What you sell is never omelette rice: Read Naofumi Kakiuchi's "Please create added value for this omurice dish" and talk about what is left after AI wipes out the work.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I like to eat omelette rice.
The moment the smooth egg skin is opened, the sweet and sour tomato sauce is wrapped in the hot fried rice. To be honest, it is not a delicacy, but it is a very healing dish in my mind. When I go out and see omurice on the menu, I will most likely order it.
So you can imagine, when I was visiting the bookstore a few days ago, how did the book “Please create added value for this omelette rice” (opens in a new tab) on the platform attracted my attention?
Haha, I was amused by the title of the book at first. When I opened the author’s introduction, I was stunned for a moment: Kakiuchi Naofumi, a former editor, has been working on magazines and books for many years, and the cumulative sales of the books he has planned exceed 14 million. Later, he brought the editing skills into corporate marketing, product development and presentations.
Well, this path is all too familiar to me. We also start from the editing desk, and we also translate the skills of media people into another profession after middle age. Meeting an author with a similar background is like meeting a fellow countryman in a different place. You will want to know: What path did he take?
So I stood in the bookstore and quickly read the entire book.
Why should a two-hundred-yuan omelette rice cost three thousand?
The omelette rice in the title of the book is such a topic.
For the same omelette rice, clerk A said: “This is our omurice rice, a portion is 200 yuan.” Clerk B said: “This is the “support omelette rice” specially developed by the chef. Every bite will cheer you up after a hard day!”
Which one makes you excited?
There is a more ruthless version in the book. How much would you pay for an ordinary-looking omelette rice dish? The market price is probably a few hundred yuan. But what if I tell you that this is the omelette rice that a well-known athlete has eaten before competition since childhood, and it was made by the athlete’s mother? The answer in the book is very expressive: “I am a loyal fan of that player, and I want to eat it even if I pay 100,000 yen!”
The omurice hasn’t changed, what has changed is the value.
The author breaks down value into three types: existing value, added value, and valuelessness. The existing value is something that should already be there, like a supermarket checkout that needs to be able to check out quickly; the added value is the little difference that is beyond expectations, like the clerk who checks out as fast but always smiles and greets you proactively; as for worthlessness, it is something that you think you have added points to, but the other person doesn’t care about it at all.
The person who judges these three is never the provider, but the recipient.
This sentence is worthy of being copied by anyone who does marketing, content, or any business and sticks it next to the screen. Many years ago I wrote “Thinking from the reader’s perspective - how to write valuable articles?” 〉, actually talking about the same thing: there is often a whole canyon between what you think is good and what the other person feels is good. Kakiuchi Naofumi just changed the scene from the manuscript paper to the dinner plate.
The most pity is that the value is not conveyed
What impressed me the most in the whole book was the parsley section.
Western food dishes often come with a small plant of parsley. Most people don’t eat it because they find it bitter, and they even wonder if it is reused? But parsley actually has its reason for being used in vegetables: in addition to color matching and sterilization, it also promotes digestion.
What’s the problem? The store never said that.
So something that could have added value becomes worthless because it has not been communicated. The author said that this is the most regrettable situation. After all, humans are creatures who cannot understand unless they speak.
After reading this paragraph, I stood in the bookstore and nodded frequently. Because this is basically the daily life of content creation and personal branding: How many people quietly do things well, but assume that the other party will see it? How many professionals’ quotations are full of their own hard work, but not a single line is translated into the value that the other party cares about?
This is also an old problem I talked about in <Verify first, then build>: What you sell is actually a quote, not a product. The other party doesn’t care about a word of the evidence of “I’m serious” on the quotation; what he cares about is how different his world will be after this thing is done.
I often say in class that writing is the process of verbalizing values. This book uses a parsley plant to explain the same truth more easily.
In the AI era, this book is actually about “irreplaceable”
After reading the middle part, I realized that this book collided with the topic that I have been most concerned about in recent years.
In the past few years, during in-house training and university lectures, the question I am most frequently asked is: AI can do everything, what else do I have left?
Kakiuchi Naofumi gives a clean frame. He said that work is divided into two types: homework and creating added value.
Homework is something that is handed down and has a standard answer, and AI is driving the price of all homework to close to zero at a very fast speed. In other words, AI eats up the market of existing value. In the past few years, I have described the same phenomenon in 〈When AI agents take over execution, marketers rely on these three keys to reshape irreplaceable value〉: When execution costs approach zero, this layer is no longer your moat.
What’s left of that person?
The rest is what this entire book teaches you: discern the needs of the recipient, and create that little extra difference in unexpected places. Your experiences, your opinions, and your intentions for a specific person cannot be calculated by the model. A while ago, I put this matter more clearly in
The book introduces a set of techniques for creating added value: redefinition, in other words, master-slave reversal, narrowing and experientialization. The names sound like moves, but they are essentially the basic skills of editing: the same material has a different value if you change the perspective, the object, and the location. The mineral water at Mount Fuji sells for 500 yen, which no one finds too expensive, because what you buy is not the water, but the refreshing sip after climbing to the top.
Among them, I particularly want to say one more thing about “narrowing”. It has two sides of the same coin as what I wrote about
Having said that, this also explains why I feel close to this author. The core of editing is never to revise the manuscript, but to find its most valuable position for the content. He simply moved this craft from the pages of books to the entire business world.
*▲ The saying “Leave the homework to AI and leave the added value to yourself” is almost verbatim in the context of academic research and writing. Literature crawling, data compilation, and formatting proofreading are all standard “assignments”, but your research questions, arguments, and original opinions are the irreplaceable added value. If you are a researcher or knowledge worker and want to learn to collaborate with AI while maintaining academic ethical boundaries, welcome to my AI-empowered academic research and writing practical workshop (opens in a new tab). *
Three exercises you can do today
If you asked me where to start after reading this book, I would suggest these three steps:
- **Language your added value. ** Take a piece of paper and write down “that thing you would do more of even if no one asked you to do it” at work. If you can’t write it, Chapter 4 of this book will be a good mirror.
- **Review your daily work with redefinition. **Is that really what you are selling? People who sell briefing courses may be selling confidence for promotion, while people who write e-newsletters may be selling weekly companionship. When the definition changes, the practice changes as well.
- **Speak out the value. ** Don’t be that parsley plant. Every extra thing you do deserves a clear explanation to let the other person know that it is for him.
Conclusion
When I walked out of the bookstore that day, I went to eat an omelette rice.
As I was eating, I thought, the reason why I am willing to pay for it again and again is actually never just the meal itself: it is the memory of childhood, the ritual of healing, and the reward for myself after a busy day.
It turns out that I have been paying for added value for a long time, but this book made me see this clearly.
Instead of worrying about being replaced by the world, it is better to become irreplaceable in this world. This sentence is printed on the waist of the book, but the real answer lies in the book and in the little extra you do every day.
Extended reading
- Refining the human premium: When AI makes perfection cheap, imperfect you are the most expensive asset
- I read “The Practice of Professional Realization”: Creating Irreplaceable Personal Competitiveness in the AI Era
- In the AI era, should you follow the trend and transfer knowledge, or delve deeper into originality?
Book purchase link: “Please create added value for this omelette rice” (opens in a new tab) (blog)
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Vista Cheng speaks and runs workshops on AI workflows, writing and content systems for companies, schools and public agencies.
