The true cost of your service

What is the difference between price and cost?

Price

When you look for a service or buy an item, usually the best price is the lowest one. You never think about the true cost. It will leave the most amount of money in your pocket. But will you get what you paid for?

We do not often consider any other costs as the effects of it can be grasped right now. You don’t have money now, you need to buy other stuff now, and the bills need to be paid now. The environment will not suffer from your small decisions. Your health probably won’t be affected by this decision significantly anyway. You are probably not even thinking about it anyway, so your mental health is not affected at all you might think. The 2nd set of costs is important! Not so urgent now, you may think. You can always work on them in the future, at some other point.

Why don’t you take a step back, meditate on it for a while, and look from that perspective? I came to understand that important and urgent issues have a massive impact on what happens now. They can be very important. Think about something would you need to do to improve your relationships, your business, and your health. It is very unlikely that it is urgent, isn’t it?  This might be the very cause of why it needs improvement in the first place. It tends to be the things that are also important but not so urgent. Exercise, mental health, planning holidays, and dreaming in general.

Value

You get what you paid for, don’t you believe it? You can’t get good and cheap, good things aren’t cheap. It is also possible to get poor quality and very expensive – we have all been there and suffered because of our poor choice. Usually, we were uninformed, not fully understood, and rushed. All you really want is value for money, isn’t it? At Silver Lining, we have our values and we want you to make an informed decision when it comes to the restoration of your wood, stone, or carpeted floors.

It is always better to spend a ‘little’ more than you planned as at the most you can lose is just that ‘little’. If you spend a little too less than you should, you will lose everything and yet you will not have the product which does what it is supposed to do. Sometimes, waiting is a better option, this way you are not losing anything, you are just withdrawing your investment.

Cost

Isn’t the cost often called the price? Let’s take a burger as this example. The price of it is £3.99, which is the cost of making this burger. You need a cow to start with, the cow needs to be born, raised, and slaughtered. It drinks around 150L of water daily for around 15 months – that’s the cost to the environment. It eats a lot as well! The grain must be grown to feed it.  grain needs a field, this is why deforestation happens – in order to feed the cow. Then it needs to be slaughtered, packed, shipped, and cooked. So, the cost in this instance is likely to be more than the price you pay of £3.99. We like to pretend to be blind and ignore the true costs.

Profit

In order for any business to be healthy economically, treat the workers fair, treat the planet well, don’t go mental, and serve good value to its customers, it must produce a profit. Otherwise, costs will go up and you will not even notice. Next time you call, the business may not exist anymore as it was not sustainable. Do you often hear the business owner saying that his/her employees are paid more than the owner?

Morale

Consider all the costs and look at the value of the product. if it doesn’t match the price, there is something wrong. It may just be a feeling, or it can be very obvious. Either way, the decision, in the end, is yours and you have to live with its consequences.

 

This actually makes me a hypocrite as sometimes I ignore the true cost. The truth comes in 3 stages – ridicule, violent opposition and acceptance – I am somewhere in between all 3 :).