November 10, 2020
Pick one
Let’s say:
1) You love making hand knit cashmere sweaters
AND
2) You have a passion for helping homeless people
Each cashmere sweater costs about $300 in yarn, plus 40 hours of labor. So in order to have a profitable business doing this you need to charge at least $1,000 per sweater.
This creates a dilemma:
How can you sell $1,000 cashmere sweaters to homeless people?
You can’t.
You have to make a choice:
1) Find a way to offer the benefits of a hand knit cashmere sweater (e.g., warmth and comfort and love and a feeling of specialness) to homeless people.
OR
2) Continue making hand knit cashmere sweaters and find people who are happy to pay you $1,000 for them.
Either not both.
Yours,
—J