years serving just that) even if they’re not called Coneys or Coney Island Hot Dogs or Coney dogs. That product has grown way beyond its origins. Smart entrepreneurs spot trends, assess needs, find openings, and fill them. I did a little digging and while there are a few restaurants with “egg roll” in their name, there really doesn’t seem to be a chain that just serves egg rolls (and the restaurants named Egg Roll Express, despite the name, are regular Chinese restaurants with 2 egg rolls on the menu). Here is your first business idea for 2018 and a franchise opportunity for well beyond.

A few good reminder with which to end the year. I’m looking forward to stepping up to the fryer with you next year!

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December 20, 2017 · 12:39 pm

You’re On Your Own

A decade has passed since I last held a “real” job. My kids call the work I do now “Daddy’s Phony Baloney Made Up Job” but hey, it pays the bills so what can I say?

I didn’t realize when I left corporate life 10 years ago that I was actually beginning to ride a wave that continues to grow. I had joined the gig economy. What’s that? A gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and companies sign up independent workers for short-term engagements. Companies don’t have “employees”, they have consultants or contractors. Think Uber – every driver works for themselves. Rather than a corporation of thousands, we have a thousand corporations of one.

According to Intuit, by 2020, 40 percent of American workers will be independent contractors. It’s liberating in some ways and incredibly stressful in others. No guaranteed paycheck. No paid-for healthcare or other benefits. You can set your own schedule and work as you choose but you have to go find that work. I mean, unless you’re a pro, playing a lot of golf doesn’t pay the bills.

We’ve become a society where we’re on our own. Putting aside what may be happening with small social safety net we do have here (no politics, please!), many more people are going through their daily lives without the safety net a “real” job provides, and many of the full-time jobs that are out there pay wages that haven’t increased in years because the demand for the shrinking number of jobs is still high. We have seen the growth of businesses and services that support individuals rather than corporations. Sites that help you find gigs (as opposed to full-time employment) are plentiful although in many cases they become places where it’s a race to the bottom with respect to what you can get paid.

What strikes me is that I struggled in many ways to get my business on a good track despite many years of business experience, having managed dozens of people, and being responsible for a multi-million dollar P&L. I often wonder how many kids starting out in this economy are going to struggle and fail without any sort of mentoring. I don’t mean the relatively easy stuff such as how to keep a proper set of books so you don’t have tax issues. I wonder about the hard stuff that involves learning how to formulate ideas and how to express them. It’s the stuff that we don’t learn in school that forms our business education (and that means you too, MBA’s). It’s hard to get that while you’re on your own.

This trend of being on your own is going to continue and to grow as more companies downsize and robots of some sort begin to perform tasks once performed by humans. Who is going to program and service those robots? Independent contractors, no doubt. Maybe you?

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December 18, 2017 · 12:38 pm

Serving The Wrong Master

One of the things you learn about if you’re in the digital marketing space is Search Engine Optimization and its cousin Social Media Optimization. I work with clients on both from time to time and frankly, it’s a time-consuming and frustrating process. I say that not because it isn’t worthwhile – it is. In my mind, the biggest challenge in digital marketing is being visible. Call it discoverability, call it what you will, but unless you are presented as an option to consumers you aren’t going to make a sale. If you don’t get a turn at bat you’re unlikely to hit anything, right?

Photo by Alex Knight

That said, the frustrating part comes from two places. The first is that it’s always much harder to hit a moving target and the algorithms that drive how search engines and social media platforms behave are constantly changing. Google’s search algorithm changed half a dozen times this year and 10+ last year, although researchers on those numbers have to guess because Google doesn’t announce most of the changes (or how the whole damn thing works for that matter!). Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and others have all done similar things, so getting your content to be visible is like herding cats if you’re chasing a changing formula.

The second part of my frustration comes from a philosophical place. I don’t think any of us should be serving the algorithm rather than serving our customers. The algorithm is the wrong master. Before you object, think about any content you’ve written lately or that your organization has put out. I’m willing to bet the creator thought about keywords and making the title “click-worthy.” There is nothing wrong with that up to a point. I do it and I advise clients to do so as well. However, when what we’re creating loses relevance and meaning to humans while becoming more attractive to computers, we’ve gone too far. You see it in the repetition of words in an article making them less interesting. Content that uses sarcasm or clever writing might delight a reader but confuse an algorithm.

Given where artificial intelligence and machine learning are headed, I’m not sure how long we humans will be writing a lot of what we consume now. A significant percentage of sports and financial reporting, for example, are made by machine today and most of us can’t tell the difference. There is software on the market that will help you create content that’s perfectly optimized for whatever algorithm you’re chasing. But ask yourself this: when was the last time you met an algorithm at a cash register? Serve your customers – they’re in charge, not an ever-changing bit of code. You with me?

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