American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield and her husband owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. It was a popular place to eat because chef Ruth featured home cooking. But it was her desserts that really gained her local notoriety. One day when she was whipping up a batch of cookies she realized she was out of baker’s chocolate, so she did what all good chefs do: she substituted. In this case, she chose a semisweet chocolate bar from Nestle. Unlike baker’s chocolate that melted when baked, the semi-sweet morsels didn’t melt – just softened. The chocolate chip cookie was born.

Ruth’s cookies became so popular that the sales of the Nestle chocolate chips grew. Andrew Nestle knew he had a winner. He negotiated to buy the recipe from Ruth and agree to print the recipe on the back of every package going forward. Included in the purchase of the recipe was a lifetime of chocolate chips for Ruth.

Ruth died in 1977 and the Toll House Inn burned down in 1984, but to this day Nestle still prints the recipe for these mouth watering tasty cookies on every package sold.

But the story doesn’t end there.

While Ruth didn’t profit from what happened next, a smart business owner should take notice and start out the new year looking at their business’s services and products. Could they repackage, reinvent, make smaller, bundle, joint venture, increase size – do anything to change up what they already offer to make it new, more interesting and in the process – find more profits in your business.

Can’t think of anything? Invite 2 or 3 business friends to spend a morning talking about each of your businesses to brainstorm how to reinvent and package your services. In 1937 Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich called this a “mastermind.” The goal is for each business owner to come out of the mastermind with a plan.

From this simple chocolate chip cookie – that’s become the #1 most loved cookie of all time – came these ideas. Use them to kickstart your brainstorming/mastermind session.  In fact, buy some of these products and have them placed in the center of the table as a real-life example.