Travis Albritton 0:00
You may have heard the phrase good, fast, cheap, pick two. And typically that refers to if you want to get something done, if you want to hire something out, you have to choose between two of those three options that if you want it to be good and fast, then it's going to be expensive. But if you want it fast and cheap, then it's probably not going to be good. But you can't have all three now and Mike Michalowicz's 'Get Different' a book that I highly recommend for thinking outside of the box, when it comes to marketing your business. He actually says that in marketing, you only really get to pick one. And that's because when customers and prospects think about you, and they think about your business, they're gonna put you in one of those categories, you're either a cheap product, a quickly delivered product, or a good product. So in this episode, we're going to look at this framework as a way of clarifying the message of your business, and help you decide which one is the best positioning for you.
Travis Albritton 0:58
Welcome to the Honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Allbritton. And we're going to take a look at three different examples of different kinds of businesses that have different kinds of offers and run them through this good, fast, cheap framework, to give us a backdrop for what this looks like in action to think about applying this to your business, whether you are positioned as a good product, or you know, focusing on the quality of the product, whether you're a fast turnaround, or fast delivery, or quick results is what you lean into with what makes your business different, or if it's cheap if you're competing on price. And then at the end, we're gonna talk about what you actually do with that. Okay, so first, let's talk about something that in the United States is ubiquitous, and that is, hamburgers, every one of their brothers sells a hamburger. So when you think about, you know, as a food service person, you know, business to a restaurant or something like that, how would you think about your burger and how you position it. So if we look at good focus on quality, then you know, you're gonna be charging top dollar. But in exchange for that, as a consumer, you're getting the best ingredients, you're getting that steak brisket blends, not just the ground chuck in the patty, it's going to be table service. So you're going to have somebody actually cook the burger, bring it to your table, refill your drinks, sit down restaurant style. And there, you're looking at top dollar, you're gonna spend 1520, maybe even $30. For a burger. If you go for the Wagyu beef, then it may be even higher than that. But the reason that you're spending that much money on that burger is because it is good, because you actually want the quality and you want to spend the money to get the highest quality burger that you can, what would a fast burger look like? McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's is really good at fast by the time that you order in the drive thru, and then hypothetically, drive up to the window and give them your credit card, your food is waiting there for you hot and ready to go. But it's not the cheap option. A lot of people think about McDonald's as being cheap. But really, their claim to fame is being fast, they will get you hot food faster than anyone else. And that's really the fast food promise, right. And so you actually pay for that luxury for that service to be able to drive up, order the food and get it delivered to your car so you can start eating it. What would the cheap option be? It's the grocery store, you go, you buy all the ingredients, you come home, you cook it yourself. And that's the cheapest that you're gonna get the things that you need in order to make a burger. But then you still have to make it yourself. And it takes time and it takes energy and effort. And it's not going to probably be as good as if you had it prepared at a restaurant unless you're really good chef, in which case, why you're not going to restaurants, right, you're not the target audience. But in general, when it comes to hamburgers, that's how you can think about this framework. Good fast, cheap, good would be a high end sit down restaurant, fast would be McDonald's or some other fast food drive thru service. And then cheap would be going to the grocery store, getting the ingredients and making it yourself. Now let's talk about a service business, a design agency, graphic design, branding, that kind of stuff. So on the good end of the spectrum, where you're focused on quality, it's gonna be totally custom a client comes to you they have specific needs that they're looking for, and you are able to deliver exactly what they need and more. You're able to not just give them logos and design language and colors and different mock ups and graphics, but you're able to deliver an entire package of everything they could possibly need. And you have the talent on your team to do a better job they can do in house or by hiring someone else. And so you are selling the high end top quality branding graphic design that someone could possibly get and you charge for that you charge for that expertise you charge for those deliverables and for that outcome. What about fast what would fast look like for it? I need to see, well, that would be 20 or 24 hour turnaround time or less, right?
