Secret Sauce. Really?

Secret Sauce. Really?

Want to find out how to make a great spaghetti sauce? Just Google it. 248 Million search results. Pick one and have at it. I guarantee your sauce will take on its own characteristics and flavor than the base recipe you used. As you tweak it and integrate it into your cooking style, it will become yours.

We have a secret sauce in our industry or so people say. It is your unique way you do things: your policies, workflows, marketing, systems, procedures, among others. These make your business super successful or not. Good or bad, these are your secrets; your ways. Secrets are personal and not to be shared. Right?

So why are the most successful shops sharing their sauce? Business development groups, twenty groups, masterminds, local regional, and national meetings to share best practices and policies. When these owners get together, they bring their KPI’s, profit and loss statements, their challenges, and the good stuff that is working and they share. Everyone in the group takes one, two, or more ideas and plans to do something with them (by the way, if any great idea is never implemented, it is just vapor).

Point is no matter how these ‘secrets’ are implemented in another shop they will take on the flavor and success of the culture, team, and leadership of the receiving company. Each of these ideas or secrets take on their own form. Every business, no matter how similar, is unique and different because of our independence.

Get my point? I’m sure you do. Keeping secrets, thinking that someone will duplicate what and how you do things is furthest from reality. I encourage anyone who feels that their secret sauce is unique and different get involved in a local, regional, or national group and discover that you may need a little garlic or oregano to kick up your sauce to a new level. Give and get. An excellent recipe for success.