I remember someone teaching us this lesson in the early days of Visual Impact Promotions – “Good, Fast or Cheap – You Can Have Two, But Not All Three.” The words resonated, but we still tried to do all three.

As a start-up company a lot of people often fall into the same trap we did – take business, any business. As if there aren’t enough things to worry about as a start-up, we had our Accountants breathing down our necks stressing the bottom line. This is exactly the kind of thinking that can torpedo a company. It is dire to realize that profit is just as, if not more important than the bottom line. Without profit a business will not last.

For a while we ran around barely covering our costs, meeting unreasonable deadlines and doling out quality products. Thankfully we realized that this was counter-productive, stopped and reassessed the way we did business. We started to work with companies who respected the fact that  they can get things good and fast, but costly; fast and cheap, but not good; or good and cheap, but not fast.

It is important to work with companies who are respectful and don’t expect everything for nothing. There are a lot of companies who prey on new businesses. They try to get as much as they can for as little as possible and end up sucking those businesses dry for all their resources. Then they move onto the next start-up, that has not yet learned this lesson.  We’ve seen it happen. So be aware and don’t let this happen to you.