Travis Albritton 5:05
You say I want a logo and within 24 hours, we gave you a logo, it's not going to be as good as if we had a whole design team working on it and working on the branding and everything like that. But it will be very fast. And within that quickness, you're usually looking to build in some efficiencies, and so you're going to have fewer options than fully custom. But it's not going to be boilerplate. And so people may pay more for that, they may pay less for that, depending on the quality, but in general, you will earn less per client for fast than you will for good. And then what would cheap look like? Well, she probably doesn't exist, you're gonna be competing against Fiverr, where people can get logos designed for as little as $5. And it's very difficult to build a business model where your customers are giving you $5 A pop in exchange for labor. So the for a service industry, that's what it would look like is, are you focused on the quality? Are you focused on turnaround time, or are you focused on competing on price as a commodity, so then let's switch over to a product, let's say you make a widget and in this case, we'll use a lawn mower. So if you're in the market, for a lawn mower, a good lawn mower, you're going to have high end materials doesn't break down very often, it's very reliable, no maintenance, and has all the bells and whistles that you could want in a lawnmower. So think John Deere, and for that you're gonna pay top dollar, you're gonna pay more for that kind of lawn mower, then another lawn mower that may do a similar job of cutting your grass, but with either fewer high end polishes less, you know, high quality materials, and so forth. And so fast. Well, it fast looks like for a product, well, it could either be, you actually increase the speed at which you can use the product to get the desired outcome. So maybe you make one that goes 20% faster than the John Deere. And that's your claim to fame and might not have the high end materials or the reliability track record. But if you can cut your lawn and 20% less time, people will find that desirable. And so that could be a way that you position your product. And then cheap would be this lawnmower technically cuts your grass, the blades spin, it takes gas, and you get to push it around your yard, you know, but there's no guarantees that would last for more than a year. And there's you know, you're using the cheapest materials possible in order to drive the price down in order to compete on price with other cheap alternatives. So that's how you think about good, fast, cheap for a business in three different areas, three different industries in you'll obviously want to do this for your industry. So for me, and my podcast production agency, which is more service oriented, people are paying for services, my team then delivers them, it's gonna be closer to the design agency. And you'll see podcast production agencies that are either good fast or cheap. So the good ones would be where it's either fully custom, or they deliver a lot around your podcasts. They do repurposing, though, give you Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, they'll write blog posts, they'll schedule it and upload it for you and put it on your website and, and provide all of these other services that complement the podcast production. And they will actually build that out ahead of time fast would be that you have a quick turnaround time, you give them audio files within 24 to 48 hours, you get a cut back, and then you're able to review it and see if you'd like it. And if you don't you ask for changes. And then 24 to 48 hours later, they give it back to you again. And the whole business model is based around fast turnaround times, or cheap, where you're competing on price. And you're trying to charge as little as, as you can profitably in order to get people in, that will give you money to in exchange for editing services, but you're not able to offer the same level of quality or same level of service to those clients. So when you think about your business, and applying this framework to your business, and the marketing and how you think about your business, how you communicate the value of your business, what makes you different than your competitors, which one should you choose? Well, I'm gonna tell you one to scratch off right away. And that is cheap, you do not want to compete on price. And the reason is, because if you're competing on price, if you're choosing cheap, it's a race to the bottom. Because if you charge $5 for your widget, and then somebody comes in beneath you and charges 495 Well guess what you have to do, you have to charge 490 And then go down to 485. And you have to go down to 480. And it's a race to the very bottom until everyone goes out of business except for one person because they have survived the longest at that cheap price. Or you all going out of business or at a certain point you can't continue to compete and you end up becoming irrelevant because unfortunately, there is no benefit to being the second cheapest option. If Walmart is cheaper than you. You do not want to play the price game, okay. You do not want to become a commodity. You do not want to be competing on price, because as soon as somebody undercuts you, there goes the value of your product or service. And so if you're always competing on being the cheapest being the most affordable, then you're gonna run into that problem. It's also very difficult to scale a profitable company, if you are price competitive on the low end, because you know, you will need more customers more clients to scale your revenue. As you get more clients and more revenue and more customers, you need to increase your overhead to fulfill the products and services that you've sold. And if those things are out of whack, or the price or the cost to increase your overhead to fulfill the product outpaces your ability to increase your revenue as you get more customers, that eventually you build this giant behemoth of a company that is making lots of money but spending more money. So that's where you can get into a situation where you have a seven figure business, that's spending seven figures and you run out of business, even though you're doing all this revenue, it's because the profitability of your products, you're not able to maintain that pace as you increase the ability for you to fulfill the demand for those products. So don't be cheap. That would be my encouragement. If you take one thing away from this podcast episode, don't think of yourself as the cheapest option is going to really limit your upside and limiting your limit your opportunity to be sustainable into the future. And so then there's two left's, there's fast, and there's good. So if you decide to become a fast product, whether that's your fast to fulfill the product or service, or people get results fast, but they're not at the hot the top end of results. So think diet, pill versus liposuction. So diet pill, it's fast, in the sense that you take the pill and it immediately goes to work. Liposuction is the fastest, but it's also the most expensive, and but you get similar results, right, you lose weight. So with fast, you're probably going to be optimizing your production workflow, whatever that looks like, if it's a service, that means you're going to have fewer options, fewer packages, so that you can optimize those things. So you can very quickly produce what you need to produce to turn it around quickly. And so you'll end up with a simpler business model than somebody who does