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My visitor is in the catering and event production business, so I brought up the subject of Wolfgang Puck. Her opinion was that he isn’t a first rank chef and mine was that his kitchen abilities don’t matter nearly as much as his relentless marketing and hard work away from the saucepan. Since I’m a watch collector, here is an example of what I mean. Rolex is probably the best known prestige watch brand in the world, but it is far from being the finest wristwatch that you can buy. Rolex advertises all the time, tying their brand to prestigious events and highly accomplished people. The common perception is that these Rolex timepieces are lovingly made in small quantities by talented Swiss watchmakers hovering over their benches for hours on end. In fact, Rolex turns out about one million watches per year. That is over nineteen thousand units per week! If they were crafted the way they want us to believe they are, there wouldn’t be enough work benches in all of Switzerland to accommodate the necessary watch-making elves. The reality is that most of their watch movements are simple enough that with two weeks training, most of us could learn to assemble and properly service them.
So Wolfgang, or “Wolfie,” as some call him, is at the top of a food empire and the famous chef list because of smart marketing and brand building. In the words of the Hip-Hop community, you can “make bank” with various areas of excellence, but you don’t have to be the absolute best to get there. I’ve met Mr. Puck on several occasions and feel that he is one of the hardest working business owners I know of. In Los Angeles, his signature restaurants, from oldest to newest, are Spago, Chinois, and Cut. Wolfgang Puck miraculously appears at all of them most nights when he is in town, giving the impression that the owner is in the store and that customers are in good hands. Mr. Puck manages the illusion of being in several places at once by employing a car and driver along with a supply of fresh white tunics! Wolfgang Puck is literally everywhere with books, a television series, his face is on a line of prepared foods, and he also caters high-profile events like the Academy Awards. Having visited all the above mentioned establishments to put major dents in my credit cards, I can say that using the best ingredients and well-trained staff play an important role among his success ingredients, and successful on a large scale is what he has become.
What can we learn from him as business owners? His focus is singular and laser-like on food and hospitality-I haven’t yet seen any Puck shoes or aprons. Wolfgang Puck insists on the best ingredients from food vendors and charges prices that reflect high quality. His staff is very well trained and prepared to represent him well by working to deliver an overall outstanding eating “experience.” If not they don’t get to stay, but if they do they are amply rewarded. His work ethic is still relentless, like a person who enjoys what he does and lets it show. He publishes, works charitable events and speaks as a representative of his industry.
Do the right things and success is inevitable. What are you doing today to build your personal or business brand? Have you sharpened your entrepreneurial focus to a fine point? Are you sharing your knowledge inside and outside your business? Do you insist on excellence from yourself and those people you employ?
If you have a couple of minutes to drop me a line about how you developed your market position or other aspects of how you are going about building your business, I’d like to hear your story and post it here on the web site.
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