CHAPTER 2

Your Basic Goods

Simplicity is the end result of long, hard work, not the starting point.

—Frederick Maitland

Gain an edge for yourself, your team, your organization—it’s really quite simple. There are two components:

1. You bring value. You enrich what would otherwise be.

2. Others think so too.

That’s it. Simple, right? But as historian Frederick Maitland suggests, the simplicity of hard work can be understood only after experiencing all the nuances.

Perhaps the most important nuance? Whether there is an and that connects the two components:

You bring value. You enrich.

AND

Others believe you bring value and enrich.

This is where things get sticky. Some people seem to have an edge by hitting just the second piece—that people perceive that they bring value—even if they don’t in reality. They’re just good at convincing others that they do. It’s infuriating.

They got that promotion because they are always kissing up to the boss—asking about his weekend, playing squash with him—and I’m the one doing all the work that they take the credit for.

Or: How is it that our organization is getting slaughtered in sales compared to theirs when we were the first company to offer this? They were just the ruthless company who stole the ideas from us, people who were truly original, and then claimed it as their own.

Or imagine you were Henri Poincaré, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics fifty-one times* over the course of eight years (1904 to 1912), including thirty-four nominations in 1910 (that year there were fifty-eight nominations in total, meaning Poincaré received 59 percent of them), for his groundbreaking work in theoretical physics and celestial mechanics. But that year, the Nobel Prize went to Johannes Diderik van der Waals, who got only one nomination. Why didn’t Poincaré receive the award? Robert Marc Friedman, a professor of history of science at the University of Oslo in Norway, explains:

Poincaré failed to secure the support of the most influential committee member, Chairman Svante Arrhenius. Largely to oppose a rival in the academy who had initiated the campaign for Poincaré, Arrhenius pushed the candidacy of countryman Knut Ångström.

When Ångström passed away before the announcement of the prize (the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously), Poincaré still didn’t have Arrhenius’s support. Friedman continues, “Arrhenius just dug up documentation in support of Johannes van der Waals, who had long been dismissed as a candidate and whose critical research had taken place in the 1870s (despite Alfred Nobel’s bequest requiring that the awards be based on achievements ‘during the preceding year’).” Poincaré continued to receive nominations before his death in 1912, and continued to be lauded for his scientific achievements on mass-energy relation, relativity, and gravitational waves. But he never won the Nobel.

It feels deeply unfair. For many of us, our natural instinct is to think about edge in terms of fulfilling the first component—bringing value and enriching the status quo, like Poincaré did. And that if we do a good job and show how we provide unique value, then that will be enough—people will, on their own, gather this. But they don’t.

So in response, we start to feel like we need to fight fire with fire. “They kiss up to the boss? Well I can kiss up to the boss too.” But in doing so, we are often setting ourselves up for more heartache and preventing ourselves from actually gaining an edge.

Once we start to focus on the extent to which people perceive us to provide value, we begin to minimize (and sometimes even forget about) actually providing value. We stop, to some degree, trying to enrich ourselves. We impede our own ability to bring value to the outside; we stop acquiring the tools that we might have at our disposal to even know how to enrich.

We also overlook the fact that not everybody can get away with appearing as if they provide value without actually providing it. Sure, you might know people who can get away with this strategy. There are many who can. But me? I cannot. So I don’t try to do it like those other people.

To have an edge, you need to either be good at convincing others that you enrich and bring value (while not actually bringing any distinctive value), or actually bring value and convince them of it.

Either way, you’re going to need the buy-in of others. It’s much easier, it lasts longer, and it has more impact (in addition to being easier on the soul) if you achieve buy-in in such a way that you do, in fact, bring value. So we’ll start there, but we will certainly, most definitely, also discuss the buy-in piece.

Delivering Value Through Your Basic Goods

What does it actually mean to enrich and deliver value?

en·rich /in’riCH/

to improve or enhance the quality or value of

What many of us subconsciously think about when we seek to improve or enhance is that we have to go all in. We equate value and enriching with “giving it your all.”

