Quantity vs Quality
A lot of people like to talk about this subject, and over the years, it has become cliché. That subject is quality versus quantity. When it comes to this subject, which do you prefer? Do you prefer quality, or do you prefer quantity? Most of the time, depending on what people are talking about, the default answer is quality. My question to you, is do we really know the difference? Do we really think that quality is always best? No, it isn’t. It’s not always the best. You have to have some level of quality, but sometimes people will take a diminished level of quality for a huge quantity. Sometimes people would rather have a lot of people around them as opposed to a few quality people around them. People would rather have a whole lot of money and it doesn’t matter the quality in which they acquired it.
I want to delve deeper into this subject and figure out if people really know what that means. What does quality mean in business? Why is quality so important in business especially because a lot of times we want a lot of customers. We want a lot of sales. We want a lot of money. We want a lot of everything. When you’re at the beginning of your business, a lot is what you want because that’s how you measure whether or not your business is successful, or sometimes that’s just the thing that motivates you. The more people that are interested in your product, the more people that are talking about your services, the more people that give attention to your business, that makes you feel good.
That makes you think and believe that your business is going in the right direction. Let me use myself as an example. When I started in business as a photographer, I realized that after a couple of years, I would be doing 150 to 200 jobs a year and still had not become a six-figure earner. I was doing those jobs, a lot of jobs, but they were for $100, $150, or $200. Even if you do 200 jobs at a hundred dollars, that’s only $20,000. If you do them at $200, that’s only $40,000. As you can see, the quantity was there, but the quality.
Most photographers are not working that much in a calendar year. To be honest, because there wasn’t quality, meaning the amount of money I was making, I was really working for nothing. I was working for pennies. As I grew and understood the difference of quality over quantity, I started to streamline the type of customer I wanted. I started understanding what it is that I wanted my business to look like and how much money I want to make. Let’s talk about employees, sometimes business owners want a bunch of people to help them and that’s cool. But when you start to find out that you have 10 people on your staff and 20% of them are completing 80% of the work, with the 80/20 rule applied, you find out you really only have two people. These two are really putting in the work and carrying the load, but you’re paying eight more salaries.
You think you have 10 people, and it seems as if you’re moving and shaking. However, if they’re not bringing in any money or they’re not able to help move the needle and it’s only two people out of those 10, that’s not helping you. You have to start making the decision and therein lies the problem. Quantity versus quality requires a decision. And most people, most entrepreneurs hate making decisions.
We get into a business; we get into spaces in our lives, and we want life to dictate or make the decision for us. I state in my third book, Morning Motivation: Consistent Encouragement Through a Crisis, that indecision is worse than wrong decision. The only time you get to really know the difference between quantity and quality is when you make the decision about what you want. If you don’t know what you want or you don’t know where you’re going, then any direction will get you there.
If you don’t have a destination in mind, wherever you land will be your place. Once you start to decide and say, for example, I want to make $200,000. You’ll really be able to dictate if a client is quality. All you have to do is do the math. How many times are you going to have to provide a particular service in order to make $200,000? And then you’ll know if it’s a quantity or is this really quality? Am I going to be able to do 1500 jobs in the calendar year in order to get to that amount of money or do I need to find a different caliber of client? We have to stop shunning making decisions. It is great that you make the ultimate decision to decide to get into business, but the decisions don’t stop there.
The decisions are always happening. As an entrepreneur, you’re making decisions that affect not just you, but other individuals and their households. You have to decide how are you going to run your business? A quality company or a quality employer? Are you going to provide quality service? All of these things are decisions. And when you finally start to make decisions on a regular basis and you get comfortable with making decisions, sound decisions then, and only then, will you be able to truly have an answer, of which one is better quantity or quality.
Think about this as you move forward. I’ll see you back here next week, where I’ll be right in your business corner.
