Value and Price

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. 

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. 

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well

to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” 

― John Ruskin

I “usually” apply this quote to all my personal and business transactions, I try to remember this when I am hiring employees or trades, buying materials and purchasing tools, I found that with time I can’t really remember the times I could overpaid a little bit for something, but I still remember every single time and the consequences of every occasion where at some point I thought I had got a great deal !

I always get a kick out of the employments ads that list all sorts of responsibilities and qualifications and then finish with something like this : “ pay base on experience 12 to 16 dollars “ , ….. 

My fellow employer, who do you think you are kidding ?

First one on line, its yourself, you will be posting that ad again in a week or two looking for someone to come and fix what that person just did. There is a big chance that time and money loses is all you are going to get from employing a person that is willing to work for 16 dollars an hour to perform any type of work that will required some qualifications or abilities on any field of construction these days.

Second one on line, It’s the Client you are working for… believe it or not .. I see it all the time …   people performing tasks they have not proper training for , obviously quality and workmanship will not be parts of that project.  As a dear friend of mine jokes about : the best business to be in three years will be renovations, all the defective work we see around now will be falling apart by then and they gonna need tons of people to fix it.

The third one on that line are us, all the contractors and trade people that feel passionate about the work we do, the ones that try to do it right ! Sometimes, the 16 dollars employers will be chosen over the other guys with decisions based on price and the circle of consequences will repeat itself over and over again.