So many of us become obsessed with going all in. We strive for it. We think that when we’re good at something, we need to be so great at it that the skies part and angels sing. We’re afraid to be mediocre at anything.

But seriously, isn’t it enough to have just one, maybe two superpowers, and then just be okay with being okay at everything else?* I mean, Batman has supergenius intellect and physical prowess, but he is limited in many other ways relative to other superheroes. And Spider-Man can wall-crawl and has some admirable speed and reflexes, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Superman’s superhuman strength. Even superheroes are only known for one or two things.

And it’s not just superheroes either. Two years ago, my husband and I took our kids on a road trip through Texas, starting off in Houston (where my husband was raised and his parents still reside), then continuing through Austin, San Antonio, and other, more rural parts of the state. Before we left, my mother-in-law shouted to us, “Don’t forget to stop at Buc-ee’s!” I looked confused, so my husband whispered to me, “Buc-ee’s is a gas station,” which did nothing to clear things up.

But lo and behold, a couple hundred miles into the trip, we saw a Buc-ee’s and my husband decided to stop for gas. And I was blown away. The place was a sight to be seen, a sovereign kingdom to be bowed down to. The restrooms were immaculate. Tons of fountain drinks and mountains of ice to refill our coolers. The store was packed with Texas-themed gifts that were so ingenious that I wanted to post them all on Instagram, clothing stamped with clever puns that I wanted to steal for myself, and its own brand of delicious snacks like beef jerky and caramel popcorn. I could have browsed for hours. And of course, there were rows and rows of gas pumps so that we wouldn’t have to wait.

Captivated, I spent the next part of our car ride researching and reading about this glorious gas station. I discovered that the first store was opened in 1982 in Lake Jackson, Texas. The cofounders, Arch “Beaver” Aplin III and Don Wasek, focused on just two things: cheap ice and clean restrooms—what they called their basic goods. See, what they determined is that people go to gas stations for gas and to use the restroom (and according to Texans, to get ice for their Dr Pepper).

So Aplin and Wasek made sure that Buc-ee’s had gas—that was a must. And then they focused on providing clean restrooms and inexpensive ice. And that, my friends, is how they made Buc-ee’s a road trip destination. They certainly enriched my gas stop experience.

Buc-ee’s in Texas City has thirty-three urinals for the guys alone. That means there is rarely a wait. The travel center has won awards for having the best public restrooms; customers marvel at how clean the facilities are, even at four a.m. The New Braunfels Buc-ee’s has 120 gas pumps and a store footprint of sixty-seven thousand square feet. The location in Katy, Texas, holds the record for the longest car wash conveyor belt. Buc-ee’s has more than thirty locations across Texas and is expanding to Florida and Alabama, with additional locations in development.

Though Buc-ee’s began as a gas station, these days, only 60 percent of the company’s revenue actually comes from gas sales, with an impressive 40 percent coming from convenience store items, including high-margin brand items. Buc-ee’s has changed the way consumers think of the phrase “rest stop” because of the value it brings. In addition to gas, providing pristine bathrooms and cheap ice became the travel center’s superpowers. And that allowed it to become “America’s Best Bathroom,” with customers bragging, “Buc-ee’s is like an adult amusement park!” and “What’s not great about Buc-ee’s? Nothing!”

I’ve called these traits superpowers, but that makes them sound much more elusive and rare than they actually are. Enriching is really about the few things that make you singular. After all, there’s nothing that complicated about big restrooms, lots of gas pumps, and plentiful ice. So I tend to think about it more as, what are my “basic goods”?

Before my Taiwanese mother begins cooking anything in the kitchen, the basic goods—the food staples that she must have—are ginger, scallions, sesame oil, and soy sauce. My Italian husband? Garlic, onions, olive oil, and cheese. (And a glass of red wine and some prosciutto di Parma for inspiration.)

Know your basic goods or the basic goods of the organizations you are leading, because they are what you will come back to, time and time again. They’re the key elements that will ensure your survival, your subsistence, and your ability to truly enrich.

