Sunday, February 27, 2011

Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

Analogies between business are war run rampant in our culture.  Some of them deserve some merit.  I do believe that Sun Tzu's Art of War is a great bona-fide business book.  Most of those analogies, however, make a terrible distortion on the nature of business.  If you do things right, business is most often NOT a cut-throat dog-eat-dog world.  Kaladi Coffee is all about finding a niche (preferably with fun clients, honest vendors, and a livable profit margin) and then letting the rest of the coffee world go its own way.

But still...if you're serious about your business, if you intend that it should pay you and your people and provide your clients with a great experience, there are certain harsh realities you need to face.  The core people, systems, and equipment for your business are CRITICAL.  If we're discussing coffee joints, we're not talking about plastic water cups and toilet paper dispensers here.  We're talking about your coffee machine, your espresso machine, and your grinders.  The same thing could be said for your brake, shear, punch, etc. in a metal fabrication business or the cleaning and imaging apparatus in a dental practice.  Identify the equipment that is critical to your work and focus your spending ability there.

Don't buy cheap equipment for the core of your business.  That's like bringing a knife to a gunfight.  Or entering your Corolla in an F1 race.  Those comparisons are funny, I guess...until you realize that it costs you a couple of hundred grand to enter the race in the first place. 

Winning is tricky even when you have the right tools.  To run the race of business with anything but the best stuff, though, is truly challenging fate.

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