Put Bacon on that Doughnut

Ryan Reynolds is on a business tear. He sold his gin brand. He sold his mobile phone brand. He had a victorious British football team, and now he's evidently bidding to buy the Ottawa Senators from the NHL.

It's easy to say, "Yeah, but he's famous." And sure, that definitely has something to do with the opportunities one gets early on, but the ability to actually do something with attention still hinges on adding value. And Reynolds knows what value he can add.

Bacon on a Doughnut

I've been a massive fan of Jesse Cole for ages. Jesse and his wife Emily bought the baseball team that would become the Savannah Bananas and he's turned it into a raging success. His "bacon" for this particular doughnut was "fans first." He redesigned every aspect of the baseball experience (eventually even leaving behind the traditional way the game is played) from how you buy a ticket (all-inclusive including food and even a souvenir), to removing ads from every single surface in the park, and on and on. They have the most popular baseball account on TikTok even, blowing away all the majors. Talk about some tasty bacon.

Johnny Earle started Johnny Cupcakes to be able to create fun tee shirt (now greeting cards and many other things) designs and build a business around the belief that all people should be treated with the same level of respect, kindness, and love (click that link to see that in action). His store on Newbury Street in Boston (which happens to be the location of one of his old jobs back in the day - working for Newbury Comics, who moved down the street) has "ovens" so that when you get your "fresh baked" tee shirts, steam and cupcake flavor comes out before they put your products in a nifty carrying box to leave the store. Everything is built around fun, a kind of tribalism of cultural references, and a business dedicated to not only paying the bills but supporting people in the community.

Everyone Can Add Something (And It Doesn't Have to Be The Same Thing)

In my two examples above, as with Ryan Reynolds, the element that's added is a very personalized version of fun and entertainment. If you can make something more fun, people will love it.

Other people's "bacon" is a lot less shiny. You might be amazing at operations. If you think that Jesse Cole and Johnny Earle or Ryan Reynolds can make all that fun without a powerful operations organization, you'd be quite mistaken. If you can't deliver on the promise of the fun, then it's not really all that fun, is it?

So even if you can't be full of stars and candy, maybe you're the kind of bacon that delivers all kinds of operational success, or maybe you're part of the team who makes everyone else's parts better. (Appfire does that - we don't make the main thing - we make the main thing better.)

Bring Something to the Bakery

Showing up and doing your job is a great start. But that just means you'll be doing what you were paid to do. It's not really worth it for you to envy the success of others, if you're not working on what your bacon is going to be. The doughnut does just fine on its own. There are 11,300 Dunkin locations worldwide (I live in Boston, where probably 11,200 of them are). But no one RAVES about Dunkin. They just compare it to Starbucks and Krispy Kreme and whatever.

If you want people to rave, you've gotta go a little bit nuts.

How else do you think these people get so ...LUCKY?

Chris...