4 ms·

>You’re better off being very expensive ($10k tattoo artist) than broadly appealing. This is like saying you’re better off playing in the NBA than shooting hoo

>You’re better off being very expensive ($10k tattoo artist) than broadly appealing. This is like saying you’re better off playing in the NBA than shooting hoops in the park. Yes, anyone can shoot hoops in the park and make $0 but wouldn’t it be so much better to play in the NBA and get paid millions? It sounds great in theory but you better hope you have the talent, drive, and luck to make it happen. Baking a $30 cake and baking a $6,000 cake are totally different ballgames and the actual baking is quite different and the business part of it requires totally different skills/network/etc.

makeitdouble 5y ago
You are right, but I think it applies in smaller increments. To get back to bread, selling fancy cakes for 10$ and not 4$ might not seem a big deal, but it can be enough to upgrade all the ingredients while staying in your comfort zone skill wise. The competition gets smaller, and while you’re now priced the same as some superstar shops, you clients will still be happy if it’s clearly better than the 4$ cakes next door. In a way NBA is a regulated market, most markets don’t behave that way.
onion2k 5y ago
Baking a $30 cake and baking a $6,000 cake are totally different ballgames and the actual baking is quite different and the business part of it requires totally different skills/network/etc. I don't think that's true. The difference between two cakes is down to who baked them, not the price. There are amazing bakers making fantastic $30 cakes, and great bakers making brilliant $6000 cakes, and there are terrible bakers making awful $30 cakes and others making awful $6000 cakes. You can't tell whether a baker's cake is any good by what they charge. No doubt the technique for baking a $30 cake and a $6000 cake is different (the sizes are probably different for a start) but any good baker could work at either end of the scale. It is absolutely not like basketball where things like genetics (height, lung capacity, heart size, etc) enter into it. No one is a naturally good baker.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  This isn’t true at all! You can’t have ordered many cakes for weddings and large parties. There are plenty doing a good job who would not be able to move on to richer clients. There is significant variation in design skill, baking skill and equipment out there among professionals. Visual taste, food taste, steady hands, and stamina are three natural traits I’ve noticed and there are probably others in great bakers and chefs.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > No one is a naturally good baker. While baking/cooking may not relate to physical genetics, it is definitely linked to creativity and such. Not everyone can be a Masterchef. > I don't think that's true. The difference between two cakes is down to who baked them, not the price. It is true? Everything you listed are things that are influenced by both the baker and the price. Not everyone can handle the stress of managing multiple high-end event deliveries while fulfilling the nuanced needs and quality expected of a 10k cake vs a 100$ cake, and so on.
- awillen 5y ago
  No one is making awful $6000 cakes (or at least they're not selling them). You can absolutely tell how good a baker's cake is by how much they charge, assuming they're actually making sales. Someone who is consistently selling cakes for thousands of dollars is a very good baker. Beyond that, you have to bear in mind that $30 cakes and $6000 cakes are basically different products. The former is a dessert and the latter is closer to art. A very successful baker making $30 cakes is more like the head chef at a restaurant than a home baker - they're running an operation that's making those cakes at scale (because there's a limit on how successful you can be selling $30 cakes that you make yourself - only so many hours in the day). A baker making $6000 cakes is making hands-on, labor-intensive creations, and while that person may have some staff, they're involved in each cake. Their work doesn't scale the way the large-scale $30 cake operation does, but they can make lots of money in the same way a high-paid lawyer does - basically a very high hourly rate for their work.
- paulcole 5y ago
  Closing a $6,000 deal with a decision maker at a big company is different than closing a $30 deal with my grandpa. Getting on the radar of the decision maker at a big company is a different skill than getting my grandpa’s attention. The difference has very little to do with the cake. A fair number of high-priced wedding cake makers just use boxed cake mix. It’s the decorating and the security that they’re not going to fuck up the wedding day.
mynameishere 5y ago
I don't know about the NBA but if you look at the stunning difference between Mike Trout's salary (35 million/year) and an AAA minor league player's (700/week) you might be even more stunned by the difference between their batting averages (ie, around .100). Point is, once someone gets "in the game" and isn't just playing for fun, valuations get really strange. As another example, I am impressed by the salaries at Facebook when it is still just a particularly herky-jerky Myspace clone, or at Youtube, which is the same website it always was 10+ years ago ("But now with TWO types of annotations no one asked for.") What are all those geniuses doing? They aren't even batting above average as far as I can tell. ... As for baking, I knew a professional baker when I worked in a restaurant. Man, that guy was miserable and weird. He made nice-looking stuff third shift for the next day, but knowing him, I wasn't about to eat any of it.
- MPSimmons 5y ago
  > you might be even more stunned by the difference between their batting averages (ie, around .100). You have to account for both sides of that equation, though, and consider the skill of the pitchers being faced by the minor leaguer.