custom work and is able to do that for everyone. But you will then have limited options for your clients and customers. And if that's fine, if you know what packages make sense, and you're able to deliver them quickly and promptly, then that could be a great place to position yourself as getting people very, very quick results. Now on the other side of that, you will need to make sure that you can continue to deliver on that promise. So if you believe yourself as being fast to deliver things, and your marketing and how you talk about your business and the promise that you make to your customers and clients, then you need to have redundancies built into your business. So that way, if somebody gets sick, somebody goes on vacation, somebody leaves take another position in another company, you actually have other people to backfill those roles and responsibilities into so that you're not leaving your customers on the hook because you can't fulfill and deliver the product that you promised. So you're going to be more focused on operational efficiency if you're fast. But then you also need to have some redundancy built in to be able to continue to deliver on that promise. And then if you want to focus on being good, you really want to focus on being the best, the very, very best at what you do. Because no matter what your industry, no matter what you offer, no matter what you do, there will always be people that want the best, and they're willing to pay whatever it takes to get the best. Okay, so this comes down to personal trainers, this is products and services. This is toothbrushes, this is any anything and everything, there is a market for people that just want the best. This is why if you think about T shirts and clothing, you'll have direct to consumer apparel brands that built their entire brand online with Instagram. And they can charge at 100 $200 per shirt. Think about supreme as a brand. Right? Those shirts, they're good shirts are they $200 shirts, I don't know there are some people, some people are willing to spend $200 on a shirt that says supreme on it, because they have positioned themselves as the very top end of what they sell, versus going down to Walmart and getting a pack of three white t shirts for eight bucks. Right. So where they're focused on cheap Supreme is focused on being the best. Now a great thing about being the best at what you do is that you can charge what you need to charge. Now, I would not advocate that you price gouge just for the sake of soaking every single penny out of your customers wallet that you can. But pricing your product at the high end of your industry is a signal to customers and clients that you are among the best at what you do. period, full stop. So then you need to obviously deliver on that because otherwise word of mouth is going to kill the marketing of your company. If people discover you're not actually that good at what you do, even though you say that you are. So you do have to deliver the promise that you make. But if you price yourself as the best at what you do, and you deliver on that, then you can charge whatever you want to charge price is no object because there will always be people that want the best. And those clients are actually the best clients to have. I remember seeing somebody who is a course creator they sell info products on line. And they do coaching and consulting for business owners. And they had the side by side comparison of a $500 client versus a $50,000. Client and the $500 client, they wanted to always be getting on the phone, get hopping on Zoom, getting help, hey, I'm stuck, I need you to help me, I need you to guide me. I'm not really sure if this is worth it explained to me, why should buy your product or service? And the $50,000 client says, Where do I send the check? When do we start? And that's it. Because the kind of clients that are looking for the best, they're looking for you to do that work for them that thinking for them. And they're solving a problem by writing that check, and then giving it to you. Whereas if you attract the kind of clients that are always looking around at pricing, they're always looking at what's the cheapest option? Can I find it cheaper elsewhere? I don't really understand what makes you different from this other person. So I'm gonna go with them because they're cheaper. It's just a different kind of client. So you have to decide for your industry, what makes the most sense for you? And then choose appropriately? Do you want to be fast? Or do you want to be good? And then what do you do? Once you choose? What do you do once you choose whether you want to be fast or good? Well, you incorporate it into your brand messaging. So if we look back at the design agency example that we talked about in the episode, if you want to be fast, then your marketing could be custom business logos, and graphic design and 24 hours or less. And that's the whole promise of your business. And then you design everything around that speed. And the people that want that speed that want that quick turnaround, there'll be attracted to that. If you want to be good, then you could say you do world class branding and design for eight figure businesses. So right there, you position yourself at the very top of what you do. And you even identified, these are the kinds of businesses we do business with, because an eight figure business could invest in the best designing, and branding. So that's how it would manifest. That's how it would play out. As you talk about yourself as you talk about your business. As for me for on his podcast, we've chosen good. And so you'll see that on the website we actually recently launched. So if you want to check it out and see what that looks like, just go to honestpodcasts.com. But we chose good. And so you'll see things like cutting edge, and you know premium level language really positioning ourselves as being the authority and what we do the best at what we do for the people that are a good fit for us and what we do. I just said what we do a ton. So I'm not not reading off a script here. But we've positioned all the marketing collateral towards good. And so can you find production agencies that are cheaper, per episode or per month? For sure? Well, you find some that are more expensive, probably. But the whole point is, is how do we attract the clients and the customers that wants to do business with the best at what they do? And are we charging enough in order to fulfill those services and those expectations for them.
Travis Albritton 17:52
So when it comes to good, fast and cheap, you don't get to pick two, you want to pick one and then really lean into it to either be the fastest or the best. So I hope that was a helpful exercise for getting clear about how you can position your business as the leader and whatever it is that you do. It's going to make all of your marketing all of your sales so much simpler. Because now you know, this is what makes us different. This is why we're different. This is why you would choose us over the other person. And that makes it a really clear distinction in your prospects minds. So if they're looking for the best, or they're looking for the fastest they know to come to you. If you enjoyed this episode, and you listen on Apple podcasts in the world if you would leave a review down in the show, tell other people about the podcast. And if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment below. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Well hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, be honest