Ask yourself this: When people are interacting with you or your organization, what is the most basic thing they expect you to deliver in order for them to allow you to continue up the ladder of influence?

For Beaver Aplin III and Don Wasek, the basic goods were gas, ice, and clean bathrooms. With that strong foundation Buc-ee’s has been able to diversify to sell food, gifts, and clothing. But it’s still the basics that get people coming back.

To identify our basic goods, we must own not only our strengths but also our weaknesses. When you acknowledge and accept your weaknesses, you start to see the contours of the playing field. Knowing your weaknesses and your basic goods helps you figure out where you can create an edge.

As an entrepreneurship professor, I’ve often had students come to me with ideas for start-ups. Some of their ideas are quite good—for example, one student had an idea for a venture that would help bridge the gap between the time a 911 call is placed and when an emergency medical responder arrives at the scene by providing a technology that would allow the EMT or ambulance driver to communicate by video with the patient. Video communication would console the patient and allow the EMT to see the extent of any injuries and learn in advance about any preexisting conditions.

Other ideas were more mundane but nevertheless clever, like an app that would help you track credit card promotions and annual fees and help you make efficient decisions about which of those airline credit card offers to toss and which to pursue.

Regardless of the idea, many of them begin their pitch with “I’ve got this awesome idea” and then finish by asking, “Can you help me find a technical person who can help me with it?”

The student with the 911 idea? A background in finance—no knowledge of medicine or technology. The student with the app idea? A background in medicine—nothing in finance or technology. How can you gain an edge without grasping the basics?

This is not to say that ideas can’t come from random inspiration—they certainly can. But each time I hear that an entrepreneur is looking for someone with skills that they themselves do not possess but that are the crux of what they are trying to do, I can’t help but think they are not finding and cultivating their edge and their ability to enrich. They are overlooking their own basic goods.

Imagine someone came to me and said, “I have the most amazing idea for a best-selling novel. And now I just need to find a writer to write it.” Or “I have the best idea for a masterpiece painting. And now I just need to find a painter to paint it.” It’s the same thing.

If you believe that your idea is the idea of the century, yet it relies on programming and you are not a programmer, be self-aware and admit to yourself that you will need to build that muscle.* You offer not just your strengths but also your weaknesses.

When you’ve discovered and pinpointed your weaknesses as well as your strengths, you’ve figured out where you’ve got an edge. You know not only where you’re valuable, but where you’re invaluable. Warren Buffett, American businessman and investor, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and third-wealthiest person in the world, describes it as understanding his circle of competence, which helps him avoid problems, identify opportunities for improvement, learn from others—and enrich.

Each of us, through our own unique experiences, has built up useful knowledge in certain distinct and finite areas. Some areas are more generic, but others are more specialized. Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, once said, “I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots.” That’s the circle of competence.

Buffett once described the circle of competence of one of his managers, a Russian immigrant he called Mrs. B. “She doesn’t understand stock . . . She understands furniture.” He remarked that “she wouldn’t buy a hundred shares of General Motors if it was at fifty cents a share”—but not knowing the stock market didn’t matter. Mrs. B built the largest furniture store in all of Nebraska by focusing on her basic goods. She understood that it’s not the size of the circle of competence that’s important; it’s knowing its boundaries. Know your weaknesses so that your weaknesses never become a liability. That’s when your strengths have the opportunity to shine the brightest.

When we figure out our basic goods, it answers the essential question: Where should we devote our limited time in life to achieve the most success? Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, fittingly offers the following: “Figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose.”

Less Is More

The trifecta of bigger, better, and more extreme—we are a society obsessed with bigger. In business, we seem to always be talking in some way about striving to be like those who seem larger than life—Larry and Sergey of Google fame, Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin empire, Jeff Bezos and his own empire that is Amazon, the Tata family, Jack Ma and the mythical Alibaba . . . I could go on and on.

