10/16/2024
All business owners understand the saying of fast, cheap, good!
Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap. Fast, cheap and good … pick two.
It's funny though how some customers/clients can't grasp this concept.
My wife is a photographer and graphic designer. Several times over the years I've seen here have to battle with impatient clients or have to haggle with a client who wants to lowball her prices. In their mind, they see the end result of the photos, nothing else. They don't see the hundreds of pictures taken, then the dozens of hours of editing once those photos are uploaded. They want great quality, and they want it fast.
We as ranchers see the same thing sometimes. A customer complains about the price, comparing it to cheap beef at the grocery store that came from God knows where.
They don't see the 3 years of labor it takes to raise an animal to finished weight. They don't see the bottle feeding of a newborn calf that is struggling. They don't see the daily routine of things like fixing fence, breaking ice in the water trough, jump starting an old tractor at 5am in the dark when it's 15 degrees out.
They don't see the rotating of cattle to fresh pasture, or the daily hay feeding in the winter. They don't see the loading and hauling of cattle to and from the butcher.
They don't see the pain and agony of losing a newborn calf, or having to do your best to treat a sick or injured animal, or the million other things that can and do go wrong on a farm/ranch.
In my youth, this would have upset me, and I would maybe have caved on the price in order to make a sale or prevent losing a customer/client, even if it meant losing money. Today however, Martin Beck and I do our best to explain, but let it be known that the price is the price, take it or leave it.
The strange phenomenon though is that this only seems to apply to small business owners, where a customer or client directly sees the owner face to face.
Nobody goes to Walmart and tries to haggle the price tag or tell the manager that the product is too expensive. Nobody goes to a fancy dinner and tells the owner that their prices are too high.
So, it's fast, cheap, and good...pick two!