5 ms·

Funny enough, I'm in a position to be friends with many small business owners (I've done work for them over the years, and it has involved into friendships) Th

Funny enough, I'm in a position to be friends with many small business owners (I've done work for them over the years, and it has involved into friendships) The folks that are successful don't look at pennies. They produce or sell their products for a healthy price and focus on delivering a quality experience. I went to dinner with the owner of a small business last week that just closed on 30mm in revenue across 15 employees. The company has a profit-sharing plan that pays most of the profit into a pension. It has been in business for well over 15 years. They aren't the cheapest, but they have excellent customer service, sell great products, and ship those products to you in the fastest way possible. If, as a small business owner, and your primary concern is undercutting the other guy, you are going to go out of business. That has been the rule since capitalism was basically invented. Very few businesses can make their money by undercutting the other guy. Notice the most successful companies such as Starbucks and Apple, and even nonprofit companies such as the YMCA (in the US) don't focus on the bottom dollar. Instead, they focus on standing out. Even if you look at bottom dollar chains like McDonalds, companies have tried to do it cheaper. Shoot, you can STILL do it cheaper. The reason they don't exist anymore is because, at the end of the day, McDonalds did a better job of providing food of consistent (shit, erm, sorry, not a McDonald's fan) quality, quickly, and at an affordable price.

MrWiffles 5y ago
Nailed it. Not rocket science; focusing on delivering VALUE in exchange for the money you charge has always been the obvious, unsexy, boring, fundamental thing that makes any economy function. So yeah, it's not surprising your friend has closed over 30mm. Especially if he's treating his employees well (which is what it sounds like, esp. wrt. pension). And there's unsexy rule number 2: you treat the people who do the hard work really well, you pay them well, and you hire accordingly because that translates into an intangible competitive advantage that doesn't lend itself well to quantifiable measurement, but something we all have a word for anyway: OPTIMISM! It's no secret why these shit-for-pay businesses all over the country are having a hard time filling open hiring reqs; because the pay sucks! And that's usually a fair indicator of how your employer's going to treat you if you join them, too. If they're not willing to pay a reasonable living wage, you can be pretty sure they're also not going to bother making the working environment anything even marginally better than the law requires as an absolute minimum. And frankly that legal bar is far, far too low to begin with (and we're not even talking minimum wage here, just basic human decency is lacking most of the time). So yeah, kudos to your buddy there. If small businesses want to compete with the big guys, this is how you do it. You don't undercut, you charge fair, you pay better, and you over-deliver. It's called "hard work", and that's precisely why it's so damn rare.

MrWiffles 5y ago

Nailed it. Not rocket science; focusing on delivering VALUE in exchange for the money you charge has always been the obvious, unsexy, boring, fundamental thing that makes any economy function. So yeah, it's not surprising your friend has closed over 30mm. Especially if he's treating his employees well (which is what it sounds like, esp. wrt. pension). And there's unsexy rule number 2: you treat the people who do the hard work really well, you pay them well, and you hire accordingly because that translates into an intangible competitive advantage that doesn't lend itself well to quantifiable measurement, but something we all have a word for anyway: OPTIMISM! It's no secret why these shit-for-pay businesses all over the country are having a hard time filling open hiring reqs; because the pay sucks! And that's usually a fair indicator of how your employer's going to treat you if you join them, too. If they're not willing to pay a reasonable living wage, you can be pretty sure they're also not going to bother making the working environment anything even marginally better than the law requires as an absolute minimum. And frankly that legal bar is far, far too low to begin with (and we're not even talking minimum wage here, just basic human decency is lacking most of the time). So yeah, kudos to your buddy there. If small businesses want to compete with the big guys, this is how you do it. You don't undercut, you charge fair, you pay better, and you over-deliver. It's called "hard work", and that's precisely why it's so damn rare.