makeitdouble 5y ago

You are right, but I think it applies in smaller increments. To get back to bread, selling fancy cakes for 10$ and not 4$ might not seem a big deal, but it can be enough to upgrade all the ingredients while staying in your comfort zone skill wise. The competition gets smaller, and while you’re now priced the same as some superstar shops, you clients will still be happy if it’s clearly better than the 4$ cakes next door. In a way NBA is a regulated market, most markets don’t behave that way.

onion2k 5y ago

Baking a $30 cake and baking a $6,000 cake are totally different ballgames and the actual baking is quite different and the business part of it requires totally different skills/network/etc. I don't think that's true. The difference between two cakes is down to who baked them, not the price. There are amazing bakers making fantastic $30 cakes, and great bakers making brilliant $6000 cakes, and there are terrible bakers making awful $30 cakes and others making awful $6000 cakes. You can't tell whether a baker's cake is any good by what they charge. No doubt the technique for baking a $30 cake and a $6000 cake is different (the sizes are probably different for a start) but any good baker could work at either end of the scale. It is absolutely not like basketball where things like genetics (height, lung capacity, heart size, etc) enter into it. No one is a naturally good baker.

1123581321 5y ago
This isn’t true at all! You can’t have ordered many cakes for weddings and large parties. There are plenty doing a good job who would not be able to move on to richer clients. There is significant variation in design skill, baking skill and equipment out there among professionals. Visual taste, food taste, steady hands, and stamina are three natural traits I’ve noticed and there are probably others in great bakers and chefs.
yunohn 5y ago
> No one is a naturally good baker. While baking/cooking may not relate to physical genetics, it is definitely linked to creativity and such. Not everyone can be a Masterchef. > I don't think that's true. The difference between two cakes is down to who baked them, not the price. It is true? Everything you listed are things that are influenced by both the baker and the price. Not everyone can handle the stress of managing multiple high-end event deliveries while fulfilling the nuanced needs and quality expected of a 10k cake vs a 100$ cake, and so on.
awillen 5y ago
No one is making awful $6000 cakes (or at least they're not selling them). You can absolutely tell how good a baker's cake is by how much they charge, assuming they're actually making sales. Someone who is consistently selling cakes for thousands of dollars is a very good baker. Beyond that, you have to bear in mind that $30 cakes and $6000 cakes are basically different products. The former is a dessert and the latter is closer to art. A very successful baker making $30 cakes is more like the head chef at a restaurant than a home baker - they're running an operation that's making those cakes at scale (because there's a limit on how successful you can be selling $30 cakes that you make yourself - only so many hours in the day). A baker making $6000 cakes is making hands-on, labor-intensive creations, and while that person may have some staff, they're involved in each cake. Their work doesn't scale the way the large-scale $30 cake operation does, but they can make lots of money in the same way a high-paid lawyer does - basically a very high hourly rate for their work.
paulcole 5y ago
Closing a $6,000 deal with a decision maker at a big company is different than closing a $30 deal with my grandpa. Getting on the radar of the decision maker at a big company is a different skill than getting my grandpa’s attention. The difference has very little to do with the cake. A fair number of high-priced wedding cake makers just use boxed cake mix. It’s the decorating and the security that they’re not going to fuck up the wedding day.

mynameishere 5y ago

I don't know about the NBA but if you look at the stunning difference between Mike Trout's salary (35 million/year) and an AAA minor league player's (700/week) you might be even more stunned by the difference between their batting averages (ie, around .100). Point is, once someone gets "in the game" and isn't just playing for fun, valuations get really strange. As another example, I am impressed by the salaries at Facebook when it is still just a particularly herky-jerky Myspace clone, or at Youtube, which is the same website it always was 10+ years ago ("But now with TWO types of annotations no one asked for.") What are all those geniuses doing? They aren't even batting above average as far as I can tell. ... As for baking, I knew a professional baker when I worked in a restaurant. Man, that guy was miserable and weird. He made nice-looking stuff third shift for the next day, but knowing him, I wasn't about to eat any of it.

MPSimmons 5y ago
> you might be even more stunned by the difference between their batting averages (ie, around .100). You have to account for both sides of that equation, though, and consider the skill of the pitchers being faced by the minor leaguer.