But what we don’t hear is how often they themselves—these mythical unicorns such as Bezos and Ma—talk about their basic goods and the core products and services they arranged for their companies. These icons know that it’s the basics that enabled them to get big, yet we get in trouble because we keep trying to emulate them and go for more. Nearly all of them, despite their spectacular growth and size, succeed because they still abide by the notion of excelling at a few things, instead of achieving mediocrity by trying to do everything.

What if we take just one of them, like Richard Branson? What we would see at first glance is what he has done with his huge Virgin conglomerate. He has his hands in air travel with Virgin Atlantic and space travel with Virgin Galactic, not to mention his presence in music and entertainment, health and wellness, and financial services, just to name a few.

But if we take the story of how Branson founded Virgin Atlantic, we soon find that he absolutely started with the basics—and further, that as he grew the company, he continued to maintain its basics. How did he start the company? With a single Boeing 747 flying between London’s Gatwick Airport and Newark International Airport, in New Jersey. Now, mind you, he could have started with a whole fleet of planes and multiple routes, but he didn’t. Why? Because he was testing out what he saw as Virgin Atlantic’s circle of competence: the flying experience.

Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson* started the airline on somewhat of a whim. He was scheduled to take a flight (coincidentally enough, he was trying to get to the British Virgin Islands), but it was canceled. Needing to get to his destination, he did what most of us would do* and hired a private plane to get him there. While on the phone booking the private plane, he was asked by the booking agent, “And how many passengers will there be?” which made him realize that, indeed, there were other passengers who also needed to get to the Virgin Islands. “Hold on,” he said, and (jokingly, he says) wrote “Virgin Airlines” on a board, rounding up other passengers. One version of the story holds that he charged thirty-nine dollars each, writing “$39 one way to BVI” on the board. Another version claims that he did not name a price, and in fact, there were so many other passengers interested that he started a bidding war and actually made money from the private charter.

Nevertheless, both versions maintain that Branson and the other passengers had so much fun on that flight together that something dawned on him: he was fed up with other airlines and the experience they offered. He made a phone call to Boeing, bought a 747, and tried out his hypothesis: that air travel could be an enjoyable and special experience, and that Virgin could be the one to provide it in a way that was affordable for the customers and profitable for the company.

An airline was born. It wasn’t basic in its offerings—it featured mood lighting, comfortable leather seats, individual TV screens, and an extensive selection of in-flight entertainment options, all before other airlines—but they distilled the “basic good” that they offered into one thing.

Still not convinced? How about what Steve Jobs did with Apple? This is a company whose signature product, the iPhone, helps them reach between $89 billion and $93 billion in revenue per quarter. I have never heard the iPhone described as basic. We know it for its extensive offerings of slick features: facial recognition, bionic processors, stereo sound, burst mode, and other camera features for perfect exposures.

But what Jobs recognized was the iPhone’s basic good: that it is a combination device—one that people value because it can simultaneously be used as a phone and a camera and it can access the web. When Apple launched the original iPhone, it didn’t have facial recognition, bionic processors, stereo sound . . . it didn’t even have cut-and-paste functionality or the ability to search contacts.

You see, Apple had no idea whether the iPhone would completely bomb. They were in absolute fear that people might not actually want or even use a device that could do several things at once. What if people never ended up using the camera feature because they felt like their digital camera took clearer and better pictures? What if they preferred using their laptop for online browsing and functionality?

So they tested what they saw as their basic good: the elegance of its all-in-one combination of offerings. And with each new iteration, with each new feature, that basic good continues to guide what is to come. With their iPhone X, Apple delivered on sleekness and elegance. And with its Apple TV+, the company stayed true to a simplified, streamlined, and elegant TV-watching experience. Without a doubt, the company will continue to roll out new products that never fail to deliver on its basic goods of elegance, simplicity, and usefulness.

We can channel Virgin, Apple, even Buc-ee’s. Not getting distracted by bigger, better, and more extreme can truly provide us with a means to enrich. Creating an edge starts with pinpointing your basic goods and defining your circle of competence, and operating inside that perimeter. Of course, over time, you can work to expand your circle like Buc-ee’s did. But never lose sight of the basics that are the foundation of your edge.